Author: Gabriel Cohen

The Emergence of the Field of African American Museums by Jeff Hayward and Christine Larouche, in an article sponsored and published by the NCPH offered a discussion and brief history of the movement to establish a broad and enduring circuit of African American museums in the United States. Hayward and Larouche offered a great deal of information from multiple sources, including community polls, interviews with staff of the Association of African American Museums, and the sources of the funding for such projects.

It was of particular interest that many of these museums are well established and frequently visited, contain a great deal of works, and yet were entirely privately funded. Private donorship and contributions from collectors inspired by the mission of the AAAM to “enhance the ability of those museums to serve the needs and interests of persons of African ancestry and those who wish to know more about the art, history and culture of African-derived culture,” are what allow the movement to thrive.

The article really spoke to me on an individual level, as well as simply being related to the field discussed. I am in fervent support of smaller, independent museums dedicated to the education and interpretation of artifacts from cultures that are woefully without adequate representation in the mainstream.

The Finger Saga, an article written by Rebecca Mancuso of University of California Press, and featured in The Public Historian, brought to light the issue of the preservation and display of human remains in an academic setting.

The remains in question are a set of severed fingers placed in a jar that were retrieved from a crime scene. The article describes the ways in which the tragedy of the circumstances surrounding the fingers have been reduced and objectified for financial gain. At what point do human remains stop being ‘sacred’ and become an artifact? Worse yet, issues of morality come into play when using human remains for display and to attract visitors for money. It’s a very delicate issue, and many suggest that we simply tow the line between preservation and education and simple objectification and abuse.

These negatives are offset by the beneficial elements of the museum’s mission regarding the object: to educate the public about domestic violence and the worst outcomes imaginable.

Feuds by C. L. Sonnichsen illuminated to me a more local version of a much broader history of violence between vigilante and criminal groups that clashed during the 19th century. This was not an uncommon occurrence, but in the case of the Regulators and the Moderators, who were based in central Texas, it reached new extremes. The violence became so appalling that a group of counter-vigilantes arose to combat the extreme actions of the Regulators.

The article encompasses a great span of this history, from the 1830’s to the 1880’s. Special attention is paid to the era directly before and after the Civil War, during which there the intensity of these conflicts were fanned into flame to a greater extent than at other times. Of particular interest to me was the way in which the author, Sonnichsen, juxtaposed to motivations of the earlier feuds to those of the later periods. The article granted me a better look at the often romanticized lawlessness of the old west.

Handbook of Texas Online, C. L. Sonnichsen, “FEUDS,” accessed September 08, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jgf01.

“Of this gentleman, I may in truth write that he has a character alert, lively, eager and restless, curious of every kind of novelty, unsuited to the common manner and behavior of mankind, but striving after new untried or extraordinary ways; moreover he has much more in his head than he allows to be expressed or perceived… melancholy though luminous thoughts, a bent toward alchemy, magic and enchantment, community with spirits, scorn and indifference towards human ordinances and conventions and to all religions, making everything proposed by God or man to be suspected and despised… Likewise he will be unmerciful, without brotherly or nuptial affection, caring for noone, devoted only to himself and his desires, severe upon those placed under him, avid, covetous, deceitful, inequitable in his dealings, usually silent, often violent… not to be browbeaten.”

• – Johannes Kepler

Few individuals in history have lived lives of such internal conflict as Albrecht von Wallenstein, who was born on September 14, 1583 in Heřmanice, Bohemia. Wallenstein was born into a family of relatively humble means, but achieved power and prestige through a combination of military genius, opportunism and devotion to his own interests at the expense of all others’.

By trampling upon the fortunes of his rivals, he rose to a position of power that he only dared dream of before. Wallenstein would serve as the de facto Defender of the Faith for the Catholic world despite the ridicule and undermining efforts of his compatriots and superiors. I believe there is no greater story about one individual’s ambition and the deterioration of spirit and morality one must undertake in the pursuit of absolute power and personal delights.

Wallenstein’s early life saw him develop a lust for wealth, power and beauty. A proper education in the then peerless schools of Altdorf and Padua in philosophy and the arts led him to towards the baroque, not just in the arts but in life. Like the baroque period of art and architecture, Wallenstein would begin a relentless pursuit to incorporate the most extravagant and ornate of luxuries and privileges that title could grant him. In 1606, Wallenstein converted to Catholicism. Given his conduct during his entire life, I would  consider this a political rather than religious move to please the Habsburg dynasty who he served. Three years later he would marry an elderly Czech widow who possessed a great number of lands and titles. This marriage was organized and ordained by the Jesuits as a holy union under God. To Wallenstein, it was a power play. He sought to inherit the Earth, starting with his widow’s vast lands in Bohemia.

