History is rarely a strict chronicle of events, often it is a story woven into many other stories. This blog is the thoughts about History and Museum work, from a young historian.
Just as the World Wars and the
Great Depression defined the 20th century as we know it; The
COVID-19 pandemic is one of the defining events of the 21st century.
Stay at home orders are lightening up and questions about what the pandemic
means for policy and personal decisions are coming to the forefront. It is
important to chronicle and remember some of the images of the pandemic.
Caution tape to close the playground
The pandemic is not over by any
means and here is some pictures that reminded me of that fact today as I took a walk in my
neighborhood.
I have been thinking a lot about this academically trained historian versus independently trained historian business for some time. For the sake of full disclosure and so one may see where I'm coming from, I went to Liberty University graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor's in history. I worked three years giving tours at two museum/historical sites but wasn't to find a full time position. I started work on a Masters degree at James Madison University but quit after a semester due to health as well as just being burned out on school.
Since not being connected to any academic institution for about four months; I have tried to stay up to date on the history world. And recently read two articles both flying warning flags about the future of the study of history.
The first article an opinion piece from Max Boot for the Washington post about the sorry condition of American's knowledge of American history. He points out the decline of history majors in Universities around the country. Including the fact that the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Pointe had considered discontinuing history classes all together (at the time of this writing I don't know if they actually called it quits on their history program). The second article, A New York Times piece talked about President Obama's Presidential Center and how it won't technically be a Presidential Library. It won't actually house a physical collection. Obama's papers will be digitalized and accessed online. Some Public Historians have voiced concerns about what this means for scholarship on the Obama Administration in the future. A digital collection can be easier to limit scholars access; as well as concerns about curation and preservation. If there isn't a repository for donations, items not already in the National Archives collection may be lost.
The theme in both of these articles is how we study the past is changing. No longer is historical knowledge just being distrubuted through universities and museums. Some call this trend the democratization of history.
President Obama's documents being put online instead of a physical collection or the apparent lack of interest in making history ones prime vocation in the coming generation. These are not signs of the end, on the contrary these are merely signs that history is being less centralized. History as an interest is actuality booming. Genealogy sites are everywhere and thriving from subscription sites to genetic testing. Documentaries are available where ever films are sold or streamed. Podcasts and blogs from amateur historians are easily found on the internet. Historical knowledge is readily available to all who is looking. What is collapsing is the professional apparatus, the academy.
After 2008 many saw the falling number of social science majors as a sign of the recession. Ten years after the fact, and we are still seeing these numbers fall. The academy is in the awkward position training young people one discipline (a very expensive training), many millennial have gotten used to the idea of the side hustle, working two and three jobs at once.
Even those we consider professional historians have not come directly from the academy. Nick Bunker, author of An Empire on the Edge, in an interview stated that he had careers in journalism and finance before writing two critically acclaimed history books.
Don't freak out! The study of history as an academic discipline is relatively new. The first PhD awarded in the US, ever, was from Yale in 1861. The academic system that we know today has only been around for about 200 years. People have been studying history without history degrees for centuries. Think of Herodotus, Thucydides, or Polybius. According to one story Edward Gibbon thought his brief stay at Oxford was a waste of time. Just because there are fewer history majors doesn't mean the world will collapse into idiocracy or an Orwellian nightmare. Or that history will be forgotten (any more than it already has). There will still be those who have questions, those who will want to know how did we get here and those who love the stories.
Unger, Harlow
Giles. The Last Founding Father: James
Monroe and A Nation’s Call to Greatness. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press,
2009.
I started to read The Last Founding Father as part of my
effort to understand more about James Monroe the fifth president of the United
States. Almost all of my colleagues told
me that it was a terrible book, that “it was full of inaccuracies,” and how “Unger
played it fast and loose with the facts.”
This of course made me want to read the book all the more. I could not
believe that the book was as bad as all that.
I didn’t want to simply jump on the critical band wagon, I wanted to
give the book a fair chance. Needless to
say I read the book. I don’t have time to present a full book review, so here
is a “limited book review.”
The
Last Founding Father, is a relatively short biography, only
347 pages; almost two hundred shorter than the other major James Monroe
Biography. Harry Ammon wrote James Monroe: The Quest for National
Identity in 1971 and focuses primarily on James Monroe’s political career,
creating a robust James Monroe encyclopedia.
