Historiography - Tumblr Posts
History memes #6
For real though, I’m curious to y’all, who was taught either the Islamic golden age or Indian golden age in school? Cause I don’t think I was taught these until the college level (though I did study the Islamic one independently, though I sadly am not as familiar with the Indian golden age… proving the point)
Modern people: Pliny the Elder is an idiot.
Pliney the Elder: I’m including this, but I find it questionable.
In all seriousness, good for him.
my toxic trait is that I think pliny the elder did an okay job for a guy living before the invention of the printing press trying to basically write all of wikipedia all by himself
History memes #30
Does the HRE count as an inheritor of Rome? Discuss
History memes #35
Ok seriously, why? White supremacists, please don’t ruin things for the rest of us.
it’s sort of funny that the current cultural idea of the flapper dates not from the 1920s, but the 1950s when costume designers took the radical, gender-fluid, sexual, sexually liberated ideas and fashions of the 20s and made them sexy. as in sexual objectifying.
because 1950s and fuck female agency.
it's fascinating and frustrating at the same time when historians take one event and get wildly different conclusions. i mean, i guess that's an inherent part of history but wow.
a really arbitrary but striking example of this is in regards to washington apparently being caught off guard when recommended hamilton as secretary of treasury, saying that he had never spoken with him on economics so was not aware of his skill.
many historians (including michael e. newton) seem to take this at face value and make the case that it's clear that hamilton and washington weren't close during the war and constitutional convention. given that hamilton was writing letters about economics to morris years before he was considered for the secretary of the treasury role, this indicates the level to which washington and hamilton must have maintained an absolutely professional relationship.
but i just read john ferling who thinks this is probably a deception on washington's part, and that there's no way they had never spoken about economics (or at least that washington did not know of hamilton's interest in that field) during the war when it's known that he had informal discussion with his aides as a group at the end of the day. especially since it would've been right in line with the army's main struggle with finance and supplies. in fact, ferling goes on to say he thinks it's likely that washington had already chosen hamilton as his secretary early on (he elaborates that they weren't personally close but washington knew exactly what benefits a loyal hamilton would bring to him), but was merely waiting until the department was created, etc.
right now i'm not judging on what interpretation is more likely, just saying how this changes how readers view their relationship and characters. it's a relatively meaningless detail, if washington knew about hamilton's economic skills beforehand, but really interesting.
chapter five: anne boleyn in nineteenth-century historical fiction
[citation: rosemary sweet, antiquaries: the discovery of the past in eighteenth-century britain (london: hambledon and london, 2004), 2]
[citation: elizabeth fay, romantic medievalism: history and the romantic literary ideal (basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 2002), 2]
[citation: stephen bann, romanticism and the rise of history (new york: trayne publishers, 1995), 4; 5]
[citation: thea tomaini, the corpse as text: disinterment and antiquarian enquiry, 1700-1900 (woodbridge: the boydell press, 2017), 12]
[additional citation: peter mandler, “revisiting the olden time: popular tudorism in the time of victoria,” in tudorism: historical imagination and the appropriation of the sixteenth century, ed. tatiana c. string and marcus bull (oxford: oxford university press, 2011)]
