Historical Revisionism

[Giz]

The American Civil War: It wasn't about slavery.

That was always a Shanek classic.

I believe you meant "The War of Northern Aggression"!

There was a great riff he went into one time... from memory it went something like this:
"If Lincoln had let the South go then Federal power would be far weakened, therefore the USA would not intervene to the same extent in WW1, therefore Imperial Germany would not be defeated as badly, therefore the treaty of Versailles would not be as harsh, therefore the Nazis would not have been able to play on resentment of the treaty to gain power. Ergo, Lincoln caused Hitler, QED".

Amazing.

 

[gtc]

There was a great riff he went into one time... from memory it went something like this:
"If Lincoln had let the South go then Federal power would be far weakened, therefore the USA would not intervene to the same extent in WW1, therefore Imperial Germany would not be defeated as badly, therefore the treaty of Versailles would not be as harsh, therefore the Nazis would not have been able to play on resentment of the treaty to gain power. Ergo, Lincoln caused Hitler, QED".

I think Harry Turtledove wrote a book about that.

 

[marksman]

Another type of historical revisionism is the Beautiful People myth. Often see it in association with NewAge ideas about native americans and other primitive societies. You know that thing about only hunting as much as they need, and using every part of the buffalo? It's bull (or at least a part of the bull you don't want to use ) An archeologist friend on another site told about the hunting practice of some tribes. Find a heard of buffalo, start them stampeeding, and direct the stampeed to a nearby cliff. Then go to the bottom of the cliff and have a huge BBQ

If you want more information on how the Pre-Colombian Americans were far from "living in harmony with nature", I highly recommend 1491, which I just finished. It's a great book, an easy read for non-archaeologists, and goes into great detail about a variety of American Indian cultures and how they vastly reshaped the American environment well before Columbus arrived. Some cultures wiped themselves out through envrionmental disaster. The Incas physically altered almost every mountain in the Andes. They terraformed the Amazon basin and burned down the Hundson River forests on a regular basis. They hunted animals to extinction and engaged in what seems like ceaseless warfare.

(It's not all negative. They created some of the first cultures on earth, produced monuments of art, and scientific developments -- like maize -- that still stun scientists today and that have transformed the world.)

I think he also has the theory that while they older races didn't start off being respectful of nature, they came to when they realised they would die out if they didn't.

That assumes a static culture, for which there is no evidence. Probably, like cultres elsewhere in the world, populations ebb and flow. They will split and merge, war and ally, fight and trade. Like all cultures, they will have social mores and philosophical or religious traditions that will be attirbuted to ancient days, but may be no older than a few hudnred years, or, if older, may not resemble the original philosophies at all.

One thing in their favour, despite the undoubted hardships of their lives, is that their cultures have survived for such a long time, about 20,000 years in the case of the Australian aboriginals.

That's like saying Iranian culture has "survived" for 20,000 years ot the founding of Persia. We have no evidence that aboriginal culture is the same as the culture of its ancestors. All was can say is that aboriginals have been in Australia for 20,000 years and thus have had culture for that time.

Something must have been working right.

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The aim is to ensure the Palestinians are not allowed to investigate their culture

Is there any thread you won't turn into a complaint about Israel?

 

[Beerina]

Egyptian Afrocentrism.

Advocates of this theory claim that the Ancient Egyptians were black equatorial Africans and not the brown Hamitic north Africans we see portrayed in wall art. I’ve even heard it claimed (I forget by whom at the time) that Rameses II was black. The biggest problem I have this theory is Ancient Egypt belongs to the Egyptians. As an Islamic state they technically should have destroyed all the idolatry of the Ancients (see the Taliban) but from the death of Cleopatra, though the Coptic Church period, the coming of Islam until the modern state, they have generally preserved their heritage.

Remember that religion is all about power, power for self-selected individuals. The artifacts, led by the pyramids, are currently an excellent source of tourism dollars, which is to say, hard western currency. Hence it is much more in the interest of those in power to keep the tourism going. Those in power do not, currently, need the radical version of Islam to stir up the local population against an enemy, in this case, their own non-Islamic past, in order to maintain power.

