Revisionist

[Clive Maier]

Can some kind pal give me a definition of the term ‘revisionist’ as it applies to Great War historians? My interpretation, based mainly on what I have seen on the forum, is that revisionist means a school of thought holding that the war was conducted more or less as well as it could be in the context of its time.

However, despite dissenting voices, surely this was the orthodoxy during the war and for a long time after? When eventually the pendulum swung and people began to concentrate on the human waste of the war, were they not the revisionists? So doesn’t that make today’s historians who incline to the original view counter-revisionists? Or have I got this all wrong?

[Ron]

I think criticism of the war started during it - Sassoon, Graves and other poets for example - and certainly was in full swing when the bulk of the soldiers returned after it. Were they revisionists?

Revisionists is an academic term and certainly, in my sphere, archaeology, is appliied to anybody whoo puts forward a realistic alternative explanation of something that other people believe.

Ron

[Jock Bruce]

I think it is 'revisionist' when it applies to historians - what they're revising is the historical view. Whilst this may represent an agreement with the orthodoxy of the period, those who held that view at the time were not historians since they were living it.

As for what makes a 'revisionist', I really wouldn't like to say - like most of these labels it can be less than helpful. It may not be always be an either/or thing.

I suspect if you agree with most of this

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/info/lec97.htm

you may have revisionist leanings.

Jock Bruce

[ianw]

Given that the last of the Official Histories was only published after WW2, I suppose it could be argued that they were revisionist in nature. It's time that this whole issue was renamed as in "New" Labour. Why not "Third Wave" Great war history. Then we would be ready for the "Fourth Wave" !

[john w.]

What perturbs me most about this is that to be a revisionist you have to take an alternative position to what exists. What exists has been generated by historians using information. To be a revisionist therefore assumes that the starting point used is correct in the first place. In essence it is all academic!

John

[BeppoSapone]

What perturbs me most about this is that to be a revisionist you have to take an alternative position to what exists. What exists has been generated by historians using information. To be a revisionist therefore assumes that the starting point used is correct in the first place. In essence it is all academic!

John

It can also mean that new "evidence" has come to light. For example, if you read about the death of Rommel in anything written soon after WW2 he "died of war wounds", and Italo Balbo was shot down "by accident" and so on.

One of the leading WW1 revisionists was Fischer who said that Germany was the country that started WW1. Until that time, and this is possibly due to the guilt of having "assigned blame by treaty" ie Versailles, many people had agreed with the "nations staggered and stumbled into war" idea of the origins of WW1.

The "BeppoSapone" theory of any war is that the people that started it are the people that fought it mostly in other peoples countries.

[Muerrisch]

The "BeppoSapone" theory of any war is that the people that started it are the people that fought it mostly in other peoples countries.

That lets a lot countries off the hook.

But the problem is that one deduces thereby that Great Britain [with Colonies and Dominions], Japan, Portugal and USA [to name but a few] started it.

An intriguing thought which I cannot subscribe to. Very revisionist.

Germany was hell-bent on agressive expansion, and it was only a question of 'when' not 'if'. Provided all their neighbours laid on their backs to have their tummies tickled, there would have be no Great War, and no WW II either.

Any rational case for the opposition had better be good.

[BeppoSapone]

The "BeppoSapone" theory of any war is that the people that started it are the people that fought it mostly in other peoples countries.

But the problem is that one deduces thereby that Great Britain [with Colonies and Dominions], Japan, Portugal and USA [to name but a few] started it.

An intriguing thought which I cannot subscribe to. Very revisionist.

Not really, because the war had already started by the time these countries put troops into the field. My view is that Germany started it, in the west at any rate. It was Germany that invaded France and Belgium, not the other way around.

I agree with you that "Germany was hell-bent on agressive expansion", but Great Britain was also hell-bent on maintaining her position as "leading" country in the world.

IIRC the British Cabinet had decided to fight Germany, and were "relieved" when Germay invaded Belgium, because it gave them cause to fight a "just war".

They felt that they needed to defeat their economic and naval rival, Germany, but also felt that the British public would never support a war on the side of France and Russia - the "traditional enemy" and "bloody Tsarist autocracy".

The German invasion of Belgium gave Britain a chance to be seen to protect "poor little Belgium" and still, as they thought, cripple their rival Germany.

However, if Germany had not invaded Belgium we might not have fought and, by invading France and Belgium Germany started the war.

[Simon R]

In my experience, calling someone a 'revisionist' in archaeological circles will lead to a flint arrowhead between the vertebrae. Generally a perjorative term I feel. Doesn't really help us advance, just provokes a counter barrage.

[Clive Maier]

Many thanks to everyone and particularly to Jock for that Brian Bond link. I have read Bond’s 1997 Liddell Hart lecture carefully and in one sense it adds to the confusion. I will come back to that in a moment.

