Ship of Fools: Historical Relativism

Thread: Historical Relativism Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

I'm reading The Origins of the First World War by Gordon Martel (Revised 3rd Edition).

Gordon Martel is Professor and Chair of History at the University of Northern British Columbia, and Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester.

He made quite an interesting point which I thought worth sharing seeing as the Ship debates a lot of historical issues, especially concerning wars.

He is discussing the fact that prior to the war, it was a time and place in which war was not only acceptable but popular. It seems inconceivable today, but as he says...

quote:
For [students of history] the greater the gap in time between themselves and the historical subject, the more difficult it is to recapture the attitudes and ideas that made up the emotional world in which Europeans lived early the twentieth century. Two world wars, numerous revolutions, a great depression, the advent of atomic weapons and bloody ethnic conflicts separate us psychologically from the men and women of 1914. The kind of thinking that led people to rejoice at the prospect of war is now difficult to recapture - but rejoice they did

I think this is more general than just the first world war. Before we judge historical decisions we should attempt to try to understand the societal, political and cultural context within which those decisions were made.

I believe we can also add the information revolution, 9/11, the rise of terrorism and the advent of suicide bombers. All these things separate us from the people of history.

If we can't even reliably understand the people of the early twentieth century, what hope have we of understanding those people who made the decisions over the US civil war, the Crusades, the crucifixion, the creation of Israel and so on?

I think the quote is quite correct, which makes it all to easy to judge people by our modern standards, usually leading to unjustified attacks on personal character, and accusations of criminality.

Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on :

...and the issue you want to discuss is what, exactly? Whether the learned professor is correct? If he is correct, how should this frame our discourse?

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

So, we can't say that Adolph Hitler was a monster because we can't figure out what was going on in his head? Or at least my daughter's generation will have that privilege revoked?

I think there's a grey area here between complete moral relativism and certainty.

I can say that the people who complied with the Nazi movement out of fear were cowards, or manipulable, or somewhat victims of historical context. I've gotten a dirty look from a professor once for saying that what they did was understandable from a human perspective. But I'm not going to do them the indignity of saying that what they did could somehow be justified or that we're not allowed to consider the morality of their actions or lack thereof.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

Understanding is not the same as agreeing. We know the Guns of August was a mania, an outburst of patriotic fervour and foolery that was cruelly demonstrated to its participants by 1915. The soldiers who marched home in 1918 gave rise to a dour, dispirited culture, or in extreme reaction became libertines.

A prime example of this is Lt-Col Agar Adamson, CO of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. He started the war as an Edwardian gentleman and used his connections to secure a commission in 1914. By 1918 he was the regiment's Colonel. He wrote his wife religiously in both letters and his diary, and this is one of the best personal records of the Great War in Canada. He spent 30 months in the trenches.

After the Armistice he couldn't readjust to civilian life; his marriage dissolved and he took to running away to England to dwell in London's gaming houses. He literally sold the family silver to cover his gambling debts.

He crashed an airplane he had purchased in 1929; he spent two hours in the North Sea and it was the last straw.

WWI was a war that took men's sanity, it wasn't something that Edwardian society could even imagine and the realization of the mental health issues did a good bit to change attitudes to war.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Hmmm. I learned nowt me. And neither did anybody else it seems. An armchair warrior of over 50 years. I had brief periods of doubt, due to the vicarious horrors of war, but back would come, 'Kill them, kill them ALL.'.

I was so excited during the Falklands War I couldn't sleep. The liberation of Kuwait. Wah-HOO! I don't know anybody apart from a few conshie loonies who objected and Tam Dalyell.

... This year I flipped. By the uncomfortable grace of God.

As for the OP, as Pat Barker's awesome Regeneration Trilogy showed, nobody on the home front learned either until they lost their son/father/brother and then not.

I can't see men like Agar Adamson or Wilfred Owen not fighting even with full prescience of what was to come.

