History can be understood in a number of different senses.  First and foremost, it is what has actually happened in the past.  However, it is impossible to recreate past experience.  The best we can do is to create models of understanding of the past.  These models of understanding are what historians speak of when they refer to “history”.

History is built on evidence.  However, evidence should not be confused with fact.  I may dig up a musket ball from the battlefield at Waterloo.  The musket ball is a fact.  However, that fact only becomes “evidence” when I connect it with a series of events.  Evidence therefore involves the selection and discarding of facts in the light of a historian’s personal judgment.  What one historian considers ephemeral or irrelevant might be deemed quite valuable by another.

This simple observation points us towards the essence of history as a discipline:  History involves the creation of models of past experience in which there is a dynamic interplay between evidence and the imagination of the historian.  The values,attitudes, beliefs and perspectives of the enquiring mind leave their stamp on the historical model that is created in the mind of the historian.

History can be viewed as applied philosophy, bound by the rigours of historical  method and the factual dimension of available evidence.  The discerning mind is the one that can rise above the prejudices and limited perspectives of self-interest and cultural bondage to embrace a more perfect and more pure view of history.

Since many of the most cherished beliefs of society are founded on  historical  sophistry, history remains the battleground of ideology.  To delve deeply into the nature of history is to avoid the heady inebriation of popular history with its vested ancillary interests, and drink deeply of the fountain of true wisdom.  Historiography provides the “Rosetta Stone” necessary to interpret, analyse and evaluate historical models in an intelligent and informed manner.