Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candid Speaks and joined by staff writer Jane Hey.
Speaker 1: Candids Jane. We have alluded to revisionist history before when
Speaker 1: we talked about Rosie the Riveter and um did the
Speaker 1: Chinese Big Columbus to America. The idea being that as
Speaker 1: new evidence is found in new facts revealed, or we
Speaker 1: start to look at history in a different way, we
Speaker 1: can see that it is an evolving thing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's always a very popular subject to talk about anything
Speaker 1: relating to derisionist history. And I find it really interesting
Speaker 1: just because it touches on the idea of the history
Speaker 1: of history itself, basically how we view history, and because
Speaker 1: it's it's always important to go over your own assumptions
Speaker 1: and like make sure like what you believe isn't based
Speaker 1: on something not right exactly. And that's what makes for
Speaker 1: visionist history so controversial. And it's not always controversial sometimes
Speaker 1: as a simples is fixing a date in a history textbook.
Speaker 1: But back in ninety one, the American Historical Association president
Speaker 1: Carl Becker made this sort of landmark speech and which
Speaker 1: he clarified that history wasn't a static list of of
Speaker 1: dates and aims and you know, a very fixed chronology
Speaker 1: in our global culture. He said that it is an
Speaker 1: evolving living thing. And I like to think of history
Speaker 1: as going to an art museum and you look at
Speaker 1: a painting, and the way that I interpret it is
Speaker 1: dependent upon my life experiences, the you know, environment which
Speaker 1: I was raised, the values I have, and what I've
Speaker 1: been taught, and you may come along and look at
Speaker 1: the same painting you have a totally different interpretation. And
Speaker 1: I think that around that time people were starting to
Speaker 1: learn that it was okay to think of history that way.
Speaker 1: It didn't have to be a very fixed subject. It
Speaker 1: could be you know, reinterpreted and re not reimagined, but
Speaker 1: re evaluated. Yeah, And I think Becker himself actually um
Speaker 1: compared it to looking over your own history. Like if
Speaker 1: you think about your own past, and there are certain
Speaker 1: things that, uh, you do skew and you do choose
Speaker 1: to forget, like you obviously can't remember everything, and the
Speaker 1: and the idea of of relating history is necessarily picking
Speaker 1: out facts and ignoring most of the other facts. And
Speaker 1: so you necessarily, like objectivity is really difficult, and so
Speaker 1: just the fact, just the way that you pick out
Speaker 1: facts can can alter how someone understands it. And we
Speaker 1: know that historians as early on as Plutarch and Tacitus
Speaker 1: were doing us they were revising history, but it didn't
Speaker 1: really become a major subject of discussion until World War Two,
Speaker 1: when historians had to go back and think about how
Speaker 1: do we write about the war, how do we write
Speaker 1: about the Nazi soldiers, And that's when revisionist history really
Speaker 1: became a hot top. And in the decades that continue
Speaker 1: to to follow, all of these volatile movements began um
Speaker 1: not just in the United States, but around the world,
Speaker 1: and even globalization itself with a volatile topic as well
Speaker 1: as technology. Events like the Vietnam War, the Civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: the Cold War, and the feminist movement. All of these
Speaker 1: things happening that made people realize that different names and
Speaker 1: different motivations needed to be included in history textbooks. That's right,
Speaker 1: and so textbooks started incorporating looking at marginalized people of society,
Speaker 1: Like you mentioned the feminist movement, so they looked at
Speaker 1: famous women and in their their work in the feminist movement,
Speaker 1: and you know, the Civil Rights movement in America. At
Speaker 1: least after that, people started paying much more attention to
Speaker 1: landmark um African Americans or marginalized races in general, exactly.
Speaker 1: So before we go any further, I think it would
Speaker 1: be a good idea, maybe just to even warm you
Speaker 1: guys out or get you um familiar with revisionist history,
Speaker 1: to tell you a little anecdote. And we have a
Speaker 1: great article on our website about Vision's history, and the
Speaker 1: author of this one begins by telling the much beloved
Speaker 1: story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree. And it
Speaker 1: is it's a fun, simple little anecdote in which we're
Speaker 1: told as school children, or we used to be rather,
Speaker 1: that George Washington went and cut down a cherry tree
Speaker 1: on his parents property one day, and when his father
Speaker 1: asked him whether or not he had cut down the tree,
Speaker 1: he said, father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut
Speaker 1: down the cherry tree. And it was meant to reaffirm
Speaker 1: in the early American's mind that George Washington was a
Speaker 1: man of a valor and truth, and he could be trusted,
Speaker 1: and he was a good leader. And it wasn't true.