A few years back, there was a slavery revisionist movement among African Americans to claim there were as many as 250 million slaves who died on ships coming over to the US. This was rightly discounted as a simple mathematical check shows it to be physically rediculous as to the number of loaded ships that must have sunk every year, to say nothing of the astronomical numbers of ships needed if that 250 million were only a fraction of those brought over. But again, it's about gaining power by stirring up outrage. Innumeracy doesn't enter into it, apparently.

Feminists/Neo-Pagans:

Not to lump Feminists and Neo-Pagans together, but the Revisionism that I’m referring to is used by both groups. A gross oversimplification of their theory states that Europe was a feminist, woman-centered, vegetarian Utopia, where women were fat and happy and men knew their place. It seemed the wonder years of the Neolithic might last forever until the coming of the Khurgans who, as meat eaters, had developed large penises and aggressive tendencies. They subjugated the peaceful, nature loving, Goddess worshipping peoples of Europe and gave rise to such brutal societies as the Assyrians, Egyptians and Greeks.

Never heard of this one. I presume their claims follow the woo tradition (outrage, claims of being ignored by those in power structures, and a lack of getting many papers to withstand criticism and peer review in respected journals) rather than are a huge stack of respected papers in major journals.

 

[Beerina]

Another type of historical revisionism is the Beautiful People myth. Often see it in association with NewAge ideas about native americans and other primitive societies. You know that thing about only hunting as much as they need, and using every part of the buffalo? It's bull (or at least a part of the bull you don't want to use ) An archeologist friend on another site told about the hunting practice of some tribes. Find a heard of buffalo, start them stampeeding, and direct the stampeed to a nearby cliff. Then go to the bottom of the cliff and have a huge BBQ

I first heard about this in an archaeology class in the mid '80s. Actually, it was a variation on it, where the "victor" race or society generates memes of how noble the "losers" were. They were a proud people. Fierce. Brave. Magnificent fighters. It was one of those strange, reverse-racism things, and was thought to be a way for the "victors" to make themselves feel better about displacing the "losers".

It's an interesting dynamic, too. After the "win", you be kind to your defeated opponent, so their followers will think better of you, which is to your advantage. You, the new person with power over all of it.

 

[Tony]

Was? You speak as if he's gone forever or that his posts/threads can't be resurrected. He'll be back to avoid the question and obvious answer - what state's right were Southern states so worried about protecting... oh, yeah, that's right slavery.

However right you may be. It's still a gross oversimplification to say the cause of the Civil War was slavery. I'm sure you know it was much more complicated than that.

 

[Tony]

Thanks for the bump man.

You're welcome. This was a good thread and I figured newer people should want to read it.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

However right you may be. It's still a gross oversimplification to say the cause of the Civil War was slavery. I'm sure you know it was much more complicated than that.

Of course. No war is ever about one single issue. It's a figure of speech.

However, Shanek and others like him will bend over backwards, sideways, and twist themselves into all sorts of contortions just to avoid the slavery angle.

Saying the Civil War was not about slavery is like saying WWII was not about Hitler.

 

[Luciana]

Luciana,
Thanks for the interesting post.

Man, that was 3 years ago!!! When I saw this, I thought "hmm, let me reread what I wrote, in case I don't agree with it anymore".

After I saw your post, I read a little summary of the Triple Alliance War. The three allies being Brazil, Argentina and Urugway. They apparently waged a brutal war against Paraquay for five years that killed a large percentage of the Paraquayan male population.

Correct. Paraguay was then being led by Solano Lopez, a dictator who believed that Paraguay should be as important as the size of its army - and that was at least 5 times more than that its neighbors. Lopez split his army in two to invade very different parts of Brazil. As Argentina denied access through its territory, Lopez attacked Argentina also.

