Category: Historiography

With “history” being an incredibly personal term, it’s incorrect to assume that there is a clear-cut difference between “history” and “historiography”. Ford’s maxim that ‘history is bunk’ (Ford, 1916), juxtaposed with Porter’s aphorism viewing history as an important process (Porter, 1975), highlights that defining “history” cannot be abridged to an orderly solution. Schinkel offers “historiography” as the process of writing “history” (Schinkel, 2004), and can therefore be seen as a more subjective concept than “history”; this implies “history” is objective. It is therefore difficult to clearly distinguish a difference between “history” and “historiography”, with this being an exceedingly open-ended theme to grapple with.

The inference that “historiography” must be a subjective concept, with “history” playing an objective role, immediately distinguishes between the two terms. “Historiography” as historical interpretation, the writing of history after its events, can easily be misconstrued or constructed towards bias. Whereas, “history” as facts, leaves little room for the potential of such opinion. St Augustine stated that “the historian does not himself produce the sequence of events which he narrates,” (St Augustine, 1997), which lends understanding to the notion that “history” remains a static concept, where it cannot be changed, compared with “historiography” that can be written subjectively by every historian in their own essence. This is corroborated by Elton’s view that “[history’s] objective reality is guaranteed; it is beyond being altered for any purpose whatsoever” (Elton, 1967). “History” remains objective, where its facts and events cannot be changed or distorted by any means, and cannot be touched. Despite its fragmentation, it remains a hybrid discipline, a cultural subject (Cobb, 1975), whose purpose is to increase one’s understanding of and over one’s environment (Carr, 1961). This, therefore, denotes meaning to the awareness of “history” remaining a constant as a symptom of its objectiveness. This is in contrast to “historiography”, which relies on the approach of the historian in their writing of “history” and its events. Reliance to the historian’s approach and writing generates a multitude of views, attitudes, and opinions that interpret the events and periods of “history” in endless ways. This is why “historiography” is a subjective term, as it allows for “history” to be written and rewritten according to the historian’s approach, view, and personal agenda. Perhaps why such subjective and objective differences are clear, is that “history” denotes its meaning to people, places, and events in the past, as opposed to “historiography” which stresses the work of historians across a time scale. There is an emphasis on “history” as the ‘what’, compared to “historiography” as the ‘how’ (Schinkel, 2004), and despite historians not unanimously agreeing with this dissimilarity, the acknowledgment of such a distinction is central to this debate.

Arguing between the past and present is part of the distinguished difference between the two terms, that historians are far from united over: it feeds into the overarching difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Empiricists, such as Ranke, argue that “history” should be written exactly how it was at the time, implying that the past is comprehensible but permanent. Therefore, “historiography” should not be susceptible to interpretation as historians must simply write events for how they actually happened. This empirical approach argues that “historiography” naturally has a bias, however, empiricists emphasize that such bias could and should be overcome. The empiricism of this argument fundamentally centers around “history” as the objective past (Schinkel, 2004), and therefore implies that the “historiography” for the permanent past opens up possibilities for susceptibility to subjectivity. The historians who foster the skeptical approach, profoundly argue that the past cannot be accessed as it is too vast to be understood (Schinkel, 2004). However, through the acknowledgment that the past is able to exist in the present, the “historiography” produced by skeptics is largely based upon the remnants and remains available from the past in the present, for example, through primary sources. Hence, the distinction between “history” and “historiography” is clearly evidenced here through perceptions of the past and present in their relation to their objectivity and subjectivity. Another approach to identifying in highlighting this difference between the two terms is the pragmatic approach. This approach maintains that the past is real, but although it is inaccessible in the present, historians are able to distinguish its truth. Most historians are likely to fall into this more ‘moderate’ category, who view interpretations and such “historiography” as wholly subjective as such interpretations derive from subjects (Schinkel, 2004). “History” is therefore centered around the past and its concrete facts, giving it its label of objectivity, whereas “historiography” is open to interpretation in the past and present, and is, therefore, able to be more subjective. Its subjectivity arises from a debate centering around the notion of “importance” (Schinkel, 2004), with historians subjectively deciding which elements and aspects of “history” deserve the most attention. It’s this idea that lends understanding to the marked difference that can arise from this: if historians subjectively choose their information and sources from their perception of importance, this creates a vast scope amongst historians for the “historiography” they produce. Fundamentally, “history” remains an objective constant in the past, contrasted with the endless scope for “historiography” which sustains its subjective nature.

It’s therefore important to distinguish and identify the difference between “history” and “historiography”, as there are various approaches employed by both terms that add to the fragmentation of the debate; both terms are vastly different despite a strong correlation between the two. “Historiography” as a subjective term, existing in both the past and present, is the reason why “history” can be read and interpreted in boundless ways. Haskell’s assertion that “the writing of history and the writing of fiction are kindred activities” (Haskell, 1990), is interesting within the context of this debate, as it creates and strengthens the assumption that “history” comprises genuine facts, whereas “historiography” as the writing of history, is a fictional process that detracts value from the facts. The difference between “history” and “historiography” matters because it demonstrates how “history” comprises the permanent past, that cannot be changed, whereas “historiography” is something that is constantly occurring, allowing us to experience and face alternatives to live that we may not have previously encountered. “Historiography” provides ever-changing accounts and writings for ‘how’ things happened in the “history” of the past (Tosh, 2010), and can only be understood through acknowledging the distinction between the two terms. Those who deny that “history” provides us without any lessons are in some respect correct, as are those who affirm that history offers a sign of human destiny (Tosh, 2010): as such open-ended concepts, all responses can be argued. However, it’s the way in which “history” is interpreted and presented to us through “historiography” that the latter can provide us with lessons in response to questions and concerns experienced in the present. “History”’s objective nature of the past is therefore distinct from “historiography”’s subjective offering which allows for limitless opportunities in which we can view the past and its associated events.

When asking a question like, “Is history political?” it can be quite easy to simply say: yes. History is political. There’s ample evidence to prove it. Any layperson would know that history comprises of the rulers, governments, and wars of the past. Undoubtedly, the political narrative of the entire human race. Even in the present day, history is often used politically. Whether it be how Europeans claim the history of the Greeks or the Bengali Brahmins claim the history of the Hindu Aryans (Chatterjee 29), the claiming of history, and occasionally the retelling of history is an act of the politics of identity. But when asking a question like, “Is the writing history necessarily political?” there must be more pondering to be done about it. Talking about the writing of history would also automatically disqualify oral histories completely. Firstly, we must look at what is history. How has the writing of history been different from the progression of events? What would be a non-political history? And then we must ask can there ever be a history completely devoid of the political? Only then can we know if the writing of history is necessarily political. This paper will attempt to answer these questions as best as possible looking particularly at the Indian context.

History as the discipline we know today came up in the West during the period of enlightenment. With the advent of scientific inquiry, the writing of the past sought to be more scientific in its approach rather than religious or moralizing. So was born liberal historiography, also called Whig history writing. This 19th-century gentlemanly view of history claims ideological neutrality in the writing of history. A “view from nowhere” implies that it is an unbiased and detached narrator of events. It is debatable how effective this notion of neutrality really is considering when talking about any historical event, there are always multiple perspectives and complex relationships involved. Ideological neutrality could refer to attempting to show every perspective without bias to any one perspective. However, even then, there would be many deterrents against it. The fact that written history is through only what are considered to be “valid sources”, which in itself is a bias to only the perspectives of those who created the sources whether they be inscriptions, biographies, or autobiographies. This, while being biased against any other sources which cannot fit the liberal historiographical label of accuracy or validity like folk songs, ballads, and oral history. If ideological neutrality would be a de-political approach to writing history, it would be inherently contradictory. One cannot talk about political figures and events by being de-political and history is the record of political figures and events. However, these European historiographers still claim ideological neutrality. It is probable that liberal historiography, due to this very claim to neutrality can, in a sense, get away with its biases and over time, be accepted as a “view from nowhere” simply because of the claims.

The writing of history, studying writing of history, although technically the study of constructs, opinions, and single perspective accounts of a time long gone and people who are dead, is still very important to study because these constructs, views, and accounts have consequences in the present time and society. One look at the colonial rule in India itself can show the effects of history writing on the thoughts and ideologies of its people. It all starts with the fact that, as mentioned earlier in this essay, the discipline of history itself originated in the West. It was the context in which history emerged that shaped how it functioned as a discipline, especially in methodology. This is because history is not simply just the recording of past events. It involves research, primary sources and the writing of history itself is also a part of the discipline of history and of course, the claim to ideological neutrality. If it weren’t for these specifics, there was definitely a recording of the past in India. There were the Ithasas- the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, the 18 puranas, and many Vamsavalis- dynastic trees and charities- biographies. But these were nowhere near the same kinds of writing that the Europeans were by then accustomed to calling historical. The fact that many of the stories were mythical and scarcely made a difference between fact and fiction was all the more reason for the British to immediately dismiss these accounts of the past as ahistorical. The only pre-colonial text that became well-known as it was considered close enough to modern historiography was the Rajatarangini written by Kalhana. This was because Kalhana was quite critical of the dynasty of his patron, the king of Kashmir while other Charitas and Vamsavalis would give their patron rulers a basically divine status. British historians then propagated India’s historicity and stagnation. They used these Indian methods of recording the past as sources for then writing a proper history of India. In a truly “white man’s burden” fashion, they set out to “provide India with a history”. The real consequences of these actions come with the spread of English education in India. When Indians were given English education, they were also given English thoughts and ideology. “Macaulay’s Minute”, English education reform in India, famously sought to make Indians “English in every way but appearance”. Education can be considered one of the most effective ways of spreading ideologies in the guise of it being knowledge. This included the spread of the notion that India was ahistorical and the first history of India was written by James Mill- a Britisher. The views of British history writing on India had many dangerous generalizations to it and also racism. Teaching Indians to see themselves as nothing but the natural subordinate of the British was meant to be a hegemonic method of dominating the entire subcontinent but ended up just educating an emerging English-educated middle class about the concepts of rights, liberty, and justice from which the nationalists and freedom movement arose. Tapan Raychoudhuri talks about the effects of British history writing in more detail. We shall look at what he says later in the essay but we must first clarify more about the nature of history writing itself in India.

To talk about the kinds of content found in historical writing and how they relate to the past, we must talk about the different kinds of historical writing. There are considered to be 5 main schools of historiography in India. They are The Mill-Dodwell tradition of the writing of India which is the imperialist historiography and was written during colonial rule. Then is the Nationalist tradition of writing which comprised of history written by Nationalists and the history of the nationalist movement. The 1970s Cambridge school of writing is the writing by the imperialists about the nationalist movement. Although here, it is important to note not all Cambridge writers were imperialists but most did tend to hold a dismissive or negative view of the nationalist movement. Then we have Marxist historiography which was based on Karl Marx’s notion of 5 epochs of history. It was most notably the historian Kosambi who in the 1980s interpreted Marxist historiography to fit the Indian context without simply just superimposing it onto the Indian context. Finally, we have Subaltern studies. Subaltern studies would be the most recent school of historiography which is the historiography of minority groups of any kind, including the intersectionality between multiple minority groups. When looking at these schools of writing, and more specifically on whether these schools of writing are “necessarily political”, we can say a few things off the bat. The imperialist and nationalist schools were both political in what they wrote and political in the impact of their writings. The Cambridge school was political in what they wrote but when compared to the imperialist and nationalist schools whose political after-effects quite literally formed and broke nations, the Cambridge school did not have the same impact. The Marxist school can be seen as the first time that the writing of history deviated from exclusively political as it is more about socio-economic structures with a special interest in the working class. It was through the Marxist school that the Subaltern studies emerged as a historiographical method as it too looks at the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the past. However, these are not set lines. The demarcation between what is political, cultural, economic, and social and not compartmentalized in our society, and we need not see it that way. So, just because different schools can be seen as focusing on different aspects of history does not mean that they exclusively write about only that.

