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Remember that history and historical recounts are only written by the winners and in the winners own words.

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-___-;;;

Please don't ever bring up that overused (and frequently inaccurate) cliche again.

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Why not? history always is what else is the point in wining, as many men may have said; what is the point of living a long life when you can be imortalised by history?

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It's wrong because that cliche does not distinguish between historical accounts and the actual study of history.

"History" refers to the study of past events, not to the chronicling of current events, and thus history is never written "by the winners." It's written by historians who come decades, more often centuries later to study the accounts and who have little to no personal stake in the "winners." Some of those accounts may be written by the winners, but most historians, and certainly all modern historians, look at the accounts written by the "losers" as much as they look at those accounts written by the winners.

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AnomanderRake said:
Some of those accounts may be written by the winners, but most historians, and certainly all modern historians, look at the accounts written by the "losers" as much as they look at those accounts written by the winners.

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Ah, but the trouble is that the "losers" typically leave behind a lot less cultural evidence than the "winners" do. In many cases the winners go out of their way to destroy or deface the cultural icons of the losers precisely so that future generations will remember only the victorious side. Monuments are erected by the victors, who have the wealth and the freedom to glorify themselves in ways that will last for millennia, whereas the losers are generally enslaved or impoverished to the point that survival is their foremost concern.

This has been standard practice for thousands of years, particularly among empires--empires thrive on cultural hegemony, so they work to destroy the cultures of the vanquished in order to replace it with their own. This prevents future generations from getting nationalist ambitions and turning on the empire, since the empire is "us" now, and not "them."

This same motivation was behind the co-opting of various pagan traditions and holidays into the Christian tradition--it eased the conversion process, to the detriment of the original faiths. We know relatively little today about Sol Invictus or any of the other religious cults of that era, but our libraries are filled with Judeo-Christian and Muslim history books. The "losers" got a lot less press, precisely because the "winners" worked hard to absorb them and destroyed as much evidence of their existence as they could manage.

In effect, the winners control how much evidence future historians will be able to discover, so in a very real sense the winners do write future history, if not literally. The winner's culture prevails, the loser's culture is suppressed. The winner's genes propagate, the loser's genes tend toward extinction. In the long run, it's the winner's story that gets told, simply because there's more evidence available to support it.

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Ah, but the trouble is that the "losers" typically leave behind a lot less cultural evidence than the "winners" do.

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I don't dispute that, but "a lot less" is different from "none at all," and what little IS left behind is probably going to be the kind of evidence that cannot be erased because it is so ingrained into the regional culture. No amount of eradication of a "losing" culture is going to erase those signs of its regional significance.

I'm not even going to touch on the plausibility of a 2000-year-old conspiracy theory like that suggested by DVC. Now that's just plain ridiculous.

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AnomanderRake said:

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Ah, but the trouble is that the "losers" typically leave behind a lot less cultural evidence than the "winners" do.

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I don't dispute that, but "a lot less" is different from "none at all," and what little IS left behind is probably going to be the kind of evidence that cannot be erased because it is so ingrained into the regional culture. No amount of eradication of a "losing" culture is going to erase those signs of its regional significance.

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The "losing" side may be more interesting to a historian, but it's precisely because of the challenge posed by the scarcity of cultural evidence. It takes little effort to chronicle the history of the "winning" side, because it's practically everywhere--books, poems, films, songs, monuments, architecture, etc. Finding out who the "losers" really were, though--as opposed to the enemies as described by the "winners" in their stories--is necessarily more difficult, particularly when these events took place long before the historian came along.

Where written records survive to help the historian, they're generally quite scarce and few in number, such that the historian gets only a very limited view of the "losers'" culture. Cultures with oral traditions typically fare far worse--we'll never know much at all about many of the Native American tribes that were eradicated by other tribes before Western historians set foot on the continent. Archaeology can help to an extent, but again, the "winners" leave more clues behind than the "losers" do, so there's necessarily more guesswork involved in studying the "losing" culture on the basis of that more limited evidence.

