The Western Way of History?

[Patrick Waterson]

I have found the recent Richard III thing very interesting because we've had to face up to the physical fact that Richard III had a disability.  If we judge this by the attitudes of his contemporaries, this would lead to us believe he was touched by sin.  If we judge by modern attitudes, his physical attributes had no moral basis and we should judge him (if at all) by his actions.  Is application of a modern filter wrong in this case?

The 'modern filter', at least prior to his discovery, seemed to pivot on whether he had been maligned by Tudor 'propaganda' in general and Shakespearean depiction in particular, with the possible 'models' of Richard III being either a good king without bodily deformity or a bad one with it.  Since the discovery of his remains, I have the impression that the largely untried concept of a good king with a bodily deformity is being assimilated, if somewhat grudgingly by those who maintained his unitary governmental and bodily virtue.

One may note that in many past cultures any form of bodily deformity or debility debarred a man from the throne - the Mahabharat was built around the dire consequences that ensued when this salutary stipulation was just for once abandoned.

Case in point, I was watching Ken Burn's series on the American Civil War and there was an interview with a historian teaching at Harvard. The historian stated that she did not believe it was wrong to judge the past by current values. I was surprised that a historian from one of the most highly regarded universities in America would espouse such a belief. Unfortunately, this is not the only such incident I have since noticed in history, archeology, or anthropology.

The query here to me is what is this woman doing that is wrong?  Is she just being honest and acknowledging that looking at history and pretending objectivity is worse than owning up to the fact that we can't dissociate ourselves from our times?  Or is she saying we should abandon any attempt at objectivity?  I would agree with the first and roundly condemn the second.  All we can do is recognise our subjectivity and seek our most objective view in that light.

I had the impression it was neither - my reading was that she was saying that one could and maybe should impose one's ethical values and outlook when delineating and analysing the past.  "Judge" was the key word that caught my attention.

[Imperial Dave]

If it is taught as violent conquest then Welsh people are going to feel dispossessed. if it is taught as immigrants just arriving and peacefully taking over then how is the host community to today's mass immigration going to feel.  If we say that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it then there is a downside corollary that the lessons of the past need to be very carefully drawn or there will be a problem or two.

To take an example. Spain was under at least partial Arab/Moslem control for 800 years. To one view of history it means that it should be returned to that control, to another that it took an 800 year fightback to get their country back.  That's an extreme case, but the past is full of potential justifications.
Roy

Good point Roy, perspective is very important indeed when viewing history from one side of a proverbial fence

I was born in England to English parents but was brought up from a very early age in Wales. My father looks on Welsh people even now with some ingrained negativity if not downright disdain. This was admittedly accentuated by his contact with insular (anti-English) Welsh people whilst living and working in Wales. For my part I have always viewed Wales as home and England as a foreign land and thus biased towards Welsh history perspectives. That's not to say I am right just that I view Welsh and English history interactions with an unintentional jaundiced eye

Great is the writer who can remain truly impartial when viewing and conveying history involving 2 different countries or peoples

[Mark G]

there is a rather good quote in todays guardian on history.

History isn't a myth making discipline.  It is a myth busting discipline, and it needs to be taught as such in schools.

(Richard Evans, Cambridge originally quoted last year).  Of course, he is from Cambridge, so you know, its all a bit suspect on one level.

When we get into these 'what is history, when is it biased arguments', it always seems to be around someone's cherished myths being busted in one way or another.

The trick is differentiating someone who has found genuine evidence to the contrary of the previously accepted myth (or no evidence to support in the first place) vs someone who just needs a 'now revealed' headline to get any sort of press coverage - and who frequently doesn't make the claim the headline said anyway.

the worst example of headline history has to be Niall Fergusson - who only ever seems to say utterly iconoclastic things whenever he has a new book to sell - and then goes directly for the most headline grabbing thing he possibly can.  Mind you, I've yet to be convinced that he is any good as an historian at all, but he is quite entertaining in a newspaper columnist sort of chip-paper-value sort of way.  our grandchildren will be the ones who determine this of course - by whether his books survive as a reference given any credence at all.

