Revisionist History Works Both Ways

        We see the words “revisionist history” bandied about, generally by conservatives, as if it were somehow yet one more example of the evils of liberalism, vice what it usually is, a deeper search for reality than older sources cite. The recent op-ed I just responded to at some length on my blog used the term, although considering the creds of the writer, I question her understanding of the real meaning of the term.

        There is one easy example which shows the true nature of the beast: Following the  1890 Wounded Knee massacre, and using what incredibly biased reports were generated by the Army, 20 soldiers were awarded Congressional Medals of Honor for their parts in using four Hotchkiss-designed M1875 mountain guns  against the Lakota, many of whom had already been disarmed.

       By comparison, only six Medals of Honor have been awarded personnel involved in fighting in Iraq. Yet, to some, usually the “my country is always right” crowd, telling the reality is “revisionist” which by the meaning of the word it is. It is also frequently the truth.

       The same philosophy prevails in places like Kansas where school texts are approved only on the basis that they minimize the real story of the Civil Rights, Reconstruction, etc. To be equitable, it must be conceded that revisionism cuts both ways at times.

         One such example is Patrick Buchanan’s claim that Poland, Britain and France, not Germany, were responsible for World War II. Think about that for a moment. His view is that the Anglo–French guarantee to Poland in 1939 encouraged Poland not to seek a compromise over Danzig₁, though Britain and France were in no position to come to Poland's aid, and Hitler was offering the Poles an alliance in return. He argues that they thereby turned a minor border dispute into a catastrophic world conflict, and handed East Europe, including Poland, to Stalin. Buchanan further argued the British pact with Poland ensured the country would be invaded, as Stalin knew the British Empire would not be able to declare war on Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. To be candid, this viewpoint is rejected by most historians on the grounds that Hitler would have done to Poland as he did to Austria in 1938 – simply annex it.

        Revisionism places on the reader the onus of reading more than one source if “truth” (frequently a subjective concept in any case) is to be found. Most recent revisionism however centers around recognizing previously marginalized accomplishments or events and those responsible.  

1. Danzig (Gdansk, in Polish) had been declared an “open city” with joint German/Polish access by the Versailles Treaty. As Germany rearmed, many Germans in Gdansk became Nazis and pushed for the city to become solely German. Poland as a nation would never have conceded this, so Buchanan’s point (he is an anti-Semite, and Danzig had a large Jewish merchant population most of whom were later exterminated by the Germans), is, to me more than a bit suspect.

       Another means of revisionism is to analyze the beliefs of the original writers and reevaluate their works through the lens of their inbuilt biases. A final example of an author for whom this is applicable is Theodore Roosevelt. While I find many things to admire about the man, he was a white supremacist in perspective  as well as robustly convinced that just about everything good in America was Anglo-Saxon in derivation.

        A brilliant man, a legitimate historian and a very good writer, his 1889 Four volume set, “The Winning of the West,” is a masterpiece of historiography – as T.R. saw it. In Roosevelt’s world view, essentially everything done to expand America to the Pacific and settle all that lay between was the product of vigorous and generally moral White men and, to a significantly lesser extent, women. Hispanics, persons of color, and, to an even lesser extent, Native Americans, have relatively little place in the narrative.

       Roosevelt admitted that the shedding of blood was not always “agreeable,” but deemed it the “healthy sign of the virile strength” of the American people. As president of the American Historical Association and as president of the United States, Roosevelt exulted in “our manifest destiny to swallow up the land of all adjoining nations who were too weak to withstand us.” He deemed it “desirable for the good of humanity at large that the American people should ultimately crowd out the Mexicans from their sparsely populated Northern provinces₂” and wrest the rest of the West from Indians.

Roosevelt and his peers largely ignored the simple farmers who actually built towns, schools and churches in favor of more glamorous and far more violent figures, lawmen and baddies alike.

Revisionists point out that the uncomfortable (for some) truth is that almost everything Americans know about cowboying was learned from Mexican Vaqueros. Additionally, Most of California’s culture in 1850 was Spanish in character. Roosevelt, a product of his time and his background wrote about it not as it was, specifically, but rather as he envisioned it to be.

2. Since the US had already annexed Texas and all the states along the current Mexican border were already US territories, TR must have been referring to taking what is now still Mexican territory South of the current US/Mexican Border!