Sarajevo, June 28^th, 1914. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is on a visit to the capital of the Empire’s newest province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Anti-Austrian feeling has run high since the annexation of 1909, and on this very day an anarchist plot is afoot to assassinate the Archduke. Seven members of the Serbian terrorist group, the Black Hand, have fanned out across the city, in position to strike a blow against the hated and oppressive empire.

Somehow, throughout the day, all fail; but just as their cause seems lost, Fate intervenes. Deciding to visit the wounded victims of one of these attempts, Franz Ferdinand orders his driver, Franz Urban, to head for the city hospital. The driver is unfamiliar with the route dictated by Bosnian Governor, General Oskar Potiorek, and makes a wrong turn.

It will turn out to be history’s costliest wrong turn. Nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip, one of the conspirators who had earlier in the day missed his opportunity, is ruing his poor luck at a nearby café. He looks up and sees a very familiar car struggling to manoeuvre out of the narrow street…

Several shots later, the archduke and his wife are dead. Just over a month after the incident, all Europe is aflame. The war will last four years, see over ten million dead and even more wounded, bring down four European empires and unrecognizably alter the world.

But what of the man who fired the shots, and the driver whose wrong mistake gave him his chance? Gavrilo Princip was fated to die of tuberculosis in the last year of the war. Franz Urban survived World War I, but little else is known about him. No one even has any idea of when and where he died. Both were obscure characters, immortalized by acts which on their own would have had little significance, but which set in motion a chain of events that would have momentous consequences for the entire world.

That encapsulates one of history’s defining principles – that it can turn on a coin, made in a split-second by a completely ordinary individual who returns to being a completely ordinary individual after his act. It also highlights another principle: that the past is murky, and that historians almost never do have all the details, or any way of attaining all the details. There is no definitive account of this assassination, one of the best-known and most-studied events in history; what chance do all the thousands and millions other far less perceptible occurrences have?

But let us leave aside this apparent problem for the moment, and consider what are the three most popular perceptions of history (at least in Singapore, and in my opinion): one, that it is “all about dates”; two, that is it all about memorization; and three, “history is DEAD.”

I have heard all of the above expressed in varied forms a great number of times over the years. I believe they are grave misconceptions, but of course I do not blame people for being misinformed. It all does seem attractively simple: history is the study of the past; what happened has already happened and we have no way of changing that – so what is the whole point of studying it? Additionally, since history is the study of the past, dates and events must be essential, so I suppose I’ll have to begin cramming my head with dates and facts – if one does not know the events that occurred and when they occurred, how can one be a student of history? Or, more pertinently to Singapore perhaps, how can one do well in history exams?

I’m hardly going to deny that factual knowledge is an integral part of the study of history, because to do that would be ludicrous. Obviously, before you study any event, you need to know what happened and when it happened. But history is not all about memorizing dates and facts – what is even more important is knowing the significance of those dates and facts. People don’t seem to realize this, and then proceed to complain about the pointlessness of history; I would agree that if history was only about the study of dates and events that it would be very tedious indeed. But that is a much too simple appraisal.

That would bring me to the third point: that history is dead. On the contrary; history is far from dead. Anyone who has studied history in some depth will know that differing accounts exist about the same event. Numerous accounts exist about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, all disagreeing in largely minor ways, but different nonetheless. Moving beyond that, countless volumes have been written assessing the murder, with very varied viewpoints on its significance and impact. There are no uncontroversial events in world history; the difference is only in the degree. We might even know, more or less, what exactly transpired – but the motives of the main players can be in serious question. For, as stated above, the study of a historical event involves much more than knowing what occurred, on what day, at what time and in what sequence.

Controversy and debate are thus integral parts of the study of history. These can get very lively, to put it euphemistically, particularly when historical events call into question national honour. How can one, then, label such a subject that attracts such frenzied argument, raises such hackles and invokes such livid emotions as “dead”? And I’m not even touching upon counterfactualism here: as I earlier expressed, history can turn on a coin. What if Franz Urban had got his directions right? Would we have had the First World War? How would the 20^th century have panned out instead? What would the world look like today? Such questions have no easy answers, and the scenarios which can be postulated are endlessly fascinating. History, “dead”? I think not.

