Worldbuilding 205: Winners write history
Greatings and…D'OH! Well, at least it wasn’t on salutations this time! Hiya everyone! Today's blogpost will be about a persistent myth, namely… Why do I even say this? You’ve read the damn title! Winner’s don’t write history!
“Winners Write History”
This is a phrase we’ve heard time and time again, but what does it mean, and why do people believe this? What it means is whoever wins a war, or anything, are the ones that get to tell their tale in history books, so history is skewed and plastered by the biases of the victorious side, and thus the losers are silenced and lost to the sand of time.
It is easy to believe this, and to some degree, it is even true! But only some. It’s an easy belief because it just seems to make intuitive sense. If you win the war and conquer people, you have all the power and can put your boot onto their necks and throat and tell them how it “really was” for generations to come and make people believe it. And to your own native population, you might even succeed at this for some time because they have little to no incentive to question the narrative given, and thus, it is partially true.
Losers don’t listen to your history
The heading kind of explains why this is false. The losers will never listen to your narrative and your stories. You tell history as you saw it, but while they might sit and nod along while you explain, the moment your back is turned, they start undermining your narrative amongst themselves and tell the history as they see it.
And this is fundamentally the reason why it is never true that the winners write history. They might write their own history and how they see it, but no side can write THE history. The defeated or losers will always tell their own history amongst themselves. Put yourself into their own shoes, and some of you don’t even need to pretend: why the fuck would you listen to an outsider’s version of history when your own people tell a different one? If the official history demonises you and makes you and your ancestors out as being wrong and even outright evil, why would you listen to it when your own history says you’re the good ones and the others are evil?
Psychology behind narratives
One important thing to remember about people, humans, and such, is that you are story-driven creatures. You require a huge amount of context to make sense of anything. Facts, dates, evidence, means little to nothing unless it is put together into a narrative, a story that allows you to make sense of the world. This is one of many reasons why it is called a “narrative,” because history is a story to be told. And no, HISTORY DOES NOT COME FROM “HIS” STORY! Whoever thinks that is a bloody imbecile! It comes from ἱστορίᾱ, historíā, in Ancient Greek meaning “Learning through research;” the coincidence in your pronoun and word for a story are entirely coincidental.
Now, humans have many cognitive shortcuts. The brain is a bloody expensive organ, which means it has to do things to minimise energy consumption. And just like it relates better to stories that make sense to it, it relates to stories that FEEL good. No matter how logical you might think you are, you are much more likely to accept anything that makes you feel better than anything that makes you feel worse. This is a fundamental reason why demonising narratives are inherently divisive. It might unite some people because they get an enemy to look at, but the enemy has now cognitive reason to reject your narrative and everything you say.
This is a major component of why many narratives have failed to permeate all of society. You humans like to demonise and create enemies in narratives but with that, well, as said, the other side will reject that and keep telling their own version. Due to society’s demonising of them, their own narrative might morph and shift until it too demonises the people of the main narrative.
Integration
I have to stuff this in here as a thing because of how I worldbuild and believe. Given these psychological propensities, a great way to add integration of even conquered people is not to suppress their narrative, not to demonise them, not to speak ill of them, and be honest. That increases the chances that a people can be integrated and turned into a part of the main group. There is, however, no guarantee, because again, their narrative might morph, shift, and change until it no longer reflects reality, and their version makes you the demon. Narratives and history are tricky.
(Anne:) One fun lecture-ish thing (a TED talk, if you know what those are) about the subject of how to teach history without demonising a people is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” where she advocates for telling multiple stories about a people in order to avoid stereotypes and teach a full history. This is a little similar to what Vivian is advocating here. I highly recommend it if you have 20 minutes or so!
Examples from history, HAH!
(Vivian:) Okay, this might get a bit heated but… tough shit. Reality is as it is, and while I, as a Limax, may be as susceptible to cognitive biases and issues as any human, I still at least TRY to be as close to the truth as possible.
“The Lost Cause”
This is an example of the loser telling their own history and even distorting their history to make it more palatable. Anne, wanna define what it is, as you reside there?
(Anne:) From my point of view as an American, this is one of the worst examples of losers writing history, and as a Northerner now living in the South, it’s easy to see the damage this has done. Basically, in the United States a while ago, the Southern states seceded in order to preserve slavery. That’s not me saying it, it’s in their articles of secession! We had a whole civil war, and luckily the North won, and slavery was abolished not too long after. Well, it seemed lucky at the time. The US government decided to be pretty nice to the Southern traitors, offering them money for their “lost” slaves and letting them keep their land, and the freed slaves themselves got nothing, leading to generations of poverty and working in essential slavery through things like sharecropping. Anyway, yeah, the losers were treated well. And they took notice.
The Daughters of the Confederacy, a group of women who were, obviously, related to Confederate soldiers (the losing side), decided to rewrite history so that the Southern cause looked good. And boy did they succeed! This is why most Southerners today believe the cause of the Civil War was “state’s rights,” without acknowledging that the right in question was the right to own slaves. Anyway, it’s damaged America quite a bit since Southern history and thinking (white supremacy) has not only maintained power but overwhelmed any good that might have come from a Northern victory. I could go on, but basically, you get it. The Southern losers were allowed to choose what gets taught, and now their thinking is dominant in American culture. Back to you, Vivian!
