>Presumably it's laity interested in the humanities. So wouldn't they already know this?
Why would they? Did you know anything about any field and at any age? What if they're starting out with history xkcd.com/1053/ style?
Not to mention that tons of people read history (historical accounts, biographies, etc.) as a hobby, and take what thet read at face value, not understanding the inherent biases.
And of course, the article also gives examples, puts the issue in a general perspective, explains some issues associated with it, etc.
It looks like you've only considered the title, as if the post begins and ends at that.
>Which actually makes this empty virtue signaling, regardless of truth value.
I think this is more true of this comment, than of the article.
This ended up being an interesting piece by the end.
The headline and parts of the article suffer a bit from clickbait by conflating the two different ways “revisionist” is used—sometimes to mean revising past precedent with new knowledge, and other times to mean purposely hiding facts about the past (also called negationist history).
Obviously not all history is purposely hiding facts about the past…
But if you ignore that, the author did a good job of explaining how lots of at-one-point accepted history was originally introduced with revisionist/negationist/biased aims. To the point that it’s harder to cleanly separate out all the negationist history than you might think.
So overall an interesting point and a useful reminder of how these interpretations are always in flux. And that that’s okay and healthy.
From memory that's Pierre Vidal Naquet argument against negationnists, that they called themselves revisionists, because it is a legitimate stance in history but that what they are indeed are negationnists.
When we talk about "revisionist history", don't we generally think of people with less than honest intentions deliberately trying to force a narrative? Often or usually by sprinkling untruths and non-facts in?
What the article seems to be arguing is that historians without such dishonest intentions are necessarily reinterpreting history in light of the modern era, and are likely including their own and societal biases in their narrative. and there is no real 'objective' history. Is this news? This is the sort of thing I learned in history class as a teenager (albeit in simplified form). Primary sources are valuable but should be put through the filter of partial knowledge of a situation and personal bias. Secondary sources should be looked at with knowledge of the times around them and the potential biases of the author.
It's the intent that's always defined "revisionist" history to me, and the willingness to include things which are not fact-based, or are counterfactual.
Not just deliberately trying to force a narrative... trying to force a narrative that is contrary to what is commonly accepted to have happened, specifically because their new narrative benefits them financially, politically, socially, or in some other way.
A "revisionist historian", as I understand it, is a manipulator, a con artist, a gaslighter. Someone who is trying to convince people of some history that didn't actually happen, because doing so will enrich them.
This article... seems to try to revise "revisionism"?
> This is the sort of thing I learned in history class as a teenager
My observation from discussion about history (including on HN) is that most people
did not learned the same thing. My own history lessons in high school definitely did not taught that. Instead, many people assume whatever they learned is definite and any new addition or emphasis on something else is bad.
> Primary sources are valuable but should be put through the filter of partial knowledge of a situation and personal bias.
Yes, but also to interpret primary sources, you need to understand quite a lot about that period. What they mean when they say certain words. What knowledge is assumed, what values are assumed by the orignal writer. History is foreign country, it is very easy to misunderstand their priorities or what they write about.
When laypeople say "revisionist history" they often think that, but the term precedes this modern meaning in academic circles and does not have the same meaning.
Somebody who writes about some topic in history from the perspective of women when it has largely only been examined from the perspective of men in prior scholarship is engaged in "revisionist history" but without the connotations of propaganda and poor scholarship.
The core problem here, as is often the problem when HN discusses history as a profession, is that few people here actually have engaged with the profession. So basic jargon of the field is misunderstood.
I'd say this article is a little revisionist itself, especially when it comes to Eusebius, as in nobody really cares about his writings around these parts of the world from where I'm from (Eastern Europe), and, to be honest, I haven't seen Late Antiquity - Moyen Âge French historians mentioning him that often, if at all, either (they're way more fond of Grégoire de Tours, for example).
Nothing bad per se, but as other people have mentioned in this thread, historical revisionism has been used for lots and lots of despicable things in the recent past, including genocide.
Yes, we "all" (I include in here people interested in history) know that nations are "imagined communities" and we extensively like to quote Benedict Anderson on that.