The discussion about the politics of history writing, the political-ness of it or the lack thereof is one that happens frequently among historians. This essay will now look at some of the writings of Ranajit Guha and his take on the writing of history and its politics of it. First, let us look at a chapter from his book “The small voice of history”. In this chapter, he starts by talking about the elitism of historiography. He talks about how the historiography that arose from colonial times, that is, the liberal historiography of the western discipline of history was elitist in nature because of its methodology and more importantly, the way it was used in India. He says that the historical writing of that time could not explain the Indian Nationalist movement to us (Guha 189). This is mainly because although schools like the Cambridge school of history writing would try to argue that the Indian nationalist movement was only a movement by the elite English-educated Indians for their own benefit, one cannot deny the many peasant rebellions and mass movements that the common people of India too were a huge part of the movement. Guha does not, however, dismiss historiography as a whole for it. In fact, he says

Elitist historiography is of course not without its uses. It helps us know more about the colonial state, the operation of its various organs in certain historical circumstances, the nature of the alignment of classes that sustained it… (Guha 188)

He even talks about the reason for this separation between the elite and the commoners, even after independence. Guha believes that the reason for this dichotomy was the failure of the Indian bourgeoisie to speak for the nation (Guha 192). There were people who were part of the hegemony and then there were people who were never even integrated into the hegemony because of it. However, he clarifies that this does not mean that these two domains are hermetically sealed off from each other and had no contact between them. In fact, he says the contrary that there was a great deal of overlap between them. This arose from the effort made from time to time by the more advanced elements among the indigenous elite, especially the bourgeoisie, to integrate them (Guha 192). From this, we can gather that political and non-political histories are not separate, and trying to make such a distinction between them might be an actual problem. Guha also talks about some alternate histories that are not political or elitist. In his book “The authority of vernacular past”, Guha talks about vernacular history. Vernacular history is that of any minority which also goes not follow hegemonic historiography. However, Guha also ends up illustrating the deep-reaching effects of colonialism and colonial historiography as he says

For in India ‘vernacular’ established itself as a distancing and supremacist sign which marked out its referents, the indigenous languages, and cultures, as categorically inferior to those of the West and of England in particular. (Guha 475)

History of the pre-colonial past was represented as preparatory to an eventual and almost providential outcome in the form of British paramountcy in the subcontinent. The narrative of the history of the Indian people was written as the story of “England’s Work in India” (Guha 475). This all-pervasive narrative led to the “Indian slave”, being born a slave to believe that they had no past of their own other than the one given to them by their colonial master. So, if the Indians were to write history, it would be nothing more than a repetition of what the colonial master had told them. However, Guha clarifies

Yet this retelling made a difference. For the story could no longer be told exactly as the master had set it up. Because it was told not in the master s language but the slave’s… (Guha 476)

It was these kinds of differences that led to the Nationalists completely rejecting any form of colonial history to write their own history and provide a truly Indian history. Nationalist history, however, was not vernacular. Despite attempting to pose itself as diametrically opposite to colonial historiography, it used the same methodology and even the same line of essentialization in its writings. It still excludes many groups and was still hegemonic in its own way. Guha remarks, “No wonder that vernacular, an autochthon of the depths of civil society, was unimpressed. It was obviously in no great hurry to dissolve itself in a totalizing nationalism” (Guha 477). Guha in fact states that vernacular history performed a role of informing the relationship of rulers and the ruled within the colonial state as well as the structures of dominance and subordination within the indigenous society which it continued to perform despite nationalist historiography.

Tapan Raychoudhuri in his book “Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities” talks about how the writings of the British made it seem like the Raj was doing only good things for India and the poverty of the nation was from the past before the British and how widespread those notions were (Raychoudhuri 156). There is even a popular notion that the British conquered India in a “fit of absent-mindedness” and hence had no reason to wish ill of a nation they never had malicious intent of conquering. Tapan Raychoudhuri however, disagreed with this claim. He said outright, “The Indian empire was acquired, not in a fit of absent-mindedness but, in the words of a British historian, in pursuit of the public and private greed of the Company’s servants.” (Raychoudhuri 161). Raychoudhuri has a point as before the East India Company, India was the richest nation in the world and it is well-known historically that the reason most Europeans even came to India was for its wealth. Conquering that wealth would make them the richest nation and people. Which was exactly what happened. He goes on to talk about how the new Indian government too inherited the administrative organization of the Raj and the traditions which went with it. However, these were not best suited to the tasks of social and economic development attempted after independence. The inordinately expensive judicial system and proverbially corrupt police which was often a law unto itself remain heavy burdens for the underprivileged in India (Raychourdhuri 160). Even social identities acquired new political importance as new patterns of consciousness emerged through interaction with western thought and the British presence. We do not encounter in the pre-British past either the idea of an Indian nation or any consciousness of a Hindu community spread across the subcontinent (Raychoudhuri 164).

In conclusion, after looking at the discipline of history itself, and its claim to ideological neutrality, one look at colonial history in India shows us that the claim to ideological neutrality does not cause neutrality in fact, it can end up causing more bias than neutrality simply because when it is accepted that a view is “a view from nowhere” without any questioning then this claim to neutrality itself can cause ideological hegemony and exclusion of minorities. Neutrality in history is not possible for every individual in our society always comes from a certain perspective. The claim to ideological neutrality is, therefore, a means of hegemonic manipulation. When looking at Indian history and historiography in particular, one can see clearly that there is an implicit connection between the writing of history, the playing out of politics, and the society itself. The writing of history is on the politics and the way the society of the past functioned; the playing out of politics affects the way a society functions and the playing out of politics is influenced by and uses the writing of history. When talking about the schools of Indian historiography, there are a lot of schools that talk almost exclusively about politics. Although the nationalist school talks more broadly about history it is still seen as a political school of historiography because their writings themselves were used for the success of the very political and very widespread nationalist movement. However, the later schools of historiography provide some much-needed context and nuance to an otherwise elitist and academic discipline and it is these nuances that we must not overlook. One cannot, as mentioned by Guha earlier in this essay “hermetically seal” these varying parts of the human experience away from each other. So, when finally answering the question “Is the writing of history necessarily political?”, the answer would be that the world is political, social, economic, religious, and cultural all at the same time. They all influence each other and are connected to each other deeply. So if the question implies that history must necessarily be only political, then the answer is no. However, otherwise, history is necessarily political in the same way that history is also necessarily social, economic, cultural, and religious. History should necessarily represent all facets of the human experience because history represents a varied human past for an even more varied human future.

References:

1. Guha, Ranajit. The Authority of Vernacular Pasts [online]. Meanjin, Vol. 51, No. 2, Winter 1992: 299-302. Availability: ISSN: 0025-6293. [cited 21 Nov 19].
2. Chatterjee, Partha, et al. “Claims on the Past.” Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 1–50.
3. Raychoudhuri, Tapan. Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India’s Colonial and Post-colonial Experiences. Oxford University Press, 2000.
4. Guha, Ranajit, and Partha Chatterjee. The Small Voice of History: Collected Essays. Permanent Black, 2010.

Historiography refers to looking back on the historical writings and research of the Philippine Archipelago throughout Luzon to Mindanao during the Spanish period. Our historian’s perspective mainly focuses on Filipino viewpoints through time. They expand their knowledge and provide the pillars of historical research and new interpretations of traditional literacy. The question wants to foresee the development of Philippine Historiography from the Pre-colonial to the Post-colonial period.

In the pre-colonial era, the information are limited due to the lack of a strong foundation of writing for most of the information is written in a traditional way like writing in bamboo and leaves which happens to be perishable over time. In the Spanish colonial period, most of the historians are Spanish priests and passionately spread Christianity to the people in the Philippines. The writings and information from this period are mostly missionary history. It is a fact that during the American colonial period, the writings are better than the former. It mainly focuses on the concern for socio-politics, culture, and society. The historians of America had contributed a great effort in writing Philippine history. On the other hand, the Post-colonial period was the most memorable writing of all, it has the point-of-view of a revolutionary Filipino during the post-war era and they make sure that the works are all about the Filipino people and its society.

As time passes, historians made an effort in writing the history of our country. It is time for us to become part of this journey as we take a look at the past efforts made by diverse historian people throughout the era. Although all these situations and different scenarios already happen in the past, let’s not discard this effort and throw them away just like junk in a garbage can, remember these words for this will be commemorative and shall never be forgotten. Philippine Historiography is truly an amazing journey.

The common thought that circulates a person’s mind is that why we should study history. Philippine historiography?All these happenings are in the past, why we should reminisce it again? It is like taking back garbage in a trash can. But they didn’t know how important it is to study these past events. Our history is a bridge that leads us to understand how these historical details about society, create an impact on the people. It is life-changing for all the members of the community. This information is also a great help in our studies.

When we take a look back at our Philippine historiography this different perspective from the pre-colonial to post-colonial period is the knowledge we need in order to solve certain issues and social problems in the community. The characteristics and features of modern conflicts can be converted into historical questions that can be solved in a traditional way. It is a way for us to gain empathy from historians and become patriotic person that has a love for the country and the people without expecting anything in return. A true Filipino has the courage to look back on the efforts made by our ancestors to fight for freedom. History will be a guide to continue living in the present and for the future of all.

Studying Philippine historiography is like reminiscing the memories of your loved ones. We must learn to recall and learn in order for us to understand the essence of living from a different perspective. It is a way to appreciate the efforts made by historians. It is great wisdom that can be passed through generations because we all know that someday, we will also become a part of history for the future perspective. And if we won’t appreciate this thing, we will also feel this as time goes by. It may be history but it won’t forget.

How did twentieth-century historians interpret the period known as the Great Famine?

The history of any nation is an integral part of establishing sovereignty and recognition on a global scale. Certain events or individuals dominate these narratives and can be based on triumph or atrocity. As such, the period of the 1840s has become a key feature in what could be called the ‘Irish Story’. It was a period of widespread hunger and disease, with the obvious catalyst lying in a blight that decimated a staple crop that had to some extent become over-relied on. Nonetheless, the circumstances surrounding the onset of the potato blight became an extremely controversial historical topic. Retrospectively, it was an epoch where Ireland was almost halfway through their union with Britain and had been significantly impacted by over a century of Penal Laws. Consequently, the popular narrative of events had been heavily influenced by nationalist rhetoric. However, a significant point in Irish historiography would challenge many accepted nationalist myths and begin to construct alternative ways of understanding the Irish story. A conflict of popular and traditional consensus against new historical methodologies would yield debates that would expand and hinder our understanding of many aspects of Irish history, including the Famine. This essay will assess the trajectory of Famine historiography concerning the controversial question of responsibility. In doing so, firstly, a brief discussion on the origins of the narrative became widely accepted following independence. Following this, the attention will turn to the emergence of new historical methods which would change the face of Irish history. Then, the focus will turn to two publications that were significant for this topic. Furthermore, the discussion will focus on a period of revised interpretations. Lastly, the discussion will center around interpretations that emerged following this period of revisionism and more modern accounts.

Contemporary understandings of the Famine were mainly articulated by individuals of political concern in an era where propaganda was essential for shaping consensus. Therefore, narratives being projected during and after the events served as tools in the political sphere, especially for Irish nationalists. Staunch nationalists such as Isaac Butt and John Mitchel were central in the narrative that was constructed in the decades following the events.[footnoteRef:2] For example, Mitchel quite overtly directs blame at the British government in 1854, in his Jail Journal.[footnoteRef:3] Mitchel’s attitude towards the events can then be summed up in his widely used quote, ‘the Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine’.[footnoteRef:4] Essentially, Mitchel, and many others like him, believed that the British government’s inaction – failure to close the ports, relief efforts, allocation of finances, and land and property policies – was the reason a crop failure could produce the crisis it did.[footnoteRef:5] The result of such narratives could certainly be seen to have increased any resentment harbored towards British authority. Indeed, individuals such as Mitchel were accused of exploiting the events for exactly that.[footnoteRef:6] Moreover, British narratives could be seen to have done little to alleviate this resentment. Justifications based on divine Providence and Malthusian ideology could be seen only to bolster nationalist rhetoric. Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Charles Trevelyan, for instance, wrote ‘the great evil with which we have to contend’ is ‘not the physical evil of famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the [Irish] people’.[footnoteRef:7] However, there were alternative understandings put forth. For example, the first scholarly work on the Famine, by Canon John O’Rourke – unlike Mitchel’s, this was derived mainly from eyewitness accounts – emphasizes how significant the split between Daniel O’Connell and the Young Irelanders had been, stating ‘had they remained united, they might have obtained means of saving the lives of thousands of their countrymen’.[footnoteRef:8] Nonetheless, it was the nationalist narrative that came to precedence and would be absorbed into scholars like Douglas Hyde and Eoin MacNeill who would be central to constructing the Irish history in the newly established Free State which would evolve into a popular national consensus.[footnoteRef:9] Indeed, it is vital to critically analyze and recognize the political agendas behind contemporary accounts in order to discern and construct an accurate framework, and this is exactly what was set out upon from the late 1930s. [2: Isaac Butt was the first leader of the Home Rule Party and produced a work titled The Famine in the Land (Dublin 1847). ] [3: John Mitchel, Jail journal, or, Five years in British prisons: commenced on board the Shearwater steamer…(New York, 1854), pp. 17-18. ] [4: Idem, The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) (Glasgow, 1876), p. 219.] [5: Ibid, p.209] [6: Mary Daly, ‘Revisionism and Irish History: The Great Famine’, in D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds), The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy (London, 1996), p. 72.] [7: Quoted in Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger (London, 1962), p. 156.] [8: Canon John O’Rourke, The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847, with Notices of Earlier Famines (Dublin, 1875), p. 89.] [9: Douglas Hyde quoted in Robert Welch (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (Oxford, 1996), p. 368, on John Mitchel, ‘he would make a rebel out of me if I weren’t one already’. For more information on the construction of Irish history around this period see John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (London, 1987), or, Sean O Tuama (ed.), The Gaelic League Idea (Dublin, 1972), or, John O’Callaghan, Teaching Irish Independence: History in Irish Schools, 1922-72 (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009).]

