Roundup: Talking About History

The Word "Empire" Should Be Honored

Robert Jackson, writing in the London Times (Dec. 29, 2003): It is another dreary sign of present-day historical disconnection that even William Hague should join in the modish campaign against honours referring to the " British Empire ". The idea that empire refers only to one of the most recent episodes of our history -the overseas expansion of England/Britain after 1600 -shows a profound lack of historical insight, information and imaginati

Historians in Hong Kong to Debate Role of Catholic Church in the Boxer Rebellion

Ambrose Leung, writing in the China Morning Post (Dec. 29, 2003): Historians and clerics from Hong Kong, the mainland, Taiwan and overseas will gather in the city for the first time next year to discuss the role of Christian churches in China during the Boxer Rebellion. The topic has long been considered sensitive due to the links between foreign missionaries and western nations that were expanding their influence over the declining Qing dynasty.

Never Forgetting What Happened at Wounded Knee December 29, 1890

Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji), a Lakota Indian, writing in the Baltimore Sun (Dec. 28, 2003): On crystal-clear nights, when winter winds whistle through the hills and canyons around Wounded Knee Creek, the Lakota elders say it is so cold that one can hear the twigs snapping in the frigid air. They called this time of the year"the Moon of the Popping Trees." It was on such a winter morning on Dec. 29, 1890, that the crack of a single rifle brought a day of in

Top Schools Aren't Requiring History

Jennifer Dekel, writing for Accuracy in Academia (Dec. 2003): Universities today routinely scrap history courses in favor of politically correct attitude-adjustment seminars, witnesses from academia itself told U.S. senators at a congressional hearing last month. Three out of four of the witnesses identified themselves politically as liberal. Anne Neal, J.D., the President of the American Counc

FDR Prolonged the Great Depression

Jason Livingood, writing for Accuracy in Academia (Dec. 2003): Although historians and educators tell us that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ended the Great Depression, in reality, the New Deal prolonged chronic unemployment in the U.S. in the 1930s, Cato Institute scholar Jim Powell said early this month. "The New Deal was substantially financed on the backs of the middle class and the poor,

The Myth of Pavlik Morozov, Stalin's Poster Boy for Patriotism, Unravels

Julius Strauss, writing in news.telegraph.co.uk (Dec. 27, 2003): Even by the high-octane standards of Stalinist-era propaganda, the storyline was a powerful one. Pavlik Morozov was a handsome 14-year-old schoolboy who lived in a tiny Siberian village, never played truant, always did his homework and was polite to his teachers. He loved communism so much that when his own father

Spain Pays Tribute to British Role in Defeating Napoleon

Isambard Wilkinson, writing in the Daily Telegraph (London) (Jan. 17, 2004)AFTER two centuries of bitterness over Britain's role in ousting Napoleon's forces from the Iberian Peninsula, Spain yesterday honoured the soldiers' efforts by commemorating one of the most famous retreats in the British Army's history.Cannon fire and muskets rang out across the bay of Corunna as Spanish, French and British officials yesterday marked the 195th anniversary of the"Retrea

Tempers Flare Over Inquiry on Israeli Attack on U.S. Spy-Ship

Guy Dinmore, writing in the Financial Times (London) (Jan. 13, 2004) Survivors of one of the most hotly disputed incidents in American military history - the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty spy-ship in 1967 - yesterday accused the US authorities, past and present, of a cover-up in backing Israeli claims that it was a tragic mistake.Emotions boiled over in the basement of the State Department as the Office of the Historian opened a public conference on the six-d

Africa's Vikings: The Indonesians

Rory Carroll , writing for the

Mexico Has Not Forgotten Its War With the States

Tim Weiner, writing in the New York Times (Jan. 9th, 2004)In the American South, William Faulkner once wrote, the past isn't dead. It isn't even past.This may become truer the farther south one goes. In the United States, almost no one remembers the war that Americans fought against Mexico more than 150 years ago. In Mexico, almost no one has forgotten.The war cut this country in two, and"the wound never really healed," said Miguel Soto, a Mexico

Canadian Navy Book to Chronicle Their Role in the War on Terror

Jim Bronskill writing for the Canadian Press (Jan. 8, 2004)The navy plans to tell Canadians about its secret role in the war on terrorism -- for a price.The Defence Department has commissioned a book on the navy's overseas missions, based partly on classified material, with the aim of hitting store shelves by summer. The government is seeking a co-publisher for the volume, tentatively titled Operation Apollo: The Golden Age of the Canadian Navy in the W