More exactly the "nation" as a term can be (and has been) quite easily de-constructed through revisionist means, but what do you do when the same line of thought is applied almost ad litteram by one of your powerful neighbours who happens to have one of the biggest nuclear arsenals in the world? (because that's what Putin actually said about Ukraine, that they're "not really a nation", that they're an "imagined community")
> historical revisionism has been used for lots and lots of despicable things in the recent past, including genocide.
Historical revisionism is also when those are uncovered later. First obviously, politically you get accusations of revisionism. And also quite literally, you are revising previous history.
> More exactly the "nation" as a term can be (and has been) quite easily de-constructed through revisionist means, but what do you do when the same line of thought is applied almost ad litteram by one of your powerful neighbours who happens to have one of the biggest nuclear arsenals in the world? (because that's what Putin actually said about Ukraine, that they're "not really a nation", that they're an "imagined community")
Then you are doing politics and not history. Putin is not doing history.
All nations were made up at some point and that includes Russia. Maybe especially Russian nation. National movements became popular in 19th century. That is not even revisionism, that is just something most people don't think about.
Nevertheless, Ukrainians have more then proven over very long period they have distinct identity and culture different from Russian one. It is much different culture and country then what you find in Russia.
Later edit: A very big, substantial, part of it, anyway. It is my belief that ignoring that aspect has brought lots of misunderstandings when it comes to history, both on how it is taught and on how it is perceived.
Politics is however not history. When Putin claims those, he is not engaging with history nor trying to interpret it. Instead, he has political project and is actively working toward what he wants to happen.
> Historical revisionism is also when those are uncovered later. First obviously, politically you get accusations of revisionism. And also quite literally, you are revising previous history.
I don’t think any serious person has ever objected to updating history based on a new archaeological discovery, and that’s not what “revisionist history” refers to, at least as I understand it.
> Then you are doing politics and not history.
I’m inclined to agree, and in a certain sense it’s easy to say this about Putin, a politician, but what about when a historian is doing politics under the guise of history? How do we exclude their work from the histories which at least aspire to minimize bias?
> I don’t think any serious person has ever objected to updating history based on a new archaeological discovery, and that’s not what “revisionist history” refers to, at least as I understand it.
I am NOT talking about that nor was person I responded to. What I responded to are frequent situation in which it was not talked about genocide and then history started to talk about those. When by the end of 80ties it became suddenly possible to talk about Stalin/Lenin crimes, that was revisionism too. Because status quo history at that time did not allowed info about Holodomor.
> in a certain sense it’s easy to say this about Putin, a politician,
Oh no, I am saying that Putin is straight up lying about history.
In addition to the other answers, I’ll also put forth the distinction between many individuals lending their unique interpretations based on their individual biases and a politically cohesive batch of historians revising expressly for political activist purposes. This is why academic heterodoxy is important.
Note also that this all mirrors debates about the media, another epistemological institution with a high degree of political homogeneity (and a similar orientation as among historians), which also has a lot of folks who argue that journalists shouldn’t be obliged to pursue objective or neutral narratives because perfect neutrality and objectivity are unachievable (in other words, they implicitly argue that 99.9% objective, neutral reporting is no different than 0%).
I think the main point of the article on Eusebius is not that he is directly relevant today, but that he most prominently marks the turn from the secular historiography we associate with Thucydides to historiography as Christian salvation history as the dominant interpretive framework for more than a millennium after him. And I would say that Eusebius is at least relevant for all Christian denominations that have their roots in the Roman Empire after Constantine, West and East, and even outside, as the existence of some Armenian manuscripts of Eusebius' works indicates.
I'm curious about ancient history when the author of the history apparently wrote it 100+ years after it happened. I can't imagine anyone alive today writing with much authority about 1922. Why should I believe someone like Herodotus could possibly report accurately about things in 50 to 100years before he was born in places he couldn't have possibly been and with no actual proof, just decades of "telephone" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers)
People write about earlier times by studying contemporary written sources and records and looking at archeology from the period. They also use later writers who had used and quoted contemporary sources. They also make inferences based on that material and syntheses of other material. In Herodotus's case, he used sources such as Thersander of Orchomenus, Archias of Sparta, and numerous other named and unnamed sources. He also made stuff up, but that's discouraged in modern history.