By the late 1930s, new historical methodologies had emerged which saw the establishment of the Irish Committee of Historical Sciences and the Irish Historical Studies journal, which would usher in a new beginning for Irish history. Taking influence from Britain and Europe, T.W. Moody and R.D. Edwards, stressed the importance of this new ‘value-free’ way of doing history, stating how it would be ‘constructive and instrumental’ for the Irish story.[footnoteRef:10] As such, many new interpretations of significant aspects of Irish history would surface throughout the proceeding decades. In many cases, these new interpretations challenged the nationalist narrative of the Irish story that was held so strongly by so many.[footnoteRef:11] Therefore, the ‘revisionist’ appellation was applied to anyone who produced work that seemed to eliminate any nationalistic elements of Irish history.[footnoteRef:12] On the other hand, those individuals who rejected the revised interpretations earned the epithet ‘traditionalist’ or ‘anti-revisionist’.[footnoteRef:13] Consequently, an era of severe polarisation amongst Irish historians would develop. However, when put into context, the gradual intensification of this polarization can be understood somewhat. As violence and unrest become increasingly common, especially in the north, some historians may have felt it their duty to omit any nationalistic characteristics from their work.[footnoteRef:14] Indeed, many were said to have this exact agenda.[footnoteRef:15] Similarly, those who refused to downplay such features were accused, in extreme cases, of justifying and encouraging the actions of the IRA.[footnoteRef:16] This practice of bi-categorization would prove to have significant implications for the development of Irish historiography. Huge debates would ensue, such as how the Easter Rising would be remembered, the land wars, or indeed, the Famine. Thus, for a long period of time, the scope of Irish history was limited by this process of ‘traditionalist’ or ’revisionist’ labeling. A clear example of this concerning the Famine is the publication of two texts in 1956 and 1962. [10: Ciaran Brady, ‘‘Constructive and Instrumental’: The Dilemma of Ireland’s First ‘New Historians’’, in Idem (ed), Interpreting Irish History: The Debate on Historical Revisionism (Dublin, 1994), p. 4. ] [11: A good example of how important the nationalist narrative was for some is Brendan Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism and Historical Scholarship in Modern Ireland’, in Ibid, pp. 191 – 216.] [12: This is discussed in depth in ibid, or in D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day, ‘Introduction: ‘Revisionism’ and the ‘revisionist controversy’, in Idem (eds), The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy (London, 1996), pp. 1 – 14.] [13: Ibid.] [14: As stated by F.S.L. Lyons, ‘In the present situation, with the dire past still overhanging the dire present, the need to go back to fundamentals and consider once more the meaning of independence, asserts itself with almost intolerable urgency. The theories of revolution, the theories of nationality, and the theories of history, which have brought Ireland to its present pass, cry out for re-examination, and the time is ripe to break with the great enchantment that for too long has made myth so much more congenial than reality, in ‘The Meaning of Independence’ in Brian Farrell (ed), The Irish Parliamentary Tradition (Dublin, 1973), p. 223. ] [15: Christine Kinealy, ‘Beyond Revisionism: Reassessing the Great Irish Famine’, History Ireland, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 29-30 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27724290) [accessed: 11-1-19].] [16: O’Callahan, Teaching, p. 36.]

The Famine had been a neglected aspect of Irish history in the early decades of independence, with only a mere five articles published in the first hundred issues of Irish Historical Studies.[footnoteRef:17] As such, on the eve of the Famine’s centenary, Eamon de Valera commissioned the ICHS to produce an authoritative history of the Famine to commemorate the events.[footnoteRef:18] However, it was not published until 1956. What’s more, the collection of essays – written by graduate students and supervised by editors like R.D. Edwards – did not live up to the standard promised on commission and although academically acclaimed, was not well received by the public.[footnoteRef:19] For example, criticisms directed at the book were that it had removed the emotion and suffering from the famine, briefly acknowledging in the book that ‘many, many people died’.[footnoteRef:20] On the contrary, in 1962, the publication of Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Great Hunger, seemed to portray the Famine in the light that many wished to see it, gritty, emotional, and confronting the reality of the widespread suffering.[footnoteRef:21] Criticised, however, for not being academic enough, sensationalized, or simply condescended as a novel.[footnoteRef:22] Nonetheless, the time has shown that Woodham-Smith’s efforts have stood the test of revision, still being widely read and cited while the other is long out of print. Does this display the power of myth over fact? Or is it the result of the ‘value-free’ history being not-so ‘value-free’ after all? Were there intended efforts to downplay British responsibility on one hand, or exaggerate them on the other? Indeed, Famine historiography would accelerate in the years following these publications and the same questions could be applied to many of the disparate interpretations. [17: Stated in note no. 2 of Daly ‘Revisionism’ in Boyce and O’Day, The Making, p. 86. ] [18: Cormac O’Grady, ‘The Saga of The Great Famine’ in Brady, Interpreting, p. 269.] [19: Ibid, p. 284.] [20: Quoted in Kinealy, ‘Beyond’, p. 31.] [21: O’Grady, ‘The Saga’, p. 281.] [22: James S. Donnelly, Jr., ‘The Great Famine: Its Interpreters, Old, and New’, History Ireland, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), p. 28. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27724090) [accessed: 11-1-19].]

As more histories on the Famine were published, it began to be somewhat marginalized in importance. New evidence coupled with stricter historical paradigms, gave revisionist interpretations dominance of the narrative. As such, British responsibility was significantly downplayed as economic and social historians further cemented the notion that the events of the 1840s were unavoidable.[footnoteRef:23] As stated, this may have been necessary for the political climate of the time, however, it would only serve to limit our understanding of events. If the ‘value-free’ methods that were so fundamental to the revisionist approach were in fact compromised by certain values and agendas dictated by context, then it could be inferred that any claimed objectivity is inherently flawed. Taking a strict paradigm and deliberately avoiding certain topics in order to satisfy a particular concept or ideology, are how myths are essentially constructed, no? Therefore, if in fact some revisionist work was intended to debunk nationalist myths, then in some ways it becomes a myth in itself, yielding an interpretive paradox.[footnoteRef:24] For example, much work went into examining the economic state of Ireland prior to the outbreak of the potato blight. Time and again, a picture was painted of a society with so many economic and social fissures, that any disruption to the fragile pillars which supported it would end in catastrophe.[footnoteRef:25] Thus, the onset of a fatal disease on a pillar that was so integral to the structure of that society was ample disruption to result in famine. Contrarily, however, accounts also emerged that showed society in a more positive light. Although most of the Irish population was by no means prospering as poverty was significant, people did have access to essentials like turf, agricultural productivity had been gradually improving, and on the eve of the Famine, Ireland was producing enough food to feed a population of nine million.[footnoteRef:26] As such, the polarisation of interpretation left us for a long time with either, essentially relegating the widespread hardship in the 1840s as an inevitable process, or, that the Famine was the result of British authority deliberately shirking their responsibility. Indeed, it was the former which came to dominate academia for a significant period of time.[footnoteRef:27] Nevertheless, the existence of such polarization is what ultimately hinders any progress in constructing a clearer picture of how the 1840s unfolded. As sectarian tensions subsided, however, and the century came to a close the polarisation gradually seemed to die down. [23: Daly, ‘Revisionism’, p. 76; For a breakdown of several aspects that were revised see Kinealy, ‘Beyond’.] [24: As quoted in George L. Bernstein, ‘Liberals, the Irish Famine and the Role of the State’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 29, No. 116 (Nov. 1995), p. 513. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/30006773) [accessed: 19-1-19]. ‘The term myth as used here does not necessarily imply that the account is untrue. Rather, the myth comprises a combination of fact, fiction, and the unknowable in a narrative of such power that, for the people who accept it, the myth provides a guide to future understanding and action. In this respect, Irish mythology about the English and the Famine is rooted in facts . . .’] [25: For examples of these interpretations see T.W. Freeman, Pre-Famine Ireland. A Study in Historical Geography (Manchester, 1957), or, L.M. Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland Since 1660 (London, 1972), or, K.H. Connell, The population of Ireland, 1750-1845 (Oxford, 1950).] [26: Daly, ‘Revisionism’, p. 78.] [27: Christine Kinealy, The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology, and Rebellion (New York, 2002), p. 2. ]

Significant contributions to the historiography which began to emerge on the eve of the 150th anniversary of the Famine would begin to slowly shatter revised accounts as an era that earned the epithet ‘Feminism’ would commence.[footnoteRef:28] As such, a new wave of interpretations underpinned by a more traditional tone was once again beginning to dominate the narrative.[footnoteRef:29] As economic historians served to bolster revised narratives, John Moykr’s attempt at an economic analysis of pre-Famine Ireland – following on from much-revised material – would end up once again directing responsibility at the British government.[footnoteRef:30] What is slightly different here, however, is that Moykr feels the Union with Britain did not go far enough.[footnoteRef:31] Suggesting that further integration into the Union was stifled because the British viewed Ireland as an ‘alien and even hostile country’.[footnoteRef:32] Moreover, accounts examining powerful economic ideologies – like that of Trevelyan – which heavily influenced British economic policy offered great weight to the notion that the British government did in fact shy away due to their staunch belief that divine Providence was at work.[footnoteRef:33] Suggesting that Mitchel’s lively nationalist propaganda may have reflected reality to a certain extent after all.[footnoteRef:34] However, it could be suggested that these new interpretations were subject to context as much as their earlier revised counterparts. This was a period where the public appetite for traditional interpretations was quite significant.[footnoteRef:35] Plans for national commemorations were beginning and in hindsight, sectarian tensions were subsiding and the cloak of ‘self-censorship’ was being lifted.[footnoteRef:36] As such, the need to fill the void in the historiography concerning emotion, suffering and the question of responsibility may have overshadowed the need to take a more balanced approach. Therefore, the interpretations which came to shape the commemorations of the 1990s – which would also see a public apology from the British government – and to satisfy the existing public consensus around the events, may well have done just as much to skew our understandings of the Famine as the revised narratives did. Nonetheless, they opened the door for more detailed and nuanced interpretations which have shown the true complexity and ambiguity that still haunts the events of the 1840s. [28: Melissa Fagan, Literature and the Irish Famine 1845-1919 (Oxford, 2002), p. 11.] [29: Ibid.] [30: Daly, ‘Revisionism’, p. 83.] [31: Joel Moykr, Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800-1850 (London, 1983), pp. 278-94.] [32: Ibid, p. 291. ] [33: See Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement. The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785-1865 (Oxford, 1988), or, Peter Gray, ‘Potatoes and Providence: The British Government’s Response to the Irish Famine’, Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge (1992).] [34: Donnelly, ‘The Great’, p. 33.] [35: See Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘Making Irish Famine History in 1995’, History Workshop Journal, No. 42 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 87-104 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4289468) {accessed: 20-1-19]; Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument (Liverpool, 2013). ] [36: Kinealy, ‘Beyond’, pp. 28-30.]

