What are some ways of recalling or contextualizing dense material? I have trouble with dates, especially the whole thing with written centuries (for instance, writing 'fifteenth century' instead of the 1400's). It forces me to just think of the number below it, which makes reading slower and a heck of a lot harder to remember. And going into BC becomes a nightmare.
Mnemonics in history?
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schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
For centuries, it's just something you'll get used to. I rarely have to think about it anymore. For remembering dates, remember that for the most part specific dates aren't super important, but the easiest way to remember dates, at least for me, is to relate it directly to something else that I know is going on around that time. I do it all the time for baseball. The Year of the Miracle Braves (when the Braves won the world series against all odds) occurred in 1914, the year WWI started in Europe. The first ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by President Taft in 1912 while he was campaigning for the mid-term elections. etc. etc. You can do it for older stuff too, obviously.
Really the best ways to remember things in history are:
1) Actively relate information you're reading to other things you know. It's not necessarily easy to remember that Frederick V began his campaign to assume the throne of Bohemia in 1618. It's much easier (for me) to remember this when you consider that Frederick's father-in-law was James I/VII of England-Scotland (as Frederick took the crown on the assumption that aid from his father-in-law would be forthcoming [it wasn't]) and this occurred later on in James' reign which ended in the mid-1620s. The great thing about history is that everything is connected so the more history you learn, the more you can relate to what you know which creates a feedback loop further strengthening you knowledge overall.
2) Read. A lot. The important dates will rise to the top. 1338. 1357. 1360. 1356. 1452. 1492. 1517-21. 1530. 1548. 1559. 1568. 1618. 1648. etc. etc. You read enough about a period of time and these numbers will simply become ingrained into your mind.
Tahuti
Writing Deity
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There isn't really. With all due respect, you just have to memorise the material until you can dream it.
That being said, history is not about trivia, is about being able to think about the period you wish to think about in a sharp manner. In some ways, it is better to develop an intuition in how people of the time could have plausibly thought than know all the most minute facts by heart.
That being said, history is not about trivia, is about being able to think about the period you wish to think about in a sharp manner. In some ways, it is better to develop an intuition in how people of the time could have plausibly thought than know all the most minute facts by heart.
schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
Oh yeah. This too. You memorize facts in history for your benefit. So you don't have to go through the trouble of digging them up when you need them in a pinch. History is more about logic, imagination, and creativity. The best historians aren't trivia masters who can memorize a thousand facts. I find those types of "historians" to be the most tedious, frankly. The best historians are those most capable of truly being able to visualize the period they're working on. To see the period as best they can through the lens of its contemporaries. Then taking that visualizing and relaying it to a modern audience in a way that is both readable and informative.
Every time I see one I experience blood rage. It's the worst thing in the world to expend that energy on literally nothing.
The rest of your post is very helpful, thank you.
Kozmos
Jew Detective
Weave a big story in your head. Like imagine a tall and long ass tapestry stretching across on an endless wall which you can walk along. It takes a while to set up and imagine but I found it useful. Use standard enhancers to make it easier to remember. Having a mental number line with delineations helped me deal with the years. You don't even have to make it in the head. Just make it digitally or on paper.
+1
Best way to remember dates (or roughly remember most) is to read a lot on periods you already have some reason to like. I do remember a few tens of 'important' dates between the 7th and 4rth centuries BC, but only because they tie to specific events and people of the presocratic and platonic eras.
Sometimes a date has two notable events (or more), eg 356 BC is both the date of Alexander's birth, and the one of the burning of the temple of Artemis in Ephesos*, by Herostratos, and the resulting Damnatio Memoriae business/law. And you get the age of Alex's death for free after that, if you just recall he was 33 when he died.
*argued to have happened the very same night, July 20th.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
I remember the order of events, not specific dates. Then I try to roughly remember how much earlier or later something was. Then I remember a few very specific dates. After that, I ballpark. History isn't about knowing a specific date. If I need to know it, I'll look it up. Granted, I fully agree that people who know history will probably think you're stupid if you don't know 1066 as the year William invaded England, but the "important dates" are pretty arbitrary. Memorize what you can, but don't sweat the rest.
I still struggle with BC dates when converted to centuries. But no one will judge you for taking a second to do the math.
I still struggle with BC dates when converted to centuries. But no one will judge you for taking a second to do the math.
Don't see the issue with BC aeons, or AD ones.
In BC it is the same century as it would have been in AD, just the symmetric one in the negative bit of the linear axis, eg 323 BC is in the 4rth century BC, while 323 AD is in the 4rth century AD.
Only sort of boring thing to recall is that for BC the start of each century is at ---0, and its end at ---1, and the opposite is true for AD. (eg 300 BC is the first year of the 3rd century BC, but 300 AD is the final year of the 3rd century AD).
In BC it is the same century as it would have been in AD, just the symmetric one in the negative bit of the linear axis, eg 323 BC is in the 4rth century BC, while 323 AD is in the 4rth century AD.
