Roundup: Talking About History

September 10, 2004

How Keith Windschuttle Is Using Numbers to Obscure the Suffering of Australia's Aborigines

Kevin Meade, in the Australian (Sept. 9, 2004):A PROMINENT Queensland archeologist entered the "history wars" debate yesterday, accusing controversial historian Keith Windschuttle of using statistics to hide the suffering of Aborigines in colonial Australia. The principal archeologist with the Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy, Mike Rowland, said Mr Windschuttle had a right to take historians and others to task for er

September 10, 2004

Yes, the Internment of Japanese-Americans Was Wrong--And Schools Should Teach that

Danny Westneat, in the Seattle Times (Sept. 8, 2004):Count me as a new fan of Bainbridge Island Principal Jo Vander Stoep. Recently some parents contended it is "propaganda" to teach sixth-graders that the internment of Japanese Americans was a mistake. But Vander Stoep held firm that Sakai Intermediate School would teach that the internment was a bad move. And then the 25-year veteran of public schools said this: "There are some things th

September 10, 2004

Legacy Of The V-2 Rocket

Paul Rincon, BBC News (online), 09 Sept. 2004 In the first of two features, BBC News Online looks at the legacy of the V-2 rocket - how the Americans and the Soviets raced to exploit the German technology and expertise they had captured at the end of WW II. In the early 1930s, rockets were considered successful if they travelled several metres from their launch site. But Germany's thirst for re-armament after World War I spurred an ambitious programme of rocket developmen

September 10, 2004

British Spy Who Inspired James Bond's 'M' Revealed As William Melville

Jonathan Thompson, Independent on Sunday (London), 05 Sept. Spymaster William Melville in 1906 (right), MI5 members in 1918 (left) and Judi Dench as M in the 1995 Bond film Goldeneye' One of the great espionage mysteries has finally been solved - the identity of the real-life inspiration behind M, James Bond's fictional boss. A new biography, drawing on previously unseen government files, will unmask William Melville as"the Godfather of MI5" and the inspiration for Ian Flemin

September 10, 2004

Exploring Hitler's Human Side

Ben MacIntyre, The Times (London), 04 Sept. 2004 WHO WAS HITLER? The question may seem ludicrous, given the vast outpouring of books, television programmes and films about the man. Amazon offers no fewer than 32,000 books about the Nazi dictator; only Jesus has more literature devoted to him, while Stalin merits half as much. We have learnt, variously, that Hitler was a vegetarian teetotaller, a racist demagogue, an opera nut, a drug addict, a bore, and possibly homosexual. And yet th

September 10, 2004

Biography's History In England Explored

James Fenton, The Guardian (London), 04 Sept. 2004 Richard Holmes is editing a new series of classic English biographies. The first titles cover three centuries: there is Defoe on the criminals Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, representing the early 18th century. There is Southey on Nelson. And there is a curious rarity, The Portait of Zelide, by Geoffrey Scott, first published in 1925. This is about a highly educated Dutch woman with whom both Boswell and (later) Benjamin Constant fe

September 10, 2004

East-West Encounters Explored Via Vasco de Gama At Victoria & Albert Museum

Peter Aspden, Financial Times (London, England), 04 Sept. 2004 Just a few yards inland from a tired, lonely beach on the southern coastline of India, a modest monument stands in honour of a landing that took place some 500 years ago and which changed the world. The inelegant, unwashed piece of stone marks the disembarkation of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama on the shores of Calicut in 1498. The words on the monument are pithy, almost to the point of rudeness. The plaque itsel

September 8, 2004

WSJ: Rewriting Japanese History

Editorial in the Asian edition of the WSJ (Sept. 7, 2004): East Asia just can't get over the past. Japan's refusal to fully explore its brutal World War II behavior has led to an undercurrent of anti-Japanese sentiment throughout the region -- which manifested itself last month when enraged Chinese soccer fans protested Japan's victory at the Asian Cup match in Beijing. While the rabid soccer fans' behavior was unpardonable, Japan's unwillingness to acknowledge t

September 3, 2004

Just in Time, a New View of the American Indian

Michael Hill, in the Balt Sun (Aug. 29, 2004):CLOSE YOUR EYES and conjure up what comes to mind when you hear the words "American Indian." No matter your political correctness, the dominant image is probably one of feathers and war paint, bows and arrows, buffalo and teepees, beads and skins, wisdom and warfare. It is an image derived from adventure movies and childhood books, from sepia-tinged photographs and museum exhibitions, from exploita

