[Ansteorra] BTW, "Historical Revisionism"

[Marc Carlson]

It's a shame that since people want to sling that term around like they knew
what it meant, they seem to be failing to grasp the essential meanings.

Historical Revisionism is trying to approach history from more than one
perspective, to get a broader idea of what actually took place (for example:
the work _The crusades through Arab eyes_ is a useful tool for studying how
the Frankish Invasions were seen from the other side - so that people won't
be assuming that there is only one version of the events).

The dominant version of history may be told by the victors, but that doesn't
actually make it what happened.  For that matter, neither does the minority
version told by the losers reflect what actually happened any more clearly.
Between them, though, you can hopefully come up with more clear
interpretation with both of them (Thesis+Antithesis=Synthesis).

Unfortunately, some people have chosen to hammer the "other" version as
though it were THE "truth" and called that "Revisionist History".
It's not.  It's just another flawed version of events, and more data to
examine, just as the traditionally accepted version of events is nothing
more than date that's been flawed in its perception.

I'm currently discussing King Edward I of England (1272-1307) and we are
hampered by the basic disagreement between whether he was "the greated king
England ever had", or a bloodthirsty tyrant and the only accurate thing in
"Braveheart".  The first is the traditionalist view, the latter is minority
opinion.  Which one is right?  Argueably both are, and may tell us a lot
about how a "great king" gets to be that way.

Marc/Diarmaid

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