We LOVE it. Despite and INCLUDING the horror of it all.

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

It is notable that, ay the end of the war, the general feeling was "Glad that's over. What do we do now?"

Sample quote: Ernie Pyle:

quote:
“We won this war because our men are brave and because of many things — because of Russia, England and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature’s material. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud.”

ISTM that, as David Brooks points out, the farther one gets from real war, the easier it is to revel in the idea of war.

Going back to the OP, Europe had been through, relatively speaking, an amazing length of time without serious multi-national war. The British had exported their wars to those colonies that needed to be subdued, as did several other Imperial countries. There had been minor unpleasnatnesses such as that in 1870/1 between France and the new entity of Germany - but most of that sort of thing had been generations before, and now we were all excited about science and technology.

Unfortunately, technology brought us better weapons and their carriers - ships, motor vehicles, airplanes - and everyone wnat ed to try them out, just like any teenager with his new motorcycle/car.

And the grand symbol of technology hit an iceberg and sank, just as the idea of war eventually did.

But we had to get through the sinking, just as we now have to get through the new Imperial power struggle (that the US is losing)

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

How did that happen? I apparently managed to post the previous item, without the form disappearing from my screen. So I posted it for what I thought was the first time.

If it matters, could someone please remove this post?

[ 30. December 2012, 19:23: Message edited by: Horseman Bree ]

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

The older I get, the nearer 1914 gets to me.

When I was ten years old it was five times my lifespan ago. The old days, a different and lost world, before my parents were born. Even the Second World War felt like ancient history then.

Now 1914 is less than twice my lifespan in the past. Two and a half times nearer. Part of contemporary history. One of the events - probably the single most important event - that made the world we are now living in. And the second war is barely yesterday. We even have colour films of it.

The gap between the end of the Second World War and my birth is less than the gap between the end of the Vietnam War and my daughter's birth. She doesnt even remember the Soviet Union. For her, St Petersburg has always been St Petersburg. For me, that name used to belong to a past that felt as distant as the Hanseatic League and the Holy Roman Empire. As did Sarajevo. They all feel a little nearer now.

[ 30. December 2012, 20:29: Message edited by: ken ]

Posted by Rosa Winkel (# 11424) on :

quote:
Originally posted by deano:
I think the quote is quite correct, which makes it all to easy to judge people by our modern standards, usually leading to unjustified attacks on personal character, and accusations of criminality.

We can certainly judge actions.

In any case, there's a flip side to this. One talks of "different times then", "can't judge now" with regards to obviously bad things that people have done, but one doesn't hear about the same arguments given to good things that people did. Now, they are judged as showing something good about ones character. Therefore Churchill is lionised, despite his views on strikers in Wales or disabled people.

There's a political agenda behind this hypocrisy.

[ 30. December 2012, 21:11: Message edited by: Rosa Winkel ]

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Going back to the OP, Europe had been through, relatively speaking, an amazing length of time without serious multi-national war. The British had exported their wars to those colonies that needed to be subdued, as did several other Imperial countries. There had been minor unpleasantnesses such as that in 1870/1 between France and the new entity of Germany - but most of that sort of thing had been generations before, and now we were all excited about science and technology.

The Franco-Prussian War was not a 'minor unpleasantness'. The only excuse for describing it that way, is that we weren't involved in it. It was a major and very bloodthirsty war. Paris was besieged and threatened with starvation. It also collapsed into a neo-revolution. It was though, by 1914, nearly 45 years ago. Comparatively, that is 1967. That doesn't seem that long ago to me, but to my children, it's before they were even born.

I can remember many people who fought in the Kaiser's War and talked about it. My children can remember one female relative who was an adult during it, but of course, she did not fight in it. All the male relatives who had been in it, had died before they came along.

My generation all grew up in the shadow of Hitler's War and imbibed from our parents and our culture that, 'this must never happen again'. My fear is that younger adults now, have not done so. A generation could arise again which thinks of war as one big adventure. I see signs of this among some UK Moslem youths.

