Historians: Past Eras Were Worse Than Now

[Vanessa]

Just an article I ran across on yahoo a few minutes ago, thought it was interesting.

Historians: Past Eras Were Worse Than Now

By MARK JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Sat Dec 10, 3:40 AM ET

ALBANY, N.Y. - Terrorist attacks, a war in
Iraq and natural disasters aren't so bad compared to other tough times in America's past, from the Revolutionary War to the Cold War, history professors say.

Asked to compare eight difficult periods of the nation's history, 46 percent of the 354 professors who responded to a nationwide survey agreed the current era was the least trying. The Civil War, 55 percent said, was the toughest.

Researchers at the Siena Research Institute of Siena College came up with the survey after hearing students comment they felt today's era was one of the most trying in America's history.

"It's an issue of perspective," said Thomas Kelly, a professor emeritus of history and American studies at Siena who helped conduct the survey, which was released Thursday.

"With very few exceptions most generations have confronted enormous kinds of problems and have to greater or lesser degrees coped," he said.

Next to the Civil War ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù which threatened the nation's very existence and cost the lives of more than 600,000 people ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù the poll found the Revolutionary War and the Great Depression to be the most trying, followed by Vietnam and the Cultural Revolution, World War II, the Cold War, World War I and today.

Kristina Hicks, 20, a Siena junior, said that while it's true most of today's Americans have not had to sacrifice like previous generations did, she disagrees with the poll's findings.

"I definitely think today is one of most trying times," she said. "When I read about things like 9/11 and the war in Iraq in textbooks, it doesn't actually portray the whole picture of what happened."

Dan Reisner, a 21-year-old Siena senior, ranks the current era in the middle, saying the destruction of the World Trade Center changed his world view.

"I never thought we were under threat until I saw 9/11," he said. "It was very shocking. Times are definitely more dangerous now. Terrorism is constantly getting worse."

Kelly said the shock of the 2001 terrorist attacks was felt especially hard by today's college students, who were in their early or middle teenage years at the time.

"For young people, life is very visual," Kelly said. "There are few things as visual as the twin towers falling."

The survey was mailed to each of the roughly 2,500 American colleges and universities with a history department, Kelly said.

 

[Ken]

I think its true that life is very visual. That is why we are able to study history as a subject academically and not get powerfully affected by it emotionally.

Maybe its a bad example, but I remember before the film Titantic came out. People were aware of the history of the even, but it didnt really affect them. When they say the film though, I remember people crying during it because seeing it happen in front them had a much more powerful impact and made them much more emotionally involved.

If we look at history, some of the great wars and battles of the past were huge in scale in comparison to what is going on in the world now and much much more horrific. But people live in the present and will guage their responses to events about how it impacts them individually and affects their own lives, which I guess make sense and is understandable really, although it doesn't hurt to at least be aware of the larger picture of things.

Ken

 

[scotrace]

Perspective

1864, Vicksburg: No food to be had, rotting bodies piling up; some people have taken to eating their clothing to stay alive. Everyone has lost someone they loved, often as not to dysentery. Civilians - women and children - have died of horrible wounds from the constant shelling.

1933, Nebraska: A woman loses a 1/2 cent bobby pin between the floorboards in her bedroom and cries for half an hour, because there isn't a single cent with which to replace it. Everything is cheap, there simply isn't any money to be had. Banks have failed, families made homeless overnight. Then the dust storms! The dust was so thick that people scooped up bucketsful while cleaning house. Dust blocked exterior doors; to get outside, people had to climb out their windows and shovel the dust away.

1944, New Jersey: You're a jewish person hearing incomprehensible stories from relatives in Europe and fear for their safety. You've given everything you can think of to scrap drives and bought war bonds until the pinch is severe. Your son is in a jungle in the Pacific somewhere, the tires on your car are patched beyond limit and your gas rations ran out last week anyway. News is days old. You feel cut off, worried, as though the world might be ending.

2005, Anywhere, USA: The falling of the Twin Towers was so horrific you felt lost, angry, deeply grieving. You came to avoid news of the cleanup as it was just too painful. Your cousin serves in the ongoing, forgotten war in Afghanistan and her safety is a daily worry for the entire family. All the Support newsgroups are filled with anxious messages, and many must be downloaded to your iPod to read later, at your office. You're thinking of trading in your Suburban for something smaller to save gasoline, maybe a Lexus, but a call to the dealer via cell phone on the way to TGI Fridays for dinner confirms that the rate may be better next month...

 

[BellyTank]

I think its true that life is very visual.
Ken

...this is maybe one reason why people nowadays have an impression that 'Today' we are living in terrible times:

All that happens in the world can be seen from the relative comfort of the sofa.
The 'Twin Towers' unfolded live on TV- I remember watching from here in Denmark it as it happened. Also- all the other daily tragedies across the globe are seen by everyone. Back in the day, a lot of the global atrocities and suffering would not have been so well publicised and discussed. One hundred years ago, things that happened far away, or just in the next state may not have touched 'us' as it would today.

