Who writes the history, why, and who funds it?

This week I went to hear Prof. David Ekbladh talk about Battle for the History of World War II. If you are naive enough you believe that history is history, that there are facts that are indisputable, and all you have to do is to dig out these historical facts and bingo! the story presents itself in all its shiny clean narrative. But things are not like that. The victors are always the ones that tell the story. The questions that interested David Ekbladh however, were the  disputes, controversies that went on behind the received narrative. William Langer, head of the department of history at Harvard, was the voice of the progressive view of history. His monumental works, the history of American diplomacy leading up to the Second world War, The Challenge to Isolation (1937-1940) and Undeclared War (1940-1941) argued that the US had no choice, it had to enter the war to confront Fascism. Charles A. Beard, an equally distinguished historian argued that the US had no business getting involved in a fight among Europeans, their conflicts were their problems. Yet the prevailing view as transmitted in textbooks and popular narratives is that of Langer. The dispute between interventionists and isolations is ongoing to this day. Wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan were seen as wars that touch on America's security, yet conflicts in Rwanda and the Balkans were considered local conflicts and none of America's business. The conflict in Somalia was too dirty, too unmanageable, and the US walked away from it. The question David Ekbladh raised is 'who is telling the story, why, and who funds the narrative'. Langer was a part of the American progressive establishment, associate of Roosevelt and an influential public figure. His books on prewar diplomacy were published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a quasi government body; Beard, from a Quaker background, became one of the leading proponents of American Non-Interventionism. He argued that the United States had no vital interests at stake in Europe and accused Roosevelt of lying to the American people to go to war. Towards the end of his academic career he became a prominent voice of the 'right'; isolationism and an economic interpretation of history. It is his widely used textbooks on the History of the United States that enabled him to steer an independent course. History in totalitarian states is glorified propaganda, but history in democracies tells the narrative that the establishment at the time sees as reflections of its aims and aspirations. In New Zealand there was the curious case of W. B. Sutch's Quest for Security in New Zealand, which was commissioned by the government as a centennial history of New Zealand, but because it did not present New Zealand as a benign Liberal Pacific paradise, the government refused to publish it, and although it was published by Penguin later, it never prevailed as the historical narrative of New Zealand. The Zionist leftist heroic account of Israel was disputed by Benny Morris and the account of the Arab - Israeli conflict is still a work in progress. Read history and ask who is the storyteller.