The modern age seems to many of those who grew up in the shadow of Hitler's war to have no sensitivity to some civil liberties issues that give me the shivering abdabs.

Going back to the OP, though, this isn't just something that applies to the First World War. Much of the debate on many current issues - including, particularly some Dead Horses - is conducted on the assumption that our forefathers were benighted idiots. One cannot and must not condemn people for not thinking of something that in their time, nobody had thought of.

We have no idea now, what will be the arguments of the present that seem terribly important now but will be flushed down the pan of history. Nor do we know which ideas which we're blissfully unaware of now, will be regarded as incredibly important even 20 years from now - yet alone which of those in their turn will be important and which will likewise be flushed down the pan.

It is both surprising and disturbing to realise quite how many respected thinkers of the first half of the C20 both advocated human eugenics and saw it as a gladsome part of 'the future which works'.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Rosa Winkel:

quote:
Originally posted by deano:
I think the quote is quite correct, which makes it all to easy to judge people by our modern standards, usually leading to unjustified attacks on personal character, and accusations of criminality.
We can certainly judge actions.

In any case, there's a flip side to this. One talks of "different times then", "can't judge now" with regards to obviously bad things that people have done, but one doesn't hear about the same arguments given to good things that people did. Now, they are judged as showing something good about ones character. Therefore Churchill is lionised, despite his views on strikers in Wales or disabled people.

There's a political agenda behind this hypocrisy.

Rosa Winkel, you posted while I was witing my previous piece. What you've just said, though, seems to me to be quite a good example of what I was trying to get at.

Churchill was not perfect. He had many flaws. In 1935 he looked like a busted flush. Had France not collapsed, historians would know him merely as a middle ranking player in the First World War. But I can forgive him an awful lot in exchange for delivering Britain from invasion by the Germans. Under Chamberlain, Halifax or anyone else, we would have crumpled.

If you are hostile to him because you are from South Wales and imbibed your hostility with your mother's milk, I can accept, sympathise and identify with that. If however, you are hostile to him because that is a fashionable reconstructivist view of history for a C21 person of vaguely leftist sentiments to think, I can't.

I'm not sure what you're getting at on disability. I don't know what particular outrageous view you are attributing to Churchill. All I can say is that people just did not begin to think about disability in the way we take for granted now until about 25/30 years ago. It's not that we were unkind or uncharitable. It's just that nobody had thought of disability in the way we are now sensitised to. And that is certainly not how it would appear to someone who was born in 1874 and was already 65 in the summer of 1940, yet alone even someone in 1965 aged, say, 21, choosing that date because it was the year when he died. That really is condemning someone from another age for being born in the wrong time and not guessing what we were going to think in the future.

People will look at us, now, and ask, 'how could they have not have realised ...... ', and we don't even know what about.

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

Going back to the OP, though, this isn't just something that applies to the First World War. Much of the debate on many current issues - including, particularly some Dead Horses - is conducted on the assumption that our forefathers were benighted idiots. One cannot and must not condemn people for not thinking of something that in their time, nobody had thought of.

I agree entirely but I also think we should remember the less heard voices from all wars. It was never one size fits all. These people I have known personally:

A radio operator on HMS Norfolk at the battle of Jutland WWI: We had no choice - you were locked into the radio room. No one would unlock the door if we got hit. Bravery didn't come into it.

A great aunt who's lover vanished in WWII, she said: He went behind enemy lines, he wasn't in uniform. I try not to think about it.

My grandfather at El Alamein: the only time he felt really healthy and free from asthma. He came home and was soon a bedridden invalid.

My stepfather in WWII, a Bevan boy working in a Yorkshire coal mine, a mile below the ground and four miles on your hands and knees to the coal face. Why were Bevan boys needed? Because coal miners joined up to be in the army where it was safer.

