BS: History books and revisionism...

Subject: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 12:00 AM

Here's an article that is referring to a trade dispute between China and Japan over energy and borders.

The Chinese Govt is using the issue over modern history books which the Japanese use in their schools that tone down the Nanking (today Nanjing) massacre in order to raise protest levels by Chinese University students to put pressure on Japan by other means.

There were serious riots in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen last weekend where students attacked the Japanese Embassy its consulates and business. Protests like this are not spontanious in China.

Spontanious ones get put down heavily, these are usually protests by farmers against local govt officials ripping them off, or by city dwellers whose property has been destroyed to make way for new developments. This type of protest attracts fast and swoft police reaction. The protests in Beijing did not.

What has also made smile wrily is that Chinese school textbooks do not mention the millions of Chinese who died or were imprisoned in the 100 Flowers Movement, Great Leap Foward or the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen.

Maybe both sides should revise their books.

Are there other examples of revisionist history books in use in schools today.

Offshore gas claim fuels row between Beijing and Tokyo
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
(Filed: 14/04/2005)

Japan escalated a bitter row with China yesterday by announcing licences to drill for gas in disputed territory in the sea between the two east Asian powers.

Japan's trade ministry said it was beginning to process applications to drill in the East China Sea, on its side of what it regards as the border between the two. But China disputes that border, and has begun drilling nearby.

The Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, denied that the decision was connected to demonstrations in Chinese cities at the weekend that led to the Japanese embassy being stoned.

But the protests have prompted an exchange of insults, with Japan's trade minister calling China a "scary country".

China blames the protests, which were triggered by Japan reissuing a history textbook glossing over its Second World War atrocities, on Tokyo's refusal to show sufficient remorse for its past.

Although not actively supported by the Chinese government, the fact that the protests were allowed to take place at all indicates approval.

They serve two current foreign policy goals: the search for energy, often in competition with Japan since the two countries rank second and third in world oil consumption, and stopping Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Last week China indicated that it did not support a quick reform of the UN, and since it has a veto, there is little Japan can do. Its request for an apology and compensation for the demonstrations was also met with disdain.

Meanwhile, Japan has joined the United States in declaring that it has a security interest in a peaceful resolution to China's claim over the island of Taiwan, a move that infuriated Beijing.

The protests have been matched in South Korea, where the textbook issue has also caused anti-Japanese feeling, while Japanese Right-wingers have started their own protests against the Chinese embassy.

Meanwhile, North Korea has also joined in criticism of the textbook. "This is a grave insult to the peoples of Korea and the rest of Asia," a foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the Stalinist regime's mouthpiece, the Korean Central News Agency.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: artbrooks
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 07:46 AM

I've seen the news reports but, as a sometimes historian, I'd have to ask what the text actually said and what was the purpose of the book itself. Was it a broad survey of the 20th century for primary school students or a scholarly text covering WW2 in Asia for high school or college students? The amount of detail in the former on anything would be very limited.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: kendall
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 07:57 AM

History is always written by the winners.
How many people know that we never did defeat the Seminoles?
How many know the truth behind the "Trail of tears" ordered by President Andrew Jackson?
definition of "history"... His Story.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:23 AM

Fanatic pressure has gotten some textbooks in scinece to assert that Christian creationism is as important a theory as evolution. This abuses the definition of scientific theory but they don't seem to notice that.

A

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:28 AM

For those who believe in the complete relativism (his story) of research in history this book could be a mind opening reading:

In defence of history

Richard J. Evans mounts a brilliant and compellingly effective defence of the historian's capacity to reach genuine insights about past events.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:37 AM

Hey, it's bad 'nuff when a couple generations after-the-fact that mythologistic historians massage the story but what we got going on these days is revising it as it occurs...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: artbrooks
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:41 AM

Sorry...had to go off without finishing.

Revisionism is an interesting concept. Does it mean that we revise the actual events which occurred when we write our histories or dos it mean that we look at events from our own point of view (the historian's perspective), which is probably different from that of other nations or even other individuals in our own nation? Or does it mean that we revise our history books as our pespective changes?

I disagree that history is always written by the winners; because it really can't be 'history,' in the sense of a neutral examination of causes, events and results, until both the winners and losers, and probably their children and grandchildren, are dead and gone. It has only been in the last few decades that we have been able to view the conquest and settlement of the American West as anything other than "good guys vs. bad guys," and much of the historical dialogue has actually degenerated to arguments over who was actually good or bad. For more contemporary examples, The (Irish) Easter Rebellion has been over for more than 80 years, World War II has been over for nearly 60 years and the Vietnam War for more than 30, yet the events of both still arouse nearly as much passion as if they ended yesterday. It will be at least another generation before any of them really moves from the category of current events to that of history. In this country, we generally do ok at looking at the American Revolution as history, and we are coming closer to seeing the Civil War in the same context.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 11:59 AM

There is nothing new in the attempt to make history that reflects well on the writer. No one is immune to the attraction of being able to look better to others and feel better oneself at the 'cost' of a little ink.

I have heard it said that the Egyptians solved the problem caused by a military loss to the Hittites by simply writing down how victorious they were. In those days the lies were inscribed in stone for the ages. (The part I fail to understand about this story is if it is true, how do we know?)