It was Bond who prompted my question in the first place. I have long been baffled by the term ‘revisionist’ but what brought it to a head was a review elsewhere on the forum of Professor Bond’s book The Unquiet Western Front. The review was impeccable on the thickness of the book but was so terse on content and standpoint that I looked elsewhere for understanding. While doing that, I found that historians such as Bond and Sheffield were routinely labelled revisionist. This confirmed the usage as I had understood it from remarks made by pals on the forum. Broadly, and grossly simplifying of course, the viewpoint of Bond, Sheffield and others is pro-war or lions-led-by-lions. This then is revisionism.

The counterview, espoused by writers such as Laffin, Winter and Clark, is broadly lions-led-by-donkeys and anti-war. Bond seems to identify this movement closely with the 60s, perhaps forgetting Liddell Hart himself, and ascribes the view overwhelmingly to literature and the arts. Emotion rather than history in other words. Indeed, Professor Bond has a tendency to reserve the term historian for those of his own persuasion. Others are no more than anecdotalists and mythmakers. It is human to be partisan about views but impartiality would be more useful for a historian. In his Liddell Hart lecture, Bond refers to “bitter individual memoirs, mainly by sensitive intellectuals”. Apparently eye-witnesses are not to be trusted if they are tainted by sensitivity. The academic’s aversion to intellectuals is similarly difficult to understand.

My point, and it is certainly shared by Bond, is that ‘pro-war’ was the prevailing view for some time after the war. When it was challenged by Clark, Laffin, Winter and others, surely they were the revisionists? ‘Anti-war’ became the prevailing view and probably remains so in the popular perception. In more specialised circles, there is one hopes a better balance. My instinct is 'anti-war' but I sense that ‘pro-war’ is again in the ascendancy. So I say that the school of Bond, Sheffield and others is orthodox or if you like, counter-revisionist or anti-revisionist. If we invoke the term revisionist each time opinion lurches between pro- and anti-war, we shall end up calling both Bond and Winter revisionist, and all meaning goes.

What was confusing about Professor Bond’s Liddell Hart lecture? In his first paragraph, Bond describes an anti-war view as revisionist. He goes some way towards making my point for me.

[BeppoSapone]

In my experience, calling someone a 'revisionist' in archaeological circles will lead to a flint arrowhead between the vertebrae. Generally a perjorative term I feel. Doesn't really help us advance, just provokes a counter barrage.

Certainly a perjorative term within left-wing politics. I wonder if this is where the historians aquired the term?

In Imperial Germany there was a debate within the German Social Democratic party between those who believed that Marx had got it right in the things that he predicted for society and those who felt that these things had not came to pass.

The Revisionist/Dogmatist argument seems to have been very important to them at the time, but I care so little I can't be bothered with examples. Maybe if someone actually cares enough....

[Clive Maier]

The fact is that the term revisionist is in common use on the forum and in Great War studies at all levels from amateur to international authority. It is too late to deprecate it, so I am interested in knowing what it means. And in knowing that when other people use the term, they mean what I think they mean.

So do pals agree that historians like Bond and Sheffield are counter-revisionist?

[Muerrisch]

NO

[Clive Maier]

EXPLAIN

[Simon R]

The fact is that the term revisionist is in common use on the forum and in Great War studies at all levels from amateur to international authority.

At the Amateur level:

I've not come across it in the work I do for my local museum. It is a fine line between educating and antagonising especially where dead relatives are concerned. I am fortunate in working with a large documentary and photographic archive and really contentious issues are usually avoided due to the sheer volume of material and problems in navigating it. I wouldn't presume to substantially challenge the whole world view of 70 year old relative just looking for the facts of their fathers probably quite tragic death.

[The_Historian]

Clive,

I may be wrong, but I understand revisionist to mean someone who re-writes history to suit the contemporary political climate. That's how I use it, at any rate.

In the context of the Great War, Oh What A Lovely War was written by a Marxist and would, IMHO, be revisionist. I have a friend who's been a professional archaeologist for over 30 years, and until recently she honestly believed there were very few prisoners taken during the Great War because of what OWALW and other contemporary films in the Sixties led people to believe.

Regards,

gordon

[David_Blanchard]

Well if we have to have labels (do we?) then as Prior & Wilson borrow from both 'camps' they must be 'post-modern'.

[The_Historian]

only if they paint as well!

[David Seymour]

Clive,

Review posted 17 Nov - no responses - thought it had gone unnoticed! Apologies for its freedom "from cumbrousness and superfluity" (Concise OED)! However, I have gone some way to make amends - see under book reviews.

Interesting discussion of "revisionism". Plenty of material here for the construction of a family tree of "revisionism". I wonder how many generations it would run to?

Historians, of all shades, spend much of their time re-considering the evidence (and considering that which has just emerged). So, it is possible that we are all revisionists. It is, it would seem from the forum discussion, a term for all seasons. Perhaps there is a dissertation topic here for someone!

