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This sounds a very sweeping statement. Nevertheless, there is much truth in it. The bias
is not always deliberate. Every writer owes much to his or her background and to the national
climate of opinion.
The important thing about the writing of history is that it should not only be factual but
that it should include all the facts. For example, it would be wrong to write about the French
Revolution without dealing with what led up to it, the glaring differences in living standards
between aristocrat and peasant, the inequity of the law, the callousness of the rich and the
rational philosophy of human equality and human rights spelled out by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Otherwise the account would read simply as a record of brutal and
indiscriminate violence on the part of the Paris mob.
The best of historical writing therefore includes all the facts, objectively presented, leaving
the reader to draw personal conclusions. The problem of this kind of writing is dullness, where
personal opinion or interpretation is rigorously excluded.
Nobody, either writer or reader, is totally without a political stance. One writer dealing
with a popular revolution will castigate a mob for violence, greed and looting, condemning the
murders which lead to the overthrow of a stable government. Another, dealing with the same
revolution, will put all the blame on the government for its autocratic and heartless attitude
to the people, and argue that the ugly features of revolution are necessary if full democratic
control of government is to pass into the hands of the people.
If some historians tend to write, however objectively, from the national point of view,
others tend to adopt the one-world stance, which is basically left-wing. This stance favors
aggression by the oppressed and is invariably censorious about colonialism. It is also pacifist
insofar as the established powers are concerned, although vague about the consequences of total
non-aggression in all circumstances. The one-world view also tends to be
selective in the presentation of facts, eliminating those which conflict with
it's overall moral outlook. For example there is no mention of social and
material progress or of the Pax Britannica in certain
modern accounts of British colonialism.
Much the same applies to domestic history. While it is true that the old-fashioned historian concentrated on power bases, monarchs and political leaders, perhaps excessively, some modern
historians see history simply in terms of the upward struggle of the poor, writing only about
violence against the class struggle and against the trades union movement.
More recently, the writing of history in some countries has been
debased out of all
recognition. This happens when an oppressive government decides to brainwash its people into
continued subservience. The technique is to suppress all the truth of the past and rewrite only
the material which fits in with government policy. Such
travesties are forcibly imposed on
schools, while objectively-written history books are withdrawn from schools and libraries.
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