My mother for whom the war was the most wonderful thing that ever happened: a village girl suddenly meeting a free Czech airman, impossibly romantic. But he was killed and after that it was all awful for her, depression, disappointment, bitterness. For the rest of her life, two husbands and I all came a very poor second best to the wonderful 'Tommi' (as we were from time to time reminded).

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

To paraphrase Truman on Somoza Garcia, Churchill was a son of bitch, but he was our son of a bitch. I lionized the man, still do naturally with my 50 year armchair warrior. Never mind the miners, he wrote off three MILLION Bengalis to death by starvation in '43.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

Just FWIW, today is the anniversary of Wounded Knee.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

To elaborate, even reading the Wikipedia article it becomes quite apparent that there were people contemporary to the event who were able to make moral judgments about what happened, and did. It's not like the people then weren't aware that chasing down and killing noncombatant women and children is in some strange paralell universe a socially acceptable activity, or that the treaties "signed" with the Native Americans weren't being respected with regard to promises made.

The moral judgments that are made today about the incident are by and large the same kinds that were made then. Why shouldn't I read about what happened, read about the people who were closer to the site and how they formed their opinions, and not decide about what happened? Or how could I?

Posted by PaulBC (# 13712) on :

I used to think war could be a good idea. Then I realized my mother spent 65 years mourning the love of hjer life killed in North Africa 1943 and in spite of marrying my father there was always a certain sosmeone she was missing. Then I read more & more military
history the less & less I thought war was a good idea . Indeed I now believe that war is the worst solution to interaction between humankind. And yes evil can always be named.
As for Churchill he was at his peak in 1940 by 1945 he was tired and had had several strokes
and maybe a bit past being fit to be PM. BUT when Britain needed him in 1940 he was there. [Angel]

Posted by Og: Thread Killer (# 3200) on :

I find it strange that people believe we can not or should not judge history. Of course we can, and should. Its the only way we learn.

Much of our societies can not understand, or is unwilling to understand, the rationalities of others - be they others from 100 years ago or others from the same country who vote differently or who have a different upbringing.

We study history and modern society both in order to break through those barriers, and to understand.

Its why this website exists.

That study and understanding makes us better able to make sense of decisions and actions today.

*****

On another note, I think the relatively recent push to suggest that we can not possibly understand the morals of the past is more down to historiographical territory creation then any scientific inquiry; I've yet to see any psychological and social research into whether we can not understand moral history.

The historiographical understandings (call them unified field theories if you must) that empowered much of historical research for the last 100 years (Marxism, Big Man Theory, or the Manifest Destiny of Democracy) all had a moral bent. They have all been found wanting.

In that absence, historians are trying to create other ways to classify and justify their work.

The "we can only see dim shadows" historiographical approach gives historians license to probe without making moral statements. That makes things safer in the classroom, and more importantly in the journals. It also allows them to publish more books without fear of being pigeon holed.

Its also self delusionary.

Every biography, every historical research document, every history book has an historiographical understanding; no matter how much they try, the writer is never able to decouple themselves from providing a subjective response.

We may think we can ignore ourselves when studying history.

We can't.

And we shouldn't.

Posted by Og: Thread Killer (# 3200) on :

And on another note about historical relativism, I would point out to people how books are out there already judging how the world behaved in the 00's..and that was just 3 years ago. And judgement of the 90's is a full blown industry. Which requires some kind of self wiping or decoupling from history on our part, because, unless we are less then 13 years old, we were there.

Heck, I see newspaper articles judging how historical events occurred only weeks afterwards; its the whole "we bring you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how x team brought about y" that is pretty standard post election or post big world event.

And yet we still look back on those times, just a short while ago, as if we know better now, only years, if not weeks, later. The idea that "we know better now" is hard wired into us. You see it in the writings of the Torah and throughout history.

