History is always written by the victor

[BeBMan]

Do you agree or not? Discuss.

[Proteus_MST]

It was definitely true in the past wars, till maybe the beginning of the 20th century.
Nowadays however there are enough independent news agencies and news (support by pictures/films) can spread very quickly around the world even if the victor wants to ban them.
Therefore I think that nowadays the victor is less able to spread only his own propaganda (and silence the views of the loser).
Look for example at Tibet. China won the short war, annexed Tibet and claims that it has every right to the possession of Tibet.
Despite this propaganda the inconventient truth about Tibet being a war of aggression and the atrocities against buddhist monks have spread throughout the world, so that outside of China you won´t see many (non chinese) people who agree that China had any right to invade Tibet.

[molly bloom]

The victor will always 'write' a history.


However, in the instance of the Battle of Kadesh, both sides wrote 'histories' but it's the Egyptian version and propaganda that has achieved greatest renown- not the 'winning' Hittite perspective.

Because strictly speaking, Ramesses II didn't win.

Also, we mostly know Hannibal and the Carthaginians and the Celts through the eyes and distortions of others- so it's always worth taking the received views of them with a pinch of salt.

Same for the Germanic tribes and the Picts and the Greek view of the Achaemenids (and nearly any non-Greek except for the Egyptians and 'Aethiopians').

[LordShiva]

The Vikings and Mongols didn't write as profusely as their vanquished enemies.

[Arrian]

The losing side of the US Civil War managed to get its side of history out pretty well. Pretty damned well during certain periods...

-Arrian

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by molly bloom
(...) so it's always worth taking the received views of them with a pinch of salt.

True But I think the sentence as such - if it is indeed there to indicate that always only the victor gets finally his views through, and that those of the others always do somehow disappear - is just another bad generalization which may work in certain cases, but which often does not.

Re Proteus - I think even earlier than the 20th century it's not per se true. The others gave some examples, I'd also add that history writing was in the better cases not the same as making propaganda. Sure you have these guys like Callisthenes who wrote for Alex the Great, but otoh you have also those like Thucydides who can hardly be accused of writing only propaganda stuff.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by BeBro


True But I think the sentence as such - if it is indeed there to indicate that always only the victor gets finally his views through, and that those of the others always do somehow disappear - is just another bad generalization which may work in certain cases, but which often does not.

Re Proteus - I think even earlier than the 20th century it's not per se true. The others gave some examples, I'd also add that history writing was in the better cases not the same as making propaganda. Sure you have these guys like Callisthenes who wrote for Alex the Great, but otoh you have also those like Thucydides who can hardly be accused of writing only propaganda stuff.

I think also that the inheritors of classical civilization in the West will automatically have a bias for Graeco-Roman versions of history, given the emulation of what are supposedly Roman and Greek ideals.

I blame the Church of course....

This certainly led to a downplaying of the democratic aspects of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings in favour of the 'received' Greek version of democracy.

Terry Jones of Monty Python fame hosted a very entertaining series on the 'Barbarians' :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Terry-Jones-Barbarians/dp/0563493186

which to anyone unfamiliar with the intellectual and technological advances that took place amongst the non-Graeco-Roman peoples will be informative.

After all, let's give the Celts/Germans their due: barrel staves, beer barrels, soap, chain mail and advanced metallurgy.

If only torcs could talk...

[Fake Boris]

It's much more a problem of documentation than the losers not writing an history. Those who have lost, in general, wrote in languages that disappeared, had their temples and archives pillaged, etc. We have retained the documents of those who have lost the recent wars, because it's much easier now to store knowledge than it was previously.

In the general sense, it can still be said that victors write history, to the extent that might makes right, and create the normative conditions for their version to reach a larger consensus.

[BeBMan]

Agree about the problem of documentation.

And yes, if we understand the sentence also as "making history" where the victor can just establish facts "on the ground" (as they call it today) due to his power.

But if it's about the views on history I'd rather say that often there are "competing histories" and the dominating one isn't always that of the victor. It depends highly on the character of the war(s) fought, on the concrete results and on the abilities of the participating sides to get a certain view on history accepted as "the history". To give a more recent example - I doubt that the majority of people in the west sees the war in Vietnam through the eyes of Vietnamese historians, movie makes, writers etc...

[Zkribbler]

A couple of months ago, I saw a movie on Hitler's last days in the bunker. It was based in large part upon the memoirs of Hitler's secretary.

Great movie by the way.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
A couple of months ago, I saw a movie on Hitler's last days in the bunker. It was based in large part upon the memoirs of Hitler's secretary.

Great movie by the way.

name of the movie?

barring that, where did you see it?

[Hueij]

Originally posted by Dis


name of the movie?

barring that, where did you see it?

Der Untergang, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. IIRC it won an oscar last year. It's an awesome movie

[Az]

Yep.