Why History? This is something I am asked all the time. Why couldn't I have been interested in something more practical? Something more modern? More stream-lined to a particular career? This is for all you who love history, those that share the passion for the past. This is for all of you who hate history, who would rather wait in peak hour traffic or watch paint dry, than read about the Titanic or Henry VIII's Field of Cloth of Gold, or Viking raids.
This piece of writing is pretty much me rambling about why I looooveeeeee studying, learning, immersing myself in history of pretty much any era. It isn't a scholarly deconstruction on history or the problems that occur with studying it. Anyways, so here we go. The only way I could simply describe the feeling is probably the same as when a painter gets new paintbrushes or a gym junkie finds a new protein powder; it's exciting. Yet I'd hope that history has a more meaningful impact on me than the protein powder or paintbrushes have for others.
It is fascinating collecting knowledge of the lives of people, how they interacted, lived, thought, acted and rebelled. History is a sort of intrigue and curiosity, the whys?, the hows? when? where? We investigate it, as Sherlock and Watson sleuth around a crime scene. It is all about questions, and if we're lucky, sometimes they are answered. How were the pyramids built? Why did women wear corsets? What does the Great Wall of China keep out?
I could care less for dates, statistics and policies; History is not made up of numbers but of people, rebels, revolutionaries, day dreamers and night thinkers, sufferers, hardships and hope. The French Revolution was not important because it began in 1789, but because of the ideas it fought for, the legacy it left, that sketched a mark throughout Europe. Just as Leonardo Da Vinci's great inventions of the ball bearing and flying machine, the beauty of his paintings transcended his time.
(The Vitruvian Man) The past seems to sit in a milky cloud, that we peer through often seeing the golden memories, the quirky abstracts that transform into novelties. Like how in the Georgian period noble women and men wore white face powders as make-up that were lead based some including vinegar and horse manure. Wigs were also popular because of the fear of lice. The next image is an eccentric wig belonging to Marie Antoinette.
History evokes emotion, for myself, I feel a patchwork quilt of emotions ranging from heart-wrenching sadness, to wild anger, to curiosity and happiness. The only fatal tragedy is that we can't change it...
"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." (L.P. Hartley)
History does boast a dark side. A side that ignores wrongs done, trauma that slices through generations and horrors across all continents that still remain unknown because of an unwillingness to accept the mistakes and abuses of our ancestors. Hindsight is such a luxury for us, we know what has happened in the past, the overall picture of a narcissistic ruler that systematically destroys or the dominating coloniser that destroys the peace of first peoples. We remove emotion and raw tragedy with academic examination, scholarly intrigue and judgement-- some don't care for the people. History is such a powerful force because us in the present are handed with hindsight to stop what has previously happened. Yet many people abuse it, will mimic the mistakes, galvanise the failures and wrong doings of the leaders to roll them over into our time. It takes courage to combat this. The courage of the Suffragette Movement of the 19th and 20th centuries and the rebels of the Easter Uprising of 1916.
It makes you grateful for how far we've come, for example in the Western world the advancement of women and Indigenous rights, but even though we're thankful for the progress, it makes some people complacent, they stop continuing this progression that has clearly not finished. History has walked with us thus far, yet we have many more journeys to go.
History will always be relevant and important. We will always be cherry picking into the past for reasons to explain the present and change the future. We will always try to chase back with nostalgia for the 'good ol' days'. And I don't think I'll ever stop chasing. I've always been told I was born in the wrong era, and I intend to keep exploring that world as closely as possible...
