[OT] How much of history do we really know?

[Darklone]

Ok, but what do you do about a war where both sides accused the other side of atrocities?

Ok, you can always assume that both sides committed them... But in these typical cases of military conflicts, you usually have the winner write the history... it's rather seldom that the winning side admits huge scale pillaging or worse stuff, more often they try to eradicate reports that indicate so.

 

[Umbran]

So the perhaps the answer to inquiring youth is to do more research themselves in the field, rather than force feeding them ideas.
[...snip..]

The thing is, perhaps the arrogant manner in which information is feed to the students, as absolute truths, rather than saying "we believe that X did Y", and if people ask for the cause of these beliefs, then point them in the direction where further information can be found?

The problem with this is simple - there's too much history. An individual can skim the surface of reseach on a few topics, or perhaps delve deeply into a couple if they make it a life's work. But, on the whole, there's simply too much history for everyone to fully research all of it for themselves.

In a democracy, the average Joe ought to have some basic knowledge of history in order to understand the world in which he lives, and in order to make informed decisions about the future. Even "basic" history is quite a lot of information. As a practical matter, a goodly amount of "force feeding" is required to prepare a person to be a properly informed citizen.

 

[MerakSpielman]

it's rather seldom that the winning side admits huge scale pillaging or worse stuff, more often they try to eradicate reports that indicate so.

Actually, often they did admit to the atrocities, with pride even. After all, whoever they defeated is almost always considered Vile Sub-Human Offenders of the Right Way to Do Things. It's only right to do terrible things. It was considered to be just retribution for all the terrible things they did to your side.

Back then, they weren't going to get in trouble with the international community. There was no UN to officially condemn the acts, which were generally perfectly legal, and no journalists to take gruesome pictures to show to the people back home.

 

[Amos_Sten]

Ok, but what do you do about a war where both sides accused the other side of atrocities?

Ok, you can always assume that both sides committed them... But in these typical cases of military conflicts, you usually have the winner write the history... it's rather seldom that the winning side admits huge scale pillaging or worse stuff, more often they try to eradicate reports that indicate so.

A few years ago an excavation at a civil war burial site was able to present some very strong forensic evidence that prisoners had been killed following the battle. By examining the skeletal remains the were able to prove that the majority o killing blows had been struck from behind in a downward stroke. This was consistant with written accounts of prisoners being forced to kneel before being executed.

So its not impossible to prove attrocites.

It is also very difficult to hide or destroy all evidence especially within the last few centuries. Letters are written, diarys are kept. It may not appear in official dispatches but that doesn't mean that there are no records its just a matter of finding them. Regimental museums are a great source for this, families tend to pass documents over after awhile and the museums tend to keep everything even those which don't paint the regiment in the best of lights.

 

[MaxKaladin]

I do not doubt that this is true, but, in the humanities at the very least, you should hold your views in communication, if not communion, with the views of those who have gone before.

{Snip}

For instance, while states' rights seem to be an obvious civil war issue in the light of the development of government in the twentieth century there are still many documents, including those of earlier historians, that emphasize the importance of slavery and Southern life and power as distinct and central issues. Even the debate over states' rights is clearly centered on slavery if events such as bloody Kansas and the Missouri compromise are to be at all considered in the narrative of American Civil War and disorder. Certainly narratives purely of slavery and southern ambition do not serve the state of the South at this end of this history, but neither does denying those narratives for an alternate narrative focussing entirely on states' rights.

{Snip}

Mind you, that can be an incredibly difficult task given our human taste for clear cut ideas of how things worked and how large some discourse communities are, but noone said being professional was easy.

This is usually the primary problem. People look for simple, easy to digest and regurgitate answers -- preferably ones with a clearly defined good side and bad side -- and hopelessly distort things in the process. Your civil war example is a prime candidate. You have a bunch of people on one side who believe the civil war was about slavery and that the northerners were righteous, crusading paladins struggling to free the oppressed slaves from their evil southern oppressors and ignore all the economic and political questions like states rights. You have another side that wants to portray the south as idealistic, freedom-loving men fighting valiantly in an ultimately doomed struggle to protect their ideals, chief among them states rights, against an implacable enemy determined to impose its will on them and stifle their freedom. This side tends to gloss over that whole slavery thing and the fact that there were very real injustices going on.

