History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

[sophie]

I do not accept that type of cultural relativism. There may be room for embellishment in folk tales and myths, but never, never in actual history. I once heard a historian say something along the lines of "there are no statistics in antiquity, only rhetorical flourishes with numbers". Well, in modernity they are called lies.

(Using documentaries as an analogy is also not making me any more sympathetic to them.)

Like, you do you man, by all means. I'm just relaying to you how history works.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Did Scandinavians ever really passionate about Christianity, or was it perhaps viewed as some sort of the common cultural framework (for example, most Westerners believe that Greek statues were originally white, but aren't emotionally invested in this belief and basically shrug their shoulders when it is shown to be false).

 

[Ajidica]

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Did Scandinavians ever really passionate about Christianity, or was it perhaps viewed as some sort of the common cultural framework (for example, most Westerners believe that Greek statues were originally white, but aren't emotionally invested in this belief and basically shrug their shoulders when it is shown to be false).

Yeah, we are still back where we started. If Olaf the Farmer goes to Church on Sundays and got baptized in the Church, but also lights bonfires as part of a 'pagan' fertility rite to bring a good harvest, is he a Christian? Based on the admittedly limited sources on what 'the common people' thought, we have pretty compelling evidence 'pagan' rituals held on for quite a while and quite happily alongside 'Christian' rituals.
We have examples of clearly 'pagan' traditions existing alongside Christian traditions, such as Icelandic rune staves lasting among the peasants to almost modern times, despite Iceland being a "Christian" country for several centuries at that point.

 

[Mouthwash]

Yeah, we are still back where we started. If Olaf the Farmer goes to Church on Sundays and got baptized in the Church, but also lights bonfires as part of a 'pagan' fertility rite to bring a good harvest, is he a Christian? Based on the admittedly limited sources on what 'the common people' thought, we have pretty compelling evidence 'pagan' rituals held on for quite a while and quite happily alongside 'Christian' rituals.
We have examples of clearly 'pagan' traditions existing alongside Christian traditions, such as Icelandic rune staves lasting among the peasants to almost modern times, despite Iceland being a "Christian" country for several centuries at that point.

Even so, that's not relevant. People believe contradictory things all the time. What would the Christian part have meant to him? If his child decided that the Bible was a lie, how would he react?

 

[Ajidica]

Even so, that's not relevant. People believe contradictory things all the time. What would the Christian part have meant to him? If his child decided that the Bible was a lie, how would he react?

It is quite relevant to your initial question:
“Since both the initial conversion of Scandinavia and its Lutheran reformation were top-down processes initiated by monarchies, the possibility exists that the majority of Danes & Swedes NEVER became Christians at a level more profound than that of formal collective adherence.”
The question is basically "What makes someone a Christian?" which, as should be obvious, is a devil of a question. That is made all the more messy by the well documented overlap between 'pagan' and 'Christian' rituals and identity. I highly recommend you read the wiki link I posted above about the benandanti and the mixing between 'pagan' and 'Christian' rituals - all of which was recorded by various Catholic inquisitors. (So there isn't any of the Margaret Murray 'make stuff up' take on paganism.)

 

[W|M]

There are a lot of non-Christian rituals practiced by Christians to this day

 

[Imaus]

Like, you do you man, by all means. I'm just relaying to you how history works.

That's a very old view of history. The whole field of historicity alongside is there to explicitly find and seek *what* happened, *what* existed. Few other than nationalists or fundamentalists just take the said 'history' as is, all the embellishments and myths intertwined. And we're better off for it - everything should be critiqued, double checked, triple checked. Whatever didn't happen gets thrown to mythology. Whatever did to history. It's not that hard of a divide.

 

[JohannaK]

It is when the sources you have for ancient history all skip happily both sides of the divide.

 

[Traitorfish]

I feel like a lot of people in this thread are working with a pretty confused understanding of the word "history". It doesn't describe what actually happened. That's just the past. History is the process of recording the past, of working out narratives and saying to an audience "this is what happened". This is something that we would expect to change over time, and we don't need to sacrifice the view that modern standards are more rigorous, produce more accurate work, and are just generally better, to allow that older work that doesn't live up to those standards is still "history".

