Sunday, 23 September 2012

Understanding The Basics Of Historical Revisionism

By Janis Hickman


Historical revisionism is the examination of available facts in order to reevaluate an important event. It can involve presenting an event so that it becomes less or more positive. This concept has also been associated with negationism which involves the denial that certain events ever occurred.

Most accounts have probably been retold in such a way that the group who is in power can not be criticized. There are data available regarding an event but because of the biases, the account becomes distorted. Wars, for example, can easily be retold by the victors who, of course, would not be critical of their actions.

Historians could be reexamining an event through a different school of thought. They could be double checking on the facts that were previously presented. They could also be working on the idea that an event was distorted with to accomplish a specific objective.

Famous examples of the rewriting of certain events include the occurrence of the Holocaust. Certain factions have taken up the belief that the persecution of the Jews never occurred. There have also been controversies about the identity of who was responsible for the first world war.

It was first used as a term after the first world war in the Treaty of Versailles. The revisionists were the ones who wanted to change the treaty given the new facts that were revealed. It also came to mean repeated use and later on gained a negative connotation. History however, has been rewritten due to several factors.

One is that if new data is uncovered. There have been many instances that data has been lost over time and these valuable information can actually shed new light on a past event and change its perspective. In some situations data remains sealed because of the potential security risks it presents once exposed to the public.

Science is also a factor that can bring about more data in the field. The latest equipment and techniques can give more scope to the data that can be obtained from sites. These can be used to confirm the accuracy of a account.

There are other environmental factors such as nationalism and culture which can bring about historical revisionism. If knowledge about a language is improved, it can also change an old perspective. As the environment continually changes and new data is continually obtained, history also evolves.




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