Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History

by James W. Loewen

  Now imagine a landing in 1000 BC. Egypt was still paramount. India was in decline. Various kingdoms vied for power in Mesopotamia. Again, nothing in Europe compared.

  If the space travelers returned in 1 BC, they would find the Roman Empire dominant over Egypt. The civilizations of Persia and Greece had already risen to impressive heights and then descended, though they were still important culturally. Clearly the spacecraft would want to touch down in Rome, the center of the Mediterranean, or perhaps in China, now unified under the Han dynasty.

  Half a millennium later, around 500 AD, a new claimant had arisen, the Mayas. They mastered agriculture and probably aquaculture, lived in cities, and built pyramids larger in volume than those in Egypt, though not as high. The Eastern Roman Empire, its capital at the city now known as Istanbul, was the largest nation in Europe and western Asia. Another civilization had arisen in India, this time in the east, but was already in decline, about to be sacked by the Mongols.

  By 1000 AD, the Holy Roman Empire, amounting mainly to modern-day Germany, eastern France, and northern Italy, might have received a visit from our space aliens, even though Voltaire famously derided it as “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.” More likely, they would have landed in China, now divided into two competing kingdoms that got along without much conflict. Probably, however, our visitors would have chosen Mecca. As British historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto put it, in 1000 AD,

  A continuous band of territory under Muslim rule stretched from the Duero [a river in Spain] and the Atlantic, across North Africa and the western Mediterranean, to the Indus, the Jaxartes [Syr Darya River, in Kazakhstan], and the Arabian Sea.6

  Not only was this “the biggest … civilization the world had ever seen,” it was still expanding in 1000. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Britain were about to be conquered by Normandy.

  In 1500 AD, the world was in rapid flux. Several empires had arisen and already declined or were about to decline: the Aztecs and Incas in the Western Hemisphere, Ghana and Mali in West Africa, and Great Zimbabwe. The Ottoman Empire in Turkey and Mogul empire in India had just got under way. “In 1500 Europe … was still but one civilization among many,” writes British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who mentions the Ottomans, the Moguls, and the Chinese.7 If our space visitors had any inkling of what was to come, however, they would have landed in Spain. For Europe—first Italy, then Iberia, and later, as new crops from the Americas altered population patterns, northern nations like Britain, France, Germany, and Russia—would dominate the next 500 years.

  The purpose of this exercise is not to summarize the history of the world. Rather, this thought experiment can teach humility: even the longest-lived civilizations are transitory. Ours has been going on for a far shorter period of time than ancient Egypt, but Egyptian dominance is long over. Ours, too, will end. Realizing this may prove useful, delaying our fall and humanizing our dominance.

  The exercise also seeks to get students asking why these societies were so successful, if only for a while. None of these civilizations was inevitable, least of all ours. What does explain them? As soon as students ask this question seriously, any genetic explanation fails. Civilization can hardly relate to some innate capacity for progress that some people have while others don’t, because very different people inhabited the various landing sites listed above. Some of Egypt’s founding ideas—as well as some of its pharaohs—came downstream from the black societies living along the Upper Nile. Mayans are neither genetically nor geographically related to Arab Muslims. Nor are Chinese close to Romans.

  Thinking across time shows even more dramatically than thinking across space the absurdity of the notion that differences among people might cause differences among societies and cultures. The western and northern Europeans who now dominate the world were mostly not part of any of the civilizations mentioned above, before 1500 AD. Quite the contrary: Romans considered them barbarians. Lingering in our speech today is the fear civilized people felt of such groups as Vandals, Goths, and Huns. Writing about the peoples and nations that surrounded the Roman Empire, Palmer notes:

  Throughout its long life the Empire had been surrounded on almost all sides by barbarians, wild Celts in Wales and Scotland, Germans in the heart of Europe, Persians or Parthians in the East…. These barbarians, always with the exception of Persia, had never been brought within the pale of ancient civilization. They remained illiterate, unsettled, townless, more or less nomadic, and frequently bellicose.8

  If Celts or Britons were backward in 2000 BC for “innate” reasons, how could they have subdued much of the world by 1892? Obviously, genetics had nothing to do with it. Evolutionary theory does not hold that innate human intellectual ability can change rapidly within what is, in evolutionary terms, the twinkling of an eye. Nor does evidence suggest a drastic winnowing of barbarian babies to produce some marvelous eugenics transformation. On the contrary, the causes of the hegemony of northern and western Europe are historical, not psychological or biological.

  EXPLAINING CIVILIZATION

  At this point, it may be useful to help students uncover why civilization—defined as a complex division of labor—arose in the first place. Absent an answer to this question, it is easy to slip into the inference that civilized people were (and are) smarter. Jared Diamond opens his bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel with exactly this issue. Diamond was a biologist, studying bird evolution in New Guinea. A Papuan asked him, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [modern technology], … but we black people had little cargo of our own?” Diamond noted, “He and I both knew perfectly well that New Guineans are on the average at least as smart as Europeans.” Indeed, Diamond presents reasons for concluding that Papuans may be smarter. Yet we—and they—consider their culture to be backward.9 So Diamond started thinking about why civilization arose in some places and not in others. Eventually he identified several critical factors, including domesticatable plants for crops, domesticatable animals for livestock, nearby societies to borrow ideas from, and the absence of certain debilitating diseases. Most important is not his specific list, but his approach. He correctly notes that a complex division of labor requires some antecedent conditions. They, and not some innate characteristics of the people, are crucial.

  Sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have devoted much thought and research time to explaining the rise of civilization. The change from food gathering to rudimentary horticulture seems easy to explain. Someone notices that a given plant that is good to eat likes a certain kind of habitat. So the person helps enlarge this habitat, to get more of the plant. It works. Maybe a blackberry vine likes the edge between underbrush and meadow to the south. Our “primitive” person girdles a tree to the southwest, thus extending the meadow. Voila!—more blackberries. Now people are not just living off the world but are manipulating it to get it to produce more. It’s only a small additional step to dig up a blackberry vine and plant it on the north edge of a meadow closer to one’s village.

