Earlier this week, an article appeared at NRO about how historians interpret the Haymarket Square riot--or rather, how they fail to interpret it. For those of you who snoozed through that particular part of your U.S. History course (because labor relations are boring), the Haymarket Square riot was an outbreak of violence in 1886 Chicago where several policemen breaking up an anarchist rally were killed by a bomb and subsequent gunfire. You can read about it in more detail here; I won't totally swipe the story. Point is, historians, especially but not only those of a leftist persuasion, have generally adopted the line that there was no evidence tying the anarchists to the policemen's deaths; that the four men eventually hanged for it were wrongly convicted and martyrs to the cause of workers' rights; and so on. For decades, this has been one of the big events for Labor and the Left in America.
That began to change a few years ago, however, when a labor historian in Ohio (one who voted twice for Obama, incidentally) began researching some discrepancies in the various accounts of the Haymarket Square incident. This led to a full-scale reconstruction of events, leading him to the conclusion that not only were the anarchist protestors--like OWS, generally described as "peaceful"--armed and shooting at police officers, but that the bomb was almost certainly made by one of the men convicted. Practically everything historians have relied on in touting the conventional view of events comes from propaganda put out by defense attorneys during the trial. In most professions, this is known as "not doing your research."
When the prof's research was released to his peers, other historians
This is hardly the only example of the consensus among historians, of beliefs nearly every scholar takes for granted, being flat wrong. Take the Australian aborigines. The common assumption about European settlement of Australia is that, much like our settlement of the American West, it involved a lot of unprovoked violence and even genocide against the natives. There is some truth to this, but it is now clear that large portions of the tale aren't based in reality. An infamous frontier massacre of aborigines in the '20s, for instance, was taken as fact despite the absence of any eyewitnesses, any human remains, and the fact that those allegedly killed turned up alive and well years later. In another case, a statistic on white settlers killed by natives was portrayed by a later historian to mean the number of natives killed by whites. That is, a record of 10,000 settlers killed by aborigines in Queensland was "re-interpreted" to state that settlers had killed 10,000 aborigines. Forget not doing your research, these are just pernicious lies.
What's the deal? One more sensible scholar, reviewing cases of distortion like these, blames the influence of postmodernism, namely its claim that all truth is relative (a self-refuting claim, I might add); that the historian is incapable of writing outside his political and cultural biases and thus cannot be objective. Therefore, the theory goes, more enlightened academics ought to use their position to write histories "empowering the powerless," attacking the system, blah blah blah. No more, he adds, can a historian simply strive for a factual account of the past:
This has become the most corrupting influence of all. It has turned the traditional role of the historian, to stand outside his contemporary society in order to seek the truth about the past, on its head. It has allowed historians to write from an overtly partisan position. It has led them to make things up and to justify this to themselves on the grounds that it is all for a good cause.It's this lack of emphasis on knowing the facts about history, this placing of "power relations" and whatever theory happens to be popular at the time before accuracy, which results in these cases of willful ignorance and incoherent, crumbling ideas about the past among liberal academics. And it's not getting better. I know of fellow grad students who are unaware of who was President during the Trail of Tears; because hey, they're all rich white guys, right? Oy vey.
As Ronald Reagan said, "It's not that liberals don't know anything, it's that they know so much that isn't so."*
*If I got that quote wrong, don't tell me. I don't want to look bad.
42 comments:
Interesting. I'd always heard all anarchists of the period lumped together as violent bombers and assassins. But I haven't really heard much about these riots. I'm not surprised though. Nor am I the least bit surprised that leftists would want to distort history to fit into their worldview.
The President during the Trail of Tears was George Bush Jr. right?
Andrew, although I bet you'd like to blame it on him, sadly, no. :-)
It was actually Martin Van Buren. See? A lot of people would have said Andrew Jackson. Easy mistake to make, but presumably one a person getting his Ph.D. in American History would not make. And yet, it happened. Oh, facts--always getting in the way of theory.
As for the anarchists, it's just like how every objective historian "knew" that Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs were innocent--until it turned out they weren't. They can't be bothered to undertake the research that might shake their worldview.
Actually, I would have guessed Jackson. I thought he ordered the Indians deported from Florida?
