What is history? The nature, aims, truth claims and uses of history in different eras (New key question in the 2024 History Extension syllabus)
“What is history? The nature, role and status of history in different eras; differing interpretations and perspectives of the aims and purposes of history; issues of truth, objectivity and causation; the use and misuse of history”
"What is history?" is the new first key question from the 2027 HSC. It covers the nature, role and status of history, differing aims and purposes, truth, objectivity and causation, and use and misuse, all across different eras. Argue with named producers and eras, and judge how far history can be objective.
Jump to a section
What this dot point is asking
From the 2027 HSC, the first key question of History Extension is "What is history?" Our reading is that it takes over the 2017 question "What are the purposes of history?" as one theme among several; NESA does not state a mapping. NESA's Year 12 content lists four themes under it: the nature, role and status of history in different eras; differing interpretations and perspectives of the aims and purposes of history; issues of truth, objectivity and causation; and the use and misuse of history. The first theme is tied to different eras, and the later key questions are all framed by era, so name the period in each answer. The question is about how the idea of history has changed, not only what it is today.
Before you can argue about how history is written, you need a view on what it is. Is it a record of what happened, a story told to explain the present, a tool for rulers, or a disciplined argument from evidence? Different producers in different times have answered differently, and your job is to show how and why.
The answer
"What is history?" asks you to explain how the nature, aims, truth claims and uses of history have been understood differently in different eras, and to judge how far history can claim truth or objectivity.
Nature, role and status
The nature of history is what counts as history: a chronicle of events, a moral lesson, a scientific reconstruction, a memory shared by a community. Its role is what it does in a society, such as legitimising a ruler, teaching citizens or holding power to account. Its status is how much authority it carries compared with myth, literature or other disciplines. Use a named producer and an era for each point. Herodotus presented history as inquiry, Thucydides as a careful account of events for future use, and nineteenth-century university historians as a professional discipline.
Aims and purposes
This is the part that carried over from 2017. Producers have written history to commemorate, to instruct, to justify, to explain, to critique and to entertain. Show that the aim shapes the form: a royal chronicle, a political history, a social history from below and a museum exhibition serve different purposes.
Truth, objectivity and causation
Examine the idea that history can be true and objective, then test it. Evidence constrains what can be said, but producers choose the questions, the evidence and the frame. A useful line of argument separates three things: bias that distorts evidence, perspective that shapes questions, and method that lets others check the work.
Causation is how historians explain why events happened. Producers weigh long-term conditions against immediate triggers, and the individual against wider forces, and their choices show what they think history is for. Compare how two producers from different eras explain the same kind of event, such as a war or the fall of a ruler, and ask whether a causal explanation can be objective or always reflects the producer's question.
Use and misuse
History is used in education, politics, law, heritage and media. Misuse includes selective evidence, myth-making and presenting a contested interpretation as settled. Be ready to use an Australian example, since many case studies (for example the frontier in Australia or the Anzacs) are shaped by public debate.
How exam answers use it
- Question 1 may give up to two unseen passages. Read each for what it assumes history is for and whether it claims objectivity.
- Open with a judgement and organise by theme or by era, not as a list of producers.
- Back every claim with a named producer, their era and what they did.
- Treating history and the past as the same thing
- The past happened; history is what people construct about it.
- Writing "all history is biased" and stopping
- The question is what follows from that and how producers manage it.
- Describing only modern views
- The wording "in different eras" asks for at least two periods.
Plan with three columns: producer, era, and what they thought history was for. Then add one line on how their claim to truth was judged. That gives you the comparison across eras that the key question rewards.
Practice questions
Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.
core6 marksExplain how two producers of history from different eras understood the aims of history differently. Use specific named examples.Show worked solution →
- Choose two contrasting eras and name the aim each producer pursued
- For example, Thucydides (fifth century BCE) aimed to record the Peloponnesian War so readers could understand human behaviour in future crises, while Leopold von Ranke (nineteenth century) aimed to show the past "as it actually was" through critical use of archival documents.
- Link each aim to its context
- Thucydides wrote as a participant in a war and for readers he expected to face similar events. Ranke wrote when universities and archives were professionalising scholarship, so rigorous method became the marker of good history.
- Compare
- One aim is practical and moral instruction, the other disciplined reconstruction of the past. Both claim authority from method, but they define success differently.
Marker's note: reward two accurate examples, a stated aim for each, a link to context, and an explicit contrast. Describing the works without stating the aim stays low.
exam10 marksTo what extent is objectivity a realistic goal for those who produce history? Refer to producers from at least two eras.Show worked solution →
- Thesis
- Objectivity is best treated as a discipline the producer works towards, not a state any producer fully reaches.
- Era 1
- Ranke's insistence on archival evidence shows a genuine effort to restrain the producer's own wishes, and his method still underpins academic practice. Yet his focus on states and diplomacy shows which questions the archive made visible, so even disciplined method shaped what counted as history.
- Era 2
- Later producers, including social historians who turned to the experience of ordinary people, showed that earlier "objective" accounts left whole groups out. Their work does not abandon evidence, but it shows that selection and framing are choices.
- Judgement
- Objectivity is realistic as an aim that governs how evidence is used and challenged, and unrealistic as a claim that a producer stands outside their time. The strongest answers separate bias that distorts evidence from perspective that shapes questions.
Marker's note: reward a clear judgement, at least two eras, and a distinction between method and perspective. Asserting that "all history is biased" without evidence stays mid-band.