History - is it just me who hates the subject?

I remember when I was young if my parents were driving us down to the west country, we'd pass Stonehenge and spend some time there. In those days visitors could get up close and walk within the structure it always had a massive wow effect still does. Just how did they got those stones there? One of life's imponderables!

MiniMoon

I love history too. It was always one of my favourite subjects at school.
I am 43% of my way through that diary of Samuel Pepys, just into January 1665. I learned about the great comet from this book, I'd never heard about it anywhere else.

As a result of your post I have just ordered a copy of Pepys' diary. I haven't read it and always meant to, so thanks for prompting me to do it.

Well - I am definitely in a minority! - intriguing.......

Maybe I have the wrong genes.

I am of course aware of history - it would be impossible not to be - but I feel no burning desire to get involved, nor do I take any delight in it. During lockdown, after my OH had just died, I decided to research the history of women composers, which for me was fascinating musically, but infinitely depressing as it just drove home the aeons of male dominance and the wasted talent that lay out there undiscovered.

My local church, just down the lane, is a Knight's Templar church with lots of unusual features, including rune carvings - and it has the most fabulous acoustics - I have sung there often. But in fact it was the centre of a farm (including a very ancient dovecote) whose purpose was to ear money so the knights could go an slaughter heathens on the other side of the world. Do I find that interesting or horrifying? - the latter I think.

Art history? - of course that interests me, as someone who paints, but if you look at the symbolism of much of art from the past it is about wealth, power, battles, patriarchal religions ......

Social history? - it is of course filled with an endless iteration of the misery of this mortal coil - sickness, death, inequity, cruelty, poverty .......

I am in the main a fairly jolly gregarious person (honest guv!) so this view is not a manifestation of a miserable life; but there is no doubt that this world is a very harsh place to be and the study of history simply drives that home. I do not feel as though I wish to dwell on that.

I will rest in my minority slot!

My parents and grandparent must have introduced me to an interest in history. We are north Manchester so the Industrial Revolution led to my father’s family leaving Kent as agricultural work diminished, for mill work. Talk of hard work and determination their children would ‘do better’ must have influenced my politics.
Miss Norris taught history in years 1 and 2 at high school. Miss Slater from year 3. We studied the , east India company, slave trade/impact on our cities, especially Liverpool. She was an excellent teacher and I remember the way she brought the people to life.

Oh - and I do not think we as humankind have learned a thing from history - the genocide and cruelty going on all around us at this very moment are evidence of that. Being aware that throughout history humankind's basest instincts have caused endless misery that is still happening is not uplifting.

You sound fed up with people’s capacity for abusing power lucky

Luckygirl3

Oh - and I do not think we as humankind have learned a thing from history - the genocide and cruelty going on all around us at this very moment are evidence of that. Being aware that throughout history humankind's basest instincts have caused endless misery that is still happening is not uplifting.

But history is what we all are for future generations Luckygirl3, the good, the bad and the ugly. If it didn’t change things, we’d still be in the Stone Age. Maybe you need to read some inspiring stories of people who have changed the world for the better, because it’s so far from the doom and gloom you see if you focus on wars and destruction.

Callistemon21

Did anyone else have From Ur to Rome as their first text book at Grammar School?

Yes!! It had approx. one small black and white line drawing every 50 pages.
That wretched book was responsible for my dislike of the subject for too long.

I absolutely love History. Our teachers at school were so boring but we had lots of history books in the house. I love the Victorian period and reading about WWI and WW2 stuff. Also about the Russian Tsars. BlueBelle - you were so lucky to have such an interesting teacher. Once one of the kids actually fell asleep!

I think that you might prefer the way that history is taught in school today, Luckygirl.
Students learn how ordinary people affect, and are affected by, events, rather than just the events themselves. Individuals who stood for rights are celebrated- Rosa Parks, The Tolpuddle Martys and my hero, Semmelweis.
Curriculum and an enthusiastic teacher bring a subject to life. Some curricula and some teachers put you off for life!