More modern-day interpretations show us just how complex the question of culpability actually is. Indeed, the inaction of the British government is important to recognize, however, more nuanced accounts allow us to see that it was not that straightforward. For example, the evidence that was so strong for both sides has been shown to be too contradictory to be viable. How John Mitchel’s zealous nationalist accounts may have been so to conceal the fact that he, O’Connell, and their colleagues offered no viable alternative solutions to the crisis.[footnoteRef:37] How landlords helped to improve land in some cases.[footnoteRef:38] How Charles Trevelyan may have been more sympathetic to the Irish people on occasion than once thought and how his insights were quite valuable for contemporary understandings.[footnoteRef:39] Moreover, as the historiography is examined in more detail it can be seen just how polarising the revisionist versus traditionalist narratives had been. For example, Melissa Fagan would illustrate this in her comprehensive chapter on Famine historiography, the many similarities in the work on both sides of the fence stating that it was a ‘self-created polarity’ between historians.[footnoteRef:40] If this is the case, then the dichotomy must have been the result of context, ideology, and public appetite. Also, economic history, although the main reason behind the success of the revised interpretations, became vital in squashing revisionism while also overcoming radical nationalist rhetoric, such as accusations of murder and genocide.[footnoteRef:41] As context has reduced in significance so too have the polarised interpretations of the Famine. Far more comprehensive accounts of the 1840s have been published and show the deep complexity with which these twentieth-century historians had to battle with.[footnoteRef:42] Combine this with sectarian conflict, national commemorations, and ideology then it is understandable why such a polarised and complicated period of historiography ensued. [37: Daly, ‘Revisionism’, p. 85. ] [38: James S. Donnelly, The Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork (London, 1972), pp. 52-72.] [39: Fagan, Literature, pp. 28-30.] [40: Ibid, p. 5.] [41: Patrick Brantlinger, ‘The Famine’, Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2004), p. 194 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25058660) [accessed: 11-1-19]. ] [42: See John Crowley, Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (Cork, 2012), or, Gearoid O’Tuathaigh, Ireland Before the Famine 1798 – 1848 (Dublin, 2007) for examples of the comprehensive and illuminating works now available on the Famine. ]

In conclusion, when assessing how the period known as the Great Famine has been interpreted by twentieth-century historians it is clear that it was quite a complicated process. When tracing the origins of the narrative that was widely accepted following independence, it highlights how it adopted and maintained its nationalistic undertones as the popular consensus was mainly articulated by political ideologues. This narrative came to dominate consensus right up until the late 1930s when the establishment of more rigorous historical methodologies, which were championed by the ICHS and Irish Historical Studies journal, came to drastically alter how we understood Irish history. As such, the trajectory of Irish historiography would delve into a stifling and polarising period that was severely impacted by the context in the form of sectarian conflict. As such, the Famine was argued to be an epoch of unavoidable crisis where no political intervention on Britain’s part would have done much to help. Consequently, the Famine became somewhat marginalized in importance in the academic efforts to construct an ‘objective’ Irish history. However, national commemorative plans, decreasing sectarian tensions, and a public hungry for a narrative that conveyed the emotion, suffering, and trauma which is so prominent in modern-day Famine understandings, ushered in a period of history writing that some dubbed ‘Feminism’. This was a clear return to traditional narratives where blame was directly and indirectly placed at Westminster’s doors. Ironically, it was an economic history that began revisionism but would then eventually aid in the demise of its credibility by paying more attention to the power of the economic ideology that dominated British politics. Nevertheless, as stated, these interpretations may have succumbed in some areas to the widespread market for sensationalized accounts of the Famine. If so, they are just as vulnerable to context as the accounts they wished to challenge. Therefore, historians of the twentieth century interpreted the Famine in a binary way, focusing too much on the way their work would be interpreted rather than producing a balanced account. Indeed, it was not until the twenty-first century that the real complexity and ambiguity of the 1840s were revealed. Although we may not know exactly why things unfolded as they did, we can now see that it is far too generalizing to attempt to attribute blame or responsibility to any single factor.

Bibliography

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4. Cullen, L. M., An Economic History of Ireland Since 1660 (London, 1972)
5. Donnelly, James S., The Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork (London, 1972)
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8. Hilton, Byod The Age of Atonement. The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785-1865 (Oxford, 1988)
9. Lyons, F. S. L., ‘The Meaning of Independence’ in Farrell, Brian, (ed), The Irish Parliamentary Tradition (Dublin, 1973).
10. Mitchel, John, Jail journal, or, Five years in British prisons: commenced on board the Shearwater steamer…(New York, 1854).
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1. Bernstein, George L., ‘Liberals, the Irish Famine and the Role of the State’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 29, No. 116 (Nov. 1995), pp. 513 – 536. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/30006773) [accessed: 19-1-19].
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In order to assess the validity of the name of something, one must first look at what the given definition in context to the name actually is. And so, before this essay begins, one must look at what the given definition of the term must include in order to assess the validity of its title. With a name such as the ‘Silk Roads’ one must present an inclusive and broad definition that takes into account all of the routes, to begin, and then further the economies, markets, politics, religion, and even the people throughout these routes. The countries that are included in relation to this context must look at these factors implemented all throughout Central Asia, India, Africa, Europe, and even Rome. Though despite all of this, the term itself wasn`t actually coined until 1877 by geographer Ferdinand Von Ritchofen (1833-1905) though, it wasn`t until the twentieth century that it became widely used, especially in literature. Albert Herman had been the first to use it in a book title in 1910 which consequently led it to be read and cited quite profoundly by the leader scholars at that time. This prevents being influenced by any political agenda and also analyses the concept that commerce in any one product, such as silk, did not exist in isolation but instead was formed as a result of the trade that also included other luxuries and commodities. Within the appropriate perspective, the word ‘Silk Roads’ is used to express the preoccupation of the rising nations’ east and west between India and China; however, historians later realized that if the invented phrase was to explore a solely descriptive term, one could argue that it would be fruitless. In a descriptive sense, the term utterly disregards the effectiveness of these trade routes and gives the appearance of something less spectacular rather than brilliant. Through examples and facts, this essay will evaluate the concept of ‘silk roads’ in the Middle Ages to substantiate the argument that it is in reality unhelpful and antiquated.

Now that we have begun to explore and even assess the validity of the term we will now poise further into this essay and begin by looking at the argument posed by historian David Christian by which, which argues that modern historiography has not yet fully appreciated the ecological complexity of the silk roads. This argument poses the understanding that one then begins to fail to grasp the full importance of Eurasian history, alongside failing to grasp its full antiquity. The silk roads, on the other hand, played an important role in the exchange of goods, technologies, and ideas across various regions of ‘agrarian civilizations.’ As a result, a more in-depth examination of the Silk Roads’ dual role as a conduit for trans-ecological trades leads one to reconsider the Silk Roads’ age, significance, and location.

As a result, when viewed on a larger scale, the phrase becomes less useful. The contradictory inferences appear to indicate a varying in the interpretation of what the silk roads meant to them, and this makes reference to the understanding that perhaps the term the ‘Silk Roads’ limits the expanse of what it covers in the sense that, while it was a huge ecological expansion, the name of it boils it down to a different understanding, as one could pose that the main form of trade was silk, when instead it emerged to be the greater technologies and greater goods.

It connected numerous sections of the Afro-Eurasian landmass due to its broad breadth and widespread trans-ecological highways that went across it. Despite its immense diversity, these paths ensured that Afro-Eurasia’s history had always been able to keep its fundamental oneness, which was reflected through common technologies, styles, civilizations, religions, and even though disease patterns. In his article, historian David Christian believes that international historians have grown increasingly cognizant of the underlying unity of Afro-Eurasian history. However, there are additional articulated contrasting perspectives that are posed when it comes to the fundamental unity of the Silk Roads. Andre Gunder and Frank Gill, for example, argue that the entire Afro-Eurasian region was part of a single world system as early as 2000 B.C.E., whereas historians William McNeil and Jerry Bently restate the case for a unified Afro-Eurasian past. The conflicting conclusions seem to suggest a different meaning for what the silk roads mean to them, and this alludes to the understanding that perhaps the name of the silk roads limits the expanse of what it covers in the sense that, while it was a huge ecological expansion, the name of it boils it down to a different understanding as one could present that the main form of trade was silk, when instead it seemed to be the greater technologies and ideas that ran through these routes. Though, in contrast, historian Marshal Hodgson made the point in the early 1950s, when he argued that historical life from early times at least till two or three centuries ago, was continuous across the Afro-Eurasian zone of civilization: that zone ultimately indivisible The whole of the Afro-Eurasian zone is the only context large enough to provide a framework for answering the more general and more basic historical questions that can arise. Moreover, David Christian emphasizes the larger context and historical relevance of the silk Road throughout this publication. In this argument, his article makes the case for a broader definition of the term, arguing that it is obsolete and archaic because the meaning of the name was substantially richer and more widespread.

However, there are arguments that suggest that silk was one of the most important items carried on the Silk Roads due to its high value, remarkable beauty, and low weight. Hence the name was originally applied. Despite this, however, they also moved ceramics, glass, metals, and even sheep along one of its trading routes. Finally, while the phrase is now commonly used, it does have a solid intellectual background. Though, before the German traveler and geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen invented the term ‘Silk Road(s)’ in 1877, this network had never been characterized as a road or route from China to the Mediterranean, nor was silk ever seen as the primary object of trade along it. As a result, the Silk Road narrative suffers from a basic fault in that it is later viewed as some sort of pre-modern path between the East and the West. Thus adding to the argument that it is an archaic term from the past. However, the idea is further advanced in that it is intended for the reconstruction of the past, in which the West is positioned at the center of world history, thereby showing that all paths lead to the West.

More often than not, it becomes clear that the silk roads were not solely for the transportation of silk. Because the majority of its known historical sources are from China, India, Persia, and the Roman Empire, there is an increased emphasis on sedentary civilizations’ trades throughout its historiography. As a result, this adds to the argument that the phrase ‘silk roads’ is clearly archaic and so meaningless. According to historian Ravi K. Mishra, historiography tends to put an emphasis on the subject that sees the Central Asian network solely through the eyes of sedentary civilizations. This system of trade predated the more familiar trans-civilizational exchanges and was equally integral in the functioning of the entire system.

In conclusion, this essay contends that the term ‘Silk Roads’ has become obsolete and, as a result, less credible as a term to explore the trade routes that shifted many more valuable, goods, and even technologies throughout the world, rather than limiting its name to something as insignificant as silk in comparison to what else it transported including religions. The essay questions how frequently historiography analyses the importance of trade routes. The restricted conception of the Silk Road as an east-west route connecting China and Rome, according to this historiography, also obscures the truth that there was no single ‘way,’ but rather a network of roads. The narrative of the ‘Silk Road,’ which involves specific cultural and technological interaction, must be written throughout this essay and its historiography. As a result, it is evident that the current discourse on these routes lacks historical evidence to back it up. Furthermore, one could argue that such a word did not exist in the context of Eurasian land ways, weakening the historical legitimacy and importance of sedentary civilizations. As a result, the phrase ‘Silk Roads’ looks to be obsolete and outdated in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, considering its backward projection of the present into the collective past, especially given that silk was only one of many essential commodities traded, including horses, cotton, religions, and, eventually, knowledge.

History, [is] a distillation of rumor”, a concoction diluted by the distortionist propensity of politics. Contemporary efforts in historiography reflect the growing democratization of history as it is propelled from the exclusivity of academia to the untamed depths of the public domain. Compounded by the already vague and multi-faceted nature of the historical discipline, the entwinement of politics and historiography has inexorably undermined the modern historian’s quest for truth and veracity. Thus, it seems that objectivity and non-partisanship are no longer prerequisites for historical discourse as it is now laid victim to the convolution of politics.

Contemporary Indian writing surrounding the Aryan Question has largely been steeped in nationalistic sentiment. Under the guise of revisionism, Hindu nationalists have framed discourse in a manner that serves their political agendas and glorifies ancient Hindu culture by circulating their own unfounded theory in an “apologetic, ultimately religious undertaking”. Such developments have altered the purposes of history and further who composes it, thus making it a topic of contemporary historiographical relevance. As such, the falsehoods purported by Hindu Nationalists reflect the ability of politics to compromise the efficacy of historiography to a significant extent.

Concerned with the origins of the Indo-Aryan peoples, an ascribed ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages, the Aryan Question has become increasingly politicized. The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT, hereafter) is the most primitive, colonial-era theory of the migration models, positing that a Sanskrit-speaking Aryan people entered India around or before 1500 BC and spread its language, religion, and social structure among the indigenous population. The more widely accepted Indo-Aryan Migration Theory (IAMT, hereafter) refines such ideas, speaking of a gradual immigration of groups carrying the Indo-Aryan language and civilization into the Indian subcontinent. Conversely, Hindu Nationalists deny such theories, instead positing that the Aryan people, language, and civilization were native to India in the Out of India Theory (OIT, hereafter). Proponents of the OIT strenuously oppose the existing migration models as oppressive colonial constructs and “as a means of British policy to justify their own intrusion into India and their subsequent colonial rule” Such developments have been eased by the growing popularity of Hindutva politics in the 1990s, and the post-colonial hostility towards British Empire.

