Roundup: Talking About History

Source: Triumphs and Tragedies of the Modern Presidency: 76 Case Studies in Presidential Leadership, ed. David Abshire (Praeger, 2001)
September 6, 2005

Stephen Barr: FEMA's Transformation Under Bill Clinton

... [T]here's little dispute that President Bill Clinton got it right when he named James Lee Witt as the FEMA Director in 1993. As amazing as it sounds, Witt was the first FEMA head who came to the position with direct experience in emergency management, having previously served as the Director of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services for four years. Witt was among the many Arkansas friends and associates of Clinton who accompanied the President to Washington during his first

Source: Slate
September 4, 2005

Walter Dellinger: One of the 3 Greatest Chief Justices

The Rehnquist Court belongs to history. William H. Rehnquist will likely be seen as one of the three most influential chief justices in history, surpassed perhaps only by John Marshall and Earl Warren. Whether that influence was, on balance, benign will be one of history's great debates. There will be little dispute that Rehnquist was a great leader and effective administrator of the Supreme Court and the national judiciary. He ran a tight ship in the great marble temple that house

Source: Slate
September 4, 2005

Dahlia Lithwick: What Rehnquist Didn't Do

... Rehnquist was appointed by Richard Nixon to the Supreme Court as an associate justice in 1971 and elevated to chief justice by Ronald Reagan in 1986. Those hearings were marked by accusations that the young Rehnquist had authored a memo, while clerking for Justice Robert Jackson in 1952, advocating for the constitutionality of segregation. He was similarly charged with having intimidated black voters at polling places in Arizona in the 1960s. What Rehnquist didn't do in response to those cha

Source: The Australian
September 3, 2005

Michael Connor: The Australian Massacre that Wasn't

OUTSIDE Portland in Victoria is a place named Convincing Ground. No one knows the reason for the name but recently it gained a reputation as the bloodiest massacre site in Australian history, a conflict with whalers in which, according to The Age and the National Trust, between 60 and 200 Aborigines died. This version of what would be a textbook massacre was created by selectively reading a few bits of paper. The good news is that it probably never happened. Let's review the facts.

Source: NYT
September 3, 2005

Andrew Cohen: Harpers Magazine-Style Index on SCOTUS Nominations

Year Senate Judiciary Committee report on a Supreme Court nominee first published: 1916 Year Senate floor debate on a Supreme Court nomination first opened to public: 1929 Number of nominees who appeared before Senate Judiciary Committee before 1925: 0 (Harlan Fiske Stone was the first) Number of nominees refused permission to speak before the committee: 1 (John Parker, 1930, later rejected) Average time between nomination and Senate action on nominees in

Source: South China Morning Post
September 1, 2005

Clarence Tsui: Assessing the New Film, "On the Mountain of Tai Hang"

The Communist Party demands that it be the centrepiece for the commemoration of "the 60th anniversary of the victory in the anti-fascist war". Its launch in Hong Kong was attended by Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie, veteran patriot Xu Simin and an array of uniformed People's Liberation Army officers. It's hard to imagine that it's all about a film featuring Tony Leung Ka-fai. On the Mountain of Tai Hang depicts what the mainland's official war historians see as a

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
September 2, 2005

David Glenn: Liberalism: the Fuel of Empires?

It is one of the most troubling puzzles in the history of political thought: Why were some of Europe's early liberal theorists -- the people who imagined and promoted tolerance, universal suffrage, the rule of law, and minimal government -- also enthusiastic supporters of European colonization, conquest, and empire in Asia and Africa? John Stuart Mill, author of On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, spent 25 years working for the British East India Company in the mid-19th century.

Source: Ottawa Citizen
August 28, 2005

Jack Granatstein: Canadian Children Are Only Being Taught Part of the Story

[.L. Granatstein was director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum and author of Who Killed Canadian History?] Does History matter? Is it, as Allan Greer wrote here last week, usually presented in Canada as an "uncritical celebration" with topics bathed in "national piety?" Sometimes, it is, but not in our schools. Most often, Canadian children are made to wallow in the sins of the past, being told of a Canada that oppressed minorities, natives and wom

Source: Jennifer Howard in the Chronicle of Higher Education
July 8, 2005

Jennifer Howard: The Significance of 17th Century Rude Poetry

If today's politicians feel that they are too often the targets of the slings and arrows of constituents, they should be glad they didn't hold office in early-17th-century England. In that era, members of Parliament, courtiers, and even the king himself came in for abuse at the hands of anonymous commentators who expressed their sentiments in pointed, frequently rude poems known as libels."Never was bestowed such an art/Upon the tuning of a Fart," run the opening lines of "

Source: Mr. Bix was interviewed by Eric Prideaux in Japan Times. The interview was republished by Japan Focus.
August 7, 2005

