September 07, 2004

• What else can you expect from those commie-loving, libuhral, bra burning members of the far left-wing academic intelligista? /Typical right-wing response
• This survey is not complete. Among revisionist historians, Bush's approval ratings are sky-high.
• What are you talking about? Friend computerGeorge W. Bush is loved by all. Now go about your tasks, citizen. Have a nice day-cycle.
• Well, I don't know about commies and whatnot, but the sample of 415 and the inclusion of "sarcastic" comments certainly affirms the writer's claim that this survey is "unscientific." Much like my old high school's lunchtime polling of students on such weighty matters as "Do you think you get too much homework?" (most responded "Yes" as I recall) and "What foods should be available at the cafeteria?" (number one answer was "pizza", followed closely by "reefer.")
• TenaciousPettle: The author of the survey did allow that it was 'unscientific'. Remember, of course, that most political and international relations historians think that numbers are some kind of highly suspicious voodoo that they don't understand or trust. Having said that, a) maybe the survey isn't 'incomplete'; maybe the historians you cite are just a vanishingly small minority b) what, precicely, do you mean by 'revisionist'? The only historians I know who -like- Bush are old greybeards. Indeed, I've heard lots of right-wing people railing against 'revisionists' who want to 'rewrite history' with all their crazy 'evidence' and 'sophistication'. : ) Ok, there are a few young historians who like him, but everybody basically think's they're nuts. Which is a polite way of saying that they do not represent the preponderance of opinion in the field. On preview: Fes, that's a good point, but I'd give this a little more weight. Firstly, 415 is a pretty good sample size when you're talking about polling the opinions of historians (there aren't that many historians around, you know). Secondly, your classmates weren't trained professional education researchers or pediatric nutritionists. I'd actually like to see a properly formulated survey on this. I'd also like to see researchers outside the US included. I think it -is- an important question.
• Okay - some professional nitpicking. Please don't use "revisionist" unless you mean historians who overturn orthodox interpretations in their fields by using more rigorous methods, such as intensive manuscript research in a field dominated by work with published sources. So, when talking about 17th Century British political history, it would be correct to characterise those who questioned the teleological interpretations of the English Civil War as "revisionist"; similarly, someone who questions the technological importance of the Dreadnought to WWI based on a detailed study of the battleships before and after, and so undermines the current historical understanding of the ship could also be called revisionist. Rigorous revision is a good thing. But all this throwing around of the term just confuses me. Actually, I would say I am not surprised if most American historians are not happy with the current administration, let alone those in the rest of the world. Aside from the fact that academics in the humanities and social sciences is self-selecting for liberal leaning people (they are paid too little for too long to be concerned with making money), this administration has not exactly shown a lot of respect either for academics (threatening area studies funding, etc), or for the lessons of recent history.
• That said, the idea of historians being polled on stuff they know about - like public policy and governments - as if they were dentists ("Two out of three historians reccomend *not* saying 'Let them eat cake!'") is really cool. Yes, I think tensor meant revisionist in some strange meaning that is only used in the media, - people who don't listen to evidence, or rewrite stuff after the fact, akin to holocaust deniers (who like to call themselves "revisionists) - when really they are the opposite of actual revisionist historians (who are deeply concerned with being rigorous and having good evidence for their points).
• Note that 'revisionism' is also a technical term for the recasting of Marx and Engel's call for revolution into an anti-revolutionary economic policy. This reformist reconstruction of classical Marxism gives it the sense of 'rewriting history', which is nowadays the popular meaning of 'revisionism'. This is not intended to refute jb's point above.
• jb: I think you're being overly optimistic there. The main point about revisionists is that they revise things. They can be smart and rigerous and sophisticated, or they can be deeply nuts or just misguided. In a sense, holocaust deniers are revisionists, in that they're attempting to revise the commonly held orthodoxy. I mean, they're bad revisionists, and the orthodoxy is right, but they're still revisionists in a sense.
• fuyugare: I think that's a different meaning of the word 'revisionist'. Interesting nonetheless.