Speaker 1: And we know even today archaeologists went out and they
Speaker 1: surveyed the land where he would have grown up, and
Speaker 1: there were no cherry trees on the property. But it
Speaker 1: was a story that made him a larger than life
Speaker 1: figure in our minds. And so one of the things
Speaker 1: that revisionist history does is correct specific facts. And with
Speaker 1: a case like this, it doesn't really detract from George
Speaker 1: Washington and character that that story isn't true. You know,
Speaker 1: we still have many of the same assumptions that we
Speaker 1: did about him before. Yeah, that's right. Um, Correcting facts
Speaker 1: is something that like obviously every historian should be you know,
Speaker 1: open to if they if there is new evidence that
Speaker 1: is revealed by all means go back and fix it.
Speaker 1: And if that means altering how we think of someone
Speaker 1: in our history, we should do that. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people think of revisionist history in a more radical way.
Speaker 1: Charles Beard is a famous historian that challenge how we
Speaker 1: thought about the founding fathers in general. He looked particularly
Speaker 1: at the Revolution, the American Revolution, and he said these
Speaker 1: people um stood to gain money like too because they
Speaker 1: had debt that they bought very cheaply, and that they
Speaker 1: by after the revolution they would make out and so
Speaker 1: Charles Beard was like, oh, they weren't really interested in
Speaker 1: what they said they were interested in like the liberties
Speaker 1: and all the all the meanings behind the the constitution,
Speaker 1: but rather they were just after money. And that brings
Speaker 1: to mind a very important perspective that revisionist history it
Speaker 1: takes as well. And if the fact checking perspective is
Speaker 1: the most cut and Drive will call that number one.
Speaker 1: The number two perspective, we would say, like Jane is
Speaker 1: referring to now applying specific lenses to history, and there
Speaker 1: are four that are primarily applied, and those are economic,
Speaker 1: like with Charles Beard, theory, political, racial, and sexual and
Speaker 1: so the social or theoretical perspectives can completely alter the
Speaker 1: way we we view a group of people. But it's
Speaker 1: again like you're looking at a painting and an art museum,
Speaker 1: or or even reading a book. You can read these
Speaker 1: different theories and you can appreciate the lens that's being
Speaker 1: applied to it, but you don't have to agree with that.
Speaker 1: It just gives it a new shade of meaning. That's true.
Speaker 1: And one thing to consider when these new um ideas
Speaker 1: come out, these radical new ideas about you know, did
Speaker 1: the Chinese discover America before Columbus and all like this,
Speaker 1: that these books and everything they do sell. And uh
Speaker 1: so there is that motivation just to take these new
Speaker 1: theories with a grain of salt. That academics have this motivation,
Speaker 1: they have that temptation to come up with these new
Speaker 1: radical ideas for their own purposes. And that's when things
Speaker 1: can get really dangerous. And we'll call that perspective number three,
Speaker 1: and that is taking a negative perspective and looking at
Speaker 1: revisionism as an opportunity to put your agenda onto history
Speaker 1: and to get people to believe a certain factor that's
Speaker 1: not exactly true and in some instances if it's just
Speaker 1: dead wrong, and that's apparent to everyone. It's not called
Speaker 1: revision of revisionism. Excuse me, It's called negationism. And that's yeah.
Speaker 1: And one example of this I think you're going to
Speaker 1: lead to was the Holocaust denial. Yeah, yeah, and the
Speaker 1: revisionist claim, oh, you know, we don't want to be
Speaker 1: associated with something like Holocaust denial because you know the
Speaker 1: facts are there and it did happen, and these radicals
Speaker 1: who were saying that it didn't shouldn't be associated with us.
Speaker 1: So let's take a look at some other examples of
Speaker 1: revised histories and revised historical narratives that can in fact
Speaker 1: alter our perspective of the past, and um, it's it's
Speaker 1: the same old song for me. I'm gonna bring up
Speaker 1: my favorite man, Thomas Knew Jacob feel like that sparkle
Speaker 1: in my eye. Um. The Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming's
Speaker 1: affair didn't come to light until, you know, well after
Speaker 1: DNA tests conclusively proved that he had fathered children with
Speaker 1: her and that there were, you know, as several generations
Speaker 1: of Jefferson children who had black blood in them. And
Speaker 1: I think that really complicates that Jefferson image because we
Speaker 1: know that he had slaves on Monticello, and we know
Speaker 1: from some of his his slaves narratives that were written
Speaker 1: down that he was, you know, I guess, in certain
Speaker 1: terms a good master, but he was still a master
Speaker 1: of slaves. And he did not believe in the disillusion
Speaker 1: of the institution of slavery. He stood up very strongly
Speaker 1: for the fact that he thought it was an institution
Speaker 1: that would face itself out. And I believe he had
Speaker 1: a selfish motivation in that. I think that Marc Chello
Speaker 1: was run completely off of all the hard work of slaves,
Speaker 1: and he knew he had a good thing going, and
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he was kind to them or
Speaker 1: he was a good master, it would have fallen apart.
Speaker 1: And how how complex and difficult to grapple with the
Speaker 1: fact that he supported slavery and yet he fathered children
Speaker 1: who wouldn't be accepted as as equal members of society.
