The other day I read that ‘History is always under revision’. When I delved a bit deeper into it, I found out the writer was referring to the fact that a historical event, which has already taken place, could be revised based on new information that will arise from investigations. This made me think of Einstein, his relativity (special relativity, in particular) discovery and the notion of ‘point of reference’ of the observer.
«How does it apply to the question of history», you ask? Bear with me, it is coming. You see, there is an ongoing debate among scholars on History: ‘Who gets to write the history books? What documents are allowed into the historical record, and what documents are excluded?’ And a long list of other questions that go to the heart of the discipline of History itself.
What most of these are missing, however, is the notion of ‘Perspective’ in history. Depending on where you are looking from, a series of events could imply different things to different people. Let’s take a couple of examples.
Winston Churchill is regarded as a war hero in most of the western world. He opposed Hitler, led the whole Europe and never surrendered to him. He also led, for a while, the post-war reconstruction of Europe and the Soviet challenge. This may be a fair historical representation of Churchill, for the English and many Europeans, Americans, and other nationals. In fact, he was knighted into Sir Winston Churchill. On the other hand, however, if you are looking at him from Iran’s perspective, you will note that: he invaded the neutral Iran, because needed the country to supply weapons to the Soviet Union, and confiscated most of Iran’s resources (rails, workers, harvests) for England’s war efforts. As a result of these policies an estimated 2 - 5 millions people died of hunger in Iran, and when the reports came to him of this tragedy, he discarded them as ‘collateral damage’! Furthermore, Churchill was instrumental in the overthrow of Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, in the 50s. So for many Iranians, Churchill is far from being a hero.
Another example of perspective, is the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. In many countries this is seen as a trouble of revolutionaries who took over Russia violently and created havoc in the world for decades. This may be so for many people, but again a scholar of Iranian history would see the Bolshevik revolution as a blessing. You see, before the outbreak of WW1, the Czarist Russia and the UK had agreed to divide Iran, with the north going to Russia, the south to the UK and a weak useless government in the middle. But as soon as the Bolsheviks took over, they canceled this agreement as an evil deed of an imperialist regime that they wanted to distance themselves from. Again, Iranians’ perspective is more favorable to the Bolshevik revolution, based on the facts they observed.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not about Iranian grievances against the UK. I used these 2 examples to drive the following point: if history is always under revision, it is partly due to the fact that history is not an absolute, theorem-based science. The perspective of the writer and the investigator matters. Then again, you may have heard the line: «history is always written by the winners.»
Paris, September 26, 2022
Zeejay