slavery Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

Does History Have a “Presentism” Problem?

On 17 August 2022, Dr. James H. Sweet, a tenured full professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is also the sitting president of the American Historical Association (AHA), which is the oldest and most prestigious association for professional historians in the United States and has the largest membership of any historical association in the entire world, published an essay in the official AHA newsmagazine Perspectives on History titled “Is History History?: Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Past.”

In the essay, Sweet declares that the massive problem of “presentism” is plaguing the historical discipline. He starts out with a halfway decent observation of the real problem of the relative decline in the number of historians studying pre-1800 historical topics over the course of the past few decades. Alas, he very quickly veers wildly off the rails into a reactionary tirade, in which he disparages scholars who study topics with contemporary political salience, such as “race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, [and] capitalism,” and spends the remainder of the essay complaining about things that have little direct connection to the work of professional academic historians, drawing multiple wildly irresponsible false equivalences along the way.

Naturally, this essay set off a veritable firestorm of controversy on social media, with many historians and other academics criticizing it. According to this article published by Inside Higher Ed, it also attracted hoards of Neo-Nazis such as Richard B. Spencer and other right-wing reactionaries, who have praised and defended the essay on Twitter and lambasted Sweet’s critics. For his own part, Sweet himself has issued a formal apology for “the damage I have caused to my fellow historians, the discipline, and the AHA,” but has not retracted any of the views he expresses in the essay. This post presents my thoughts about Sweet’s essay, including both criticisms and notes about issues he might have been better served to address if he is really concerned about “presentism” in the historical profession.

Did the Ancient Greeks and Romans Practice BDSM?

For those who are not aware, BDSM is a combined acronym for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. The term refers to a variety of sexual practices that fall under these umbrella categories. There are already many articles on the internet that talk about the supposed ancient history of BDSM, but I think that all these articles are hopelessly inadequate for anyone looking for accurate information on the subject.

Nearly all of these articles are clearly written by people who know very little about ancient history and are just looking for anything mentioned in modern secondary sources that seems to vaguely resemble contemporary BDSM practices. Additionally, most online articles about BDSM-like practices in the ancient world don’t cite any ancient sources whatsoever and repeat demonstrably false factoids as though they were true. In this article, I hope to counter the dearth of trustworthy information on this subject by providing my own analysis of it, using real ancient primary sources as evidence.

Dark Academia, the “Western Canon,” and the Decline of the Humanities

In around mid-July, I found out that there is apparently a huge internet “aesthetic” movement called “dark academia” that centers around a highly romanticized impression of what humanities scholars and students—especially those in the fields of classics, English, history, and philosophy—dressed and lived like in the twentieth century. Aspects of the aesthetic include wearing old-fashioned, dark-colored, stereotypically “academic” clothing and appreciating “classic” literature, art, and music.

For those who aren’t already aware, I am currently about to enter my senior year at Indiana University Bloomington double-majoring in history and classical studies (i.e., Ancient Greek and Latin), with honors in history. My current plan is to apply to graduate programs in ancient history later this year. Even though I don’t deliberately dress in a dark academia style and I don’t identify with the aesthetic in any particular way, being a humanities student does make me feel like I have a connection to it.

I was so struck by my surprise discovery of dark academia’s apparent popularity that I’ve spent a good part of the past two weeks researching it and its history. Naturally, I have a lot of thoughts, especially about how the current popularity of the aesthetic seems to be at least in part a reaction to the slow ongoing decline of the academic humanities.

Yes, There Were Black People in Britain in the Nineteenth Century

It seems that, with my characteristically late timing, I have only just gotten around to watching the show that everyone was talking about six months ago. On 25 December 2020, Netflix released the period drama series Bridgerton, which is set in London in the year 1813 during the Regency Era. The show has triggered enormous controversy over the fact that it portrays a large number of British aristocrats who are not white, including one of the main characters, Simon Bassett, Duke of Hastings, portrayed by the Black British actor Regé-Jean Page. Many people on the internet are predictably outraged over this, insisting that the show is not historically accurate and that it is “blackwashing” history.

The show, however, for its own part, makes very little pretense at historical accuracy in the first place. After all, most of the music is modern pop music played in a “traditional,” orchestral style. Furthermore, the show is not quite as historically inaccurate as some people might think. It is true that there were no Black people who held titles of nobility in Britain during the period when Bridgerton is set, but there were certainly free Black people living in Britain at the time who were both prominent and prosperous.

“Rewriting History” Is Not Inherently a Bad Thing

There seems to be something of a trend going on right now in politics where people have developed a habit of accusing their opponents of wanting to “rewrite history.” I’ve mostly seen conservatives accusing progressives of this, but I’ve also seen a few cases of progressives accusing conservatives of it without further clarification. In all cases, people who accuse other people of wanting to “rewrite history” portray this as something unambiguously bad.

