BIAS IN HISTORY

Bias in History

Bias in Historical Description, Interpretation, and Explanation

Introduction

“Bias in Historical Description, Interpretation, and Explanation” is amongst the popular works of C. Behan McCullagh. The paper discusses the postmodern view on history that suggests that historians record their works with a subjective approach that involves misrepresentation, personal preferences, unjust deletion and illogical reasoning. Thus, the history produced is misleading and biased, which can be both intentional and accidental. The author differentiates between personal and cultural prejudice, and proposes the use of rational principles alongside open critique for producing historical accounts that are free from bias.

Discussion

Historians and critics have always argued about the authenticity and genuineness of the historical accounts of the past people, cultures and civilizations, events and incidents, and the interpretation of these. Often, the misrepresentation in the works of history arises from the prejudice of the history makers, who prefer the version of a historic happening that serves their personal interest. However, there is a distinction between the history that is accidently misleading and one that depicts intentional tampering. Similarly, personal bias and cultural bias are two different ideas, and one must be able to identify the concepts of fair representations, interpretations and explanations to determine ways in which they may be prejudiced.

Recent researches have focused on and analyzed the roots of interpretation of historical works. The common consensus from the findings has been that most of the historical accounts are results of the creative imagination of the historians, who interpret the various facts available to them depending upon their own creativity and cognition. On the other hand, the historians would find this notion absurd, since they could never agree to some objective measures of representation and interpretation against which their accounts could be compared for bias and prejudice. However, a study of such historical ...