Contemporary efforts in revisionism form a result of the desire to correct past injustices and perceived distortions. Thus, revisionist efforts on the part of Hindu Nationalists seek to free discourse surrounding the Aryan Question from “theologically driven assessments of Indian culture and traditions” according to Prakash Shah, a prominent critic of the Western account of Indian studies. He further warns, “unless we… [go] beyond a framework based on recycled scraps of Christian theology, we will do a disservice to ourselves and to future generations.” Although there is merit to the revisionism of Indian History, given the distortion of history during Colonial India, politics and the urge to condemn colonialism in its entirety have compromised the efficacy of such efforts. The revisionist projects, therefore, often revert to the opposite fringe and coupled with the distortionist propensity of politics, compromise the efficacy of such efforts.

Aligning with the emerging democratization of history, the appropriation of the modern historical discipline into a tool of political influence has led to the inclusion of evidence from religious texts, at the expense of scientific and historical accuracy. Applying such to the case study, revisionist efforts surrounding the Aryan Question have been spurred by the political motives of Hindu Nationalists, who seek to restore the pre-enlightenment authority of religious texts in a bid to further their political goals. Under the veneer of revisionism, Hindu Nationalists continue “the writing of religious literature”, thereby compromising the efficacy of revisionist efforts.

As an inflamed reaction to colonialism and the AIT revisionist scholars posit the autochthonous nature of the ‘Aryan’ claiming that the Indo-Aryan languages originated within the Indian subcontinent and spread to Europe and Central Asia. Proponents of this theory cite their own interpretations of religious texts such as the Rigveda, so as to further their own political goals and promote the ancientness of Hinduism at the expense of objective truth. Michael Witzel supports such stating that revisionist scholarship is “a political undertaking aiming at ‘rewriting’ history out of national pride or for the purpose of ‘nation building’.” The formation of Hindu Nationalism can be observed in the 1920s, as the movement for India’s independence from Britain gained momentum. The two most influential figures in its formulation were Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (1906-73) and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966). The fundamental Hindutva notion that the Hindu culture originated in India was threatened by the idea that the Aryans hailed from outside India, which would make the “followers of the Vedic religion… disqualified from being Hindus” and “essentially no different from those revering other ‘foreigners’ such as Muhammad or Christ.” This birthed the desire of Hindu Nationalists to construct a glorified past, and assert the indigenous nature of the Aryans. Such is a key feature of nationalism, which generally involves “the creation of a sense of continuity between the past and the present” The past is dissected in search of materials to construct “historic identity, unity, glory, and continuity” and guide political action in the present. This aligns with Hobswan’s, ‘The Invention of Tradition’, wherein he argues that many ‘traditions’ that “appear or claim to be old are quite recent in origin and sometimes invented.”, relating such to the use of historiography to develop nationalism. Consequently, the OIT was purported to maintain the indigenous nature of the Aryans, and can thus be traced back to the writings of Golwakar in ‘We, or the Nationhood Redefined’ (1939) in which he denies all migration models, instead positing that Hindus have always been “in undisputed and undisturbed possession of this land …before the land was invaded by any foreign race” and “children of the soil”, with Michael Witzel claiming such “terminology [is] clearly reminiscent of contemporary fascism”, with its allusions to the Nazi slogan ‘blood and soil’. In ‘In Search of the Cradle of Civilisation’, (1995), David Frawley rejects the AIT, alluding to the historiography surrounding Colonial India as “no more accurate than a papier-mache model of a jet engine”. Upon dismissing the claim that the Vedic Aryans entered India from outside of the Indian subcontinent, Frawley presents linguistic evidence from the Rig Veda, which contradicts scientific and historic facts, and thus undermines the accuracy of his discourse. Edwin Bryant supports such, positing that Frawley’s historical work is more successful in the popular arena, that ‘[Frawley] is committed to channeling a symbolic spiritual paradigm through a critical empirical rational one’.

Thus, Hindu Nationalist discourse reflects the perversion of historiography as it emerges as an instrument of political power. As such, historical and scientific accuracy has been neglected, while evidence from religious texts becomes increasingly accepted, thus compromising the efficacy of revisionist efforts.

The entry of politics into the historical discipline has fostered antagonism towards dissenting views, thus compromising the efficacy of revisionist efforts. As such, the discourse of non-Indian composers is blindly shunned and opposed by Hindu Nationalists, making their discourse primarily an emotional and political response, rather than a genuine effort at revisionism.

In post-colonial India, negative public sentiment towards British Empire has aided the growth of Hindu Nationalism. Capitalizing on such, Hindu Nationalists maintain a degree of hostility towards Western and non-Indian scholarship, blindly opposing any views other than their own, regardless of the merit of such ideas. Such is epitomized in Golwakar’s, ‘We, or the Nationhood Redefined’ (1939), in which the recurring disapproval of Western scholarship sets the tone for the work, “what authority is there to prove our immigrant nature? The shady testimony of Western scholars? … the superiority complex of the ‘White Man’ blurs their vision”. Such antagonism towards Western scholarship, despite the merit of the IAMT, compromises the efficacy of the revisionist project, as Hindu Nationalists are more concerned with objecting to non-India scholarship and solidifying their political position than conducting genuine efforts in revisionism. Further, rather than opposing Western scholarship on the lines of merit and evidence, Hindu Nationalists tend to do so on moral grounds. In Golwakar’s, ‘Bunch of Thoughts’ (1966), he states, “[The AIT], is very recent and artificial. It is one of the modern superstitions being assiduously built up by unscrupulous power-seeking persons.” Such reflects the innate irony of Hindu Nationalist writings as the majority of such works are aimed at furthering their political aims and are therefore ‘power-seeking’ themselves. This “moral disqualification” of Western Indology is a recurrent theme in indigenous writings but is largely unfounded as Western thought has abandoned its 19th and 20th-century euro-centric agendas. If anything, Western scholarship has seen “constant change in intellectual approaches and fashions in methods and in conclusions”, and has therefore strayed from its colonial agenda and pre-enlightenment use of religious texts as evidence. Despite such, Hindu Nationalist discourse maintains hostility towards views that do not align with their own, labeling such as remnants of “British divide et impera politics”, even conflating the AIT with the IAMT as a means to discredit the latter.

Although the Aryan migration models have strayed vastly from their colonial origins, Frawley and Critics of the IAMT Theory, still tend to conflate it with the outdated AIT, which “has been supplanted by much more sophisticated models over the past few decades […] philologists first, and archaeologists somewhat later, noticed certain inconsistencies in the older theory and tried to find new explanations, a new version of the immigration theories..”. However, the evolution of the IAMT is generally neglected in Hindu Nationalist discourse allowing them to group all migration models together and falsely disprove them. Such intellectual dishonesty is a key characteristic of nationalist discourse, aiding its reception amongst the populace as they claim they are righting the wrongs of the past and expelling what seems to be the modern incarnation of colonialism.

Such developments reflect critical changes in the nature of the historical discipline and in key historiographical questions. The entry of history into the political sphere inexorably alters the purposes of history as it strays from its goal of objective truth and is exploited as a tool of political implications. Further, Hindu Nationalist discourse reflects critical developments in who composes history due to the emerging democratization of the historical discipline which plunges it into the experimentalism of the public domain, with revisionist views being debated even on “Internet forums such as the so-called ‘IndianCivilization’ Yahoo! forum”. Consequently, the historical discipline has been inexorably changed whereby historical accuracy and non-partisanship are no longer defining features of historical discourse.

Succinctly, the current apologetic and nationalistic leanings of revisionist discourse surrounding the Aryan Question reflect a critical development in the nature of the modern historical discipline. It is no longer exclusively an exercise delineating the events of the past, as historiography emerges as an instrument of political power. Compounded by the democratization of history, efforts to correct the historical record may themselves result in distortion. This is due to the propensity of political agendas to normalize the use of evidence from religious texts and foster blind antagonism towards dissenting views. As such, the discourse of Hindu Nationalists surrounding the Aryan question reflects the propensity of politicians to compromise the efficacy of revisionist efforts to a significant extent.

Following on from this examination of PTSD and its impact on the reliable narrator, this dissertation will now interrogate other constraints placed on the accurate representation of women`s Holocaust experiences. In the 1960s and 1970s, the narratives of women which dominated historiography largely focused upon the accounts of resistance fighters or otherwise those considered heroic women. It is important to mention that I will not be discrediting the validity and importance of these experiences but instead questioning why these were often seen as accounts of primary importance. The exclusive emphasis on heroic resistance inadvertently contributed to the silencing of alternative voices, creating a presumed singular experience for women throughout the Holocaust. This development resulted in a purposeful divide between active heroism, which consisted of physical resistance to anti-semitism and Fascism, and passive heroism, of moral steadfastness, spiritual resistance, and the daily struggle for survival.

Within this essay, I will examine some personal accounts which have achieved renown in Holocaust historiography. Alongside this, I will be questioning the extent to which modifications and adaptations were made to these accounts by publishers. I will further seek to clarify the extent to which the dominance of the heroic woman silenced alternative voices and denied other women a platform for sharing their experiences by promoting the notion of an assumed common narrative. I will further examine history’s perpetuation of traditional gender roles by highlighting women`s friendships and roles as wives and mothers within concentration camps. In addition, consideration will be given to how male Holocaust historians maintained a biased desire to present women who upheld traditional gender roles throughout the war as heroic. This theme will focus on how these conventional gender stereotypes were considered to represent values, especially in relation to sexual assault, wherein many viewed the victims as active participants and lacking morality.

When analyzing the narratives of heroic women which arose after the war it is important to clarify these terms of reference. The heroine complex of this thesis refers to the purposeful highlighting and promotion of women who were considered traditionally heroic during the Second World War. This could be achieved either through publicly courageous acts of resistance or notable moral steadfastness, which placed them on a pedestal above their peers in Holocaust historiography. There are many examples of these women, such as Malka Zimetbaum, the first woman to escape from Auschwitz, whose final words, I shall die a heroine, espoused her valiant attempts. However, similar to many actively heroic women, Malka Zimetbaum was killed before liberation, after being caught post-escape. Therefore, there are limited primary source materials to draw upon, in the case of Zimetbaum, her story was first told publicly through the film, The Last Stage, released in 1948, chronicling her life and escape attempt. Her heroism was also publicized by Wieslaw Kielar, Auschwitz, survivor, who included Zimetbaum`s escape attempt in his autobiographical book Anus Mundi: 5 Years in Auschwitz. However, this level of historical recording on a primary source level was rare for other actively heroic women, it was more common for them to be recounted between friends through stories and oral history. As a result, one of the reasons for Anne Frank`s renown and prominence in Holocaust historiography was due to the expansive detail within her diary. If one examined the history of women`s Holocaust experiences, there would be little doubt that Anne Frank`s life story would be pre-eminent. A consequence of her diary`s popularity was that Frank`s personal experience, as a young girl, in hiding, with her family, presented a very specific type of Jewish suffering. It is important to note that although Anne Frank`s story remains invaluable to understanding some of the issues that Jewish women faced in the Holocaust, it was not a framework to which many other Jewish women could relate. Her diary was one of the first to be published from the perspective of a young girl who lived throughout the Holocaust, providing readers with invaluable insight and the ability to learn about this history without having to confront the horrors of the camps or ghettos. It is known that testimonies are often used as a means of establishing solidarity between the writer and reader. Therefore with a young girl’s testimony, the tone is often overtly sentimental which rarely reflects the writer’s original intention. In fact, the purity of Anne`s diary is exactly what attracted readers and publishers to it. As her diaries, privacy gives an intimacy that makes many feel as if they know her therefore she was considered an accessible source. The worldwide perception of Anne as a beacon of hope is well established, a truth confirmed by her memorable quote, I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

However, one must question why people chose not to focus on the final line of her diary, A voice within me is sobbing… I get cross, then sad… and keep trying to find a way to become what I`d like to be and what I could be if…only there were no other people in the world.

It is this presumption by many readers that the girl in the diary is representative of, not only Anne but numerous other women and their experiences during the Holocaust. However, there were those who knew Anne in the camps who tell a story in stark contrast to the one portrayed in the diary, of someone broken by the genocide, for them, the fate of Anne Frank represents not a traditionally heroic tale of good over evil, but rather the terrible fate of so many concentration camp inmates. Even Anne`s tale which has become renowned for its optimistic message was edited by her father to exclude more controversial topics, as Ephgrave notes, it referenced sexuality and Anne Frank`s body that were edited out of her infamous diary. Therefore, if even this relatively innocent memoir was edited, how were women who had been brutally raped and abused supposed to present their accounts on a wider scale. As boldly stated by survivor Judith Isaacson, there were no frameworks for such violent narratives, the Anne Franks who survived rape don`t write their stories. Overall, this construction of the heroic Jewish woman clearly helped to suppress the narratives of women who had suffered from sexual violence.

