This week, ending in March 6th, 2014:
Today's thread is for open discussion of:
History in the academy
Historiographical disputes, debates and rivalries
Implications of historical theory both abstractly and in application
Philosophy of history
And so on
Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion only of matters like those above, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.
I think this essentially falls under philosophy of history with relevance to history in the academy.
Something I've been thinking about recently - Dan Carlin regularly includes the disclaimer on his podcast, "I'm not a historian, I'm just a fan of history." I've always taken his meaning to be speaking in strictly professional terms; history is not his "job", but I think it's pretty plain that he's "doing history", consulting primary and secondary sources to draw conclusions and advance arguments about the past. I'm interested to know how people who are historians, for whom history is their job, apply the term. Who, to you, is a historian? Where and how do you distinguish who is a historian versus a fan of history? I'd also be interested in hearing from flaired users who are not professional historians.
So, this bit from Chomsky was posted in /r/philosophy. It's pretty obnoxious. I guess Chomsky either didn't read much social history from the 1960s through the 1980s, or didn't understand it.
I watched the first episode of HBO's John Adams again the other day since the anniversary of the Boston Massacre was yesterday. It reminded me again of how much the show annoyed me with the portrayal of Sam Adams.
His portrayal by historians is an interesting case study in historiography. For a long time he was considered to be a sly political manipulator who controlled the crowds of Boston for his own purposes. Then he was portrayed as a rabble-rousing demagogue (this is the view that HBO took). More recent scholarship has shown him in a kinder light--as a leading figure in the popular party politics in Massachusetts and a key figure behind many of the protests, but nonetheless just a key figure, not the arch-manipulator.
The latter view is the one that I tend to hold to myself. Casting him as the manipulator of the crowds takes away the agency of the crowds themselves, and we know how radical much of the Massachusetts public was in 1774 and 1775. His rabble rousing demagoguery is called into question when we realize that he cautioned against talk of independence in 1774 as both he and John Adams cautioned against open talk of independence because it scared a great many other people.
In fact how we understand the American Revolution (especially the period leading up to open warfare) has changed a great deal as the focus has moved away from a few men pulling strings to the people agitating and fighting on their own.