Historical fallacies

Steve Harrison

Steve Harrison

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I was researching a blog piece recently about the difficulty of historical accuracy in writing when history itself is rarely accurate, with particular interest in the things people accept as fact, such as:

- Napoleon being short, when in fact he was above average height for the time and a couple of inches taller than more recent French leader, Nicolas Sarkozy

- "Let them eat cake!" being attributed to Marie Antoinette, when the first reference to the quote was when she was 11 and did not mention her at all.

- Nero fiddling while Rome burned, when in reality he was out of town when the blaze started and raced back to lead the firefighting efforts.

I find these things fascinating and would love to hear more examples.
 
Cromwell banning Christmas - He was a not very important MP at the time and its dubious if he even attended parliament.

That the USAAF carried out precision bombing raids in WW2, only the British carried out city busting raids - the U.S. command said at the time that they were city busting, their contribution to Dresden never gets a mention.
 
I live in a small town in Northern Ireland with a Very Big, famous as these things go, castle. Over here, lots of people (of the Unionist persuasion) revere William of Orange/William III/King Billy because he won the Battle of the Boyne and defeated the catholic King James (but not for that reason, and that's a whole other story). For that reason, lots of people wear orange sashes and bang Very Large drums, especially in July.

Anyhow, when he arrived in sunny Norn Iron to cause centuries of chaos he landed in my town. But my town had been pretty well destroyed by his general, Schomberg, and he took one look at the place, got on his white horse (there is quite a bit of historical doubt about the colour of the horse, too, but that's for another day) and rode up the road to Belfast. Without visiting our Very Large and Pretty Beaten Up by this stage castle.

Move forwards to now. Each year, my town records this historic event by reenacting the landing of King Billy. Now the council keep it pretty historically accurate (except for the white horse, and that King Billy isn't really short - though to their credit they put up a statue where he is really short (and had it bronzed in Dublin, which, as you can imagine, didn't go down well) and no one likes it because they either don't like him, or they don't like him depicted as he really was). And every year, as these sort of public events go, some people drink too much and get silly - and in this case, some of those drunk people decide they want to visit 'King Billy's castle'.

Cue what became the annual event of explaining it wasn't his castle, he never entered it, and no they couldn't get in for free. Or drunk...

#AlternativeTruthLive.
 
BAYLOR said:
Sorry, I was thinking Europeans.:unsure:

Clovis man arrived in North America roughly between 12 and 15 thousand years ago.:unsure:
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That seems to be the best guess, but there is some uncertainty about it. In addition, AFAIK there are some hints that another tribe might have got there first.
 
There's a difference between popular notions of history being sometimes wrong, and being 'rarely accurate.' Also, popular misconceptions don't make writing about history difficult, as presumably any writer making an effort is going to research using multiple credible sources. And really, it isn't the specific details like those cited as examples that make for historical authenticity - it's the environment, values, and, behaviour that the characters inhabit.
 
This thread has a couple of months, but I just saw it now, so “Thread raized”.

BAYLOR said:
Columbus discovered America . Unlikely , because the Phoenician and the Vikings got there first.
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When we say that Columbus discovered America, we are saying that we discovered it to his world, because America was unknown for his world.


Naturally the pre-Columbian indigenous already knew that America was there, since they lived there.


But you mentioned the Phoenicians! Have you sources for that claim. Sources are the juice of history.
 
But why do we say he discovered America? He never made it to the mainland did he, just the West Indies?
 
English Civil War - everyone fighting for Parliament was a Puritan and wore black, everyone fighting for the King wore pretty colours.

Nope.

Lots of non-puritans fighting for Parliament and there was a Puritan (Lord Hopton) fighting for the King.

And while some puritans tended to wear plainer clothes, they were not all in black - black was really expensive.
 
Vladd67 said:
But why do we say he discovered America? He never made it to the mainland did he, just the West Indies?
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In his the last voyage he reached the “mainland”.


But in geographic terms it is quite common that islands are considered part of the continent.


The best examples are probably in Oceania. Are the New Zealand isles part of Oceania? What about Tonga Islands? Or even Australia?


But if we stick to Europe… do we consider the British Islands part of what continent? I would say Europe.


The analogy for America is the same. The Caribbean Islands are a part of the American continent.
 
But given Viking remains in North America and that apparently Colombus got information from fishermen who regularly sailed to Newfoundland to fish off the coast, he didn't so much discover it as stake a claim of ownership for the Spanish monarchy.
 
pambaddeley said:
But given Viking remains in North America and that apparently Colombus got information from fishermen who regularly sailed to Newfoundland to fish off the coast, he didn't so much discover it as stake a claim of ownership for the Spanish monarchy.
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Can we establish a link between the Norsemen (Vikings) remains in North America and Columbus?

Can we say that “Colombus got information from fishermen”?

Did the fishermen who regularly sailed to Newfoundland saw land? If yes, when did they saw land, before or after Columbus Voyage?


History is made with sources. If we don’t have sources to answer to those questions we are merely speculating.


Columbus, an ambitious man, that didn’t even calculate right Earth’s diameter, was able to gather enough knowledge and resources to make the first recorded expedition, without doubts, from Europe to America, since the Norsemen voyages. But if the Norsemen voyages didn’t had much consequence, Columbus first voyage linked definitively two points of the planet that weren’t linked before in any regular way.


The expedition was made on behalf of the kingdom of Castile, after the king of Portugal had refused to patrocinate the voyage when Columbus was still on Portugal. So, at least on a first stage, it was the kingdom of Castile that made the investment and gathered the profits.
 
Tulius Hostilius said:
Can we establish a link between the Norsemen (Vikings) remains in North America and Columbus?

Can we say that “Colombus got information from fishermen”?

Did the fishermen who regularly sailed to Newfoundland saw land? If yes, when did they saw land, before or after Columbus Voyage?


History is made with sources. If we don’t have sources to answer to those questions we are merely speculating.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I haven't heard any stories about fishermen exploiting Newfoundland pre-Columbus (fascinated to hear if there are). Just off the top of my head the first person at least attested in historical record, not including the Vikings, to have "discovered" Newfoundland was John Cabot in 1497.*

(As an aside it's interesting that the Vikings discovery did not generate much interest at all. Possibly the Scandinavian nations at the time had much easier pickings in Europe to exploit and the whole thing was just forgotten???)

As for "sources" Colombus was probably using information gleaned from Marco Polo's account of China, as well as the inaccurate size of the globe, to try and guide him as that was where he intended to go. :)

So I do think initially he thought he was on the Eastern edge of 'Cathay'. He may though have been having doubts near the end of his life on the final voyage when he reached South America as I see he started to speculate that he had found some sort of Garden of Paradise different from China.

----------------------------------------------------

*And as for the Phoenicians visiting, I believe there is no physical evidence, nor any written evidence (Again interested if there is any hard evidence). I suppose you can't say it didn't happen - a Phoenician ship could possibly have made the crossing, but if it did it left nothing behind in historical and archaeological records
 
It goes without saying that there is a very selective presentation of WW 2 history (as well as the Soviet Union) when one has access to speeches and documentation on the internet to fill in the blanks not included in Hollywood movies. Lots of untold stories. Was reading about a 15 year old Estonian girl who blew up a Soviet monument in the 1940s. Sounds worthy of a movie but not going to happen by any official media companies.


Not sure if this counts as an inaccuracy or just a funny word mutation. Philistine is often defined as "uncultured barbarian." But they were likely the opposite, yet the word mutated over time, going through various language and literary references, being lumped with a German word that sounds similar to arrive at its present meaning.
 
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