History Carnival Number 30

Welcome to the 30th edition of the History Carnival! For your reading pleasure we have an awesome collection of posts, representing the best in history blogging. So sit back with a cup of coffee or other satisfying beverage and enjoy the reading!

First off, what are some of the problems that historians face? Acephalous discusses the problems with the phrase “a useable past” in “On ‘Useable’ History: A Rant in One Long, Hoarse Howl.“ Thinking about what plagarism should encourage us to do instead of not to do, Stephanie Hurter at Word Choice presents “The Spirit of History.” For William Turkel, a useable past is probably one that we can find and access. In his “Methodology for the Infinite Archive,” Turkel discusses the problems and possibilities associated with digital primary and secondary soruces, and the new skills historians need to use digital materials. Earmarks in Early Modern Culture discusses Steve Connor’s manifesto for cultural phenomenology in history in “Cultural Phenomenology.” Finally, another problem historians face is people who claim to be historians, as David Meadows argues in “Baigent.” Meadows specifically takes issue with Michael Baigent and his commentary on the FoxNews show “The O’Reilly Factor”

Presenting historical experience, in writing and in artwork, can be a daunting challenge. In “Shared Experience,” trenchfever presents a review article for The Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. trenchfever reviews artwork from official war artists during the Second World War. The post discusses issues artists faced in depicting the myriad of experiences of war and highlights the roles of artists as both creators of artwork and soldiers in combat. Similarly, Alan Baumler provides a nice discussion of Imperial images in “Imperial Self-Images.” Baumler writes:

I find it a bit more interesting that this is the most explicit case I have seen of imperial spectacle aimed at the ruler themselves. Imperial and royal spectacle is usually studied on the assumption that the audience was the populace or the court or the citizenry or something. One obvious hard to study audience is the ruler themselves. Chinese imperial ritual was intended to constrain as much as to empower the ruler, emperors were probably aware of this, but their reaction to the ritual is hard to know.

In “The Return of Uwano Ishinosuke” Nick Kapur writes about Uwano Uwano, a former Japanese Army soldier left on Sakhalin Island after the Soviets captured the island during the Second World War. Orac at Respectful Insolence also comments on the return of Uwano in “I Didn’s Think This Was Still Happening.”

Reminants of the past are all around us, as 100 Word Minimum reminds us in “Ghost Signs” and “Up At Dawn.” The dairy-turned-apartment building in Richmond, Virginia (in the second post) is great!

On the Japan side of Frog in a Well, K.M. Lawson finds some interesting reasons for the inclusion and exclusion of historical information in encyclopedia entries in “To Stab a Historian.”

Regarding historians, the general public, access to history, and public history: Nick Terry at Holocaust Controversies takes a critical approach in “Don’t Know Much About History….” Rightly so, I think, Nick argues that historians need to get involved in public history instead of sneering at it. And Steve Muhlberger takes issue with Juan Cole’s latest assertion that classic American writing is usavailable in Arabic, and questions access to classic writings for other cultures in general in “Unknown to Readers of Arabic.” Jonathan Dresner reminds us that the history textbook controversy between China and Japan has larger implications. In “China-Japan Historical Struggle Reaches MIT,” Jonathan criticizes the censorship of a John Dower site on racist imagery, and raises questions regarding the ramifications of warnings that precede violent and racist historical imagery. And David Brion Davis is “concerned with the erosion of interest in history,” and tells us why we should remember in “The Importance of History.”

Now for a bit of labor history. In “May Day with Heart,” Peter Linebaugh takes a look back at the history surrounding May Day and the violence in Haymarket in Chicago. Political Calculation’s post “Union Membership Trends in the U.S. Private Sector” focuses on the decline of unions in the United States.

We have a good deal of ancient history fare this time around. “Papyri: Artemidorus and Oxyrhynchus posted at PhDIva, discusses a rediscovered 50 B.C. papyrus by Artemidorus, which is a copy of his second book in an eleven-book series on Mediterranean geography. Tony Keen critiques a Timewatch show on “The Mystery of the Headless Romans” in “Headless Romans.” Alex Bordessa at Alex’s Historical Fiction also talks about about decapitations and references Tony’s post in “Dr. Who and the Skellies?” Chris Weimer at Thoughts on Antiquity discusses “Ancient Translation Problems.” Finally, Martin Rundkvist keeps us up-to-date with his field research in “Fieldwork in Östra Husby.”. Martin didn’ find any Viking artifacts but did discover some remains from a prehistoric settlement.