You only have to look at the map to see this is complete madness - Paraguay is a landlocked country and it's dwarfed by Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. In the first year Rio del Plata was blocked and their access to the sea, read "armaments", was cut. Also, even though the Triple Alliance countries had puny armies, they had plenty of natural resources, stronger economies and larger demographic contingents.

Paraguay was devastated because Solano Lopez didn't surrender, and he hid in the marshes until he had used up all the male population in his own protection, including children.

One of the results of the war was to leave Paraquay with a democratic government.

That's a very 21st century way of thinking. Making the place a republic was preferable, but "democracy" never played a important role in the whole matter. With no agriculture, no manufacturing, no infrastructure and 2/3 of the male population dead, "democracy" isn't much of a sweet deal.

I understand why this would be the most important war in the history of Paraquay but why do you think it was the most important war in the history of South America?

First of all, what could be the other?

There is the Great Brazil-Argentina War That Never Happened. Well, if it ever does, at this point, it will be because of soccer.

There aren't many worth mentioning, and certainly none came close in terms of importance or casualties. There were the independence wars, of course. But between states? Hmm, the Pacific War, with Chile against Peru and Bolivia, in which Bolivia lost its exit to the sea (1883); Paraguay and Bolivia over the Chaco, where Bolivia lost part of its territory (1935); Argentina-UK, that lasted two months (1982). Aside from that, some border conflicts (Peru-Ecuador, Argentina-Chile, Peru-Bolivia).

But why it was so important? It was the demise of a country, one that was left in extreme poverty and whose territorial integrity was guaranteed by Brazil only because it didn't want Argentina to occupy it.

To Argentina, it meant progress, as the port of Buenos Aires profited because all the armaments, supplies, etc., that went through it. Also, lots of infrastructure was built because of it. The war solidified the recently-united country.That accumulation of wealth meant that by the turn of the century Argentina would be one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

To Uruguay, the most fragile country, it was the guarantee that a greedy dictator didn't share its borders. More than that, the war strengthened the ruling party, thus helping to stabilize a previously chaotic presidency.

Brazil was the only country which didn't profit any, on the contrary. It waived the costs of war of Paraguay and ended indebted because it paid for the war efforts of the whole Triple Alliance by itself. But the war fueled patriotism, and for the first time people felt Brazilian and acted on it. It is believed that this new awareness, among other things, led to the proclamation of the republic three decades later.

 

[Luciana]

I concur with Luciana's opinion, and will interject with my take on it.

(I know, I swore off Politics, but the occasional innocent thread can't hurt. I have it under control.)

Same here. I'll keep crossing my fingers so there's no trouble.

The War of the Triple Alliance saw the coming-of-age of the allies as nations. To maintain the war they had to create modern, effective administrations to collect and expend taxes - something which had been

lacking previously. This was only a generation or two after the Wars of Independence, after all.

True. They had to build armies almost from scratch, had to establish a steady flow of information between heads of states, thus helping to "organize" the region for decades to come, etc.

These were initially nations in name only; the reality on the ground was essentially feudal. That changed significantly during the war. (It's never gone away completely, of course, but neither has it in Europe .)

Easy there. The word "feudal" would put you in serious trouble with historians around here. You may be thinking of backwardness and poverty, but aside from subsistence farming, all the work-relations were capitalist, even if in its most primitive forms. Most of the production was export-led anyway. Then there is widespread slavery. But not feudalism as that in Europe, if we could ever agree on a definition, that is.

Also, Brazil and Argentina can't be described as "in name only". Brazil had a centralized government, regular elections, active press, freedom of speech, many urban centers, diversified agriculture, heavy investment from England, a sizable Navy, etc. And Argentina had cities such as Buenos Aires, Entre-Rios and Corrientes which were prosperous and very aware of being part of an elite, plus the largest flow of investment from England in South America.

What you speak of is mostly true in Pacific nations and Bolivia.

The war also trained a sophisticated diplomatic corps, which gained them entree to the international scene as credible players.

They even got to exchange MAPS!!

