A respectable historian once defined the field of history as that of trained people seeking to learn what probably happened in the past, implying (I think) that they have posited certain truths and agreed on them that turned out, despite their probability at the time, to be incorrect.
So what, in your view, is the single largest majority opinion of professional historians that has come to be viewed (again, by professional historians) as incorrect?
I have no idea about the greatest, but I believe there was a feeling among many historians of the benefits of colonialization for native peoples. Instead many were heavily wiped out:
If you are looking for a singular historical fact, I think the most common one (at least among ‘ancient’ scholars) was the historicity of Troy from The Iliad, which most 19th and even early 20th century historians regarded as purely mythological. (The description of the Trojan War from is generally thought to be an amalgamation of conflicts from different eras, and ‘Homer’ himself a ‘historian’ who brought together different oral traditions into a single epic poem centered around a romantic conflict rather than a series of resource conflicts over centuries and even different versions of Troy.)
In the broader sense, it is difficult to highlight “posited certain truths” that were universally accepted because historians love to disagree. The view of ‘colonization versus genocide’ is certainly a perspective that has changed but that is in large measure because the social perspective of the cultural superiority of white Europeans is no longer considered the default, and the evidence of the cultural and technological innovation of other cultures has always been there even if dismissed and even literally plowed over. For Western historians, I think the biggest overall shift in perspective has been the characterization of the European ‘Dark Ages’ following the collapse of the ‘Western’ Roman Empire, when in reality there was a flourishing of cultures due to innovation and migration in Central and Northern Europe, as well as the rise of Islamic cultures in the Levant, Arabia, North Africa, and around the Mediterranean from the 8th through 16th or 17th centuries, not to mention everything going on in East Asia.
The recognition of large empires with elaborate trade networks, great stone and earthwork constructions, and advanced astronomical, mathematical, and agricultural knowledge and innovations is newer because of the degree to which those have been suppressed, both culturally and by literally destroying much of the evidence of the cultures of the Americas, but I think the historical and archeological community today is in broad agreement that there were great empires with expansive trade networks and elaborate irrigation systems mostly hobbled by a lack of draft animals and ready access to iron and tin, limiting them to copper and stone as structural and working tool materials.
Stranger
Speaking just of US, 100 years ago the consensus of historians was that the states rights drove the civil war. Now it seems mostly agreed that it was protection of slavery. The states’ own secession statements fully support the latter.
I don’ think that the “state’s rights” rationale for the Civil War was ever the consensus among professional historians even though it became the stock explanation presented in a lot of introductory history textbooks as driven by regional politics with the ‘Lost Cause’ mentality. The historical record clearly shows that it was the division over human slavery that led to political strife and the secession of the states joining the Confederacy. Historical agreement over the fallout and consequences of the American Civil War is much more varied and of contention today with some states (*cough*Florida*cough*) literally refusing to teach that history.
Stranger
State’s rights causing the Civil War was always known to be political baloney. Even SC in it’s secession arguments complained about northern states invoking state’s rights to avoid returning slaves. The “Noble Cause” mythology was always known to be just that by honest historians.
In terms of the Civil War, the hardest to kill myth is that Sherman’s March to the Sea was a scorched Earth thing. If a town didn’t have an arms factory or some such nothing happened there. Any supplies they obtained were paid for with US scrip which was a fully reliable scrip, esp. when compared to confederate money. It’s odd seeing all these towns along the path with pre-war buildings and such which have a tale of how the town fathers pled with Sherman not to destroy them. Which Sherman went along with. As with all towns. A guy wrote a book 20+ years ago where he went into the census and other records like diaries for the area and conclusively proved that there was no significant destruction. He received death threats from the usual “You calling my greatgrandpa a liar???” dolts.
It was thinking back in the 1930s or so many left wing intellectuals, including historians, were very positive about Russian communism–and this of course was a time that in retrospect it was clear there were massive famines and purges. Can anyone clarify?
