Dissing History
I was not sure whether I was going to post this. But I decided that if I’m going to open my mouth, I might as well be thorough about it. It’s just my opinion, and you don’t have to agree with me. In the Grand Scheme of Things, it probably changes nothing, ever. But we’re allowed our right to have an opinion, although not a right to deprive anyone else of theirs…
As an historian, I have a question to ask. What is with this current trend towards denigrating our ancestors?
I recently attended a memorial service for a friend and colleague, a highly respected eighteenth-century living-history educator. One of the points that was mentioned in his remembrances—more than once—was that Paul spoke for those people from history who could no longer speak for themselves.
I expect that some people would be inclined to say here, ‘Why should anyone need to speak for them? They had their voices when they were alive. It’s time to hear from other voices.’
I wholly support hearing from other voices. But I find it disturbing that we seem to want additionally to silence the voices of the men and women whose accomplishments helped us arrive where we are today.
We accuse our ancestors of exploiting people and resources for their own benefit. But has that changed over the past two centuries? Let’s look at this word ‘exploit’.
The verb ‘exploit’ means ‘to make full use of and derive benefit from a resource.’ We still talk about exploiting untapped markets, audiences, demographics, or technologies. Exploit doesn’t mean enslave, subjugate, or steal from, but that just seems to be our nature.
In a just world, figures from history should be able to speak for themselves. Their deeds, their motivations, their successes and failures, their hopes, and the things that made them despair should live on after their death. This is their legacy. But in the modern world, we now frequently try to ‘spin’ those things to support our own ambitions or perspectives, whether or not that perspective is actually true to the person to which it’s being attributed. I think we all do this to a degree, relatively innocently, but recently we have begun deliberately exploiting historical figures for our own benefit, in the same way that we distort the motivations, words, and actions of modern public figures.
Thanks to the inclusivity movement, cultural institutions have been charged with presenting exhibits reflecting more of the experiences of underrepresented populations. Now, at the National Portrait Gallery, you can see art depicting one of the only documented openly transgendered people of the eighteenth century. The Chevalier D’Éon was a fascinating person, and to my knowledge this is the first time they have been featured in a museum display. Sadly, this innovation was somewhat shadowed for me by the insistence of the NPG on identifying every portrait of a subject who owned slaves, or whose family had benefited from the slave trade, as having done so.
I acknowledge that members of families engaged in the slave trade undoubtedly had advantages and opportunities that others may not have had, certainly not the people who had been enslaved. But surely that isn’t the only reason that they achieved something exceptional?
At the National Maritime Museum, in an exhibit designed to appeal to children, an indigenous ‘sea deity’ berates Horatio Nelson about ignoring the plight of sea migrants, a modern issue that has limited relevance to Nelson’s Royal Navy. This might have been more enlightening if the museum had given Nelson something intelligent to say in rebuttal, but whomever wrote the script seemed to think it was imperative that the sea deity win the exchange, and their representation of Nelson merely stammers something fatuous about naval victories.
Score one off the old White guy with the funny-looking hat.
Why is it that in order to elevate the stories of underrepresented people, the curators feel the need to tear down the reputations of figures from history? What are we teaching our children, if what might be a useful dialog is instead an exercise in one-upmanship? Is it necessary to put someone down, or put them ‘in their place’ to engage in debate?
This would presume that we know better than our ancestors did. I think that’s a dangerous presumption to make. Particularly if we are dismissing the lessons that their experience can teach us.
When we make accusations against an historical figure, we must be careful to discern whether the charge is just. That requires looking at both sides of the argument, putting the argument in context—we too often make judgments based on our modern perspectives and sensibilities, not those of the subject’s era—and most importantly, discerning what the subject said about the matter and what his contemporaries said about him. Too often we deprive the subject of his voice… in favour of whatever motivation is driving us.