In contrast, Harlow Unger’s book reads a lot faster (a welcome change after
reading Ammon). Another thing to take
into account is that Unger’s book is a popular biography, a book designed
welcome any reader and introduce them to the world of James Monroe. Harlow Unger actually does this fairly well,
he does not get bogged down in minute detail. This is something that would get on a professional
historian’s nerves. I tried to not let
this bother me and take it for what it was designed to do, however there were
some things that did bug me. Here is a list of four things that I could not let
go un-criticized.
1.) When the White House was called the White
House (277).
Unger starts the sixteenth
chapter by explaining the presidential mansion was still being repaired by
1819, (The Mansion had been burned down in 1814 by the British in the War of
1812). Unger goes on to explain, that
the workers covered some charred pieces on the exterior with a thick layer of
white paint and that this is why the White House is called the White
House. This anecdote may very well be
true, but Unger refers to the President’s Mansion as the White House implying
that the White House was called “The White House” from that day to this. According the official White House page,
(whitehouse.gov) The White House officially became the White House in 1901 under
Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.
2.)James
Monroe wrote the Monroe Doctrine, or did he (313)?
Unger got my attention with his most
controversial statement in the book, “Contrary to the writings of some
historians, Monroe’s proclamation was entirely his own creation – not Adam’s
(313).” Perhaps, I am too biased on this point, I am a huge JQA fan consider
his input in the Monroe Doctrine to be unmatched by anyone. Unger goes on to underestimate Adams’
diplomatic abilities by saying “President James Monroe had almost eight years
of experience as an American diplomat in Paris, London and Madrid…” posts that
Unger claims were “more taxing than Quincy Adam’s five years of ‘dinners,
balls, parades,’ in St. Petersburg, Russia…(314).” This disregards Adams’ other postings, in
addition to Russia, he was also envoy to Holland and Prussia as well as being
one of three negotiators sent to Ghent, to negotiate a peace with Britain during
the War of 1812 (Christopher Keating, “John Quincy Adams: View of America,” The
Weaving Chronicle, August, 28, 2013, https://theweavingchronicle.blogspot.com.
3.)Monroe
Graduated (314)!?
In the same vein, Unger
asserts that Monroe graduated from “…one of America’s most respected colleges,
with a law degree that allowed him to practice before the United States Supreme
Court (314).” Assumedly the “respected college” is the College of William and
Mary (Monroe did attend in 1774-1776), James Monroe dropped out to enlist in
the Continental Army. James Monroe did not graduate but he did become a lawyer,
he trained under Thomas Jefferson to pass the bar. (http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/james-monroe,
http://www.biography.com/people/james-monroe-9412098)
4.)Monroe
Addressed Congress (314)
To top the list off Unger
said, “On December 2, 1823, Monroe strode into Congress to deliver his seventh
annual message to that body (314).” He
is referring to the annual state of the union address that American’s have
become so familiar with. Unger goes into
great detail, painting the scene as one of the greatest moments in James Monroe’s
career, the revealing of the Monroe Doctrine.
The problem with this scene is that it never happened. State of the
Union address stopped with Thomas Jefferson and would not be reintroduced until
Woodrow Wilson gave his first in 1913. (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/sou.php,
http://history.house.gov/Institution/SOTU/State-of-the-Union/).
(Important to note! Later editions have corrected this last point and says "sent" the message to congress rather than saying that Monroe gave the speech in person.)
There
are more things to criticize in this book, as well as some things to praise but
this is a limited book review. I like
pop-history in its many forms but one must be sure to get the facts right. This books greatest positive is that it gives
a fairly readable account of one of the most under-appreciated presidents in
our history. Read the book, double check the sources and let me know what you
thought. Comment either in the comments below or on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Historianforeva/)
or on Twitter (@Historianforeva
).
One of the most irksome
issues in the world of history is the dreaded “uncited fact!” (dun dun dun dun!)
This issue is usually made manifest in freshman history papers that use a quote
or discuss an event that one knows one has read but can’t remember where, so
one just adds it to your paper and hopes for the best.