It is certainly true that up until the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968 “left wing intellectuals” were trying to paper over the planned famines, pervasive corruption, and broad economic failures of the Soviet system, and some continued in this vein until the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, but that was all contemporary politics. I don’t think any credible historian—certainly not since the release of economic and trade data used to compile the IMF’s A Study of the Soviet Economy and the distribution of the Mitrokhin Archive has tried to portray the history of the Soviet Union as free from corruption, famine, and failure. I’m sure you can find some neo-Marxist historian still desperately trying to shore up a favorable interpretation of the Soviet economy but they aren’t going to be taken seriously given the surfeit of evidence and first person testimony against that argument.
Stranger
I agree with what’s been posted so far.
I’d nominate as the “single greatest mistake” made by Western historians–historically, as it were–as having come up with, and adhering to, the Great Man Theory of History.
The idea that all or even most of what’s happened is due to the birth of fated-to-be-great leaders, who shaped everything, seems rather nutty today. Of course there are those on the current scene who probably think it’s spot-on…
I think that the biggest mistake historians ever made was assuming that history makes sense. That everything happened for a reason and that people - especially leaders - were rational people who acted for rational reasons. That history doesn’t largely consist of a series of accidents, screw-ups and blatant acts of stupidity.
The greatest mistake was giving the Bible and other scriptures more credence as history than they deserve. Historians didn’t find the balls to stop trying to conform their findings to Biblical events until well after scientists and philosophers flatly stated there was not just a lack of evidence for those events but those events could not have even taken place as described at all.
Not to mention cold and unforgiving bad luck.
The posts above are fairly comprehensive. One that is technically covered but not explicitly mentioned is the deliberate omission of women as actors in politics, science, literature, and culture. They are a special case of the omission of a wide range of minorities - blacks, asians, gays, you know the drill - that are just now receiving the kind of attention that is their due.
A word about the Civil War. In the 1950s a group of historians started challenging the pervasive domination of that branch of academic study by Southerners. Not just school history texts but major academic books and articles preached the injustice of the north going into battle with the south, their opposition to slavery, the destruction during the war, the evils of Reconstruction, and the heroic efforts to correct these wrongs summed up as the Lost Cause.
The historians knew a tremendous focus on the War would blossom because of the centenary starting in 1961. And they were right. Many great books were devoured by the public then and later - Shelby Foote’s trilogy was an all-time classic - yet these barely shifted their viewpoint to demolish the earlier historians take on the South. Even a decade later, when I took my course in revisionist history, texts breaking with the past were new and daring.
Today, the reprehensible behavior of the South should be the story told in every textbook. But I’ve been told by teachers that a states’ rights narrative was featured in the texts they had to teach from.
And the cutting down of the nobility and greatness of the Founding Fathers is vehemently opposed across the country.
History is a dialog between academics and students, writers and readers. One side might want to push change, but the other side drags its feet.
A more recent one, the idea that General Rommel was this anti-Nazi military genius all popped up post-World War 2, and managed to last up until this very day. Only in the last couple of years have I seen a massive pushback against it by professional historians but previously it was pretty much written in stone Rommel was a genius.
“What are you trying to do, scare me? You sound like my mother! We’ve known each other for a long time. I don’t believe in magic, a load of superstitious hocus-pocus. I’m going after a find of incredible historical significance. You’re talking about the boogeyman! Besides, you know what a…cautious fellow I am.” *throws a loaded pistol across the room*
Stranger
I mean it’s a pretty good rule of thumb, for most of written history if you read an account of a war it’s probably written by the winning side and biased towards them in subtle or not so subtle ways.
It’s not a universal rule and it doesn’t make everything the “victors” write a fiction, but it’s a perfectly good thing to bear in mind when considering sources.
Except in the United States?
Not just a “states’ rights narrative”.
A grade school history book I read in West Virginia had an essay titled: “Slavery: Good or Evil?”
Well, rules of thumb merely give good approximate instant results. They ain’t perfect.
The South writing the history of the Civil War is certainly an anomaly. You’d be hard pressed to find many more examples even if you limit your search to the U.S., though. Although a fringe on the right are working now to rewrite the history of World War II, with the Nazis as heroes and the holocaust imaginary.
And maybe revisit revisionism.
The Dope is a nice bubble of resistance to anti-history. I hope we keep that flame alive.
Whatever our equivalent of “YEEHAH!” is.