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HBC is at heart a history site. While our focus is on fashion and issues surrounding children, we touch on a wide range of historical topics. As a result we think it important to discuss history. We note certain recurrent themes in history. Perhaps the most consistent over time is that major world powers have almost always seen themselves as God's chosen people and the center of the universe. There have also been various basic approaches and methods of interpreting history. Here we are just beginning our assessment. Do let us know if you have any insights or know of major historians that we shold mention here.
The Greek writer Herodotus is often referred to as the "father of history". The title comes more from the fact that he was the first actual historian rather than his historical method. Modern historians would find his work unacceptable. There are major inaccuracies in his work. He is also known as the "father of lies". Herodotus is known for his Histories, a highly partisan celebration of the Greek victories over the Persians. He wrote them in the mid-5th century B.C. Herodotus appeared to have tossed vin what ever crossed his mind at the time. His description of the Persian Empire is a fascinating description reading more like a travelog than a historical work. Herodotus also delved into mythological prehistory when explaining the background of the conflict. Despite Herodotus' many weakenes as a historian, his work was a substantial improvement over previous compilers of what might be called quasi-history--the logographers.
We note certain recurrent themes in history. Perhaps the most consistent over time is that major world powers have almost always seen themselves as God's chosen people and the center of the universe. [Cook] The Inca even had a hitchingb post of the Sun. This was the case of countless ancient as well as modern civilizations. The best example is the determination pf the Pope and Catholic Church even after Galileo and other early scientists convincingly demonstrated that this could not possibly the case. The British at the turn of the 20th century saw London as the center of the World. Europeans developed social and bilogical justification (social Darwinism and eugenics) using pseudo-science to demostrate their superiority. Many Americans in the 21st century share this view. Modern maps commonly show America in the middle. Few Americans ever question this world view.
One author describes what he calls as "gratuitous cultural embroidery". He dedescribes that as man's "quite remarkable capacity to tie themselves and others in knots by developing elaborate and ultimnately arbitrary rules". [Cook] This is an interesting observatiin that needs some consideration. One example is the amazingly complicated meso-American calendar. Less complicated, but still elaborate cultural emroidery is no unknown to the modern world. This cultural emroidery not uncommonly involves both ritual and dress.
Students as they begin to study history are prone to believe that history is established fact and are prone to give great creedence to printed material. As one persues their study of history it becomes much more complicated. A particular problem for young people is that they often get ther history from the movies and television--media in which facts are often prey to what film makers call creative license and dramatic effect or more blatant propaganda. The serious student finds that historians, even competent historians have very different interpretations and even dispute what had been assumed to be accepted facts. This complex web becomes even more difficult as one learns foreign languages and moves outside the cacoon of one's own country. And this is even more the case when one's reading is persued immediate society, religion, and social group. The eventual conclusion is that historical truth is very slippery. And arguments over major issues are eternal. Often the accepted interpretations fillow what James McPherson calls a "scholarly pendulum". The job of an historian is to first collect and document facts. Factual information does exist and can be subjected to rigorous historical analysis. It is on that foundation that competent historians than form their opinions and historical theories. The problem ith history is that many historians first form their opinions and then proceed to selectively collect their facts to butress their opinions. There are many examples of this since the very beginning of history. One of the best examples is the Lost Cause historians in America after the Civil War. Another example is the Marxist historians, especially Soviet historians. And in todays's world many theologically oriented Muslim historians.
There have also been various basic approaches and methods of interpreting history. The reader of course should not review this list to find one interpretation with the key to interpreting history. Rather there may be elements of truth in many of these approaches which can enhance any historical assessment.
Geography has had an obvious impact on history. Just how significant is a matter of conjecture, but that it is very important there is no doubt. Anthropologists have established almost without doubt tht mankind developed in Africa. There is considerable difference of opinion as to how man spread out over the globe. Here geography must have played a major role. Some accounts suggest man first moved along coast lines. Notably all of the early civilizations emerged in river vallies. One at the edge of Africa, the others outside of Africa. The key factor with rivers was the importantance of dependable water source and alluvial flooding enriching the soil. In addition the movement away from tropical climate was a factor. Herding was based on rich graslands and grass is most lush beyond the tropics. The same is true of crop yields of important grains--species of grasses. [Cook] It was the agricultural abundance in these river vallies that gave rise to the first civilizations. Europe's emergence in the 16th century was strongly associated with geography. [Diamond, Guns.] Geography has continued to influence history. There are of course many other instances of geography affecting history. Russian history was affected by the vulnerability of the flat to Steppe to inasion. The geographic isolation of the Americas were factors in the success of the Conquistadores over the Native American civilizations. [Cook] Russian history is marked with invasion from east and west. The origins of Russia itself evolved around the major rivers. The Huns and Mongols swept east over Russia from the Mongolian Plain. It was the Sweedes, Poles and Germans that swept west. Britain in contrast benefitted by the security afforded by the Channel. At sea, it was an island nation, Britain, that became the world's preeminent sea power. An American naval strategist theorized that in modern history, command of the seas has been desisive. [Mahan] This ground-breaking assessment of seapower was premissed on geography. Geographical factors had a huge impact on the settlement of America. New York's rise was based on the important natural harbor and the fact that the Hudson River was an important route inland, made even more important when the Erie Canal linked the Huson to the Great Lakes, opening the West and turning New York into the most important city in America.
