Modern Official Histories
Modern governments have commissioned official histories for a range of purposes. These include promoting the government's achievements, reflecting on past practices, commemorating events and providing an authoritative record for other historians to draw from. Military history is a particularly common topic for official histories to cover. Examples of official military histories include the Australian series Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 and Australia in the War of 1939–1945 and the British series History of the Great War and History of the Second World War.
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Famous quotes containing the words modern, official and/or histories:
“The complaint ... about modern steel furniture, modern glass houses, modern red bars and modern streamlined trains and cars is that all these objets modernes, while adequate and amusing in themselves, tend to make the people who use them look dated. It is an honest criticism. The human race has done nothing much about changing its own appearance to conform to the form and texture of its appurtenances.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“All histories do shew, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)