There's an interesting chapter preview about his sources here:
There's no guarantee that someone living in 1922 would be more accurate about what happened at that time than a historian writing today. They might have access to more detail, but they can lie, be mistaken, be partial, and so on. Eye witness testimony is often less reliable than a methodical examination of the available evidence, however later that happens.
The answer is that you should not believe that. Herodotus was unable to accurately report on what happened 100 years before he was born. But also, the (popular) books on antiquity I seen made no secret of that. Also, blog articles by historians I have seen were careful to point the same out.
There's no obligation to believe or not believe a source. There are the facts and then there's the interpretation of the facts, the latter is what constitutes history.
The crux is that the interpretation doesn't happen in a void. It's always driven by context in which a record first originated. Historiography isn't just about creating new narratives, it's also re-interpreting existing narratives within their context. Which interpretations of the past exist? Why did a particular narrative become dominant? What motivates historical actors to promote one narrative over another? To what extent are establish facts corroborating with an generally accepted narrative?
For instance, Caesar's De Bello Galico isn't an objective, factual account of his famous campaign to pacify Gaul. It's a textbook example of a narrative of the facts that served different purposes. Here we have a roman warlord who wants to capture the story for posterity, but also leverage his report as a propaganda and finally as an apology geared towards the senate and his enemies.
That doesn't mean we should dismiss De Bello Galico is a worthless account. Its value isn't in gaining a facts based perspective of the different cultures that populated Gaul some 2.000 years ago. Instead, it's an unique insight in the mind of a roman general and what motivates him to write a particular narrative.
Then there are the biases and opinions of the contemporary historian interpreting De Bello Galico today. That's where it gets interesting. The art / science of history is akin to watching the past through the back mirror in your car: perspectives and interpretations change as more time and distance passes by, as well as the mirror itself warping the image over time.
Ultimately, we are all slaves of the arrow of time. The idea that we can somehow capture the past in excruciating detail is almost predicated on the fact that you have to pretty much build a static, frozen version of the Universe at a particular moment in time. That's - of course - science fiction. So, when looking at the past, one has to always give countenance to the fact that you'd do so through the imperfect proxy of historical records, the fallible memory of eye witnesses and a sampling of artifacts. There's just no escaping that reality.
> Why should I believe someone like Herodotus could possibly report accurately about things in 50 to 100years before he was born in places he couldn't have possibly been and with no actual proof, just decades of "telephone"
Modern historians _don't_ take ancient historians at their word, in general. No-one _actually_ thinks that Caligula made his horse a consul or a priest, say. There's very limited contemporary information on a lot of ancient history, and they have to work with what they have, but they're generally skeptical.
A very interesting read! I've often thought about the different interpretations of past actions but hadn't thoroughly considered how historians as individuals cast their own interpretation on events.
I suspect the reason for this piece is this bit buried in the middle:
> It’s in the context of that reevaluation that we recently experienced a furor over which date to assign to the beginning of American history. There are many candidates to consider: [...] Such debates, arising from different perspectives on the same evidence and constituting classic instances of revisionist history, are unlikely ever to be fully stilled
I.e. this is probably to be read in the context of an academic (or political) dispute about that subject. I guess someone proposed to move "the beginning of American history", someone else objected using the term "revisionism", and James M. Banner Jr. (a venerable 87-year-old historian) decided to weigh in and remind people of old truths about the field.
Personally, I think he's stretching the term a bit, at least in the modern (and negative) understanding of it; it's obviously true that the practice of historians requires constant re-evaluation, but the point should be to keep such efforts free of clear agendas - which is what "revisionist" tendencies typically have.
I searched on Google before I posted, your Atlantic link comes up second in a Google search. The first two links on DDG (which I don't use) are for "The Patriot Post", which I've never heard of. If I search Google for "1619 revisionist patriot" the Patriot Post links don't come up, if I add "1619 revisionist patriot post" they finally do.
To some extent you can control the Overton Window by controlling search results.
Historians used the term first and in the context of their profession it does not have the connotation of working backwards from ideology and agenda. A primary project in the last 40 years of history research has been explicitly called "revisionist history" in the sense that professionals are re-examining well-trodden territory but from new and broader perspectives.
