4 ms·

Australia's most famous historian, Charles Clark (called himself Manning Clark to be special) admitted before he died that he made things up, because he was mor

by 10g1k 3y ago

Australia's most famous historian, Charles Clark (called himself Manning Clark to be special) admitted before he died that he made things up, because he was more interested in telling a story fitting his own ideas, rather than reporting facts. They still name roads and such after the guy.

ggm 3y ago
This is an exceptionally hot take. Manning was Charles Manning Hope Clark. You can verify this easily. His status in Australian history is mixed, because of the strong left/right axis of history as a field in Australia. Manning Clark was unquestionably of the left. The Australian, and its tame philosopher-historian Gerard Henderson makes much of this, and Manning Clark being awarded an order of Lenin for history by the Soviets. Guess what? The Australian, Keith Windschuttle and others reject Aboriginal "black armband" history, working class history, and dislike Manning Clark immensely. They are unquestionably of the right (side) I suspect you're partisan in this war. "making things up" has been part of what Historians do since Thucydides. We don't call it making things up but any time you see the word "infer" you can go there. History is complicated. Even documents don't tell the whole story. Do you think Cabinet Minutes record verbatim what everyone said?
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  >"making things up" has been part of what Historians do since Thucydides historians up until quite recently had nothing to do with the modern academic profession. they were paid writers who made tons of stuff up to sing praises to whomever would pay them.
- thagsimmons 3y ago
  Reading Windschuttle's "Fabrication of Aboriginal History" along with the heavily critical responses in "Whitewash" was a fascinating intellectual exercise. I went in quite neutral on the issue and came out convinced that, while there are some factual issues in Winschuttle's account, the thrust of his argument was correct and that Australian history was in deep trouble as a discipline. The essays in Whitewash show all the weaknesses described in the article above - they are filled with motivated reasoning by people who are very strongly constrained in the conclusions they are able to reach, both by ideology and by social pressures from their peers. https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/1876492058/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/1876492058/ref=dbs_a_de... https://www.amazon.com/Whitewash-Windschuttles-Fabrication-Aboriginal-Melbourne/dp/0975076906 https://www.amazon.com/Whitewash-Windschuttles-Fabrication-A...
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/1876492058/ https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/1876492058/ >$900, oof. Archive.org has a scan: https://archive.org/details/fabrication-of-aboriginal-history-vol-1-van-diemens-land https://archive.org/details/fabrication-of-aboriginal-histor...
  - ggm 3y ago
    If you want another example of this, Try "Haig's Command: A Reassessment" by Denis Winter. Winter had access to documents held in the Australian war memorial archives which strongly disagree with official war history, because they're the input texts before the official edit. He drives very hard to this being a whitewash by the establishment of Haig's command. The counter view is that it's entirely normal editing, He's displaying the not uncommon Australian/Canadian/New-Zealand dislike of Haig because Haig used the colonial forces as shock troops and then played down their role in the turn-around to attrition warfare, and he's probably also strongly leftist and anti-establishment. It's a great read, but unquestionably one-eyed. I don't agree with you about Windschuttle but I am also very biassed against him by his continued association with the News Ltd schools of journalism which is a strongly rightist world view. I could believe he's a good historian. He's not in any sense the neutral arbiter. I think he would be amongst the first to deny it. His primary vocal opponent in the press here in Oz (Robert Manne) is equally one-eyed and at times, more passionate than accurate. I'm not sure the practice of history in Oz is any better or worse than anywhere else to be honest. I miss Eric Hobsbawm, who never hid his marxist affiliations. Hobsbawm absolutely hated counter-factuals. I rather like them but they're fiction, not history.