At the same time, the War promoted national-awareness - patriotism, "us" - by that classic method, conflict with a "them". It helped that the Paraguay of the day would appear thoroughly alien to anybody normal.

Absolutely, specially Argentina, that was only recently united.

So the war was, essentially, the making of modern Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

That's a tad too strong, as certainly Brazil was already established as a country, with a constitutional monarchy and the identity of being neither Portuguese nor Spanish-speaking, to say the least. What the war did was to set areas of influences (Uruguay under Brazil's, Paraguay under Argentina's), establish the borders for good and eliminate the presence of a bloodthirsty dictator in its midst.

 

[Tony]

Would the idea that Reagan defeated global communism and the USSR be considered historical revisionism?

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Would the idea that Reagan defeated global communism and the USSR be considered historical revisionism?

I'm not quite sure which fallacy it would be (post hoc ergo propter hoc most likely) but it wouldn't be on par with Holocaust denial. It would also be a case of simplifying a very complex issue. One could label it historical revisionism, but it's not as if his policies in the 1980s had nothing to do with the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union. Saying that President Reagan was directly responsible is simply incorrect because it ignores the role played by JP II and Lech Walesa in Poland, various seperatist leaders in the Baltics and, ironically, Gorbachev in the Soviet Union itself.

 

[Stormraven]

I've seen the 'beautiful people' myth, but let's not forget the other myth of primitivism - the Incompetent Primitive myth. Granted, it's not widely spread outside the UFO community, but it is there.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Letter to the editor in the Dallas Morning News on Sunday

Re: "Bush's war vs. Big One," by Tom Sullivan, Wednesday Letters.
Mr. Sullivan may not be aware there was massive resistance from our citizens to entering World War II. Then, as now in Iraq, we were virtually alone in fighting the Axis powers. Our only allies were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia and Russia.
We, of course, supplied virtually all of the eqiupment these allies used to fight the war. With the exception of Russia, one might note that we have the same allies today in the war in Iraq.
John K. Murtaugh, Rockwall

 

[Wolfman]

It is interesting to read all of this, as I am facing a very similar situation right now. Among other things, I've founded a non-profit organization that works with one of China's least-known minority groups, the Mosuo. The Mosuo are one of the few matriarchal/matrilineal cultures left in the world, and furthermore do not traditionally practice marriage, but rather can choose and change partners as they please. It is a very unique and fascinating culture, if you want to know more about it, you can click on the link in my signature below to go to our website; you can also read a much more detailed thread that I started specifically about the Mosuo at JREF here.

Anyway, being a matriarchal/matrilineal culture, the Mosuo naturally get a lot of attention from feminist groups; and this is where the problem arises. Because by far the majority of feminists who go there to "study" the Mosuo are actually going there with a specific agenda of using the Mosuo to prove the "superiority" of female-run societies. Thus, in far too many cases, the actual truth gets lost under a mass of distortions and fantasies.

For example, if you Google "Mosuo", you'll quickly find links to sites that will tell you that the Mosuo have no words in their language for "murder" or "rape". This is true (partly, as I'll explain), but this is then expanded to make the claim that the reason these words don't exist is because, in the Mosuo culture, there is no rape or murder.

The FACTS are as follows: the Mosuo do not have specific words for "murder" or "rape", but they have general words for "kill" and "assault" which, when combined with other words ("deliberate killing" or "sexual assault") have those same exact meanings. And any Mosuo will tell you that not only do murders happen, but their mythology is full of stories of murder; and they have their own specific punishment (a slit throat) for any man committing rape...why have a punishment for a crime that "doesn't exist"?

Another popular revisionist claim is that the Mosuo's matriarchal culture, prior to takeover by the Communists (and imposed leadership by men), was a culture of peace, equality, etc. Again, the truth is very different. Historically, the Mosuo actually had a noble (land-owning) class, and a peasant (laborer) class. The noble class were patriarchal and patrilineal; the peasants were matriarchal and matrilineal. This proved to be a very beneficial system for the Mosuo nobility, because all inheritance was traced through the man's side of the family. But if a man went out and fooled around with the peasants, and produced a few illegitimate offspring, they were no threat to his position because their lineage was traced through the mother's side of the family. Thus, no peasant child would have claims to noble heritage...ever.

