The German word for history, Geschichte, is also the German word for story. History and Story are the same thing, a tale of what happened, the only difference being, more or less an amount of truth.
So much of history is filling in gaps; not just the what, but the why. Or, in some cases, the how: what was it like to live in a medieval English town? Pre-Columbian Central America? Who were the people who came before us, and how are we so different, yet have so much in common?
The short answer might be that life, as it were, was brutal, nasty, and short, or as my significant other put it recently, history is largely about people being rotten to one another. As far removed as a main battle tank is from an ancient chariot, I wish I could argue otherwise, or that in modern times we are different.
I prefer my history to be alive; not living in the past, but understanding the present. Very often, in my line of work, I start with the idea that, “surely, we are not the first to have this problem to solve.” History is often taught as a litany, without connecting the dots between the conversations people were having two hundred years ago, to the conversations we are having today.
As I write about history, I want to make those connections. I want to have empathy with the people of the past, however flawed they may have been.
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