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History can never be objective because it written by human beings who are by nature subjective.
The historical documents and sources were created by people of the period who obviously had their own views. When viewing the historical evidence no historian would accept it at face value. One must always consider who created the document and for whom and why was it created and when. The documents and evidence that make up the sources from which historians interpret history are not in themselves the whole story.
In the United Kingdom, one can obtain records of official government documents but the historian must put these in the context of their original purpose. For Example In a civil service memorandum to cabinet the need for a particular government policy direction may be over stated in order to overcome objections from the treasury.
Records of Parliamentary debates may include speeches, which are merely party point scoring, discrediting political opponents or covering political embarrassment rather than information.
Newspaper reports might seem a more factual source of historical information but one must remember that newspapers now are often politically biased but in the past, they mostly reflected the politics of their owners.
It is often better to use several sources together evidence from a public survey coupled with newspaper reports might give a clearer view of real opinions and attitudes in the period in which one is interested.
Diaries, memoirs, and oral history are of course, naturally slanted, memory is selective and people view and show themselves in the best possible light. Memoirs by their very nature are written later in life than the events they describe. Memory dims with time. Before Diaries are published. An oral history is recorded often many years after the events the subject is reflecting upon. The private documents of a person's life may be incomplete. Well-meaning relatives of those involved in public life or celebrities often destroy papers that they consider either too private or injurious to the deceased's memory.
Historians also come to writing history with their own attitudes. It is an old adage that the victor of a war writes the history. In addition, however scrupulous they are with their interpretation of the historical sources they cannot help but imbue their writings with their own personal attitudes, aspects, views and prejudices. They also have the added handicap that they are looking back over time and the attitudes that prevailed at the time of the events may have changed greatly by the time the historian is writing.
History is written, recorded and researched by subjective beings and so cannot possibly be completely objective. They have their own attitudes, opinions, and prejudices, which reflect upon history.
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