Falsification of History: The Role of Emotions in Documenting Knowledge

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”- Napoleon Bonaparte

In this quote, Napoleon Bonaparte is projecting his belief that history is merely some lies that people agreed on, implying that most of the historical knowledge present today is a product of fiction that individuals in the past agreed to write down as factual knowledge. The motives behind the fabrication of historical knowledge can range from personal gain to even hiding a country’s embarrassing past. However, this raises an interesting question regarding what about the event leads historical figures to document false information. It is possible that these figures simply chose all bad and significant events to falsify. However, through the shared knowledge of history and existence of proof of several events such as massacres, wars, battles, etc, it is obvious that the nature of the event itself is not sufficient enough to falsify information about it. The emotions of the authorities may play a considerable role in this, as after all, they are the ones putting their thoughts down as historical knowledge. Hence, this begs the question: How does Emotion affect one’s willingness to document knowledge in History, either truthfully or falsely?

To investigate the role Emotion plays in this process, it is most prudent to do so using an event that affected a large group of individuals on an emotional level. For the purposes of this essay, the Nanking Incident serves as an example. To quickly summarise, the Nanking Incident was an act of mass murder and rape committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing, China, during the second Sino-Japanese war. It goes by different names. For example, it is called “The Rape of Nanking” in China, and simply the “Nanking Incident” in Japanese textbooks. The diction of the titles themselves give a different nuance to their respective readers. A Chinese person reading about this event would be more strongly affected, compared to a Japanese person, as “rape” sounds a lot more serious and specific compared to “incident”. The Japanese refuse to acknowledge their soldiers’ wrongdoings during this time, they even refuse to fully explain it in textbooks. It is often dumbed down to a simple paragraph about the “Nanking Incident”, whereas in China the very same event is taken quite seriously, which is not an irrational thing as the Chinese people were arguably very deeply affected from such a horrific event. Hence, the variations of the ways in which Japan chooses to represent this event could be argued as falsification of historical knowledge, as by changing the wording of the title, they were able to reduce its significance as a historical event. The Japanese may have done this in order to protect their image in the nation, or even because they are too embarrassed to admit that their soldiers went and did these terrible things. This is evidence of the fact that if an event holds high emotional impact or significance, it is more likely to be altered when being documented as historical knowledge, where the nature of the alteration depends on the context of the environment where it is being discussed.

Although reducing the significance of events such as the aforementioned Nanking Incident is an example of a country altering a historical event due to its high emotional value, there are several more cases where the opposite happened. For example, Jallianwala Bagh massacre in India during the British occupation, where over 400 Indians were shot down for simply assembling in a garden, is an event covered extensively in any historical source that talks in detail about the British occupation. It is something that even the British acknowledge. There are even public initiatives set up in India that honor the people that died in this event. Hence, this example, along with many others, forces one to reconsider the notion whether level of emotional depth of an event has anything to do with falsification of history at all.

The primary reason the Jallianwala Bagh massacre is more widely acknowledged for what it truly was is the fact that the British, who are the perpetrators in this case, themselves publicly admit to these claims. On the other hand, Japan is still reluctant to fully admit to all its crimes in Nanjing. This affects how these two incidents are depicted in historical knowledge, one is accurate and one is watered down to different levels depending on where it is being used. Therefore, it can be concluded that although Emotion has an important role in this process, it comes down to how the concerned parties choose to acknowledge the event in question.

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