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20 People Share The Scariest Examples Of History Being Written By Winners
Article created by: Ieva Pečiulytė
Herodotus is widely credited as being the first historian—he traveled across Ancient Greece and wrote down what he saw and the stories he heard.
Classical scholar and poet Peter Levi said that what made him the first serious historian was his combination of great scope and precise focus, as well as his imaginative power as a storyteller and his rationalism, his concern with truth. However, while some call Herodotus 'The Father of History', others say he's actually 'The Father of Lies' and could've included more than facts in his tales.
Of course, current academic historians are more than just storytellers. Most of them have developed a rigorous approach to studying the past. But they are only as accurate as their sources.
In an attempt to see how misleading they can be, Reddit user Vo_Lair asked other platform users to share examples of the phrase "history is written by the victors." And they did!
Continue scrolling to check out the replies as well as the talks we had on the subject with Tudor historian and bestselling author Hayley Nolan and family historian, author, and digital archivist Andrew Martin.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Anytime someone says "Well, by the standards of the time, it was okay." When talking about an atrocity or horrific practice.
It usually means "By the standards of the people doing the atrocity."
For example, Slaves *knew* the Slave trade was evil. But when we say "People thought it was okay" we arent counting the slaves as being people.
The victims of history are voiceless, even if our sensibilities have evolved over time. We try to justify things by saying 'they couldn't have known' and almost always ignore a large group of people who certainly did know.
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#2
I mean, the US technically stole Hawaii from a legitimate government.
But we have just normalized it as a state.
#3
Pretty much any indigenous population that got in the way of any colonial power. No single country has a monopoly on the violence and oppression that was done worldwide as the colonial powers expanded. ALL were guilty of it..
#4
Nobody is gonna talk about what china is doing to Hong Kong?
#5
How nobody cares about the thousands of native American children that were taken out by the Canadian government until 1998
#6
Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Astor, Mellon, Morgan, Schwab, Stanford...
They were called robber barons for a reason. All those schools and music halls and community centers are all built on the backs of crushed men and named after the men who crushed them.
#7
There is a bunch of Chinese history that is pretty much speculation because whenever a new king would conquer places, pretty much the first move was always to burn all the records and take out the historians to establish dominance.
#8
The UK's affect on India, and the 45 trillion dollars worth of material they stole from India.
#9
In the UK, it is not taught that the famine in Ireland was a genocide committed by Britain. Our population still has not recovered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baronet#Role_in_the_Irish_Famine
#10
I knew when I saw this thread stuff like this would come up. I'm a Japanese person, and I would never defend any of the horrific things Japan did in the past.
But I'd like to defend the majority of our citizens who are sick and tired of the revisionist fascist government we currently are stuck with. I sentiment I was so sick of I left. If you know anything about Japanese politics you know that the current party doesn't have a serious contender party and hasn't for a while. Racist boomers rally around the "nothing bad ever happened" party, while the rest of us can't rally around a credible threat.
I was a teenager when I learnt what our country really did, and it was horrifying. I wish I could do more than just post a reddit comment, I'm sorry I don't know what to say anymore.
#11
Surprised to see no one mention the massacres of Caesar during the gaulic wars. He deliberately targeted certain gaulic tribes to make them cease to exist, which straight up is genocide. Almost every time I hear someone speak of the Gaulic wars I see them either side lining them to the civil war that followed it or it is a heroic struggle from both sides. The Gauls are trying to remain free while Rome is trying to expand and civilize.
Almost every time I read about it the atrocities are omitted which I find to be really bad.
#12
Carthaginian Civilization existed for well over 600 years. They controlled large parts of North Africa, Spain, Mediterranean Islands, and had trade networks going All over the Mediterranean and even explored the African coast. They were powerful enough to bring Rome to the brink of defeat in two massive wars.
Romans won, and as a result, not a single Carthaginian primary source exists.
#13
Not really a scary one, but I've always found it interesting that the word "barbarians" is used in such a negative way. It simply means people of different language and culture. But if you're the one writing history it gets a very negative connotation
#14
The Spanish conquering the Aztecs (and Mayans). History through the eyes of the Spanish paint the Aztecs to be these horrific, dirty heathens that practiced cannibalism. They also depict the Mayans to be the same way. However, over time we have found out that although Aztecs did practice cannibalism and sacrificed their own people, they were also very clean people that practiced routine hygiene and even had a school system for their children. The Mayans had whole libraries that included untold amounts of Mathematical knowledge. They were also master astronomers that discovered things about the universe that Europeans had no clue about for at least several hundred years. But, the Spanish destroyed all of this and told the rest of the world nothing of these great things.
#15
How Spain always claimed to have conquered the Americas by killing and fighting millions of native Americans.
They did not. Most died of sickness but they played the badass army card for quiet some decades.
By today's standards it would be embarrassing to tell about how good of a genocide job you did.
#16
MacArthur covering up the atrocities of Unit 731 so the US could get the results of their chemical and biological experiments on POWs and undesireables.
Japan wanted it to fade away and so did the US and that is what happened. They were given immunity. No one paid for those crimes in the east. MacArthur forced all in the Pacific to sign NDAs before being released from duty. No one could talk about what happened in the Pacific.
My mother's first husband was a POW in the Pacific. When he got back he started saying what happened and the authorities picked him up and took him away and would not tell her anything. They were Catholic and she had to annul the marriage as the one thing they did tell her was he ain't coming back any time soon.
#17
WW1. Germany especially are always seen as the bad guys and in western films like Wonder Woman for example, that’s especially the case. But in truth the war was far, far more complex then that and so there wasn’t a clearly defined “good vs bad” like WW2.
#18
After the Paraguay war, there were no losers left to write history… I guess Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina was what was left.
#19
Robespierre, one of the main figure of french revolution has been taken out by political opponent, they tried to delete his name from history, accused him of all the kills during the Terror (3 years where a lot of people got killed bcs of a fear of a royalty return), they even used the body of a very ugly man to make ppl believe it was him (ppl still think its him except historian) and basically now he is seing as a monster by some ppl
#20
Notice that everything people are pointing out is well documented.
"people dont care" is not the same as history being erased.
It's a nonsensical thing people say. We have MANY records of people that lost conflicts. "History is written by the literate" is a more apt statement.
If history was only written by the victors we would have zero historical context for Jews even existing.
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