The relevance of European and American conceptions of history

[Tom 1]

Well, no one has so far. If some low IQ person sends you a nasty private message, I'll talk to them for you.

 

[Chesterton]

This is from four years ago. I thought it was kinda good.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Yes, being forced to live in a cell and to do labour without a pay is slavery.

I'd call it working for 'room and board'.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

I think you're right. I live in Virginia. We feel pretty good if we have buildings that are a couple, three hundred years old. There is a sense in which Americans think of history as beginning with America. It's the kind of arrogance that one has when they think that every life that came before them was simply a prelude to their own. It's the product of glorious individualism. But, more than that, a lot of folks just want to forget we enslaved one group of people and nearly eradicated another. The stark contrast between that and our high ideals is simply too painful to admit. If we were willing to admit the reality, we would acknowledge that the repercussions of our short history have persisted.

I think there is a nagging feeling among many Christians that Anglo/American history began with Abraham.

I think white people are forward looking. The past is interesting and foundational, but not binding.

And...we got our revenge on England.

 

[agapelove]

We keep circling round to the points you aren’t looking at, the fundamental difference between building a set of opinions on something phony vs something real. I don’t see a problem with understanding Hitler - I read sections of mein kampf at A level. The question is what do you do with a Hitler? WWII was probably inevitable, but the Holocaust wasn’t. The only thing to do with someone like Hitler is to eliminate them. Understanding how he managed to get into power however holds some potentially useful lessons. So inclined to talk about his achievements- ? I don’t know what you mean by that, but if the people at the time who were trying to avoid war at any costs had remained in charge instead of Churchill, today’s Europe would be a very different place. Armchair pacifism doesn’t alter that one iota.

Are you saying the nasty parts of Churchill are “phony” and only his accomplishments are real and worth building a set of opinions on? Because it kind of sounds like it.

WW2 was inevitable. Kenyan colonization, air bombing Iraq, and killing Sinn Feinners wasn’t. Natives who rebelled in mandated areas were far from “Hitlers” who needed to be eliminated. Trying to justify violent imperialism with maintaining democratic strongholds is a lie that colonizers tell of westernizing backwards people for their own good. It’s about power.

You are acting like I think Churchill’s involvement in WW2 is bad. Quite the opposite, that is the one great thing about him.

 

[Tom 1]

Are you saying the nasty parts of Churchill are “phony” and only his accomplishments are real and worth building a set of opinions on? Because it kind of sounds like it.

WW2 was inevitable. Kenyan colonization, air bombing Iraq, and killing Sinn Feinners wasn’t. Natives who rebelled in mandated areas were far from “Hitlers” who needed to be eliminated. Trying to justify violent imperialism with maintaining democratic strongholds is a lie that colonizers tell of westernizing backwards people for their own good. It’s about power.

You are acting like I think Churchill’s involvement in WW2 is bad. Quite the opposite, that is the one great thing about him.

No, I mean your whole premise is phony, your view of history as something you are in a position to make total judgements about, making declarations about this or that person or situation you quite obviously know very little about. It’s pure fantasy, this whole notion that the world can somehow be rearranged by whitewashing the past to make it fit into some superficial conception of what ‘should’ be. But you are entirely unable to see that, unfortunately.

 

[agapelove]

No, I mean your whole premise is phony, your view of history as something you are in a position to make total judgements about, making declarations about this or that person or situation you quite obviously know very little about. It’s pure fantasy, this whole notion that the world can somehow be rearranged by whitewashing the past to make it fit into some superficial conception of what ‘should’ be. But you are entirely unable to see that, unfortunately.

History is written by the winners, in this case white people who colonized, that’s what whitewashing history means. I think you are confusing mentioning the perspective of the colonized as me “making total judgments”. What have I ‘totally’ judged? What have I said that’s untruthful? Until you can point that out I think you have no argument against me beside feeling offended.

 

[J_B_]

This is very true. I feel the modern world in general, but the New World states like the US, Australia, Canada, etc. have a profound lack of sense of the past. In a way, they have the same ideas as mediaeval Europeans, lumping everything beyond a century or so into a single 'ancient' time. This idea that these threads don't directly impact you is laughable, but a culture that doesn't celebrate their past ultimately forgets it. I feel there is far more of an historic consciousness in Europe, but I say that as an outsider. I recently saw attempts to put back up statues of Mary in Prague thrown down as the Hapsburg Austro-Hungary crumbled, and jockeying over the borders of old Hungary in eastern Europe; or how money used to depict old mediaeval kings there, too. National heroes are as varied as Skanderbeg, Barbarossa, Robin Hood, Boudicca, Caesar, etc. I think the New countries simply have too little history there, no old heroes, and there seems to be a clear starting point with colonisation or Independance, that what came before seems less relevant. It is psychological blindness.