Reminds me of how certain folks inside and outside of the media argued that media bias is impossible to completely eradicate thus the media should go all-in on its biases. According to them, the pursuits of objectivity and neutrality hold no value unless they can be perfected.
Objectivity holds such value that falsely pretending to be objective causes far more harm than being clear, honest and uncompromising with one's biases.
It's not that it's "not worth trying" it's that the "trying" causes far more harm than "not bothering to try"
> Objectivity holds such value that falsely pretending to be objective causes far more harm than being clear, honest and uncompromising with one's biases.
I agree that there is harm done when a news source fails to be objective, but again, objectivity isn't a binary which invalidates the implication that a media which is not 100% objective is as bad or worse than one which is 0% objective. I would also be less bothered if we had a diversely biased media landscape, such that various biases "cancel each other out", but instead we have (more or less) a monoculture among mainstream media.
Moreover, what the "the media should be biased" people have delivered is not a media which is "honest about its biases", the new activist media still pretends to be as objective as the older ethical media had ever done, but without actually making nearly the effort. This is strictly less honest. I'm firmly of the opinion that activism in our epistemological institutions is what is driving partisanship and extremism which in turn makes our government increasingly dysfunctional.
Article seems to be engaging in a bit of sophistry. Yes you can claim historical revisionism has been "widely applied" when you redefine it in the broadest possible way that mostly ignores the context in which it is being used in modern discourse. I might be assuming the worst here, could just be an instance of click bait. If you changed the title of the article it's a fairly dry explainer piece about historiography and the reliability of sources. With the title it feels like somebody performing transparent apologetics for the politically charged historical revisionism trend.
This is, unfortunately, somewhat similar to the use of "crypto" today.
"Revisionism" has been used in academic historian circles for decades and does not carry the negative connotation that is widespread today. That came later. You've got the changed meaning backwards.
It's incredible that tax dollars go to funding the publication of this kind of material with a government seal of approval on it! Certainly much of history is a matter of interpretation, certain historical works are more trustworthy than others, and of course there are disagreements. But what I take as the thesis is essentially that truth about the past is not really something we can know.
Take this statement from the article:
"The results have been profound. Historians now take it for granted that it’s impossible to understand any part of the past without taking into account the realities of all, and all kinds of, people."
No source cited, no names listed. A "fact" floating freely in midair. Pure propaganda.
49 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadWhy would they? Did you know anything about any field and at any age? What if they're starting out with history xkcd.com/1053/ style?
Not to mention that tons of people read history (historical accounts, biographies, etc.) as a hobby, and take what thet read at face value, not understanding the inherent biases.
And of course, the article also gives examples, puts the issue in a general perspective, explains some issues associated with it, etc.
It looks like you've only considered the title, as if the post begins and ends at that.
>Which actually makes this empty virtue signaling, regardless of truth value.
I think this is more true of this comment, than of the article.
The headline and parts of the article suffer a bit from clickbait by conflating the two different ways “revisionist” is used—sometimes to mean revising past precedent with new knowledge, and other times to mean purposely hiding facts about the past (also called negationist history).
Obviously not all history is purposely hiding facts about the past…
But if you ignore that, the author did a good job of explaining how lots of at-one-point accepted history was originally introduced with revisionist/negationist/biased aims. To the point that it’s harder to cleanly separate out all the negationist history than you might think.
So overall an interesting point and a useful reminder of how these interpretations are always in flux. And that that’s okay and healthy.
Ironically, the old anti negationnist website I found the following link on is called anti-Rev : http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/VidalNaquet92c/
What the article seems to be arguing is that historians without such dishonest intentions are necessarily reinterpreting history in light of the modern era, and are likely including their own and societal biases in their narrative. and there is no real 'objective' history. Is this news? This is the sort of thing I learned in history class as a teenager (albeit in simplified form). Primary sources are valuable but should be put through the filter of partial knowledge of a situation and personal bias. Secondary sources should be looked at with knowledge of the times around them and the potential biases of the author.
It's the intent that's always defined "revisionist" history to me, and the willingness to include things which are not fact-based, or are counterfactual.