• "What foods should be available at the cafeteria?" (number one answer was "pizza", followed closely by "reefer.") Now there's a rallying call for disenfranchised generation if ever I heard one. Vote Pizza/Reefer in 2004! Please now return to your more weighty discussion, to which I have only the comment to make that "revisionist history" - as it has progressed into the public sphere (i.e. beyond, specifically, academic historians) - while initially a deeply useful and often more accurate appraoch to history*, has now become essantially synonymous with "contrarian sillybuggers". *I don't know if Norman Davies' The Isles: A History would count as such, not being about a specific subject (which is generally the trend in revisionist history), but his approach to removing the study of British History from post-facto interpretations and justifications is kinda the thing I'm talking about here.
• See, it was a joke...since Bush had gone on and on in the past about "revisionist" historians to discredit anybody who didn't think his way of seeing the past was the right way, I thought it would be funny to mention such here. Sorry to have ignited such a firestorm. No, wait, I'm not. To see me as sorry would be to revise history...er something. *scuttles back to his hole*
• Yeah, I'm a bit surprised that nobody seemed to get that.
• Oh we got it all right, but to cast the issue as a question of 'getting' or 'not getting' is too simplistic. One must also consider the nature of the economy--in the midst of a crushing recession where humour was a dear quantity--and the prevailing social context that elevated bickering and snark to the status of entertainment. (In fact, much of this change in social mores can be traced to the prevailing neoconservative tone in the socio-political sphere; Brown (2033) makes a strong case that any examination early 21st century society must necessarily situate the examination in the context of the bitter American elections of 2000 and 2004.)
• Our preznit is good at inventilating and redefinitionating words. It's like those "activist" judges who keep interpreting the law, as if interpreting the law is their frigging job or something...
• This infidel fuyugare creature must be sat upon and poked with pointy sticks until it cries for mercy -- and then it must be strapped to the back of a rabid wolverine and set on fire! It's the only way to keep democracy safe!
• MonkeyFilter: It's the only way to keep democracy safe!
• If you're not with me, you're against me, and the terrorists have won!
• *ow ow* what'd I do?
• *smacks head* Oh! I get it! I simplistically GET IT. ;)
• flashboy - thanks for clearing it up a little. But I am a bit confused on how "revisionist" turns into contrarian. The Isles book sounds interesting (no English state before the Tudors? I want to see his argument for that) - I will definately try to check it out.
• You have violated a key provision of the USA PATRIOT Act, revised, "meat" flavored, annotated, lightly salted, final version, Section 666, page thirtyleven, which states: "No individual or group or imaginary lizard god shall make or cause to be made or think about causing to be made any remarks in any public or semi-public or private forum (including but not limited to websites, restroom stalls, motorized conveyances, treetops, amusement park rides, and sewer pipes) that consist of any type of satirization of the American people, as a group or singly, which might possibly cause others to issue the accusation 'Oooh, you're a smartypants!' because satire undermines the very spirit of our great country and all it stands for, on, against, or underneath. Amen." I think that's pretty clear.
• jb: Revisionist to contrarian sort of works as follows: Revisionist historical works (in the academic sense) coincided with - and in many ways might have contributed to - a surge in 'popular' and highly profitable, historical books and television series. Revisionist history, obviously, has more of a "headline" element to it than most history. Unfortunately for the quality of revisionist history, market forces then take over, and academics who previously would have been perfectly content with a few well-regarded papers and a small quad in Oxford start coming out with stuff taking the general form of "Briatin never actually had an empire!" or "Winston Churchill was gay!". An exaggeration, but you know what I mean - in the sense that revisionism went against 'accepted knowledge', historians started desperately searching for things that went against perfectly reasonable accepted knowledge because it would get them book deals and TV shows. Study enough source material and give yourself wide enough paramaters for interpretation, and you can get sufficient material to challenge almost any orthodoxy (in the process, pleasing story-hungry media types like me). If this were merely limited to pointing out how historical situations were more complex than the standard narratives, then fine, but the highly oppositional approach most of them seem to take suggest that "contrarian" is an unfortunately fitting description. I'd give you some examples, if I'd not just been drinking too much to actually remember any. That Norman Davies book is great fun, by the way. Even little tricks such as giving things the names they were actually known by, as opposed to Anglicised versions, comes as quite a shock to non-historians such as myself. How an actual real-life historian would look at it... I think the general perception is "some good stuff, some a bit dodgy".