Better to accept that part of our nature, our desire to get better and our ability to see the progress in its minuteness, then to try to somehow make ourselves immune to judging behaviour.

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

Could it be that the rejoicing before WWI was a reflection of the colonial British attitude of 'we are the powerful nation'? It's seen in the universal rush to enlist and the almost dismissive (of the Germans):'The war will be over by Christmas.'

The reason for the rejoicing was not so much the desire to go to war but the assumption that it would be all so easy, that the British would fight hard and suffer few casualties and that all would be back to normal in no time.

They thought it would be a quick campaign but it turned into a blood/mudbath in the trenches.

We would never have rejoiced had we known it would last 4 years and kill millions.

Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Could it be that the rejoicing before WWI was a reflection of the colonial British attitude of 'we are the powerful nation'? It's seen in the universal rush to enlist and the almost dismissive (of the Germans):'The war will be over by Christmas.'

The reason for the rejoicing was not so much the desire to go to war but the assumption that it would be all so easy, that the British would fight hard and suffer few casualties and that all would be back to normal in no time.

They thought it would be a quick campaign but it turned into a blood/mudbath in the trenches.

We would never have rejoiced had we known it would last 4 years and kill millions.

I think that is Martel's point in his quote in my OP. That events change us and distance us very, very quickly.

I was changed by 9/11 and I don't think that I can very easily put myself into the shoes of someone pre-9/11, even though I am in my mid-40's. Events change us.

The cold war, nuclear weapons, the fall of the Soviet Union and so on, all separate us from those people who governed and were governed prior to the Second World War.

The Second World War and the depression separates us from the pre-First World War generations.

If we find it difficult to think about the world where 9/11 has yet to happen, how can we think about a world where all those events have yet to happen.

I agree we need to read history, and understanding decisions taken in order to examine them objectively is absolutely the correct thing to do, but to examine them subjectivly invites us to view them through the fog of the events that have taken place since, coming to erroneous conclusions about characters and motives.

Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :

When I was doing some writing for a local textbook, the man who was heading up the committee to put the book together -- a friend of mine who works in the curriculum area of the provincial dept of Education -- loaned me a book which, as near as I could understand it, essentially said that as history teachers (and presumably as writers of history books) we should never encourage students to "put themselves in the place" of people in the past, or give them an assignment that would, say, ask them to write a diary entry or letter from the point of view of a person in history, because it was a fallacy to think we could ever understand the worldview of people in the past and students had to be taught to appreciate the gap between our understanding of the world and that of people in the past.

I think that's what it said, but I could be wrong because I did throw it across the room partway through. I agree it's a valid point that people DID view things differently in the past, and students need to be aware of that, but it's going too far to say that we can never appreciate their worldview or perspective (and thus can't judge them). Obviously any assignment that asks a twenty-first century student to put themselves "in the shoes" of someone in the nineteenth century is going to leave some gaps, because they'll be bringing modern sensibilities to what they think and say, but that becomes a teachable moment in and of itself.

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

It's also a very valuable thing to do with Biblical texts as well. to ask, why did this person write this? why did this person do that/go here/say this?
What happened in similar circumstances? What was the contemporary view, the political situation, the cultural norm at the time of writing?

To do this - especially with the gospels - is, for me both illuminating and fascinating. I have learned a lot from commentators who write about the background of life at the time - stuff that really brings the Gospels to life and explains a lot of things.

It also clarifies a lot of things that church tradition has done much to obscure, especially the Jewish/Rabbinic background to what Jesus said and did.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

Is it humanly possible to read history objectively?

Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Is it humanly possible to read history objectively?

To be honest, no, I don't think it is. In spite of all I've said, I think history is a long, lingering gaze, rather than an x-ray!

I just think it's something that everyone who is interested in history, or just joins in a debate over a historical event, needs to be aware of.

We will always come to history with our own baggage that is virtually impossible to put down, but at the very least we should be aware of that and before one is tempted to say "why the hell did you do that??", we should recognise that, whilst we probably do have all the facts, we certainly don't have the context.

