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1. Sir Geoffrey Elton (1921-94) menjelaskan pengertian sejarah:
history is at once interesting and exciting, amusing and instructive. Yet Elton
was against historians having empathy for the past, for such an emotional
engagement displaces what should be the object of the historian, namely,
rational enquiry into past events. As a traditional historian, he believed very
much in the possibilities of history as an exercise in empirical or fact-based truth
and the ability of the historian to analyse objectively the results of research with
a high degree of precision.
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2. E.H. Carr (1892-1982) in What is History (1961) argued for a rather more
sensitive approach to historical evidence. For Carr, history is subjective because
historians are recognised as part of the process of doing history, unable to
separate prejudices and presuppositions from conclusions drawn solely from
evidence. It is this factor above all others that has secured Carrs reputation as a
radical in his approach to history, while Elton is seen as a defender of the
conservative approach to history.
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3. As a discipline which emerged in the nineteenth century under the guidance of
von Ranke, history has tended to rely exclusively on documentary evidence for
its sources. For most historians, written documents are the most reliable to hand
and thus provide the best access to the period under study. Belatedly, other
sources broadly considered as visual are now treated with seriousness.
Paintings, photographs, films and architecture are thus increasingly employed as
legitimate sources of evidence. In certain respects this is surprising given that
they are works of the imagination, and therefore not reliable sources. And it is
true that our techniques for reading them are little developed in comparison
with those which are brought to bear on documentary evidence, and yet when
used skilfully images have been able to shed important new light on historical
episodes.
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4. A document usually means a primary source that can give us information about a
person or a specific period. This might be an eye witness account of some sort: a
government proclamation, a photograph, a diary, film or even a building,
...Primary sources might equally constitute evidence that at first glance we might
not imagine as evidence at all, revealing details about the past that the author of
the document had not planned to divulge and informing many areas of historical
study...There is then method to working with historical documents. Mostly this
method consists of asking questions of the document.
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5. That documents are sometimes subject to forgery is not a new discovery.
Examples of attempts to sabotage the archives go back into at least the
nineteenth century. In the case of the Hitler Diaries in the 1980s, it was
demonstrated how a post-war context could make a forgery financially
rewarding. In the case of the Protocols, dating from around 1900, the motive is
less clear and appears to be rather more ideologically or politically driven. It is a
timely reminder that history is powerful enough to be considered worth
falsifying and that the results of that falsification can matter.
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6. The digital revolution in humanities has facilitated a fundamentally different
approach to historical knowledge and the acquisition of historical knowledge has
been transformed. A whole world of online archives has been brought to life on
the Internet with concomitant opportunities for the student to engage in study in
areas and ways formerly beyond our wildest dreams. History on the Internet,
however, also presents certain pitfalls for the historian unwilling to exercise
caution in accessing the websites used and monitoring the veracity of the
knowledge they present.
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7. An archive is generally thought of as a repository for materials of historic
interest or social significance. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century
when history emerged as a discipline, much intellectual, emotional and financial
weight has been invested in the archive as a result of which it now stands as a
store of pristine knowledge, sacred and inviolable. Such perspectives, however,
have to be tempered by recognition that the archive does not create itself, but is
shaped by the people who put it together and allow historians or the general
public access to the materials. We therefore have to ask of the archive: Who are
the collectors? What criteria do they use in collecting material? How is the
archive controlled and maintained? Who act as the gatekeepers?
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8. Oral history is a strand of historical inquiry that has grown in status in recent
years and although still regarded by more conventional historians with a degree
of suspicion, has also been responsible for innovative studies...Conventional
historians are quick to point out the difficulties of oral history. For the most part,
as a methodology, it relies upon the memories of witnesses, and we know only
too well how fickle, unreliable and selective these can be. In answer to this, we
can say that oral historians are interested not only in the ability of people to
recall factual information reliably, but also in how they interpreted the events
which shaped their lives. It is clear also that recall of the past is shaped
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profoundly by the present. People interpret their lives through the prism of the
here and now, and often attempt to reconstruct personal narratives as a means
of making sense of, or celebrating them. The process of gathering information is
also prone to influence from the presence of the interviewer. All memories are
therefore recalled with a particular audience in mind, and responses to questions
shaped by beliefs in what is required or expected of them. These sorts of
criticisms do not necessarily compromise the promise of oral history, however,
not least because they can also be levelled at other, more conventional sources.
All documentary sources are written with a particular audience in mind, and
equally importantly, also depend upon the memories of their authors.
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