I read a history of the Chinese Dynasties which implied that when a new Dynasty arose, one of their first projects was to (re)write the history of all the preceding Dynasties.

The past master of the concept was George Orwell who made the re-writing of history the main job function of Winston Smith, through whose eyes we experience the world of 1984. Orwell went on to provide a brilliant afterword where he explains how thoughts are controlled through regimentation of speech and vocabulary.

But technology, which provided the Hittites with steel against the Egyptians bronze swords, has now provided the means to fabricate perfect 'genuine' fakes. In the present it is already possible to provide photographs and movies which depict imaginary scenes.

Never has it been more important to transmit through the media to the public, and through the teacher to the student, the concept of epistemology, which is how we know what we know. A metaphor for this would be the notion of 'provenance' the papertrail that accompanies a masterwork of art to verify that it is genuine and legally owned.

Cautionary Tale Number One: The Shroud of Turin. We don't know the entire story with all our technology. A case for humility and the awareness of differing opinions among the most disinterested of us.

Cautionary Tale Number Two: The Mark Hoffman Case wherein a brilliant forger 'discovered' primary sources of American history, which he had faked, and was planning to 'discover' lost Mormon texts which he was also going to fake. When he was a young man he had forged a valuable coin by depositing a mint mark thereon, and had come to the conclusion that if the fake was accepted as genuine, then genuine it was. Conclusively documenting his depradations on historic texts took cutting edge technology of the 1980's.

Cautionary Tale Number Three: I don't remember the name of the miscreant, but in Tony Hillerman's anthology "Best Of The West" is the true story of a man who went into libraries and public annals of documentation in order to alter primary materials and fake a Spanish land grant so as to 'inherit' a vast quantity of land from the US Government. His marriage was a part of the giant fraud.
Orwell captured this point to

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: GUEST,PETR
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 12:38 PM

of course theres revisionism, even by losers. Japan as the losing nation, still minimizes its role in the war.
Japanese people talk about the crime of Hiroshima or Nagasaki,
(although the firebombing of Tokyo killed far more people over a couple of days)
and yet only after the emperor died was there any attempt to bring up the past atrocities they committed in CHina, Nanjing.., redress for Korean women who were kept as prostitutes for the troops etc,
practising biowarfare experiments on pows, or amputating perfectly good arms and legs just to teach their doctors..

I watched TOra tora tora on (ironically) the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbour, with my Japanese girlfriend at the time and halfway through the movie she turned and said 'you mean Japan started the war?'. It is not taught in school. Sure I know they were drawn into it by the US but they still started it.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 01:09 PM

One particular historical event can be used as an example here.

Go out and buy a general UK history book today. Look at the chapter on Richard III. It will probably tell you that he was an evil, deformed tyrant who killed his brother and his nephews, poisoned his wife in order to marry his neice, in order to become King of England.

All complete bollocks.

There was a retraction published after the death of Elizabeth I (the last Tudor monarch), all the evidence points towards Henry Tudor being the bad guy, something that historians choose to ignore.

All history is bunk.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 01:48 PM

I find it amusing the way "revisionist" seems to be used as a sneer word - as if the assumption is that the first account of what happened has to be regarded as holy writ, and any attempt to revise it to take into account facts that were left out must be seen as an attempt to distort the truth.

All real historical writing has to be revisionist, in the sense that it is trying to take into account all the facts about what happened, and all the information about the reasons it happened.

I can't remmber who it was commented that "You never hear people complaining about revisionist dentistry".

What is wrong and to be fought against is when people pick and choose whatbthey include so as to present a story that distorts the facts about what actually happened, and why it happened; and they do it for reasons that have nothing to do with telling the truth - people who deny that the Holocaust involved genocide against the Jews, or who ignore the accompanying genocide against Gypsies. Or these Japanese schoolbooks which, from what I have read, very much plays down what was done by the Japanese military machine to people in China and Korea.

But the problem isn't that they are revisionists, it is that the history they tell is in serious need of revision.

.................
In this country, we generally do ok at looking at the American Revolution as history My impression - from a distance - is that there is still some way to go before it is generally recognised that it was in a real sense a civil war, with about as many Americans engaged on the losing side, and with some good reasons for doing so, especially when it came to Black soldiers and Native Americans. (And that is probably just as true of people in England, if they ever turn their attention to the events of the period, which is fairly rare.)

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: GUEST,Seneschal
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 02:26 PM

BTW the Egyptian defeat by the Hittites, I assume they mean Kadesh. Not so clearcut, probably a draw which the Pharoah milked for all he's worth.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 03:47 PM

Guest Seneschal: Thank you for the correction. I was going from memory at that point. I am still curious as to how, if the Egyptians were writing the history, we know any different from their story.

Reading 1984 was a watershed in my young life. It terrified me on an intellectual level that is hard to imagine now. It presented an evil world that was stable. It showed pretty explicitly and convincingly how that world worked. It showed such utter control on the part of absolute government that history could be permanently changed, then changed again, in a word, political humanity would exist in a bubble with no true connection to the past, and no future beyond the present. And you could see elements from that book all around you, most particularly from Soviet Russia, Maoist China, and the erstwhile Nazi Germany. I still regard that book as a work of genius.

