Popkin defines historiography “as the critical assessment of the ways in which historians try to reconstruct past events as distinguished from the statements they make about the past” (pg. 3). \u00a0It is a very complex and complicated field of study that is not easy to understand at first. \u00a0Popkin argues that this complexity comes from the fact that history is not simple because “history refers both to events that took place in the past and to the accounts we give them” (Popkin, pg. 4). \u00a0Due to the fact that there can be multiple works of writing dealing with the same time period or event that contain different material, we need a way to help understand why there are differences in them. \u00a0This is where historiography comes into play. \u00a0Historiography helps to understand the different ways hisotrians interpreted the past to try to understand or gain a knowledge of a universal truth about the past. \u00a0(Popkin, pg. 4).<\/p>\n

I share the same feeling of historiography giving me a weird taste of history as\u00a0Joseph\u00a0Ngo does. \u00a0I love history for the great tales of the past. \u00a0I enjoy the history books that Popkin says are “written for a popular audience” these books focus on “spectacular events and big personalities” (Popkin pg. 5). \u00a0So it is a little frustrating being presented with this field of history. \u00a0However, studying historiography gives people a better understanding of history itself, and allows people to become better historians themselves, therefore, is important.<\/p>\n

Historiography forces “historians to look at the past from new angles” by viewing these new angles, this creates conflict between historians, however, Popkin argues that these “disagreements help keep the discipline alive” (pg. 8).<\/p>\n

Although this concept seems a little awkward, it is very important because it allows historians to gain a better understanding of history, and helps continue to encourage historical research and debate, helping to maintain the discipline as a whole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Popkin defines historiography “as the critical assessment of the ways in which historians try to reconstruct past events as distinguished from the statements they make about the past” (pg. 3). \u00a0It is a very complex and complicated field of study that is not easy to understand at first. \u00a0Popkin argues that this complexity comes from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}