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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“And, in fine, the ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,” become at last one maxim.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Our medieval historians who prefer to rely as much as possible on official documents because the chronicles are unreliable, fall thereby into an occasionally dangerous error. The documents tell us little about the difference in tone which separates us from those times; they let us forget the fervent pathos of medieval life.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The delicious faces of children, the beauty of school-girls, “the sweet seriousness of sixteen,” the lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, and the varied power in all that well-known company that escort us through life,—we know how these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)