When reading historical books, how do you keep track of timelines?
I've recently become interested in exploring history. However, though I am usually quick to read and process large amounts of information in other genres, I find myself struggling with the dates in history books. For example, here's a excerpt from the book I'm currently reading [1]:
During this period, tsarist policy was contradictory along its Western borders. In Finland, a Parliament was convened in 1863 for the first time in fifty-four years. In 1860, its own currency, the Finnish markka, was introduced, initially tied to the Russion rouble before being tied to the value of silver from 1865, which enabled the Duchy to trade more easily with the West. By 1906, Parliament had passed 400 separate pieces of legislation, and by 1883, Finnish had equal status as a language to Russian.
It takes me surprisingly long to process this; my mind struggles to put together the timeline and most relevant facts. This style is used throughout the whole book and others like it, where multiple dates (and names or facts) are mentioned in a short piece of text, often in seemingly random order. This makes it difficult for me to truly get something out the book -- either I don't remember the information well afterwards or I can't relax while reading because I'm constantly puzzling it together.
For people more familiar with historical works: are there any tricks to this? Does it perhaps get easier in time, when you become more familiar with the genre (similar to keeping track of the characters in fantasy books like Game of Thrones)? Or do some people have a natural affinity for dates, same as others have a mind for numbers or for languages? Looking forward to hearing your opinions and experiences.
[1] N. Taylor, "Estonia, A Modern History", 2nd edition, C. Hurst & Co, 2020.
Update: This was my first post here, and I’m loving the thoughtful replies. Here’s a summary of the tips so far:
- Combining specific dates into a higher level time periods, e.g. start/middle/late century.
- Using historical dates with a personal meaning as anchors to keep an overview of the time period.
- Paying special attention to the first line of each paragraph, the first section of each chapter, and the first chapter of each book, which should be a summary of the following paragraph, chapter, and book, respectively.
- Writing or drawing your own timeline of events, outside of the book.
- Adding context information to your own timeline, based on understanding why each event occurred in that time and that way.
Like others who have commented so far, I am also terrible with dates. But when I was studying history and tests would need dates, I had to figure out a way to keep track of the timelines. This is a pretty detailed process so I didn't use it outside of the course. This is how I took notes, I'll use your example for reference.
My technique leans towards being effort-intensive so your mileage may vary if you want to use it for casual reading.
Construct a chronological timeline with the dates. The paragraph you shared had these:
Next, I would connect them together so there's a cause/effect relationship. This happened because this happened before and then because of that this happened. Now, this might not be information available in the text you have, or be mentioned later, so it might require further effort. If it was just a matter of remembering the dates only, I would make my assumptions.
This step also combines understanding the why of everything, so I would put the questions together before finding the answers.
You get the idea. I have no context for this excerpt so some of those questions you might already know the answer to. The point of this is basically to get an understanding of why the events occurred in the timeline they did, why some things took years, some decades. Even if not all of them would be relevant, just getting a broader understanding and having more pieces of information would help me remember the general way things processed and help me tie the events together.
This also isn't a technique for everyone, this was what I preferred because the more info I had on anything, I could organize it in my head better. Some might find it confusing with too much unnecessary detail. Also, it takes a lot of work so I wouldn't call it efficient by any means. There are other memorization techniques if you just wanted to remember dates, but rote memorization never worked well for me even using those. Although a mind palace is very fun to use to learn lists.
Thanks for taking the time to write this all out in detail, even linking it to my example. Much appreciated. I’m reading for fun right now, but your technique sounds very effective for actually memorising important information. In particular, asking yourself questions about the context would work very well.
Yeah, I figured it wouldn't be what you would want to use but glad it was still helpful in some capacity!
I generally disregard specific dates unless I feel there’s a compelling reason to remember them. I prefer to just remember a vague send of the period. When I read the excerpt of text you provided, the important point to me is that from the mid 19th to the start of the 20th century was a period of increasing Finnish independence from Tsarist influence.
However, if remembering specific dates is something you will need to do in the future, I’d suggest keeping a timeline with specific dates and short notes for reference.
Condensing the dates into a vague sense of the period definitely sounds like a way to go, thanks! I don’t need to remember specific dates in this case, just reading for fun and a better historical understanding of this region.
Here's something I learned in grad school (for history) that may help you with some of these books:
Any well-written history book should have an easily-understood structure:
The introduction should be a complete summary of the entire book and its arguments.
The first section of every chapter should be a summary of that entire chapter.
The first sentence of every paragraph should be a summary of that entire paragraph.
