The Myth of History

I am a product of the books that I read in my youth that inspired me, the films and TV programs that I watched later on in life which captured my imagination, the people I have known who have told me some of their part in the world, and lastly, of my own experiences.

I have always been inspired to live and act by something, and it is a strange feeling to find the idols of the past exposed and uncovered. At primary school, fascinated by the story told by Apsley Cherry-Garrad in his book "The Worst Journey in the World", I created an abridgment, read by myself and two others one morning during the assembly, of Captain Scott's journey to, and failure to return from, the South Pole. Years later, I began to learn more about Shackleton, who never reached the pole, but never perished in the wilderness or threw his mens' lives either, and learned that seasoned explorers such as Wally Herbert considered Scott to have been reckless, or a poor planner. I was forced to revise my opinion of a hero and accept that he did not perish simply due to the capriciousness of the weather, but due to some of his own mistakes.

We learned, at school, that Great Britain had been a major sea-power, never defeated, due to the character of the men who crewed the ships, and the traditions of the past. Britannia ruled the waves. While working at a company I choose to call Wobble and Careless, a friend there told me about a painting he had seen in a gallery in Amsterdam, which showed the Dutch Navy sailing up the Thames and sacking the Port of London. That hadn't been in any of the history books I had read.

Odd little snippets are beginning to come out now that the 60-year D-notices have been lifted, and we are learning that some of the victories in the last war were not due to courage, determination, heroism and self-sacrifice as much as to intercepted and decoded radio transmissions. And that we (Britain), and America, did a deal with Joe Stalin that condemned many people to death or imprisonment for years to come.

The world behind me is changing even as I write this. History is not the tube down to the incinerator in the basement that Orwell foresaw in 1984, it is almost the opposite. We risk being flooded with new information which could make us rethink a lot of what we have till now taken for granted.

History, I am beginning to realise, is always written at a distance, not as it unfolds, but after it has settled down and stopped throwing up the dust which confuses the participants and mixes up the warring sides. In the past, we are told, it was written for political or religious control, but not now, not in our enlightened democratic age. Oh no, it seems, history now is written to make money.

We are all at the mercy of the editors and publishers of history. We know only what they decide to publish. For example, take Custer's Last Stand.

G. A. Custer is/was an iconic figure who stood for heroism, determination and sacrifice, because of what we had been told happened to him. A few years ago, someone decided to give credence to the stories told by the Indians. They had always told these stories, right from the time that they killed him and his men, but nobody published their accounts. The newspapers, book companies and Hollywood told of an heroic doomed stand, of men facing certain death, staring it defiantly in the face. "They faced their foe and died with their eyes open."

"No," said the Indians, "there was no last stand, no small group back-to-back around their flag. They were running, scrambling away through the grass, every man for himself. Custer didn't organise his men into any formation, defensive or otherwise, because he didn't know we were there. We rose up out of the long grass and killed them as we came upon them."

Archeologists excavating the site came up with evidence that supported the Indian tale of events, not the published ones.

The Indians told the truth, but the papers and books and films made all the money.

You are what you buy.