this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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I know I'm taking a joke remark too seriously, but "History is written by the victors" is just plain wrong. More often than not it is, sure, but it's not exclusively, or even overwhelmingly.
History is written by those who write it. This can be the winners or the losers, and there are plenty of examples for both.
E: people crying about this even though it's blatantly true and I've provided plenty of examples in another comment.
Sorry, but people need to stop universally applying and blindly believing Churchill's history is written by the victors quote.
It was a half-cocked throwaway line by a politician, it's not a universal law.
Yes, I listened a really long podcast about it and I know it made total sense and listed a lot of evidence, but as always, I can't recall anything but the point that truly the saying is wrong. Do you have an example?
There's plenty of examples, but possibly the most interesting one is China.
China, historically, fanatically wrote about their history, and unfortunately for them, particularly around the time prior to the Ming Dynasty, most of this was writing about them having their arses repeatedly handed to them by Mongol armies.
For the US, plenty of the history surrounding their civil war was, at least for a while, written by supporters of the Confederacy, which is why to this day there's still so many people pushing the "it was about states rights!" thing.
Sticking to the US, let's be real, despite many Americans claiming otherwise, the US lost their war with the British Empire and their allied natives in 1812, yet the US often refers to it as being a draw, or even (though more rarely) an American win.
England under Cromwell invading Ireland was written about heavily on both sides, and England isn't exactly presented as being the good side.
It's probably more accurate to say History is most consistently written by the most literate, but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
History is written by people who write it down (and then get it successfully accepted/disseminated to a certain degree).
Yup. And while this is obviously easier to do when you're the winner, it's not a requirement.
Most of the records of the Mongols outclassing China over such a long period of time comes from Chinese writings, for example.
People love believing blanket, black and white statements. History is written by the victors, nobody else, I know this because it's a Churchill quote, it has to be true!