That the "losers" existed at all is not generally disputed by anyone. The "winners," after all, typically try to paint their victories as heroic struggles against either a villainous tyrant or an honourable rival, so some evidence of the "losing" culture usually survives in the "winner's" version of events. In fact, these biased tales are often the spark that sets modern archaeologists and historians hunting for information about the "losing" side's culture--cultures that we otherwise wouldn't have known existed.

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I'm not even going to touch on the plausibility of a 2000-year-old conspiracy theory like that suggested by DVC. Now that's just plain ridiculous.

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The DVC is a patchwork of conspiracy theories, so I'm not sure which one you're going out of your way not to touch on here. One point you might note, however, is that conspiracy theories thrive on the inability to either prove or disprove them, and that speaks to an insufficiency of available evidence. Speculation rules the day when evidence is scarce, and as we've already agreed, it's the "losing" side that suffers this lack most acutely. It should come as no surprise, then, that conspiracy theories flourish regarding what the "winners" did to the "losers." Any accounts by the "winners" are seen as inherently biased, and the evidentiary record of the "losers" is usually spotty at best, leaving people with a handful of tantalizing clues they can stitch together with whatever explanation suits their fancy. Some historians fall into that trap, too, in an effort to make sense of limited evidence, and conspiracy theorists later use those historians' works as references to support their theories.

Ask yourself, though, how much evidence of our own times is likely to survive the next 500 years--and more importantly, whose culture will be represented by that evidence. That's already a big concern with Google's Digital Library plans. How long will printed books survive if they aren't digitized? Who gets to decide which books are "important enough" to get digitized, and which ones are left to fall into obscurity? Will we see English become the universal language of the digital world, dominating to the detriment of other languages when libraries like Google's only accept English texts and English translations of foreign-language texts? Once again, the dominant culture uses its resources to assert itself to ensure its own survival into the annals of future history, intent on "winning" the culture war. We have a hard enough time preserving the languages and cultures of aboriginal peoples today--how many of those will be irretrievably lost after 500 more years of cultural assimilation?

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It takes little effort to chronicle the history of the "winning" side, because it's practically everywhere--books, poems, films, songs, monuments, architecture, etc.

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they're generally quite scarce and few in number, such that the historian gets only a very limited view of the "losers'" culture

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That the "losers" existed at all is not generally disputed by anyone.

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The "winners," after all, typically try to paint their victories as heroic struggles against either a villainous tyrant or an honourable rival

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some evidence of the "losing" culture usually survives in the "winner's" version of events

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Ahhhh, please no exaggeration. The "winner's" version of events will rarely be very different from the "loser's" version of events except in the adjectives and, in the case of the battles, the numbers of losses. You can only bend the objective facts so much before the falsehood becomes clear.

Understand that "public" accounts are much, much less valuable to historians than "private" accounts, whether for the winner and the loser, and the "private" accounts of the winner are just as unlikely to survive as the "private" accounts of the loser. And by "private" accounts, I don't merely mean letters and journals and such. I mean government reports, official communiques between governments, etc. These are less likely to be biased because the immediate public impact of such documents is negligible.

To make it plain with a modern analogy, newspaper articles are not history. Using the mass media, any kind of mass media, as historical evidence is....stupid. No other word for it. The kind of "clues" you cite as examples of the winners writing history are historically analogous to mass media and propaganda. The only value they have is in showing the impact of the winners after the fight. Any competent historian knows this. The "clues" which are truly valuable are as rare for the winners as they are for the losers. So it makes no sense to say that the winners write the history. They can write the legends, though; that's perhaps the better word. But the history? Nope.

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I forgot to include oral traditions in my reply. IMO, a culture that survives purely on oral traditions is just destined to die out. No winner or loser involved. Oral traditions are too variable, and due to constant linguistic evolution, they have the potential to change drastically in just a few generations. You can't blame a "winner" when the "loser's" culture is practically TAILOR-MADE for extinction.

Edited by AnomanderRake (05/08/05 10:08 AM)

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AnomanderRake said:
Time is a greater destroyer of evidence than any mortal "winner."

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That the "losers" existed at all is not generally disputed by anyone.

