The opposing argument was that history gets too philosophical and should not need a thesis since the subject is just a synthesis of facts.
My dear readers, I wholeheartedly disagree, especially since this is not the first time I have heard this argument. When I was an undergrad, a classmate of mine got into an argument with one of my professors, Dr. K. She was planning to write a research paper about Mary Tudor (Henry VIII's daughter, not his sister for those of you who know Tudor lineage) and she said she did not need a thesis because she was going to research the "facts" and just write about "facts."
Friends, there are no facts when it comes to history. None! History is a synthesis of ideas and interpretations that historians have pieced together over the years based on collected documents from the past. (This is my own definition; feel free to disagree.) Since we cannot know for sure which documents ended up being doctored, skewed, copied, mistranslated, etc., all we can do is compile the pieces together and create our own educated guess about what happened during the event/era/place we've decided to research on. This is called The Thesis. Without your Thesis, you are simply making a list of things that may or may not have happened.
History is not done by historians alone. We rely on our brethren: the archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and geographers. For the sake of postmodernism, without these fine people history as we know it could not exist!
At the very least, it's basic middle-school English: When writing a proper essay (in any subject!) you must have a thesis and you must be able to defend it. This is especially true for all historians and those who aspire to be them.
Daily advice:
Do not forget your thesis, topic sentence, and/or proper grammar or else the results will be disastrous.
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