The Western Way of History?

[Mark G]

I believe it was the lack of warning which made the inquisition so detestable, rather than the simple body count.

[Patrick Waterson]

Non-Monty Python fans may miss that one ...

Still, it's preferable to two World Wars, the Gulag, the famine in the Ukraine, the Holocaust, the Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge, etc. etc.

Alas, the global situation is equally dire in the 19th century - Slavery, Serfdom, Pogroms, exploding volcanoes and tsunamis and so on. 

I am intrigued by this 'equally dire' outlook: was this conclusion arrived at by personal evaluation or by replicating the essence of history as read/taught/imbibed?  What were the reference points/criteria used to evaluate the assessment?

(This could be a first-class example of the way history is taught influencing perceptions or it could be pure personal evaluation and judgement with/without cultural factors acting as significant influences.  Finding out which seems to be an essential preliminary to making comments.  )

... it is hard not to start from the perspective of your culture - but we need to be mindful of it and bring it to the forefront sometimes.

Seconded.

[Mark G]

I didn't expect that response, Pat.

[Patrick Waterson]

Si, senor.

[Erpingham]

I am intrigued by this 'equally dire' outlook: was this conclusion arrived at by personal evaluation or by replicating the essence of history as read/taught/imbibed?  What were the reference points/criteria used to evaluate the assessment?

Alas, in the absence of a tardis or other temporal device, personal evaluation was out of the question.  I therefore fell back on what I had read, been taught and otherwise imbibed.  I think this is quite common when dealing with historical events outside one's own lifetime

The question of how I evaluated the data available is, of course, of interest.  In my case, I have made an impulsive statement ("equally dire") without any attempt to establish a measure of direness on which to make a judgement.  I will therefore revise it to there was a lot of direness in both centuries, including war, intolerance, disease and natural disasters.

[Justin Swanton]

It can be difficult to ascertain just how much human misery was being produced in different centuries by different causes.

In this case though one can form an idea of the lot of the Russian peasant in the 19th century as described by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, compared to his lot in the 20th as described by Solzhenitsyn. I've read the Gulag Archipelago several times. It shows just what a government built on a social doctrine that is completely liberated from all the constraints imposed by religion and tradition is capable of.

The interesting point for me is that the worst king or emperor of the Middle Ages did not have the power to do what a dictator could do during the last century.

[Justin Swanton]

On the nefarious methods of the Inquisition (for the Monty Python uninitiated).

[Patrick Waterson]

The question of how I evaluated the data available is, of course, of interest.  In my case, I have made an impulsive statement ("equally dire") without any attempt to establish a measure of direness on which to make a judgement.  I will therefore revise it to there was a lot of direness in both centuries, including war, intolerance, disease and natural disasters.

If we attempt to map where the 'direness' was most often and most concentratedly manifested in the 19th century, we find it principally - with a few short exceptions - in the non-leading nations of the world.  Conversely, in the 20th century it strikes most prominently, if not always most viciously, in and at most of the the leading nations.  The effects on history (and our perception of it) are quite noticeable: 'direness' that is not confined to 'backward' areas is deemed to be dire indeed.

One reason for this is that there does seem to be a tendency to measure history by looking at the progress or decline of certain 'beacon' cultures and nations that exert disproportionate influence on the world.  If these are seen to be growing and expanding and not suffering overmuch from intestinal troubles, then the era seems to be one of human progress overall.  If the 'beacon' nations are struggling and disintegrating, the result is viewed as a 'dark age', not least because the citizenry of the 'beacon' nations provide us with most of our historical records.

In this case though one can form an idea of the lot of the Russian peasant in the 19th century as described by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, compared to his lot in the 20th as described by Solzhenitsyn. I've read the Gulag Archipelago several times. It shows just what a government built on a social doctrine that is completely liberated from all the constraints imposed by religion and tradition is capable of.

And one can get an idea of the impact of communist China's 'Great Leap Forward' - described in my schooldays as a bold effort that did not quite make the grade ('a small step backwards') - on mainland China's peasants and workers from Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter (who lives in Hong Kong).  Working from communist records of the period, he shows that far from being 'a small step backwards' it was a catastrophe unparallelled in Chinese history.

My impression, seeing what was (and presumably still is) taught in schools and universities about communist regimes contrasted with what people who lived under them have to say about them, is that the favourable portrayal of these regimes in the west materially contributed to their continued existence: we created our own myth of communism which was much more favourable and acceptable than the real thing.

One can see something of this in Greek and Latin authors' portrayals of the Roman Republic as 'wise' and 'just' - it was sometimes, but from the 3rd century BC its actions increasingly look like spite, perfidy and callous destruction of mildly antagonistic populations.  By the late 2nd/early 1st century this kind of behaviour seems endemic, and it is perhaps no coincidence that around this time revolts against the Romans became the norm rather than the exception.  I get the impression that a number of smaller powers fooled themselves into becoming allies and clients of Rome through wishful thinking, in a haze of delusion created by Rome's ostensible reputation for fair dealing and their own readiness to believe rather than evaluate - and then paid the price.