I have a quiet hope that the present time and near-future will perhaps be recorded with a little less of a biased slant due to the fact that we are in the midst of an unprecedented era. Prior to our current time, history was recorded in extremely sporadic and one-sided ways. First it was by word of mouth and so bias obviously entered in. Then it was written word, but only a very few could write. Then it was by print, but only a few could print. Then by photograph, but only a few had cameras. Then by television camera, but people still only got to se one side.

You're right, when we write on history today, we still interpret it with our own bias and when we see images or words, we still hear and see what those people want us to see. The difference now, is that there are so many people writing from all angles that if one were to take a kaleidoscopic view and mush all of the various mediums together on a particular topic, one might find that they can see the various bias coming in from each angle and, therefore, dispel them much more easily. There is still much room to improve, but when a camera catches an image today, we tend to see more of what occurred, rather than what "they" want us to see. And when it hits the web, we get to hear viewpoints from all sides of the equation, allowing us to sort the wheat from the chafe a little better.

We do interpret the past with our own bias and with the bias that we see from the small variety of sources that may be available on any historical topic, but as we advance culturally, we are able to see more and more coverage of a single instance and, therefore, attempt to write history as it may truly be.

While saying this, however, is it actually possible to truly present history without bias? Because, even if history could be presented without bias and with all of it's colours showing, wouldn't we still see it with our own individual bias shading it the way that we want?

Even if we take a film made by a camera in front of a bank, the interpretation of the film is biased.

It seems impossible for historians to be unbiased.

One trend that is also common in history books now is the oral history or getting the story from real people and not just the royalty or the governing bodies of the time.
Therefore, you hear about how the Boston Tea Party was experienced by a young girl living in Boston. (I'm thinking of the amazing popularity of the American Girl series and the dolls they had for kids a few years back.)
Or you look at diaries of people of the time.
I personally love this approach with one distinction, that sometimes they go to the extreme and totally forget to mind the historical facts and dates!

Same story as the feminist scholarship, when I put actual working women Salon painters in, I was not exactly ostracized but it wasn't fashionable enough a view, I didn't take the avant garde painters. Plus, sin of sins, I took male painters who did the same themes.
I tried to be more objective as to the theme and how anyone approached it and the political foundations behind it.
I used feminist sources of course, Badinter and others, but in the long run the fact I didn't exclude men went against me.

I don't think it is possible to do history without a bias.

Meaning of 'eigentlich'. Today I looked this up in the Deutsches Woerterbuch. The relevant volume is #3, which was published in 1862. The meanings given there for both the adjective and adverb are those already mentioned by flem and myself and there's no trace at all of anything remotely like 'anscheinend'. So there's no translation error in rendering Ranke's 'eigentlich' as 'actually' or 'really' in English.

That's great and extremely interesting. Now I have to find the source and then you can then by all means nail them and publish.

Reading this interesting thread a quote springs to mind.

"Thanks to modern technology history now comes equipped with a fast forward button" Vidal Gore

Many thanks, Dobrov.

No problem. I'll be back in Montreal next week (hooray!souvlaki! bagels from the Bagel Factory!) and I'll find the source for you. Heck, we aren't so fast, Quizzikal!