Slavery is a blight on humanity, and it always has been, as far back as the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Romans. Conquered people were often kept or sold as slaves. It wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right today, and it wasn’t right in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Rather than pointing out that some innocuous gentleman who built a textile industry in… Cumberland… benefitted from the institution of slavery, perhaps we should look more closely at the continued existence of slavery in modern populations. Our current culture seems to make far more noise about historical slavery than about modern people trafficking. We can’t unmake the slaves of the past, but we should be able to prevent any more vulnerable people from becoming slaves, with all the repercussions of having been enslaved. Slavery is an historical fact. It should not have a future.
Additionally, empire was a stage that nations went through. The sixteenth through nineteenth centuries were a race between European nations to see who could snap up the most territory and impose their culture most extensively around the world. Britain, France, Spain, Austria, Portugal, and the Netherlands all engaged in empire-building. And the U.S. followed suit in the nineteenth century with ‘Manifest Destiny’, which was just imperialism under another name. The primary motivation was economic, and it remains so today. We still displace and subjugate indigenous people when expedient; we despoil wildernesses and rainforests for our oil pipelines, cobalt, avocados, and coffee, and the profit that these things promise.
My point is that we haven’t changed much. Shaking a finger at people from the past, which is safe because they can’t defend themselves, is also hypocritical and doesn’t do anything to address the issues of the present.
Like my late friend Paul, I hope I will always speak for our forebears who can no longer speak for themselves.
I found this blog post extremely inspiring and it has really made me think. I wish that more people had the courage to speak out like you. You are incredibly brave and I really admire you. I am from England and I feel embarrassed and ashamed that as a country we have allowed this kind of culture to develop, where great men and women are vilified simply because they had links to slavery. You ask some really interesting and important questions and I wish that more people would speak out and challenge the idea that if someone was involved in slavery then their legacy and achievements are forever tarnished. It’s as if this one fact is blown up into a huge thing that completely overshadows the rest of the person’s life and all the good things they did and almost makes it morally unacceptable to praise them without mentioning slavery. I find this really sad and to me it reflects very badly on us – it feels very judgmental and intolerant. I find it really strange that people who in other contexts would be kind and forgiving are so quick to criticise people from the past. I feel we should always try to be charitable when we interpret and evaluate people’s behaviour. We should always remember that no one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes and something that might be obvious to us today may well not have been obvious to people of the past – and probably wouldn’t have been obvious to us if we had lived back then. My sense is that as a society we have in certain respects become kinder and more compassionate – for example we probably care more about animal welfare and there is greater recognition that if people have problems (for example with violence or addiction) then often they are not solely to blame and society bears some responsibility – but when it comes to judging historical figures things have gone the other way: we are far more critical and less charitable. I would like to think that most of the time people’s hearts are in the right place. For example, the curators who put on the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery probably didn’t intend to denigrate Horatio Nelson. My guess is that their intention was to give a voice to people who didn’t really have one when they were alive but they didn’t mean to besmirch Nelson’s reputation. I think a lot of people – including me! – find it hard to be balanced and fair if they feel a strong sense of injustice – they instinctively empathise with people they consider victims but go too far, with the result that they end up with a distorted perspective and almost feel like they have a moral duty to try to right historical wrongs by attacking anyone who can be conceived of as an oppressor of any sort. Unfortunately proportionality and perspective go out of the window and people like Nelson and Winston Churchill are denigrated and in some cases it becomes morally unacceptable to say anything positive about them at all!
I think people who work in museums and galleries are frightened of speaking out and challenging the culture that has taken hold. People seem to think that if they fail to mention someone’s links to slavery then they might be accused of harbouring prejudice or not really caring about inequality and discrimination so they go out of their way to show they are on the right side morally and unfortunately one of the ways they do that is to be very critical of historical figures and point out all their flaws and failings. People are terrified of being accused of racism and feel the best way to protect themselves is to level that accusation at others. Maybe it is a bit like what happened in the olden days when people believed in witchcraft – the best way to protect yourself against suspicion is to accuse other people?
