5 ms·

I think its much more complex than just "the facts don't change." We change, all the time, and are interested in different things and so pay attention to differ

I think its much more complex than just "the facts don't change." We change, all the time, and are interested in different things and so pay attention to different things and choose to tell different stories. To use the historiography of the US Civil War since 1945 as an example: From roughly 1945-75 the general focus in Civil War studies was on the life of the individual soldier, as a generation molded by service in WW2 tried to relate their experience to the most violent struggle in American history. From roughly 1975-1990 the focus was more on the Civil War as a struggle over slavery, as a generation molded by the Civil Rights movement tried to relate their experience to the most violent struggle in American history. There was a short era in the 1990's where women- and broader social history- and the US Civil War became the focus, as people tried to grapple with the way that the most violent struggle in American history had totally remade society as a way of relating their own experiences with a rapidly changing society. And finally, I would say that the past 15 years of study in have largely been shaped by a focus on Reconstruction, as people have suddenly grown interested in how a militarily dominant US Army, victorious in battle and occupying a restive population, lost a decade long guerrilla war, withdrew, and watched the collapse of the political regimes left behind. Obviously there was research on all of these topics in all of these eras. I'm just making subjective summaries of where I've seen the most intense activity in history research during these eras. (So, e.g. Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote give way to James McPherson give way to Drew Gilpin Faust give way to Allan Guelzo and Brooks Simpson as the most prominent Civil War scholar of each era.)

bilbo0s 7y ago
I think that kind of proves the OP's point though. That people come along and "create new angles" an awful lot in history. You don't really need much data, if you need any at all. And at the same time, like journalists, historians want something that "bleeds" so it can "lede". Wall Street Journal, CNN, FOX, The Economist, etc etc etc, will all write endlessly on what this or that senator meant in the debate on this or that bill. Those outlets have audiences many times larger than C-SPAN, which simply televises the debate and the vote, along with a link to the exact text of the bill on its website. You know why no one watches C-SPAN? Because facts like that are boring as tar, and no one cares about them anyway. (We generally adhere to our own worldviews on subjects like that in any case.) Same with the Civil War example, if people really wanted to know the reason the states began fighting, they could just read the various Declarations of Causes. Written by the people who seceded themselves, declaring exactly why they intended to secede and fight. You know why practically no one has read any of the Declarations of Causes? Because they're boring as watching paint dry, and no one cares about them anyway. (We generally adhere to our own worldviews on subjects like that in any case.) In such an environment, you need something new and imaginative to capture peoples' imaginations. That's just the reality of the state of the study of History right now.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  > facts like that are boring as tar More to the point, typical cable news viewers much prefer someone to tell them what to think. There are plenty of people who watch C-SPAN, but watching C-SPAN lacks context and doesn’t give the full story anyway; maybe half of the politicians at any given hearing are spewing ignorant misunderstandings or deliberate misinformation, grandstanding, and hoping for soundbites that will please their supporters when replayed on the news. The folks on the other side of the hearing tend to be circumspect, to put it mildly, because there are serious risks to revealing too much publicly. Others read transcripts of un-televised hearings, long investigative reports, government documents, independent statistical analyses, etc. But most people don’t have the time or spare thinking space to figure out their own unique conclusions starting from primary sources about every possible topic. > could just read the various Declarations of Causes First, it’s not clear who you mean by “practically no one”, but I’m pretty sure that any undergraduate Civil War history course is going to involve reading these. Many high school students surely read them. But if you take a few minutes to read them, they make it very clear that perpetuating slavery was the Confederate rebels’ primary concern. Which is the same thing most historians will tell you if you ask for a 1-sentence (or 1 page) summary of the war. Here’s the second sentence of the Wikipedia article about the Civil War: “The Civil War began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people.” But that’s not the whole story of a gigantic war involving millions of people. It is true that in the US South, white elites have undertaken a century-long propaganda effort (with help from a few fringe revisionist historians) to minimize the public’s impression that the Civil War was about slavery and to rehabilitate the Confederacy. This has been largely ineffective at changing the minds of historians, but if you ask many modern-day “conservatives” who are caught up in that propaganda cloud, you may hear that the Civil War was about “states’ rights” and that slavery was a marginal consideration.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    that's unfair, I love to think, but when my mechanic has a recommendation, I take it. I don't want to have to be as knowledgeable as my mechanic.

bilbo0s 7y ago

I think that kind of proves the OP's point though. That people come along and "create new angles" an awful lot in history. You don't really need much data, if you need any at all. And at the same time, like journalists, historians want something that "bleeds" so it can "lede". Wall Street Journal, CNN, FOX, The Economist, etc etc etc, will all write endlessly on what this or that senator meant in the debate on this or that bill. Those outlets have audiences many times larger than C-SPAN, which simply televises the debate and the vote, along with a link to the exact text of the bill on its website. You know why no one watches C-SPAN? Because facts like that are boring as tar, and no one cares about them anyway. (We generally adhere to our own worldviews on subjects like that in any case.) Same with the Civil War example, if people really wanted to know the reason the states began fighting, they could just read the various Declarations of Causes. Written by the people who seceded themselves, declaring exactly why they intended to secede and fight. You know why practically no one has read any of the Declarations of Causes? Because they're boring as watching paint dry, and no one cares about them anyway. (We generally adhere to our own worldviews on subjects like that in any case.) In such an environment, you need something new and imaginative to capture peoples' imaginations. That's just the reality of the state of the study of History right now.

jacobolus 7y ago
> facts like that are boring as tar More to the point, typical cable news viewers much prefer someone to tell them what to think. There are plenty of people who watch C-SPAN, but watching C-SPAN lacks context and doesn’t give the full story anyway; maybe half of the politicians at any given hearing are spewing ignorant misunderstandings or deliberate misinformation, grandstanding, and hoping for soundbites that will please their supporters when replayed on the news. The folks on the other side of the hearing tend to be circumspect, to put it mildly, because there are serious risks to revealing too much publicly. Others read transcripts of un-televised hearings, long investigative reports, government documents, independent statistical analyses, etc. But most people don’t have the time or spare thinking space to figure out their own unique conclusions starting from primary sources about every possible topic. > could just read the various Declarations of Causes First, it’s not clear who you mean by “practically no one”, but I’m pretty sure that any undergraduate Civil War history course is going to involve reading these. Many high school students surely read them. But if you take a few minutes to read them, they make it very clear that perpetuating slavery was the Confederate rebels’ primary concern. Which is the same thing most historians will tell you if you ask for a 1-sentence (or 1 page) summary of the war. Here’s the second sentence of the Wikipedia article about the Civil War: “The Civil War began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people.” But that’s not the whole story of a gigantic war involving millions of people. It is true that in the US South, white elites have undertaken a century-long propaganda effort (with help from a few fringe revisionist historians) to minimize the public’s impression that the Civil War was about slavery and to rehabilitate the Confederacy. This has been largely ineffective at changing the minds of historians, but if you ask many modern-day “conservatives” who are caught up in that propaganda cloud, you may hear that the Civil War was about “states’ rights” and that slavery was a marginal consideration.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- celticmusic 7y ago
  that's unfair, I love to think, but when my mechanic has a recommendation, I take it. I don't want to have to be as knowledgeable as my mechanic.