Petit Journal (1898) Racist caricature of European powers dividing up China. Germany leaseholds Kiaochow, England wins Weihaiwei, Russia gets Port Arthur as France and Japan wait in anticipation of their own slice of Le gateau des Rois. What knowledge questions come to mind when assessing political cartoons like this as historical sources?

Petit Journal (1898) Racist caricature of European powers dividing up China. Germany leaseholds Kiaochow, England wins Weihaiwei, Russia gets Port Arthur as France and Japan wait in anticipation of their own slice of Le gateau des Rois.

What knowledge questions come to mind when assessing political cartoons like this as historical sources?

“History isn’t only a subject; it’s also a method. My method is, generally, to let the dead speak for themselves. I’ve pressed their words between these pages, like flowers, for their beauty, or like insects, for their hideousness. The work of the historian is not the work of the critic or of the moralist; it is the work of the sleuth and the storyteller, the philosopher and the scientist, the keeper of tales, the sayer of sooth, the teller of truth…

The past is an inheritance, a gift and a burden. It can’t be shirked. You carry it everywhere. There’s nothing for it but to get to know it.
”
— History according to Jill Lepore Professor of American History at Harvard University, staff writer at The New Yorker. Lepore, Jill (2018: xix-xx) These Truths: A History of the United States. W. W. Norton and Company, New York.

Class activities

The past has gone. How on earth are we to make sense of it?

Here are some class activities that will enable students to explore the scope of history. Students will reflect on their own relationship to history as an academic discipline, and how historians bring their own perspectives to the evolving edifice of historical knowledge. Students will encounter the distinct methods and tools of history, as well as some of the ethical conundrums confronted by historians as they strive to inquire, interpret, and tell meaningful stories about the past.

Draw history (including cubist history)
Evoke history without words
Cubist history
History is not what happened
What historians do
Comparing history to science
Trotsky air-brushed
The map that made a nation cry
Napoleon rendered in oil paint
The Retreat from Moscow
Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture
History vs. historic fiction
Hilary Mantel perspective


KNOWLEDGE QUESTIONS

The new Theory of Knowledge Guide (2020) provides 385 Knowledge Questions for student exploration. Here are my personal favorites from the history section. 

SCOPE

Are all areas of knowledge concerned with knowledge of the past to some extent?


PERSPECTIVE

How can we gauge the extent to which history is being told from a cultural or national perspective?


METHODS AND TOOLS

On what criteria can historians evaluate the reliability of their sources? 

Is there less emphasis on collaborative research in history than there is between researchers in other areas of knowledge?

How do the methods and conventions of historians themselves change over time?

ETHICS

Should terms such as “atrocity” or “hero” be used when writing about history, or should value judgments be avoided?

CONNECTING TO THE CORE THEME

How might the methods of the historian help us to evaluate claims we are exposed to in the media today?

What ethical concerns are raised by the digitization and online publication of archive material containing people’s personal images and documents?

Detail from the Catalan Atlas (ca. 1375) complied by a group of Mallorcan Jewish cartographers, depicting Sultan Musa, owner of the West African gold mines at the center of trans-Saharan trade routes. Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Detail from the Catalan Atlas (ca. 1375) complied by a group of Mallorcan Jewish cartographers, depicting Sultan Musa, owner of the West African gold mines at the center of trans-Saharan trade routes. Bibliothèque Nationale de France.