"Relying on the Unreliable", thoughts on bias in history. This report will consider the companies which have been chosen for the aviation sector, including a PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analysis of the industry. An analysis of ra

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Relying the Un-Reliable

Sources is history, history is sources. Without sources, there would not be history- without history, there would not be sources. It should become quite clear how interlinked these two things are. The Area of Knowledge History relies heavily on the studying, understanding and analysis of these so called sources. Before we even properly started the IB History High course, our teacher presented us with a variety of sources, asking us to comment on their reliability. First of all, sources are described as including books, newspapers, printed documents, personal papers, and other archival records, artifacts, and oral accounts that give insight on occurrings of the past.

What was interesting was the fact that the whole class had big difficulties understanding why some written pieces of work might not be true at all. It is hard to judge the truth of something, when you’ve never actually saw any reason for doubting it.

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Problems arise again. Our first topic in history “Chinese History” is a critical topic. One of the problems when studying Mao’s China is that of obtaining such reliable sources. In China there has always been the tendency to see the past as it has affected the present. Under Mao the media was always controlled, so many of the sources that we use to study China are western. The immediate question is: “how reliable is Western historiography when dealing with Chinese History”? Further knowledge issues emerge. “Is it possible for a person to write a reliable account or book about ...

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