This last semester I had written a research essay about ancient Greek culture, and in that research I read a little about their institution of pederasty. That’s the example I’m going to use to explain my question a little more, but I’m not trying to start a discussion on the subject of pederasty, so much as on how historians handle subject matter that makes them uncomfortable.
I was reading a few different history books about the 1200-700BC sort of range, I was interested in the start of democracy. I found that most authors were very uncomfortable with the subject of pederasty, almost to the point not covering it at all, or making single line references. But this wasn’t immediately apparent to me, it wasn’t until I stumbled upon a source that dealt with the subject in depth that I even realized how tangentially most of the other authors I had read touched the subject. It was pretty interesting when I made the inference that these other authors just didn’t want to talk about it.
What I was reading about when I looked into the subject specifically was mind blowing, we’re not just talking about a society where child molestation wasn’t explicitly illegal or where there wasn’t any sort of law enforcement to curb the weirdos, we’re considering a culture where these sorts of behaviors existed in a formalized, public way. I had no idea.
Not wanting to talk about a culture that institutionalized the practice of sex with children is entirely reasonable, of course. There’s not really any greater taboo. But from a Historian’s perspective, isn’t it wrong to let modern morals influence our interpretations of the past? Greeks also practiced slavery and genocide, right? But we have no issue discussing those facts, despite considering slavery and genocide as ‘big E’ evil. Examining the cultural forces that allow genocide is not the same as endorsing those cultural forces.
Are there other examples of cultural practices that just swept under the rug because talking about them makes us uncomfortable?
It’s interesting that your question is more historiographical than historical. I’m writing about three narratives from medieval Ireland for my PhD. One of these is the Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh, ‘War of the Gael Against the Foreigners’, a sprawling pseudo-historical text about the Vikings in Ireland and their subjugation by Brian ‘Boru/Bóruma’ mac Cennetig, who died as an old man at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014CE. This text has engendered a lot of scholarship, partially because it’s so long and likely includes information that hasn’t survived in annals, but also because it has been interpreted as a proto-nationalist text.
I had read so many articles before reading the Cogadh for the first time, that I was astonished to find a passage about a mass rape of the Norse women of Limerick after Brian’s forces take the town. Remember, Brian is the good guy. One or two scholars have referenced the incident obliquely but no one has tackled the implications head-on. I’ve built an entire chapter into my doctoral thesis to consider the role of women in these texts and analyse this assault in detail.
I try to see myself as a steward for the historical women who suffered. While Cogadh and the other texts have sure fabrications, even if this scene was fictional, it certainly references real practices. As a rape survivor I want the stigma of speaking out to fall away, and taking rape in a twelfth century text seriously is part of that. Other scholars have analysed scenes of battle carnage; I think this assault ought to be considered among the rest of the graphic violence in the Cogadh.
The only edition/translation that exists of the Cogadh is by James Henthorn Todd and was published in 1867. It’s in the public domain and available here: https://archive.org/details/cogadhgaedhelreg00todd
Máire Ní Mhaonaigh has been working on a new edition for a long time, hopefully that will be published soon! In the meantime the best book-length treatments of the Cogadh are her Brian Boru: Ireland’s Greatest King? (2007) and Seán Duffy’s Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf (2014). There are a number of excellent articles in Medieval Dublin XVI (2017), edited by Duffy.
I study groups of people (Turks and Mongols, 12th-16th century) who boasted of things like building minarets out of skulls when they conquered cities - and of course, like most of history and the present day, my period is a rape-o-rama. There's also a certain amount of pederasty in the culture. I don't think that I have a great answer for how I handle this material, truthfully, except to faithfully report it so far as the records show and mention the gaps in the narrative. I think the only responsible way to handle things like this is to do your very best to avoid concealing them. Emotionally, I still feel great affection for and attachment to the people I study, which I think is completely normal although taboo in the profession. But they did what they did, and it would be a mistake to pretend it doesn't matter. I don't tend to explicitly comment on the morality of it, because it really IS dependent on perspective, even though from mine, it's awful. Witnessing is the best I've got.
