when I was young and start to search about African history, the first thing I found was a British guy saying.
AFRICA DON'T HAVE HISTORY because it don't have Written.
How can an European source be good when speak about abroad land. I just use European sources if I want to learn about Europe, all other topics of world European Sources are not good sources at all.
Some random British dude on the internet does not count as a So
urce.
There is SOME merit to your cynicism regarding
Histories, but you're going in an entirely weird way about it.
1. For instance, Portuguese historians until recently weren't too keen to address the more jarring aspects of colonisation. Speaking of slavery and conquest in the abstract is much easier than to engage and quote the more visceral accounts written by the people who lived during that time. Portuguese Historians did not need to lie, just omit, and choose to focus on more agreeable things. Historians, like everyone else, are still bound to be affected by the emotions and issues of their time.
2. Access to sources in 2020 is way more democratised compared to 1920 or 1820. A government, and certainly a democratic one, is much less likely to be able to hide sources away in some library, to be accessed only by a handful of Historians with the right connections and the right frame of mind.
3. "
Philia" is not uncommon among Historians
. Meaning that often it can be the emotional attachment to a particular person, events or culture that leads a Historian to want to focus their research on that aspect in the first place. That a person prefers to focus on things that
interest them is hardly surprising, we all do it, but this can be troublesome. The 19th century Philhellenes, for instance, were too emotionally connected to their own perceptions of classic Greece to be reliable History
-tellers. They gave us very Greek-centred account of European history and attempted to interpret later developments in Europe as developing linearly from Ancient Greece.
So, although there's room for scepticism and it's perfectly natural to ask "
who wrote this" and wish to read a few different accounts on the same subject by people from different backgrounds to ensure you're well-informed, your casual dismissal of all Historians of European descent on matters outside Europe is plainly immature. It's made worse since you seem willing to just grab on any "source" (aka dude on the internet) that seems to corroborate the point you're trying to make.
.
