Real and Fake History: Can it be the Same?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

I have never noticed a great difference between approaches to history in Europe and the Americas.

I dare say you probably haven't, as you have never been to America to notice the lay of the land. It's all book study to you, and journalism. At least, you once told me in person that you had never travelled to North America.

I was thinking of situations where historical sites in NA have literally and physically been moved, two, three, four miles, to accomodate new freeways, etc.

One difference between historical sites in the UK and here in North America concerns how the sites are presented. Admittedly, this is based on just a few samples in the UK (and nine provinces and about 35 states) but at Stirling Castle, The Tower of London, York, and Mary Queen of Scots' birthplace, the tours I went on were lead by guides (always middle aged men) who spoke the stories, in costume of course, but mainly the experience was a verbal walking tour, so to speak. Here in NA, I think there is a greater reliance upon a "hands on" approach, with many of the historical parks offering dramatic recreations and activities which the visitors can physically engage in--not that Brebeuf's torture was itself recreated.

I haven't heard yet of any Tolkien/Middle-earth theme park, although possibly the touring movie exhibits of the weapons, costumes, etc, satisfy the urge for movie fans. The conventions, with their costumed banquets, of course, allow us to imagine a Middle earth more concretely.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I dare say you probably haven't, as you have never been to America to notice the lay of the land. It's all book study to you, and journalism. At least, you once told me in person that you had never travelled to North America.

That's true, and I should have mentioned it. In my limited experience, though, North Americans show as much if not more interest in their history than people in my own country. Being surrounded by relics of the past doesn't necessarily mean that you know or care very much about them. In a survey about fifteen years ago, several teenagers had Winston Churchill down as one of the Ghostbusters; and one boy (who was interviewed at a Civil War re-enactment) thought that Oliver Cromwell lost to Charles I.

I'm always wary of suggestions that North America is perhaps less appreciative of its past or less culturally aware than people on the other side of the Water. It's common in Britain to claim that the rest of Europe is more sophisticated, more open-minded and generally socially superior to our own backward, reactionary and vulgar culture; but that's been a common rhetorical device at least since the Romans (whose cultural attitude toward Greece is very reminiscent of Britain's toward France). I would hate to think that Canadians and Americans were falling into the same trap with Europe in general over something so minor as having a couple of thousand years' less European history, so I try to argue against anything that looks like that sort of argument. I say 'European history' because there are millennia of inconveniently unrecorded human history in the Americas going back long before Leif Eiriksson first set foot on Newfoundland. I expect I've misread your meaning.

That was flagrantly off the Tolkien trail. In a flailing and desperate attempt to return, I shall clumsily draw Tolkien's portrayal of the Hobbits and their nomenclature over my shameless pontification. Names such as Peregrin, Paladin, Meriadoc, Saradoc and others are specifically referred to by Tolkien as heroic names given not for their forgotten meaning, but because they sounded nice. Similarly their transformation of 'Baranduin' to 'Brandywine' due to ignorance of its meaning is fairly typical of English conventions. The Hobbits are like the average Englishman: living in the midst of thousands of years of history, yet blissfully unaware of its meaning or import; or even, in many cases, of its existence. I would suggest that this applies to more people in the world than the Warwickshire villagers who were Tolkien's models, and I don't think that the attitude respects either national or continental boundaries.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

I expect I've misread your meaning.

You have indeed, but when did that ever stop you? It's my own imprecise form of argument, as MatthewM also misunderstood my comments as a personal comment on his attitude towards history. So let me try again...

There is ignorance wherever humans gather; its seems part of the species. Yet I was not thinking of ignorance so much as a social perspective. It is always difficult to talk generally of a culture, as individual differences are also a part of the species. Yet it is possible to argue that America was founded upon a rejection of history-- of European history--a rejection of its religious intolerance, a rejection of its social hierarchy, a rejection of its appalling history of inequality and lack of individual liberty (while conveniently accepting slavery). It is this general sense of creating newly which I think subtly informs American attitudes towards history, an encouragement not to be weighed down by the past or by tradition. Why, I remember a television interview with a coal miner years ago when Baroness Thatcher was attempting her new world order; he was on strike, he said, to defend tha pits so his son could go down to the mines, like him and his father and his father before him. The poor soul could not imagine a future for his son if there wasn't a mine to go down. (And what do I know? Maybe there in fact was not anything else for the son to do.) Until very recently, I would think that attitude would have been rare in North America, where there was the general expectation that each generation would "do better" than the parents in terms of wealth, position, etc (whether that happened or not is another matter). Perhaps a way to express is to say 'we are free to make our own history rather than forge a place in history'. This is a mythology of course, like any other. It was this very manifest destiny which allowed some of the most flagrant cruelties in North American history...

Originally Posted by Squatter

That was flagrantly off the Tolkien trail. In a flailing and desperate attempt to return, I shall clumsily draw Tolkien's portrayal of the Hobbits and their nomenclature over my shameless pontification. Names such as Peregrin, Paladin, Meriadoc, Saradoc and others are specifically referred to by Tolkien as heroic names given not for their forgotten meaning, but because they sounded nice. Similarly their transformation of 'Baranduin' to 'Brandywine' due to ignorance of its meaning is fairly typical of English conventions. The Hobbits are like the average Englishman: living in the midst of thousands of years of history, yet blissfully unaware of its meaning or import; or even, in many cases, of its existence. I would suggest that this applies to more people in the world than the Warwickshire villagers who were Tolkien's models, and I don't think that the attitude respects either national or continental boundaries.

Hobbits don't have grammar schools, don't have public libraries, don't have newspapers or broadsheets, although interestingly they do have a postal service. Their history lies in the oral tradition-- or at least this how Bilbo and Frodo come to learn of things elven--and it belongs apparently to the 'upper classes' of Hobbit society. The elves themselves, at least those in Rivendell, seem to use that oral tradition in public events or feast meals. Come to think of it, doesn't Bilbo's and Frodo's attitude towards things elven sound a bit similar to that rhetorical device Squatter mentioned about English attitudes toward European sophistication?

And this is also flagrantly meandering away from MatthewM's original idea. I suspect I misread his meaning.