September 2, 2004

Imperial College Of London Puts Newton On The Web

Steve Jones, The Daily Telegraph (London), 01 Sept. 2004 [Steve Jones is professor of genetics at University College London.] Plenty of scientists are religious and even more are not, but whatever their beliefs, most have the common sense to separate their moral universe from their daily work. George Bush might deplore stem-cell research and doubt evolution in order to placate the born-again, but Richard Dawkins, who often takes ferocious swipes at him, does so on grounds of loa

September 1, 2004

Joshua Spivak: A Brief History of Political Conventions

Joshua Spivak, in Roll Call (Aug. 30, 2004): [Joshua Spivak is an attorney, writer and media consultant with the firm Ripp Media.] As Republicans from all over the country descend on New York City, most voters are aware that the conventions are simply made-for-TV pageantry. Presidential candidates are no longer made at this quadrennial relic of the past,

September 1, 2004

Editorial in Korea: The Battle Over History in Asia Reflects Underlying National Rivalries

Editorial in Korea Times (Aug. 29, 2004): Japan's rightist groups have relapsed into historical distortion. The Tokyo education board has adopted a history textbook that deletes or rationalizes Japan's past atrocities for use by a top high school. The Japanese Foreign Ministry is reportedly stepping up diplomatic efforts to claim Tokto as its territory and calls the East Sea as the Sea of Japan. The world's No. 2 economy pursues a matching political power by becoming a perman

August 31, 2004

Do Arabs Have a Claim on Palestine?

Lawrence Auster, at frontpagemag.com (Aug. 30, 2004): [Lawrence Auster

August 29, 2004

Neil Sheehan: Vietnam: It Never Seems to End

Neil Sheehan, in the NYT (Aug. 27, 2004):Thirteen years after the 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush, announced that America had "kicked the Vietnam syndrome'' with his crushing expulsion of Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait, the war in Vietnam is back. Its memories and divisions are reverberating as forcefully as ever in the campaign between his son, George Walker Bush, the 43rd president, and Senator John Kerry.Seeking to convince voters that

August 29, 2004

Nixon's Shadow Is Inescapable at the Republican Convention

James Rosen, in the NYT (Aug. 28, 2004):"I am a product of the Nixon era," President Bush told a small audience of journalists shortly after his inauguration. Yet when Mr. Bush accepts his party's nomination in New York next week, his listeners are not likely to hear many references to Richard Nixon, his father's political mentor and the modern-day chief executive many observer

August 29, 2004

The Man Who Beat Lewis & Clark to the Pacific by 2 Centuries

James MacPherson, Associate Press writer, in Newsday (Aug. 29, 2004):Two centuries ago, before Lewis and Clark went in search of a passage to the Pacific Ocean, David Thompson paddled the Columbia River, worked to establish a trading alliance with Mandan Indians and made maps of North America that ultimately became the guide for explore

August 27, 2004

Americans Got a Different Reception from the French in 1944 than They Did in Iraq in 2004

Michael Hill, in the Balt Sun (Aug. 22, 2004):... If there is a rift between the French and Americans over the war in Iraq, it is not evident in Normandy this summer. There seem to be almost as many U.S. - and British and Canadian - flags flying as tricolors of France. Sixty years after D-Day, they affirm the welcome given to liberators, the reception U.S. troops hoped for in Iraq....Wednesday marks the 60th anniversary of the celebrated liberation of P

August 27, 2004

Sarah Hammerschlag: It's Time to Retire the Holocaust Trope

Sarah Hammerschlag, in Sightings, the newsletter of the Msrtin Marty Center at the University of Chicago (Aug. 26, 2004) [Sarah Hammerschlag was a 2003-2004 junior fellow at the Martin Marty Center and is currently a dissertation fellow at the Erasmus Institute at the University of Notre Dame. She is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School and is writing her dissertation on the reappearance of the trope of the Jew in twenti

August 26, 2004

Salon.com Expose on Politicizing of the NEH

Mary Jacoby, at Salon (Aug. 26, 2004):... unelected and unappointed, Lynne Cheney is back in charge at the National Endowment for the Humanities, operating without that pesky "mandate from the voters" through handpicked surrogates in key positions. "It's pretty obvious that she's running the agency," William Ferris, a history professor who headed the NEH fro

August 22, 2004

Establishment Historians in Australia Are Strategizing to Defend Themselves from Another Attack by Keith Windschuttle

Ean Higgins, in the Australian (July 22, 2004): Who's still afraid of Keith Windschuttle By Ean Higgins THE AUSTRALIAN 22 July 2004 AS the elite of the nation's academic historians met in the stately rooms of the Newcastle Town Hall, fear and loathing lurked the corridors. The Australian Historical Association spent virtually an entire day trying to work out strategies to deal with the menace. Would there be safety in numbers if academics stood together? What sh