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But this is exactly the claim asserted above ("perhaps there once was a female equivalent to the Jewish God Yahweh"), and the same claim that Dan Brown asserts in DVC.

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Ah, so that's what we're arguing about Well, not to be too pedantic about it, the poster did include a "perhaps" in there, which usually acknowledges a degree of speculation. In the absence of proof one way or the other, who can say that it wasn't possible? Even this whole business about whether Jesus could have been married seems to be unprovable, but it doesn't stop "experts" from holding committed positions on either side of the issue. As the saying goes, "there are the people who believe what you believe, and then there are the nutcases."

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To make it plain with a modern analogy, newspaper articles are not history. Using the mass media, any kind of mass media, as historical evidence is....stupid. No other word for it.

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I suppose we should distinguish between "pure" and "applied" history, then, because while the idealized historians you describe are interested in getting at some kind of "objective truth," it's equally important to remember that history is used as a propaganda tool itself. History texts used to teach one country's school children will differ considerably from the history texts used in another nation. Even within the same country, regionalized versions of history are taught in schools, particularly in the wake of civil wars. Often these texts are highly selective about what events they cover, and the detail with which they treat more controversial subjects. Facts may be correct in many cases, but lies of omission help to distort the truth in ways that the culture considers more palatable. Books like Lies My Teacher Told Me (written by historian James W. Loewen) take aim at precisely this sort of thing by dissecting the textbooks currently in use at American high schools.

The trouble with such "applied" history is that it produces generations of citizens who are taught a common patriotic fable, which in turn makes its way deeper into the culture of the land, its media, and these "accepted truths" become far more widespread than the "objective truth." The fact that so many people believe X (when in fact Y is the case) can lead to many societal ills, from forms of bigotry like racism and sexism to religious discrimination and outright xenophobia, and eventually more extreme forms of nationalism. And sadly, when these people are one day told that Y is in fact the true version of events, they're inclined not to believe it--it goes against what they've been told all their lives, and they dismiss it as a crackpot theory.

There's nothing new in this--it's not exclusively a latter-day phenomenon to say the least. Any era's history texts will contain the biases of that era and the culture in which the author was raised. Is writing a pure and objective history of an event even possible? There seem to be new books hitting the shelves every week these days purporting to tell us something new about WWII, and I'm sure these individual accounts are of some value to "pure" historians, but which version of "the truth" do we teach our children in the meantime? How do the WWII history curriculum texts differ for children in Washington, London, Moscow, Berlin, and Tokyo?

The publishing industry (and the media in general) teaches us a related lesson, oddly enough, about winners and losers and the dominance of published information. Publishers in large part control the information the world has access to, by virtue of their ability to decide what does and does not get published, how many copies get printed, what languages it appears in, and how widely the book/film is distributed. Bigger publishers have deeper pockets and bigger distribution networks, so if you get your book/film picked up by such a publisher, your ideas will reach a wider audience and stand a greater chance of creating a lasting impression on the cultural landscape. If you have to go with a smaller publisher, fewer people will have access to your works, and your ideas are more likely to be overlooked. Some great books with great ideas will never reach mass audiences for that reason, while books like the DVC become cultural touchstones in spite of their flaws. Similarly, a lot of very good independent films will never be seen by large audiences because theatre chains prefer to carry Hollywood's latest marketing juggernauts. The mass-market "winners" are all people talk about at the water cooler; the "losers" barely merit a write-up in fringe magazines with small circulations.

In short, I think it's the culture that best reflects the impact of history--the things that survive the test of time. When we look at what we've lost over the millennia, in terms of languages, religions, and populations that have become extinct as a result of conflicts with other cultures, it seems pretty clear that the winners have a greater influence on the ensuing culture than the losers do. Their policies and laws prevail, of course, and the losers become assimilated into the winner's culture, often losing their language and traditions over the next few generations. The loser's near-term future is effectively written by the winner, and any future historian will have to try to look past the biases of his own time--which may well bear long-term cultural impacts of the event itself--in order to arrive at any sort of "objective truth" about what happened. And even then, what ends up in history textbooks will likely "reinterpret" the facts selectively for propaganda purposes--or simply to sell more sensational books to the mass-market.