I think it's more an effect of democratization - along the lines of Tocqueville that democracies tend to the lowest common denominator. In other words, people in general have always had a poor grip on the past, and it has always been an elite few who know history well. Democracy, however, makes people think they are equal in all things (or even insist upon it). Therefore, I know as much as a doctor, engineer, lawyer, etc. I recently had a conversation with one of my kids where I had to explain that you don't walk in and tell the doctor how to treat you. You explain your symptoms and let them determine the course of treatment.

The elite used to embody history in cultural symbols (such as the U.S.'s upcoming 4th of July), but now everyone "knows" that the Founding Fathers were just a bunch of selfish pigs. The result is reaching extremes that are now being called the "cancel culture", where no one is relevant but me, all are here to serve me, and I don't have to forgive anyone their mistakes.

 

[Chesterton]

History is written by the winners, in this case white people who colonized, that’s what whitewashing history means. I think you are confusing mentioning the perspective of the colonized as me “making total judgments”.

If the colonized didn't write their history, how do you know their perspective?

 

[Tom 1]

History is written by the winners, in this case white people who colonized, that’s what whitewashing history means. I think you are confusing mentioning the perspective of the colonized as me “making total judgments”. What have I ‘totally’ judged? What have I said that’s untruthful? Until you can point that out I think you have no argument against me beside feeling offended.

Offended by what? You’re just pasting together a few notions from which you draw some sketchy, biased conclusions. I’m not offended by your lack of understanding. I don’t really see any point in continuing this conversation.

 

[agapelove]

If the colonized didn't write their history, how do you know their perspective?

Through historical methods and epistemology, and basically common sense? Your only source of information is not the textbook. You will find that even many primary sources are peddling in propaganda and that physical evidence and outside accounts don't always reflect what was accepted in the time. This isn't saying that people were sitting around twirling their mustaches writing lies about how certain events played out, it's more like these people who put together their national histories undoubtedly thought they were correct, for example genuinely thinking women had no place in the political world or believing native people needed to be assimilated. They weren't intentionally manipulating the future so much as exercising power over their present.

 

[agapelove]

Offended by what? You’re just pasting together a few notions from which you draw some sketchy, biased conclusions. I’m not offended by your lack of understanding. I don’t really see any point in continuing this conversation.

You only believe they're sketchy and biased because they go against your own biases. I think you and I are not all that different, so we can just agree to disagree and leave it at that.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Hey @Quid est Veritas?, what is the current perception of Winnie Mandela in SA?

She became somewhat of a pariah after she was forced from government for fraud and corruption, and the full extent of her involvement in the torture and murder of a teenager named Stompie Seipei became public knowledge. Her only supporters were hardcore ANC. She gradually crawled back as people forget things. Then she of course died, and now she is a hero again, Mama Winnie, and the EFF and ANC youth league laud her and threaten people that speak ill of her.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

@Tom 1,
Well, yes, Churchill. Mama always said starting a thread was like a box of chocolates.

For something more about your OP: a poster above said she didn't think American history was taught well. Regarding slavery, my experience was good. I recall beginning in 3rd grade (in the early '70's) they taught us about the slave trade, the practice of slavery, the Abolitionist movement and related stuff, Harriet Tubman was presented as a heroine, etc. And the war, Reconstruction, the sharecropping system, carpetbaggers, all that stuff. They taught us about the post-war Ku Klux Klan, although neglected to accurately describe it as the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party, lol. I could imagine very heated complaints coming in to the school when little Johnny gets home and asks "Daddy, didn't you say you and mommy were Democrats? Because teacher said you guys...".

Overall I think the teaching was pretty thorough and good. It's really hard to whitewash humans owning humans. The fact that it happened is an ugly fact of something that just can't be justified in the modern world, and of course there was no attempt to ignore it or excuse it.

A side note about Churchill: He should be remembered also for his writing and exquisite oratory. I once read a book which was nothing more than a chronological compilation of all his speeches. So there were speeches about boring topics, such as agricultural production, or dealing with trade unions. As a fan of language, I enjoyed reading even those just for the way he said things. If he'd never been a military man or statesman, I think he might have earned a statue for writing something.

