Examples of past historians projecting the issues of their day onto the past

[Lumine]

It may be a pessimistic outlook, but I'm not sure that many historians manage to avoid projecting present into the past they write about, even the more serious ones. What I've experienced during three years of university being forced to read from an array of historians that range from the fantastic and enjoyable to read to quite a few nonsensical ones is that said bias is actually more extended than what one thinks. Indeed, I think I've become cynical enough to distrust the ability of historians not to do this sort of projection whether it is intentional or casual.

For example, one of the most popular historians in Chile, Gabriel Salazar, can't stop judging the main figures of our independence period as European style democracy was something possible in Chile at the time (and therefore many of them qualify as bloodthirsty, authoritarian, semi-fascistic tyrants to his eyes), and yet he's considered one of the most serious authors we have (which is rather depressing). I tend to find some Medieval and Renaissance historians as an aversion of this, as many of them have studies on the conceptual differences one has to take into account to understand the period, and more importantly, the sources (because we read so many words in a different way to what they used to mean).

Making Genghis Khan look like a modern liberal or arguing that he is a symbol of "modernity" sounds ludicrously awful and cringe-worthy, but the example I probably loathe the most is marxist historiography (along with its many children) and its tendency to apply economic, social or historical theories to historical periods in which these have no bearing. It is utterly ridiculous, for example, to try and explain the Roman Republic from a marxist view of society, and yet there's countless revisionist works on the issue.

[Lumine]

Are they talking about "why Rome fell?"

Then there's a high chance they are doing this.

This is painfully true as well. I once read a book that pretty much attacked Justinian for not behaving like a modern sovereign would and thus he ruined the Byzantine Empire by not being nicer to the Persians.