No one doubts that economics have influenced history. HBC has asssessed some of the major economic developments in history. Some historians, however, argue that economics is more thn an important factor. Marx argues that economics determines history setting up a dyalectic. He theorized that human civilzation moves through successive stages of history. Feudalism was replaced by capitalism which would eventually be replaced by communism. Marx did not argue just that eonomics was important, but that economics governed historical development.
Man has often believed that he and history is in the hands of God. That was the view of Medieval Christians and many in the world still have that view. While modern historians reject this world view, it is undeniable that religion has been a powerful force in history.
Many historical assessments stress powerful social and economic forces as driving history. Often loss in these discussions is the role of individuals. A strong case can be made for the importance of individuals in major historical events. This has been referred to as the Great Men approach. But of course in our modern PC worl, Great Individuals is more acceptable and probably more accurate. Here many examples of important can be considered. The Russian Revolution is often described as a result of social forces that had been developing for centuries. A strong case can be made for the Revolution as a coupd'état that may have never occurred without the leadership of Lenin. [Pipes] Individuals have been powerful forces for godd and for evil. Strong cases can be made that the historty of the 20th century was powefully affected by Churchill, Hitler, and Roosevelt. One can conceive of a very different 20th century history without these and other key individuals. One historian writes "the population as a whole plays only a marginal role in history, or at any rate in political and military history, which is the preserve of small elites: people do not make history--they make a living." [Pipes]
The NAZIs saw race as the central force in history. There is in fact little eviudence of this. Many ancient civilizatons appear to have given relatively limited attention to race. It appears to have surfaced as a more important force in the modern world, in part because of European colonialism, African slavery, and other trends. While race may have not been a major determinant of history, racism has at times been an important factor in the cultural life of many countries.
Some authors have stressed environmental factors or probably more accurately states how societies effectively utilize their environments. There are many examples in history of great socities collapsing. Attempting to understand the forces at play have facinated historians. Historians debate over the causes for the collapse of these societies. One of the great works of history is Gibon's The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Historians have often persued the collapse of civilizations as romantic mysteries. Rome has been one of the civiilizations most studied, but many other scocities have attracted the interest of historians, includiing the Egyptians, the Maya, the Toltecs, and other civilizations. Many of these societies built magnificent cities envolving sophisticated arvhitecture and stunning works of art involving a huge effort and expenditure of resources. Some of these great cities were subsequently abandoned. which they then abandoned. This leaves historians with the need to explain why these cities were abandoned. after building them with such great effort? Rarely in early histories were ebnvironmental factors stressed. More modern historians are giving increasing attention to environmental factors. One historian points to environmental factors as a major cause for the decline of Angkor Wat, the Mayan civilization, the Easter Islands, Greater Zimbabwe, the Indus Valley and other civilizations. [Diamond] In more modern terms there are many failed and failing countries which have are exhausting their environmental resources, countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Somalia.
No one has ever developed a theory of history based exclusively or largely on disease. Disease is, however, a factor that has had a powerful impact on history. Disease is not a topic that has commonly been treated in detail by historians. Some historians have begun to give it more attention. Here Jeremy Diamond's Gun's, Steel, and Germs has powerfully persued the importance of disease in history. The modren threat of both bio-terrorism and the rapid movement of disease vectors as a result of modern communications has drawn further interest in the subject. We now know that the plague had a huge impact on modern Europe. We also know that smallpox and other diseases virtually wided out Native american populations. The topic is of some interest to HBC, both because of its important historical role, but also because of the role children have played in deceloping cures. One other interesting topic is the development of polio in the 20th century and the huge impact it had on children.
