What Is History - VIVA

These questions relate to “What Is History?”

What Is History?

• Discipline → understand how people lived, thought and acted in the past

• Those actions shape the present

• Way of Asking Questions, Analysing evidence and building interpretations overtime

First Author for the " What Is History” Section?

• Stuart Macintyre “The History Wars”

• Historians used special methods to analyse primary and secondary sources

• They apply trained judgement to decide what those sources mean

• Key part of history is interpretation

Second author for the " What Is History” Section?

• Peter Geyl “Argument Without End”

• Historians never reach one final conclusion

• Everyone brings their own perspective, questions and context

• “Truth assumes many shapes to men” → historians can look at the same sources and still reach different conclusions

What Major Ideas does this Connect to?

Positivism:

• Belief that sources speak for themselves

• Only one truth exists

• Ranke’s famous idea of telling history as it actually was reflects this

• Modern historians recognise this as not realistic

Historicism:

• Context, individuality, perspective shape conclusions

• E.H. Carr “What is History” → Historians choose which facts matter and how to arrange them → changing choices naturally leads to different interpretations.

Why is history a discipline of inquiry?

• R.G Collingwood said historians must ask why people acted as they did → not just record what happened.

• March Bloch → history as a curious, questioning form of knowledge.

• History is always changing because new questions lead to new interpretations.

How is history different from other ways of knowing the past?

• Archaeology → studies physical remains → lead to scientific reports

• Science → measures deep time through climate data and geological layers

Anna Clark “Making Australian History”

• Indigenous knowledge systems → aboriginal engravings, landscapes and storylines act as historical archives that challenge western ideas of linear time

• Reminds us that History is not only written→ also held in country, ceremony and cultural practice.

History is a human-centred, interpretive discipline that constantly evolves as new questions are asked and new evidence becomes available.

These Questions relate to “Why do historians today reach different conclusions to prior generations?”

Why do they reach different conclusions?

• The discipline has changed

• New evidence has emerged

• New questions are being asked

Peter Geyl

• Historians will always interpret information differently → they live in different times and bring different perspectives

E.H Carr

• Historians select and emphasise different facts, and changing those choices naturally leads to different conclusions

Why did Earlier historians often worked within narrow frameworks?

• Early historians wrote from a British colonial perspective

• Focused on explorers, governors, and settlers, and they aimed to create a unified national story.

Stuart Macintyre in The History Wars 

• This approach excluded Indigenous experiences and frontier violence.

• This produced what W.E.H. Stanner later called “the Great Australian Silence,” where Aboriginal histories were left out of the national narrative.

Why did historians begin asking questions as society changed?

Clark and Ashton in “Australian History Now”

• Movements such as Indigenous rights, women’s rights, multiculturalism, and environmentalism reshaped the discipline.

• Historians started writing about groups previously ignored — Aboriginal people, women, migrants, workers, children, and people affected by poverty or violence.

• These new questions naturally led to new interpretations.

How did new evidence change historical conclusions?

Ann McGrath in “Deep Histories in Time”

• Australia’s human history stretches back at least 60,000 years.

• This deep time does not fit European timelines, which usually begin around 4000 BC.

• As archaeologists and Indigenous knowledge holders revealed more about ancient Australia, historians had to rethink how they understood the past.

• This expanded the timeline of Australian history and challenged older interpretations.

How did Technology change the discipline?

Clark and Ashton explain

• Digitised archives, Trove, and online records allow historians to access far more evidence than earlier generations could.

• Oral history, community archives, and heritage studies also broadened the range of sources historians use.

How did political debates shape interpretation?

Macintyre “History Wars,”

• Historians and politicians argued over how to represent colonisation.

• These debates pushed historians to rethink old narratives and produce new ones

• Because history is interpretive and because new evidence and new perspectives continue to emerge, historians today naturally reach different conclusions than earlier generations.

These next questions relate to question 3 “How have histories of Australia evolved, and what are the consequences of new interpretations?”

How has it changed overtime?

• Early histories were shaped by colonial values and focused on British settlement, explorers, governors, and national progress.

• They presented Australia as a young British nation with a heroic pioneering past.

• This excluded Indigenous histories, women, migrants, workers, and frontier conflict.

Anna Clark in Making Australian History 

• Colonial stories were placed over much older Indigenous histories, even though Aboriginal people had been making history for tens of thousands of years.

From the 1970s onward, new movements transformed the discipline?

Clark and Ashton in Australian History Now 

• Indigenous rights, women’s rights, multiculturalism, and social history challenged traditional national narratives.

• Historians began writing about groups previously ignored. They also began studying everyday life, gender, work, migration, and environmental change.

• This made Australian history more inclusive and more complex.

Why did historians start to study deep time?

Ann McGrath in Deep Histories in Time 

• Australia’s 60,000‑year human history does not fit European timelines.

• She shows how Indigenous histories are held in Country, ceremony, and story, and how these forms of knowledge challenge Western ideas of chronology.

• This expanded the timeline of Australian history and encouraged historians to rethink how they define evidence.

Why did these changes lead to major public debates?

Stuart Macintyre describes the “History Wars,”

• Historians and politicians argued over how to represent colonisation.

• New interpretations emphasised frontier violence, dispossession, and racism,

• Conservatives accused historians of promoting a negative national story.

• These debates shaped museums, school curricula, national commemorations, and public memory.

Why were the consequences significant?

• They broaden national identity, challenge myths, reveal hidden histories, and encourage more inclusive understandings of Australia’s past.

• They also create political debate, as seen in the History Wars, but they ultimately deepen our understanding of how Australia became what it is today.

• New interpretations show that Australian history is not fixed — it is always evolving as historians ask new questions and uncover new evidence.