Everything else is either fluff or extra context. So using your example (assuming that that's where the paragraph starts), the entire point of that paragraph would be "During this period, tsarist policy was contradictory along its Western borders." That's it. That's what the author is trying to tell you in that paragraph. The rest of the paragraph just gives dates and examples (which I agree is a bit confusing to keep track of without background knowledge of the subject). But even though the rest of that paragraph is filled with dates and information that many would consider to be extraneous, by understanding the paragraph's first sentence you can probably get the gist of what it's trying to say.
That is incredibly helpful, thank you!
That first sentence is actually a summary of at least three paragraphs: this excerpt is a full paragraph about tsarist foreign policy in Finland, the next paragraph is about Poland, then multiple paragraphs about Estonia. (The contradiction being an almost completely independent Finland versus aggressively micro managed Poland and Estonia.) The paragraphs are rather short, perhaps that’s why the “rule” doesn’t fully hold up.
In any case, I’ll be paying special attention to the first sentence of each section from now on.
Glad it could help you! It was a life saver for me when I had to read like 30+ books a semester. And it made me a way better writer too, since I'd look back at my papers to make sure that my arguments were clearly stated at the beginning of each paragraph/chapter/paper.
Honestly, my brain felt like it would refuse to process dates. If a bunch of dates were just thrown in with no frame of reference, it felt like reading gibberish. It made history classes feel like hell. I found books that focused on a more narrative style helped me retain the material better. If there were no visual aids provided and I wanted to remember any of it, I often had to actually draw myself a timeline. So I guess my answer is by drawing them out, but I don’t bother if I don’t think it’s important.
Glad I’m not alone! I’ll indeed look into more narrative books after this one. Also considering historical fiction + Wikipedia, since it’s not actually important to remember this information. Might me more entertaining that way.
That sample you provided was dizzying to read. Wow...
I remember having the same difficulties in high school. History courses were always difficult for my brain to process. It wasn't until years later that I realized that the problem (for me) was that everything - and I mean everything - was out of context.
I had no anchor. No historical reference. The dates were all free-floating in space-time.
Looking at the dates again, I see 1863. Today I would try to create an anchor to this period. The most notable thing (for me) is 1860s American Civil War period, Abraham Lincoln and similar (US-centric).
Now... history isn't really an area of interest as you could see from the 1860s example I provided above to help anchor me. The best I could manage, unfortunately, are highlights of American History. However, if I was interested in history, I would try create a highlights cheat sheet covering every 10 years, example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860s?useskin=vector
Or prep for a book by getting a sense of the period first (via wikipedia, etc). Creating that anchor.
Good anchors are like memories. If you talk to me about 1927, for example, I'll "remember" the 1927 Yankees (tons of passionate historical baseball reading - so much so that I feel that I lived during that era). I "remember" the 1960s (US) fairly well too because of TV shows, relevant politics, coverage of the civil rights movement, etc.
So I say... spend some time creating anchors to the period. If you find that a certain period provided things that interested you (eg; The 1950s: rock and roll, cars, styles, baseball, etc) than it feels like actual "memories" begin to form. You begin to really understand the era, the people, the thinking...
If you can't find things in the period that interested you, I imagine it'll be difficult to form these anchors (memories).
Okay, so it’s not just me! : )
Using anchors sounds good. Also not a big history buff, so I’ll need to use the Wikipedia technique to start building a mental timeline of anchors that have some personal meaning to me. Thanks!
No its not just you! I've had to be very picky about historical books I'll read for fun because some are too dry, technical, and verbose. I had one where I think the author specifically picked up a thesaurus to find the most arbitrary words instead of any common language. It was written more like a I know I'm smarter than you vs trying to help the reader learn.
I usually now read the sample of a chapter to see how the book reads, or if I'd rather find another one because it'll be too much like going to school.
Like several other people have said, I also pretty much don't worry about dates at all. I try to think about relative times -- like, what happened first, second, etc., and why. Did things happen in quick succession or were there long gaps? What are the cause/effect relationships? I'm much more likely to absorb the information if I can reframe it more "narratively" like that.
IMO, the excerpt you posted is just plain badly written. I don't really understand why they'd skip around in time like that. It would be easier to digest if it was presented in date order, and I don't think anything would be lost thematically (although that's just going based on that short excerpt; maybe more context would change my mind).
Thanks! I felt the same — it does feel like bad writing. Nothing would be lost if it would have been presented chronologically, because the text goes on to contrast the free reign given to Finland to the stricter Russification policies in Poland and Estonia.
I'm glad it's not just me! The book actually sounds interesting, but if it's all like that, I'm not sure I could do it.
I have to make it relatable to my life.
I take my age for example 50 and divide that into 100 years. So 100 years would be two of my life times. I do that because the way history is measured is 100 year chunks. Then I can go backwards in history and I have an understanding of how long ago it was.
The 1600s would be around 8 and half of my lifetimes.