 

[sophie]

That's a very old view of history. The whole field of historicity alongside is there to explicitly find and seek *what* happened, *what* existed. Few other than nationalists or fundamentalists just take the said 'history' as is, all the embellishments and myths intertwined. And we're better off for it - everything should be critiqued, double checked, triple checked. Whatever didn't happen gets thrown to mythology. Whatever did to history. It's not that hard of a divide.

Yeah, that's uh, kinda my point.

Although it should be noted, that this reduction of the historical discipline to "sifting the fact from the mythology" is itself a very old view of history. Like, that's an arch-Rankian characterization of the discipline, and to my knowledge, hasn't really been a part of rigorous historical work since at least the 1980s. Like what does "sifting fact from mythology" have to do with, say, Historical Memory or Material Culture or Indexicality?

 

[Mouthwash]

I feel like a lot of people in this thread are working with a pretty confused understanding of the word "history". It doesn't describe what actually happened. That's just the past. History is the process of recording the past, of working out narratives and saying to an audience "this is what happened". This is something that we would expect to change over time, and we don't need to sacrifice the view that modern standards are more rigorous, produce more accurate work, and are just generally better, to allow that older work that doesn't live up to those standards is still "history".

There are still many things that can be known with a high degree of reliability, if measured. Presenting conjecture about those things as fact is "lying".

 

[Traitorfish]

There are still many things that can be known with a high degree of reliability, if measured. Presenting conjecture about those things as fact is "lying".

It's strange to me that you're comfortable with a definition of "lying" that encompasses statements made with undue confidence, but not with a definition of "history" that includes anyone working before Leopold von Ranke.

 

[Traitorfish]

When Yuan Shi-kai declared himself emperor in 1916, did he declare a new dynasty?

I can't seem to find anything that gives a name, but given that, in Chinese history, declaring a new dynasty was so bound up in somebody from outside of the imperial clan assuming the throne that they're almost one and the same action, not declaring a dynasty seems itself a very deliberate act- but I also can't find anything to confirm that.

 

[JohannaK]

That's a good one. I've been wondering about that myself quite a bit.

 

[Dachs]

Although Yuan wanted to make China back into a monarchy with an inherited throne, and although he gave his reign an era name (Hongxian), he did not really pick out a dynasty name. Where other emperors might have referred to the Empire of the Great Qing (or Ming, etc.), his communications referred to the Chinese Empire and to himself as the Great Emperor.

It's possible to make too much of this. Yuan's Empire lasted less than three months. His attempt to change the Republic into an Empire proceeded by stages: the slow end of party politics in 1913-14, the ostentatious imperial sacrifices carried out by him as President in 1914, the imperial trial balloon in 1915, and the empire of 1916. Perhaps he would have declared a formal name to his dynasty after testing the waters. Didn't turn out that way.

 

[caketastydelish]

Is the 4th of July mourned in Britain? Considering it's a day in which they lost a vast amount of their empire?

 

[JohannaK]

I suppose, then, that January 27 is also a day mourned in the US, seeing as it is the day the US certified its greatest humiliation before of since.

 

[caketastydelish]

Fair enough. I'm not sure what happened that day though (or what year), please educate me.

 

[Arakhor]

The end of the Vietnam War? The Apollo 1 fire?

As for 4th July, no, nothing happens. Sorry to disappoint you.

 

[Traitorfish]

Is the 4th of July mourned in Britain? Considering it's a day in which they lost a vast amount of their empire?

If Britons were in the habit of marking the occasion, surely it would be October 19th, when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown?

As it is, they're not. Most Britons didn't really have a sense of "the empire" until the nineteenth century, by which time the American colonies were long gone. If they feel like mourning the loss of their empire, then Indian independence would be the defining moment.

 

[caketastydelish]

Based on what I've read there were a TON of German soldiers surrendering/becoming POWs on Dday. Far more than the actual casualties. Is there a reason for this?