I've personally met Mosuo who were peasants under the nobles, and can tell stories about that time. They were treated as most peasants are usually treated...as inferiors. Education, standard of living, etc., were all much poorer for the peasants than for the nobility. Rather ironically, when the Communists took over and abolished "landlords" (including the Mosuo nobility), they also effectively abolished the patriarchal portion of Mosuo culture, leaving them almost entirely matriarchal (the exception to this is that Mosuo priests, called Daba, still follow patriarchal practices).

So much for the "equality for everyone" myth.

Now, don't get me wrong; I think that the Mosuo culture is a fascinating and valuable one, and has a lot that other cultures could learn from. But we're only going to learn by understanding the truth of their culture, not by building up fantasies to suit personal agendas.

In closing, just a mention of the most blatant and ridiculous "revision" of Mosuo history/culture that I've encountered thus far. A German woman who visited the Mosuo for one week, then returned home and, in her blog, stated that Mosuo women are all lesbians, and engage in sex with men only for purposes of procreation; the rest of the time, men are kept essentially as convenient labor. Not only is this completely untrue, it would be considered a gross insult by most Mosuo, who do place equal value on both genders.

 

[Chaos]

Would the idea that Reagan defeated global communism and the USSR be considered historical revisionism?

Since "global communism" actually was defeated, and the USSR actually did collapse, and Reagan actually was in office during that time, that idea is nowhere near the same league of lies and/or delusions that are the hallmark of historical revisionism.
It is, however, a gross insult to everyone else who did so much more than Reagan, including risking their own lives, to bring down communism and the USSR.

 

[CFLarsen]

Would the idea that Reagan defeated global communism and the USSR be considered historical revisionism?

How did he do that?

 

[Mercutio]

How did he do that?

Lists of questions, and demands for "evidence?". It's the only way anything ever gets done.

 

[CFLarsen]

Lists of questions, and demands for "evidence?". It's the only way anything ever gets done.

Cheeky.....

 

[Moufflon]

Leckie is quite correct - whenever we come upon a significant archaeological site or region and begin to dig, no matter how early the site is, more often than not there is evidence of warfare. The evidence may not necessarily be as direct as weapons and spearheads, either; one of the most telling indications of hostilities between two tribes or groups of people is if the two are in close enough proximity to make contact probable, yet there is a "no-man's land", an area between the two where no evidence of settlement can be found, and for good reason - that's where the hostile confrontations happened most often. But there was always conflict - if not between two or more tribes, then internecine. It's interesting to note that whenever a civilization developed the written word, the thing that was invariably written about first and most often was not their religion, or their "understanding of the balance of nature", but warfare - boasts of victory and conquest.

Hi Joshua Korosi,

Just to say that I liked your Cult Archaeology thread, too! There is indeed a huge amount of Woo of the Ancient World. I'm a Near Eastern archaeologist myself, and the place is a minefield of Goddess worshippers and aliens... If I can lend a hand with any debunkingness, let me know, if you like...

Can I take a tiny issue with what you wrote above, though? Firstly, it might be helpful to distinguish between warfare and interpersonal violence. For many Neolithic (i.e. agricultural) cultures of the ancient near east, there is often little unambiguous evidence for warfare - organised political violence. There's quite a bit for people hitting each other quite hard in the head, though.

Also, the very first writing in the Near East (from the site of Uruk) is not even about victories or warfare. The earliest texts say things like: "10 sheep. 5 units of barley." They're accounting tallies: extremely unromantic. We owe a huge slice of civilisation to... accountants.

But your point remains, that the first thing they started writing down weren't eco-friendly Nobel Savage lifestyle tips.

Cheers,
Moufflon