ABSTRACT
Professional historians show a similar propensity to use the present to reconstruct the past. The term “presentism” (Butterfield, 1965; Hull, 1979) is associated with the tendency to recreate and interpret history on the basis of current ideas and values, rather than from the knowledge and values of the period. Presentism also involves an inclination to write on the side of the victor (e.g., histories of the colonization of North America are typically presented from the perspective of Europeans rather than aboriginals, Richter, 2001) and to produce a story that
justifies and glorifies the present. Various authors have noted the perils of presentism and admonished historians to understand the past on its own terms (e.g., Butterfield, 1965).
