How Revisionist History Works

Like any other discipline, history often becomes a matter of interpretation. Check in with HowStuffWorks' resident history experts as they explore the phenomenon of revisionist history in this podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candid Speaks and joined by staff writer Jane Hey.
Candids Jane. We have alluded to revisionist history before when

(00:21):
we talked about Rosie the Riveter and um did the
Chinese Big Columbus to America. The idea being that as
new evidence is found in new facts revealed, or we
start to look at history in a different way, we
can see that it is an evolving thing. Yeah, and
it's always a very popular subject to talk about anything

(00:42):
relating to derisionist history. And I find it really interesting
just because it touches on the idea of the history
of history itself, basically how we view history, and because
it's it's always important to go over your own assumptions
and like make sure like what you believe isn't based
on something not right exactly. And that's what makes for
visionist history so controversial. And it's not always controversial sometimes

(01:06):
as a simples is fixing a date in a history textbook.
But back in ninety one, the American Historical Association president
Carl Becker made this sort of landmark speech and which
he clarified that history wasn't a static list of of
dates and aims and you know, a very fixed chronology

(01:27):
in our global culture. He said that it is an
evolving living thing. And I like to think of history
as going to an art museum and you look at
a painting, and the way that I interpret it is
dependent upon my life experiences, the you know, environment which
I was raised, the values I have, and what I've
been taught, and you may come along and look at

(01:48):
the same painting you have a totally different interpretation. And
I think that around that time people were starting to
learn that it was okay to think of history that way.
It didn't have to be a very fixed subject. It
could be you know, reinterpreted and re not reimagined, but
re evaluated. Yeah, And I think Becker himself actually um

(02:08):
compared it to looking over your own history. Like if
you think about your own past, and there are certain
things that, uh, you do skew and you do choose
to forget, like you obviously can't remember everything, and the
and the idea of of relating history is necessarily picking
out facts and ignoring most of the other facts. And
so you necessarily, like objectivity is really difficult, and so

(02:32):
just the fact, just the way that you pick out
facts can can alter how someone understands it. And we
know that historians as early on as Plutarch and Tacitus
were doing us they were revising history, but it didn't
really become a major subject of discussion until World War Two,
when historians had to go back and think about how

(02:52):
do we write about the war, how do we write
about the Nazi soldiers, And that's when revisionist history really
became a hot top. And in the decades that continue
to to follow, all of these volatile movements began um
not just in the United States, but around the world,
and even globalization itself with a volatile topic as well
as technology. Events like the Vietnam War, the Civil rights movement,

(03:16):
the Cold War, and the feminist movement. All of these
things happening that made people realize that different names and
different motivations needed to be included in history textbooks. That's right,
and so textbooks started incorporating looking at marginalized people of society,
Like you mentioned the feminist movement, so they looked at
famous women and in their their work in the feminist movement,

(03:37):
and you know, the Civil Rights movement in America. At
least after that, people started paying much more attention to
landmark um African Americans or marginalized races in general, exactly.
So before we go any further, I think it would
be a good idea, maybe just to even warm you
guys out or get you um familiar with revisionist history,
to tell you a little anecdote. And we have a

(03:58):
great article on our website about Vision's history, and the
author of this one begins by telling the much beloved
story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree. And it
is it's a fun, simple little anecdote in which we're
told as school children, or we used to be rather,
that George Washington went and cut down a cherry tree
on his parents property one day, and when his father

(04:19):
asked him whether or not he had cut down the tree,
he said, father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut
down the cherry tree. And it was meant to reaffirm
in the early American's mind that George Washington was a
man of a valor and truth, and he could be trusted,
and he was a good leader. And it wasn't true.
And we know even today archaeologists went out and they

(04:42):
surveyed the land where he would have grown up, and
there were no cherry trees on the property. But it
was a story that made him a larger than life
figure in our minds. And so one of the things
that revisionist history does is correct specific facts. And with
a case like this, it doesn't really detract from George
Washington and character that that story isn't true. You know,
we still have many of the same assumptions that we

(05:04):
did about him before. Yeah, that's right. Um, Correcting facts
is something that like obviously every historian should be you know,
open to if they if there is new evidence that
is revealed by all means go back and fix it.
And if that means altering how we think of someone
in our history, we should do that. But a lot
of people think of revisionist history in a more radical way.
Charles Beard is a famous historian that challenge how we

(05:28):
thought about the founding fathers in general. He looked particularly
at the Revolution, the American Revolution, and he said these
people um stood to gain money like too because they
had debt that they bought very cheaply, and that they
by after the revolution they would make out and so
Charles Beard was like, oh, they weren't really interested in
what they said they were interested in like the liberties

(05:50):
and all the all the meanings behind the the constitution,
but rather they were just after money. And that brings
to mind a very important perspective that revisionist history it
takes as well. And if the fact checking perspective is
the most cut and Drive will call that number one.
The number two perspective, we would say, like Jane is
referring to now applying specific lenses to history, and there

(06:12):
are four that are primarily applied, and those are economic,
like with Charles Beard, theory, political, racial, and sexual and
so the social or theoretical perspectives can completely alter the
way we we view a group of people. But it's
again like you're looking at a painting and an art museum,

(06:32):
or or even reading a book. You can read these
different theories and you can appreciate the lens that's being
applied to it, but you don't have to agree with that.
It just gives it a new shade of meaning. That's true.
And one thing to consider when these new um ideas
come out, these radical new ideas about you know, did
the Chinese discover America before Columbus and all like this,

(06:52):
that these books and everything they do sell. And uh
so there is that motivation just to take these new
theories with a grain of salt. That academics have this motivation,
they have that temptation to come up with these new
radical ideas for their own purposes. And that's when things
can get really dangerous. And we'll call that perspective number three,
and that is taking a negative perspective and looking at

(07:15):
revisionism as an opportunity to put your agenda onto history
and to get people to believe a certain factor that's
not exactly true and in some instances if it's just
dead wrong, and that's apparent to everyone. It's not called
revision of revisionism. Excuse me, It's called negationism. And that's yeah.