Yeah, historians are great at knowing things that aren't true. It's too bad history is such a mess.
Speaking of history, I've always had a theory and I want to run this by you (and who ever else wants to answer... apologies for hijacking your thread):
It strikes me that rather than breaking history down into periods based on leaders (e.g. the Napoleonic Era) or wars or specific events (e.g. the Colonial Era), it would make more sense to break history down into philosophical periods.
I think there's a direct connection between the philosophy of particular time periods and the events that followed immediately thereafter. What do you think?
Andrew, he was the one who ordered their removal (from Georgia), but the actual move west on the TofT happened during Van Buren's tenure. And like I said, it's not a big deal if you or another layman doesn't know that; it's a big deal if someone who's made it to the Ph.D. level of historical studies (U.S. History, no less) doesn't know it.
T-Rav, True. I'll tell you what though, I find the same thing in the legal profession. I'm shocked sometimes how much basic knowledge attorney you see as pundits don't have. I'm not even talking about obscure trivia, I mean they truly lack basic knowledge that tells me they don't have a clue what they are talking about.
I had read the article in eco-unfriendly print assuming you are talking about John Lee Miller's article "What Happened at Haymarket" referring to the scholarly work published by Timothy Messer-Kruse. It is astounding how the labor historians tried to undermine his objective work, many without even reading it!
As an exercise, I looked in the American History textbook used by my youngest son in high school. The title is American History by Alan Brinkley (10th edition) published in 1959, but this edition is McGraw-Hill 1999. The Haymarket Riot is mentioned only briefly, but is terribly biased towards the laborite version.
While I agree with your premise, I have to wonder how quickly, if at all, Messner-Kruse's work will be mentioned. We have nothing to fear, but Progressive academics brainwashing our children" is my take.
perhaps another take is that "history is written by the winners." In our case, progressives have long held sway in academia. There is a lot of propaganda that has to be overcome or unlearned.
Andrew, that's an intriguing topic (and no, I don't mind--I mean, I spend half my free time drawing up future lectures and lesson plans in my head, so it's not like I have room to be upset).
There's not a single good answer to your question. On the one hand, I firmly believe that you cannot treat history as a string of events on a timeline; that is, you can't give a history lesson saying, "And here's everything that happened between 1700 and 1750." There has to be more connection than that. On the other hand, there are certain periods you more or less have to treat as a whole. The Napoleonic Era, for example, is significant because of how it drastically re-ordered the political map and spread nationalism and the revolutionary spirit throughout Europe, and it's hard not to deal with that block of time on its own terms.
Personally, I largely agree with your last statement; most of my interest in history is predicated on my belief that ideas, after all, have consequences. One historian I really like has proposed a "genealogical" approach to history, which means teasing out a particular chain of ideas over time and how that chain plays out.
Ultimately, it comes down to how feasible such an approach is. If you're writing on or devoting a class to a particular topic, the philosophical take you're talking about can be done. But if you're teaching a basic-level Western Civ course, then it becomes a matter of how much you can really convey (the Enlightenment, for example, can only get two hours' or so worth of lecture time if you intend to cover the other subject matter of the course as well). So it's a balance between the ideal and how far you can get away with it.
Andrew, given the number of people I know who've taken their history degree and gone straight into law school, no, that does not surprise me at all.
Jed, I actually have a copy of Brinkley from a course I TAed for. It's now called "The Unfinished Nation"--I could say quite a bit on that in itself.
Here's the relevant part of his Haymarket Square treatment:
"When the police ordered the crowd to disperse, someone threw a bomb that killed seven policemen and injured sixty-seven others. The police, who had killed four strikers the day before, fired into the crowd and killed four more people. Conservative, property-conscious Americans--frightened and outraged--demanded retribution. Chicago officials finally rounded up eight anarchists and charged them with murder, on the grounds that their statements had incited whoever had hurled the bomb. All eight scapegoats were found guilty after a remarkably injudicious trial."
This is the sort of thing Messner-Kruse is struggling against. How much success he'll have is anybody's guess.
