This article focuses on how history as a concept is understood by first-year BA Education students. Students were asked to respond to the following questions: 'what is history?', 'what is history to you?' and 'who writes history?' Verbal and written consent was obtained from the students to participate in the study. Their answers demonstrated a concept of history that is imbued with a spatial and temporal as well as ideological and moral position. This article argues that, through the data, it seems that for these students the concept of history emerges as an object that is given a moral value, rather than history being seen as having value as a knowledge or skill set. I draw parallels between my findings and Donovan and Bransford's work on how history is learnt by primary school students in the United States. There are clear similarities between the primary school understandings recorded in Donovan and Bransford, and first-year university understandings that emerged in the data of this study. This article argues that if history is understood as moral, as 'good' or 'bad', critical thinking and analytic skills which learning history can imbue are vastly diminished. Furthermore, this article uses Lauren Berlant's concept of 'cruel optimism' to consider the implications of how the participating students understand what history is.