A "revisionist historian", as I understand it, is a manipulator, a con artist, a gaslighter. Someone who is trying to convince people of some history that didn't actually happen, because doing so will enrich them.
This article... seems to try to revise "revisionism"?
My observation from discussion about history (including on HN) is that most people did not learned the same thing. My own history lessons in high school definitely did not taught that. Instead, many people assume whatever they learned is definite and any new addition or emphasis on something else is bad.
> Primary sources are valuable but should be put through the filter of partial knowledge of a situation and personal bias.
Yes, but also to interpret primary sources, you need to understand quite a lot about that period. What they mean when they say certain words. What knowledge is assumed, what values are assumed by the orignal writer. History is foreign country, it is very easy to misunderstand their priorities or what they write about.
Somebody who writes about some topic in history from the perspective of women when it has largely only been examined from the perspective of men in prior scholarship is engaged in "revisionist history" but without the connotations of propaganda and poor scholarship.
The core problem here, as is often the problem when HN discusses history as a profession, is that few people here actually have engaged with the profession. So basic jargon of the field is misunderstood.
Yes, we "all" (I include in here people interested in history) know that nations are "imagined communities" and we extensively like to quote Benedict Anderson on that.
More exactly the "nation" as a term can be (and has been) quite easily de-constructed through revisionist means, but what do you do when the same line of thought is applied almost ad litteram by one of your powerful neighbours who happens to have one of the biggest nuclear arsenals in the world? (because that's what Putin actually said about Ukraine, that they're "not really a nation", that they're an "imagined community")
Historical revisionism is also when those are uncovered later. First obviously, politically you get accusations of revisionism. And also quite literally, you are revising previous history.
> More exactly the "nation" as a term can be (and has been) quite easily de-constructed through revisionist means, but what do you do when the same line of thought is applied almost ad litteram by one of your powerful neighbours who happens to have one of the biggest nuclear arsenals in the world? (because that's what Putin actually said about Ukraine, that they're "not really a nation", that they're an "imagined community")
Then you are doing politics and not history. Putin is not doing history.
All nations were made up at some point and that includes Russia. Maybe especially Russian nation. National movements became popular in 19th century. That is not even revisionism, that is just something most people don't think about.
Nevertheless, Ukrainians have more then proven over very long period they have distinct identity and culture different from Russian one. It is much different culture and country then what you find in Russia.
History is politics.
Later edit: A very big, substantial, part of it, anyway. It is my belief that ignoring that aspect has brought lots of misunderstandings when it comes to history, both on how it is taught and on how it is perceived.
I don’t think any serious person has ever objected to updating history based on a new archaeological discovery, and that’s not what “revisionist history” refers to, at least as I understand it.
> Then you are doing politics and not history.
I’m inclined to agree, and in a certain sense it’s easy to say this about Putin, a politician, but what about when a historian is doing politics under the guise of history? How do we exclude their work from the histories which at least aspire to minimize bias?
I am NOT talking about that nor was person I responded to. What I responded to are frequent situation in which it was not talked about genocide and then history started to talk about those. When by the end of 80ties it became suddenly possible to talk about Stalin/Lenin crimes, that was revisionism too. Because status quo history at that time did not allowed info about Holodomor.
> in a certain sense it’s easy to say this about Putin, a politician,
Oh no, I am saying that Putin is straight up lying about history.
Note also that this all mirrors debates about the media, another epistemological institution with a high degree of political homogeneity (and a similar orientation as among historians), which also has a lot of folks who argue that journalists shouldn’t be obliged to pursue objective or neutral narratives because perfect neutrality and objectivity are unachievable (in other words, they implicitly argue that 99.9% objective, neutral reporting is no different than 0%).
There's an interesting chapter preview about his sources here:
https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004217584/B9789004217...
There's no guarantee that someone living in 1922 would be more accurate about what happened at that time than a historian writing today. They might have access to more detail, but they can lie, be mistaken, be partial, and so on. Eye witness testimony is often less reliable than a methodical examination of the available evidence, however later that happens.
There's no obligation to believe or not believe a source. There are the facts and then there's the interpretation of the facts, the latter is what constitutes history.
