when I was studying historiography, I liked Foucault's idea of 'pouvoir-savoir'
power is based on knowledge and conversely power shapes knowledge according to its agenda. this is probably the most important issue with historiography; if the goal of an historian is to record the past "how it really was," according to Leopold von Ranke's scientific view of history, then Foucalt's 'pouvoir-savoir' makes this impossible. this therefore means that a recount of the past can never be objectively true, because an historian's motivations and resources are a product of their environment; how the established power structure influences them will in-turn affect their writings.