• See, it was a joke...since Bush had gone on and on in the past about "revisionist" historians to discredit anybody who didn't think his way of seeing the past was the right way, I thought it would be funny to mention such here. Oh, sorry! I am dumb. I thought you were reffering to those few who actually think he's doing a fine job. I mean, there are such people. There's all those people who're inventing a new 'history' about how Reagan actually won the Cold War (instead of almost loosing it), and there's this guy running around talking about how empire is a fine thing and we should all get right back into it. I was wondering if these people were calling themselves revisionists, now, in the press.
• Good stuff spackle. 'cept for the "section 666" part. Ashcroft would never stand for that.

• stuff taking the general form of "Briatin never actually had an empire!" or "Winston Churchill was gay!"

  Of course, some of these absurd ideas - "The American Civil War had nothing to do with slavery" - end up getting quite deeply embedded.
• (I had never heard of Bush's remarks about revisionism, either - sorry :) About the Civil War: Well, the way I heard way back in an undergard history survey (I'm not in American history), the Civil War was primarily about how the states would relate to the federal government. Of course, slavery was the issue that they clashed over, but for most of the people fighting, it was about either unity or freedom from the feds - until the Gettysburg address, when Lincoln really made it about slavery. Now, I've never studied this field in depth, but I would trust the opinion of someone who has spent years reading documents and newspapers of the period. It's like trusting a biologist when they tell you something about biology. I know that "appeal to authority" is suposed to be passe in debate, but why else do we have experts if we don't trust them when they are talking about something we have not personally researched? (That doesn't mean we shouldn't question, but that maybe they have some weight from their experience.)
• Bob Woodward: "How do you think history will regard the war in Iraq?" George W. Bush: "History, we don't know. We'll all be dead."
• the Civil War was primarily about how the states would relate to the federal government HAHAHAHA! I mean, yes, okay, I shouldn't laugh. But I have read a tremendous buttload of actual white-Southern documents and newspapers and biographies from the Civil War period, which all say things like "WE MUST FIGHT TO DEFEND OUR WAY OF LIFE (fine print: which depends entirely on the slaves who pick our cotton)" and "RUNAWAY SLAVE: $25 REWARD, light mulatto, scars on back, missing thumb on right hand" and "WANTED: 100 NEGROES FOR COTTON PLANTATION" and it just goes on endlessly in that vein. The major problem with saying that "experts" must be right because they've read more than you have is that you're failing to consider the fact that THEY have previously CHOSEN what to read and what to believe, and that filtered information has likely been diluted (or even perverted) in many ways before it ever gets to you. So for example, if all your teachers are white, they will automatically have a biased view of race relations in the slave-holding South. Question authority, always. Pay attention to your teachers, sure, that's only polite. But if you want to speak with any authority on a particular topic, you simply must develop your own opinions by doing your own research. Otherwise you're just another parrot in search of a cracker.
• This is bullshit. Historians are trained to examine the past, we have no special abilities or perceptions regarding the present. The opinions of historians on a sitting president are no more valuable than that of mathmeticians, or biologists, or truck drivers or chicken pluckers or ...
• But I, for one, welcome our new chicken plucker overlords.