The theme of female heroism and courage re-emerges time and again wherein similar accounts are recorded, as evidenced by Sara Zyskind`s account of her teenage years spent in the ghetto, Auschwitz, and then the Mittelstein slave labor camp, Stolen Years. This book was first described by its publisher as, an odyssey of agony that should never be forgotten… an epic of love and courage that the reader will want to remember forever. However, nowhere in her testimony does Zyskind state or imply that she views it as an epic of love and courage. In fact, the testimony contains brutal detail of the rape, abuse, and torture that occurred against both Jewish men and women in the ghettos and camps. It is clear from analyzing sources such as these that the reality of rape and abuse was considered by publishers to be too unvarnished to be sold. Instead, there was a desire that these, feelings of helplessness, vulnerability, and physical torment could be masked by the icons of resistance, heroism, or martyrdom. Therefore, the experiences of women such as ‘Pauline’ who was molested by the male relatives of the people hiding her, were not regarded as either appealing or important by early Holocaust historians. Even the survivors themselves became convinced that their experiences had no place in history, as traditional Holocaust narratives made it difficult to discuss anything considered to be outside the range of accepted accounts as outlined by existing testimony. ‘Pauline’ herself considered this and stated, In respect of what happened, (what we) suffered and saw the humiliation in the ghetto, seeing people jumping out and burned is this (molestation) important?

It is impossible to truly understand the actions taken by those in the Holocaust, however, history has been judgemental toward those who were not deemed heroes, forgetting that heroism is a luxury of hindsight. As Gottlieb states, any Jew who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Europe showed resistance towards their oppressors, by simply surviving. Therefore, the heroine complex was based upon the assumption that a common Holocaust narrative existed, and was mutually experienced. This ultimately resulted in the creation of one mainstream narrative, where the experiences of women who were neither mothers nor fighters, but manipulated sex for their own and their family`s survival, remained an untold story of the Holocaust.

Through independent research, another common theme I have identified is the frequently mentioned lasting preference by male survivors to view female survivors through a traditionally gendered lens. This is evident in notes written throughout the Holocaust, most notably Emmanuel Ringelblum`s, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto. This compilation of personal diaries, notes, and decrees is an essential source for modern historians providing an understanding of daily life within the Warsaw Ghetto. Beyond that, this source provides an essential first-person account of how Jewish women were perceived and treated by their male counterparts. Ringelblum studied the lives of Jewish women in the Warsaw Ghetto before deportation, specifically asking about their roles as mothers and wives. This work became the focus of much Holocaust gender historiography. It is important to recognize that Ringelblum`s testimonies largely reflected the wider opinion of the time concerning how women should act to be seen as moral, heroic, or noble. It was the result of accounts such as these that the central theme of women, as mothers and wives, merely appendages to the men in their lives, never the main character in the historical narrative arose, that has remained to this day. A central trend in Holocaust history was that greater respect was attributed to women who had maintained traditional gender roles throughout the war. Even in Ringelblum`s testimony, there was a focus on the middle-class woman who had still maintained the role of caring for her husband and family despite difficulties.

Ultimately this one-sided perspective encourages and allows readers to judge those who were unable to uphold their traditional roles, due to starvation, poverty, or even assault. As Waxman argued, what about those who couldn`t resist eating their bread rather than giving it to their husbands, their actions are just as human and not less worthy of praise, but there is this shame of not being able to control their hunger.

This sense of morality and gender is most clearly emphasized in historical accounts and representations of how women behaved within the concentration camp environment. As women were often separated from their families upon entering camps, a post-war judgment emerged, regarding how they should have acted at the point of separation. For example, on arrival at Auschwitz, it was noted that most women clung to their children (and many young girls to their mothers) and were sent to the gas chambers with them. While this was undoubtedly a brave decision that some women made, there were other women who followed orders and entered the camps alone. While these were patently different decisions leading to different outcomes, there is not one that we can judge as being more courageous than the other, as many of these women did not know what awaited them, nor their separated family members. However, this did not deter historians from passing judgment on the actions of these women. In fact, many historians continued to view women specifically in terms of how they maintained their positions as mothers and wives. This desire to maintain a sense of normality throughout the genocide through imposing gender roles is reflected in the importance placed on female friendship and purity. This trope of focusing on female friendships in camps was based upon a presumption of bonding and care. This has been significantly problematic as these conversations about sisterhood have managed to create a glorification of the motif of womanly strength in the face of persecution. The popularity of objects in Holocaust museums that show female friendships highlights this trend. For example, Gerda Gerstl`s friendship ring made from silver spoons in the Riga ghetto, by her best friend Issi Lurie survived the war, whereas both girls perished (see Fig .1).

The ring is popular as it acts as a reminder to viewers of the innocence of a young girl`s friendship and can be seen as an accessible source with which to understand the genocide. This bias is further acknowledged in Marlene Heinemann`s 1986 study on women which states that egocentric people are never shown as the main protagonists in Holocaust memoirs, but they often exist in secondary roles to highlight even more the humanity of the main character.

A desire to impose traditionally heroic values on women in concentration camps has created a tiered system reflecting the level of respect afforded to different survivors. Therefore, when one considers how survivors of sexual assault ranked, it becomes clear why so many victims believed they didn`t have an available platform upon which to share their stories. As H¡jkov¡ has explored in her works, the postwar public believed women had engaged in illicit activities to survive the war. This narrative became a staple of the public perception of women in the camps. In the eyes of the public, female survival was sexually purchased. When considering the thesis of why and how the early historiography of the Holocaust suppressed the plight of women who suffered from sexual violence, it becomes clear that pre-determined expectations placed on women`s actions specifically within their capacity as mothers and wives helped to create a singular narrative, whilst excluding those whose experiences deviated and wanted to speak of their sexual assaults.

In summary, this analysis reveals that the complex of the heroic woman created resounding effects on the perception of women throughout the Holocaust. Historical writings were based on the concept that women needed to maintain traditional gender roles to be perceived as heroic. Therefore, in an examination of why sexual assault has been excluded from mainstream historiography, it can be clearly linked to the desire to promote the heroic Jewish woman. The women who suffered as a result of sexual assault felt themselves sidelined by both historians and historiography, finding no platform for sharing their experiences, a reality that ultimately silenced voices with alternate accounts to the preferred and promoted one. The emphasis on female friendships by recent historians was another means by which to enforce the idea of women as subsidiaries, friends, mothers, and wives, not individuals worthy of their own voice. Overall, this essay has provided insight into how women were viewed in Holocaust historiography and how the homogenous account of ‘heroic women’ came to be.

Slavery in the colonies relied on the notion that the mother passed down the legal condition of enslavement. From the beginning of the colonization of the Caribbean sometime in the 15th century, it was expected that enslaved women gave birth to enslaved children. This was later cemented into the common law of the roman code Partus Sequitur Ventrem, a Latin translation of ‘offspring follows belly,’ that legally stated any child born to an enslaved woman was born into slavery, regardless of the status or ancestry of the father. Historiography has differed in its emphasis on what the doctrine was based on, some such as Weinbaum and Santos argue that it was due to the economic value of women in the slave trade. Others argue it facilitated the transformation to entirely race-based slavery. The Foucauldian discourse remains focused on its ability to perpetuate white domination within the most important point of contact of power relations, the body. A post-modern view held by historians such as Morgan and Bush emphasizes that it legitimized the sexual abuse of enslaved women, as it presented no repercussions to the widespread abuse through the alienation of the enslaved from their kin. Ultimately, whilst all these factors are integral to the facilitation of maternal heredity it was most importantly a doctrine born out of economic necessity that in practice supported the sexual abuse of enslaved women throughout the Caribbean.

From its introduction into the Atlantic World, colonial slavery was fundamentally connected to enslaved women’s reproductive capability. Before it was even fleshed out into legal codes, it was a commonly held European assumption that slavery would be passed down through the mother. Morgan corroborates this, by providing insight into the roots of inherited slavery: stating that well before 1662, enslaved and free black women were faced with the dangers of racial inheritance. Considering this, the institution of slavery could only occur due to the understanding that ‘enslaved women gave birth to enslaved children.’ Although it did not appear legally until the implementation of legal codes in 1662, it was a common belief that was recognized by slave owners and enslaved women alike. Thus, as shown by the historiography, enslavement passed down through the mother’s line due to an ideological process that was tethered to the institution of slavery. The codes of Partus Sequitur Ventrem legalized this belief.

Legal codes thus cemented the notion that enslavement followed maternal lines, due to the establishment of the legal doctrine Partus Sequitur Ventrem. This roman code translates to ‘offspring follows belly. ‘ It stated that ‘all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.’ This was incorporated into legislation in the British American colonies, and later in the United States. It fixed into colonial law that any child born to an enslaved woman was born into slavery, regardless of the ancestry or citizenship of the father. This was ratified in 1662 by the Virginia House of Burgesses. Its ratification was in reaction to the case of Elizabeth Key Greenstead, who was one of the first enslaved persons to sue for freedom from slavery and succeed. This suit was called for as her father was an Englishman. Thus, the law was formalized to forbid any other slaves from seeking freedom due to European ancestry. The doctrine was then passed and adopted throughout the colonies.

For slavery to be passed down through maternal lines, English common law was entirely reversed. This is further commented on by Morgan who notes that this system was a ‘profound reversal of European notions of heredity; in the service of a new form of difference and bondage.’ Morgan additionally argues this had not always been the case. For example, in the context of the Slavic and Greek slavery trades, the child was seen as assimilable and paternal heredity still took place. This is important in understanding how common assumptions surrounding hereditary fundamentally shifted in the colonies due to incorporating racial ideals. Although the concept of race at this time was not similar to its modern definition and rather conceptions revolved around a sense of ‘blackness’. Therefore, the legal condition of passing enslavement down through the mother occurred due to the retraction of European common law throughout the colonies, a new concept that occurred as the slaves were not seen as assimilable to the European colonizers. This ultimately meant that no white man’s child could be enslaved, yet all black women could. Beckles explores the social relevance of this reversal of European heredity, highlighting that it was an important construct as it ensured the white race could not be reduced to chattel slavery. Thus, it further enforced slavery as a non-white institution. This arguably concretized the underlying racial significance of slavery that European colonizers had sought to develop.

The concept of reproductive capitalism developed by Weinbaum is a useful element of historiography in understanding the slave trade as a reproductive venture where women played a principal role. Weinbaum states that women participated in multiple streams of essential labor; ‘sexual, reproductive, domestic and agricultural.’ The idea of reproductive capitalism extracted procreative labor and products from the bodies of black women. This was enabled to occur due to the moral and social distance that was created between both black and white women. This stratification of the gender provided a sense that ‘blackness’ justified the use of slave women as ‘reproductive tools’, who provided children as chattel, that were to be utilized for labor or sold. This concept is useful in understanding how this supported the legal condition being passed down maternally, as women were bound to their reproductive labor.

Broadly, economics played the most important role in the new concept of maternal heredity. Enslaved women’s bodies were legally bound as economic spaces that overthrew ideals of kinship and motherhood. Morgan explains the necessity of enslaved women in the economic success of racial slavery, as they contributed to a ‘productive relationship whereby everything that a body could do was harnessed to the capital accumulation of another.’ Therefore, slave owners were aware of the economic advantage that laboring women created. Enslaved women’s children automatically became slave owner property due to the legislation. This was crucial as it provided owners with more sources of labor or the children was sold. This is echoed in Barbados in the 1650s, where slave owners began to describe fertile female slaves as ‘increasers.’ Thus, the duality of women’s labor was integral to the economic needs of the colonies as they experienced relentless labor shortages. As mortality rates were extremely high, and the government could not produce enough indentured servants, the legal doctrine created a stream of work. The legal condition ensured that all children born were automatically chattel and could be identified as so.

Historiography also indicates that this economic value of enslaved women was also highly apparent in the ‘Second Slavery’. This concept was based on the second upsurge in the production of sugar in the Hispanic Caribbean, expressly in Cuba and Puerto Rico, that followed the dismantling of slavery throughout the remainder of the colonies. Santos argued that Elite planters were concerned with the issue of replenishing captive labor as the middle passage was being increasingly policed. This caused women’s reproductive labor to become requisite in the ‘procreation of a creole population of slaves that would replace African captives imported in the trade.’ The concern of economic failure of the slave trade was pressing as enslaved populations declined. This meant that plantations needed more coerced workers to ensure production levels. This caused women’s reproductive capabilities to be exploited by the Hispanic Caribbean in the second wave of slavery as to provide greater levels of coerced labor.