The modern media has brought it all home in living, visceral colour...

B
T

 

[Pilgrim]

I suspect that TV makes everything more vivid. At age 55, I remember that one of the reasons the VietNam war became so unpopular was the ability of TV to bring it into people's living rooms. This was a first - the closest previous occurrence was WWII and Korea in film shorts shown in movie theaters.

That said, I agree with the study. Can you visualise people actually donating metal to scrap drives, piling things in the street to help the war effort? Raising victory gardens?

I think we are more complacent and sacrifice much less then previous generations. Today's world may seem harsh to young people, but it's the only world they've known, so that is not surprising.

 

[Mycroft]

I think it is alrelative, you can't say X time was worse than Y time because it really depends on the people affected. Like the time Israel was invated by Romans, was bad for the Israelis, but the Romans were at their peak.

 

[Ken]

Well i guess it also depends on your perspective. Like if you lived in medieval times in England during civil war you would know nothing except war so you would be used to it as part of life whereas in our more sheltered luxury of modern society most of us feel deeply affected by even small results of the current political climate.

Ken

 

[Andykev]

I'll just take it one day at a time

"They aren't reallythrowing people into ovens, are they?"

It depends on which side of the line, or political ideology you had. Or your skin color-religion-race. Past era's were worse, I think, when you compare the slaughter of people in battles, or from disease, plague.

Things are so much better today, but all that can change in a hurry.

Remember, China will take back Tiwan by 2010 they say. I hear they are building aircraft carriers that rival the US Navy. What will the US President do? As a nation? Yep, it could get ugly. Korea, this new Holy War....the latest news I saw today was that they were again calling for death to the infidels and the cross. Da Vinci Code? Book of Revelation?

 

[Twitch]

While every generation has felt singled out as living in the toughest times each has also haughtily swaggered about the fact that they were THE culmination of knowlwdge and accomplishment as well.

 

[Feraud]

Interesting article. I do think it takes learning or at least experience to comment on something like this. Why did they balance the answers of a professor with those of a 20 & 21 year old?

According to Kristina Hicks, 20:

"I definitely think today is one of most trying times," she said. "When I read about things like 9/11 and the war in Iraq in textbooks, it doesn't actually portray the whole picture of what happened."

So when she reads about it in textbooks, it doesn't portray what happened. O.k. ..

Dan Reiser, 21:

"I never thought we were under threat until I saw 9/11," he said. "It was very shocking. Times are definitely more dangerous now. Terrorism is constantly getting worse."

Terrorism is getting worse? Worse then when? Sorry Dan but 'waking up' to the real world does not make it worse than past societies. Does he think he is less safe today than a Jew in Europe in the 30's-40's? Or is less secure than one of the thousands of street children that were part of the Victorian landscape?

No insult intended to young people but the writer did a bad job on this article, imho. The AP writer should have stuck to the facts offered from professors than let people give their opinions. That is exactly what is wrong with most historical writing. Authors giving opinions as opposed to letting the facts speak for themselves.

 

[Section10]

The answers to this thread are highly subjective. Good or bad times are often little more than your definition of 'good'. I think things are good right now, but I don't think they will stay that way much longer. Since all facts are subject to interpretation, professors aren't accurate purveyors of facts any more than anyone else is. Whoever is in power at the time gets to write the textbooks and to interpret history.

Statisticians have shown us that if you put a man's head in the deep freeze and his feet in the oven, he will feel pretty good on the average.

 

[Michael Mallory]

Good old Charles Dickens really hit the nail on the head when he said, "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." All eras are good and bad. My son was born with a medical condition that today is fixable. Had I had it when I was born, fifty years ago, I would have died after three months. So I can't let nostalgia overtake me. Having said that, though, I have to confess that I sometimes long for a simplicity of life that simply doesn't exist anymore. When I was a kid I walked over to the television, switched it on, and selected one of the four (three American, one Canadian) channels offered to me. Simple. Today I have to find the remote that switches on the TV, and then find the remote that controls the channels, and then wade through the 100-plus channels trying to find something to watch, which is futile anyway, since most of it is crap. Not simple. And things are only going to get more complicated.

 

[Lena_Horne]

To aid with pictures of daily life that are somewhat unimaginable now I'll post these, they are from the Charles Cushman collection at the Indiana University internet archives and others are from the Library of Congress online collection, hope I'm not stepping on any government toes and others are from the Franklin Roosevelt Library online collection and still others are from this Roosevelt Museum site about Eleanor Roosevelt:

Crowd gathers in front of Red Cross station during salvage collection, lower East Side, October 4, 1942

Walter Donaldson is shown by the fireside reading to a portion of his family. Donaldson was taught in a WPA educational class. Gilmer, County, Orland, West Virginia, March 31, 1938

After supper, Lois and Dorothy do the dishes. Fort Wayne, Indiana, November, 1937

Mrs. Snyder does her weekly wash in the kitchen--that's the only place she has for such jobs. Fort Wayne, Indiana, November, 1937

L_H

 

[Lena_Horne]

