Historical personages are over emphasized

Western history is looked at very often and far too heavily as a history compsed of and dictated primarily by a few specific individuals. This is not, however, an especially good way of looking at history. Granted there are individuals who have made major contributions to the course of history, but very often individuals emphasized were little more than great exemplars of cultural/social/economic trends already present. Trends which, had the specific individual not existed, would have gone forward anyway.

p.s. More later, now I go to cook noodles.

 

Yeah, but it is just so much easier to deify great men than examine the complexities of demography and culture.

Really though this is a chicken and egg argument.
You argue that without these great personalities general cultural trends would have followed in their direction anyway. True enough, but the trends would have manifested themselves then in other 'great men.' The Men who actually did accomplish it then are just a product of their circumstances, yet did for their part have disproportionate agency from the nameless masses, single-handedly ushering in major turning points.

So if Columbus had died in infancy we would be unfairly blaming some other sap for enabling 500 years of genocide.

 

that seems just like an essay question i had on my test last semester


It is true to some degree. Julius Caesar achieved a lot because he had the backing of his army. Could he have done it without them? no. Would any joe schmoe have been able to accomplish what he did? no. Taking advantage of an oppurtunity is genius in and of itself. Caesar, alexander(fill in many other gargantuan figures) grabbed the bull by the horns and directed history how they saw fit to. Anyone else would have directed it in some other way. That is fantasy, however. Our history HAS been largely shaped by some key figures.

Revisionist history is too often used just to sell books or complete PhDs.

 

It's very true. Like columbus discovered america, but who built his boats? And what about his crew?

On a side not he didn't the native americans discovered america

 

He discovered America for 'the west.'

And who cares who built the boat? How can you compare someone who was a slave(literally or figuratively) to someone who more or less led to this part of the world being conquered by Europeans? The boat builder didnt shape history..he just shaped a piece of boat.

 

yeh but the point remains, that he couldn't of done it without them. I mean its the same with socialism, lenin lead the russian reovlutoin but couldn't have done it without the massess.

 

should everyone be treated equal in history? Am i shaping history as much as george bush is?

 

On the Cloumbus this. Folks often speak of Columbus as if he just came along out of nowhere. Folks seem to think that everybody in Europe was sitting around twiddling their thumbs until Columbus came along and proposed his little plan to get to China by sailing west. Fact is that Columbus's era was chok full of explorers all trying to find, among other things, the fastest way to China. Columbus simply happened to be the first to try sail west to China. If he had died in infancy as per BlueBing83's senario then in perhaps in 1496 or 1497 some other fellow would have come along and tried sailing west to China.

Another good example is Edison and the light bulb. People genuinely seem otthink that if Edison hadn't invented it we would all still be using candles and gas lighting. Edison did not just come up with the idea all of the sudden out of nowhere. People had been trying to make similar things for years and had gradually been getting closer and closer to the correct design. If not edison, then perhaps Westinghouse would have invented it. Neither could have edison invented it if not for the work of the previous three or so generations. It's not so much the folks who made the glass for the bulb, or the filiments, or the copper wire who are important, it's the folks who took the knowledge of electricity to the point where Edison was able to take the next step. Without those generally forgotten folks, Edison wouldn't have been able to do shit.

 

you are if you shoot him...... otherwise probably not......

 

You're missing the point: Others didnt do what columbus or edison did. That is purely fantasy and 'what if' history. Mental masturbation if you will. History is about dealing with facts. The fact is, Columbus and Edison have dramatically changed the history of the world. While others may have done what they did later, they didnt. We should celebrate the genius and the talent of the people who ACTUALLY did something instead of the ones who "could have"

 

Who's missing the point? The point is that we tend to view certain semi-random folks as the people who "did something" and then ignore everybody else. Why do we celebrate Thomas Edison but not Heinrich Gobel or Joseph Swan? Both of whom developed working, practicle light bulbs before Edison did. Do you genuinely believe that Edison is the only person who "did something" in relation to inventing the light bulb. Do you really believe that nobody else had anything to do with it? Or that Edison is the only person capable of having invented it? Same goes for Columbus. As you are aparently unaware, Columbus was not the only person conducting voyages of exploration during that time period, those guys were a dime a dozen back then. We celebrate Columbus but not Amerigo Vespucci.

Celebrating genuis is just fine, but we tend to celebrate it in a rather pathological way. We celebrate genius as though it simply pops into being unaided and accomplishes amazing tasks out of nowhere and with total historical detachment. Perhaps this is because all of history is just so very big. Trying to look at all of it, or even more than we do now would be just so hard and difficult. It is easier to keep it simple and pretend that most of it was unimportant or didn't happen. Let's just focus on a few important people and events and pretend that all of history revolves around them.

 

what histories are you attacking? textbook histories that are in schools? they offer a GLANCE at history. You could fill a whole entire textbook on 15th century explorers, but that is not the point of those textbooks.


Lets remember..columbus = 1492...vespucci = 1500. And we dont celebrate the guy? Do you know where the name America comes from? You should have pointed out the vikings who probably found america centuries before...

As for scientists...most science tends to build ontop of each other, so no, Edison's work didnt just pop up out of nowhere. As for heinrich goebel..he probably has a much better claim on 'inventing' the lamp than edison.

 

As to the vikings, yes they did indeed land on and begin to colonize a tiny portion of the south labrador coast. However, their colonies were eventually lost and in time forgotten entirely. The evidence that they were there, while conclusive, is sparse. The impact of said colonies on the course of history is certainly no better than negligable. The viking landings in North America are essentailly an interesting historical footnote. They made no contribution what-so-ever to later large scale colonization by Spain, Portugal, France, and England.

As to Amerigo vespucci, yes the Americas are named after him, duh. Most people do not know this, it is not generally taught in schools, and we don't have an "Amerigo Vespucci day" marked on our calendars. Have you ever seen a statue of Amerigo Vespucci? Have you read a poem about Amerigo Vespucci? Come to think of it, do people know what his actual accomplishments were, or merely that the America's are named after him?
Columbus discoverd a few small islands. To his dying day he thought that he had landed on islands off the coast of China or perhaps Japan. Amerigo Vespucci was the fist to land in continental South America, and the first to realize that it was a continent in its own right and not part of Asia. He did a bunch more too, but I am beginning to ramble.

 

Columbus was earlier...i assume thats why we have columbus day and not vespucci day. Although, Columbia is the poetic name of America..so both have lent their name to the naming of this part of the world. Also, i was taught that america was named after vespucci.

 

we over deify people, that is the nature of the creature, we look for creatures bigger and more powerful than ourselves, people who did big things are an "intellectual" and convenient way to do it.......