B. Introduction

▪ Every historical investigation begins with a simple question: "Why?"

▪ Pinning down the most important causes of events allows us to decide how best to deal with it. This provides meaning to situations which otherwise would leave us feeling helpless.

▪ However…History is the flawed product of incomplete, unrepresentative and biased evidence which is selected and interpreted by Historians with their own values and preoccupations.

▪ So…historians answer the question "Why?" in different ways, based on the evidence they choose to work with, and the conclusions they choose to draw from it.