Thank you so much for this blog post. We desperately need voices like yours and I really hope that I will manage to find the strength to speak out on behalf of those who are unfairly vilified or demonised.
You make some excellent points here, Charlotte. Every evolution has its rough patches, and it is only by discussing them rationally and civilly that we will work through them and progress to a better place.
This is a very insightful comment: “I think a lot of people – including me! – find it hard to be balanced and fair if they feel a strong sense of injustice – they instinctively empathise with people they consider victims but go too far, with the result that they end up with a distorted perspective and almost feel like they have a moral duty to try to right historical wrongs by attacking anyone who can be conceived of as an oppressor of any sort.” We do sometimes become crusaders against the things we perceive as injustices. Also, it can be very hard to balance the scales, and I think often we don’t want to do the extra work required to do that.
Although Nelson has come under a lot of criticism in the past decade or so, I don’t think that the National Maritime Museum intended to denigrate him in their exhibit. I do think that perhaps it wasn’t thought through as thoroughly as it might have been, because it does leave him open to that ‘oppressor’ label, if people are inclined that way. Progressives like to say that if you aren’t part of the solution you’re part of the problem, but that (intentionally) leaves people very little room for dissent, or even individuality. It should never be morally unacceptable to say something positive about a person! As you point out, we are all imperfect, but even the worst of us are human, and, I hope, redeemable.
Thank you for being brave enough to share your thoughts with me! The only way we will achieve any sort of balance is to care enough to point out when things are out of balance (and to do it without vilifying anyone else).
Thank you so much for responding to what I wrote! Please forgive me for getting muddled up earlier – I was confused and thought the exhibit featuring Horatio Nelson was in the National Portrait Gallery rather than the National Maritime Museum!
Here in England a lot of people tend to worry about upsetting or offending people from ethnic minorities. We worry about saying the wrong thing or our words being misinterpreted. We are so desperate not to upset anyone that it feels like we’re walking on eggshells all the time and there are certain issues that people don’t want to talk about because they are worried about being seen as prejudiced or bigoted. Our society is very censorious (I really hope that’s the right word!) and people who are labelled racist or transphobic suffer terrible abuse, even if the charge of racism or transphobia is completely unjustified. This has created a climate of fear where people are terrified of saying anything that might provoke a backlash and a lot of people keep quiet when someone is unfairly accused of racism instead of standing up for them or even worse join in with the abuse and vilification. I think part of it is about people trying to protect themselves – they are frightened of the same thing happening to them – but part of it is nobler: they feel terrible about how certain groups were treated in the past and want to do everything they can to try to make people today feel safe and welcome here. So in moral debates they instinctively side with minority groups and people they see as oppressed.
I wonder if because people from the past can no longer talk to us it is harder for us to empathise with them and so it is easier for us to demonise them? Maybe we sometimes forget that once upon a time they had feelings, hopes and fears just like us and are just as worthy of respect.
And we in the United States tend to be so callous that we don’t seem to care who we offend… and yet we are easily offended. It is noble to take up the cause of someone else. If we vilify other people in the process, the cause loses some of its nobility.
I attended a graduation ceremony on Friday. Many of the young people who were children of immigrants wore a piece of clothing with their robes that symbolised their heritage. It was very dignified and I thought, quite moving. It made a statement without getting in anyone’s face. With immigration being such a hot-button issue in the U.S. right now, it struck the perfect tone: we are members of this culture, as well as the cultures of our parents and grandparents. I hope that one day soon all people can wear their heritage proudly, and respect the heritage of their adopted nations equally. I personally believe that every human being is worthy of respect, regardless of their race, culture, religion, creed, gender identity… or history. And I hope that when our descendants look back on us from 200 years in the future, they are generous with our shortcomings.
You have expressed your feelings beautifully and I feel exactly the same way! The students’ tribute to their ancestors and heritage must have been very powerful and I’m sure I would have been very moved by it too.
Are there historical figures you once really admired but now think much less of because of things you’ve learnt about their lives or what they were like as people?
