Writing Royal History: Is Dynastic History Equivalent to the History of a Kingdom?

Extract

In the wake of the genocide, it has been argued many times that the history of Rwanda needs to be rewritten, that past understandings of the history of this society contributed to the atrocities of 1994. Indeed, our understanding of history influences the present by lending justification to our actions today. But such a relationship of past and present works both ways. As the very demand for a new history suggests, our vision—and therefore our presentation—of history is also influenced by our contemporary view of historical process. In a sense, history is always an attempt to make sense of political and social issues for which we have no answers in the present. Therefore, at one level, historical inquiry is always an attempt to understand the present, and a history that ignores the important questions of the day becomes simply antiquarianism.

But such a reality evokes some fundamental methodological and conceptual questions. To what degree—and in what way—do present concerns influence the ways in which we proceed to construct history? At what point does history become simply propaganda? To what degree do our current preoccupations shape our questions of history, and to what degree do they mold the content of our histories? Do we base our analyses on the known empirical record, critically analyzed, in as complete and comprehensive a fashion as is feasible? Or do we simply fashion our conclusions to meet present concerns? Concern over content—not questions—leads often to a selective presentation of the record, a simplified version of history, with the selection determined by the desired outcome.