@boomerang,
boomerang wrote:However, I don't think it's just current textbooks that whitewash and over-simplify history. That's always been a problem.
Napoleon is responsible for most of the better known bullshit claims about history, which is ironic, given that history was his best (and reportedly his favorite) subject at Brienne when he was preparing for
l'École militaire.
The most well-known is that history is written by the victors. There are several obvious objections to this--for example, we wouldn't know about any atrocities if the "truth" were only told by the victors. That being said, it is important to understand how big an influence the victors can have. Most Americans are probably unaware that there were incidents of American troops shooting German prisoners in both the First and Second World War. But, by and large, the farther you get in time from an event, the weaker the influence of the version of history which was promoted by the powers that were. And great events or personalities can completely overcome this. Napoleon is a prime example of this. The English of the late 18th and early 19th centuries viewed Napoleon with as much, and possibly even more horror and loathing as their descendants would in regard to Hitler. Yet Napoleon retains a glamor of glory about him--this despite the fact that the English were the victors, not the French. His reputation is so good that the style of warfare the French used is known as Napoleonic, even though he didn't invent it, and it was all in place the first time he took command of an army in 1796. His own people, though, weren't so gullible as we are today. Napoleon issued bulletins after every battle, and there is now a commonplace saying in French about someone thought to be a chronic liar: ". . . lies like a bulletin."
He also said that history is a set of lies agreed upon. To a certain extent this is true, and nowhere more so than in schools. And it's odd what kind of lies get perpetrated. Robert E. Lee fought for the bad guys, but he nevertheless has a reputation as one of America's greatest soldiers. If you examine his record in command of Confederate armies, it's really rather poor--he didn't do basic staff work, cared little for getting and providing accurate maps, and was profligate of the lives of his soldiers, which actually tended to shorten the war and make the defeat of the South inevitable. But Southerners loved him for being audacious and aggressive, and the halo-polishing machine which went to work on him after he died in 1870 has succeeded in making him into "a great American hero."
Mostly, though, the bowdlerization of history is rather mundane. The history of the United States is largely "New England-centric," meaning it is told from the point of view of New England Protestants. The Pilgrim Fathers were not the first English settlers in North America, not by a long shot. They weren't even the first settlers in the Massachusetts Bay area. But people aren't good with dates, and the New England Protestants have done a good job with the propaganda. How often do American school children, for example, say to themselves, "Hmm . . . Jamestown 1607, Plymouth Rock, 1620--Virginia must have been settled first!" I suspect almost never, especially given how kids hate to memorize dates. (Of course, the first English settlement in North America was Roanoke Island in 1584, and the first European settlement in North America north of Mexico was at Hilton Head, by the French, in 1562.)
History in schools deserves to wear Napoleon's label--a set of lies agreed upon. In a very real way, that boy knew history inside and out, and knew what he was talking about--well, most of the time.
