"History is written by the Victors." We do not know who exactly said these words first. It might be Napoleon, or Winston Churchill, the latter an amateur historian in his own right. And this statement has been used by some groups, such as the anti-nationalists, the postmodernists or even politicians to reject "official" historical narrative, accusing them of being controlled, manipulated, wilful hiding of evidence by a Big Brother-like ruling establishment with full hegemony over the telling of history.
But this statement, like many of the statements made by the left-wing ideologues, has the annoying problem of not being adequately qualified with a proper definition, and it would have been laughed off by any respectable historian or history students who take their craft seriously. Let us try to answer the problems:
1. Is this statement even true? If yes, why? Or more importantly, so what? How does saying this statement dogmatically prove that history is false or untrue? Does the status of victory disqualifies the victors from telling or writing history at all? Why? What is the justification of this approach then?
2. With this statement, does this mean all history studied is merely evil government propaganda who wishes to control the past and defend their bias, and we historians must 'cleanse' and 'purify' history?
3. Let's consider 2 to be right, would this not mean that historians have already submit to their own bias when they decide to challenge "official" history? And if this happens, does this not open the 'clean' and 'pure' historians to charges of bias, thus disqualifying their writings like the "official" works they sought to denounce?
4. Let's take the postmodernist approach to history. History is merely perspective (as history is subjective and depends on the views of the 'victor'), and history itself is only wordplay and philosophy, with no importance attached to evidence, upholding the superiority of interpretation of evidence, or even more frighteningly, interpretation without the need for evidence itself.
5.If 4 is true, then history itself is untrue, and it could not be differentiated from fiction. But this could not be true, for we know the past is real, events did happen, and history could only be written with records and documents from the past, not pulled out of thin air and shaped to our will, according to the postmodernist view.
6. But I digress. Let us return to the main statement of history belonging to the victors. What does it mean to be a 'victor'? Who won what? What decides a group as a 'victor'? Victory on the battlefield? Victory in political struggle? Victory when one's view is accepted by the majority and becomes 'official' history, and thus becoming the 'history of the victors'? The term 'victor' itself is undefined, thus causing this confusion among the people.
7. If 'victor's history' meant one's view is finally accepted by the majority, then what use it is for us to question them, as if the victors are all evil and biased? for the struggle to challenge "official" history begins with the writing of 'alternative' history that one hopes will be accepted by the public.
8. However, when this happens i.e. when alternative history is accepted by the majority and the old official history is rejected, the logical outcome is alternative history would no longer become alternative, but official, thus becoming the "history of the victors" they despised so much. This is a flowchart to illustrate that fact:
Official history-->written by the victors-->biased and impure-->we must purify history-->introduction of alternative history-->accepted by many-->becomes official history-->written by the victors now-->biased and impure-->repeat.
9. If the people who threw around this meaningless statement actually studied their historiography (study of the writings of history), they would know such a statement is wrong and empty. If only military victors control history, then there would be no "The Peloponnesian War" by Thucydides, who wrote about the war from the perspective of Athens, who LOST the war with Sparta. If only political victors wrote history, then the United States would be viewed as a great and holy power who defeated the evil Axis empires in World War II, and their "official" historians would be prevented from writing about the discrimination faced by the Blacks in the military, and the unlawful detention of Japanese-Americans in detention camps in Manzanar due to racial prejudice.
10. The truth is much simpler. Historians, regardless of political, religious, ideological views of background, when they study history, they will eventually submit to the superiority of evidence. We are not lawyers, or sociologists, or a guy with a camera who manipulate evidence based on pre-conceived theories. Our theories are shaped AFTER all evidence have been observed and studied, and subject to peer review and even later revision when new evidence arises. In the end, there is no "victor's history". There is only "evidence-based history."