Speaker 1: So that's a really strong point of view about a
Speaker 1: founding father whom I ide really love for his ideas
Speaker 1: and when he contributed to our nation. But revisionist history
Speaker 1: doesn't just look at people specifically. It can also look
Speaker 1: at periods of time. That's right. It's interesting if you
Speaker 1: look at the different periods in history. Uh, they were
Speaker 1: obviously named, and these names were invented by certain people
Speaker 1: who had certain perspectives on history. So you look like
Speaker 1: a name like the Dark Ages or the Enlightenment or
Speaker 1: the Renaissance, and whether it was through intention or just
Speaker 1: the connotation of the name of the word, it does
Speaker 1: sort of shape how we think of them. And so
Speaker 1: it's always good, like how stuff works. We have this
Speaker 1: gray motto of keep asking and it's always good to
Speaker 1: always be questioning how we think about history in general.
Speaker 1: And one personal uh story of mine that I, you know,
Speaker 1: had I am young enough to have gotten a kind
Speaker 1: of revisionist history when I was taught, was that when
Speaker 1: I was learning about the American Revolution, my textbook would
Speaker 1: talk would basically give a lot of defenses for the British.
Speaker 1: You know, I was taught obviously in America, but um,
Speaker 1: my textbook was like, Hey, but the British, you know,
Speaker 1: had their had their reasons and and this is why
Speaker 1: they did those taxes, and they were just defending America
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah, and so it really, um, you
Speaker 1: can see it seeping into American school children today. It's
Speaker 1: so interesting to think about. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: one particular county in Florida that has outright banned any
Speaker 1: sort of interpretive or revisionist textbooks. And again we see
Speaker 1: that revisionist history can be a really nasty term. Even
Speaker 1: George W. Bush used it to describe the media covering
Speaker 1: the war in Iraq back in two thousand three. He
Speaker 1: called them revisionist historians. And again, depending on whether you
Speaker 1: look at revisionist history as an opportunity to being a
Speaker 1: greater truth in a in a greater shade of understanding,
Speaker 1: or some sort of ulterior motive to get people to
Speaker 1: correspond to your agenda. It can go either way. One
Speaker 1: of the most important reasons to study revisionist history and
Speaker 1: even history is that we've un told time and time again,
Speaker 1: the history repeats itself. And a really hot topic right
Speaker 1: now with Obama getting ready to come into the White
Speaker 1: House is the idea of a New New Deal. But
Speaker 1: to u c l a. Economists are claiming through their
Speaker 1: research that the original New Deal wasn't so hot after all,
Speaker 1: and that it actually might have put the United States
Speaker 1: back seven years in terms of economic recovery. And what
Speaker 1: they're saying is that the policies that were part of
Speaker 1: the National Industrial Recovery Act actually made the Great Oppression
Speaker 1: continue on until about nineteen forty three, when the economy
Speaker 1: could have naturally corrected itself by thirty six. So what
Speaker 1: FDR I did essentially was revoke any sort of punishment
Speaker 1: for big corporateations that were trusts, and he encouraged employees
Speaker 1: to be paid more than what their salaries and their
Speaker 1: jobs were really worth. And so we're looking now and
Speaker 1: these economists are saying we really need to think twice
Speaker 1: about any sort of new stimulus plan to how boost
Speaker 1: the economy. Yeah, that's true, and how in a plus today,
Speaker 1: you're very right, And I have heard that theory before
Speaker 1: because like if you look at the f if you
Speaker 1: look at FDR, like a lot of people say, the
Speaker 1: depression didn't end until the war, and the war is
Speaker 1: really what ended the depression, um and not FDR's policies.
Speaker 1: So it is very relevant today to decide what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do exactly. And I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: think of FDR as a bigger than life president. You know,
Speaker 1: he certainly has one of the most um memorable monuments
Speaker 1: in Washington. Certainly he's a very beloved figure. He had
Speaker 1: an incredibly long term. He had, you know, people who
Speaker 1: followed and listened to the fireside chats, and they were
Speaker 1: also very big fans of Eleanor. And so these economists
Speaker 1: who are putting forth this new theory are are really
Speaker 1: shaking up our perceptions of a president who people know
Speaker 1: here to fourth that led our nation through a really
Speaker 1: hard time and another questioning they're questioning that. And I
Speaker 1: think some theorists are even going so far as to
Speaker 1: question what FDRs ulterior motives may have been. Perhaps he
Speaker 1: genuinely thought he was doing the right thing for the nation,
Speaker 1: for the economy, or perhaps it was a power and measure.
Speaker 1: Maybe he wanted to hold his office and he knew
Speaker 1: that he could if he continued to keep the people
Speaker 1: you know. Understand exactly so our business history here near
Speaker 1: is what will we revealed next. But there are so
Speaker 1: many opportunities for you to go in and look at
Speaker 1: historical narratives and revise them and bring your own point
Speaker 1: of view to them. And we would encourage you guys
Speaker 1: to do that with many of the history articles on
Speaker 1: our site, so be sure to check them out at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot com.
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