History, Point of View, Interpretation - Essay Example

1 History is normally viewed as just a written narrative of past events. Allan Munslow however argued that although the facts are correctly stated, history is presented by historians through a narrative as to how he understands and interprets these facts, which is mainly biased towards how he interprets and understands the events of the past. As Munslow put it, history “cannot escape its authorship… the past is not just re-interpreted according to new evidence but also through self-conscious acts of re-writing as well.

”2 As such, there is a tendency of historians to offer their point of view according to their personal interpretation of events. Munslow contends that present day historical authors and is more inclined on presenting events according to their interpretation. The emphasis now is less on history as a process of objective discovery and report but, rather, accepts its unavoidably fictive nature, that is, its literary contractedness. By this I mean recognizing the figurative assumptions that underpin authorial activity in creating the text…often determining the selection of evidence and its most likely meaning…Postmodern history, because it is a literary… cannot escape its authorship…the past is not just re-interpreted according to new evidence but also through self-conscious acts of re-writing as well…include the historians pre-narrative assumptions and how we translate those assumptions…”3 Antonia Castaneda’s, Spanish Violence against Amerindian Women present two different interpretations of events in the history of California.

These different views are due to different ideological perspectives of the two authors. Castaneda focused on the oppression and sexual exploitation of Amerindian women by Spaniards. Her study discussed brutality of soldiers to the women, critically analyzing of situations of the Amerindian women before and during the Spanish conquest of California and how natives