McG of H: Being brought up in the US, I learned American Revolutionary History in stages. The first stage, in the single digit years, has all Americans as persecuted heroes except for the traitorous Benedict Arnold. The second stage gets more into the history and logic of Empire that the British government was dealing with, and the third stage is to almost turn the thing on its head and look at it from some far removed vantage point which might have even been called revisionist. I settled somewhere in between stage two and stage three: About a third of American colonists were revolutionists, a third were loyal to the Crown, and a third were at heart not involved. A great deal of those in the second group lost their property and removed to Canada or England. This in turn provoked instability in Canada because at the time Canada was primarilly a French population with an English administration.

I understand Jimmy Carter has just put a book on the market set in Revolutionary times.

And I agree with the term 'in a real sense a civil war' although more properly it was a war for independence (After all, there were significant British forces brought in, and a French navy which saved our bacon). There was an American Revolution, but it came later with the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention, and the success and stability of the U S Constitution. Intellectually our core is Enlightenment Europe with that fearless English attitude of the times which didn't forbear from defying the forces of imperial Catholic Spain, putting a king on trial for tyranny, all the while spawning poets and playwrights and scientists with abandon.

When I was in the first stage of education about the American Revolution, there was a kid who talked funny in class. Turned out he was English. The teacher quite politely asked him what they taught him in England about the American Revolution. He replied they barely taught it at all, maybe a sentence or a paragraph. This was a powerful lesson to me that different peoples have different histories, or more properly different frames of references at which to look at history from. I later drew a parallel when Christians asked me how Jews look at the life of Jesus.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: GUEST,Seneschal
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 04:10 PM

Also you must remember most did not want independence at first, just higher status. Common Sense helped change all that.

Anyway we can have a guess at what really happened at Kadesh by reading between the lines and applying logic. I reccommend the osprey Campaign: Qadesh as a starter.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 14 Apr 05 - 08:51 PM

robomatic,, one might also add to the US history that it was founded on
two abominations, in how they dealt with the native peoples that lived there and the black slaves brought in from Africa..
Thomas Jefferson (whom I greatly admire) believed that all men were equal, they should all own land, they should all own slaves..

originally of course there werent 13 colonies but 16 colonies (the ones in Canada)

when the Egyptians boasted about their wars in inscriptions etc. its safe to guess that they didnt write about their losses, I believe that one of their -so called victories against the Hittites was actually the worlds first known peace treaty.

the period between 2000 and 1500 BC is also the first dark age.
its a time when Chariot riding pastoralists nomadic people armed with composite bows descended on most of mesopotamia, eg the Hyksos in Egypt, the Aryan invasion of the Indus valley civilization (Harrappa, Mohenjo Daro) of which quite possibly the caste system is a remnant.

these were not literate people, so we only have archaelogical, and linguistic evidence. Certainly the Egyptians didnt write of their defeats only when they started to get the upper hand against the Hyksos.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: GUEST,Seneschal
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 03:37 AM

To say the US was founded on mistreating the natives and enslaving Africans is an oversimplification as well as twisting everything out of proportion. If anything it's foundations are making money and being a convenient dumping ground for convicts. Blacks were not the only slaves either and take the Irish immigrants of the 1840s, their lot was actualy rather worse.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: kendall
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 08:36 AM

"You mean Japan started the war"?
Depends on where you want to start. They did bomb Pearl Harbor, but only after Roosevewlt cut off shipments to Japan, ordered them out of Southeast Asia and the islands, but what tore the rag off the bush was when he froze all Japan's assets in this country. That was an insult that they could not bear. They would rather die than "lose face". I'm not saying they were justified, just that in their minds they had damn good reason to fight.
Anyone who has read THE UGLY AMERICAN knows how we deal with other cultures.

At last, the revisionists have decided that the Kamakazi pilots did not really want to commit suicide, but the peer pressure made them do it. That makes a lot more sense than the story were all familiar with, that they chose to die for the Emperor. I'm usually suspicious of revisionists, but in this case they make sense.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: GUEST,Allen
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 09:38 AM

Even so I'm sure there was a core of complete fanatics.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: kendall
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 09:53 AM

Would you crash your plane into an Iraqui tank for George Bush?

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: GUEST,Allen
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 09:55 AM

Not I, not for him at any rate, but the mindset was different when it came to the Emperor. Plenty of examples of fanatacism anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: robomatic
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 10:26 AM

Would you crash your plane into an Iraqui tank for George Bush?

I recall a bit of copier humor from Gulf War I:

"I'd fly 1000 miles to 'smoke' a camel" showing a silhouette of a camel riding mujahid in target sites.

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 01:26 PM

What's the alternative to "revisionist history"? Giving up on trying to sort out the truth from the propaganda?

Subject: RE: BS: History books and revisionism...
From: GUEST,Allen
Date: 15 Apr 05 - 02:19 PM

I generally approve of 'revisionism' even if I don't agree with the argument, beacue a fresh look at something always brings interesting results...