Some modern hidtorians have proposed a liberal thory of history. There are two basic assumptions that underline this theory. First, democracies tend to conduct peaceful relations, at least in their affairs with other democracies. Here we are speaking of true demicracies, not just countries which hold elections, but countries with constitutional rule and civil liberties. Second, countries with market economies over time tend to become political democracies. This is not an imutable, but does appear to be a general tendency. {Mandelbaum] This is the hope in the modern world, that free markets in Russia and Chima will drive both countries toward political democracy. China today is not a democracy, but it is a very different country than it was in the 1980s. Of course, free markets are not without their problems. Some wonder if the economic difficulties that have been encountered in the 1990s have invalidated this theory. Some also sight declining popularity of democratic governments in some countries. One interesting factor, however, is that unlike the 1930s, there are really no competing systems to liberal democrcy and free markets. First fascism and now Communism have been throughly descredited. One historian has postulated another complication, the conflict is shift from nation states to civilizations. [Huntington]
The modern discipline of philosophy was born out of Greek philosophy. Herodotus is often cited as the father of history. There are today two basic philosophical schools of history: 1) history as a cyclical process and 2) history as a evolutionary process in which society slowly progresses toward enlightened civilization. The phiosophical attitudes of historians over time have been colored by these basic philosophical schools. The cyclical school sees history as the account of a series of civilizations that have developed, flowered, and declined over time. Such authors often believe that immutable forces are involved that givern these process. Such historians often lack the optimism and idealiam that the progrssive school often exhibit. The progressive school see history as the account of man's rise from primitive nomads to modern civilized individuals. The underlying message is that civilization will eventually lead to enlightenment and a utopian endpoint. A good example of this out look is Francis Fukuyama's, The End of History. The rise of 20th century totalitarianism brought this view into question, but the victory of Western democracy has reinvigorated this optimistic, progressive outlook.
Historicism is the theory that history is guided by laws which can be discovered towards a foresseable conclusion. The most elaborate such theory is of course Marxism. One important philosopher totally rejected the idea that history follows any set laws. He defended the Open Society' and liberal democracy seeing historicism as the intelectual foundation for totalitarianism. He argued convincingly that the expansion of human knowledge is a causal factor in history. Thus since "no society can predict, scientifically, its own future states of knowledge", it is thus imposible to predict histoty. [Popper]
History is commonly structured around national states or reguional groupings of nation states. Thus most people are acustomed to viewing history through thre prisim of their own national experiences. Of course, this can lead to many misunderstandings as so many historical developments involve interactions with other countries. We have worked on many historical events as we developed HBC, working on a thematic and chronological approach. Many of these topics toch upon or pertain to many individual countries. A number of HBC readers have expressed an interest in specific countries. So it seems a reasonable to create pages on national histories that tie these various pages together for readers interested in a specific country. We do not have many of these national history pages, but will begin to create them as HBC develops. Here we invite readers to contribute assessments of their country's history. HBC's focus is of course largely American and we are thus interested in reader contributions on their history.
We are building a historical chronology. Here we are in an organizational bubble. We began with just dealing with a clothing chronology, but over time we realized that we needed a historical section to put our fashion discussin in context. So our chronology section at this time is historical for the earlier eras and more focused on fashion by the 16th century. This is going to take some reorganization to sort this out, but it is a project we will eventually address.
International organizations have come to play an increasingly important role in history. There have associations appearing early in history. Athens for example fought the Pelopenesian War with the Delian League. The League was, however, more of an alliance dominated by Athens than a true international organization. A medieval grouping was the Holy Roman Empire. Here the Hapsburgs were not able to totally dominate the Empire, but it did not really have an independent existanance separate from that of the emperor. Perhaps the first real international organization was the Red Cross (1864). It was founded Many international organizations have followed the humanitrian impulses which led to the creation of the Red Cross. A range of chritable organizations followed in the wke of the Red Cross. Since World War II there has been a plethora of new international organizations founded to persue a range of social efforts, especially ecological programs which nation states seem to have difficulties addressing. Some international organizations have been overtly political, such as the Socialist internationals. The major international organizations have been aimed at persuing world peace. The first was the League of Nations set up after World War I (1919). The League failed in the face of Fascism. Its successor was the United Nations established after World War II (1945).
Historians at the end of the 20th century were given a radically new source of information--DNA. Questins of heredity had interested historians earlier. This was particularly true of the NAZIs. At thtime there was no scientific method to measure heredity. That of course did not stop the NAZIs with horendous results. Historians in the 21st now have a way of measuring heredity which they are just beginning to take advantage of. In part the NAZI obsession wih genetics has caused historians to approach DNA cautiously. It is now clear that DNA evidence can be enormously useful, but has severe limitations. One area in which DNA can be particularly useful is pre-history. Our knowledge of cultures that did not leave limited records is very limited, both because of the lack of records and the time which has pased erasing physical evidence. Historians in many cases have to rely on linguistic studies to develop information on he origins of modrn peoples. DNA evidence is adding another independent source of information to collaborate or disprove linguisic studies and archeological finds. The fact that some of the issues are politically contentious, such as just how cloesly related Jews and Arabs are complicates work. DNA may also assist with more recent historical questions, such as President Jefferson's children. Even so there are substantial limitations to DNA work. One author who tried use DNA to find more aout his ancestors discusses some of the limitations. [Bell] He points out that the average individual if we go back only 10 generations has about 14,000 ancestors. Of course our understanding of DNA is still very limited. Historians will undoubted make major advances in using DNA as the science develops. A HBC reader tells us about his personal DNA research.
