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Overview
History is full of myths, legends, fables, folklore, misinformation and misconceptions. Whether they have come about inadvertently or deliberately, many have become part of the public imagination. This book presents some of the most popular and enduring of these myths from the time of the American and French revolutions to the two world wars and beyond. Arranged within well defined geographical or thematic sections, and through a mix of short and long entries, each topic is clearly explained and the myth, error or controversy is exposed. This is an authoritative, compelling and illuminating miscellany, where you can find a straight answer to all those niggling questions about the past.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752495835 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 07/20/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 468 |
| File size: | 524 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 Years |
About the Author
Ed Rayner and Ron Stapley have both taught modern history at school and college level. Ron Stapley is the author of Britain 1900-1945. Their previous book together is Debunking History (2002).
Read an Excerpt
Debunking History
152 Popular Myths Exploded
By Ed Rayner, Ron Stapley
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Ed Rayner and Ron StapleyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9583-5
CHAPTER 1
ANCIENT GRIEVANCES
The Boston Tea Party: Did it Spark the War of American Independence?
The story of the so-called Boston Tea Party provides one of the most colourful and enduring legends relating to the War of American Independence. But its significance and importance have often been misinterpreted, and its role in bringing war to the American colonies has often been misunderstood.
By the beginning of 1773 the main issues between Britain and its American colonies were already clear. Apart from the major question of taxation, whether for revenue or trade regulation (the factor which lay at the root of the Boston Tea Party) there was also the relationship between colonial legislatures and colonial governors, the question of billeting and martial law, and whether British justice was superior to colonial justice. The whole relationship between Britain and the colonies was under challenge, and no effective compromise had yet been found. But since the Boston Massacre of March 1770 American agitation had died down, and the colonies had resumed their former practice of quarrelling with each other: there were bitter boundary disputes between New York and New Hampshire, and between New York and Pennsylvania. In the Carolinas, 6,000 frontiersmen rebelled against the coastal colonial aristocracy, and were put down with the loss of 15 lives. The British government, at the same time, thought it opportune to revive the fortunes of the East India Company by encouraging more sales of its tea in America. The Tea Act allowed the importation of tea directly into America (i.e. without having to be taken to Britain first), and removed the burdensome English duty on the tea, but retained the American duty. To avoid smuggling, the Company was to deal with named official agents. This outraged those American merchants, particularly in New York and Philadelphia, who made fortunes out of smuggling tea and other goods into America: they were now to be excluded from legitimate trading and the low duty would make smuggling unprofitable. Reviving the non-importation agreements would be very difficult – after all, most of these had broken down. The patriots in Boston concluded that the Company would have no difficulty in recruiting agents there, and that they would have no difficulty in selling the tea. In desperation, therefore, some of them dressed as Mohawk Indians, boarded the two tea ships in Boston Harbour, and discharged the contents of 298 tea chests, worth £11,000, into the sea.
Did this event cause the Revolution? Not immediately and not directly. The British government could have ignored the event as it had done the pillaging of the Gaspée the year before. But with the Gaspée the main damage done was to persons rather than property, and in the eighteenth century injury to property was always regarded as much more reprehensible than injury to persons. The British government could have left it to the Massachusetts authorities to seek out and bring to justice the perpetrators. But although it was well known in Boston who the ring-leaders were, it was highly unlikely that there was enough evidence to convince a Boston jury. Throughout most of the rest of the colonies the Tea Party was a cause of shock rather than rejoicing. Even moderate patriots thought that things in Boston had gone too far.
And there it might have rested, with both British and Americans concentrating on what united rather than what divided them. But the British government somewhat mistakenly felt that even in America some punitive action was expected, and in Britain merchants and the East India Company clamoured for retribution. Having decided that the event could not go unpunished, the British government secured the passage through parliament, not without some strenuous opposition, of a series of Acts known to all patriotic Americans as the Retaliatory Acts, and these were to form the basis of the most tangible of the American grievances as listed in the American Declaration of Independence. The closing of the port of Boston was an arbitrary collective punishment. It aroused widespread resentment, even among those who would not have objected to the punishment of the perpetrators. Merchants and ordinary citizens in other ports along the eastern seaboard were alarmed that their prosperity depended on the whim of a government 3,000 miles away. The tampering with the charter of Massachusetts was an implied threat to the constitution of every other colony. The transferring of trials to England and the Quartering Act, which provided for an increased British military presence in Boston, revived earlier grievances which had been allowed to lie dormant.
Radical elements were able to persuade most Americans that the Quebec Act, which the British had been preparing some months before the Tea Party, was, in fact, an instrument for their further enslavement. New England, where conservative elements were strong outside the Massachusetts trouble centre, was predominantly Puritan. It viewed with alarm the religious freedoms confirmed to the Roman Catholics in Quebec, and regarded them incredibly as the first steps by the Church of England in alliance with the papacy (!) to destroy Puritanism. The more materialist of them objected to the extension of the Canadian frontier to the Ohio. Overall, the combined effect of the Retaliatory Acts and the Quebec Act was to play into the hands of those who wanted to revive the anti-British agitation. They were able to persuade even the moderates that it was deliberate British policy to subjugate and enslave the Americans.
