President's Message

In my last message as president of the Illinois State Historical Society, I want to talk about history. What is history anyway? A typical answer is that history is the study of the past. What then does a historian try to do? A historian attempts to reconstruct or recreate the past. Although the past is often illusory and difficult to grasp, the historian still tries to explain what happened and why a particular event is important.

History is more than the listing or tacts, dates, and events. Historians must examine the cause-effect relationship of events and write historical studies that are thesis driven. Historians publish monographs and biographies to pursue key questions that are meaningful to them from the perspective of their own time. At one time, histories discussed kings, parliaments, congresses, presidents, and especially diplomatic relations. Later, economic and social history, rather than just political history, came into vogue. Still later the new social history took the spotlight.

History once chiefly concerned upper-class males. What historians have recently come to realize is that history is not just the past but everything in the past. There is economic, social, constitutional, religious, scientific, cultural, diplomatic, political, racial, ethnic, gender and even family history. History includes popular culture, music, art, and literature, as well as the more traditional topics of reigns and wars. In addition to the usual courses in American and European history, I also taught academic courses in the history of American animation and the history of cartography. Although we often examine history on the global or the national level, state liistory is certainly just as important. As national history is built on state history, state history is built on local history which includes counties, villages, cities, and townships. The Illinois State Historical Society was established to promote the history of Illinois, which means the whole history of the state—all areas and all fields of history. No historical period is more important than another. No section of the state is more important than another. No field of history is more important than any other field. Political history is not more important than social or economic history; social or economic history is not more important than the history of the culture of the state.

It is essential for all of you who are interested in history to support your local and county historical societies and museums as well as to support our state historical society. It is important that our heritage be preserved. I ask you to do your part by supporting the many historical organizations throughout Illinois.

Rand Burnette

Illinois Heritage 3