My last two posts dealt with a troubling letter and article the appeared a peculiar sort of publication: a history magazine. Perched between the worlds of "pop history", an unwieldy category to which both much good work and a good deal of dreck belong, and the often duller and less accessible world of professional scholarship, such … Continue reading History in the Toilet
Month: September 2017
How to Change History: William Petty, Irish slavery, and a fake debate
Treating debunked pseudo-history and personal attacks as legitimate criticism of historical research is bad enough on the letters page of a widely-read history magazine. Publishing articles based on spurious sources is worse. In my last post, I discussed History Ireland's publication of Mike McCormack's letter attacking Liam Hogan for exposing the myth of Irish slavery. … Continue reading How to Change History: William Petty, Irish slavery, and a fake debate
Irish Slaves, from Myth to “Debate”
At the risk of stating the obvious, it is important that historians try to get the past right -- to describe it accurately, to base their claims about it on evidence, and to represent the sources from which that evidence is drawn fairly. Historians face mounting challenges in public discourse from dishonest, misleading, or made … Continue reading Irish Slaves, from Myth to “Debate”
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