All History Is Revisionist History

Do a search for "1619 revisionist" if you want to know the context.

There's an interesting chapter preview about his sources here:

https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004217584/B9789004217...

There's no guarantee that someone living in 1922 would be more accurate about what happened at that time than a historian writing today. They might have access to more detail, but they can lie, be mistaken, be partial, and so on. Eye witness testimony is often less reliable than a methodical examination of the available evidence, however later that happens.

There's no obligation to believe or not believe a source. There are the facts and then there's the interpretation of the facts, the latter is what constitutes history.

The crux is that the interpretation doesn't happen in a void. It's always driven by context in which a record first originated. Historiography isn't just about creating new narratives, it's also re-interpreting existing narratives within their context. Which interpretations of the past exist? Why did a particular narrative become dominant? What motivates historical actors to promote one narrative over another? To what extent are establish facts corroborating with an generally accepted narrative?

For instance, Caesar's De Bello Galico isn't an objective, factual account of his famous campaign to pacify Gaul. It's a textbook example of a narrative of the facts that served different purposes. Here we have a roman warlord who wants to capture the story for posterity, but also leverage his report as a propaganda and finally as an apology geared towards the senate and his enemies.

That doesn't mean we should dismiss De Bello Galico is a worthless account. Its value isn't in gaining a facts based perspective of the different cultures that populated Gaul some 2.000 years ago. Instead, it's an unique insight in the mind of a roman general and what motivates him to write a particular narrative.

Then there are the biases and opinions of the contemporary historian interpreting De Bello Galico today. That's where it gets interesting. The art / science of history is akin to watching the past through the back mirror in your car: perspectives and interpretations change as more time and distance passes by, as well as the mirror itself warping the image over time.

Ultimately, we are all slaves of the arrow of time. The idea that we can somehow capture the past in excruciating detail is almost predicated on the fact that you have to pretty much build a static, frozen version of the Universe at a particular moment in time. That's - of course - science fiction. So, when looking at the past, one has to always give countenance to the fact that you'd do so through the imperfect proxy of historical records, the fallible memory of eye witnesses and a sampling of artifacts. There's just no escaping that reality.

Modern historians _don't_ take ancient historians at their word, in general. No-one _actually_ thinks that Caligula made his horse a consul or a priest, say. There's very limited contemporary information on a lot of ancient history, and they have to work with what they have, but they're generally skeptical.

Ironically, the old anti negationnist website I found the following link on is called anti-Rev : http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/VidalNaquet92c/

"Revisionism" has been used in academic historian circles for decades and does not carry the negative connotation that is widespread today. That came later. You've got the changed meaning backwards.

A "revisionist historian", as I understand it, is a manipulator, a con artist, a gaslighter. Someone who is trying to convince people of some history that didn't actually happen, because doing so will enrich them.

This article... seems to try to revise "revisionism"?

My observation from discussion about history (including on HN) is that most people did not learned the same thing. My own history lessons in high school definitely did not taught that. Instead, many people assume whatever they learned is definite and any new addition or emphasis on something else is bad.

> Primary sources are valuable but should be put through the filter of partial knowledge of a situation and personal bias.

Yes, but also to interpret primary sources, you need to understand quite a lot about that period. What they mean when they say certain words. What knowledge is assumed, what values are assumed by the orignal writer. History is foreign country, it is very easy to misunderstand their priorities or what they write about.

Somebody who writes about some topic in history from the perspective of women when it has largely only been examined from the perspective of men in prior scholarship is engaged in "revisionist history" but without the connotations of propaganda and poor scholarship.

The core problem here, as is often the problem when HN discusses history as a profession, is that few people here actually have engaged with the profession. So basic jargon of the field is misunderstood.