Without revisionism, we might be stuck with the images of Reconstruction [1865–77] after the American Civil War [1861–65] that were conveyed by D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation [1915] and Claude Bowers's The Tragic Era [1929].
[3]In the field of historiography, the historian who works within the existing establishment of society and has produced a body of history books from which he or she can claim authority, usually benefits from the status quo.
And we should not think that our point of view, if consciously and critically applied to the problem, will be inferior to that of a writer who naïvely believes... that he has reached a level of objectivity permitting him to present "the events of the past as they actually did happen".
The old consensus, based upon limited evidence, might no longer be considered historically valid in explaining the particulars: of cause and effect, of motivation and self-interest – that tell How?
As such, in 1986, the historian John Hope Franklin described four stages in the historiography of the African experience of life in the US, which were based upon different models of historical consensus.
The historical record may be revised to accommodate for a number of academic reasons, including the following: The release, discovery, or publicization of documents previously unknown may lead scholars to hold new views of well established events.
With the release of the ULTRA archives in the 1970s under the British thirty-year rule, much of the Allied high command tactical decisiomaking process was re-evaluated, particularly the Battle of the Atlantic.
Professor Andrew Sherratt, a British prehistorian, was responsible for introducing the work of anthropological writings on the consumption of legal and illegal drugs and how to use the papers to explain certain aspects of prehistoric societies.
[17] Carbon dating, the examination of ice cores and tree rings, palynology, scanning electron microscope analysis of early metal samples, and measuring oxygen isotopes in bones, have all provided new data in the last few decades with which to argue new hypotheses.
Furthermore, as cultures develop, it may become strategically advantageous for some revision-minded groups to revise their public historical narrative in such a way so as to either discover, or in rarer cases manufacture, a precedent which contemporary members of the given subcultures can use as a basis or rationale for reform or change.
After World War II, the influence of Marxist interpretation waned in British academia and by the 1970s this view came under attack by a new school of revisionists and it has been largely overturned as a major mainstream explanation of the mid-17th-century conflict in England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Issues of causation in history are often revised with new research: for example, by the mid-20th century the status quo was to see the French Revolution as the result of the triumphant rise of a new middle class.
Research in the 1960s prompted by revisionist historians like Alfred Cobban and François Furet revealed the social situation was much more complex, and the question of what caused the revolution is now closely debated.
Many modern scholars who study the era tend to avoid the term altogether for its negative connotations and find it misleading and inaccurate for any part of the Middle Ages.
This understanding was especially popularised by Shakespeare's play Henry V. However, recent research by Professor Anne Curry, using the original enrollment records, has brought into question this interpretation.
In a New York Times book review, historian and member of the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Committee William Hardy McNeill wrote about Sale: McNeill declares Sale's work to be "unhistorical, in the sense that [it] selects from the often-cloudy record of Columbus's actual motives and deeds what suits the researcher's 20th-century purposes."
During the Radical Civic Union government of Hipólito Yrigoyen, historians followed the revisionist view of anti-mitrist politicians such as Carlos D'Amico, Ernesto Quesada and David Peña and their theories reached the academy thanks to Dardo Corvalán Mendilharsu.
In 2011, the Manuel Dorrego National Institute of Argentine and Iberoamerican Historical Revisionism was established by the Secretary of Culture,[31] but this one suffered a rupture between 21st century socialists and nationalists.
Common charges were that the generals commanding the army were blind to the realities of trench warfare, ignorant of the conditions of their men and unable to learn from their mistakes, thus causing enormous numbers of casualties ("lions led by donkeys").
Some historians, even revisionists, still criticise the British High Command severely but are less inclined to portray the war in a simplistic manner with brave troops being led by foolish officers.
Termed "business revisionism" by Gabriel Kolko, historians such as Allan Nevins, and then Alfred D. Chandler emphasized the positive contributions of individuals who were previously pictured as villains.
[36] Peter Novick writes, "The argument that whatever the moral delinquencies of the robber barons, these were far outweighed by their decisive contributions to American military [and industrial] prowess, was frequently invoked by Allan Nevins.
"[37] Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, Western historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher.
[44] Great Soviet Encyclopedia was also redacted frequently, with subscribers of the paper book receiving letter to cut out pages e.g. about Lavrentiy Beria or Nikolai Bukharin and replace them with unrelated articles.
Similar changes were introduced in chapters discussing Soviet economy, space program, Brezhnev, collapse of USSR, perestroika and glasnost, where the phrase "freedom of speech" started to be used in scare quotes and presented as something harmful.
The British historian A. J. P. Taylor ignited a firestorm when he argued Hitler was an ineffective and inexperienced diplomat and did not deliberately set out to cause a world war.
Buchanan argued the guarantee led the Polish government to transform a minor border dispute into a major world conflict, and handed Eastern Europe, including Poland, to Stalin.
In the introduction, Lewy said: It is the reasoned conclusion of this study ... that the sense of guilt created by the Vietnam war in the minds of many Americans is not warranted and that the charges of officially, condoned illegal and grossly immoral conduct are without substance.
To measure and compare the devastation and loss of human life caused by different war will be objectionable to those who repudiate all resort to military force as an instrument of foreign policy and may be construed as callousness.
[60] In general, revisionist chronological theories suggest halving the duration of the Christian era, or consider certain historical periods to be erroneously dated, such as Heribert Illig's Phantom time hypothesis[61] or the materials of the "New Chronology", a proposed revision of eras by academician Anatoly Fomenko, albeit one widely rejected by mainstream scholars as pseudoscience.