I just though it made for an interesting quote in a general sense rather than just the specifics of WWI. It made me reflect that we have changes as a society since 9/11 or Vietnam, and that it is understandable that four years of war changed people even more dramatically.

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Is it humanly possible to read history objectively?

No - nor the newspaper.

Nobody has mentioned the other side of the problem. Read one of Montaigne's essays (his motto was 'Que sais-je' of course) and it feels like you are hearing someone from the 21th century not the 16th. People from all the centuries in between felt he was talking to them like a contemporary. But someone who lived then couldn't see the world as we do - could they?

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

Some history is objective - the literary and archaeological, etc, records - people lived here, used this, wrote that, etc. The other stuff like political intentions, etc, is all interpretation.

We can know that people lived in a particular style of house, we can't always know what motivated a king's policy.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Some history is objective - the literary and archaeological, etc, records - people lived here, used this, wrote that, etc.

That's not history that's archaeology.

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Some history is objective - the literary and archaeological, etc, records - people lived here, used this, wrote that, etc.
That's not history that's archaeology.

Well then, if history isn't the study of the past and what happened there, you are going to have to give me a better definition, aren't you?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

History is drawing conclusions from archeological findings. Which is always going to be subjective.

Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

That's quite a new way of looking at it in my opinion mousethief.

I'm not saying you are wrong, but I have always understood archeology to be a science, studying things that are preserved through nature, rather than preserved through human recording.

I find it difficult to belive that a telegram from the British Ambassador in Berlin to the Foreign Office, sent in 1905, and stored in an archive office in the British Museum, is an archeological artifact.

You may well be right, but it just seems counter-intuitive to me.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

It is never simply a matter of "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner".

As a history teacher, and as a lecturer in church history survey courses, I always encouraged students to try to get inside the heads of those in the past, and not just dismiss them as fools or villains, but I never sugested that understanding is synonymous with justifying.

Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :

Keep it in English or provide translations when necessary, please. That phrase is not universally understood.

Gwai
Purg Host

[ 01. January 2013, 00:42: Message edited by: Gwai ]

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
When I was doing some writing for a local textbook, the man who was heading up the committee to put the book together -- a friend of mine who works in the curriculum area of the provincial dept of Education -- loaned me a book which, as near as I could understand it, essentially said that as history teachers (and presumably as writers of history books) we should never encourage students to "put themselves in the place" of people in the past, or give them an assignment that would, say, ask them to write a diary entry or letter from the point of view of a person in history, because it was a fallacy to think we could ever understand the worldview of people in the past and students had to be taught to appreciate the gap between our understanding of the world and that of people in the past.

I think that's what it said, but I could be wrong because I did throw it across the room partway through. I agree it's a valid point that people DID view things differently in the past, and students need to be aware of that, but it's going too far to say that we can never appreciate their worldview or perspective (and thus can't judge them). Obviously any assignment that asks a twenty-first century student to put themselves "in the shoes" of someone in the nineteenth century is going to leave some gaps, because they'll be bringing modern sensibilities to what they think and say, but that becomes a teachable moment in and of itself.

It's a very important point that people in the past viewed things differently, but the writer of your book was a prize ass. Throwing the book across the room was a kinder fate than it deserved. If history does not encourage people to try and see the world through someone else's eyes, then studying it is a waste of time.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Never mind the miners

There appears to be an element of rusted-on folklore as regards Churchill and Tonypandy (and I write as the great-grandson of a coal-miner from South Wales).

As far as I can make out, Churchill as Home Secretary put only unarmed police, never armed soldiers, on the streets.

quote:
wrote off three MILLION Bengalis to death by starvation in '43.

Nobody is perfect, and assessments of historical figures can only be made on the basis of balances rather than absolutes.

