Tag: American history

History is Complicated

Of the things that frustrate me to no end, willful ignorance tops the chart. History is what it is; a recollection of the past. I would be guilty of willful ignorance myself to say that history, or interpretations there of, haven’t been used for political and ideological purposes in the past. They have, since history was first recorded, there have always been interpretations of events that fed a narrative of the authors choosing to some agenda’s needs. Modern history is certainly no exception. Fictitious narratives and interpretations have been generated by many ideological groups, most notably by ideologues with a personal agenda and a need to subvert a population so that population will follow the ideolog, and do their bidding. The Nazis, soviets, present day Russia, and, sadly, the present administration in America are but a few examples. Rewriting history is nothing new, but in this day and age of infinite connectedness, we should be doing better at remaining aware that it’s being done.

Written histories often represent the attitudes of people groups, national or regional. The Lost Cause narrative of the American Civil War is an example of this kind of revisionist interpretation in service of ego fragility. Usually, over time these kinds of revisionist histories are reinterpreted and at some point, they eventually get closer to the facts of the events. Newer interpretations tend to acknowledge the various perspectives of those participating in, or observing events. Well written history will also include analysis of previous interpretations and the drivers of those interpretations. Distance from the events allow a more circumspect view and less attachment to the interpreted narratives generated by those earlier historians. The exceptions enter public view when the writer has an agenda they wish to reenforce. The Lost Cause narrative is an exception that has been reenforced over the last century and a half, and it persists in some areas to this day. Holocaust denial is an example of a whole genre of agenda driven historical revision serving a ideological agenda. The romantic, and completely fictitious Völkisch history created by a handful of Germans in the 1920s and 30s was an agenda driven historical fantasy that provided a background for the Nazi’s to build on.

The ham-fisted attempts of the current American administration to turn back the clock and ignore or remove the civil rights more than half of the population is an outrage, as are its attempts to disenfranchise citizens and prevent them from voting. A small segment of the population, egged on by the administration and far-right wingnuts wishes to rewrite American history to serve their agenda. America is a nation of immigrants. It always has been. Unless you are descended from indigenous people, you are an immigrant descendant. A significant number of my ancestors were hear before 1776. I am an immigrant descendant.

This is a partial representation of my family tree. Above the red line are family that immigrated to the colonies or were born in the colonies before 1776.

While I am proud to say that some of my ancestors participated in the founding of this nation, as a historian, I must acknowledge that this carries with it darker aspects of their lives. Colonialism, the abhorrent treatment of First Nations people, and the atrocities of slavery. These are also part of my family’s past. It’s not a bad thing to acknowledge the truth. It is what it is. I wasn’t there. America has a complicated past, and present; colonialism, genocide, slavery, meddling in other sovereign nations politics for our benefit, and we have been at war with someone for most of the last 250 years. Being willfully ignorant of the past and hiding your head in the sand are not solutions to anything, they are delusion.

Question authority, study history, read widely, demand evidence of any claims, seek evidence from as many sources as possible, verify all evidence, refuse to be made a fool for someone else’s agenda or ego.

A Soft Spot for Newspapers

I have always had an affinity for newspapers, the physical medium, more so than the content. In many ways, it is like my affinity for books, the physicality of the medium. As long as I can remember, I have been interested in manual printing presses and the early small-run automated presses of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I am not much of a journalist, but I have done ad and magazine design work as well as photography, along with the digital processing of text and visual components. Over the last year or so, my affinity for the idyllic small-town press has grown—the kind of paper you might find in Andy Griffith’s Mayberry.

My research on propaganda has me doing background on the history of newspapers in America. The two have been close companions since the introduction of broadsheet media, soon after the invention of the printing press. America’s entire history includes propaganda in newspapers from the colonial period to the present. I have an assignment due Sunday on how the turn of the 20th-century newspaper industry was affected in a business sense by the Committee on Public Information’s engagement with the press in both selling America on the war and disseminating information during the war.

One of the first illusions shattered by this research was the idea of the idyllic small-town paper. When they did exist, they were likely a political or special-interest paper from around 1800-1880. By the 1900s, mass-market press, muckrakers, and yellow journalism were already well established. The press lords began to dominate the newspaper industry shortly after the penny-press movement started in the 1830s. Their reign would continue through the Gilded Age, well into the 1930s.

Aside from bringing historic reality into focus, this research has furthered my interest in the restoration of manual and semi-manual presses from the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is also furthering my interest in producing limited press runs of broadsides. What has been added to my list of potential interests is journalism. Journalism from the perspective of that idyllic small-town newspaper, or just maybe, some contemporary journalism flavored with a bit of sass and humor in the spirit of the younger Franklin brother in Philadelphia.