A Historian Discovers that Students Today Don't Know that AIDS Originally Was Regarded as a "Gay Disease"

[T]his past fall, while teaching an undergraduate course called"Plagues and Politics: The Impact of AIDS on US Culture" at Dartmouth College, I was shocked — profoundly shocked — by the fact that only three of the 34 students in the class had any idea that AIDS was once widely regarded as a gay-male disease. As someone who lived through the AIDS epidemic, who has lost lovers and friends too numerous to count, I was literally stunned: how could this be?

Peter Dreier and Dick Flats: Patriotism's Secret History

Many Americans believe that the left is "antipatriotic" (and even anti-American), while the political right truly expresses the American spirit and reveres its symbols. Particularly since the late 1960s--when the movement against US intervention in Vietnam gained momentum--the terms "progressive" and "patriotism" have rarely been used in the same sentence, at least in the mainstream media. It has become conventional wisdom that conservatives wave the American flag w

Anne Alexander: Unpicking the knots: War and imperialism in the Middle East

... Perry Anderson makes clear, in his excellent survey of the Arab-Israeli conflict in New Left Review, that the liberation of Palestine represents one of the last great struggles of the colonial era. The question of Palestine provides a concrete link between the role of the old imperial powers in the Middle East, Britain and France, and the new, in particular the United States. Zionism: False Messiah by Nathan Weinstock outlines the development of the Zionist movement and its relationship to t

John Pilger: The Friends of Pol Pot

[John Pilger has twice won Britain's highest award for journalism. His documentary films have won awards in the United States and Britain.] It is my duty," wrote the correspondent for The Times of London at the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Belsen, "to describe something beyond the imagination of mankind." That was how I felt in the summer of 1979 when I arrived in Cambodia. In the silent humidity, houses, office blocks, hotels and schools stood empty, as if va

Joseph A. Palermo: Ross Douthat's Hit Job on JFK

Joseph A. Palermo has written two books on Robert F. Kennedy: In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Columbia University Press, 2001); and Robert F. Kennedy and the Death of American Idealism (Pearson Longman, 2008).Appearing in the New York Times' "Sunday Review" on the first Sunday following the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the conservative commentator Ross Douthat's take on the former president. Right-wing pundits rarely make good amateur historians and Douthat's short hit piece, dripping with contempt, is fresh evidence for this conclusion. He sets out to debunk what he calls "premises" and "myths" associated with President Kennedy, but his effort is an embarrassing failure on all counts. Interpreting history is all about nuance and nuance is clearly not the forte of right-wing pundits like Douthat.Douthat begins his debunking by dismissing a series of straw man premises he ascribes to anyone who has written positively about John F. Kennedy: "The first premise is that Kennedy was a very good president, and might have been a great one had he lived [original italics]. Few serious historians take this view."

Mark Tooley: Eisenhower's Religion

[Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Taking Back the United Methodist Church.] Often, America's religious life in the 1950s is dismissed as sterile and conventional. Supposedly President Dwight Eisenhower typified generic, superficial religion with his oft quoted quip: "Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is." The quote actu

Luke Slattery: There's Always Been some East in the West

[Luke Slattery is an author and critic and a commentator on higher education issues.] THE idea of the West as a distinct yet endangered entity rose to prominence in the late 1980s during the debate known as the culture wars.... We are still dealing with the reverberations of this conflict whenever the phrase "clash of civilisations" is used. And of course it became something more than a rhetorical debate about literary culture and tradition after the attacks o

Interview with Greg Robinson: The Japanese Internment Camps

[Greg Robinson, a native of New York City, is associate professor of history at l'Université du Québec à Montréal and author of By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans.] The following is an interview with Greg Robinson, author of A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America Q: Is there any need for a new book on Japanese Americans and World War II? Many have already been written, including one by you. Hasn’t everything im

Steven F. Hayward: Would Reagan Vote for Sarah Palin?

[Steven F. Hayward is the F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution, 1980-1989." His most recent Outlook essay was "Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?" on Oct. 4. He will be online on to chat with readers on Monday, March 8, at 11 a.m. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.] Sarah Palin invokes him. Mitt Romney glorifies him. The "tea party&quo