Glad to have been of service!

Regards,

David

[Clive Maier]

Clive,

Review posted 17 Nov - no responses - thought it had gone unnoticed!  Apologies for its freedom "from cumbrousness and superfluity" (Concise OED)! However, I have gone some way to make amends - see under book reviews. ...

David,

Thanks for the revised review in your Book Reviews thread, and for taking my comment so gracefully. While rummaging for information on The Unquiet Western Front I found a sample chapter on the publisher's site. It is most but not quite all of the first chapter.

[Clive Maier]

I may be wrong, but I understand revisionist to mean someone who re-writes history to suit the contemporary political climate. That's how I use it, at any rate.

In the context of the Great War, Oh What A Lovely War was written by a Marxist and would, IMHO, be revisionist. ...

Gordon,

Is that a ‘yes’ then? You regard historians like Bond and Sheffield as counter-revisionists? If Oh! What a Lovely War was revisionist, its debunkers must be counter-revisionist. Incidentally, I don't think the play was ever meant to be more than caricature; a cartoonist's truth by exaggeration.

I don’t think I can go along with your definition of a revisionist as one “who re-writes history to suit the contemporary political climate”. This suggests that somewhere there is an absolute inalienable historical truth, and moreover that it is likely to be found in the orthodoxy. I don’t think that simple crystalline truth exists anywhere.

The whole thing does show the difficulty of history. The Great War is not yet 100 years distant. It was massively documented, filmed and photographed. Personal accounts abound. And yet we can’t agree about it. It makes one wonder how far off course we may be in our perceptions of more distant times. You must come up against this in mediaeval studies. To be Marxist for a moment, what of the great mass of people who could not record their thoughts and feelings? Can they be discounted historically? I can’t believe so.

[BeppoSapone]

I don’t think I can go along with your definition of a revisionist as one “who re-writes history to suit the contemporary political climate”. This suggests that somewhere there is an absolute inalienable historical truth, and moreover that it is likely to be found in the orthodoxy. I don’t think that simple crystalline truth exists anywhere.

The whole thing does show the difficulty of history. The Great War is not yet 100 years distant. It was massively documented, filmed and photographed. Personal accounts abound. And yet we can’t agree about it. It makes one wonder how far off course we may be in our perceptions of more distant times.

History has been described as "the propaganda of the victors". As a cynic I prefer "lies told by thieves"!

[The_Historian]

Clive,

I take your point. As the man said, history is the lie most commonly agreed upon!

I think Oh What A Lovely War was a play of its time-anti-establishment and a bit of a caricature of the upper classes. But it DID have a political message, however subtle.

Of course there's no crystalline truth as regards history, you're absolutely correct in saying that. But that shouldn't give people the right to promote one version of it to the exclusion of all others-I'm interested in both sides of every story: my own personal politics don't enter into it.

With regards to mediaeval history, it's an uncomfortable fact that the vast majority of the population lived and died without anyone seeking or recording their opinions.

How much richer our knowledge would be with that information is incalculable. The extant legal/exchequer records are usually biased towards the dominant classes, as you might expect. I think the earliest recording of the opinions of the "lower classes" is in the voices of Morebath, from the 1540's. At least with the Great War, the ordinary soldier's voice and thoughts were recorded for posterity-as it should be. Like you, I'd rather hear from the ordinary man in the street than the usual sycophants who thought they were born to rule!

Anyway, apologies for wandering off-topic.

Regards,

Gordon

[munce]

I think Great War revisionists get their name because they were the first historians to revise the commonly accepted history of the Great War. In the immediate post-war period, general feeling was probably pro-war, as others have pointed out. However, looking back on the war during the 1920s is not really history as such as the events were too recent, records were closed to all but a selected few, etc. Only in the 1960s did 'history' really take over, in the sense of academic historians coming along and looking closely at what source evidence they could find. The general conclusion of this first 'historical' view was the anti-war lions-led-by-donkeys one (although there were notable exceptions). The opposite view came along I suppose in the 1990s with a new generation of historians eager to posit a different interpretation on the war, possibly with the use of new source evidence. They are therefore revisionists of the (up to then) mainstream historical view.

Counter-revisionists I suppose would be those modern generation historians who take the revisionist view and argue against it, again hopefully as a result of new revelations from previously unused sources. It is likely that when this happens, the view will probably not go all the way back to the extremes of the first ant-war position, but will find a place somewhere in the middle. I say this not out of personal conviction of the rights or wrongs of each camp, but just as a reflection on how academic views tend to oscillate, with each oscillation coming closer to a central point.

[Alan Lines]

I have always thought a revisionist was someone who put forward an opionion/theory that is different from the accepted view. As the massive majority of the population are still in the "butchers and bunglers" camp this must mean the likes of John Terraine are still revisioinists.