(Vivian:) Thank you! It is a great example of the losers rewriting history as they see it to be more palatable. “State’s rights” sure does sound better than “We want slaves!” Albeit not being from a federation like the US, Germany, etc., it is still baffling to me. Why would you give subunits of your own nation such broad freedoms on great issues? Well, you federationists have, so it sounds better then!
What is important to note here is that the narrative changes: the main narrative, which more closely aligns with the truth, did not succeed, and it was for a myriad of reasons. Sure, it was the Bitches of the Confederacy who did a lot of the work, but it could not happen if the society was not ripe for it.
Sami
I will take an example that is closer to home for me here. In 🇸🇪🇳🇴🇫🇮, there are a people called the Sami. Yeah, they are the colourfully dressed people of the Norse. I so want one of their outfits! Really genuinely made by them! But I have heard it is… impolite to ask such, as an outsider. Oh well. The Norse people and Finnish–yes they are different people even if they are all called Nordics these days–came in and essentially conquered all the Nordic lands and said “ours”.
The Samis had no say and were pushed away. Fortunately for them, the regions far north are so inhospitable that the Nordic people didn’t care what they did up there, and they got to live mostly on their own. Until WAY later when… uh… Nordics got real bad with eugenics and more. Yeah, it is part of history, and we are not proud of it, but we do tell it! The thing is, however, the history of “we pushed them out and took their land” is essentially never discussed, told, or anything. It boils down to essentially “we got Samis in the north, and we were dicks to them until the 1950s roughly and afterward got better,” which… is true I guess? But it does not tell the true history of what has happened. I will be honest and say, I am not sure if the Nordics know the history enough to tell it, or the Sami know it enough to tell, either. But the fact we did push them further north and took their lands a thousand years ago or more is never really told of.
So in a way here, the winners did get to make the history. As a side note, they are still mistreated to this day by Nordics in the north 🙁 it saddens me, but it is getting better over time, which is good.
History classes
There are of course many more examples of where the losers have told their tale endlessly, and there are examples of stories and tales being lost either due to time or people… becoming too insignificant over time. While the saying that winners write history is BS as a general statement, it has its places of truth.
But history is taught in schools, even in old times. The difference between now and then is that school is for everyone now, and back then, it was only for rich kids! ...Which I guess is still kinda true for 🇺🇸.
(Anne:) How history is taught changes too, like in America, the story of Alexander Hamilton was forgotten until the fantastic play Hamilton came out, and the final song “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story” perfectly captures the idea of who decides what is remembered.
(Vivian:) History changes for many reasons, and that is an important point to have made! Who and what we focus on is governed by the times and their values. Like in 🇸🇪, Gustav Vasa–NOT FUCKING GUSTAVUS VASA!–is taught because to Sweden he was important breaking away from Denmark. Anyway, you need some standardisation of the curriculum, and how is that decided?
Well… those in charge decide! And this is where government types come into play. That is because what do they value? Fascist states and people do not value truth or accuracy but instead what furthers the nationalistic narrative they want. Honestly, most authoritarian regimes do the same, but fascist ones are infamous for being obsessed about this. Even democratic nations are not immune from falling prey to telling a flattering narrative. Again, the cognitive thing rears its ugly head.
So for your own nations, what would they prioritise and why? Maybe they haven’t done atrocities lately, so to them being honest does not cause cognitive issues and thus real narratives are taught. Or were the issues relatively recent, and they do not want to face what they have done? The history your characters will know speaks volumes about what the culture values because their version will not be the truth. You know the saying, right? There are three sides to any story, my side, your side, and the truth. No one knows the truth as it was, but may be close at the best of times.
(Anne:) One common character arc is someone learning a more real version of history than whatever propaganda they were taught and changing as a result of it!
(Vivian:) And it is an amazing arc to have! But one has to be careful in making it because if it is too quick, it feels forced, and if it is too in your face, it feels like the author is just telling their views and the reader should adopt them! But we are all amazing writers here, so no need to worry, right?
Summa Summarum
History is a complicated subject, and how it becomes told is affected by a myriad of factors. It is not as simplistic as “whoever wins can tell any story they want.” The defeated will tell their own stories and keep at it no matter what you do, and attempts to stamp it out are millenia long projects that no one with an agenda can be arsed to plan… unless they are immortal!
So all in all, use history as a way to show culture, values, and who is the dominant force within a region, but do not use it to say what really happened or to show who was wrong. Even the defeated can be wrong and evil which can be a great thing to show through their narratives.
And that’s it, history comes and goes, but the present always is and forever changing 🙂
History changes not because reality changes but because our own values and knowledge change.
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as History, Democracy, Fascism, the “Lost Cause,” and the Sami are either generic, free terms or copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” is copyrighted but meant for educational purposes, so please share it! Just attribute it. However, specific ideas such as Lin Manuel Miranda’s play Hamilton and the song “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” and all of Adichie, Vivian, and Anne’s language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. While Hamilton can be used freely under fair use, it’s owned by Disney, who are famously litigious. Vivian is much more likely to approve use. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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