Reading the thread about"Have any heroes from the past not been subjected to revisionism" I wondered if any bad guys from the past have subsequently been found by historians to be good guys or if not then not totally evil guys.
On the moment I can only think of Judas in the musical J.C.Superstar, and the Romans IRL at the Crucifixion who gave J.C. vinegar when he begged for a drink and later on stabbed him with a spear.
I was told at school that the vinegar donation was sadistic tormentation when in fact “Vinegar” was the rough wine legionaries drank themselves and administering the Coup de Gras was in an actual fact an act of of mercy to save the victim a long lingering death from suffocation.
I dont mean this to be a religious thread but cant think of any other examples at this moment .
Most participants in liberation movements were regarded as villains by the power from which they sought to liberate their people, and heroes by their own people after the achievement of liberation. This is especially true for the de-colonization movements during the 20th century.
It should also be added that emperor Nero, who has been regarded as a blood-thirsty lunatic for two millennia partly due to his bad image among early Christian writers, is now regarded in a more positive light by recent historians.
Simplistic “good guy/bad guy” labelling aside, there certainly has emerged a more complex view of Benedict Arnold than was generally held throughout American history. Most historians credit him as the real man behind American victory at the Battle of Saratoga. He was brave, innovative and decisive – the polar opposite of “Granny” Gates under whom he served (and who relentlessly tried to shunt Arnold aside).
And he did have legitimate grievances – Gates got all the credit for the campaign; he was passed over for promotion by political enemies in Congress; and he was essentially abandoned by Washington when his enemies got him court-martialed over some shady finances during his time as military commander of Philadelphia (bed feathering not being an uncommon practice at the time).
Not an excuse for betraying one’s country, but not the arch-villain he’s been portrayed as in the history textbooks.
I don’t know that he’s been completely rehabilitated, but Richard III’s ongoing reputation was soundly trashed by More and Shakespeare - presumably to flatter the reining Monarch. His reputation has re-bounded somewhat.
Actually, checking out Richard’s wiki entry I came across this snippet:
That must have been a fun thing for the three of them to do!
Currently over here HBO is running a miniseries on the life of John Adams, who ended up becoming our first minister to Great Britain after the Revolutionary War. It’s strange to think that now this same King George had to deal on diplomatic terms with men who previously were traitorous rebels.
I once heard a credible defense of Aaron Burr. According to the speaker, a reputable researcher, a lot of the things that gave Burr his bad reputation were/are overblown or outright false.
NOTE: Please do not expect me to now defend Burr in this thread. I don’t remember the speaker’s points, nor do I wish to parrot his position here.
I was taught that the spear thurst was an act of mercy and, part of biblical prophecy. As the Christ was not to have any of his bones broken, and many victimes of crucifixion had their legs broken below the knees to finish them off, but not Jesus.
Similarly, the myth that Mozart was poisoned by Salieri has more to do with Pushkin and Rimsky-Korsakov than any actual evidence. Amadeus wasn’t exactly kind, either, but it’s generally accepted that it simply didn’t happen.
William Marcy “Boss” Tweed was still a huge-bellied corrupt politician, but Leo Herskovitz, re-evaluating the data (much of it unopened since Tweed’s day – Herskovitz says that when he opened files, the sand used to absorb the ink slithered out), says that he’s nowhere near as much of a crook than he was made out to be, and that many of the stories told about him are untrue. See his book Tweed’s New York.
Nevertheless, the stories Herskovitz says aren’t true continue to circulate, as in the current Wikipedia article on him:
So, there’s a possibility that Tweed, while not rehabilitated, wasn’t as big a crook as people thought. For what that’s worth.
Lt. William Bligh was celebrated as a hero when he returned to England after the *Bounty *mutiny, and for good reason, as his 47 day, 3600 mile trek in an overcrowded 23-foot ship’s launch was a miracle of seamanship. The court-martial that subsequently convened to try him for the loss of his ship acquitted Bligh of all responsibility for the incident, and the newly promoted Captain Bligh soon set sail back to Tahiti with a new crew (including a compliment of Royal Marines) to complete the mission he had set out to perform in the first place.
Over the following years, however, Bligh’s reputation suffered in the public eye. The influential families of Fletcher Christian (leader of the mutineers) and of Peter Haywood (midshipman convicted of mutiny but pardoned by the king) worked hard to defend the tarnished names of their respective sons by advancing specious tales of Bligh’s cruelty and corruption. Gradual shifts in the public perception of the slave trade (which Bligh’s voyage was intended to serve) and in the treatment of royal mariners, combined with popular mistrust of authority and the near-inevitable triumph of a good story over demonstrable fact served to repaint Bligh as a sadistic martinet. By the time Hollywood took on the *Bounty *saga, there was little truth left in the tale.
Caroline Alexander’s 2003 book The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty has done a great deal to restore Bligh’s reputation. Careful analysis of the historical record demonstrates that the infamous Lieutenant was actually surprisingly lenient in the handling of shipboard discipline. In fact, his theories for maintaining the health and wellbeing of his crew, modeled upon the enlightened idea of his own former commander, Captain Cook, were positively enlightened for their day.
" When we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing, and I’ve since come to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is truly God, and I believe that I, as well as everyone else, will be accountable to Him."
John Profumo was not a historical villain as much as being cast as a foolish, self-indulgent man.
From his obit:
Filled with remorse, Profumo never sought to justify himself or seek public sympathy. Instead, for the next four decades he devoted himself to Toynbee Hall, a charitable settlement at Spitalfields in the East End of London. He began by washing dishes, helping with the playgroup and collecting rents. Later he served with the charity’s council, eventually becoming its chairman and then president - the only other person to have held that office was Clement Attlee.*
Hell of a guy.
George III of England was viewed as an individual who was attempting to take power away from parliament and become some sort of autocrat. More recent scholarship indicates that while he had a poor relationship with parliament he was not the autocrat many historians have made him out to be.
James VI of Scotland/ I of England was thought to be a poor monarch who laid the foundations for the English Civil War. Recent scholars have been re-examining the evidence and believe he may have been a better monarch than he’s given credit for.
You’re right of course I was a teensy bit merry yesterday evening.
In actuality the "blow of fat "was a sadistic practice who’s intention was to raise the hopes of the victim that his suffering would soon be at an end,a hope that was dashed down when he realised that the spear point was fashioned out of frozen hog fat.
This evil machination is believed to have been thought up by Torquemada.
One interesting case of revision currently on-going is Qin Shi Huang Ti.The first sovereign emperor of China, he was reviled for 2000 years as a monster, a dictator. He was the touchstone for Evil in Chinese history, as Adolf Hitler is for us today.
In the past few years, there is an effort to rehabilitate his reputation, and cast him as firm, but fair, and the patriotic uniter of the Chinese nation. See the recent movie Hero for an example.
Most of the information we have on Caligula was written while the descendants of his enemies were in power. Modern historians tend to be skeptical of such accounts. Quite a few have moved into the “Well, his enemies were just as bad” camp.
The same goes for Vlad Dracula. Most of the people he impaled and enslaved were from the Boyar class, who were not exactly pacifists themselves. Romanian historians have always viewed him as a hero who kept them free from Turkish invaders. Many modern historians now view him as “Well, you would be just as bad, if your childhood was as rotten as his was.”
Once they were dead or safely imprisoned, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull started getting better press.