Churchill displayed a horrifying blindness and callousness toward the suffering caused by the 1943 Bengal Famine, but he did not cause it, desire it, or deliberately engineer it for political purposes.

That is one of the reasons why it is not unreasonable to conclude that on balance the deeply flawed Churchill was a "Good Thing", while faministas Stalin and Mao, despite some benefits they brought to their countries, were not.

Posted by Og: Thread Killer (# 3200) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Some history is objective - the literary and archaeological, etc, records - people lived here, used this, wrote that, etc....

You'd be surprised how much of that is based on a subjective understanding of the evidence.

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

quote:
Originally posted by deano:

I find it difficult to belive that a telegram from the British Ambassador in Berlin to the Foreign Office, sent in 1905, and stored in an archive office in the British Museum, is an archeological artifact.

You may well be right, but it just seems counter-intuitive to me.

But that's exactly what it is, just as a shard of earthenware dug up somewhere is also an artefact. To draw inferences and conclusions from both the sending of the telegram and its contents is where history steps in. (Noting of course that in some instances the authenticity of the artefact may be in issue.)

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:

quote:
Originally posted by deano:

I find it difficult to belive that a telegram from the British Ambassador in Berlin to the Foreign Office, sent in 1905, and stored in an archive office in the British Museum, is an archeological artifact.

You may well be right, but it just seems counter-intuitive to me.
But that's exactly what it is, just as a shard of earthenware dug up somewhere is also an artefact. To draw inferences and conclusions from both the sending of the telegram and its contents is where history steps in. (Noting of course that in some instances the authenticity of the artefact may be in issue.)

Yebbut. People work out from a shard, how it was made, what colour it was etc, what era it comes from. What's significant about a telegram isn't usually the paper used, but what it says. A telegram conveys the same message if quoted in a book. A shard doesn't. For its interpretation as an artifact, we have to reply on an archaeologist who is skilled in these things.

Which is also the reason why archaeological evidence is no more objective than any other.

I don't know why shard X is late Roman and shard Y C12. I also don't know why shard X should denote that a particular villa was sacked by barbarians rather than that a maidservant dropped a pot going to the well.

Posted by Cedd007 (# 16180) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
When I was doing some writing for a local textbook, the man who was heading up the committee to put the book together -- a friend of mine who works in the curriculum area of the provincial dept of Education -- loaned me a book which, as near as I could understand it, essentially said that as history teachers (and presumably as writers of history books) we should never encourage students to "put themselves in the place" of people in the past, or give them an assignment that would, say, ask them to write a diary entry or letter from the point of view of a person in history, because it was a fallacy to think we could ever understand the worldview of people in the past and students had to be taught to appreciate the gap between our understanding of the world and that of people in the past.

...

The so-called 'New History', which was beginning to blossom when I started teaching History in the 1970's, included the idea of EMPATHY. The Powers That Be got very upset by this, for example when EMPATHY became the skill tested in coursework, especially in such topics as Conflict in Ireland or the Arab-Israeli conflict. Actually I think that it is difficult for young people to acquire sufficient writing skills to be able to demonstrate their understanding of how people thought in the past, so it was never perhaps a good historical skill to try to assess. But empathy remains, in my view, essential to an understanding of History, and probably, for that matter, to being human, even if it is sometimes a struggle.

The Tudor Historian G.R.Elton argued that young people had insufficient maturity to understand History, and that as a subject it should not be studied until undergraduate level. One of his books, 'England under the Tudors', was written for undergraduates, and then became, ironically, a best-selling textbook for 'A' level students. It is also ironic that Ben Elton, his nephew, probably made an equally important contribution to the study of History by giving us 'Blackadder'. And the explanation Blackadder gives, in the final episode, for the outbreak of WW1 - that the politicians just couldn't be bothered - is probably as good as any.

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Never mind the miners
There appears to be an element of rusted-on folklore as regards Churchill and Tonypandy (and I write as the great-grandson of a coal-miner from South Wales).

