Transnational Comparison

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Transnational Comparison

When you have read the article about Columbus by David Armitage, read the article by Rafal Jaworski, which is a review of a book about Columbus by Manuel Rosa. 

 

 



Tasks (students' view):
Questions about the article "Christopher Columbski, or a tale of King Wladyslaw on a remote island"

1


What is the main claim of the book by Manuel Rosa (‘Columbus: the untold story’)?


2


What is Jaworski’s opinion of Rosa’s book? What criticisms does he make of Rosa as a historian?


3

What is the connection between the article by Armitage and the article by Jaworski?


4

Do a Google search to establish the academic credentials of Rosa and Armitage as historians.

What does it reveal?


5

The study of Christopher Columbus is not part of the National Curriculum in England, and few students learn about him. Can you speculate about why this might be the case?


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Tasks (teachers' view):


1 What is the main claim of the book by Manuel Rosa (‘Columbus: the untold story’)?
2 What is Jaworski’s opinion of Rosa’s book? What criticisms does he make of Rosa as a historian?
3 What is the connection between the article by Armitage and the article by Jaworski?
4

Do a Google search to establish the academic credentials of Rosa and Armitage as historians.

What does it reveal?

5 The study of Christopher Columbus is not part of the National Curriculum in England, and few students learn about him. Can you speculate about why this might be the case?


Teacher commentary on transnational comparisons


Jaworski’s article makes the point that even with very famous historical figures, like Christopher Columbus, the historical record is ‘largely fragmentary’. He adds that ‘Throughout centuries documents have been lost or destroyed… It often happens that the winds of history effectively efface one’s footprints… Even history students know very well that the further we go back in time, the harder it is to establish data which, from our contemporary perspective, seem obvious.’
This is important because he goes on to argue that into the vacuum and the gaps in the historical record step people who make things up about the past, or who distort and manipulate what evidence there is to make knowledge claims that are flimsy or simply false.
He reviews the book by Manuel Rosa (who is Portuguese), ‘Columbus, the untold story’, which claims that Columbus was in fact Portuguese.
Jaworski is extremely critical about the validity of Rosa’s claims, and his ability and integrity as a historian, focusing in particular on his flawed use of footnotes and his referencing of historical sources, and the weak analysis of historical sources:
Columbus: The Untold Story can be seen as a part of increasingly popular pseudo-Iberian studies, in which every nonsense can be sold under the pretence of academic research. It is a great shame that, taking into account numerous interviews with the author and the presentation of the book in the Polish media, this nonsense is uncritically accepted and promoted. The so-called “Norman Davies’s syndrome” also applies here, since we simply like reading everything that foreigners write about us and our history. One may only derive satisfaction from the fact that Manuel Rosa, a fervent Portuguese patriot, who has put so much effort in proving that Columbus was Portuguese, now must witness the spreading of the news that Columbus was a Pole.
The academic apparatus (footnotes and bibliography) in a historical publication give the reader an opportunity to verify information provided by the author and to consult the source and critical texts on the basis of which the author has developed his theories. In Columbus this apparatus is just a sham which makes the book appear academic. Footnotes have been inserted in an arbitrary way, while the most crucial source texts have not been indicated. Speculations on Columbus’s origins are perhaps the most classic example of amateurish works in which incompetence is hidden behind the veil of noisy enthusiasm and unshaken confidence in one’s infallibility.
Another, more serious problem is that every sentence in the book serves as an example of the author’s lack of skills in analyzing historical source texts. Rosa seems unable to subject the consulted texts to elementary criticism with regards to the author’s credibility or the informative value of the text. This ineptitude partly results from the lack of preparation and it is partly a conscious strategy, since even a basic analysis of some source texts on which Rosa builds his theory would force him to verify his theses.
The connection between Jaworki’s article, and the article by Armitage is that Armitage argues that people are always trying to use and distort the past for their own ends (in relation to the story of Columbus, but also more generally), and Jaworski devotes a whole article to illustrating just one particular example of this phenomenon.
In terms of the comparative status of Armitage and Rosa as historians, A Google search reveals that whereas Armitage is an endowed professor at one of the world’s leading universities (Harvard), Rosa is ‘an information technology analyst and amateur historian’ (see wikipedia entry for Rosa).
The British historian John Tosh has made the point that ‘the diversity and unevenness of the history which is publicly available raises the more profound issue of academic authority’ Tosh, 2008: 136). For a spectacular example of this, see the brief video clip of ‘The Regan years’ (http://www.learnourhistory.com/The_Reagan_Revolution.html), from the ‘Learn our History’ website (www.learnourhistory.com). The site promises ‘positive, patriotic and unbiased American history, and its founders argue that their project was necessary because in schools in the United States, ‘our children's classes and learning materials are often filled with misrepresentations, including historical inaccuracies, personal biases and political correctness—and without acknowledging God's role in America's founding and development.’ The site has a page about the academic rigour of its content development, with endorsements from academic professors (http://www.learnourhistory.com/How_We_Develop_Our_Content.html).
It is because there have always been people keen to exploit the past for their own purposes that an essential part of school history is the development of historical, critical and media literacy, so that young people leave school able to tell the difference between good and bad history, and in the words of Norman Longworth (1981), ‘It does require some little imagination to realise what the consequences will be of not educating our children to sort out the differences between essential and non-essential information, raw fact, prejudice, half-truth and untruth, so that they know when they are being manipulated, by whom, and for what purpose.’
A Google search reveals that Rosa has a substantial web presence, including his own web site. However, we should remember that web presence is not in itself a guarantor of authority and reliability. As the British historian Stephen Church points out, ‘The internet is wonderful for historians, but you’ve got to remember that there is absolutely no one between you and the idiot who is putting this stuff on the web.’ (Church, 2002).

One explanation of the comparative neglect of Columbus as a topic in the history curriculum in England is that like many other countries, and perhaps more than most, most politicians want school history to focus mainly on the story of the national past (and preferably, to tell a nice, positive story about the national past).Columbus was not part of building the British Empire, and our national curriculum for history tends to focus on British explorers, and the British Empire, rather than on the exploits of 'foreigners'.

References
Church, S. (2002) Seminar for history mentors, School of Education, 10 May 2002. (Stephen Church is a Professor of Education at the University of East Anglia).

Longworth, N. (1981) We’re moving into the information society- what shall we teach the children?, Computer Education, June: 17-19.
Tosh, J. (2008) Why history matters, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.




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