Black and white women were ideologically separated to justify this economic exploitation that was enabled through the legal condition. This is particularly evident in the destruction of black motherhood. Claude Meillassoux argues that this was a defining characteristic of slavery, as the enslaved African woman’s womb was denied her productive role. Consequently, enslaved women were ‘stripped of their sex’ and denied motherhood, as their children were removed from them and sold or taken captive. This allowed slave owners to completely disregard the social impact surrounding reproduction. Orlando Patterson describes this exploitation of reproduction as ‘natal alienation’ as it denies the enslaved women access to motherhood and a family unit. This consequently resulted in the understanding of enslaved African women as members of reproductive capitalism whose labor resulted in the creation of chattel, which was justified through the denial of black motherhood.

Furthermore, the notion that slavery should be passed down through the mother was allowed to occur as black women were constructed as non-feminine in the white female sense. Emphasis was placed upon black enslaved women alleged increased muscular capability, physical strength, aggression, and sturdiness. This entirely contrasted contextual white feminine ideals of fragility, and weakness. This is summed up in the descriptions from pro-slavery writers who presented enslaved black women as ‘devoid of the feminine tenderness and graciousness in which the white woman was tightly wrapped.’ It was believed that black women were able to have multiple children, work without rest and be successful at manual labor. This is evident in sources at the time such as Edward Long’s History of Jamaica, which also described the low fertility rate as evidence of her non-feminine identity. The ideological de-feminization of the black woman supported maternal hereditary as they were ignorantly understood as being able to provide far more children and work manual labor, unlike the white woman who mothered children in a family unit where the father was also involved.

Importantly, the passing of the legal condition through the mother legitimized the sexual abuse of slave women by white men. Evidently, women and girls were vulnerable to sexual exploitation and rape by white planters and other white men. Morrissey has argued that there is little evidence to suggest that liaisons between slaves were common, due to the harsh conditions. Thus, most sexual interactions were sexual abuse, to which Bush argues there were limited checks. This is corroborated by Beckles who stated that the rape and sexual violation against enslaved women by males was not considered a legal offense and thus does not appear in litigation records. Plantation owners repeatedly denied that female slaves were sexually abused, rather African women were inherently promiscuous and would engage in sexual relations for their social betterment.

The extent of sexual abuse that enslaved women encountered can be seen in the accounts of Thomas Thistlewood, a British plantation owner who created a diary in which he recorded instances of rape of enslaved women recording 265 sexual encounters with over 45 slaves. Thistlewood described his fetishization of black women and how he was not alone in this, rather ‘it was an important part of white culture.’ The horrifying extent of sexual abuse could occur, as explored by Morrissey, through the notion of maternal inheritance as kinship relations were destroyed which allowed non-marital ties. This often led to illegitimate ‘mulatto’ children who were confined to slavery unless their fathers took special legal action. This ultimately meant that white fathers did not have to legally acknowledge or support their illegitimate children with slave women, and slave children had no possible claim to any possessions, titles, or financial support. Thus, sexual abuse could continue without repercussions.

Broadly, this pattern of enslaved hereditary acted as another avenue of control on not only the enslaved woman but also her offspring. Michel Foucault describes how the body is the ultimate contact point of power relations in the Caribbean. Considering this, white domination is allowed to occur at the most fundamental level, the body. Bush corroborates this, stating that a slave’s life was dominated from birth to death. This, therefore, locked Africans into a continuous cycle of slavery. Enslaved people’s lives entirely existed as human property. This fundamental level of power was important in the maintenance of slavery, as the sense of control and domination with little chance of freedom allowed for complete mastery over the enslaved, and perceived supremacy of the European institution.

Conclusively, it emerged that the mother passed down the legal condition of enslavement through the introduction of common law that consolidated years of European assumption. This was importantly facilitated through the complete destruction of black motherhood and femininity. Historiography has placed different emphasis on why the code was ratified; some stress it allowed for economic advantage as it created a constant line of labor, while others that it was used to confirm the racial meaning behind the slave trade or that it was to legitimize sexual abuse of the enslaved. Ultimately it may be concluded that the most important factor that led to the legal condition was that it allowed for the economic exploitation of women. Enslaved women provided reproductive labor that was essential to the running of the slave trade since its introduction into the Atlantic World. Europeans were most concerned with the economic outcome of the slave trade, particularly in the context of high mortality rates and insufficient numbers of bondsmen. However this undoubtedly simultaneously facilitated sexual abuse as the lack of ties of kinship to the illegitimate children provided no repercussions for the abuser.

Into

History is mutable; all historians are, despite attempts to avoid it, a product of their own historical contexts. So since the beginning of the study of history, there have always been different theories and methods used to approach it. Moreover, as social and cultural beliefs have changed, these theories and methodologies have changed as well. The last two hundred years especially have seen a significant increase in changing ideas, views of history, and techniques used to approach it, which have in turn encouraged the development of further new approaches to gain a more comprehensive understanding of history. Theories about society, economics, and politics often provide the context in which a new approach to history is created. One such theory is Marxist economic and political theory. This theory and its subsequent approach to history have had such a significant influence on historical writing that much of modern historical scholarship can not be ‘fully appreciated without some understanding of Karl Marx’s ideas’. This essay aims to demonstrate the different ways in which Marxist Economic and Political theory has influenced the creation of newer approaches to history, such as economic history, cultural history, and women’s and gender histories, and how they compare to Marxist historiography.

Marxism

To understand how Marxist theory has influenced historical writing, it is necessary to have an understanding of the theory itself. Marxist economic and political theory, popularised in the mid-19th Century, is a method of socioeconomic analysis named after Karl Marx, who first described it in his 1848 pamphlet, the Communist Manifesto. This doctrine initially consisted of three parts: an economic and political theory, a philosophical anthropology, and the theory of Historical Materialism. Marxism holds that capitalist society is divided into two main classes, namely the upper-class capitalist bourgeoisie who control society’s means of production, and the lower class, the proletariat who work for the bourgeoisie. Marxist theory holds that the relationship between these two classes is inherently exploitive, therefore creating a constant struggle between the two, and that this struggle defines all economic and political relations within a capitalist society and will eventually lead to a proletariat revolution in favor of the inevitable socialism.

Marxist economic

The most obvious type of historical writing influenced by Marxist economic and political theory is Marxist historiography. Marxism, having accused older approaches to history of focusing too narrowly on individual great men or leaders, developed a bottom-up approach to history that prioritizes understanding the perspectives and experiences of ordinary people, rather than ‘great men’. The work of influential Marxist historians such as E. P. Thompson continued this broadening of perspectives with works such as ‘The Making of the English Working Class’, published in the early 1960s. Using previously ignored documentary remains, Thompson outlined cultures of ordinary, working-class people, telling previously forgotten and ignored histories of working-class life during the late-18th to early-19th centuries. According to Emma Griffin, a professor of modern history at the University of East Anglia, Thompson’s book was so influential that it represented a turning point in the writing of history. As Griffin suggests, Thompson brought to light ‘aspects of human experience which had never before had their historian’, using documentation that ‘others had regarded as scraps from the archive’, to gain a fuller understanding of the ordinary human’s experience. In this way, he popularised a scientific approach to history developed later by social history and emulated Marxism’s systematic observation and deductive reasoning to reach its conclusions. In addition to this, by showing older approaches to be ‘neglecting the broader context in which [history] operated’, Marxist theory influenced historical writing by extending its viewpoint from purely political to wider society, consequently requiring an emphasis on the border context which Marxism sees as being economics. Like the theory, Marxist historiography understands history as being centered around different class struggles, arguing that the ‘mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and intellectual processes’ of a period. This understanding relies on the structuralist Marxist theory that capitalism is an impersonal structure controlling human agency, implying that every historical epoch can be viewed in terms of its dominant productive forces. Similarly, Marxist Historical writing also relies on the Marxist economic determinist notion that the economy is the main force for change in history. In this way, Marxist economic and political theory influenced the broadening of historical writing by demonstrating the previously ignored importance of economic forces to history. This emphasis on economic forces triggered the beginning of a similar approach to writing history in the late 19th century, also influenced by a Marxist social and political theory called economic history. This approach studies how past economies have changed, the factors that influence their development, and emphasize the value of historical context. Marxist economic and political theory has clearly influenced economic historical writing as, according to Jon S. Cohen, in the Journal of Economic History, most economic historians adhere to the Marxist notion that every historical era is shaped by its predominant means of production and how the forces of production are distributed and held. Similarly, advocators of economic historical writing such as Joseph Schumpeter, Max Weber, and Sir William Ashley, influenced by Marxism’s economic determinism argued that analysis of human actions, historical context, and ‘the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth’ was key to historical analysis. Marxist and Economic histories are a great example of how many disciplines within history are heavily reliant on one another; economic history, for example, has been so heavily influenced by Marxist historiography and its methods, that many of its key historians are self-proclaimed Marxists.

Sociocultural

With the rise of social democratic politics and the increasing popularity of Marxism, in the aftermath of the second world war, came Social History as an extension of economic history satisfying the increasing need for an intellectual addition to ‘the larger idea of the social.’ Social history, started off as a bottom-up approach, (another example of the influence of Marxist methodology) studying conflicts that arose due to industrialization and focusing particularly on social issues, classes, and socialism attempting to understand objective patterns in social classes and the lived experience of the working class and their champions. ‘The Marxist influence on social history was substantial and long-lasting’ however, it began to be considered increasingly anachronistic and gave way to a more liberating approach which held more ‘potential for exciting new avenues to be explored’, Cultural History. Cultural history, popular from the 1980s onwards, also makes use of a bottom-up approach to history like the Marxist historiography albeit with a larger focus on analyzing the emotions, images, and sense of identity held by people in the past rather than their lives from an economic perspective. Where Cultural history differs from Marxist historiography is that it is not purely focused on a bottom-up approach; cultural history also looks at high cultures such as literature, art and clothing, music, politics, armies, and courts. In this way, cultural history provides a thick description of history by attempting to uncover ambiguities, meanings, or subtle nuances. This allows cultural history to reject the predominantly economic determinist and materialist perspectives of historical writing such as Economic and Marxist historiographies in favor of analyzing the deeper cultural meanings behind a text, event, or epoch. However, according to Dr. P. Prayer, Elmo Raj Cultural is still influenced to some extent by influenced by Marxist economic and social theories as it has a similar critique of power as Marxist theory as being exploitive, showing that despite rejecting some of the Marxist ideas, social and cultural historical writing are still largely influenced by Marxist economic and political theories.

Women’s and Gender

Women’s and Gender history have also been influenced by Marxist political and economic theory. An offshoot of cultural history, women’s and gender histories attempt to approach history from the perspective of women, analyzing the contributions of women to history and the meaning and formation of gender in the past. Pre-women’s history, the majority of history recorded about women had the same issues Marxist historians noticed about older historiographies; it centered heavily around great men, or in this case, great women. The focus was entirely on ‘society matrons’, women doing what men would typically do while happening to be a woman, and woman’s life in the public sphere while neglecting their lives in the private sphere. With the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, Women’s historians began to apply the Marxist criticism of older historiography being too narrowly emphasizing leaders and elites and dismissing the role of women. Some took it even further, criticizing Marxist historians for focusing too heavily on class inequality and not heavily enough on the impact of race and gender. Joan Wallach Scott (a professor of Social Science at Princeton University) for example, suggested that E. P. Thompson’s approach in ‘The Making of the English Working Class’ was ‘androcentric’ and failed to see the importance of gender to the working-class identity. Despite this, many women’s historians still ‘attribute the most dramatic changes in women’s historical experience to the emergence of capitalism’, like Marxist and economic histories. A system that arguably upholds structural inequities encountered by women in any capitalist economy. Feminist historians such as Alice Clark argue that women’s useful economic roles, before the arrival of capitalism, gave them a certain level of equality with their husbands, since production was centered around the home women were engaged in running farms landed estates, and some trades. However, as capitalism developed throughout the 17th century, the labor divide between typical men and women increased, with the husband usually being employed in paid jobs outside of the home while the wife stayed home performing unpaid household labor. with the realm of paid labor being understood as privileged, inherently male, and more socially valuable than the feminized domesticity of the home. This in many ways emulated the Marxist notion of an inherently exploitive relationship between proletariat and bourgeoisie, one worked with little gain while the other held all available economic powers and freedom. Despite this making women’s and Gender history’s relatively structuralist approach similar to Marxist historical writing, ‘Scott added a new dimension to the meaning of gender by urging women’s historians to embrace post-structuralist theory as well.’ In this way Women’s and Gender History attempts to reject essentialism, stepping away from ‘the belief in an ahistorical, transcendent core of experience and identity’. …….push for more women’s history as a means of recognizing and valuing their work in the public sphere, in the hopes that conditions for women would improve. And this would in turn advance the feminist’s cause; a ‘collective quest’ for economic and political equality.