This problem is the most
widely revealed on the internet where the average person can post anything they
want (like myself and this blog). The most frustrating example was when I was
talking to a gentleman about Woodrow Wilson and he insisted that Woodrow Wilson
was part of the KKK. Now don’t get me
wrong Woodrow Wilson was not a bright shining star when it came to civil rights,
in fact by most standards (if not all) he would be considered a racist. That
being said there is no evidence that I have found that says Wilson was a member
of the KKK and I told this gentleman so. The gentleman then insisted that he
had proof and pulled up a web site riddled with ads with the title “15
presidents you didn’t know were in the KKK.”
I enjoy clickbait articles as much as the next guy (that’s a lie I
really hate clickbait). This is not
evidence, especially when consider that it is completely uncited! It did not
tell you where they got there evidence.
The gentleman then said that history was just stories told from one
person to the next and apparently moved on with his life. History has to be corroborated with evidence
so we as a people can know what truly happened in the past.
I was reminded of this
issue of uncited-ness when I posted a tweet regarding Christmas trees. I have been reading up on the history of some
Christmas traditions and I could not remember exactly where I had read that
only 1 in 5 Americans owned Christmas trees in the late nineteenth century. So, I ended the tweet with
#uncitedfacts. I propose that every time
you find yourself trolling the internet and you find that I put #uncitedfacts,
you should double check the fact in question. Provide a source to either support or dismiss
the fact that I post. As a professor of
mine once said, “History is a conversation,” history should be discussed,
debated but most importantly history should be true.
By the way, It was 1900 that 1 in 5 Americans had a Christmas tree (I still don't have a citation for that). Checkout the Historian Twitter account @historianforeva or the Historian Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Historianforeva
Like many, my wife and I
have a tradition of carving pumpkins in the month of October. This year we decided to have a presidential
theme to our endeavors, so I decided to carve James Monroe and my wife carved
Thomas Jefferson. I think they turned
out pretty good!
Have a Happy Historical Halloween! If you carve a pumpkin like a president or visit a historical ghost tour share your pics and stories on Facebook, twitter or in the comments below.
This post is talk about some odds and ends, I want to
thank everyone who has read my blog and continues to read it, to explain a
comment I got and to shamelessly plug some other projects that I am working
on. First off "The Weaving
Chronicle" has just reached over 2000 views! This may not seem like much,
but it is a pretty big milestone for me as a young historian and writer. So
thank you to all of you read and support my blog. An equally big milestone, is
that I had my first comment that challenged a statement I made in a post! I
have had comments posted by friends who offered encouragement (very grateful
for those too)! When I saw that I had a comment, I had to check it right
away! And when I read it, my heart sank
a little bit but then I reminded myself that criticism was better than silence
and the author was not rude or abusive. So I thanked the commenter and
did a mental fist pump at actually having interest in my blog posts. Here
is the comment in full.
I have to say that, bearing in mind the examples that you
gave, implying that "walls actually have a poor success rate
throughout history" is not entirely substantiated. Walls are physical
barriers intended to keep people (and other critters) out or in. The Great Wall
of China did eventually fail, but it also held back scores of other previous
invaders. The Maginot Line failed as a wall because it was not complete; the
lack of end points and gaps made it more of nuisance than an actual physical
barrier. The other examples (the Berlin Wall and the Korean Border) worked
splendidly for their intended primary and secondary purposes: secondary to keep
people out, primary to keep people IN. If their intent was solely political in
nature, I would agree that they failed in compelling sympathy toward their
respective causes, but as physical barriers they were quite effective.
The author makes some good points.
Criticisms and rebuttals are important to the
study of history, as a professor once said “History is a conversation.” History
is not hear say, repeating whatever you have been told. It is a back and forth,
trying to understand the past better. Here
are my reasons for maintaining my opinion:
The Great Wall of China did stand for many years
before the Mongols conquered China and established the Yuan Dynasty but the
point is the wall did fail.
The Maginot Line did not fail because it was
unfinished, it failed because it was an outdated stratagem against a superior
form of warfare.
The Berlin Wall did its job very well however there
are stories of people still getting passed that obstacle (see the link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/07/berlin-wall-escape-stories_n_6090602.html).
That being said the reason it was so successful is the same reason why the 38th
parallel is so successful because of men, mines (there were no mines in Berlin
that I know of) and machine-guns. I for one would not want to see such a
structure raised in Texas. My point is that walls have failed over the
years and will continue to fail. Those that have done their job well, is not
because the wall was too high or thick but because of the threat of force
against those who try to cross it. From ancient China around the globe and to
modern Korea. A wall will not protect the United States nor make it great.