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I've met American who believe that the US won the Vietnam War.

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And they would be right. Just as right as someone who says the U.S. lost the Vietnam War.

It depends on how you define the Vietnam War. Politically, it was a disaster. But militarily? There was no question that the U.S. military dominated the Vietnamese battlefields. What the commonly-held opinion probably is in the U.S. is that public pressure on the politicians forced a political end to the war. Thus, if war is defined as a political action, then the U.S. unquestionably lost because it lost morale. But if war is defined as a military action, then the U.S. unquestionably won, because it dominated virtually every clash with Vietnamese forces. And both are true. Ultimately, it comes down to definitions, but within those definitions there are incontestable facts. It would be more wrong to say the Vietnamese won the Vietnam War because of military superiority as it would be to say the U.S. won the Vietnam War.

I didn't study in the U.S., btw, so my knowledge of Vietnam is limited, from any point of view. All I know is, the mass media played a huge role in swaying U.S. public and political opinion to end the war.

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In the absence of proof one way or the other, who can say that it wasn't possible

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Whether that's done by burning/shredding/blacking-out documents, tearing down the loser's monuments and shrines, slaughtering the intellectuals, or campaigning extensively to assimilate the losers into the winner's culture, the victors determine how easily future historians will be able to reconstruct what really happened. In that sense, the victors "write" future history to as great an extent as they can manage.

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Again, not my point. Even in the winners' chronicles, as I said, you can bend the objective facts only so much. The less evidence that exists, the less significant the "loser" was likely to have been.

I'm not arguing against the broader meaning of the cliche, which is basically that bias exists, no one can definitively argue against that. Although I am arguing that bias does not have so expansive an impact as some suggest, I'm mainly arguing against the immediate implicit meaning of its words, one that was used by the initial poster and by Dan Brown in his (HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE ) book. That immediate, implied meaning is that the winners can and routinely do reduce the historical significance of the "losers" (i.e. eradicating all traces of the "sacred feminine," which was significance prior to male-dominated religion, to make it seem like male-dominated religion has ALWAYS dominated). Claims like these are immediately appealing to people, to Americans in particular, because of the inherent injustice of such an act (unsportsmanlike conduct, beating an opponent when he's already down, etc.) and the "underdog"-ness of the loser (I can't think of a better word -___-;;; ).

Incidentally, a minor point:

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How do the WWII history curriculum texts differ for children in Washington, London, Moscow, Berlin, and Tokyo?

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This question can easily be answered by realizing that there is not ONE WW2. There are, in fact, as many different WW2s as there are countries involved. The American WW2 did not exist before 1941. Before then, the 1939-1941 war was a European conflict. Likewise, the European WW2 did not exist before 1939. Before then, the 1937-1939 war was an Asian conflict. They are different wars with the same name (actually, sometimes even different names; the Russian WW2 is called the "Great Patriotic War") because they overlap some of the time. This is not an example of historical bias. It's an example of historical involvement. Another example is the Spanish-American War of 1898. What is referred to as the Spanish-American War is actually two different, albeit similar, wars: the Spanish-American War between Spain and America, and the Philippine War of Independence between Spain and the Philippines.

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AnomanderRake said:
Needless to say, his characters come to a lot of conclusions despite either the lack of evidence, or a decisive amount of opposing evidence against their conclusions.

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That immediate, implied meaning is that the winners can and routinely do reduce the historical significance of the "losers" (i.e. eradicating all traces of the "sacred feminine," which was significance prior to male-dominated religion, to make it seem like male-dominated religion has ALWAYS dominated). Claims like these are immediately appealing to people, to Americans in particular, because of the inherent injustice of such an act

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The appeal also comes from the intrigue factor--someone is ostensibly trying to suppress information, which implies that that information must be important somehow. We find secrets deliciously appealing, and the notion that we might be able to discover what someone has worked hard to keep from us lends to it an allure of forbidden knowledge. That's about as American as Adam and Eve and the Apple

Still, the moment you can dismiss another's speculation because it's unpalatable to your own sensibilities, you should be examining your personal biases, and your commitment to arriving at any sort of "objective truth." The best conspiracy theories, after all, have within them some kernel of truth, and dismissing them out of hand as such risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Better to examine the theory on its own merits and separate the facts from the speculation--there might in some cases be more to the story than you expected at the outset.