Interview with Herbert Bix: Emperor Hirohito and Modern Japan

In 2000, historian Herbert P. Bix shattered the image of Emperor Hirohito as a mere figurehead who was detached from Japan's imperialist warmongering in the first half of the 20th century.Bix argued in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, which won him the Pulitzer Prize, that the emperor was intimately involved in the decision-making behind his military's ruthless campaigns. Hence Bix contends, the Emperor bore heavy moral, legal and political responsibility.Bix explains why J

Source: Natonal Catholic Register
August 24, 2005

Catholic Website Calls Hiroshima a Sin and the Complaints Fly

We at the Register were startled by the number of angry letters — a few of them canceling subscriptions — that we received in response to Catherine and Michael Pakaluks’ column calling America’s use of the atomic bomb 60 years ago “Our National Sin.” After all, the Church’s position on this matter is clear. Pope Paul VI called America’s use of the atomic bomb “butchery of untold magnitude.” Pope John Paul II called it “a self-destruction of mankind” and named Hiroshima,

Source: boingboing.net (August 2005)
August 24, 2005

Charles Platt: What the Inventor of the Neutron Bomb Could Teach Us (If Only We Listened)

[Charles Platt was a senior editor at Wired.] I'm cruising into the small town of Williams, Arizona, heading for the laundromat, when my pickup truck coughs and dies, leaving me stranded at the side of old Route 66. As I pause to consider my options, my cell phone rings. The inventor of the neutron bomb is on the line. "Charles, this is Sam," he says, sounding elderly and erudite. "Did you hear about Edward?" In his inimitable fashion,

Source: Ottawa Citizen
August 20, 2005

Allan Greer: Canadian History Is So Boring ... Or Is it?

[Allan Greer teaches Canadian history and the colonial history of the Americas at the University of Toronto. His most recent book is Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits.] As someone who has spent 30 years researching, writing and teaching the history of Canada, I hear two main messages from my fellow Canadians about my favourite subject: 1. It's boring; 2. We need more of it. The same people who tell you that Canadian history is a snooze will nod in agree

Source: WSJ
August 17, 2005

Slade Gorton & Hank Brown: The Misguided Bill to Give Native Hawaiians Special Rights

[Messrs. Gorton and Brown are former senators for Washington and Colorado, respectively.] The Senate is poised to sanction the creation of a racially exclusive government by and for Native Hawaiians who satisfy a blood test. The new race-based sovereign that would be summoned into being by the so-called Akaka Bill would operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the nation's most cherished civil rights statutes. Indeed, the champions of the proposed legislation boast that the new Na

Source: Asia Times
August 18, 2005

Andrei Lankov: The Leftwing Bias of Books on Korean History

[Dr Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at Kookmin University, Seoul.] There is a new textbook out on North Korean history, written by a g

Source: WSJ
August 17, 2005

WSJ Editorial: Japan's Unheeded Apologies

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's latest apology for Japanese behavior in the first half of the 20th century undermines the familiar refrain heard on the streets of Beijing and Seoul: that Japan has yet to atone for its wartime crimes. China's churlish official reaction to the apology shows, on the other hand, that history is less a thorn than a useful card for Beijing to play. It is one that China's leaders will likely be increasingly tempted to use if Mr. Koizumi's party wins gen

Source: WSJ
August 16, 2005

Fumio Matsuo: Tokyo Needs Its Dresden Moment

[Mr. Matsuo is a former Washington bureau chief of Kyodo News Service.] Although Prime Minister Koizumi renewed apologies to countries that the Imperial Army had invaded and colonized, Japan observed the 60th anniversary of its World War II defeat yesterday with great political unease: First, there were the tensions caused by his gamble in dissolving parliament over the rejection of his long-cherished plan to privatize the postal service. On the diplomatic front, Japan's isolation i

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
August 12, 2005

Whatever Happened to American Heroes

Americans used to embrace heroes, such as George Washington, on the basis of achievement and gentility, but they now choose celebrities, like the American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson, on account of personality, writes Amy Henderson, a historian at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery. The growth of the media, immigration, and urbanization at the beginning of the 20th century fueled the change, she writes. In the republic's early days, Americans mythologized nationa

Source: FreePress.org
August 9, 2005

Harvey Wasserman: Nagasaki, the Forgotten Atomic Target

[HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE US is available via www.harveywasserman.com , along with A GLIMPSE OF THE BIG LIGHT: LOSING PARENTS, FINDING SPIRIT, and the upcoming SOLARTOPIA. He is co-editor, with Bob Fitrakis, of DID GEORGE W. BUSH STEAL AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION? (www.freepress.org).] Like Nagasaki, August 9 is an orphan of history. And in that history, new, definitive evidence h

Source: WSJ
August 11, 2005

Willy Lam: China's Own Historical Revisionism

[Mr. Lam is a sinologist who specializes in Communist Party politics and Chinese foreign policy.] China's government bitterly accuses Japan of historical revisionism, but the new Chinese leadership should also earn high marks for creative and self-serving misinterpretation of past events. Going by a recent propaganda offensive, for instance, one would easily conclude that the Chinese Communist Party single-handedly defeated the Japanese imperialists in World War II.