Bad History: How We Got the Past Wrong

Also by Emma Marriott

I Used to Know That: History

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by

Michael O’Mara Books Limited

9 Lion Yard

Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

Copyright © Michael O’Mara Books Limited 2011

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Papers used by Michael O’Mara Books Limited are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

ISBN: 978-1-84317-617-6 in hardback print format

ISBN: 978-1-84317-778-4 in Mobipocket format

ISBN: 978-1-84317-777-7 in EPub format

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Cover design by Ana Bjezancevic

Designed and typeset by www.glensaville.com

Maps and technical drawings by David Woodroffe

Illustrations by Andrew Pinder

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

www.mombooks.com

CONTENTS

Introduction

The American Old West Was a Wild and Dangerous Place to Be

Henry V: ‘The Greatest Man That Ever Ruled England’

The Founding Fathers of the US Sought to Replace Monarchy With Democracy

The ‘Iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck: Ruthless, War-Mongering Conservative and Dogmatic Idealogue

Bolsheviks, Under the Charismatic Leadership of Lenin, Heroically Stormed the Winter Palace in the October Revolution of 1917

Christopher Columbus Introduced Syphilis to Europe

The Main Killing Sites of the Holocaust were Auschwitz and the Concentration Camps in Germany

Benito Mussolini Made the Trains Run on Time

The Defeat of the Spanish Armada Was a Heroic Victory for the English and Marked the Beginning of England’s Supremacy of the Seas

Captain Scott: Intrepid Antarctic Explorer and Iconic British Hero

French Revolutionary Doctor Joseph Guillotin Invented the Guillotine

The Man in the Iron Mask Was Louis XIV’s Brother

Australia Was Established Purely as a Penal Colony, a Dumping Ground for Britain’s Convicts

President Roosevelt’s New Deal Saved Capitalism and Lifted the US Out of the Depression

Abraham Lincoln’s Main Aim in Fighting the US Civil War Was to Free the Slaves

America Entered the First World War at the Last Minute and Contributed Little to the Allied Victory

The Great Famine in China Was the Unintentional Consequence of Chairman Mao’s Economic Reforms

The Suffragettes Secured Votes for Women in Britain

James Watt Invented the Steam Engine

Cecil Rhodes: Heroic British Imperialist or Evil Rogue?

The Attack on Pearl Harbor Was Deliberately Engineered by President Roosevelt

The ‘Madness’ of King George III Was Caused by the Blood Disease Porphyria

Britain Was Once a Fully Integrated Province of the Roman Empire

The Italian Astronomer Galileo Was Persecuted by the Catholic Church, and Imprisoned in a Dark Cell

Bloody Mary Was a Ruthless Persecutor of English Protestants

St Patrick Was Irish

Roman Gladiators Fought to the Death

Vichy France Leader Philippe Pétain Tried to Save Jews From the Holocaust

Thanksgiving Day in the US Harks Back to the ‘First Thanksgiving’ Given by Plymouth Settlers in 1621

Oliver Cromwell: Man of the People and Common-Man’s Hero

The US Army Defeated the Japanese and Liberated Vietnam in 1945

Bibliography

Index

INTRODUCTION

‘HISTORY IS A PACK OF LIES ABOUT EVENTS THAT NEVER HAPPENED TOLD BY PEOPLE WHO WEREN’T THERE.’ GEORGE SANTAYANA

The chronicles of history are littered with myths and legends, misinformation, falsehoods, embellishment, wild exaggeration and a great deal of confusion. And this makes for an awful lot of bad history. As Mr Santayana says, the problem with history is that we weren’t actually there, and we rely on other people who also weren’t there to tell us what happened and why. This means that historical ‘facts’, like the ones drummed into us at school, are not quite what they seem: the best we can say for a lot of them is that they are ‘probably true’, whilst others – like Britain was once a fully integrated province of the Roman Empire or Mussolini made the trains run on time – turn out to be, well, probably not true.

There are a myriad of reasons why events or people from the past are misrepresented or misunderstood. Archaeological or documentary evidence may be lacking, unreliable or bewilderingly inconsistent (ask ten or twenty witnesses what happened at a particular incident and you’ll get ten or twenty different versions). Extrapolating what happened at any given event is a tricky business: if you then add in a large chunk of time, be it a decade or several centuries, then some might say it’s an almost impossible task.

Problems also arise when we wrench something out of the past and examine it out of context. We can’t pretend we don’t live in the present, and however much we try, modern sensibilities shape our view of history – and the conclusions that we draw often speak volumes about our own beliefs. In the last century, Cecil Rhodes was revered as a great Empire builder; now many think of him as a crook and an arrogant bully. Which is it to be? And which is the example of ‘bad history’?

