'The Heritage Post'

  Introduction: - As we all know that history is about interpretation of events, texts, dynasty and empires in context of their rulers, policies, and cultures etc. thus, the division and categories under which history is kept is also contentious where historians have conceptualized this category i.e., of ‘ancient, medieval and modern’ in their ways through varied perspectives. When it comes to South Asian history and Indian history in particular the division of Indian history was first done by British colonizers on sectorial basis relating Ancient to Hinduism, Medieval to Islamic rule and Modern to British Era. Although this division has its own flaws but it impacted Indian history for a long time and even today. However, many contrary conceptualizations also developed with time like socio-economic, political perspectives and so on. Here in this essay, we will look at some of these interpretations done by historians for the medieval history. Definition and re-definitions of the ‘m...

 East Asian societies during Qing dynasty, Choson dynasty, Tokugawa dynasty had been very much stratified and discriminatory in nature towards women and commoners. These stratified class divisions had sub-divisions in them. They were patriarchal in nature and women had very little or no social exposure. However, with some later developments they got very minimum exposure to the society and families also had a hierarchical structure between themselves.                                             The Qing dynasty or Manchu dynasty ruled china from 1644 to 1912. Since, they were considered as outsiders by the Chinese population, they adopted ways to potentialize and strengthen their rule in china. They used a ‘Banner system’ to separate themselves from the Chinese populat...

 “The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for a life.”                                                                                                       -Confucius Confucianism is a philosophy, a set of virtues and norms for human society to develop itself morally, ethically and strengthen politically. Though it emerged in china but it has its extent to other major east Asian countries as well like Korea and Japan from ancient times till now even after modernization.                         Confucius was born in China around 551BC in the state of Lu to a low r...

1.  Rene Descartes was a French philosopher. He was a rationalist who relied on reasons as the guide for belief and action. He focused on logic on any act or ideology. Descartes proposed that to solve any question we should divide large problems into small one, this he called as ‘Methods of doubts’. Descartes asked to ground our ideas to our personal experiences and reason, rather than authority or tradition. Descartes believed in self-examination guided by definition, sound argument and clarity of thought could achieve. Descartes believed ion learning from personal experiences in different situations, meeting different people of varied ranks and class. Descartes relied on ‘thinking’, all his ideas and works moves around his famous phrase ‘I think therefore I am’, he focused on one having their own ways of thinking and perspective and suspect the tradition of passing the ideas. Rene Descartes thus, propagated an independent rational vision of existence. In his works like ‘Rules of ...

1 . Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-183) is a thinker of western philosophy. Hegel points out defects in his own time and focused on the role of central power, need for new institutions and educated officials. His works ‘The phenomenology of spirit’, ‘The science of logic’ and ‘Elements of the philosophy’ of right helps us to clear his thoughts about the past and politics as his views are related to politics and political institutions much.   Hegel mentions a historian should be a person who can bring out the ideals from the past which can compensate for the blind spots of present. Hegel asks one to learn from his/her contradictory ideas because it can possibly can have some bits of truth and ideas which looks unappealing to us and should ask to “what silver of sense and reason might be contained in otherwise frightening or foreign phenomena”. What we can derive from his philosophy or understanding could be that history can provide new solutions to a present situation. And in moving fro...

  1 . Herodotus was a Greek scholar who was born in Halicarnassus. He is known as ‘Father of history’ and ‘Father of lies’ by Cicero and Plutarch respectively (some famous Greek philosophers). Herodotus’s way of writing history is through stories and narratives. Herodotus is known for his work ‘Histories’ which brings a new method of looking at events, breaking the early methods prior to him of recording pasts as list of events only, with no efforts to explain their causes, but he brought a new method of recording the past. Herodotus started looking at the past with an observation of causes for events from both the sides to understand the reason for any incident. So, he looked for reasons to reach a conclusion about something, he thinks rationally in a sense to produce an outcome. Herodotus brings the aspect of critical inquiry from his work ‘Histories’. His work Histories is of course cannot be considered as a true history in today’s context but all his narratives are not complet...

1. E.H.Carr didn’t studied history academically nor he had any Ph.D. degree in history but his journey as a historian starts when he joined the ministry of information’s foreign division and worked as a clerk, he witnessed some historical events like Paris peace conference, treaty of Versailles etc. which has an impact on his career as a historian he took academic posts also. He observed Russian revolution which inspired him towards history his one more memory as an undergraduate student where he got influenced from one of his professor who argued that “Herodotus’s account of Persian wars in the 5 th century BC was shaped by his attitude towards the Peloponnesian war”(Source- www.newstatesman.com ). Going through E.H.Carr’s views what I can interpret is that history is an interpretation of facts, a historian’s view towards looking any event, but a historians view also depends on the contemporary situations of his/her time. One more aspect of looking towards history is the interpret...