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How do the WWII history curriculum texts differ for children in Washington, London, Moscow, Berlin, and Tokyo?

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This question can easily be answered by realizing that there is not ONE WW2. There are, in fact, as many different WW2s as there are countries involved.

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True, but for every pair of countries involved in a conflict, there are bound to be differing accounts in their respective history texts. I suspect that American and Japanese students today get different discussions about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in their history books, for example. A certain amount of bias shelters the citizens against a crushing loss of national pride, I imagine.

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I suspect that American and Japanese students today get different discussions about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in their history books, for example.

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But neither side can deny that they happened, eh? The only argument is in the justification behind them. But anyway, digression.

Aiyah, so you want to argue semantics?

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The Priory of Sion--a European secret society founded in 1099--is a real organization

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Paris' Bibliotheque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion

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Blooper #2:
The Les Dossiers Secretes (DB leaves out the 'e' in Secretes ) were not discovered BY the Bibliotheque Nationale. They were composed IN the Bibliotheque Nationale, and then planted and "discovered" by the forgers, not the Bibliotheque.

True enough about the Opus Dei on the FACTS page, but it's all hearsay, not fact.

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All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.

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The worst claim of the bunch. I can only prove artwork and architecture, though, but I'm sure the other two are equally inaccurate.

Firstly, artwork. Teabing claims that there is no Holy Grail chalice in the picture, and thus the actual "Holy Grail" is Mary Magdalene. However, there IS a Holy Grail CHALICE in Leonardo's Last Supper painting. It is clearly visible over the head of the leftmost apostle in the ORIGINAL painting, but is absent in almost any kind of artificial, non-photographic reproduction of the painting (i.e. if another artist copied the painting; I guess Teabing had another artist's rendition of the Last Supper, eh? ). Thus: inaccurate description.

Secondly, architecture. Langdon claims that the Opus Dei's men's entrance opens into the main street of Lexington Avenue, and that the women's entrance opens into a side street, thus evidence of the women's inferior role in Opus Dei. Actually, no door is sex-restricted, and even in terms of architecture (there are male and female areas within the building), it is the opposite of what is described in the book. The women's section entrance opens into Lexington, and the men's section entrance opens into a side street. Quod erat demonstratum: inaccurate description.

I might also argue against there being a letter 'M' in the painting, or there being, as Sophie asserts, visual evidence that the figure most consider to be John the apostle was painted as a female (John the apostle was a young man, and young men were painted with feminine features in the Renaissance).

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The fact that his characters believe that doesn't constitute a claim of proof by Dan Brown himself.

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Actually, Dan Brown says that he himself believes the theories have merit.

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Sephia said:
His theories do have merit--people believe them. Even before DVC, people believed in some of them.

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Then they wouldn't be 'his theories'.

Great thread to read guys. I enjoyed it.

With reference to the part about Brown picking his words carefully for the opening declaration about what content is factual it's a pity he couldn't show the same concern for the rest of the book. It's clumsy. You only have to read the first couple of paragraphs of the prologue where Sauniere can quite easily discern the eye colour, hair colour, and more of his attacker despite the attacker being described as fifteen feet away and a silhouette.

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AnomanderRake said:

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How do the WWII history curriculum texts differ for children in Washington, London, Moscow, Berlin, and Tokyo?

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This question can easily be answered by realizing that there is not ONE WW2. There are, in fact, as many different WW2s as there are countries involved. The American WW2 did not exist before 1941. Before then, the 1939-1941 war was a European conflict. Likewise, the European WW2 did not exist before 1939. Before then, the 1937-1939 war was an Asian conflict. They are different wars with the same name (actually, sometimes even different names; the Russian WW2 is called the "Great Patriotic War") because they overlap some of the time.