Jed, that's exactly the problem. The leftist monopoly over how history is interpreted is all-pervasive; and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't influenced by it from time to time. It's hard to avoid when you make it your career. And it leads to groupthink and the sloppy research standards I'm talking about.
T-Rav, I think it would take a complete re-evaluation of history to do that, but I think it would actually be more useful. You would need to break down the key intellectual movements and then map out the events that followed. But in the end, I think you would find that history made more sense, i.e. it would be more coherent.
I say that because in my own studies, I've always seen the philosophical motivations as the driving forces and I've found that ideas really do drive events.
In terms of time, I think that since you would be completely re-evaluating the entire field, it wouldn't be a big deal to decide how much time should be spent on what and to make some changes.
With regard to something like the Napoleonic era, I think it would still pretty much be taught as a unit because it starts with the ideas introduced in the French revolution, and doesn't really end until well after Napoleon is gone -- his defeat didn't actually kill the ideas that drove him, they just became mainstream ideas across the world. So I don't think you would see as much broken up as people might think.
If I had the time and background, I would actually write a history book using this premise, but sadly there's no money in it and I don't have the history reputation for it to be influential.
Interesting. Haymarket rings no bells for me but its not the sort of thing I would have committed to memory.
Rav - It is fascinating that you are that well familiar with Brinkley. That is the exact passage. I have no idea which text we used back in the early 60's, but this particular one was in use at the Hill School which is a private boarding school in Pottstown, Pa. My son survived, and is a card carrying capitalist and conservative (the apple doesn't fall far ......) I do remember terms like teapot dome and Haymarket Square, but then I was always a lover of history and U.S. history.
Anyway, this was an excellent post; I appreciate your putting it up.
You ought to see what they are doing in my hometown of Memphis. They have quickly changed the names on 3 parks, Confederate Park, Jefferson Davis Park and Forrest Park and removed signage that didn't actually belong to them. They want to erase any historical connection between Memphis and the CSA. The vast majority of population in Memphis have no clue about the real history and only do what they are told. The powers in Memphis are trying to rewrite history to get more power.
Andrew, I would prefer it if history were done that way. But then, intellectual history isn't the only field out there; there's also social and cultural history and a lot of other angles which don't discuss philosophy (they probably should, but that's another story). Also, this would become increasingly difficult, though not impossible, once you get into the 19th and 20th centuries simply because there are so many wars, revolutions, etc. to cover as well. The approach you're talking about would be easiest to implement for the medieval and early modern periods, because there are fewer "red-letter" dates and political figures to spend time on.
As an aside, if you want to see an example of this, I recommend Brad Gregory's "The Unintended Reformation." He covers his subject matter in a manner similar to what we've been discussing.
Anthony, it's not the sort of thing a lot of people are very aware of. For those involved with labor or studying it, I imagine it is a big deal; for the rest of us, though, it only gets a page or so in history textbooks.
“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
Thanks Jed! I rather liked writing it. :-)
Yeah, the Brinkley book is a rather popular one with U.S. History courses in college--which is unfortunate because of how terrible it is. I think I mentioned before a textbook that invariably capitalizes whites as "Whites," such as White settlers or White soldiers; that would be this one. Plus, it doesn't convey the subject matter well at all.
Glad your son survived the indoctrination.
Critch, I think I might have heard about them doing this, or at least having plans to do it, when I was still in that area. I don't know what's worse; the fact that Southerners are having their heritage erased, or the fact that their own leaders are largely responsible. God love 'em.
When I saw this story on PJMedia and then on NRO, I thought of you, T-Rav! I feel a bit sorry for the honest historian - heck for anyone that's intellectually honest in the "social sciences"! Every time they find an "inconvenient truth" and present it, they are pilloried.
T-Rav - Very interesting! Of course being a student to history from a different perspective through art, architecture, fashion and how politics, morals, and mores influenced all of the above, we were always taught to use primary sources rather than secondary in forming our thesis. In otherwords - original artwork, arch. plans and drawings, any first hand written accounts, photography, period magazines etc.- as our sources. So to read that one of the "primary sources" used for a class is a book written by a historian is disturbing.
