Everybody's History
We are living through extraordinary times, and our memories of the Covid19 months will become part of history...
Everybody’s History
Your Story Matters
Historians spend their careers exploring the past, so that we can understand why events happened and use that knowledge to anticipate or influence future events. That’s the theory, anyway – though you’d struggle to make a case for the relevance for some fields of history.
Most of the time, we research in libraries and archives, searching for clues in state or private documents that have survived. Some of the richest sources for past events are letters, journals and diaries that provide eye-witness accounts of momentous times – wars, regime change or societal upheaval. Not only do they provide a worm’s eye account of what happened, but they often challenge the ‘official’ view that’s captured in state papers.
However, throughout history the main voices captured by historians have been the literate minority – usually the higher echelons of society who had accessed to education, a privilege that came with wealth and status. The Victorians introduced national education and state schools in the nineteenth century, which meant that more people were able to read and write. But whilst communication was possible by post, the mass survival of personal exchanges between ‘ordinary folk’ in the forms of letters and postcards has been scant, usually restricted to family archives that are more often than not discarded after the death of an elderly relative, deemed irrelevant.
The rise of family history, and the invention of the internet and social media, has changed all that. Now everyone has a view to share, and the lives of millions of people are played out on an international platform. Whilst this poses all sorts of other problems – what is true? what is relevant? how do we preserve mass digital archives? – it does mean that the recording of history is far more democratic and instant that at any time in human history.
Your story, therefore, matters. We are living through extraordinary times, and our memories of the Covid19 months will become part of history. In years to come, historians of the pandemic will trawl through our thoughts, our experiences and our contributions alongside broadcast media footage and official documents. This is your chance to write yourself into history so that your voice is heard by generations to come.
Dr. Nick Barratt
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
