I am a member of the AHA. Pretty much every professional historian is. You basically have to be.

I’m not sure about what activities the AHA was involved in during the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. It doesn’t necessarily surprise me that they would make such a claim in 1934, being in middle of the Great Depression and all. It also doesn’t surprise me that Congress would investigate them at the height of the Red Scare for statements made 20 years earlier. It was a witch-hunt and it doesn’t surprise me that they would target academics. Historians tend to be about as liberal as you can get, and I would guess that most historians care very deeply about social justice issues. The AHA must have been an easy target for Red Scare politicians to focus on for political points.

Without putting a whole lot of thought into it, here goes:

Most evil: Hitler (ldo). I’m sure there are others in the running, but he seems like the obvious choice.

Most good: Gandhi. Hard to go wrong with Gandhi.

One battle that comes to mind is the Battle of Valmy (1792). The French revolutionary army defeated the Austrians and prevented them from taking Paris. The Revolution may have been very different and Napoleon may never have happened had the Austrians won. Having said that, I think individual battles are not as significant as people tend to think. Even if the Austrians had won, the cultural, political, and ideological forces behind the Revolution may have been so strong that nothing would have been different. Who knows.

I’m not sure if the U.S. has an “expiration date.” It seems entirely plausible that the U.S. may not be the most powerful nation in the world, but that may be 50 years from now or 500 years from now. Not sure.

I don't know anything about this. If this is true, I doubt historians "feel" any particular way about it.

Sorry. Can't help you.

I have not read DiLorenzo, but I do know that no professional historian takes him seriously. His work is pretty much 100% politically motivated and more polemic than scholarship. Most academic journals don’t even bother to review his books, b/c his work is simply not serious scholarship. Some major historical journals have reviewed his books.

As for revisionism, all history is revisionist. All historical scholarship challenges our notions of the past. “Revisionism” tends to connote bad things among most people for some reason, but all history is a rewriting of the past. That’s why we do history.

I don't really know much about Asian history. Sorry.

I just wanted to point you toward a relatively balanced review article of a few libertarian interpretations of Lincoln and the Civil War. It’s:

Daniel Feller, “Libertarians in the Attic, or A Tale of Two Narratives” _Reviews in American History_ June 2004, vol. 34, issue 2, pages 184-195.

It’s actually a pretty balanced review of three libertarian interpretations, one of whom is DiLorenzo. He is not very kind to DiLorenzo, but he is pretty generous toward the other two books. He has a few arguments against DiLorenzo. Most basic is that DiLorenzo simply seems uniformed about the actual history. But the more damning charge is that DiLorenzo is willfully intellectually dishonest. Most historians, even very conservative historians, would probably consider DiLorenzo a fraud and charlatan (though they would never publicly use that kind of language).

maybe this is more philosophical, but (at least to me) when "religion drove a lot of early/mid cultures" (and still does to some extent) is coupled with a somewhat natural aversion to outside influence/ideas before incoporating them into a cultures own philosophy/way of thinking, how would analyze/respond to a statement such as "christian history/philosophy- (~600 years)~(similar to) Islamic history/philosphy?

is there any idea of a cultural timeline/paths cultures seem to follow as they grow/mature/self analyze?

What then would you say to historians that paint the Enlightenment as an 'evolution' of Christainity? Can you provide any other examples of dissenting English philosophers?

Why 18th century France?

What do you think of Foucault?

Was witchcraft invented by the church or was it some cohesive set of practices? Did those practices rely on the use of hallucinogenic deliriants? What is the connection between witchcraft and hermeticism and alchemy?

I am aware of some errors that have been corrected but those calling him a fraud and a charlatan are surely part of the "Lincoln Cult".

Dilo states in this interview that none of these errors make any difference on the thesis of the book. I'd have to agree.

I have a friend that was paid to research Lincoln and the Civil War. He confirmed a lot of what Dilo states and from the years I've spent studying and researching I'd have to agree.

I have yet to see any of these historians refute the thesis of the book, most I'm sure take offense to Lincoln being exposed and the ideological standpoint.(decentralized small government, states rights etc)

It's too bad these errors were not corrected sooner. You can expect anyone who challenges main stream ideas, people, to be attacked but when the day is done the facts speak for themselves.

A much better job was done fact checking, in Lincoln Unmasked.

It seems that there are those that attack revisionism because it challenges long held beliefs. Economists and historians like DiLorenzo get a lot of criticism but that's due mostly because they reject theories etc that violate their first principles, right or wrong.

To be fair, the target wasn't academics but non-profit foundations with billions of dollars and tremendous influence who used the AHA for political purposes. These groups such as the Carnegie Endowment saw war as a way to achieve world peace and thus infiltrated the State Dept to promote war. This was verified by the general counsel of the Reece Committee.

This wasn't about Hollywood screenwriters being Communists.

