The role of history in understanding the present
History
is essentially the study of the human past which helps us to
understand the present it has created. It involves a careful
compilation, reading and analysis of surviving primary and secondary
texts, artifacts (studied by archaeologists) and oral conversations
in an effort to reconstruct past events and processes. In short, the
historian’s job is to ask questions about what happened, who was
involved, when and where an event occurred, why did it happen and
what were the results, how should human groups relate to one another
and how should benefits and responsibilities be distributed among
different stakeholders? Many past events still exert immense
influences in many parts of the world and create parameters within
which we live and interact today.