History is not only the study of “what-really-happened-in-the-past,” but it can be an exciting and engaging discipline. Unlike what many students think, it isn’t some dusty subject that should be relegated to the top shelf of a remote library nobody ever visits. Instead, it’s a discipline that can help students develop skills and gain an understanding of the world around them.
But how do you make history interesting? One way is to focus on a single biography. This will allow you to experience a lot of events in an organized way, as the story of a person’s life unfolds. Movies that portray historical events are another great way to learn about the past. These are useful because they often provide a more concise summary of the main events of a period in time, and they can also inspire discussion about how history has influenced current beliefs and perspectives.
However, if you are going to take this route, it is important to remember that movies do not necessarily capture all of the complexity of the era being studied. Some important aspects of the past may be missed, such as the complex interplay of economic, social, political and religious forces that were present. Furthermore, as historians we are aware that our interpretations of historical sources always reflect our own biases. It’s hard to avoid this fact as we read eyewitness accounts of battles, letters sent to congressmen about women’s suffrage or the accounts of those who lost their lives trying to end slavery.
There are countless ways to approach history, and the best way for you to learn about it will be to find something that interests you. But whatever you choose, it’s important to have a good foundation in the subject, because knowledge of the past is essential for any modern society.
The discipline of history began to emerge as a study of the past in the ancient world with the development of written records. Cuneiform writing first appeared in Mesopotamia about 2900 bce, and soon after that, scribes began to record their findings on tablets. By the time Herodotus wrote his Histories in 450-420 bce, and Thucydides wrote his History of the Peloponnesian War, it had become clear that this was a discipline that could be learned, and that history might help us understand the present.
The discipline has developed since then, and continues to do so as scholars come up with new theories about the past. In order to be an informed student, it is necessary to read secondary sources that cover periods of history that interest you, and be familiar with historiographical debates about those topics. For example, if you are interested in the Trojan War, it is worthwhile to spend some time becoming acquainted with the debates that have taken place about the exact nature of the events described by Homer and by Thucydides. Most scholarly histories will have a historiographical section near the beginning that notes the major ideas and debates about a particular subject in the field.