As far as I can make out, Churchill as Home Secretary put only unarmed police, never armed soldiers, on the streets.

One of the points made by Josephine Tey, in "The Daughter of Time" was that, even when people who were actually there knew that a particular version of a story was untrue, they didn't do anything about it... which leads to the idea that one has to be very careful about popular versions of historical events. Even on postwar England, it was apparently common knowledge that the Tonypandy story was not what the political game described.

Thomas More's version of the life and times of Richard III, as amplified by Shakespeare, would be another example of this. Grains of truth in a less-than-satisfactory account.

This is where understanding a bit of psychology might help, in terms of the "who benefits?" or "was there any rational behaviour?" questions.

Just as one has to do with the Bible, come to that. What is the point of claiming that "our old guy Methuselah" is so much older than any of "Your old guys"? That's just kid stuff in the schoolyard. But it does undermine one's confidence in the writing when read literally, rather than for poetic or metaphoric purposes.

[ 02. January 2013, 00:17: Message edited by: Horseman Bree ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:

quote:
Originally posted by deano:

I find it difficult to belive that a telegram from the British Ambassador in Berlin to the Foreign Office, sent in 1905, and stored in an archive office in the British Museum, is an archeological artifact.

You may well be right, but it just seems counter-intuitive to me.
But that's exactly what it is, just as a shard of earthenware dug up somewhere is also an artefact. To draw inferences and conclusions from both the sending of the telegram and its contents is where history steps in. (Noting of course that in some instances the authenticity of the artefact may be in issue.)
Yebbut. People work out from a shard, how it was made, what colour it was etc, what era it comes from. What's significant about a telegram isn't usually the paper used, but what it says. A telegram conveys the same message if quoted in a book. A shard doesn't. For its interpretation as an artifact, we have to reply on an archaeologist who is skilled in these things.

Which is to say, a telegram is a different sort of artifact from a shard. No kidding.

Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on :

I think that is uncommon amongst archaeologists to consider the textual content of the written record (as opposed to its material culture) as an archaeological artefact. It is commonly where they would draw the line between their discipline and that of the historian.

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

One of the min difficulties with archaeology is that 'awkward' objects that turn up on sites that don't match the history or the preferred 'reading' of a site can sometimes end up on the black market never to be seen again. I know two archaeologists - one working in Israel and the other working in Europe who have both seen incredible and very important finds being sold off on site.

Posted by Sighthound (# 15185) on :

I always recall my grandmother's words on 1914: 'The lads thought they were going to a picnic.'

You see, most of those 'lads' worked in the glass or chemical industries or down the mines. Given that they had no real idea of what a modern war would be like, I'm not surprised that they were excited about going on an 'adventure' to escape from grim, everyday reality.

World War II also damaged minds. My mother never lost her hatred for the Germans and the Japanese, the former because they bombed us and caused her husband to be away for 6 years, the latter because of how they used her cousin in a POW camp. It was no use talking to her about the morality of Dresden or Hiroshima. As far as she was concerned, they started it, and were paid back with interest. I can't help but think that hatred damaged her life. As for my father, who actually fought the Germans, he certainly respected them, and spoke well of the German families he was billeted on. His was a much more balanced view, and yet he had seen his friends blown apart and so on.

Posted by ArachnidinElmet (# 17346) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Trisagion:
I think that is uncommon amongst archaeologists to consider the textual content of the written record (as opposed to its material culture) as an archaeological artefact. It is commonly where they would draw the line between their discipline and that of the historian.

Yep, that's pretty much it.

Archaeology = material culture; history = the written word.

So strictly speaking the first primary history in the UK begins with the Romans, but archaeology runs up til the present: think industrial or forensic archaeology, both of which can be studies of the very recent past. And, considering the OP, the interpretation of artefacts are subject to personal, political or religious experience and academic trends just like those of written evidence.

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