History is Bunk (2)

The foray into Google produced a number of articles with ‘History is bunk ‘ as their theme, all of them warning about relying on tradition and historical inaccuracies particularly in the matter of old grievances and resentment that has festered for years, maybe centuries.

One case where resentment is high is Armenia formerly one of the USSR republics and a fraction of the size it was a century ago, having lost much of its territory to its western neighbour Turkey, also held responsible for the great Armenian genocide that took place during the First World War. It doesn’t get on at all well with its eastern neighbour Azerbaijan either, the two having warred on and off over territory for quite some time. I know all about it from a former colleague who is Armenian.

Another case where centuries-long pent-up resentment finally burst is Serbia following the break-up of Yugoslavia, a good case or should that be a bad case of how past grievances are used as the causa belli. The Serbs who are of the Orthodox faith have for historical reasons not much time for either Muslims or Croats (Catholics) given the brutal regime of the Ottomans to whom they lost out in the battle of Kosovo (1387) and then in the Second World War to those Croats who collaborated with the Nazis. No surprise then when the break-up began the Serbs decided to get in first and settle some old scores and the rest as they say is history. As one commentator summed it up as ‘ So let’s treat history as it is - the past. It’s gone forever unless you reject the linearity of time. Let the dead bury their dead. Even tragic history should be a matter of quiet meditation but never used for a vendetta’.

The Serbian vendetta also features in another article on the same theme, which looks at falsification of history and the rewriting thereof following the current trend for political correctness. ‘History as bunk is bad enough but history as lies is dangerous. History is not bunk but it should also not be inaccurate, misleading and over-selective in viewpoint and presentation’.

The dangers are obvious: left unchallenged long enough and people will begin to believe what they read or see on the screen and in time become fodder for those who wish to foment trouble, have axes to grind or ‘grievances’ to exploit for their own ends. Historians, therefore, have a duty to behave responsibly bearing in mind the comment of American historian Henry Adams ‘ The historian must not try to know what the truth is if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths he is certain to falsify the facts.’ Tell me about it!

I don’t know which historian irks me more, the biased or the prejudiced. Suffice it to say I care for neither. I don’t care either for those who get so caught up in their grievance that it turns into a vendetta. There’s enough of that flitting across our screens as it is.

So here’s my quote for what it’s worth ‘A good historian should be like a good detective able to assemble the facts without taking sides or becoming emotionally involved.’

History is bunk (1)

As Henry T Ford once said ’History is bunk’. Like Voltaire that’s not what he actually said, what he actually said was ‘History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition and we don’t want tradition’.

I really am beginning to tire of the inaccuracies and false reporting but I’m not sorry I checked up on the quotation itself because it led me to discover others on the subject of ‘History is bunk’ and four in particular that sum up my current feelings if not towards history then historians and authors of historical fiction.

But first let’s start with Henry who added to his comment with a somewhat plaintive cri de coeur ‘As a young man I was very interested in people’s lives, how they got from place to place, light their homes and cooked their meals. So I went to the history books. I could find out all about kings and presidents but nothing of their everyday lives. So I decided that history is bunk’. He’d be a happy man now with so many TV programmes and books galore devoted to social history but not so some historians who complain that the pendulum has swung too much the other way.

It would seem HTF had a point about tradition; tradition or traditional tales can be dangerous if we believe them to be the truth. One of the great heroes of the UK is Robin Hood, about whom there has been films and TV programmes a-plenty and his heroic fight against the rich and powerful but very little evidence to prove that he actually existed. Try telling that to the people of Nottingham. Or Yorkshire where many claim our Robin were a Yorkshire lad. And no doubt as one philosopher might have said. ‘ If he didn’t exist, we’d have had to invent him’.

Whichever version one chooses it’s a good rollicking yarn about the put-upon young man determined to bring justice to those in a time – according to the tale – when even Magna Carta did not exist. ‘Feared by the bad, loved by the good’ as one TV series had it. Robin the good guy. Robin the people’s hero. Robin the guy who stands up to the bad guys, the oppressor, the foreign invader. Every country it seems has its own Robin Hood or variant thereof, the folk hero; such people can be found even in religious or semi-religious texts like the Bible or the Ramayana.

And yet all is not as it seems. Real medieval outlaws were seldom the good guys either and they could hardly be described as ‘merry men’ either having to live on their wits and life a hard battle for survival; being merciful was not an option. The earliest records speaking of ‘Robin Hood’ or ‘Robert Hood’ are in fact Court records and the earliest tales were oral which change or adapt or get added to or embellished as they pass down the generations. At the moment there’s not much danger with the tradition of Robin but what it if were to be hijacked as the ‘causa belli’ (the reason for war) in order to settle a grievance?