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History or fiction ? One simple incident like this would
not have been enough to create a
What if new research confirms that world war unless there were other,
Marco Polo never went to China, and more significant reasons bel'iind. The
tliat he had made it all up? This is the tensions between Gei'i'nany, France,
theme of a new show, entitled His- Russia and Britain had been built up
tory, that is currently being played on over years, and it was a question of
the theatre scene in Paris. time before something would hap-
pen. But all tliis has been omitted in
The plot raise an important question. mosthistory books thatwe liave come
What if our beliefs, orperceptions are across. Gei'i'nany's rapid economic
wrong and we come to realise that all growtli and development, made it
that we had believed up to then was search for new markets for it's in-
just stoiy-telling at its best. dustrial products, might have been
another. What is riglit and what is

Trutli always prevails is a popular wrong, is a matter of perception, and
saying, and perhaps WikiLeaks, Pan- also of available first hand sources. will perceive our cui'rent times. With
ama Papers, etc. liave made us real- This leads us to the next question. the rapid development of technology
ise that we sliould be on our guard, how can we be sure that the emails of
and do not believe all the tliings we How one is going to write the liis- today will still be around in 10, 20 or
hear, read or see on TV. toiy of the 21st Century? Whose 50 years. If tliey are no longer avail-
ti'uth should we follow in liglit of all able, what will liave happened to the
We all laxow that history has always tlie "affairs" we l'iave been discover- sources?
been written by the conquerors, and ing lately tlianks to whistle-blowers,
never by the losers. However, this WikiLeaks and the Panama Papers. Many qriestions to be asked, and no
has left us with some "universal Tl'iey are perhaps the most famous simple solution...apait from, that
ttauths" that have so often turn out to ones, but tliere are otliers. each one of us, writes down "liis
be quite misleading, or even com- truth" in his or l'ier memoires so that
pletely wrong. In a university manual, it is written one day, historians coming after us,
go to the primary sources, but what if will understand tlie complexity of
Let us just mention one. Most people there are hardly any primaiy sources orir times.
leai-ned in school that tlie First World available? Today we write emails, MARIT
War broke out because of tlie shoot- SMS, and hardly any of the new
ing in Sarajevo where the Arch Iuke ways of coi'nununicating have impli-
Ferdinand and his wife were killed. cations on how future generations