The winners are not the only ones who write, and the accounts check each other

The argument

The second argument addresses the saying that history is written by the victors. Proponents of this position argue that whatever force this had in the past, it does not describe how history is now produced, and that treating it as a settled truth is itself a failure of scepticism. Proponents argue that the losers of almost every conflict also write, and are read. Defeated nations produce their own historians, exiles and emigrants publish abroad, the descendants of the conquered research their own past, and foreign scholars with no stake in either side examine both. They add that the records are not controlled by one party either: archives are captured, opened by later governments, leaked, preserved in third countries and increasingly digitised, so a national account can be checked against material its own authorities never expected anyone to see. Proponents argue that this plurality is what makes objectivity achievable in practice rather than merely in principle. Where several traditions describe the same events with opposing sympathies, their points of agreement are unlikely to be artefacts of any one bias, and their disagreements identify exactly where the evidence needs closer work. Proponents argue that this is how the field has in fact revised national myths, including ones that were taught for generations, and that the revision was driven by historians from the countries whose myths they were. The argument concludes that because the record is contested by many parties with conflicting interests and compared across them, an account can be constructed that none of them wrote alone, and history can therefore be written objectively.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics answer that the comparison of accounts produces a negotiated settlement rather than an objective one, since what survives the comparison is whatever the traditions involved happen to share, and shared assumptions are the least visible kind of bias. They add that the plurality described is uneven, because peoples without writing, without surviving archives or without scholars to represent them are absent from the comparison altogether, so the agreement of the available accounts reflects who got to speak. Critics also argue that whichever tradition is wealthiest and best institutionalised tends to set the terms on which the others are read.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The plurality is uneven, since peoples without writing, without surviving archives or without scholars to represent them are absent from the comparison altogether. [Rejecting P2] Access to records is also unequal, and the tradition that is wealthiest and best institutionalised tends to set the terms on which the others are read. [Rejecting P3] What survives comparison is whatever the available traditions happen to share, and shared assumptions are the least visible kind of bias rather than a neutral residue. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that comparing accounts yields a negotiated settlement, which is an improvement on a single national myth but is not objectivity.