Historical revisionism

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Historical revisionism is the means by which the historical record — the history of a society, as understood in their collective memory — continually integrates new facts and interpretations of the events commonly understood as history; about which the historian James M. McPherson, said:

The fourteen-thousand members of this association, however, know that revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship. History is a continuing dialogue, between the present and the past. Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. There is no single, eternal, and immutable “truth” about past events and their meaning.

Developments in the academy, culture, and politics shaped the contemporary model of writing history — the accepted paradigm of historiography; the philosopher Karl Popper said: "each generation has its own troubles and problems, and, therefore, its own interests and its own point of view", and that:

it follows that each generation has a right to look upon and re-interpret history in [their] own way. . . . After all, we study history because we are interested in it, and perhaps because we wish to learn something about our [contemporary] problems. But history can serve neither of these two purposes if, under the influence of an inapplicable idea of objectivity, we hesitate to present historical problems from our point of view. And we should not think that our point of view, if consciously and critically applied to the problem, will be inferior to that of a writer who naïvely believes . . . that he has reached a level of objectivity permitting him to present "the events of the past as they actually did happen".[8]

Some of the influences on historians, which may change over time are:

Access to new data: Much historical data has been lost. Even archives have to make decisions based on space and interest on what original material to obtain or keep. At times documents are discovered or publicized that give new views of well established events. Archived material may be sealed by Governments for many years, either to hide political scandals, or to protect information vital for national security. When these archives are opened, they can alter the historical perspective on an event. For example, with the release of the ULTRA archives in the 1970s under the British 30 years rule, a lot of the Allied high command tactical decision making process was re-evaluated, particularly the Battle of the Atlantic. The release of the ULTRA archives also forced a re-evaluation of the history of the electronic computer.[12]