I can see your point of view about the savagery aspect of history Luckygirl and I remember being imbued with the fact that was set against the time it happened, as if reaching modern times, such atrocities were part and parcel of a bygone era. I believed that for a while, but what a misnomer that is! It's still there all over the world, that struck home forcibly during Isis reign of terror, one such example. The conditions Nalvany and others endure/d during their incarceration. We might complain about our country at times, but compared to what others are forced to endure, those of us who live in the free world are lucky.

Having said all that I'm still thrilled by so many aspects of history, such as whenever a hoarde of say Saxon coins are discovered and when Richard 111's bones were found in a car park, not to mention, the ensuing comments "what was he doing in a carpark" I love all of it, way back in time and the relatively modern era which I didn't do much of at school, I enjoy delving into the 19th and 20th century.

Luckygirl3

Oh - and I do not think we as humankind have learned a thing from history - the genocide and cruelty going on all around us at this very moment are evidence of that. Being aware that throughout history humankind's basest instincts have caused endless misery that is still happening is not uplifting.

Luckygirl If you believe the planet would be better off without human beings then I agree with you one hundred percent. Humans are the greediest and most destructive creatures on the planet who add nothing to the eco system. In fact we are more likely to cause its total collapse.

No other creature could even come close to destroying the planet. We wage deadly wars with the constant threat of nuclear wipe out, we plunder earth's resources and fill the oceans, land and air with untenable quantities of noxious pollutants all whilst adding nothing valuable to the planet as a whole.

I suspect this will be an even more unpopular opinion than your own but there we are, I've dared to speak the unspeakable.

Art history? - of course that interests me, as someone who paints, but if you look at the symbolism of much of art from the past it is about wealth, power, battles, patriarchal religions.
While I don't disagree that a wealth of these subjects are part and parcel of past art, they appear alongside far greater works of timeless elements of beauty and nature. Historical paintings of landscapes, seascapes, the human form, especially nudes, costumes, occupations, architecture etc are all depicted in changing ways throughout history. The art world isn't full of doom and gloom throughout the ages because the major galleries only have a relatively small section devoted to famous war paintings amongst the vast collections of other genres. Religion being maybe the exception.

Wasn't it that wealthy old rogue James Goldsmith who said that the two markets to be in were food and armaments as people always need to eat and always want to kill each other.

My biggest problem with history is that there’s so much of it. My memory is not always good and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
And of course history is moderated by the narrator. I also found learning about wars problematic - revolutionaries were more exciting and more bite sized. World wars were to a different scale of human devastation but it is still important to know roughly what happened. Is it that knowledge which stays in our combined memory and guards against the next onslaught?

luckygirl History is a record of the past. Everything that you describe has actually happened. We cannot rewrite history to make it all nice and lovely, anymore than we can report the present as being nice and lovely. It isn't.

If you want to live in some pretty pink cloud cuckoo land of everybody loving everybody and it all ending happily, then read fairy tales - though a lot of those are pretty nasty.

The reason humankind has thriven and grown is because all of us are born with a push to make our way in the world. The food we eat is the result of farmers being determined to sow seed and crop it. If they just decided not to plant the seed because it was rainy and they might get wet, or they were tired or anything else, we would be on the road to starvation. The same if they couldn't be bothered to crop it because it was too hot or the machinery was broken down.

Our push, our aggressive spirit, is used to both good and evil. Alex Navalny, did what he did because he was a determined and heroic man determined to take his stand against oppression and corruption. He had the same spirit that wins VCs in wartime . Look at some of the early polar explorers. . Have your read The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (it counts as history)? The privations those men survived defy belief.What kept them going was the same determination and push that won battles.

If we had all been sweetly nice and lacking any assertive/aggressive traits, humankind would never have come into being. It would still be the planet of the apes. You need to think these things through

I totally "get" that Luckygirl3
I think history had started to be interesting but feel it has reverted to the "Kings and wars" somewhat..

My grandson is really interested in ancient Greece and keeps telling me snippets of how we are the same/different. He's interestedd in the sociological side of it - also interested in what happened to the Romans to make everything collapse.

