March 6, 2018, by Anya
Four historians are walking down a road…
Are you a history student? Do you know any history students? Have you been a historian for several decades? You may be confused by the differences between the main schools of historical analysis. To help you through this, I have produced a brief-to-the-point-of-inaccuracy guide to the main types of historian. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
If four historians were walking down a road, and they saw someone putting up posters for a coronation:
The political historian might say ‘Ah, I wonder how this will affect the workings of parliament, the new King is known to be a conservative.’
The economic historian would exclaim ‘My goodness, think of the new jobs this coronation creates! I wonder how this will affect population statistics!’
The social historian would mutter ‘Interesting that a man who stands to gain nothing from the coronation seems so overjoyed to be part of it…’
They would walk on, and realise a few paces later that they had left the cultural historian behind.
They turn back, and see him staring at the poster.
‘What are you doing?’
He pauses…
‘I wonder what makes this a poster, and not graffiti. How does a poster make you feel?’
A Marxist historian then runs past, tears down the poster, sets it on fire, and exits pursued by a bear.
No comments yet, fill out a comment to be the first
Leave a Reply