(07:35):
And one example of this I think you're going to
lead to was the Holocaust denial. Yeah, yeah, and the
revisionist claim, oh, you know, we don't want to be
associated with something like Holocaust denial because you know the
facts are there and it did happen, and these radicals
who were saying that it didn't shouldn't be associated with us.
So let's take a look at some other examples of
revised histories and revised historical narratives that can in fact

(07:58):
alter our perspective of the past, and um, it's it's
the same old song for me. I'm gonna bring up
my favorite man, Thomas Knew Jacob feel like that sparkle
in my eye. Um. The Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming's
affair didn't come to light until, you know, well after
DNA tests conclusively proved that he had fathered children with

(08:19):
her and that there were, you know, as several generations
of Jefferson children who had black blood in them. And
I think that really complicates that Jefferson image because we
know that he had slaves on Monticello, and we know
from some of his his slaves narratives that were written
down that he was, you know, I guess, in certain

(08:41):
terms a good master, but he was still a master
of slaves. And he did not believe in the disillusion
of the institution of slavery. He stood up very strongly
for the fact that he thought it was an institution
that would face itself out. And I believe he had
a selfish motivation in that. I think that Marc Chello
was run completely off of all the hard work of slaves,
and he knew he had a good thing going, and

(09:02):
despite the fact that he was kind to them or
he was a good master, it would have fallen apart.
And how how complex and difficult to grapple with the
fact that he supported slavery and yet he fathered children
who wouldn't be accepted as as equal members of society.
So that's a really strong point of view about a

(09:22):
founding father whom I ide really love for his ideas
and when he contributed to our nation. But revisionist history
doesn't just look at people specifically. It can also look
at periods of time. That's right. It's interesting if you
look at the different periods in history. Uh, they were
obviously named, and these names were invented by certain people
who had certain perspectives on history. So you look like

(09:43):
a name like the Dark Ages or the Enlightenment or
the Renaissance, and whether it was through intention or just
the connotation of the name of the word, it does
sort of shape how we think of them. And so
it's always good, like how stuff works. We have this
gray motto of keep asking and it's always good to
always be questioning how we think about history in general.
And one personal uh story of mine that I, you know,

(10:05):
had I am young enough to have gotten a kind
of revisionist history when I was taught, was that when
I was learning about the American Revolution, my textbook would
talk would basically give a lot of defenses for the British.
You know, I was taught obviously in America, but um,
my textbook was like, Hey, but the British, you know,
had their had their reasons and and this is why

(10:26):
they did those taxes, and they were just defending America
and blah blah blah, and so it really, um, you
can see it seeping into American school children today. It's
so interesting to think about. And I think that there's
one particular county in Florida that has outright banned any
sort of interpretive or revisionist textbooks. And again we see
that revisionist history can be a really nasty term. Even

(10:48):
George W. Bush used it to describe the media covering
the war in Iraq back in two thousand three. He
called them revisionist historians. And again, depending on whether you
look at revisionist history as an opportunity to being a
greater truth in a in a greater shade of understanding,
or some sort of ulterior motive to get people to
correspond to your agenda. It can go either way. One

(11:10):
of the most important reasons to study revisionist history and
even history is that we've un told time and time again,
the history repeats itself. And a really hot topic right
now with Obama getting ready to come into the White
House is the idea of a New New Deal. But
to u c l a. Economists are claiming through their
research that the original New Deal wasn't so hot after all,

(11:32):
and that it actually might have put the United States
back seven years in terms of economic recovery. And what
they're saying is that the policies that were part of
the National Industrial Recovery Act actually made the Great Oppression
continue on until about nineteen forty three, when the economy
could have naturally corrected itself by thirty six. So what

(11:54):
FDR I did essentially was revoke any sort of punishment
for big corporateations that were trusts, and he encouraged employees
to be paid more than what their salaries and their
jobs were really worth. And so we're looking now and
these economists are saying we really need to think twice
about any sort of new stimulus plan to how boost

(12:17):
the economy. Yeah, that's true, and how in a plus today,
you're very right, And I have heard that theory before
because like if you look at the f if you
look at FDR, like a lot of people say, the
depression didn't end until the war, and the war is
really what ended the depression, um and not FDR's policies.
So it is very relevant today to decide what we're
gonna do exactly. And I think a lot of us
think of FDR as a bigger than life president. You know,

(12:39):
he certainly has one of the most um memorable monuments
in Washington. Certainly he's a very beloved figure. He had
an incredibly long term. He had, you know, people who
followed and listened to the fireside chats, and they were
also very big fans of Eleanor. And so these economists
who are putting forth this new theory are are really
shaking up our perceptions of a president who people know

(13:00):
here to fourth that led our nation through a really
hard time and another questioning they're questioning that. And I
think some theorists are even going so far as to
question what FDRs ulterior motives may have been. Perhaps he
genuinely thought he was doing the right thing for the nation,
for the economy, or perhaps it was a power and measure.
Maybe he wanted to hold his office and he knew

(13:21):
that he could if he continued to keep the people
you know. Understand exactly so our business history here near
is what will we revealed next. But there are so
many opportunities for you to go in and look at
historical narratives and revise them and bring your own point
of view to them. And we would encourage you guys
to do that with many of the history articles on

(13:43):
our site, so be sure to check them out at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
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