It was the moderates who, fighting off proposals for a solemn league and covenant, successfully promoted the idea of an all-American Congress to meet at Philadelphia in 1774. It was soon taken over by the radicals. Without the Boston Tea Party it would probably never have met. Without the Boston Tea Party its main proposals – to pay no taxes to Britain, and to arm in self-defence – would never have been agreed. The First Continental Congress might just have avoided the breach with Britain if the British had been prepared to negotiate with it. But the British government regarded the Congress as an illegal assembly. It continued to pour troops into Boston; Massachusetts continued to arm its militia. Conflict was the inevitable result; it was not inevitable that there would be a bloody skirmish at Lexington on 19 April 1775, but it was inevitable that fighting would break out somewhere in Massachusetts during the spring of that year. The Boston Tea Party was the catalyst that helped to bring this about.
1:2
The United Empire Loyalists: Abandoned by Both Sides?
The American Revolution was the work of a vociferous minority. The passive majority, especially outside the major towns, had little interest in and less understanding of the struggle; and, unless British troops had actually plundered in their neighbourhood, little interest in the war's outcome. But there was an active minority, called Tories by the American patriots, and Loyalists (or United Empire Loyalists) by the British, who argued and sometimes fought for the British cause. During the war those Loyalists living in areas under the control of Congress suffered at best ostracism, and at worst tarring and feathering, loss of property and even loss of life. At the end of the war both sides made promises concerning the Loyalists, but whether or not they kept them has long been a matter of considerable controversy.
When Britain confirmed American independence in the peace negotiations, the problem of the Loyalists loomed large. Britain was particularly concerned that Loyalists with homes in the thirteen colonies should be allowed to return, and their properties restored. Thus the Treaty of Versailles (1783) which ended the war recommended 'to the states the payment of all debts due to British merchants and the passing of relief Acts for the restoration of the property and protection of the persons of the Loyalists'. It was difficult for the states to carry out this promise even if they had wanted to. The divisions of war were too recent and too deep. Returning Loyalists were often subjected to violence, and even when the war was over confiscations of Loyalist property continued. Only South Carolina attempted to carry out the letter of the Treaty; the other states ignored it.
Obviously treatment of the Loyalists in the thirteen states depended much on how strong the area had been for the patriotic cause. Thus some Loyalists returned quietly to their homes, and resumed their businesses without the need for state intervention in the form of relief Acts. But in areas where American patriotism had been strong, life for the Loyalists was intolerable. The British had promised that such people were free to settle in Canada. It was implied that there would be some material assistance in providing the resettlement. In the event there was nothing immediately. It is estimated that 50,000 Loyalists crossed into Canada, and that 50,000 more would have followed if the distances had not been so great. The new Canadians found nothing to succour them. Some dispersed into Nova Scotia and Quebec provinces, found employment and started to rebuild their lives without help. Others, fed by British promises, waited patiently for Britain to honour them. It took a long time, but eventually £12 million was spent in parliamentary grants to Loyalists 'of all classes and conditions'. To the British parliament, used to low taxation and minimal revenue, this seemed a very large sum; to the many Loyalists in great need it seemed little enough. Despairing of having to wait for spasmodic handouts from parliament, a small but determined group established the port of Halifax on the coast of Nova Scotia in 1791. Its subsequent prosperity was due mainly to the hard work of its inhabitants, and little enough to any generosity on the part of the British government.
It is possible to excuse the new America for its intolerance of the Loyalists, but Britain was slow to show gratitude to those who had risked so much in their defence of British interests. Perhaps anything for them was better than independence, and that is why Loyalists were in the vanguard of those who successfully defended Canada during the 1812–14 War.
1:3
The Irish Famine: Did the English Intend the Irish to Starve?
England is often given the blame for the Irish famine of 1846, and is accused of callously ignoring that country's plight, while deliberately failing to take the steps necessary to remedy the disaster. The view that British statesmen intentionally left Irishmen to starve is an unjustified slur on men of high probity like Peel and Russell. They were faced with an enormous economic and social disaster. This disaster had its roots in the English conquest of Ireland some centuries earlier, and from the alien system of land tenure resulting from it. But could the famine have been at least as much due to the primitive agricultural methods of the Irish peasantry, the backward state of their whole economy, their innate resistance to change and to the gross over-population from which Ireland was at that time suffering?
The Irish famine had become a disaster of unprecedented magnitude by the summer of 1846, and its after-effects, in terms of epidemics and destitution, continued long after the good harvests of 1847 and 1848. During the worst years over a million died. The famine embittered further the relations between the English and the Irish, and it was an important factor in the Irish demand for self-rule. It was generally believed in Ireland that an Irish government would have handled the famine better than the British government had done – surely it could have done no worse. So arose the widely held belief that the British government had failed to deal effectively with the famine; worse, that the British government had deliberately allowed the famine to rage in order to weaken Ireland and bring it to heel. And it passed into legend that the governments of Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell were so influenced by Malthus's views on population that they regarded a decline in Ireland's population as inevitable and even desirable, and did little to prevent it. The British government gave credence to these views by publicly apologising in 1998 for the British handling of the famine – an apology based more on political expediency than historical accuracy. How much truth is there in these indictments against the governments of Peel and Russell?
