History is Written by the Victors?

“History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.” Henry Steele Commager, American historian

Someone I know likes to quote “history is written by the victors”. The phrase is pretty commonly used. It is often miss-attributed to Winston Churchill, but there are others also. The earliest print citation of the phrase was Senator George Graham Vest – quoted in the Ottawa Daily Republican (Ottawa Kansas) August 1891 “In all revolutions, the vanquished are the ones who are guilty of treason, even by the historians, for history is written by the victors and framed according to the prejudices and biases existing on their side.” The more I thought about it, the less it rang true. It seemed prudent to look into it further.

This problem is hard to sort because definitions don’t seem to be very universal, even amongst historians. Winners and losers are not always obvious. Over time more information comes to light and at the same time, memories fade when events are not well documented. There are examples to credit either the winner or loser of a conflict having written the history. But most are not clear-cut, perhaps because it isn’t obvious who the victor was, or there were multiple histories based on different perspectives of the event, such as WW I where the Allied powers blamed the Central powers for the war, justifying heavy reparations and de-armament while the Central power’s narrative was one of injustice and oppression following the Versailles treaty. Counter narratives are very common, so who do you credit with having written ‘the history’?

There are circumstances where the victors will be likely to have the only, or at least prevailing history. The victors might be the only survivors, so the losers have no voice in the histories telling. Even if a society or nation survived, the victor might erase the history of the loser. Ancient Egypt’s Pharaohs and rulers were known to erase the names and other evidence of their predecessors in order to highlight their own rule. The side with the most developed ability to communicate will likely have the version of the history which will prevail. Such a case occurred when Constantinople fell in 1453 when Greek scholars moved west, generating accounts vilifying the Ottomans. who had won. The scholars were simply better equipped to write the history. The popularity of historical accounts can impact how widely accounts are spread, and there may be accounts from the victors and the losers available, but only one side is well known.

Historical accounts are not necessarily static either. The civil wars waged by Lenin to establish the Communist party in Russia and the Communist revolution in China under Mao Zedong might be considered histories initially written by the victors. They were well documented by The Party in film, letters and official documentation, but much of that was hidden from the outside world to hide their failures. After the fall of the Soviet Union, many insights into the dark history of the nation came to light, and new histories have been written. I would suggest that the first major war to be thoroughly documented by the major combatants with journalism, film, archives, diaries and letters was WWII. This massive pool of material is being used to clarify the history of that war seventy-five years on.

The assertion is that winners write the account of a historic event. A little thought and research handily discredits that vague little truism, so I won’t spend time on that. Just a few examples of history written by the losers will suffice to make the point. Historical accounts of the Civil War Reconstruction Era were largely written by Southerners, who lost the war. America lost the Vietnam war, but most of the history of that war was written by the US. From ancient history, Thucydides was an Athenian, and wrote the most significant history of the Peloponnesian War (430-404 BC) which Athens lost to the Spartans. The most interesting case to me involves WWII history, The US Department of the Army Historical Division had German officers headed by General Franz Halder write war histories. Over 2000 manuscripts were created.

The task of the modern historian is not easy. The job includes sorting through documents which may need to be translated, interpreting archeological finds or capturing eye-witness reports, sometimes long after the event. All this needs to be done while keeping an objective view of the facts. The task is fraught with peril. It’s important for historians and researchers to critically examine different sources and consider multiple perspectives to arrive at a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of history and its complexities. It is a reminder that we also, as students of history need to be careful to critically examine what has been offered as historical accounts.

So if someone tries to tell you that history is written by the victors, you may confidently tell them that it just isn’t that simple.