I am very grateful to "unknown" for the
comment and please continue to comment, let me know where I missed it, nailed
it or if you have an idea for me to write about let me know.
Here is the shameless plug. If you like what you
see here, like me on face book https://www.facebook.com/Historianforeva/?view_public_for=299851710031447
and follow me on twitter https://twitter.com/Historianforeva
I and some friends of mine are working on a project
called Popstorian! It talks about the history of film, music, comic books and
all things pop-culture-ish. You can like the Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/PopStorian/?view_public_for=1423293254642909
and follow our twitter here, https://twitter.com/PopStorian!
I don’t normally use this blog for political messages
but this is the most biased piece I have ever written on this blog. For the sake of full disclosure I am a
Conservative Christian Republican. And
to be honest I don’t like Trump as a presidential candidate for a number of
reasons. The most hilarious of his
tirades is probably how he is going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.
What is even more hilarious (in a sad sort of way) is that people believe this
could keep America safe or "Make America Great Again!" Walls actually have a poor success rate throughout history. That being said how
about a brief history of border walls!
The Walls of Jericho:
[About 1400 BC] the children of Israel have just
finished wandering the wilderness for forty years and begin their invasion of
the holy land. When they encounter Jericho.
“2 Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See,
I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and it’s
fighting men. 3 March around the city once with all the armed men. Do
this for six days. 4 Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in
front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with
the priests blowing the trumpets. 5 When you hear them sound a long
blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then
the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight
in.” Joshua 6:2-5
Ok! I know someone is crying foul here, “that’s not
history! That’s Bible stuff!” You’re right!
I did say I am a Christian. The debate of the historical validity of the
Bible can wait. (God helped them anyway.)
The Great Wall of China:
From the 3rd century BC to the 17th century AD approximately
2000 years, a little project called the Great Wall of China was being built and
rebuilt! Now that name may seem a little pretentious but here are a few facts
curtesy of Wikipedia, the wall spans over 5,500 miles, about 40 feet thick and
30-40 ft. high. It was designed to keep out invaders, barbarians, bandits, you
name it. In about 1206 AD (when the wall
was a mere 3,100 miles long) Genghis Khan invaded and sacked most of
China. His son Kublai came back finished
the job by establishing the Yuan Dynasty.
[http://www.history.com/topics/great-wall-of-china]
Maginot Line:
Fast forward to the twentieth century after the First
World War the French built a network of forts and tunnels along the Rhine River
all the way to the Italian border. This of course was stop any future
incursions by the Germans. In May 1940,
the German army bypassed the Maginot Line in the famous blitzkrieg taking
France in about a month. To the line’s
credit it would not be taken until June 1940 around the same time as when Paris
fell. [http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/maginot-line]
The Berlin Wall:
In 1961, Germany was split into two countries. East
Germany, which was communist and allied with the Soviet Union. Then there was
West Germany who was allied to the western nations. To stem the flow of emigration from East
Germany to the West, the East German government began building a wall that
literally cut Berlin in half. The wall was called, “Antifascistischer
Schutzwall” meaning anti-fascist wall. Also known as the Berlin Wall. The wall stood for 28 years and to this day
it is seen as a symbol of repression. [http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-wall]
“Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this
gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” – Ronald Reagan (http://millercenter.org/president/reagan/speeches/speech-3415)
The Korean Border:
There is yet one more wall that makes this list. A wall that is a left over an unresolved
conflict, a symbol of a never ending war.
Along the thirty-eighth parallel that separates North and South Korea,
the Korean Demilitarization Zone (DMZ). A border that is 2.5 miles long and is
constantly guarded. As National Geographic stated “anyone trying to cross the
MDL (Military Demarcation Line) would likely be shot.” (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/features/world/asia/north-korea/dmz-text/1)
Now most people probably have heard of at least one
and probably all of these examples, what the study of history does is take that
knowledge of a few facts and teaches us of building an argument. A wall isn’t going to keep out terrorists or
anyone who really wants to get into the United States. Whenever I hear someone quote Mr. Trump about
how he is going to build a wall on the Mexican border it reminds me just how
much we need to teach history. A wall
won’t keep out terrorists, drugs, or even illegal immigrants. Walls are inept at keeping out invaders,
symbols of tyranny and represent unending war.
