The historical thread about the history of histography

[Griz882]

There are so many things wrong with that article, and not just the factual ones. He makes leaps of assumptions about grand strategy, just a month into a war that drastically changed the geopolitical landscape overnight, on really slim info and then contradicts himself in the same paragraph at times. That piece is a mess.

Setting aside the difference between “opinion” and “fact” (both are present in the article) what factual errors do you find? I get it, he makes assumptions (you have to in article writing) but he supports his assumptions quite well with sourced writings by people he knows directly. The piece isn’t a mess, it is a clear statement that the current administration hopes to thread the needle of a destabilizing “local” war or a broader regional/global one. Ferguson is trying to make the point that Biden’s team is misreading both Putin and Xi and in some ways I think he is right.

 

[Brett327]

Can we please not turn this thread into yet another argument about who had the more enlightened take on history? It's fucking excruciating.

 

[Griz882]

Can we please not turn this thread into yet another argument about who had the more enlightened take on history? It's fucking excruciating.

Kind of like listening to you tell us there is only one kind of aircraft carrier.?

 

[Brett327]

Kind of like listening to you tell us there is only one kind of aircraft carrier.?

Perhaps, if I did that on every single thread.

 

[Griz882]

Perhaps, if I did that on every single thread.

You have your career, I have mine.

 

[mapache2426]

The answer I expected, and largely disagree with. There is absolutely no guarantee that everything coming from an academic institution or that is even peer reviewed is worth a damn. It certainly isn't as likely as in the pages of a general interest periodical or a daily newspaper, but academics, and their institutions have been severely compromised, as you admit. The internet and competition for content has corrupted the academy like everything else in America. Historians who 20 years ago would have consider it their life's work to make a single well received presentation in front of 200 peers at a conference desire more. Today you need a mega phone and your CV is not complete without a popular publication.

I do not have a problem with popular publications by historians. It certainly does not make them less "professional". What good is a new take on Mary Queen of Scots or Anne Boleyn if you can only hear about it in Dr Retha Warnike's classroom? She wrote books on those subjects to educate and challenge the thinking of people who would never sit in her class or attend an academic conference. There are thousands of real historians writing for public consumption who are no less historians then academics in ivory towers. Anymore, because of stifling influences found increasingly in academic institutions, historians writing for public consumption outside of universities are more likely to buck conventional wisdom, be more creative and even more honest.

I think we agree on a lot more than we disagree on and I regret incurring the wrath of the board disparaging poor Francis and Niall. While I would stand by my positions against the influence of public celebrity on their scholastic purity, we are all united in enmity to the post-moderns so our other differences are trivial.

The universities are certainly reduced today to degree mills, and professorships to BS factories due to the “publish or perish” imperative.

I likewise enjoy popular books by Mary Beard, Barbara Tuchman, Arthur Schlesinger, etc, etc. Dr. Retha Warnike sounds like an earnest soul who wrote popular works for the public benefit above and beyond her academic output and I would bet is a thorough-going professional.

 

[taxi1]

Interesting question. I don’t hang with any history profs here at Big State U. Thoughts…

A good historian (whether a paid degrees professional or not) needs to be a good spy/archeologist, because the foundation of their profession is facts, documents, artifacts, etc. They should be really good at knowing what to look for and where to look, etc. They share some of that with journalism? Archeology?

They need to be good storytellers and pattern matchers, because their ultimate job is to weave a narrative out of some boring appendix of facts. My thinking on academic history writing is that an awful lot of academic writing is awful boring, but it is a necessary intermediate step between a box full of facts and the important history writing, which is stuff you find at a good Barnes and Nobles. After all, what is the difference between writing that is obviously bad, and writing that is correct but unreadable? Nothing, to me.

They especially need the integrity to not draw any inferences beyond what the facts support, or to at least be super clear when they are speculating on a hypothesis. Hypotheses are needed because they steer future searches, but there should always be plural of them.

It reminds me of the difference between statistics and probability. Statistics is about the past, probability is about the future. History is like statistics.

 

[number9]

The study of writing about history is called "historiography", just in case anyone wants to add it to the thread title.. ?

 

[Random8145]

Popular history is not all about being sensational and doing so at the expense of scholarship. It is also about making digestible to the general public subjects where they need a decent basic understanding but do not have the time to delve into a professional's level of extreme detail and expertise. For example, Niall Ferguson has a book called, "The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World." It is a "popular" history book about the history of finance and money. Now it isn't going to make one an expert in the history of banking and finance but it will probably give a layman a decent basic understanding of a subject they might not otherwise have much interest in, but is good to know something about.

What's bad is when such works engage in what are known historical myths to professionals.

 

[taxi1]

It is also about making digestible to the general public

It is also about pulling together the threads of multiple lines of inquiry spread across lots of journal articles into a cohesive whole. That's what I really appreciate.

YouTube videos of lectures are some of the best at distilling these topics into digestible info. I've come to really enjoy them. Doesn't have to be a TED talk either.

 

[Flash]

I think we agree on a lot more than we disagree on and I regret incurring the wrath of the board disparaging poor Francis and Niall. While I would stand by my positions against the influence of public celebrity on their scholastic purity, we are all united in enmity to the post-moderns so our other differences are trivial.

Ferguson revels in being a contrarian and while some of this work is decent I think his politics and striving for publicity colors his work too much. His piece on the Ukrainian war is proof of that, very poorly sourced and researched.