History (Historia in latin), a study of the written past might had been seen as one of the most useless subject. There is not many useful application of the study in real life. There are only a few job that require historical knowledge, mainly historian and history teacher or probably politician and writer. Sound like a useless subject to study isn't it? If studying history is useless, why in most part of the world we are required to know at least some historical knowledge of the particular piece of land. Well, basically there are several reason for it.
First off we can say that History is learnt to appreciate what the past generation had done for us. The past generation had brought us peace and subsequently freedom. Peace and freedom is not something that we can take for granted. The previous generation fought battles to obtain them. Many lives are lost in the process of obtaining them. To obtain peace we had to solve a conflict. Blood is spilled in the process. Not drops of blood but a river of blood. The past is filled with many unhappiness that could ignite to a conflict at anytime. A lot Men died because of the explosion of hatred. It only come to an end after one party surrenders or both party had come to mutual acceptance. Many lives lost in the middle of conflict, those who are trapped inside and those who try to stop it peacefully. Dag Hammarskjöld died in the middle of his pursue of peaceful Africa. Africa had nothing to do for him, yet he cares deeply about them and risk his life as middle man in peace negotiation. Freedom didn't come cheap. A fight for freedom of African American had come to a civil war. Not only Africans fight for their freedom. The united army was also consist of the Whites who fight for them. The past generations has fought for freedom from oppressive colonial rule which does not come without blood (maybe doesn't applies to Singapore but it does in many others). We studied history to honour their sacrifices for the current society.
History is also studied to know more of our roots. It is much written in history about the exploration and migration of human. After living for many generations on the new land, we tend to forget of our identity, culture and tradition of our ancestors and where we come from. In today's society, many overseas Chinese especially those living as the minority had slowly suffering from illiteracy of their own language and ignorant of the culture and traditions. Introduction of history of migration will obviously helps to ignite more awareness among this people and eventually lead to more interest in studying the culture and tradition. It will be disrespectful to disregard our ancestors by not knowing them. Studying history let us knows from which part of the world our ancestor come from provided we at least knew some customs and tradition of our ancestors from our parents or grandparents.
History is important as we can learn from the success and mistakes of the previous leaders. Rise and fall of a great leader ought to be studied as it gives clear indication of their successful and bad policies. Li Shimin (Tang Taizong) trying hard not to abuse his power by allowing his officers to criticise him, using Emperor Yang of Sui Dynasty as negative example which proved to be instrumental as his ministers tries to stop him whenever he made bad policy, such as when he decide to conscript all able bodied man aged 18 and above. His minister stopped him as it would lead to lack of food since not enough manpower to manage the farms. Kublai Khan practiced tolerance and tried as much as he can to employ non-Mongolian in state affairs, balancing imperial and local interest so that they won't feel discriminated and not represented, much to what needed in modern society to avoid ethno-religious conflict. The rise of Hitler reminded the world not to be overly oppressive to defeated nation as it could lead to over nationalistic leaders who wants to reshape the country to what it was before through militaristic effort, leading to another war. The nightmare of WWII reminded us not to fight another war. The terror reminded the world not to fight another war, as what evidenced by the cold war whereby the the tension horrified the world of possible nuclear warfare.Therefore, history is important as we can learn from the past what kind of outcome an action will bring by studying the leaders.
Most historical records written by a country is more than often biased against their enemy, making it inaccurate and useless to be studied. The Cold War is an example. Records written by American historian (The Orthodox) heavily criticize USSR for causing The Cold War, depicting them as the evil. It is not until Gorbachev of USSR declassified USSR's historical archives the world realised that the Cold War was a mutual mistrust between both states (Post Revisionist). Even though historical records are biased, there are still other sources depicting the same event giving the ability for cross-referencing thus the fact could be drawn. However, when there is no other sources, history serve little or less value as the reliability to explain past events is biased and one sided. Thus, even though many historical records are biased it is still useful provided we had another source for cross referencing, reducing the bias.
History is still useful in this modern society as it is what shaped us now. It might be biased but with cross-referencing we can reduce it. Uncovering the truth of the past. Historical documents let us to understand the perception of people of the past, allowing us not to repeat their wrong decision. Without history, we might not know who we are, the reason we are here and why the world is shaped this way now. Howard Zinn, an American historian once said "If you don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday, then any leader can tell you anything." Therefore history is very important.
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