Week 5 Discussion Example 3
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School
University of Maryland, University College *
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Course
289
Subject
History
Date
Dec 6, 2023
Type
Pages
2
Uploaded by redzslm
Historical revisionism is a method of analysis similar to scientific experimentation,
using new or theorized avenues of variables and data we can arrive at a conclusion
that challenges or reinforces previous conclusions. For historians, this concept is
applied to findings after new research has been conducted, and is not a framework
to use new research as way to craft narratives that fit an agenda. As McPherson
discussed, the "revisionist history," used by politicians to create and ignore factors
is a stark difference between useful and manipulated history.
1
Revisionism is vital
to the profession of historians as previous "truths," can be challenged and rebuked
to create not a truth of itself but more of a totality of the subject in question as
exemplified with McPherson's examples of the Confederate lost cause narratives
that emerged post-Civil War.
2
Gerstle's article provides an additional layer of
context as it was a challenge to a cultural zeitgeist and a shared memory of the
nation of a harmonized racial consensus among the former Union states. The
rebuttal of the narrative is found not through an additional cultural history but a
materialist view of how blacks were still marginalized even outside the South
especially in terms of a simple ideal such as housing.
3
The principal historical law David Irving broke, despite being morally reprehensible,
was professionally he did not use the evidence to create the total of the picture.
He used small micro bits of information and data to fit into his particular narrative
4
,
this was a clear violation of trust to both the public and professional academia.
Revisionism is the use of new information to present new theories not to use new
evidence to ignore other evidence. Ultimately this what brought down his
professional and personal prestige as a historian, if and how it existed before.
Any examination of history is just like testing a hypothesis in the scientific method;
we develop a thesis, test that thesis, gather the data, and summarize what we
found. To not challenge or add to any historical study is a akin to plagiarism as you
are simply reiterating what has already existed. Every person will bring a new and
fresh perspective because we all have differing experiences, biases, and
perspectives to the past to illustrate how we see and what the evidence provides
what happened in the past. If we were to look at World War 1 for example, we
know that Germany and Britain were at full and total war with each other, but was
that the total truth? We may come to find that many German and British soldiers
in Africa not only collaborated, but allied to out down various uprisings of native
Africans. They also shared intelligence during the emerging revolution in Russia in
1917.
1.
McPherson, James M. "Revisionist Historians." Perspectives. Vol. 41, iss. 6,
(p. 5-6). Published September 1, 2003. Accessed November 16,
2023.
https://web-s-ebscohost-
com.ezproxy.umgc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=9aacf79a-
139e-45c0-ab4a-5a9247024d26%40redis
2.
McPherson, James M. "Revisionist Historians." Perspectives. Vol. 41, iss. 6,
(p. 5-6). Published September 1, 2003. Accessed November 16,
2023.
https://web-s-ebscohost-
com.ezproxy.umgc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=9aacf79a-
139e-45c0-ab4a-5a9247024d26%40redis
3.
Gerstle, Gary. "Race and the Myth of Liberal Consensus."
The Journal of
American History.
Vol. 82, no. 2, (p. 581-583). Published September, 1995.
Accessed November 16, 2023.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2082187
4.
Zainaldin, Jamil. "The Price of Truth: History, Deborah Lipstadt, and the Libel
Trial."
Perspectives.
Vol. 40, iss. 1, (p. 28-30). Published January, 2002.
Accessed November 16, 2023.
https://web-s-ebscohost-
com.ezproxy.umgc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=8a933449-
ea1b-44e3-af51-931a304c10be%40redis
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