The crux is that the interpretation doesn't happen in a void. It's always driven by context in which a record first originated. Historiography isn't just about creating new narratives, it's also re-interpreting existing narratives within their context. Which interpretations of the past exist? Why did a particular narrative become dominant? What motivates historical actors to promote one narrative over another? To what extent are establish facts corroborating with an generally accepted narrative?
For instance, Caesar's De Bello Galico isn't an objective, factual account of his famous campaign to pacify Gaul. It's a textbook example of a narrative of the facts that served different purposes. Here we have a roman warlord who wants to capture the story for posterity, but also leverage his report as a propaganda and finally as an apology geared towards the senate and his enemies.
That doesn't mean we should dismiss De Bello Galico is a worthless account. Its value isn't in gaining a facts based perspective of the different cultures that populated Gaul some 2.000 years ago. Instead, it's an unique insight in the mind of a roman general and what motivates him to write a particular narrative.
Then there are the biases and opinions of the contemporary historian interpreting De Bello Galico today. That's where it gets interesting. The art / science of history is akin to watching the past through the back mirror in your car: perspectives and interpretations change as more time and distance passes by, as well as the mirror itself warping the image over time.
Ultimately, we are all slaves of the arrow of time. The idea that we can somehow capture the past in excruciating detail is almost predicated on the fact that you have to pretty much build a static, frozen version of the Universe at a particular moment in time. That's - of course - science fiction. So, when looking at the past, one has to always give countenance to the fact that you'd do so through the imperfect proxy of historical records, the fallible memory of eye witnesses and a sampling of artifacts. There's just no escaping that reality.
Modern historians _don't_ take ancient historians at their word, in general. No-one _actually_ thinks that Caligula made his horse a consul or a priest, say. There's very limited contemporary information on a lot of ancient history, and they have to work with what they have, but they're generally skeptical.
> It’s in the context of that reevaluation that we recently experienced a furor over which date to assign to the beginning of American history. There are many candidates to consider: [...] Such debates, arising from different perspectives on the same evidence and constituting classic instances of revisionist history, are unlikely ever to be fully stilled
I.e. this is probably to be read in the context of an academic (or political) dispute about that subject. I guess someone proposed to move "the beginning of American history", someone else objected using the term "revisionism", and James M. Banner Jr. (a venerable 87-year-old historian) decided to weigh in and remind people of old truths about the field.
Personally, I think he's stretching the term a bit, at least in the modern (and negative) understanding of it; it's obviously true that the practice of historians requires constant re-evaluation, but the point should be to keep such efforts free of clear agendas - which is what "revisionist" tendencies typically have.
Do a search for "1619 revisionist" if you want to know the context.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/12/media/new-york-times-1619-pro...
To some extent you can control the Overton Window by controlling search results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history
Searching for a link (in English), I discovered I already brought it up on HN about 6 years ago :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12652044
But I'm afraid most people use this "discovery" as an excuse to use History as a tool/weapon to achieve whatever their objectives are.
Objectivity holds such value that falsely pretending to be objective causes far more harm than being clear, honest and uncompromising with one's biases.
It's not that it's "not worth trying" it's that the "trying" causes far more harm than "not bothering to try"
I agree that there is harm done when a news source fails to be objective, but again, objectivity isn't a binary which invalidates the implication that a media which is not 100% objective is as bad or worse than one which is 0% objective. I would also be less bothered if we had a diversely biased media landscape, such that various biases "cancel each other out", but instead we have (more or less) a monoculture among mainstream media.
Moreover, what the "the media should be biased" people have delivered is not a media which is "honest about its biases", the new activist media still pretends to be as objective as the older ethical media had ever done, but without actually making nearly the effort. This is strictly less honest. I'm firmly of the opinion that activism in our epistemological institutions is what is driving partisanship and extremism which in turn makes our government increasingly dysfunctional.
"Revisionism" has been used in academic historian circles for decades and does not carry the negative connotation that is widespread today. That came later. You've got the changed meaning backwards.
If you can’t provide a link, it didn’t happen.
Take this statement from the article:
"The results have been profound. Historians now take it for granted that it’s impossible to understand any part of the past without taking into account the realities of all, and all kinds of, people."
No source cited, no names listed. A "fact" floating freely in midair. Pure propaganda.