The problem is it isn't that cut and dried. Both sides tend to ignore the fact that powerful people in both the Confederacy and the Union had very real economic issues at stake (look up the effect of tarriff policy, for instance) and they ignore the validity of anything the other side says. When you actually look at the sources, you tend to find that most of the actual issues of contention were about states rights or economics. However, the dispute over slavery is one of the bigest reasons these issues were important. That was what made those questions important. The issue of having the right to seceed, for instance, wouldn't have come up without the dispute over slavery.

So, both sides are partially right, but the issues are complicated and that doesn't satisfy a lot of people who want their history cut and dried with simple, one word or short phrase causes and a clear division of who was good and who was evil. They don't want the real history, or even the Reader's Digest condensed version. They want the synopsis of the plot of the movie that was made about the event.

 

[MerakSpielman]

That reminds me of the Simpson's episode when Apu is applying for citizenship. The test giver asked him what the Civil War was fought over and he started going into all the reasons you list. She cut him off and said, "Just say 'slavery.'"

 

[alsih2o]

this has been eye-opening for me. i guess i have a different definition of history and fact than most folks.

i see history as being pot shards (sherds, cherds, chards) and standing walls and heiroglyphics and bone fragments and cave drawings and stone.

everything else is stories form history. these vary wildly in accuracy.

while many stories from history may be false what we KNOW is KNOWN. we know a lot about forming techniques for most folks, altho a lot is left. we can tell a lot about diet usually and also about hwo they buried folks. there is a long list of what we KNOW.

there are biases from victor and from the oppressed, but when several sources report the same thing, many from alternate viewpoints there comes a collection of facts.

it is always going to come back to what you define as history...

but it is a nice read!

 

[MerakSpielman]

everything else is stories form history. these vary wildly in accuracy.

Defining history is tricky. Linguistically, the word comes from "His Story", which implies a narriative of sorts (do you remember the feminist groups starting up "Her Story" classes in protest of the male-dominant term?). This makes sense, because that is how history was passed down and learned for the longest time, as stories told from one generation to the next. Even after the stories became written, they were still really just stories.

Even now, in History class, you learn primarily the stories of the past. They might not be as colorful as the stories they told 500 years ago, and you assume that they're based on verifiable fact, but you can never be sure without doing the research yourself, and only a few people bother.

There was/is a movement to leave out the Holocaust from public school history books because it's not appropriate for children to learn about. Considering how many people stop learning history after high school, how long would it take for widespread public knowledge of this incredibly important event to just... slowly... die out? One generation? Two? Five? So far the movement has made no headway because history teachers everywhere know better. Their mantra is "Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them." With that in mind, there's no way they're going to stop teaching students about the Holocaust.

Which brings me back (roughly) to the topic of this thread: how much history has been lost? One of the primary tactics of civilizations trying to assimilate/conquer other civilizations is to control what is taught to the children. The US did this with Native American children - forced them into public schools, forbade them from using their native tongues, etc... More heavy handed countries, like China in Tibet, go much farther, and simply kill the elders who know and pass on the history and culture of their people. In ancient times, invaders would often kill the entire population, excepting only the youngest children. It is a ruthlessly effective tactic, and the histories of such destroyed civilizations are virtually eliminated, excepting the biased records of their conquerers and archiological evidence (which is also often destroyed. A lot of the pre-Christian shrines and temples of Europe were destroyed and churches built in their place. What they could have taught us is lost forever.).

Ultimately, we logically cannot know how much of history remains unknown. We would need some way of quantifying the amount of knowledge that is not only lost, but that we are unaware of being lost, there no longer being any evidence of it ever having existed in the first place. This is, sadly, impossible.

 

[jgbrowning]

I can sum up our knowledge of history is one sentence that I'm sure all historians could agree with:

We have more than we want, less than we need.

joe b.

 

[tarchon]

Defining history is tricky. Linguistically, the word comes from "His Story", which implies a narriative of

Haha. You... are joking, right?