Martin’s not finished. His “William’s Counter” explains Martin’s “unexpected historical acquaintance” with William IV of Nassau-Dietz after discovering a 18th-century counter used on a abacus.

And if archaeology on more modern history is your thing, check out Mills Kelly’s post “What’s for Dinner?“ Mills notes that the excavation of the Donner Party site is “very CSI” and argues for more cooperation among historians and archaeologists.

In Blogging the Renaissance, Truewit takes a look at a 16th-century illustrated book on hunting, and gives us some great observations. Apparently, Queen Elizabeth was an “expert tracker of some sort, able to arbitrate between the competing claims of hunters, each of them holding a pile of droppings up to her and shouting ‘Pick Mine!’”

Calling Margery Kempe crazy does matter, according to Dr. Virago. “Calling Margery Kempe Crazy—And Why it Matters“ asks about student reactions to The Book of Margery Kempe. Students aren’t merely dismissing Margery Kempe; They’re empowering her, just as she wanted to be empowered as a martyr.

At Siris, Brandon’s post entitled “Texas Independence and Zavala” discusses the role that Lorenzo de Zavala played in Texas’s independence from Mexico and the reasons why Mexican patriots supported Texas indepencence. Brandon and Nathanael continue the conversation in “Tejas por los Tejanos” at The Rhine River.

“Generations of Food Advice” at Ahistoricality features a great web resource, Timeline of Dietary Advice,which cronicles thousands of years of food and dietary advice.

David T. Beito reminds us of the death of T.R.M. Howard, a tireless civil rights activist who was also one of the wealthiest African-Amercian in Mississipi at the time, in “T.R.M. Howard: Thirty Years Later.”

Caleb McDaniel’s “The Half-Way House” gets the prize for most nominated post. Caleb ties arguments to the abolition of slavery with current debates about nuclear proliferation. Caleb writes:

How can we aver that trading nukes is immoral without making the corollary claim that possessing them in the first place is? No more easily than someone who believed that holding human beings as property was immoral could consistently oppose the slave trade without opposing slavery. And how can we claim that those states who presently hold nuclear weapons—by the mere accident of their historical discovery and development in certain wealthy countries—have a right to hold them indefinitely, while those states who, by accident of history, are free of nuclear weapons cannot acquire them? No more easily than someone who opposed the proliferation of slaves in the West could support their continued bondage in the South.

In the category of Holocaust history, rememberence, and controversy, we have Baraita’s post entitled “Counting on History,” which provides a history of Yom Ha-Shoah (Holocaust Rememberance Day) and the Omer. In “Whoever Thought This Would Be a Good Idea,” Orac rightly questions the folks who wanted to perform Jesus Christ Superstar at a former Nazi death camp in Poland. And Sergey Romanov at Holocaust Controversies surveys documentation on Heinrich Himmler’s visit to the Birkenau camp in “Correction Curner #2: Himmler’s Visit to Birkenau in 1942.”

To close, we have a few posts to remind us how history is important with regard to current events. Caleb gets the prize for the second most-nominated post with “The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons.” Madman of Chu poses questions about China’s future in “The China Syndrome.” Finally, for those of us interested in creating a separatist movement (and who isn’t, even a little bit?), Miland at World History Blog looks at the history of “separatist fantasies” in the United States. Miland’s “The Dominion of British West Florida and Tips for Creating an American Separatist Cause’ starts with the Republic of West Florida, a small but powerful state that lasted 72 days in 1810. Miland’s post references a current separatist movement on Wake Island.

That’s all, folks! Hope you’ve enjoyed the carnival. Send any errors or compaints to me at jeremy[at]clioweb[dot]org or leave them in the comments below.

Also of note: The Asian History Carnival takes place May 5th at Miscellany. Send nominations to Katrina Gulliver.

Update: Brett Holman of Airminded hosts the next History Carnival on May 15.