Wallenstein’s fortunes became quickly attached to those of the Habsburgs. Through inequitable dealings with other landholders, and abuse of his powerful as governor of Bohemia, Wallenstein came to personally own his own large piece of the nation. He used his powers as governor to debase the Czech currency even further than it had been already, and purchased more and more lands for pennies on the dollar. In fact, Wallenstein was incorporated into the Estates of Princes of the [Holy Roman] Empire. Legally, he was his own sovereign under the rules of the Empire. Wallenstein’s star rose with the fortunes of the Habsburg empire from this point onward, so it was only prudent, and more importantly to Wallenstein, profitable,  that he lend his services to the Holy Roman Emperor.

The Thirty Years War would give him such an opportunity for service, and to truly lead him on a path towards power.

 

 

When I was a kid, I would often ask myself why, when I took courses on world history, the first half of the course was oriented around Greece and Rome, with brief forays into Chinese and African civilizations, and the second half of this history of the world focused on the industrialization of the west and the disastrous series of wars brought to the world stage in the 20th century by again, western civilization. Finally, these courses wrapped world history in a neat little box by showcasing the liberty and peerless strength of the United States.

The End.

Sure, for a kid this is far easier to follow than the complex series of social developments, inter-cultural exchange and the complex dynastic, religious, and political interests that created the world as we know it. It’s a narrative with an almost storybook feel to it. It’s comfortable and familiar.

To some of us.

Once upon a time, the Greeks and the Romans, (and by the way, the Chinese, Indian, and a bunch of other civilizations that we don’t really need to know about), decided to start thinking about stuff, making war upon their neighbors, and just be, in general, imperialist and xenophobic. Those habits are okay though, right? They did invent civilization after all. Well, western civilization at least. The fact that Chinese civilization had been flourishing for thousands of years before the rise of the Rome is reduced to a mere footnote. The contributions of the Yoruba, the Han, the Quechua, the Iroquois and the Tamil are the equivalent of a brief pause or an improvised joke or anecdote in a long speech. These cultures being overlooked in the classroom is simply unforgivable.

That story, though… it seems ridiculous, right? Nobody in their right mind could possibly believe history is a straight line that looks something like this:

Greece => Rome => Great Britain => United States of America

But many do. I’ve spoken about my love of history and tried to share it with many, but for a great deal of people, if the information shared doesn’t fit into this framework, it’s simply in one ear and out the other. It’s a terrible loss for all to reduce the blossoming of diversity on the world stage to a clumsily constructed narrative that only speaks to the experiences of one particular ethnic and religious group. While there are many exceptional teachers out there that really want to expose their students to histories that aren’t their own, (and by that I mean, not those of their own heritage), I personally never experienced that until I started college. My teachers before that had encyclopedic knowledge of the west, but were functionally illiterate to the histories outside of the European sphere.

Personally, I love learning the histories and mythologies of all four of the aforementioned civilizations. If you want more, however, you have to seek it out. These are the prescribed civilizations that western societies have chosen to define our culture, and in some cases, even reduce the complexity of other civilizations by viewing it through the lens of the American and European experience.

To me this is the greatest challenge we face as historians, and more specifically, as public historians. Not only must we observe and understand other individuals experiences on a cultural level, we must also attempt to overcome the inherent biases we all naturally have in order to understand and record their histories in their own words, and not simply transcribe it into language we find comfortable and familiar. All of us, even the most accomplished historians have so much to learn from others’ experiences, and it would be a great shame if we didn’t at least try to observe and learn from them from on at least somewhat impartial platform. Our collection of historical experiences isn’t a vacuum, nor should it be viewed that way. We simply need to make sure we’re all aware that our own identity and our own heritage isn’t the center of the universe and the only lens through which others’ histories can be seen. I believe every single one of us here knows this, and I suppose I wrote this simply to put these thoughts into words as a reminder to myself. I want to be capable of doing this, and I think it’s easier to say you are capable of understanding others’ experiences and histories without comparing them to your own than actually do it.

Forgive me for the all the sarcasm in this post, please. I believed it was the best way to express how ridiculous the topic at hand can be. For this blog, each week I plan to discuss a separate culture that has long been overlooked, and discuss the ways in which their histories have been generalized and portrayed in a reductive or romanticized manner, and hopefully contribute something to the discussion of who they really were and what really happened.