I think this is truly the interesting side of history. - how societies have developed over time, and the impact this has on the present.
As they say, in the past war was generally written about by the victors.

I love history, there are so many aspects of it.

Despite my father not "getting" history at all, nor seeing the point in it, I was lucky to have a very good teacher, so was not discouraged at school.

We never had a text book. She just stood in front of the class and told us everything. We took notes and had to write them up in our exercise books, and every few weeks we were given a topic to write an essay on. The help she gave us learning how to take notes, summarise, and write those essays was invaluable for all other subjects.

I just think it a shame that the O level syllabus constrained all our lessons and we had to concentrate on the Tudors. I would have loved to know more about the Stuarts who followed them. The Civil War, and Scottish and Irish history were just not on the menu.

Since moving to Europe, I have found that everywhere I go, there's a new strand of history to learn about. Trying to connect them up is quite an exercise! As DH was a Latin teacher, we usually visit Roman digs, but then you go to the big Cathedral towns and discover wonderful castles and churches built by the Hapsburgs, the Wittelsbachs, and French and Prussian dynasties. The Reformation plays a huge part over most of Europe (fortunately, of course, that was a huge factor in Tudor times, so I can connect that back to what I learned at school). Then in The North, where the Romans didn't get to, it's a whole new world of Slavic and Scandinavian history. The buildings are radically different due to the predominantly Protestant philosophy and the different materials available.

I love trivia and quizzes, and to help with connecting the information I like to know the dates of things. Nowadays dates seem to be given less importance, but I can't understand how people can learn about the past without them.

The history section of Radio 4's "In Our Time" is fascinating as it really goes into detail.

I hadn't really thought about it all being killing, rape and pillage, especially often in the name of religion. I just thought "different times". But, as previous posters have said, humanity doesn't seem to have learnt anything. There is still a lot of cruelty, corruption, exploitation and greed in the world. And most of it is in charge of running countries, religious movements and organisations in all sectors.

The food we eat is the result of farmers being determined to sow seed and crop it. If they just decided not to plant the seed because it was rainy and they might get wet, or they were tired or anything else, we would be on the road to starvation. The same if they couldn't be bothered to crop it because it was too hot or the machinery was broken down.

Farming has a fascinating history, which encompasses other subjects too.

If farmers decided to go on strike because of rules made by incompetent governments who have no clue about farming then we'd go hungry in a very short time.

My biggest problem with history is that there’s so much of it
😁

Have you traced your family history, Lucky? I have done so back to the 1500s, and it was a very absorbing exercise over several years. My main focus now is on how my ancestors and their forebears would have lived in the Tudor and medieval periods. I find it fascinating.

Alan Bennett The History Boys. How do I define history? It's just one f***ing thing after another.

Two books I recommend are Bertrand Russell’s Why Men Fight (pub.1917) and Ian Morris’s War: What is it good for? The role of conflict in civilisation.

Morris shows that, paradoxically, war is the only human invention that has allowed us to construct peaceful societies. Without war, we would never have built the huge nation-states which now keep us relatively safe from random acts of violence, and which have given us previously unimaginable wealth. It is thanks to war that we live longer and more comfortable lives than ever before.

And yet, if we continue waging war with ever-more deadly weaponry, we will destroy everything we have achieved; so our struggles to manage warfare make the coming decades the most decisive in the history of our civilisation.

… and anything by Tim Marshall who is excellent on geopolitics.

The Russell is on Project Gutenberg.

There is nothing we can do about past conflicts, little we can do to stop current conficts or prevent future ones but as least through reading and study we can gain a better understanding of why it happens and will keep happening.

I agree with you JackyB, too much focus on the Tudors, of course they covered a seminal time in English history, particularly as regards to The Reformation, but there are so many other pivotal moments, The Civil War for example, which hardly got a mention when I was at school, but the outcome was monumental in shifting absolute power away from the monarchy.

History fascinates me! Hated it at school because all we did was WW2 (yes, a necessity of course but not for years on a row!!) But since I've left school I'll read anything I can about everything - especially obscure stuff - in particular social and industrial history. Absolutely fascinates me!