Table of Contents

Apuntes

Part I. Foundations. UNIT 1: What is History? o Historical knowledge The past no longer exists; it has vanished and continues to slip further away with each moment. Because of this, it is impossible to know the past directly, which means that history is not the past itself. Instead, history is a way of representing the past. Although the past is gone, it leaves behind traces that continue to linger in the present. These traces—whether documents, artifacts, or memories—are the raw materials that historians use. However, traces alone are not history. To become sources, they must undergo an intellectual process in which historians interpret, select, and organize them. Through this process, historians construct narratives that function like maps: they are representations of a reality that no longer exists. These representations depend both on the traces that remain and on the intellectual work of the historian. History, therefore, is not the past itself but a carefully built account of it. Not all historical representations are equally valid. Some are stronger because they follow rigorous methods that make them more likely to reflect the truth. Methodology is, therefore, the set of to...