Somewhat more intelligent and justified criticisms have been made about history, however, and it is to those which we must now turn. Cynically, history has been said never to be just history, but “history for” – i.e., that history is always written for a purpose, usually self-serving. It is difficult to refute such a statement; plenty of countries use history to their advantage, the frequent China-Japan rows being one excellent example. Yet this should not be utilized as a condemnation of the subject as a whole. Distortions of history inevitably will occur, and are of course odious, but I prefer to see the utilization of history for national aims as one more purpose it can fulfill. We should not try to pretend that the pursuit of history should be a pure, unambiguous hunt for the truth, and that the discipline itself has snowy-white morals. That is being idealistic to the point of foolishness. Of course people make use of history to get ahead and to attain their personal goals – the nature of humanity, after all, appears to be to use practically anything to get ahead and to attain personal goals. It is no reason to decry the study of history.

It has also been said, in various forms but most famously by Henry Ford, that “history is more or less bunk”. E.H. Carr put it euphemistically: “History is a series of accepted judgements.” Quite simply, there is usually no way of knowing the exact truth about an event. Bits and pieces will undoubtedly be missing; quite often, large chunks are. The historian has not much more to go on than guesswork and extrapolations from fragmentary available evidence. Or there could simple be too much evidence; too many eyewitness accounts, all of which claim different things. Who does the historian believe?

This lack of definitive accounts, as I have earlier expressed, is a serious problem indeed. Even such a famous event as the killing of the Austrian archduke has no firm, set-in-stone version of events. But this by no means is a message to historians to pack it in, quit their jobs and find alternative employment. In fact, it is an invitation to intensify the study of history. It makes history a challenge – to uncover more facts, to revise previous accounts, to come to a greater understanding of the world around us and how it all came to be so.

And that, for me, is the purpose of history: to understand our world better and know how it all came to be so. E.H. Carr put it best:

“The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present.”

Understanding history is key to understanding current world affairs; and if you are not interesting in understanding current world affairs, you’re better off not existing at all, rather than adding one more dumb mouth to the masses of willfully ignorant.

Additionally, studying history helps us learn not just about ourselves but from the past as well. A lengthy quote from Collingwood would suffice on this point:

“History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”

Indeed, knowing “what man has done”, and learning from it, is one of the main motivations for studying history.

History, then, is not merely memorization of facts and dates. History is not all about events and obsessing over the times and sequences and exact manner of occurrences. History is, undeniably, about studying what happened, but also why it happened, how it happened and how else it could have happened – not to mention who made it happen and why they made it happen. Facts and dates are means to achieving these ends, and thus must take a backseat to argument – to perspective.

This is because history is, arguably, all about perspective. The same event, the same facts, can be used to justify two entirely different viewpoints. Let us consider, for example, the British construction of fortified “New Villages” during the Malayan Emergency of 1948-60. We know for a fact that these settlements were built – but the two antagonists saw this action very differently. The British claimed that the villages were for the safety of the Malayan population; to protect them from the murderous Communist guerillas of Chin Peng. The MCP on the other hand saw the measure as oppressive; tantamount to building concentration camps to deny the Communists the fruits of popular support. One fact, two viewpoints – which is right? Who do we believe?

The fact is both views make sense: and the historian’s job is to look at the evidence at hand, pick one side based upon his interpretation of this evidence, and argue for it. The debate can only be good for knowledge; facts and motives uncovered will in all probability give us a much better understanding of the Malayan Emergency as a whole. By then considering why and how the Emergency failed, we can then look at how other Communist insurgencies fared – and perhaps understand better how to battle terrorism today. The reasons for its failure may also lead us to a better understanding of why, for instance, Communism has been almost wiped out in the world today. In this way, we pick up lessons from the past; in this way, we can understand the present better by studying what transpired.

To conclude, history is a vital discipline. It does have its flaws, but I believe we should not be too hung up about them: the fact that we very often cannot find out the whole truth is no reason to give up its pursuit, and the abuse of history by governments and people should take nothing away from the usefulness of studying history. It is self-knowledge we need – and it is history which can grant us this self-knowledge.