BTW - Andrew, your thesis that history should not be divided by time, but philosophy is actually interesting. Most "trends" do not follow a straight time line especially in art/architecture/fashion which follows politics/philosphy and influences in global matters like scientific/geographic exploration and war. It is a filtering down process of decades. For example, in fashion/culture, what you may think of as being in the '60's like miniskirts, long haired hippie freaks, etc really took full flight in the early to mid/70's.
LL, you can never go wrong quoting Sherlock Holmes. And as far as history goes, truer words were never spoken.
rla, it's the sort of thing that would catch my eye, of course. :-) Just don't let a historian catch you saying they're part of the social sciences; they tend to get pretty finicky about that distinction.
But they're very much alike in that they rarely, if ever, question liberal assumptions, and woe to you if you suggest that those brave protesters really were terrorists. Ain't it swell?
Thanks Bev!
I blame it on how overextended history has become as a discipline. Anymore, practically the only thing a lot of historians do is review each other's work and critique it, so they get bogged down in petty arguments and which theory is correct, rather than being grounded in primary sources. There are many in academia who aren't guilty of this, of course; but the leftist dogma is still hard to break out of.
T-Rav, but then again, in my History of Fashion/Costume classes we used the textbook written by the venerable Lucy Barton, THE costume historian of her age (I studied under her protege), but part of the her textbook was HOW to do research using primary sources.
Oh, History isn't part of the social sciences? Isn't that what it was called in junior high when they lumped geography and history together?
Methinks they doth protest too much...
rlaWTX, I knew it by the term "social studies" and I don't think I received a proper history lesson until the 7th grade. Perhaps I'm not a liberal b/c I was bored by social studies and would flip around in the book looking at the pictures instead of paying attention. (The social studies book did have the best pictures.)
Bev, I don't know her, but it sounds like she knew her stuff better than a few of my professors. And that is pretty scary.
rla, I think they call it "social studies" now. There's not really a scientific method associated with history, so you can't really refer to it as a social science. (Of course, you could often say the same about psychology, sociology, etc., so....)
tryanmax, everyone in school thought I was an oddball because I read textbooks and even encyclopedia volumes for fun. Okay, that wasn't the only reason everyone thought I was an oddball, but I'm pretty sure that had a lot to do with it.
T-Rav - I loved to read dictionaries and encyclopedias too. Still do. That's the great thing about Commentarama. We can all be oddballs in our own way. ;-) We're Commentarama-balls!
Bev, I like that... Commentaram-balls. :)
T-Rav, I think the 20th Century more than any other was driven by philosophical ideas. Almost every single war or social movement was the result of some new idea.
Bev, glad to see I'm not the only one! :-) I'm not sure how I feel about calling myself a Commentarama-ball, though. Sounds kinda weird.
Andrew - I don't think that philosophical changes are unique to the 20th Century. Maybe it is because of the advancements in the way we communicate that has sped up the philosophical changes that is unique.
Andrew, no, that's absolutely true. My point is that you have to cover those wars and social movements as well, and there's a ton of particular events within them that have to be laid out, which makes it hard to focus on the progression of ideas.
This is why I say this proposal of yours would work better in some venues than in others. In college classes, for example, it would be great for upper-level, narrowly focused classes, not so much for an entry level "Modern Western Civ" course.
Andrew and Bev, I don't think there's any denying that changes in thinking have occurred more rapidly in the 20th than the 19th, and those more rapidly than in the 18th, and so on. At the same time, I would argue that the most profound changes occurred much earlier, during the Reformation and Enlightenment. Much of what's happened since then is just taking some of the ideas formulated then to their logical conclusions.
"I'm not sure how I feel about calling myself a Commentarama-ball, though. Sounds kinda weird."
Hey, T-Rav, dare to be different! ;-)
Personally, I embrace being a contrarian.
Liberal Professor Kenobi type to T-Rav
"So you see what I told you about your Father was true. from a certain point of view"
I may be late to this party but I have noticed a current whitewashing of history before our eyes. The existence of the Soviet Union is slowly be erased. I was looking at a book with my son regarding space exploration. In it there is mention of the space race that took place from 1950's through 1980's but between USA and Russia. They even used the Russian flag. Not the first time I have seen this. Very bizarre.
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