The problem is that “rewriting history” is not inherently a bad thing. In fact, “rewriting history” is literally a historian’s job description. It is inevitable that each generation will rewrite history and there is really nothing anyone can do to stop it. It is, however, extremely important that the people who rewrite history do so honestly, using correct evidence and correct methods of interpretation. When we talk about “rewriting history,” what matters is not whether people are doing it, but how they are doing it.

Conquest Is a Bad Thing

Right now, there is a question on Quora that reads: “Who was the greatest conqueror in history?” So far, nearly every person who has answered this question has attempted to provide an argument that some historical conqueror was the “greatest” because they conquered the most land, they were the bravest, or they were the most strategically brilliant.

I’m going to offer a different perspective: There is no such thing as a “great conqueror.” Using the phrase “great conqueror” is like using the phrase “great murderer,” the phrase “great oppressor,” or the phrase “great committer of genocide.” Anyone who uses the phrase “great conqueror” unironically in a sense that implies that conquest is something good is either monstrously sadistic or hopelessly ignorant of the word “conquest” actually means.

The Debate about Classics Isn’t What You Probably Think It Is

On 2 February 2021, The New York Times published a profile piece written by Rachel Poser titled “He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive?” The subject of the article is Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an Afro-Latino associate professor of classics at Princeton University who argues that the field of classics as it is currently constructed is deeply embedded with systemic racism and serves to reinforce white supremacist hegemony. Padilla wants to radically reshape the field by rooting out aspects that reinforce white supremacy and rebuilding the field in a new way.

This profile piece triggered an unceasing deluge of op-eds published on various platforms purporting to “defend” the discipline of classics from Padilla’s supposed attacks. These op-eds almost invariably display complete ignorance of the conversation that has been taking place within the discipline of classics over the past few years and ignorance of what Padilla is actually proposing. They reduce the conversation to a ridiculous caricature according to which evil, radical leftist scholars are trying to bring an end to the study of ancient texts altogether.

Many people who are not directly connected to the field of classics are learning about the controversy solely from these op-eds and coming away with the egregious misimpression that this is really what is happening. In this essay, I want to explain for my general readership what is really going on within the field and what sorts of changes people are really advocating. (I would write an op-ed, but no one would publish it, since I’m just a twenty-one-year-old undergraduate.)

Athenian Democracy Wasn’t Really That Great

Today, ancient Athens is popularly seen as the ideal, original democracy that all other democracies should strive to imitate. For instance, an information page about Athenian democracy maintained by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, which comes up in the first page of results when I search for “Athenian democracy” in Google, declares:

“Of the many gifts passed down to us by the Athenians, including philosophy, theater, painting, sculpture, and architecture, none is more significant than their chosen form of government: democracy, rule by the people. Indeed, it can be convincingly argued that all the other achievements depended first on how the city was governed, on the open and free society that respected the dignity, rights, and aspirations of the individual.”

This line of thinking is deeply misguided. For one thing, contrary to popular belief, ancient Athens was not the first democracy. Furthermore, Athenian democracy was deeply flawed in ways that are, unfortunately, often overlooked. Notably, the vast majority of the Athenian population was excluded from participating in the democracy. Athens was also aggressively imperialistic and routinely sought to dominate and oppress other Greek poleis (i.e., city-states) and, on several occasions, democratic Athens even committed outright genocide.

How Was Saturnalia Celebrated in Ancient Rome?

Saturnalia is an ancient Roman holiday in honor of the god Saturnus that began on December 17th. The Romans believed that, in very ancient times, before Iupiter became the king of the deities, the cosmos had been ruled by Iupiter’s father Saturnus. They believed that the reign of Saturnus had been a “Golden Age,” in which all human beings had lived together in harmony and simplicity, and that Saturnalia was a temporary restoration of Saturnus’s reign on earth that could only last until the end of the festival.

I’ve written about Saturnalia before—usually in the context of debunking popular misconceptions about it being the source of modern American Christmas traditions. This year, however, I’ve decided to write about it again, focusing on what we know about how the holiday was actually celebrated.

The Racist Mythology about the Pilgrims

For many Americans, Thanksgiving is a beloved national holiday. It’s a time when people get together with their extended families to have a large feast and talk about what they are thankful for. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with people doing this; on the contrary, I think it can be good for families to get together and celebrate (maybe not this year, but generally speaking).

Unfortunately, the holiday of Thanksgiving as we know it today is inextricably entwined with a false mythology rooted in white supremacist thinking. The holiday continues to be abused by right-wing politicians to promote a very narrow and exclusivist vision of what sort of nation the United States is supposed to be. In this article, therefore, I want to debunk some false narratives about the Pilgrims and explain how these narratives are harmful.