We’ve all heard that history is written by the winners. In his 1995 book, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Michel-Rolph Trouillot both agrees and disagrees. He shows that historical narratives, such as the story of the Haitian Revolution, reflect differences in power—”the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals,” from the initial event to the written word.[1]
In other words, the people who shape history are not necessarily the winners. But they usually have some kind of power.
As many readers know, my husband, Richard Stroup, died in November. For those who didn’t know him, here is a short obituary. I very much appreciate the messages so many have shared with me about Rick.
Rick was somewhat skeptical of history as a discipline because he didn’t see any theory behind it (it seemed more like “one damned thing after another“). He preferred economic theory and its application to political behavior, which is called public choice economics. He and his coauthor James D. Gwartney were among the pioneers in this field.
James Hankins, a Harvard historian, has written an astute essay for the Martin Center about the difficulties facing a graduate student who wants to study traditional history. Such a student is one “who dislikes mixing contemporary politics into every historical dish and is out of sympathy with the perfervid evangelism of the modern progressive academy.”
These potential students, whom he calls conservative (but may not be conservative in the usual sense, just eager to study traditional history), are increasingly avoiding the academy. They find themselves out of sync with “social justice” agendas, and sympathetic would-be mentors are increasingly entering retirement.
I highly recommend Hankins’ article. In addition, it gives me a timely opportunity (in journalism, a “news peg”) to share my own experience as a history graduate student at North Carolina State University, from which I will soon receive a master’s degree. Continue reading “How to Be a Graduate Student in 2020”
In 2012 President Obama outraged many people when he tried to argue for the value of government by saying, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” His statement was wrong because, of course, you did build that.
But that doesn’t mean that you had no help. For many of us, that help goes back perhaps hundreds of years.
In my last post I wrote about some of the family histories my readers have sent me. I was struck by how “middle-class” their families were, even 100 or 150 years ago. I concluded that if you are a successful professional today, chances are good that you have a family history with a lot of solid middle-class people behind you, people who worked hard, sometimes back-breaking hard, who gave up leisure, and who sought education for themselves or their children.
That doesn’t mean your family history didn’t have some cads and misfits (mine did) but the general direction was toward discipline.
In other words, we have a cloud of witnesses who have predated us. Perhaps we received material goods from those ancestors, but far more important were the habits of mind—the mental strength that allows us to give up short-term rewards in the hope of longer-term gains. Continue reading “Middle-class at Heart (Part II)”
“The baby is sick. He has been sick a long time. He cries a lot and Pa sometimes spanks him to make him be good. When he sits in his high-chair he can’t hold up his head . . . Ma says she doesn’t have time to take care of him and anyway she is too busy to eat herself so she has no milk for the baby.”
So wrote Gertrude Willson in her diary in upper New York State during the mid-1880s. That starving baby grew up to be a school principal in New York City, although he died at age 56 because of his early malnutrition. Gertrude went to normal school and became a teacher. Her cousin became a school principal, then turned Methodist and became a circuit-riding preacher in Nebraska, and later was an Episcopal priest.
However poor her family was, Gertrude Willson’s family had pluck and determination and overcame odds.
A couple of months ago I asked readers to send me stories about their family history. I published one of them, by David Brook, and plan to publish the story of Gertrude Willson, a cousin of John Willson, in a future post.
The people who sent me stories are well-educated professionals. If there is one thing that has struck me about their family stories, it is how “middle class” they are, even going way back. That’s true of my family, too. By middle-class I mean that they worked hard, out of duty as much as necessity; they expected their children to do so, too; and they valued education. Continue reading “Middle-class at Heart (Part I)”