Headlines posted in street corner window of newspaper office, Brockton, Massachusetts, December 1940

Boy building model plane, Robstown, Texas, January 1942

Stores near corner of Broome St. and Baruch Place, Lower East Side. New York City, September 27, 1941

L_H

 

[jamespowers]

But historical writing IS storytelling. When I want to look at the historical facts, I seek out primary sources (which tend to be just somebody else's version of events and thus fraught with their own difficulties). When I read history, I am looking for someone else to have dealt with the primary sources and to give me a story, a version of the facts, that makes sense, i.e., to do some of the work for me. Clearly one must be willing to rely,at least a bit, on the reputation of the historian one reads. Some of us have to earn a living, and don't have time for primary research all the time. I have rarely see the facts "speak for themselves." Even the inventories from Pylos need some knowledge and skill to make sense of, and then you are just making your own story. That is what human beings do. We make stories. We live stories. We need stories. And the point of our stories tends to be that we, personally, are the best (or have overcome the worst troubles, or have solved the toughest problems, or believe the truest things), unless we are suicidal or manic-depressive.

So Herodotus and Homer are both historians? How about Karl Marx and Upton Sinclair?
It is a real shame that we lost the Library at Alexandria. Now that was history without the hype.

Regards to all,

J

 

[jamespowers]

Yeah, I loved to spend Saturday afternoons there as a kid. Nice and quiet, you know? Great periodicals section, too: even some tabloid scrolls.

Yeah they were all scrolls no matter what you read.
The most interesting part was likely the area dedicated to simply thinking. Called appropriately the Museum. Quite different than our concept today.
I spent many a warm afternoon quietly cogitating in the Museum. That whole steam engine concept never really did get oof the ground until later though.

Regards to all,

J

 

[jamespowers]

All historical writing is literature but not all literature is historical writing. All history is story telling, but not all story telling is history. So Herodotus is an historian (though one to be read with a great deal of care, as, for example is Suetonius - a lot of gossip and fiction in those accounts) but Homer is a poet, and a writer of fiction (though with a lot of historical fact behind it, from both the bronze and the iron age - Homer stands at the end of a long oral tradition spanning some pretty large cultural changes). Catagories can be so deceiving!

Herodotus is the historian. His accounts of the Peloponnesian Wars is the first that is from an outsider looking at a historic event and simply writing down what he sees. Perched where he was, he wrote about the events unfolding in front of him. I don't see much gossip and fiction in it but it does have a literary quality to it. I see it as nonfiction. What we know about those battles is directly from Herodotus. Books have been written since but Herodotus blazed the trail in 460BC. Modern historians owe a great deal to him. He is the father of all historical accounts. I suppose I could second guess him but I wasn't there---contrary to what many people think; I am not that old.
I was being facetious about Homer. Everyone thought Troy in the Iliad was fiction but it ended up being found by Henrich Schleiman on the west coast of Turkey. Imagine somewhere on this earth is the body of King Priam. I wonder how historically correct the people involved were but that is a subject for another thread. Oral traditions are fine but their details get lost and changed over time so that what we get now is nothing like the story as it was first told. Just try telling a story today and see how it gets back to you mangled and wrong.

Regards to all,

J

 

[jamespowers]

You are quite right it was the Persian wars Herodotus wrote about. I am getting my historical accounts mixed up.
I would trust Herodotus more than Thucydides anyway.

Regards to all,

J

 

[Twitch]

I don't know how this fits in but I write historical combat articles- about 200 so far and 3 book-length manuscripts. I have interviewed many ace pilots from many countries and other veterans of combat. Most of my stuff is fit into acknowledged historical accounts with my narratives simply being in depth tactical happenings in a big strategic picture. OK there was a big bombing raid on Berlin on March 8th 1944. But there are many, many stories from participants that flesh out the historical event.

I research as deep as I can on more controversial subjects such as the Japanese Army's butchery in China. I got Freedom of Information documents released in the mid- 1990s to substantiate an article about the alternate WW2 ending in 1945- invasion. In something like that there are educated estimates of scenario outcomes. A narrative of how a P-38 pilot emerged victorious form a fight with 2 Zeros is never embellished from his interview. It is the absolute truth from his seat in the action.

At any rate even fairly dry accounts can be enlivened with the proper set up and preliminary picture an author paints to interest a reader. If we don't inject the human interest factor it's like reading an encyclopedia.

 

[jamespowers]

At any rate even fairly dry accounts can be enlivened with the proper set up and preliminary picture an author paints to interest a reader. If we don't inject the human interest factor it's like reading an encyclopedia.

I suppose you are right when it comes from the point of view of the combatant themselves. The problem is that they tend to embellish the story a bit.
Any truth to the statements that the Japanese were experimenting on our soldiers and even had a few whole body specimens in glass cases? I think they said the bodies were those of Russian soldiers but they supposedly had a few of ours as well. Some soldiers came back with some interesting tales of them trying to burn the evidence before troops go there and saw what they did. Now that would be a war atrocity for sure.

Regards to all,

J