THE ROLE OF THE HISTORIAN HISTORY ESSAY  1500W

The role of the historian is a much debated issue with different perspectives provided by different schools of thought, and is an essential part of history as a whole. The Source, an excerpt from The gift of the past:Towards a critical history by Patrick Joyce, discusses a lot of issues raised in regards to the role of the historian such as the idea that sources are memory, the politicisation of history and the attainability of truth. The historians Thucydides, Edward Carr and Keith Jenkins also talk about similar issues which are shaped by their context and their school of thought.

The Source, as mentioned before is an excerpt from The gift of the past:Towards a critical history where Patrick Joyce raises the issues mentioned above. He suggests that all a historian does is ¿½practices a critical method¿½ towards his or her own work and other historical accounts. He suggests that all this is about the ¿½creation of knowledge¿½. This references to the idea that history is a science