Conclusion

Overall, Marxist economic and political theory has influenced many types of newer historical writing in numerous ways, with perhaps the most obvious being the transition from a top-down approach focusing on the elite and wealthy to a bottom-up approach encompassing the history of all peoples regardless of wealth or status. and through stressing the importance of economic factors in history, paved the way for further new approaches historical writing.

Drawing on Hayden White’s concept of historiophoty critically examine the role and impact of film in processes of historical understanding.

Hayden White identifies ‘historiophoty’ as “the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and filmic discourse” (1988: 1193) and the following essay will critically examine the ways in which film impacts processes of historical understanding. After all, the media in general has exceeded expectations and plays a fundamental role in shaping society’s basic comprehension of the world and it can be said that films contribute to the retelling of the past. The following essay will particularly focus on the role of the historical film genre in processes of historical understanding by highlighting firstly the importance of cinema and film’s cultural relevance and their role as an enabler of processing history. At the same time, using the films Selma and Platoon, I will emphasize the importance of cinema’s emotional invocation and style that allows for effective comprehension of the past. It is, however, important to note that historiophoty and modern media have the potential to be problematic in our understanding of history and perhaps traditional discourse should remain integral in today’s analysis of the past.

It is first important to highlight the relationship between historiophoty and ‘historiography’ – defined as “the writing of history” (Merriam-Webster). Rather than its antithesis, the former, it could be argued, is merely a tool – albeit one that is “radically different” to written discourse – within the latter to communicate history (O’Connor, 1990: 96) that caters to the modern world in which technology is an important medium. The film, as a result, has been used to help reflect on history through its own genre of ‘historical film’ in which the past travels from written discourse such as biographies and textbooks onto the big screen. At the same time, historical film (and television) has demoted the academic historian to a minor role in the retelling of history, putting directors and producers at the forefront. What this does is allow the film to question tradition and traditional methods of historical revision (Rosenstone in De Groot, 2016: 247) that previously shaped public understanding of the past. Consequently, we can argue that the role of the historical film is to re-examine and reconsider history through entertainment whilst at the same time reaching a larger audience than its so-called ‘predecessors’.

Another way of thinking about historiophoty and film is that they essentially do what traditional historiography does not. First and foremost, as mentioned previously, the impact of film’s cultural relevance today has the potential to influence and interact with a wider spectrum of audiences as opposed to written discourses. After all, Rosenstone underlines visual media as “the chief source of historical knowledge for the majority of the population” with the film being “the great temptation” for a large audience interested in the past (1988: 1174-1175). This is highlighted by what is considered the “slow death of traditional media” on a global scale (Desjardins, 2016) as indicated by the Global Web Index report (2017: 19) in which it is of great importance to note the consumption of online streaming of film and TV through the likes of Netflix and PopcornTime. Similarly, tickets sold at the box office have remained above one billion for the past two decades, indicating the popularity of cinema has remained consistent (Nash Information Services). Relating this to the topic at hand, it is also significant to underline that the historical genre in the film is amongst those with the largest proportional growth rate in terms of film production (Follows, 2018). Although we are yet to discuss historiophoty and film specifically as tools that impact our processes of historical understanding, what can be taken from the following statistics is that the role of visual media as an agent of historical retelling is more likely to impact a wider audience than traditional media because of its profound global reach.

The properties of the historical film distinguish it from any other tool of historiography/historiophoty in that its use of visuals has the potential to better enhance an audience’s understanding of history. Indeed, White notes how the complexities of historical events gain enough representation via the cinema’s use of setting, props, special effects, etc. (1988: 1193). In fact, Raack notes that written discourse is simply unable to “render the fullness of the complex, multi-dimensional world in which humans live” and lauds film’s use of imagery, sound, and editing in accurately mirroring an “empathetic reconstruction to convey how historical people witnessed, understood and lived their lives” (1983: 416-418). To put it simply, ‘actions speak louder than words’ in that visuals generally have the capacity to better highlight the happenings of an event more so than by putting pen to paper. The film, therefore, gives history its emotional value that provides for a better understanding of context and circumstance; a quality that text lacks. A case study I personally find fitting in highlighting the impact of the film as a “document of the past” is Selma (2014) in that it not only revises the Selma to Montgomery marches of the Civil Rights Movement in 1965 but also invokes emotion from an audience to process the historical event more efficiently.

Focusing on a scene depicting ‘Bloody Sunday’ (Klein, 2015) the relationship between the sounds of screams, whips, and batons hitting bodies and radio commentary combined with the falling of crippled bodies and tormented TV viewers establishes the events of this monumental march. Moreover, the setting of the Selma bridge provides a sense of realism to the film to accurately mimic reality and non-diegetic music sets the cultural scene whilst establishing a somber mood at the same time. Most importantly, however, is the film’s use of editing to create a spatial montage cutting between the actual events of the march and other scenarios is fundamental in grasping the profoundness of Bloody Sunday on the country at the time and on the Civil Rights Movement in general. In this context, the scene itself revises history for an audience by acting out the incident – what could be drawn out from here is that film plays an active role in retelling history similar to any tool of historiography. Film’s use of mise-en-scene allows the processes of historical understanding, though, to flourish as accurately as possible. Mise-en-scene, thus, is useful in highlighting the impact of film on audience interpretation and could best be described essentially as being “concerned with visual style in cinema” (Gibbs, 2002) through the use of lighting, decor, costume, acting, and space (Yale University). The visual style of filmic discourse plays a role in the creation of pseudo-realism that links the narrative in a film to the actual historical event it is meant to represent albeit in a way in which audiences can resonate with those historically involved. In fact, Anirudh Deshpande recognizes historical film as a source of history carrying more weight than other tools of historiophoty since “a film might display significant historical details pertinent to various aspects of social, urban or rural history” (2004: 4457) that might not directly link to a historical event, but also set the contextual scene that leads to a more in-depth understanding of it. How this can be seen through the comparison of the film Selma to an extract from a historical textbook (Davis and Vaughan, 2006: 14):

“White State troopers violently attacked the marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, accompanied by Sheriff Clark of Selma and his deputies. Black marchers were beaten, bones were broken, and bodies bruised.”

This transition to historiophoty both virtualizes and visualizes details of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ march that has been written. Written discourse informs us of the violence, yet the visuals of Selma – in which an all-white police force attacked only black protesters and a mob of white bystanders carrying racist insignia – outline the deep-rooted institutionalized and casual racism that was consuming America at the time and laid the foundations for ‘Bloody Sunday’. Consequently, this invokes more thought and reaction out of consumers who, through a combination of sight and sound, can process and understand the chaos of the event that written discourse is unable to reproduce. After all, we understand things better when we see them for ourselves and also have the opportunity to individually examine and analyze what is before us due to the symbolism mise-en-scene has the potential of creating.

Going back to the notion of an experiential narrative, the film is unique compared to other tools for discussing history in that the past becomes personal through the acting and the insertion of a protagonist in the middle of a historical event. Indeed, if we are to critically examine the impact of film in processes of historical understanding, it is fundamental to outline how film’s adoption of an experiential narrative underscores the emotional context needed to fully grasp the importance of a historical moment on society and a community. Platoon (1986) is a focus on the Vietnam War yet based mostly on the point of view of one soldier, Chris Taylor. Over time, the protagonist becomes disillusioned about American patriotism and their role as ‘saviors’ in a war against the Viet Cong. The heavy use of gore and violence interprets the Vietnam War as savage and unforgiving, yet it is Taylor’s journey throughout (as well as the rest of the characters) that truly allows us to engage with the events. After all, images of fire and mushroom clouds do little without the presence of people screaming and running for safety whilst the sounds of shots being fired have little effect unless we were to see someone behind or in front of the gun. A poignant scene in Platoon takes place in the film’s final moments when an injured Taylor is rescued out of the jungle to be sent back home to the United States, reacting emphatically to a flood of tears. Panning underneath the helicopter, hundreds of dead bodies remain on the ground and the merger of whirring propellers and dramatic instrumental music lay the foundations for an overwhelming sense of sadness and exasperation. In reality, Taylor and the rest of the Platoon characters are fictional yet are a reflection of real veterans who experienced very similar situations decades before in the actual war. Here, the film allows private memory to transcend into global and/or national history that personalizes history and thus, enhances one’s ability to understand and examine the past. In this context, both Selma and Platoon showcase the way film can not only impact but improve our processes of historical understanding through the reinforcement of humanity’s role in history. After all, we are more capable of understanding a situation’s context if human action, interaction, reaction, etc. is pushed to the forefront (Thompson, 2008). Combined with the visual creations of a film’s mise-en-scene, this produces a realism that written discourse is unable to reproduce.

It is of great importance, however, to note the criticisms of historiophoty and film that many scholars have discussed in which the potential impact the latter has on processes of historical understanding is potentially problematic. In focusing on the historical genre in film, historians are concerned with the likelihood that accuracy in detailing history clashes with a director’s desire and need to create entertaining and “crowd-pleasing work” (De Groot, 2016: 251). Indeed, there is a level of consistency that movies need to attain about their entertainment value, and to some, certain moments in history as well as their depiction in written discourse are anything but entertaining. With that in mind, films tend to embellish the past “through dramatic elements such as characterization and plot, and spectacle elements…” (Grindon, 1994: 6) to the point where the history itself and people of the past are misrepresented. As a result, because of the global reach cinema, particularly Hollywood cinema, has, it is more than likely that film has become a primary source of historical information and thus, distorted history is processed as real history. Something of considerable worry is the historical film that misrepresents and/or demonizes certain members of a society to the point where societal issues remain current in today’s climate. Films of great value to this argument are Zulu (1964) and The Last Samurai (2003) in which Zulu warriors and the Japanese are respectively vilified and trivialized in what is commonly identified as ‘symbolic annihilation’: a “lack of social existence” in a world of fiction (Gerbner & Gross 1976: 182). After all, the latter is often criticized for its “patronizing narrative” (Rich, 2004) in which a foreign country needs a white (principally American) savior. At the same time, Zulu romanticizes a Britain of the past whilst emphasizing “British heroism in the face of adversity” (Whittle, 2016: 193-194) that historically ignores the imbued violence and racism of the British empire on Africa that still has remnants of it today. Thus, rather than viewing the historical film and historiophoty in general as “transparent mediators of reality” (Gross, 1988: 190), Jarvie suggests film instead “can present a one-sided view very persuasively to the uncritical” and lacks the depth to intricately examine and debate history (1978: 377-378). Therefore, what can be argued is that yes, historiophoty and film can impact processes of historical understanding, yet not necessarily in an enlightening way. Indeed, what Jarvie essentially outlines is film’s ability to influence an audience at the same time written discourse is shunned and this potentially problematizes historical understanding in that film can manipulate an event or story for the sheer purpose of entertainment to the point where an ‘alternative’ version of history is recognized as the so-called ‘real deal’. As a result, history is either trivialized, falsified, or at the very worst, not available to critically understand.

In conclusion, it is of fundamental importance in discussing film and historiophoty to juxtapose it with written discourse if we are to see the ways in which it influences processes of critical understanding. It could be said indeed that written discourse and other traditional tools of historiography differ from that of visual media in that it is considered blacker and whiter whereas film produces opportunities for individual analysis and interpretation as a result of its film style, similarly, it could be said, to poetry. Of course, film and visual discourse are far more poignant in highlighting a multitude of layers that make up an event of the past, and as argued above, each piece of the puzzle is important if we are to wholly and engagingly understand history. Historiophoty, therefore, is necessary in processing history via a link from past to present in which the relationship between visuals and experiential narratives stimulates a cognitive connection between characters and consumers who vicariously experience a moment of history as a result. Yet, historical understanding is of vital significance to a community’s past both nationally and globally and so there is a necessity for historical discourse to remain as accurate and objective as possible. In this context, as a follow-through from Jarvie’s comments, perhaps there is still the need for traditional written discourse in discussing history because the value is placed more on objectivity and examination than the desire for entertainment. Yet, what I will finally argue is that it is important to find a happy medium between what is considered traditional and that which is, say, more culturally relevant at this point in time. In this context, the assumption that historiophoty holds a large amount of weight and influence over our abilities – or lack thereof – to understand and evaluate history needs to be outmatched by reliance on the public to utilize all historiographical tools so they will be able to note that Django Unchained (2012), for example, differs to that of 12 Years a Slave (2013).

Bibliography/References

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