• jb: The State' Rights argument doesn't really hold much water, since, prior to the gowing popularity of the abolitionists, the Southern states were the leading supporters of Federal power, in the matter of slavery at least. You'll find, for example, that the right of new states to allow or disallow slavery was ultimately settled by Federal fiat at the insistence of the Southern states; the imposition of forcing states to accept slave-hunters was another Federal fiat. The states that formed the Confederacy liked strong Federal laws just fine when they backed up pro-slavers' positions. As another illustration, Foote's Civil War details (in the third volume - on loan, so you'll have to forgive the lack of a more detailed cite) a proposal made to offer freedom to any slaves who'd fight with the Confederacy. Not unilateral abolition, mind, just for blacks willing to earn their freedom. The proposal, made when it was clear that the manpower difference would be the end of the Confederacy, ended the officer's career. If it wasn't about slavery, why would that be?
• Oh, and Larry, I hope that's humour and my detector's faulty.
• Historians are trained to examine the past, we have no special abilities or perceptions regarding the present. On the face of it, you're right. On the other face of it, however, (many sources -- who to trust? limited time!), I'd prefer the opinion of someone with experience in drawing their conclusions from close reading of an extended corpus of documentary evidence with a view to illuminating larger societal tendencies* to that of a chicken plucker. Who may or may not be educated, but whose qualifications are not evident to me. I suppose all this proves is that I'm an info snob with limited time who finds the argument from authority heuristically useful as a filter. Not a strictly logical position, but , I'd hazard to guess, a fairly common one. Semi-finally, I'd like to salute any chicken pluckers listening in, because roast feather doesn't do it for me. *Please excuse if my ignorance leads to me slighting your profession.
• jb: The State' Rights argument doesn't really hold much water, since, prior to the gowing popularity of the abolitionists, the Southern states were the leading supporters of Federal power, in the matter of slavery at least. I don't know anything about the American Civil War but, having heard the same line as jb, I'm interested in this latest zig in the historiography. I hope you don't mind if I ask a couple of questions to clarify your argument in my mind. 1. I find the above statement about Southern support for states' rights very intersting. But how did the South feel about states' rights in a constitutional theory context? Were they just oportunists, or was there a real shift in opinion? 2. What about the North? My understanding (a very vague understanding, at that) is that the historiographical argument about the 'meaning' of the ACW was mostly about why the North went to war. That is to say, that the old schoolbook history is that they went to war because they were so offended by slavery, which was overturned by a bunch of other people who said 'no, it was mostly about federalism'. How does the North fit into this new view? 3. I want to hear more about these documentary sources from the South. To my mind, what you've proved to us here today is that the Southen states thought that slavery was really important. That's not the same as saying it caused the war. - As a counterfactual example, imagine that a Nazi SS officer proposed a Jewish Battalion at the height of WWII. I suspect that also would have been a career limiting move. But it wouldn't mean that the Nazi invasion of Poland and the USSR was about killing Jews. - Another example: those racist articles about escaped slaves, and the like, that spackle describes were also strongly evident in American newspapers during the American Revolution. Does this mean that the Revolution was also about defending slavery? Before you come back to me on this one, I just want to note that I do understand the idea that underlying causes of a war can be quite different from the proximal causes of that actual start of fighting. I would be very grateful if you could expand upon your ideas.
• Historians are trained to examine the past, we have no special abilities or perceptions regarding the present. So wait...your argument is that professional historians--who are, let's face it, educated people who probably took more than just history classes to get their degrees--are COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED to speak on anything but history, and might not be otherwise smart people who might also have something to say about current events? Or are you saying that historians, who are trained to look at long term effects of political and social pressures on a culture, can't apply those skills to the present day, b/c "this is the now"? So--smart people should just stick to the field of their expertise and not turn their smarts on any other topic, or when talking about the present we must forget the past? Which is it? I'm confused...
• Actually, I'd go further than that, TenaciousPettle. Historians aren't just trained to look at the past, they're trained to look at certain things (ie. politics, economic policy, wars) in a historical way. What that really means is that a historian is an expert in a certain area of human experience who's job it is to set that area in a broad, long-term context. Not to restart the age-old grudge match about which are better, historians or political scientists, but I think that things like world events are sufficiently complex that experience tends to win out over theory. Historians are often wrong when they talk about what will happen in the future, but I strongly suspect they're less wrong than non-historians on the whole. Also, we have to be careful to recognise that all historians won't know about all issues. I mean, I don't know all that much about the history of the US presidency, so I can't tell you whether Bush is more or less corrupt that US Grant. But I do know a bit about 20th century military practice, so I think you can pretty much trust me when I chuckle grimly at people saying 'Bush has such a good record on the War on Terror!'