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      But let's be honest, regardless of all the work Haig did after the warbto support veterans, militarily he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Sure, we argue from hindsight. Also true, the opposition wasn't much better. Also true, most WW1 commanders were better than what we make them today. And Haig was no Cadorna or Hötzendorf. The big mistake Haig made, or the thing he didn't see, was IMHO how the war was fought and won on the Western Front. He wanted a breakthrough, instead he got a war of attrition. One the Entente was winning. Haig went from attempted breakthrough to winning, without realizing why his strategy worked. Because one can fight a war of attrition without sacrificing as much of your own men as the Entente did. How the Entente reacted to the Kaiserschlacht so, well, that was the right reaction: let the Germans leave their fortified positions, outrun their logistics, and sacrifice some ground until the enemy runs out of steam. Then counter attack. That way, you don't even have to break through the enemies lines as they are already abandonned and unmanned. No idea how much influence Haig had on this so. At least the authors you mentioned argue based on primary sources and facts. As oppossed to people using autobiographies and post-war memoires of WW2 generals.
- 10g1k 3y ago
  I haven't read anything by Windschuttle. But Charles Clark famously declared that he was pushing "my kind of history", which was a poetic and spitually uplifting narrative in his opinion. Shortly before his death, he gave an interview about this topic, admitted he had fabricated many things, but believed his motive was sufficient excuse for doing so. You can equivocate all you want about inferring and complication, but he actually admitted it. The "You're probably a [insert anything]!" is one of those pesky little logical fallacies intended to divert attention from the subject.
  - ggm 3y ago
    So don't read him. Call a meeting of the historian club and have him expelled. But, be prepared to find out Windschuttle, and all the other "real" historians committed grave faults, sins of omission, partial readings, because everybody does it. I'm not trying to divert, I think you've missed a point. Clark was truthful about his craft. You somehow seem to think that everyone else has no faults? Am I misunderstanding and you realise all historians select, sample and therefore distort? Maybe the central problem is knowing how much he made up.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > The "You're probably a [insert anything]!" is one of those pesky little logical fallacies intended to divert attention from the subject. It's shaming language meant to shutdown a discussion so that the predetermined conclusion held by the shamer cannot be disputed. "If you think $FOO you're probably a Nazi/wife-beater/misogynist" isn't meant to make you rethink your argument, it's meant to shut you up. After all, what would be the point of calling a Nazi a Nazi? They already know what they are and don't care. But calling a well-intentioned person a Nazi does make them pause, even if only for self-reflection, and does make them shut up, because they don't want to be a Nazi or to appear as one.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > We don't call it making things up but any time you see the word "infer" you can go there. If things are not presented correctly as being inferences, then that's the problem. I don't know if that's the case here, but there's a big difference between presenting your own imaginings as facts, and presenting them as theories.

