“History,” wrote Winston Churchill, “will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” This oft-cited quip cuts to the heart of a persistent philosophical problem: Is history a record of objective truth, or is it merely the crafted narrative of those who hold the pen -- those who hold power?
The question of whether history reflects an unbiased truth or is a selective narrative woven by victors has long vexed philosophers, historians, and scholars. From ancient chronicles to modern textbooks, history’s telling often reveals as much about the teller as the tale itself. The intellectual debate over this issue is not new, but it remains ever relevant, especially in our present world, where the power to record and interpret events is more widely distributed than ever before.
At the core of this discussion lies a central claim made by Michel Foucault, the French philosopher and historian, who argued that "power produces knowledge ... power and knowledge directly imply one another" (Discipline and Punish, 1975). Foucault’s theory of power/knowledge suggests that those who hold institutional power have the means not only to enforce their will but to shape what is accepted as knowledge and, consequently, what is recorded as history. For Foucault, historical narratives are never neutral; they are intimately tied to the mechanisms of power that produce them.
George Orwell dramatized this reality in his dystopian novel 1984, where he chillingly wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Orwell’s fictional world is a brutal allegory of the manipulation of historical truth by totalitarian regimes. Yet, his insight speaks to a more general truth about the political nature of historical memory.
As historians such as Howard Zinn have argued, traditional histories often reflect the interests of the ruling classes, the state, and imperial powers rather than the experiences of the oppressed. Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (1980) famously sought to counter this by chronicling American history from the perspectives of Native Americans, African slaves, workers, women, and other marginalized groups whose voices had been historically silenced.
This marginalization is not simply a matter of omission; it is often a deliberate act of historical distortion. Edward Said’s influential work Orientalism (1978) demonstrated how Western colonial powers constructed an image of the East -- Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa -- as exotic, backwards, and in need of Western domination and enlightenment. These distorted representations served not only to justify imperial conquest but also to rewrite the histories of entire civilizations in ways that devalued their cultural legacies and agency. Said’s work, in this sense, offers a powerful critique of the epistemological violence embedded in colonial historiography.
Beyond the politics of historical writing lies a deeper philosophical problem: Can history ever reflect objective truth? Friedrich Nietzsche, in his essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873), provocatively argued that “there are no facts, only interpretations.” For Nietzsche, the very act of understanding and recounting an event requires an interpretive framework that is shaped by language, culture, and power relations. Historical truth, therefore, is always contingent, provisional, and open to reinterpretation.
This skepticism has been echoed in postmodern historiography. Hayden White, in Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973), contended that historical narratives are fundamentally literary. Historians impose narrative structures on the chaos of past events, selecting which events to emphasize and how to link them together. As White noted, historical writing is often shaped by "emplotment"-- the decision to tell a story as a tragedy, comedy, romance, or satire -- thus revealing the historian’s subjective stance.
The implication of such postmodern theories is not that history is purely fictional, but that the boundary between historical fact and narrative interpretation is blurred. As historian Keith Jenkins put it: "The past is gone; history is what we write about it." This view challenges the positivist belief that history can be an objective science and raises profound questions about the nature of historical truth.
In an era of unprecedented access to information, we have the opportunity -- and the responsibility -- to write histories that are more just, more truthful, and more representative of the diverse experiences of humanity
If history is always, to some extent, constructed, can we ever hope to approach a more truthful understanding of the past? Many contemporary historians argue that we can -- if we embrace a multiplicity of perspectives and narratives.
Subaltern studies, a field pioneered by Ranajit Guha and developed by scholars like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, focuses on recovering the voices of those marginalized in traditional histories. In Bangladesh, much historical writing has centered on elite figures -- political leaders, military generals, and intellectuals. Yet, the contributions of peasant movements, women freedom fighters, and indigenous groups remain underexplored. In her famous essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), Spivak explores the difficulties of recovering the perspectives of colonized and oppressed peoples whose experiences were often mediated or suppressed by dominant discourses. Nonetheless, the goal of Subaltern Studies has been to give voice to the voiceless, and to acknowledge the agency of peasants, workers, women, and other subaltern groups in shaping historical events.
Similarly, feminist historians have sought to expose the androcentrism of traditional historical narratives. Gerda Lerner’s The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) and Sheila Rowbotham’s Hidden from History (1973) emphasize how women’s roles and contributions have been systematically erased or marginalized in mainstream historiography. By recovering women’s histories, they aim to present a fuller, more complex account of the past.
In the digital age, the monopoly of traditional historians and state authorities over historical narratives is being challenged. The rise of digital archives, social media, and citizen journalism has democratized historical documentation. As historian Roy Rosenzweig argued in Digital History (2005), new technologies enable diverse communities to participate in the creation and dissemination of historical knowledge.
Crowdsourced history projects, such as “HistoryPin” or the “Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive,” allow ordinary people to contribute personal stories, photographs, and testimonies. These platforms have made it possible to preserve the histories of communities and individuals who might otherwise have been forgotten. Likewise, digital humanities projects are using data analysis and visualization tools to uncover previously invisible patterns in historical data, offering new ways to understand the past.
Yet, this democratization also poses challenges. The proliferation of information does not necessarily lead to a consensus on historical truth. As we have seen with the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, the digital age has also given rise to competing and often conflicting narratives of history. The challenge for historians is to navigate this complexity while maintaining rigorous standards of evidence and critical analysis.
History, as Rabindranath Tagore reflected in his poem Bhasha O Chhanda (Language and Rhythm), is a story often told from the perspective of power. When Narada tells Valmiki, “The truth that you create, whatever happens, is not the truth,” Tagore captures the enduring tension between narrative and truth in history. It is a tension that we cannot escape but must confront.
The task before us is not to abandon the pursuit of historical truth but to recognize its complexity. We must listen to multiple voices, critically examine dominant narratives, and remain vigilant against the distortions of power. As EH Carr argued in What is History? (1961), history is “an unending dialogue between the present and the past.” That dialogue must be inclusive, self-critical, and open to revision.
In an era of unprecedented access to information, we have the opportunity-- and the responsibility -- to write histories that are more just, more truthful, and more representative of the diverse experiences of humanity. If we fail to do so, we risk perpetuating a one-eyed view of the past, where the voices of the vanquished remain silenced, and the truth remains elusive.
History, then, must be placed “in the dock of justice,” as some scholars have proposed -- not to condemn it but to ensure that its telling remains a collective endeavor, guided by a commitment to truth, however complex and contested that truth may be.
HM Nazmul Alam is an academic, journalist, and political analyst. He can be reached at nazmulalam.rijohn@gmail.com