• Dreadnought, this is not a "new view" of the Civil War. It's historically been the view of many, many historians that Southern devotion to maintaining and expanding slavery was the primary cause of the war. The new view is actually the one you cite above, which is a Southern reaction to having the horrors of slavery exposed to the world. "We aren't bad people, we were just fighting for states' rights! We were being oppressed by tariffs, yeah, that's it -- tariffs! Besides, our slaves were like members of the family!" While individual Southern views on slavery were not all the same (east Tennessee, for example, had large pockets of Union supporters) their chosen governments were strongly pro-slavery and, as rogerd says, those governments fought very effectively in the political arena to preserve and expand their region's "right" to hold slaves. The war started when South Carolina seceded from the Union about four months after Lincoln's inauguration, because they worried that the new Republican president would harm pro-slavery interests. Ten more states joined South Carolina to form the CSA. The CSA's constitution was almost identical to that of the U.S., but it also included the explicit protection of slavery. This is pretty clear evidence that protecting slavery was a key motivation for the South. In the literature of the time, the North's stated reason to fight the secessionists is "to preserve the Union," which they eventually did. I highly recommend that you read about this for yourself. Shelby Foote's exhaustive book series is available on video from PBS, if you haven't seen that yet. U.S. Grant's autobiography is amazing. And if you prefer a lighter treatment of the topic, you must read "Confederates in the Attic" by Tony Horwitz, which is both hilarious and poignant.
• Thanks, spackle. That's really interesting.
• "Those who fail to learn from history... ...are running things."
• I'd like to point out that a few comments ago I was going to make a brilliantly rude comment about "chicken pluckers", but I didn't, because I am extremely mature and having sex with animals is WRONG. Thank you.
• 80% of all chicken pluckers agree with you, quidnunc; the other 20% are undecided.
• spackle - I love how you just happily denounce my professors as racist without knowing a thing about them or the class. Or, indeed, whether they were white or not. Very open minded of you. Perhaps if you read on to my next paragraph, you will understand that what they were trying to explain was that the whites (specifically Northern whites) were more racist than many believe. rogerd - that is very interesting - thank you for more information. Actually, I should have been more clear, but it has been a few years. The idea that the war was less about slavery than thought is a Northern biased one (US history does have a bad habit of that, all the more so when taught in Canada). I don't doubt at all that many in the South were motivated to fight to keep slavery, and the ways of life built on it. (Though it could be said that sharecropping replaced it without much bother for the big landowners). But when historians talk about slavery not being so important, they are trying, as Dreadnought said, to counter the popular belief that the North fought against the South because they were completely unracist and just wanted to help the black slaves (This was no civil rights movement). Some certainly did feel that way, but it wasn't really the primary argument for the war - until Lincoln made it that way with speeches like the Gettysburg address.
• Oh, and the idea of historians not being more capable to tell you about the past than the average man is false modesty. We trust doctors, lawyers, and scientists - how are historians any different? Sometimes I think that just because history is rather jargon free, people assume it does not require expertise. I constantly ask more experience historians and historians in other fields their opinions, and I respect them. Sometimes I have questions about them - today I was thinking I should ask my advisor about the extent of patriarchy in the early modern English home, to see if he thought that ideals of patriarchy would outweigh individual personality in the power balance between husband and wife - but I would certain listen to want he said, since he's the one who has read thousands of court cases about such things, and I have not. But to question everything without cause? That is just arrogant ignorance.
• (sorry - I was typing too quickly - there are many mistakes in that post. Please excuse them.)
• I am extremely mature and having sex with animals is WRONG. Hate Crime!
