Go BackTaking it in isolation: it's not enough to learn when and by whom, it's necessary to find out why. It's not enough just to learn when Khoo Kongsi was built and by whom, to fully understand history, we need to learn the circumstance that led to its construction, why this group of people were capable of building such a structure, the political and economic climate of that time, the obstacles, etc. This allows us to piece together fragments of a seemingly unrelated historical puzzle, to form the basis of our understanding. Similarly, it's not enough to know that Francis Light established George Town in 1786, we should find out why, the circumstances he worked within, his life in Penang, etc.
Taking it without question: don't take as accurate anything a historian may say, anything you read in a book, anything you read in my or any websites. Historians are humans too. They base what they say on evidence gathered from existing documents and their interpretation thereof. Books and websites are by humans who also do the same thing. In most cases, neither the historians nor the book/web authors were there when the event took place. Even if they are already living when the event took place, they were not involved in it, and even if they were involved, they would often be so old that their memory of it is distorted. Those are the obstacles faced when we interview very old people.
In most cases, historians and authors report based on material at hand. The only advantage they may have is that they have read more, and they have access to documents or people privileged to the information that you don't. Still, don't expect them to get things right all the time. Do you always take everything you read in The Star or The Sun as fact? Haven't you ever thrown your hands up and say, "What blatant lies!"? The things you read in the papers today, the things in Facebook today, have as much accuracy as documents written way back then. To say that official documents don't lie is to be naïve. Every government provide its own perspective and interpretation of facts. So what the British colonials say in their documents is based on what they want you to hear, or more accurately, what they flattered themselves to hear.
Do I put away from writing because I don't have all the details? Should authors not start writing till they have all the information?
We shall never fully know history, unless we were there ourselves. When I write something on my sites, I approach it as one would a layer cake. Information is built layer by layer. If new evidence comes to light, I update the information to add it in. That, in a way, is the beauty of writing websites: immediate updating. Naturally, people often come to me with conflicting information. "That's not right," they say. When that happens, I probe. Where did you get that information, who gave it to you, what is the source, how reliable is the source. It's not enough to take things as fact, because someone says so. We need to investigate and weigh it in the light of existing information. We must always be aware of isolated information that cannot be substantiated. Is that fact or rumor?
As heritage enthusiast, we need to read and absorb information. Otherwise we won't be able to ask the right questions. But if we equip ourselves with a body of knowledge, then we can ask lucid questions whenever something doesn't make sense.
In Penang, we are lucky to have people who care for its history. If you count yourself as one of them, good for you! Now our next step forward is to approach the history of Penang (and elsewhere) with consciousness based on our understanding and not blind absorption.
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Looking for information on Penang? Use this Map of Roads in Penang to zoom in on information about Penang, brought to you road by road.About this website
Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.
While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.
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