History, like life, is annoyingly complex (and confusing); so packaging the past into a neat argument so that it fits some kind of preconceived notion also has its dangers. We liken our historical figures to imaginary characters, and mould them into the comforting stereotypes of hero or rogue. We forget, however, that they were real-life people and, like us, were probably a combination of the good and bad. We much prefer our victories in battle to be resounding and decisive, and not, like many military engagements, muddled, open-ended and inconsequential affairs. Whilst these embellishments make for exciting stories – we all love a dashing hero or a thumping victory – they also distort the truth, endorse delusions of grandeur and perpetuate many of the myths with which we are so familiar.

Historical myths, like fairy tales, are generally quite harmless but when they are seized upon as political weaponry, the consequences can be disastrous. Repressive regimes can cover up a discreditable past or rewrite the history books with their own sanitized version of events (see Chairman Mao) and propagandists and political leaders can appropriate popular historical myths to lend authority to their own rather dubious belief systems (see the Bismarck myth and Hitler). Conversely, some theorists who are hell-bent on proving some kind of government conspiracy or cover-up can also wander into rather dodgy territory (see the attack on Pearl Harbor).

What follows is an investigation into some of the myths and falsehoods that have become entrenched in popular belief and wrongly influenced our understanding of the world. It is by no means exhaustive – there are without a doubt many more myths out there – but I hope it goes some way to shedding light on some of the worst offences. Some will disagree with the findings – I too ‘wasn’t there’ and, as the historian Pieter Geyl said (at least, I hope he said it), ‘History is an argument without end’. But I’m hoping that the history passed down to us is not all a pack of lies, that lurking amongst all that bad history lies the truth – we just need to keep looking for it.

EMMA MARRIOTT

THE AMERICAN OLD WEST WAS A WILD AND DANGEROUS PLACE TO BE

Few areas of history have gripped the imagination as much as the expansion of the United States into the wilderness of the West. Sensational tales of the ‘Wild West’ portrayed a violent and brutal land where hardy settlers rubbed alongside brave cowboys, ruthless outlaws and savage Indians, where people took the law into their own hands to protect themselves and their families.

This image of the Old West proved hugely popular and was consolidated in American folklore, music and dime novels that were published in their millions in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Soldier and showman Buffalo Bill Cody similarly popularized the legend of the frontier land through his Wild West shows. Queen Victoria attended one of his shows at Earls Court in 1867 and wrote in her diary, ‘an attack on a coach and on a ranch, with an immense deal of firing, was most exciting, so was the buffalo hunt, and the bucking ponies, that were almost impossible to sit …’

In the twentieth century, the legend of the Wild West spread to the rest of the world as artists, magazines and movies spun a whole industry around its mythologization, in which gun-slinging heroes battled against ‘Injuns’ in places where, as Sergio Leone put it, ‘life has no value’. The first Western movie, The Great Train Robbery, came out in 1903 and by the 1950s the genre was also lapped up by US television audiences who by 1959 could choose from no fewer than twenty-six prime-time Western series.

Yet the reality of life in the West was quite different from the general lawlessness depicted in the movies. Recent research has shown that crime was relatively low among the West’s settlers and you were more likely to be gunned down in Victorian London than in the Wild West. In the real Dodge City, which at one point was thought of as the biggest and rowdiest town of the Wild West, a total of five deaths in 1878 amounted to the town’s worst year for homicides. Similarly, the legendary shoot-out at the OK Corral, a gunfight between two gangs led by Wyatt Earp and Ike Clanton (and regarded as the most famous gun battle in the history of the Old West) lasted all of sixty seconds and resulted in just three deaths. Face-offs at noon were not common events and gunfights were usually spontaneous and the result of drunken arguments that had got out of hand. The Wild West mythmakers would also have us believe that bank robberies were everyday events, but Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton has estimated that between 1859 and 1900 just twelve bank robberies occurred along the Western frontier.

Research has also shown that, in the absence of any formal government, settlers devised surprisingly effective ways to protect themselves from all manner of crimes. Voluntary organizations in the form of ‘wagon-train’ governments were set up to police and protect the 300,000 pioneers travelling west to California and Oregon, whilst in the Midwest, land clubs and cattlemen associations settled disputes and enforced property rights. On the west coast, gold-mining districts set up legal systems that punished crimes against life and property. On the whole, miners avoided violence and abided by the rules of the district. Andrew Morriss of Case Western Reserve University writes, ‘This amazing polyglot of men seeking rapid wealth, and with virtually no intention of building a lasting society, created a set of customary legal institutions which not only flourished in California but successfully adapted to conditions across the West.’

COWBOYS

Also central to the Wild West myth was the gun-slinging cowboy, the embodiment of the brave lone-rider, who, we’re led to believe, overran the frontier land. In reality, farmers outnumbered cowboys in the West by about a thousand to one: there were (at the most) only 10,000 working cowboys, the majority of whom were either Hispanic, African American or Mexican. Few cowboys could afford a firearm (a modern Colt weapon represented an average nine months’ salary) and many died young, not from shoot-outs but from riding accidents or