But my favourite historical argument at the moment is the Telegraph readership going berserk over a black actor playing Porthos.

[Imperial Dave]

But my favourite historical argument at the moment is the Telegraph readership going berserk over a black actor playing Porthos.

I know its off topic but why on earth would that be? (rhetorical question...I'll go and have a shufties at the Telegraph)

[Mark G]

I gather that they object to the thought of non white people in western Europe before the 1950s,
It makes it harder to blame everything on migration.
I could be confusing them with the daily mail though- other than the number of times you unfold the paper, its so hard to tell these days

[Erpingham]

I know its off topic but why on earth would that be? (rhetorical question...I'll go and have a shufties at the Telegraph)

Because its a-historical - the character isn't black in the book and there were no black musketeers.  The rejoinder is of course that this is a loose dramatisation of a work of fiction with frankly fairly low standards of historical accuracy, so why not?  We accept black Hamlets and white Othellos in far more significant drama.

It is interesting what gets up the nose in historical drama.  I was much more annoyed in Cosner's Robin Hood by the fact that he landed at Beachy Head and made camp that evening on Hadrian's Wall than the fact that the main sidekick had become a black man

[Imperial Dave]

I know its off topic but why on earth would that be? (rhetorical question...I'll go and have a shufties at the Telegraph)

Because its a-historical - the character isn't black in the book and there were no black musketeers.  The rejoinder is of course that this is a loose dramatisation of a work of fiction with frankly fairly low standards of historical accuracy, so why not?  We accept black Hamlets and white Othellos in far more significant drama.

Ah.....but dont the luvvies remember that Elizabethan plays required male actors to play female leads and Othello a white actor with soot on his face?

It is interesting what gets up the nose in historical drama.  I was much more annoyed in Cosner's Robin Hood by the fact that he landed at Beachy Head and made camp that evening on Hadrian's Wall than the fact that the main sidekick had become a black man

I laughed at that bit as well although the quizzical looks my family gave me at the time meant I had to chuckle and squirm in equal measure

[Erpingham]

History isn't a myth making discipline.  It is a myth busting discipline, and it needs to be taught as such in schools.

(Richard Evans, Cambridge originally quoted last year). 

An interesting quote.  In real life (i.e. not in the questing atmosphere of SOA Forums) myths of history persist long after they are out of fashion.  This is partly because teachers teach the orthodoxy they learned, so things can have changed in academic circles long before they do so in the classroom.  It is also because we have a variety of popular sources of historical information which perpetuate or even start myths.  Take drama for example.  There are some, for example, who believe William Wallace was the father of Edward III because of Braveheart, despite a quick check on the appropriate dates would show he needed a tardis.  It's not new though - look at how popular perceptions of Henry V and Richard III are coloured by Shakespear.

[Imperial Dave]

History isn't a myth making discipline.  It is a myth busting discipline, and it needs to be taught as such in schools.

(Richard Evans, Cambridge originally quoted last year). 

An interesting quote.  In real life (i.e. not in the questing atmosphere of SOA Forums) myths of history persist long after they are out of fashion.  This is partly because teachers teach the orthodoxy they learned, so things can have changed in academic circles long before they do so in the classroom.  It is also because we have a variety of popular sources of historical information which perpetuate or even start myths.  Take drama for example.  There are some, for example, who believe William Wallace was the father of Edward III because of Braveheart, despite a quick check on the appropriate dates would show he needed a tardis.  It's not new though - look at how popular perceptions of Henry V and Richard III are coloured by Shakespear.

Dont forget he was Welsh not Scottish

On the history thing at Schools, agree completely. My lad has come home on more than one occasion regurgitating the current History curriculum at me... Boadicea (ugh), Saxons and Vikings steam rollering the poor Brits into the hills with mass genocide etc etc

[Justin Swanton]

You want to see the stuff that gets taught in S.A. classrooms re the horrors of the Aparteid regime of Pretoria, with cartoons of blacks getting crushed in winepresses, etc. Shakespeare was the first to work out that history, especially dramatised history, is a very useful tool of political propaganda.