I think I’m kind of torn – on the one hand I feel we should try to be objective and impartial when we’re looking at history but then it would be completely unnatural to teach students about something like the transatlantic slave trade without expressing our feelings about the horror of what happened and the dreadful attitudes that allowed people to be treated so appallingly. I find I can’t switch off my feelings and look at things impartially – if I discovered that someone was involved in slavery then I would feel uncomfortable expressing admiration for their accomplishments, even if they achieved great things and helped a lot of people. I guess it’s a bit like the dilemma people have when they discover that a famous person they really admire for their skill and talent (for example an actor or a sports star) is discovered to have behaved very badly in their private life – should we try to keep our judgment of their professional abilities completely separate from our judgment of them as a person or should we accept that it’s impossible to view their abilities and achievements in the same light now we know of their serious moral failings?
I guess there is a part of me that does have some sympathy with the kind of culture that has developed in museums and galleries, where curators draw attention to aspects of a person’s life or character that might change how people feel about them, but I feel that if curators are going to do this then they should be completely impartial and just state facts and let visitors decide for themselves how much respect to accord the person and their accomplishments. So museums and galleries shouldn’t be prescriptive – they shouldn’t tell people what to think or try to influence how they feel but instead simply give them information and leave them free to form their own opinions.
I guess, though, that it might be difficult for curators to be completely impartial and unfortunately they could end up influencing visitors’ opinions of a historical figure through their choice of what information to display – they might include information that casts the person in a negative light but leave out information that paints a much more positive picture.
I think that I am conflicted and confused!
Charlotte, I think you are more objective than most people! I don’t particularly think that museum curators are not being impartial when they identify a subject as having benefited from the slave trade; they are. In certain cases, though, it feels a bit gratuitous. If the subject is someone the general public has likely never heard of but who contributed something important to our culture, it’s logical that the curators should identify what that contribution was. But to then say, ‘His/her family profited from slavery’, which may otherwise have nothing to do with the subject or their accomplishment, is jarring, at least to me. More importantly than that, however, a lot of visitors to museums may not have your gift of objectivity. They may read that final comment and decide that it negates the subject’s value entirely.
What has happened to Horatio Nelson’s reputation over the past five or so years should be a cautionary tale. One reporter accused him of racism, and today that gets repeated (often by people who should know enough to do their own research first). There’s no evidence that Nelson was a racist. He did not own slaves; he didn’t support the slave trade. He didn’t even write about his views on slavery, not once, and the man wrote thousands of letters. There is only one, sent to a man who was involved in the slave trade, a man who he considered an old friend… and this letter was altered after Nelson’s death to make it appear that he supported the way his old friend made his money. Similarly there’s no evidence that he wasn’t racist, but given what I know about Nelson’s attitudes towards people in general, he probably found the institution of slavery distasteful, at least. The Royal Navy’s policies were not racist, and unlike the army, the Royal Navy was a meritocracy. But slavery would not have been Nelson’s concern unless the government told him to make it his concern, which is why, I think, he never mentioned it in his letters. Today, though, if you mention Horatio Nelson to someone who knows very little about him, they might say, ‘Oh, but he was a terrible racist!’
Like all American schoolchildren, I was brought up to revere our Founding Fathers. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I discovered that all the lofty idealism that we were taught about freedom and equality was akin to making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear — yes, the American War for Independence was about freedom, but freedom to retain the wealth of the colony and not share it with the Crown. And America’s Founding Fathers did own slaves. Most of them did. It doesn’t negate their achievements in founding a new nation, but it does reveal their feet of clay. I’m not accusing them of hypocrisy, exactly. I think they believed in the things they said about freedom and equality. They just left people of colour, women, and indentured people out of the equation, because to their way of thinking, patriarchal practices should take care of those folks.
We can learn from this history, as long as we remain objective. Museum curators can’t put an exposition next to a display, but we can and should have discussions like this one. Because to take a statement at face value often doesn’t reveal the whole truth.