I study Australian colonialism with a focus on Indigenous perspectives. Australia has a hard time engaging with the Indigenous aspects of its colonial history, and there is enormous divide between what academics know to be true and what the public is willing to accept. For more than a century, Indigenous Australians suffered extreme racism from white society, which hasn't yet fully discarded all of the horrible stereotypes born of turn-of-the-century scientific racism. Indigenous Australians are also some of the most disadvantaged people in the developed world, facing systemic discrimination in their daily lives. Thus, anything seemingly negative you might write that would go towards confirming negative stereotypes is met with enormous approval from racists and conservatives, and enormous disapproval from Indigenous groups and left wing readers, no matter how much evidence you have to support your claims. This right-left battle is called the History Wars in the media, and has pitted some of Australia's best historians against one another. Shock jocks and prime ministers and all sorts get involved, death threats are sent and it has overall a very toxic atmosphere.
This means I'm incredibly unpopular with the right and centre, including my own family, as most people will tell me I've been brainwashed by extreme lefties at uni, and that the Indigenous are lazy horrible ne'er-do-wells who screech and squawk over every imagined injustice. At the same time, I'm popular with left-wingers so long as I write what they want. Indigenous Australia had some questionable practices - some historians write about incredibly brutal inter-tribal warfare akin to genocide in some parts of Australia, as well as infanticide and sexual discrimination. These do not fit with the Indigenous nationalist narrative of a peaceful egalitarian society that was one with nature, and greatly offend an Indigenous reader. As a white person of colonial descent, I risk being labelled a racist myself if I question this narrative, as well losing the respect and aid of Indigenous or left-wing experts who would otherwise help me with sources, job offers and whatever else.
Having said that, colonial and pre-colonial history are a minefield, but some modern histories are untouchable. I generally seek out perspectives from Indigenous elders or lecturers before I even try to engage with some issues.
A famous Indigenous activist from my area won his people a land grant from the governor in the early 90s. Twenty years later, he was arrested and charged with drug-induced rape and paedophilia that led to the suicide of a teenage girl, and his community closed and the land revoked. Some Indigenous people say it was a nonsense charge aimed at destroying a great person. Others say he deserved jail and more, but the government took advantage by taking the land as well, instead of keeping it within the Indigenous community - they exploited Indigenous pain and white racism to win economic and political advantage. This has mostly been forgotten by the white community, but is a very big deal for local Aboriginal people.
Anything I write on this issue could easily find its way back to people related to this event, triggering backlash in god-knows-which direction. We have a responsibility to explore the past with objectivity and honesty, but we also have a responsibility to not hurt already disadvantaged communities and not trigger traumatic experiences in people who lived through horrors like the Stolen Generations or extreme violence. We also have an obligation to not shoot our careers in the foot.
Norsist and Museologist here; like the rest of the respondents, I've got a lot of unpleasantness in my field, whether it's rape and murder in the historical record of the 8th-11th centuries (which are really where I concentrate on, historically,) the co-option of the field by and for White Supremacists, or the history of atrocities committed to acquire objects for museums in the 18th and 19th centuries, you really have to accept that these things happen.
There was - and still very much is - an extremely conservative strain in museological practice that says the acquisition of objects through colonial force shouldn't be emphasized. The Benin Bronzes are an excellent example of it, as are the Elgin Marbles. There are legal protections to ensure that looted objects are not returned to their original owners, as is the case with the British Museum Act, so it's not like these histories aren't acknowledged, but they are minimized.
There is a changing current in the field to stop whitewashing these histories, and movements to update interpretation, but institutional inertia, political pressure, and the generally conservative attitudes of prominent museum donors all combine to oppose a lot of this.
In the Old Norse field, the prevalence of white supremacist ideology, especially in younger scholars - though in some cases they're just more vocal than older scholars - is especially troubling. There was a relatively high profile incident online about a week ago where an emerging scholar tweeted about their experience at a conference and how the hyperfixation on 'viking' masculinity enables misogyny and white supremacy. Of course, within hours, the Alt-Right brigaded them and they experienced some seriously unpleasant attacks. The discussion about the prevalence of these issues in the field has never been really brought to the forefront in the way it is now, thanks to the Internet.
Change is happening, slowly, and a lot of younger and newer academics and professionals in both fields are working to bring these issues to light. There is still a lot of resistance, though, including from the public as well as the entrenched members of the academy.