Churchill won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1953, for his histories of Marlborough and the English speaking peoples.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Rule of thumb, people that present history as one overarching narrative reducible to simple things, like Power or Race, are usually biased, cherry-picking, and not really understanding the history itself. This is quite evident with Himmler and the Aryan Master Race, or the Ancient Astronauts, or modern attempts to represent history only in terms of Oppressors and Oppressed. No one can rule simply by brute force for very long anyway, so all succesful Empires co-opted locals in some manner. Cortez would never have conquered Mexico without Tlaxcalans, or the Romans without Romanisation and extending citizenship, or the British without Princely States, Protectorates and the ilk. History is messy. History is human.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

You only believe they're sketchy and biased because they go against your own biases. I think you and I are not all that different, so we can just agree to disagree and leave it at that.

Well, no. This thread is full of people pointing out factual and representational inaccuracies you made, which you just ignored and went on your merry way continueing to claim these. This is just a new imposition of a biased narrative onto other people, especially condescending to Africans, where even villains like Mau Mau are merely represented as passively responding to Europeans. This is merely a system like Imperialism or Neo-Colonialism taking another form, akin to how the Western powers keep trying to tell the poor Africans what they are supposed to think or what models they should adopt, just like in the Cold War they exported either Marxism or Capitalism. The liberal rewrite of Colonial history is not history restored, but the Europeans imposing a new narrative only, where African and Asian peoples are still only bystanders to the primary action of European protagonists, who just swopped roles from Hero to Villain or anti-Hero.

It is best to look to your own eye, before looking for the splinter in someone else's.

 

[Tom 1]

History is written by the winners, in this case white people who colonized, that’s what whitewashing history means. I think you are confusing mentioning the perspective of the colonized as me “making total judgments”. What have I ‘totally’ judged? What have I said that’s untruthful? Until you can point that out I think you have no argument against me beside feeling offended.

You don't know what the perspective of the colonized is. You have a Western version of what you think that perspective is. By total I mean that your views, as expressed here, are polarised. Polarised views of that sort are not representative of reality, perhaps you will realise that over time. A whitewash is any hasty and superficial pasting of some series of events, covering over anything that doesn't fit whatever narrative is being pushed. What that narrative is has no relevance, whitewashing periods of history based on emotion and superficial knowledge is a behaviour many people engage in, not something 'only those people do'.

 

[agapelove]

Well, no. This thread is full of people pointing out factual and representational inaccuracies you made, which you just ignored and went on your merry way continueing to claim these. This is just a new imposition of a biased narrative onto other people, especially condescending to Africans, where even villains like Mau Mau are merely represented as passively responding to Europeans. This is merely a system like Imperialism or Neo-Colonialism taking another form, akin to how the Western powers keep trying to tell the poor Africans what they are supposed to think or what models they should adopt, just like in the Cold War they exported either Marxism or Capitalism.

What representational inaccuracies have I made? What am I ignoring? Were the Mau Mau actually formed for some reason other than fighting off colonialism? Did Churchill not hold racist/imperialist views? Not really sure why you keep claiming these facts are bias. It’s defensive and unnecessary. It is best to look for splinters wherever they exist.

 

[Radagast]

Were the Mau Mau actually formed for some reason other than fighting off colonialism?

Of course they were. That's why their energy went primarily into fighting other black Kenyans, not into fighting the colonial power.

That's why the newly independent Kenyan government, rather than honouring the Mau Mau, banned them for half a century.

While the reality is extremely complex, the Mau Mau story would be more accurately characterised as a civil war among black Kenyans, and among the Kikuyu people in particular. Essentially, it was a conflict over what kind of country Kenya would be when it (inevitably) gained independence.

 

[agapelove]

Of course they were. That's why their energy went into fighting black Kenyans, not into fighting the colonial power.

That's why the newly independent Kenyan government, rather than honouring the Mau Mau, banned them for half a century.

Their energy went into fighting off The African Home Guard, which were Kenyans recruited, armed, and incentivized by the British. Since you couldn’t even fulfill the tiny request of finding me a source, here’s one: Bloody uprising of the Mau Mau

Also here’s what the Kenyan government had to say about the Mau Mau in 2003: Kenya lifts ban on Mau Mau "I have gazetted the lifting of the ban of Mau Mau as an organisation, in effect recognising Mau Mau as freedom fighters and not terrorists," Mr Murungaru said.