Abstract
Departing from Paul Valéry's assertion that history is a dangerous construction of the "human intellect," considers the historiographic connection between memory and historical narrative. Although works of history have traditionally claimed to narrate the truth, they cannot escape the distortions of memory. This inevitable link between the past and the present has often revived the wounds of the past by commemorating wars or national events from a biased perspective. Yet memory and history might also heal such wounds by perpetuating neutral, shared truths. The globalization of historical studies since the mid-20th century has helped to achieve this more noble result.