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December 11, 2003
History Perspectives
Some random reading of rss feeds turned up this Wired article which outlines one of the claims that the "Wright brothers" were not the first flyers. Personally I don't think there is a conclusive case made in the article but it sort of chimed with something I had read earlier on TL's blog about historical perspectives (and I am not referring to her "history is bunk" comment). The gist of thought was that the main push for "changing" the official history is not a matter of truth or accuracy (arguing about the slope of the ground) but a matter of political expediency. If the first man person to fly was a Brazilian living in France then that is port politically palatable than having it be an American.
This brings me back to a memory from a long time ago. My mum taught geography and history at TAFE (sort of like "college" in the US I think) and when she taught history she tried to mix in with the boring written material (prepared by politically-biased historians) some 1st degree sources - i.e. people who were actually there. One of her finds was an old WWI veteran who had fought in France. When asked what was the strongest memories he commented on the smell (something not normally mentioned in history books) and the need to keep one's feet dry. He was present (in a nearby trench) when the "Red Baron" was shot down and was part of the team that went over to the downed plane. He insisted that the bullets that killed the pilot had entered from below the plane and through the seat and were not of the right type to have been fired from the air. Now I have read my official history and AFAIK the credit was granted to a brave Canadian pilot but that doesn't match the first hand source.
In a similar vein, I can remember a discussion with a WWII veteran who had been a prisoner on the Burma railway. He mentioned that the atomic bombing of Japan was a bad thing. I suggested that without it, he would have died (as would many of the others). He agreed but pointed out that what the Japanese were doing was also bad (at least equally bad) but that one wrong thing did not justify the other. That challenged my thinking because until that point in time, I could imagine having to make the decision to bomb and proceeding with it as an appropriate action (and punishment) given the information available. Now I think I would still order the bombing but after a lot more soul searching and considering it the lesser of two evil choices - order the bombing (kill the enemy) or order an invasion (and kill more allies).
Naturally the person who was there and involved may not have the whole picture but often they have insights that even those over-seeing an event may have failed to notice. Maybe history has to be a combination of overview and "underview" and certainly the more perspectives the better.
Now I need to do some reading on this "history of Texas the country" mentioned by TL.
Posted by Ozguru at December 11, 2003 01:12 PM
Comments
Posted by: GDay Mate at December 11, 2003 01:12 PM