• jb: Ummm, what? I said: So for example, if all your teachers are white, they will automatically have a biased view of race relations in the slave-holding South. That was a "for example" and was not intended to describe your personal teachers. And I didn't say racist; I said biased, which is not even close to the same thing. I totally agree with you that Northerners were and are no less racist on average than Southerners -- I think they just tend to hide it better.
• So for example, if all your teachers are white, they will automatically have a biased view of race relations in the slave-holding South. Hmm... missed that first time around. I have to say, spackle, that I can understand jb's ire about that particular statement. See, it's not that that's not true. All historians have, and must confront, their biases. BUT, it does kind of single out 'white' historians as biased, and about a race issue too. I'm sure you can see how that comes very close to implying that white historians are somehow a little bit racist. See, historians have biases, just like practitioners in any field, but historians are also trained to examine and look past their biases. Not all of them do, of course, but that's because they're doing history badly. On the whole, however, they're pretty good at getting things right. This is especially true with recent work, as the subject of bias is a really hot topic which lots of people care about a lot. As for your injunction to 'question everything', I wholeheartedly agree... with a couple of qualifications. Firstly, questioning means being willing to be accept answers. 9/10 times, when you question a respected authority, you find out that they are perfectly right and that they think what they think for excellent reasons (I'm always secretly annoyed when this happens to me, but don't tell anyone I said that). I mean, you don't get to be a respected authority without other people thinking you've got good ideas. Secondly, remember that this is real life here. While it would be really nice for us all to go out and do our own research on everything, this is practically impossible. It takes years to become a trained historian, and even the best historians only ever do research in a very restricted field. Personally, I'd love to go off and spend a few years researching the history of the American Civil War, but I just don't have the time. This means I need to rely on the work of American Civil War historians for my understanding of it, just as they (at least in theory) rely on my work about my field of expertise. Maybe these historians are trustworthy, maybe they're not. Until serious doubt is cast on their work, however, I have to assume that they're innocent of malpractice until proven guilty. : ) Most of the time, on a practical basis, 'question everything' mostly boils down to asking yourself 'does this seem reasonable? Does the evidence they present seem to add up? Are their arguments coherent and do they follow through?' &c. For example, the connection you and rogerd drew between slavery being important to the South and slavery being a cause of the war still doesn't make total sense to me (although I'm willing to provisionally accept your conclusions, because you've actually researched in the period, and I haven't).
• Having beat up on spackle for a bit, I really have to pick on jb as well. : ) jb, I know you agree with me that source selection in history sucks ass (to use a technical term). In the social sciences, researchers have to justify every decision they make, from the questions they ask to the sample size they use, to the colour of the flash cards they show their test subjects. In history you never have to explain why you're doing something, or even what you do. You just talk about the results that come out at the end. Indeed, critical review for the kinds of problems that spackle points out tends to be very instrumental. So reviewers and instructors will say 'how do you address gender in your study?', which is a historian way of asking 'are you a sexist pig?' The problem with this is that we only screen for biases that we think we might have. We really do run the risk of missing glaring holes in research because people have biases that are unusual or that the reviewers havn't really thought about. Case in point: if you look at people writing about the Protestant Reformation in England, the people who think it was a Good Thing tend to be Protestants, and the people who think it was a Bad Thing tend to be Catholics. That smacks of bias to me, which is something that shouldn't be happening in our profession.
• Except for Christopher Haigh, who says it's a Complicated Thing, and he's not really Protestant or Catholic :) I think that it's going a little far to say that historians answer to no one. They don't have the kinds of controls social scientists are (though some sociologists and many cultural anthropologists don't follow this kind of practice) - but they do answer to other historians, and there is no one so picky as someone whose theories are threatened. Other than that, I think it depends on your field of history. Historians working in demography and classic social history are constantly descibing their methods and quams about them - entire articles have been written on "The limits of the probate inventory" as a source for wealth in early modern England. They are always debating about the reliability of a source, or the selection of sources. And then you have the medievalists who debate over every little sentence in a source. And then you have those pesky young revisionists doing more research to show what their elders missed - don't you just hate them? And that brings us full circle back to TenaciousPettle :)