There is nothing wrong with writing and re-writing history if reliable evidence can be found. A paradigm shift in history can place a huge impact on the society as much as a paradigm shift can in other areas of knowledge. The obvious example is the book “1421 – The year China discovered America” by Gavin Menzies. Although there is previously a hypothesis that Vikings could have discovered Americas long before Columbus, Menzies totally shocked the audience with his theories. Given the Chinese were good sailors and adventurists, the conclusion that they could sail from China to Americas in approximately 30 days with enough food supply is not convincing to ordinary people. But why was Menzies so sure about his theories that he decided to publish a book? The reason is he did have evidence and traces of Chinese people from observing the history and development of the Native Americans.
Let’s not go in depth to the archaeological side of the China discovering America story, but we can see that no one can control the present because the moment you finish reading this sentence, the event of reading the sentence will become the past. Menzies went through evidence from the past to come up with his idea, and it is the past with its evidence and traces that actually stayed there for us to study about and later on can alter our thoughts and actions in the present and future. And if the Chinese people really sailed and discovered Americas, they were the one who left the evidence that Menzies, in the following six centuries become interested in. Or Columbus’s announcement of the discovery of Americas to the Spanish monarch did make Europeans feel proud of the ability to conquer the world for the entire six centuries. Later generations know and understand that the Chinese people or Columbus were in Americas in the 14th century simply because they were there, and of course, if they were not there 600 years ago then anyone would ever know about the presence of a continent called Americas.
Teaching history is not only about listing thousands of events in front of students, but also teaching them know how significant, important the historical event is, and thus learn from what actually happened in the past. When a Vietnamese student is taught about the civil war in Vietnam that took place for more than 200 years since the 16th century between Nguyen Lords and Trinh Lords, he or she can somehow feel the pain of people in the period to have their country divided into two parts, not to mention the fall of the once glorious Le empire so that Le kings had no choice but became puppets of the Nguyen and Trinh Lords. The lesson from that civil war result the motivation to re-unify the North and South of Vietnam during the Vietnam War, so that people who spoke the same language, shared the Vietnamese blood did not have to see their country separated again. Vietnam now already moves on and becomes one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, and I believe this is because Vietnamese people are always confident in the future of the nation as a united one.
However, the debate about history curriculum of Japan started when the Ministry of Education of Japan decided to massively change the history text books’ content about Japanese invasion in China and Korea. This is an example of who is in control in the present can therefore take control of the past. Although we are outsiders to the post-war conflicts between those countries, we all there is a better way of teaching history than building the hostility in growing children. When those children grow up and have their own children, even before their kids get a chance to read the history text books, parents will again pass the hatred feeling to them towards what happened hundred years ago. Neighboring countries are supposed to help each other out, but this result the political distance between those countries grow even further. Everyone wants a good past, good records, but this demand is only fine if it would not do any harm to anybody.
No matter how much I agree with Orwell’s quote, no matter how much I appreciate history, I still believe, rather than asking “What did we do wrong”, it is at best to recognise “How can we do better?”. The outward looking and careful consideration for the future is the direction that we should all take. Humans are in charge of the human history, we make love, we make wars and we make history for people to look at us. We had better behave! We control the past, the present, hence we are responsible for the future of our children.