What is interesting in school history is what is not taught. I don't know the UK curriculum, but over here history only starts with the French Revolution, with the underlying notion that everything that happened beforehand was too brutal and barbaric to be worth bothering about. All that really matters is our enlightened modern age, which began with the guil... I mean the National Convention.

[Erpingham]

Dont forget he was Welsh not Scottish

What's in a name, eh?  I always thought it was an interesting pointer to the ethnic mix in the west of Scotland.  Clearly to Scots speakers, he was a member of an ethnic minority

[Erpingham]

What is interesting in school history is what is not taught.

Yes, this is a controversial question here too.  Everyone agrees that you can't fit in everything within the time available in the curriculum for history.  The tricky bit comes in what you leave out.  I do wonder how is the best way to make decisions like this because objectivity is so difficult.  Academics, educationalists and politicians all have their biases - how do we have a reasoned debate and come to a consensus?  We also risk our own biases here - is it more important in real life whether people understand recent history or ancient history if there is limited time available?

There also has to be a debate about how we teach history.  How much should be about facts and how much should be about understanding broad trends?  How much should be about the lives of ordinary people and how much about the kings and generals? 

[Justin Swanton]

If you want the pupils to understand the period they are studing then you have no choice but to do it in depth until it becomes a real world for them, in which they can grasp the thinking and motives of the principal players and the interconnectedness of the events.

Otherwise the only approach I can think of is to decide what are the important underpinnings of human society and civilisation and see how they fared in the past. The trouble then is by what criteria does one decide what the underpinnings are. I have a criterion but I doubt it would get very far in this forum, never mind an education board.

[Patrick Waterson]

History isn't a myth making discipline.  It is a myth busting discipline, and it needs to be taught as such in schools.

(Richard Evans, Cambridge originally quoted last year). 

An interesting quote.  In real life (i.e. not in the questing atmosphere of SOA Forums) myths of history persist long after they are out of fashion.  This is partly because teachers teach the orthodoxy they learned, so things can have changed in academic circles long before they do so in the classroom.

And examiners find it easier to pose and mark similar questions from year to year.  Besides, if history gets updated too often, the bill for textbooks becomes enormous.  These are of course not the only reasons myths perpetuate.

Nice quote, Mark.

  It is also because we have a variety of popular sources of historical information which perpetuate or even start myths.  Take drama for example.  There are some, for example, who believe William Wallace was the father of Edward III because of Braveheart, despite a quick check on the appropriate dates would show he needed a tardis.  It's not new though - look at how popular perceptions of Henry V and Richard III are coloured by Shakespear.

The difficulties arising there being because truth - or fact - is mixed with fiction.  Richard III as per Shakespeare was crook-backed and villainous.  Richard III as per the Richard III Society was neither.  Richard III as per the interment under the car park was crook-backed.

Mel Gibson never seems to have stopped to think that if Wallace was really the father of Edward I's son and successor, it did not say much about the Wallace genes, Edward II being one of the least effective kings the Plantaganets had to offer.

There is one problem with myth-busting, and that is it can be taken too far, throwing the historical baby out with the mythological bathwater when some academics brush aside any source-mentioned evidence they feel is not in keeping with their own weltanschaung.  One really needs to pull the plug on this practice.  Humility when considering evidence is the mark of the true historian.

[Erpingham]

If you want the pupils to understand the period they are studing then you have no choice but to do it in depth until it becomes a real world for them, in which they can grasp the thinking and motives of the principal players and the interconnectedness of the events.

Which is great in theory but there really isn't time to do this properly in the modern curriculum.  And understanding of any subject is not well served by our target driven approach to education (I can criticise that because there is cross-party consensus on it ).