Only sort of boring thing to recall is that for BC the start of each century is at ---0, and its end at ---1, and the opposite is true for AD. (eg 300 BC is the first year of the 3rd century BC, but 300 AD is the final year of the 3rd century AD).
This is a lot harder when reading ancient history. Maybe that's the problem, after all.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
I was thinking ancient events. I don't find it particularly hard. If anything, it's relatively easier because the strokes are much broader. The First Punic War happened way before Julius Caesar. The Assyrians were very, very far before that. For groups that interact, knowing events relatively to each other is unimportant until they intersect. Know that the Assyrians predate the Persians, but knowing Greek events matter little until Persian invades Greece. The only real useful thing to know would be about the Greek Dark Ages, which is about the same time as the collapse of most Bronze Age civilizations, the Sea Peoples, etc. Know that the Neo-Assyrian Empire came after. Otherwise, each group can be kept somewhat in a bubble.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I wonder why that image of academic history still persists in the popular imagination? If I tell people I study history, they say "Oh, that must be hard, remembering all those dates", and I just have to agree without admitting that I know like three, maybe four dates*. I suppose it reflects the way that history is taught at a secondary level, with a big political/military emphasis?
*For the curious, these dates are: 1066 (Battle of Hastings), 1492 (discovery of America), and 1977 (first appearance of Judge Dredd.)
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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I suspect that it's in part because such history courses try to cram a lot of history in a limited amount of time into the heads of students who are not really acquainted with the field. They try to cover the world, and the result is an extremely superficial study of things. Everything is mentioned in passing, little is actually examined. It got better in high school--one high-level course on the otherwise dull topic of American history got into nice detail with primary documents and questioning why people acted the way they did.
But for the most part primary school is just crap like "Qin Shi Huang unified China, a civilization which was built on the fertile silt of the Yellow River."
Tahuti
Writing Deity
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I wonder whether it would be better to simply focus on local history instead, if it means there is an opportunity to give a far more deeper view of the very discipline of history.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
I suspect a lot of it has to do with the way history is taught in middle school and high school. To make it easier, they focus on "objective facts" such as dates, which can be distilled through multiple choice exams. Ironically, this desire to make it simpler and easier is what turns many people off in the first place.
Wrymouth3
Emperor
As someone who can attest to the reality of history graduate school, professors do not care what facts you know or what anecdotes you bring out. History at its core is a theory on a very narrow subject, and I can completely understand why this is difficult for people to understand. For example, it's not really what Andre the poor Languedoc farmer experienced in his daily life (of course it mostly sucked), but rather the why of what secondary literature has to say. It does help to have a background in any period, but you don't really need one with historiography, just know the big schools and theorists. Remember, a professional historian is a theorist and creator, not a student of history, undergrad days are very different from graduate days, you can't just get by with a B+ in every class by knowing what the Cult of Reason was.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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That's another valid point. The study of history emphatically isn't about memorizing trivia, it's about asking why people did what they did and what effect that had. But the bureaucracy needs to know how students are performing, so their knowledge has to be quantified, and machine-graded tests with multiple-choice questions about trivia give the various levels of educational bureaucracy some nice neat numbers and percentages.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
That's the safe stuff. There's no political stance in dates, and if there's anything modern textbooks strive for, it's to be devoid of any sort of opinion (or at least to appear so), which makes them rather useless.
schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
Now this is interesting as you're a Scotsman, but my understanding is it's a doctrinal thing. American curriculum writers for history feel that memorizing those tentpole dates and facts is the key to success in the field of history. You start with them knowing that 1066 is the battle of Hastings, and 1347 is the battle of Crécy then you layer on the relativistic, interpretative, research/argument sides of things later. The idea is that it's easier for someone to unlock a more historical side of thinking if they have the raw knowledge background to start with.
This stands in stark contrast to British schools, in which they do the opposite, starting with an emphasis on critical thinking, argumentation, and interpretation of sources with the idea that if you start them off with the right way of thinking, the dates and facts will arise naturally from study and reading.
For the record British professors I have interacted with far prefer American students to British ones. They find American students tend to have a deeper knowledge base to work from which makes advising them in grad school rather easier. Having been chewed up and destroyed by the American educational system, I don't know if I'd necessarily agree. But the theory proved true for me. I started off with a good knowledge of trivia and developed towards the ideological/interpretive stuff later, scuffed and bruised, but achieving the desired destination, nonetheless.
In ancient history the dates are often sufficiently contentious that learning them is next to useless - particularly when you delve into Aegean Chronology, where two 'foolproof' methods of dating can diverge by up to four centuries. You end up dating things as 'EMII' or 'LHIIIB' and just ignoring absolute dates. Even in Greek and Roman history, though, the dates of certain treaties, laws and events is regularly uncertain by six months (that is, crossing over the year boundary) or even by much longer. It was recently shown that several of the key treaties of Athens with her allies are actually about two decades later than conventionally thought.