It could be argued that in one sense England was responsible for the famine. England had imposed upon Ireland an alien system of land tenure. Two and a half centuries earlier the English had dispossessed the ruling Irish chieftains and had replaced Irish landholding with a modified form of the landholding practised in England. But whereas in England most tenant farmers held long leases, in Ireland care was taken that tenants held land on short leases, or, as tenants-at-will, on no leases at all. Thus when tenants on short leases improved their land it gave their landlords the incentive to rack up the rents. After all, improved land was in demand and would command much higher returns. While the main crop was grain it was necessary for tenants to keep their land in full cultivation, but the introduction of the potato brought a dramatic change. It was a crop which could feed a family for a year on 20 per cent of the acreage necessary for a family dependent on oats or wheat. So a tenant farmer could leave much of his land uncultivated, allow his outbuildings to fall into rack and ruin, and keep a few animals to sell to pay the rent. This would be kept low by the poor and neglected state of his holding. Landless labourers would still work for the landowner, growing corn largely for export to England, but the tenant farmer would subsist virtually entirely on the potato which could provide almost all his nutritional needs. The potato came into widespread use in the second half of the eighteenth century. By 1845 it is reliably estimated that half of Ireland's eight million population was totally dependent upon it.
There had been partial failures of the potato crop before 1845, and these had necessitated widespread relief measures. But no one anticipated a disaster of the magnitude of 1845–6. Peel's Conservative government became alarmed when potato blight appeared in England in August 1845. Two experts, Dr Lyon Playfair and Professor Lindley, reported in late October that the situation was very serious, and that Ireland's potato harvest would be less than half of normal. They recommended drying potatoes in kilns, and applying chemical preservatives. These remedies were useless, but time was wasted in trying them. Since Peel received the report in late October there was some complacency in that most of the potatoes had already been harvested and were in store. So at first there was scepticism about the gravity of the situation. But potatoes taken from store were often found to be rotten, and Peel's public utterances showed from the beginning that he recognised not only the extreme seriousness of the situation, but also that it was the government's responsibility to deal with the famine, regardless of the laisser-faire notions current at the time. Peel decided to suspend the Corn Laws as early as November, but some of his aristocratic allies thought the Corn Law crisis had been drummed up for political reasons and that the rotten potato had become a political vegetable. One royal duke went so far as to assert that rotten potatoes mixed with grass made a very nutritious meal.
But this callous indifference did not represent the policy of the government. The Irish clamoured for a ban on corn exports. The English corn harvest had failed, while the Irish one was only a little below normal. Wagons taking corn to the ports while the Irish countryside starved necessitated the use of troops to guard them. But Peel thought that banning corn exports would solve nothing. It would ruin the landowners, some of whom were trying to help their tenants, and its retention for sale in Ireland would avail little as the Irish could not afford to buy it. Moreover, to aggravate the corn shortage in England by banning Irish corn imports would have been politically suicidal and in Peel's view unhelpful. He proposed other measures. He scoured Southern Europe to buy disease-free seed potatoes for the spring sowing. Even so, 75 per cent of the 1846 potato harvest was lost. Soup kitchens were set up in Irish towns and accessible Irish villages. These had the double motive of bringing succour to the starving and attempting to wean the Irish off their dependence on the potato. He secretly ordered maize to the value of £160,000 from the USA and sold it openly to the Irish peasantry at 1d per pound. To the peasant brought up on potato, maize savoured of animal feed and was unpleasant to the taste – it was nicknamed 'Peel's brimstone'. But the Irish were soon glad enough to eat it. To help the destitute pay for the maize and other available foods, Peel set up, through the Board of Works, a programme of relief works, such as drainage, railway construction and road improvements. Over £½ million was spent on this in 1846, but it was ineffective. Starving men could not cope with heavy labour. The officials in charge had no experience of dealing with famine; the few that had experienced it in India were still there. Some 15,000 officials were required in a matter of a few weeks, and many unsatisfactory appointments were made. There was much jobbery and corruption.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Debunking History by Ed Rayner, Ron Stapley. Copyright © 2013 Ed Rayner and Ron Stapley. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,1 ANCIENT GRIEVANCES,
2 CONSPIRACIES AND PLOTS,
3 HEROES AND VILLAINS,
4 HISTORICAL DEBATES,
5 HISTORICAL REVISIONS,
6 HISTORICAL RE-EVALUATIONS,
7 POLITICAL RE-EVALUATIONS,
8 INTERNATIONAL RE-EVALUATIONS,
9 LONG-STANDING PUZZLES,
10 ON-GOING CONTROVERSIES,
11 POPULAR MISUNDERSTANDINGS,
12 PERSISTENT MISREPRESENTATIONS,
13 UNRESOLVED PROBLEMS,
Bibliography,