There was tremendous resistance to these investigations and little publicity. Major newspapers did not cover the findings of the investigations. For decades, the transcripts of the Reece Committee were scarce. The President of the Ford Foundation allegedly told Norman Dodd, the head investigator, that their goal was to merge the United States with the Soviet Union and they wanted to keep this secret from the American people.

This is all related to that book "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America".

If you are interested in the other side of the historical argument, check out:

Norman Dodd's interview (1982)-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYCBfmIcHM

Rene Wormser, from Foundations: Their Power and Influence (1958)

And the Reece Commission-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_..._Organizations

As an historian I'm not sure I would agree with this assesment. Historians are not , nor should they be, out to rewrite the past. Their job is to assemble facts, discuss the forces at work on those facts and produce as balanced an assessment of the history as possible. At least, that's why I do history. You are certainly entitled to a different opinion.

I'd have to agree more with dalerobk. "Revisionism" is necessary precisely because new facts and new information (and new ideas of how to interpret them in the greater scheme of events) come to light all the time. What counts as a valid object of historical study now is a much broader field than 50 years ago, and new histories reflect that. Information about distant events is much more accessible than 50 years ago, and new histories need to reflect that. I actually think your two statements are in agreement, simply phrased differently. Almost no "revisionist" history is simple "rewriting of the past." It's always rewriting in light of new evidence, or because old theories are logically/empirically flawed.

How do you feel about historians, or non-historians for that matter, trying to put a "historical perspective" on the analysis of a situation?

I tried to phrase that in a way that doesn't suggest an answer, I hope it makes sense. To expand, I find that a lot of times, historians are the best able to provide the proper perspective for a given situation, and some of my favorite authors/analysts on modern/political/military affairs are historians at their core. At the same time, I feel like there are those, both professional historians and non-historians alike, who try too often to analyze every single thing in a "historical context", and often are satisfied by just smugly making a correlation between something current and something historial, without really understanding the underlying forces at work.

To add on, do you feel that your background (or maybe your natural mentality) as a historian allows you to provide a better take on something going on than those around you?

I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that, if it makes sense

I would tend to agree with you and say that I did not express myself well. Obviously, our understanding of history changes as new facts emerge, new sources of information are discovered and new theories formulated to explain the facts we know. As an aside, I believe that the reason Revisionism has a negative connotation is that many of the revisionist histories of the last thirty years were written with an express ideological agenda in mind, and this occurred on both sides of the political spectrum. That type of historical reinterpretation is unacceptable to my thinking. Healthy and hearty disagreement among historians is a good thing. But bending the facts of history to suit and promote an ideology is not.

I would say that this kind of revisionism is much less common than is often perceived, and that even if true, older histories suffer from ideological bias as well, but that bias has become accepted wisdom. If anything, I'd say contemporary research is considerably less ideological on the whole than most of the research done 50+ years ago (though still not perfect, obviously). There is no doubt that Gibbon was dramatically influenced by his own era and his own politics when he wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and certainly no doubt that William Dunning had a few ideological axes to grind in his version of Reconstruction. Likewise, E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm were undoubtedly influenced by their ideological viewpoints and politics. This does not make their histories wrong, or even suspect, really, so long as they draw appropriately from the sources and don't fabricate their research (which is a rare but sad occurrence). In part, it's new perspectives that have given us access to new sources, as the spectrum of acceptable sources for historical research has broadened. People just would not have thought to do "working class histories" a hundred years ago, because it was not part of the popular (or academic, at least) consciousness. Given that history is primarily an interpretive endeavor, a certain amount of ideological influence is going to enter the writing, or even the chosen subjects of research. So long as we're aware of it, I don't think it's especially problematic.

Mybe feel is the wrong word, I was just asking if the majority of historians believed it to be true. But since you don't know what I am talking about my efforts are futile, thanks though

I think your analysis is spot on - and that our apparent disagreements are a matter of semantics. Not only is the study of history interpretive, it is also dynamic. It is critical that any history stands the test of time and perspective. I think that the true study of history must be interdisciplinary - there is no such thing as history as a stand alone subject. History in a vacuum is simply a dry recitation of events.

It is a treat for me to be able to discuss history with professional historians like you and dalerobk. It makes 2+2 much more relevant to me. Thanks for the opportunity.

while Im not a professional historian (I do have a degree in History though) I would recommend: Blundering to Glory: Napolean's Military Campaigns by Owen Connelly.

This was the book used in my Napoleanic Wars class in college (that and the French Revolution and Napoleanic Era were probably my two favorite classes in college) that were taught by Connelly (who was also one of my favorite professors despite the fact that I thought he had died one day during class) and I have probably read it 3 or 4 times since then.

it is probably a lot different than most books you are going to find on the subject but I thought it gave me a pretty good understanding of Napolean's campaigns