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…we have never said anything like that! The World War II and the Great Patriotic War were NOT the same! Russians do not mix the wars. For instance, attacking Pearl Harbour wasn’t an event of The Great Patriotic War. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union included Leningrad blockade, the battle for Moscow, Stalingrad battle, the Kursk Bulge, capturing Berlin and other battles and operations.

The World War II formally began on the 1st of September in 1939 when Germany attacked Poland. It ended on the 2nd of September in 1945 when Japan capitulated.

The date of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War was 22nd of June in 1941, when Germany broke the non-aggression pact and attacked the Soviet Union. It was Sunday. On the eve of that day the school-leaving parties took places at Soviet schools. Many yesterday’s schoolboys made decisions to go to the front. They were going to the war directly from the school desks. It was impossible to become a soldier if a boy was not of his full legal age. Then, the boys tried to pretend to be elder then they actually were. They were going to The Great PATRIOTIC War of The Soviet Union of Socialist Republics.
The USSR didn’t need the war. Moreover, The Soviet Union wasn’t ready for it. The loss of life was enormous.

The Great Patriotic War of The Soviet Union was the greatest part of the World War II.
Smashing the enemy in the battle for Moscow (1941-1942) was the turning-point. It meant failure of Hitler’s plan of blitzkrieg. Victories of Red Army in Stalingrad battle (1942-1943) and Kursk Bulge (1943) were very important and finally deprived Hitler’s headquarters of the strategic initiative.
Since 1944 the Soviet Army participated in liberation of Europe.

We celebrate The Great Victory Day on the 9th of May. The statement of unconditional surrender of Germany was signed late at night on the 8th of May in 1945. Because of the difference in the time zones at that moment it was already 9th of May in Moscow.

Now I am stopping. If the history is interesting to someone, I am sure, the information can be found. I just ask you to pay attention to THE FACTS.

At schools Russian children mainly study the history of the Great Patriotic War (June, 1941 – May, 1945). Of course, the schoolchildren are told about the main events of the World War II (1939-1945).

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Arras said:

The trouble with such "applied" history is that it produces generations of citizens who are taught a common patriotic fable, which in turn makes its way deeper into the culture of the land, its media, and these "accepted truths" become far more widespread than the "objective truth." The fact that so many people believe X (when in fact Y is the case) can lead to many societal ills, from forms of bigotry like racism and sexism to religious discrimination and outright xenophobia, and eventually more extreme forms of nationalism.

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Alas, it is actually so.
“Applied” education, patriotic fables and implicit belief in own right provoke double, triple, … multistandards. They in turn provoke conflicts between cultures and countries. Sometimes I wonder whether the politicians and historians believe in their own words, whether they actually consider people of their country and other countries to be so silly when they (politicians and historians) talk about “right things”?!

It is easy to say a political leader is/was a villain or an event is/was terrible. It is difficult to estimate a leader or event in historical context. One must not extend current values and models to other countries and/or past periods.

It is impossible to know everything, to know the history and culture of every country you contact with. But if people are ready to respect others, it may prevent many conflicts.

Now look at the modern world. Children have TV channels showing cartoons around-the-clock; they have many toys. Teenagers have music TV channels, Internet, nightclubs; they have the diversity of entertainments.
All those things do not form person of integrity. Diversity of information and entertainments forms eclectic thinking. It is a very grand problem of the modern world. A person with eclectic thinking may claim something in the morning and claim something opposite in the evening; and the person is sure he/she is right in both cases. It is added with propaganda of patriotic fables. As a result the person is sure in things like “if it is good for me, then it is good for everyone”, “my life style is the best in the world”, “if they live not like we do, then they violate human rights”, “they violate human rights and we have the right to improve the situation and we have the right to use our money and/or armed forces for it”. It seems the person has no idea of existence of other cultures, other life styles, other mentalities. The person doesn’t notice the imperfection of his/her own country and life style or perhaps the person notices and forgives the imperfection to the motherland but doesn’t forgive the same imperfection to others. All this reasoning is just a curtain for “they don’t work in our interests, so they are our enemies”. At least, it seems so on another side. As a result, negative sentiments are rising everywhere.
Is it good for anybody?

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