Historical significance
A contingent quality shaping what is remembered from the past.
Historical significance is a key idea in historiography that examines why human societies choose to remember certain past events. This process of selection helps set history apart from the past itself. The way events are chosen and ranked in importance is not fixed; it can shift over time depending on the criteria used to make those judgments.
Quick Facts
- Field
- Historiography
- Known for
- Second-order knowledge or meta-concept in history
Facts from the source article.
Relevance
Historical significance makes judgements about what is important to be remembered about the past and why, through its reflections on historical aspects of contemporary culture and society including historical reputations, events, issues, monuments, and what is chosen to be emphasized in history writing itself. Examining what has been included and what has been left out of the historical record can guide students to understand how cultural background affects their perception of history. The concept appears in numerous provincial, national, and international history curricula, including the Singapore National Curriculum, the English National Curriculum, the IB Diploma History Guide, the New Zealand National Curriculum, and the Australian National Curriculum.
Definitions
UNESCO includes any site as a world heritage site provided it bears a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization. The International Baccalaureate Diploma History Guide defines historical significance as including the record that has been preserved through evidence or traces of the past, and/or the aspects that someone has consciously decided to record and communicate. The Historical Thinking Project defines it as a historical person or event acquiring significance if historians can link it to larger trends and stories that reveal something important for us today.
Criteria for assessing historical significance
Historical significance is typically assessed by judging an event against pre-defined criteria, though these criteria are always subjective and debatable. There can be important differences between what is seen as significant in dominant national narratives, what is taught in schools, and how minority groups may see the significance of an event. Significance teaching models are not designed as checklists but as unique disciplinary lenses, and may include subdivisions such as contemporary significance, causal significance, pattern significance, symbolic significance, revelatory significance, and present significance.
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