by 10g1k 3y ago

ggm 3y ago

This is an exceptionally hot take. Manning was Charles Manning Hope Clark. You can verify this easily. His status in Australian history is mixed, because of the strong left/right axis of history as a field in Australia. Manning Clark was unquestionably of the left. The Australian, and its tame philosopher-historian Gerard Henderson makes much of this, and Manning Clark being awarded an order of Lenin for history by the Soviets. Guess what? The Australian, Keith Windschuttle and others reject Aboriginal "black armband" history, working class history, and dislike Manning Clark immensely. They are unquestionably of the right (side) I suspect you're partisan in this war. "making things up" has been part of what Historians do since Thucydides. We don't call it making things up but any time you see the word "infer" you can go there. History is complicated. Even documents don't tell the whole story. Do you think Cabinet Minutes record verbatim what everyone said?

Almondsetat 3y ago
>"making things up" has been part of what Historians do since Thucydides historians up until quite recently had nothing to do with the modern academic profession. they were paid writers who made tons of stuff up to sing praises to whomever would pay them.
thagsimmons 3y ago
Reading Windschuttle's "Fabrication of Aboriginal History" along with the heavily critical responses in "Whitewash" was a fascinating intellectual exercise. I went in quite neutral on the issue and came out convinced that, while there are some factual issues in Winschuttle's account, the thrust of his argument was correct and that Australian history was in deep trouble as a discipline. The essays in Whitewash show all the weaknesses described in the article above - they are filled with motivated reasoning by people who are very strongly constrained in the conclusions they are able to reach, both by ideology and by social pressures from their peers. https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/1876492058/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/1876492058/ref=dbs_a_de... https://www.amazon.com/Whitewash-Windschuttles-Fabrication-Aboriginal-Melbourne/dp/0975076906 https://www.amazon.com/Whitewash-Windschuttles-Fabrication-A...
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/1876492058/ https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/1876492058/ >$900, oof. Archive.org has a scan: https://archive.org/details/fabrication-of-aboriginal-history-vol-1-van-diemens-land https://archive.org/details/fabrication-of-aboriginal-histor...
- ggm 3y ago
  If you want another example of this, Try "Haig's Command: A Reassessment" by Denis Winter. Winter had access to documents held in the Australian war memorial archives which strongly disagree with official war history, because they're the input texts before the official edit. He drives very hard to this being a whitewash by the establishment of Haig's command. The counter view is that it's entirely normal editing, He's displaying the not uncommon Australian/Canadian/New-Zealand dislike of Haig because Haig used the colonial forces as shock troops and then played down their role in the turn-around to attrition warfare, and he's probably also strongly leftist and anti-establishment. It's a great read, but unquestionably one-eyed. I don't agree with you about Windschuttle but I am also very biassed against him by his continued association with the News Ltd schools of journalism which is a strongly rightist world view. I could believe he's a good historian. He's not in any sense the neutral arbiter. I think he would be amongst the first to deny it. His primary vocal opponent in the press here in Oz (Robert Manne) is equally one-eyed and at times, more passionate than accurate. I'm not sure the practice of history in Oz is any better or worse than anywhere else to be honest. I miss Eric Hobsbawm, who never hid his marxist affiliations. Hobsbawm absolutely hated counter-factuals. I rather like them but they're fiction, not history.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    But let's be honest, regardless of all the work Haig did after the warbto support veterans, militarily he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Sure, we argue from hindsight. Also true, the opposition wasn't much better. Also true, most WW1 commanders were better than what we make them today. And Haig was no Cadorna or Hötzendorf. The big mistake Haig made, or the thing he didn't see, was IMHO how the war was fought and won on the Western Front. He wanted a breakthrough, instead he got a war of attrition. One the Entente was winning. Haig went from attempted breakthrough to winning, without realizing why his strategy worked. Because one can fight a war of attrition without sacrificing as much of your own men as the Entente did. How the Entente reacted to the Kaiserschlacht so, well, that was the right reaction: let the Germans leave their fortified positions, outrun their logistics, and sacrifice some ground until the enemy runs out of steam. Then counter attack. That way, you don't even have to break through the enemies lines as they are already abandonned and unmanned. No idea how much influence Haig had on this so. At least the authors you mentioned argue based on primary sources and facts. As oppossed to people using autobiographies and post-war memoires of WW2 generals.
10g1k 3y ago
I haven't read anything by Windschuttle. But Charles Clark famously declared that he was pushing "my kind of history", which was a poetic and spitually uplifting narrative in his opinion. Shortly before his death, he gave an interview about this topic, admitted he had fabricated many things, but believed his motive was sufficient excuse for doing so. You can equivocate all you want about inferring and complication, but he actually admitted it. The "You're probably a [insert anything]!" is one of those pesky little logical fallacies intended to divert attention from the subject.
- ggm 3y ago
  So don't read him. Call a meeting of the historian club and have him expelled. But, be prepared to find out Windschuttle, and all the other "real" historians committed grave faults, sins of omission, partial readings, because everybody does it. I'm not trying to divert, I think you've missed a point. Clark was truthful about his craft. You somehow seem to think that everyone else has no faults? Am I misunderstanding and you realise all historians select, sample and therefore distort? Maybe the central problem is knowing how much he made up.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > The "You're probably a [insert anything]!" is one of those pesky little logical fallacies intended to divert attention from the subject. It's shaming language meant to shutdown a discussion so that the predetermined conclusion held by the shamer cannot be disputed. "If you think $FOO you're probably a Nazi/wife-beater/misogynist" isn't meant to make you rethink your argument, it's meant to shut you up. After all, what would be the point of calling a Nazi a Nazi? They already know what they are and don't care. But calling a well-intentioned person a Nazi does make them pause, even if only for self-reflection, and does make them shut up, because they don't want to be a Nazi or to appear as one.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> We don't call it making things up but any time you see the word "infer" you can go there. If things are not presented correctly as being inferences, then that's the problem. I don't know if that's the case here, but there's a big difference between presenting your own imaginings as facts, and presenting them as theories.