HBC is of course a history site focusing on clothing and fashion. Clothing was not a central cetermining factor in hisry like the historicl interpretationsdescibd above. Clothing has, however, been an important factor in history, affecting historical developments beginning in ancient times. These impacts continue to affect modern times. We have begun to assess many of these historical trends on HBC.
Because of its high value and light weight, silk was the single most important product carried west from China on the fabeled Silk Road. The trade and exchanges which resulted had an almost incalcuable impact on Europeand and Asian history.
Silk was also an important cargo on the vessels working the Spice Route. Because of the natureof thise vessels, a much wider range of goods could be carried and in greater quantities. Thus goods like spices, porcelin, and other products could be carried. The Spice Route and the associated European Voyages of Discovery has an enormous impact on our modern world.
The wool trade was at the heart of the medieval European economy. Just as cotton was at the center of the Industrial Revolution, wool was a key commodity in the Medieval era. Wool was the principal raw material used for textiles in Medieval Europe. It was usually woven to produce cloth, but some was used to produce felt. The center of the European wool trade was Flanders, but the damp Low Countries was not condusive to sheep husbandry. Conditions accross the Channel in England were ideal and sheep flourished there and it was a center of wool production. Thus critical economic ties developed between England and Flanders.
The fur trade played a key role in the movement east of the Norsemen (Vikings) and the foundation of modern Russia. The fur trade also played an important role in the founding of New France and theopening of the west in both Canada and America.
No development has so affected our modern life as the Industrial Revolution. Here cotton and textiles were at the center of the inovations which began the transformation of European society in the 8th century. Historians debate just where and when the Industrail Revolution began. We would set it at about the mid-18th century in the English Midlands. It was at this time that workers instead of weaving piece work at home, began to
work in factories. Here cotton manufacture became especially important. Several inventions at this time were responsible, including the spinning jenny, flying shuttle, and a water-powered loom. This was soon followed by the key invention of our time which served as a catalyst for industrial expansion--the steam engine.
The slave trade was not based on cotton, but many economists believed that slavery would have gradually died out because it was an inefficent economic system. The invention of the cotton gin made possible the large-scale production of cotton which in great demand as a result of the Industrial Revolution. America in the 19th century was the primary supplier of cotton o European mills. American slaves were emancipated as a result of the Civil War (1861-65). The lingering impact of slavery, continues to affect the United States. Here we do not just mean the rascist attitudes of many Whites. This was the major problem until the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s. Today while racism has not been eliminated the continuing impact os slavery and racism on Black people themselves may be the major difficult. Social attitudes such as the large number of children born out of wedlock appear to be major imediments.
A British teacher writes, "One of the ways we teach history to the under 13s at least, is to get them to compare their lives with those of people in other eras. About 2 years ago
I had a mixed group of 11-12 year olds who were really keen to explore Tudor times but went off the idea when they realised the long school hours and regime the boys were subjected to. The girls thought we should still do a re-enactment until it was pointed out that their lives would have been worse in many respects. I am not teaching history at the moment but have just been to see a new touring exhibition about the Tudors and just wish it had been available for that class. I really like interactive and immersive ideas like that as history can be very dry without making it more people centred." Actually this is part of the genesis of HBC. As a young teacher in America, I noted how students would often ask about children and life-style type questions. Yet their history was full of illustrations about adults--often beared white men. Thus HBc focuses on children over the ages. We emphasize clothing, but deal extensively with culture and life style of ordinary people. Of course we have far to go, but there is now quite a bit of information aechived in HBC on childhood throughout the years and in different countries and societies. Hopefully some teachers will give us an idea of methods they found effective in teaching history to children.
Bell, Edward. Cook, Michael. A Brief History of the Human Race (Norton, 2003), 385p.
Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel.
Huntington. Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations.
McPherson, James M. This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War (2007).
Mahan, Alfred Thayer. The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (1890).
Mandelbaum, Michael. The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the 21st Century.
Pipes, Richard. VIXI: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger (Yale Iniversity Press: 2003), 264p. ("VIXI is Latin for "I lived." His parents managed to excape fom NAZI-occupied Poland. Most of their family perished in the gas chambers. Some describe him as the intelectual archetct of America's victory in the Cold War.)
Popper. Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism.
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Created: February 16, 2003
Last updated: 5:25 PM 12/11/2007