  Other steps are not so obvious. Did cities come after the full-fledged invention of agriculture? Perhaps, but some anthropologists think sizable numbers of people may have lived together first. Does irrigation play a role? Sociologists have theorized that the benefits of irrigation would have been obvious alongside rivers in dry lands like Egypt and Iraq. In turn, irrigation, at least large-scale irrigation, requires coordination. People have to keep doing their share of maintenance. People have to take their share of the water, but not more than that. There has to be a system for dealing with disputes. So irrigation may have led to the invention of some kind of government, which in turn helped lead to a complex division of labor. Perhaps, but evidence suggests that government may have preceded irrigation.

  A U.S. history course is not the place to discuss the likely causes of civilization at length. The point is that civilization is caused. Therefore, students should not infer that civilization shows anything about a people, other than that various causes came together. To l
abel some people as less civilized or more primitive won’t do.

  MAKING THE EARTH ROUND

  The four voyages of Christopher Columbus are both a result and a cause of Europe’s growing dominance over the rest of the world. Hence, their discussions of Columbus provide textbook authors with a natural place to address the why question. Instead of helping students think about the sweeping changes that Columbus’s journeys caused in our world, however, most courses in U.S. history squander the opportunity. Textbooks focus on minutiae, like the name of the sailor who cried, “Land, ho!” When not flatly wrong, most of what Americans conventionally learn about Columbus is a diversion from the important questions that his voyages ought to raise.

  Many textbooks used to tell this whopper about Christopher Columbus: that one of his key contributions was that he proved Earth was round. Some teachers still say this. Columbus did no such thing, and no competent historian who ever wrote about him ever claimed he did. Nevertheless, students learn it. Consider this item from the first edition of the new writing portion of the SAT in 2005:

  We must seriously question the idea of majority rule. The majority grinned and jeered when Columbus said the world was round. The majority threw him into a dungeon for his discoveries. Where is the logic in the notion that the opinion held by a majority of people should have the power to influence our decisions?10

  The lackeys who formulate items at Educational Testing Service used this quote, from a 1926 speech by U.S. Senator James A. Reed, “Majority Rule,” without correction. Their purpose was to trigger a student essay about majority rule. In fact, neither of the two sentences that treat Columbus contains a shred of truth. “The majority” already knew the world was round and did not jail him “for his discoveries.” Queen Isabella jailed Columbus for his inhumane and incompetent administration of Hispaniola, including enslaving 1,500 Arawak Indians. Unfortunately, about 300,000 high school juniors read the paragraph and wrote essays in response. Thus, the flat Earth myth got passed to the next generation.

  The world became “flat” around 1830, not 1491, when Washington Irving, the novelist who invented Rip Van Winkle, included the flat Earth fable in a biography of Christopher Columbus. It went on to become the most popular biography of the entire nineteenth century and stayed in print throughout the century.11 As the controversy over how people first got here provides a hook to get students to challenge textbook certainty, so the flat Earth myth provides a way to help them see how popular culture can intrude on what should be a scholarly topic. In short, students need accurate history to rid themselves of the wrong information that is presented to them all the time in our culture.

  The flat Earth myth has become part of our shared understanding of the world, which writers then use as a basis for everything from Mother’s Day cards to comic strips. This everyday usage further embeds it in Americans’ minds. Notions that we take for granted can be the last to change, precisely because we take them for granted.

  A good way to start is by having each student list Columbus’s accomplishments and then amassing a class inventory. Usually some students include “proved Earth round.” If no one does, teachers can elicit it from the class in discussion. “Before 1492, almost everyone but Columbus thought the world was ____.” If they have not heard the legend, salute them for their ignorance, which puts them ahead of most Americans, who believe this groundless story.

  Students can find many examples of the flat Earth myth in our culture, like the Mother’s Day card presented on the previous page.12 Students can also interview their parents to see if they have heard the flat Earth myth. Except for recent immigrants, most have. (Again, students whose parents are ignorant can feel proud of their ignorance.) Students can also ask their parents if they believe it, and if they do, they can then disabuse their parents of the myth. To do so, they need to know some information.

  Students who live near an ocean or Great Lake can watch a ship disappear over the horizon: hull first, then sails or superstructure, and finally the little flag on top, as the roundness of the Earth gets in the way. If they live in the Midwest or Great Plains, they can see the same thing as an eighteen-wheeler disappears: wheels first, then body, and finally the little flapper on top of the diesel exhaust. If the Earth were flat, a boat or truck would simply get smaller and smaller, become a dot, and then disappear. Everyone understood that, especially sailors. Earth casts a round shadow on the moon during each lunar eclipse, and everyone understood that as well.13 The Catholic Church, at the time the most important institution in Europe, said the world was round. So did philosophers at least as far back as the Greeks. My poster book, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, includes a photo of a globe of the Earth made in Europe in 1492. Columbus did not get back until March 1493.14

  Once students understand that people already knew that the world was round, they can be nudged to think about why so many people believe the flat Earth myth today. It’s a profound question: since no evidence exists for the claim that Columbus proved Earth to be round, why do teachers still teach and students still learn this curious story? As students address this question, they will uncover some of the influences on our thinking that do not derive from evidence.

  One important part of the answer is because our culture takes it for granted. Consider this example. In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Captain Kirk and his crew travel backward in time to our era. Explaining this feat to a present-day earthling, Spock (I think) refers to Columbus, whom he says added another dimension to travel when he proved the world was not flat. In 1986, when this movie was made, its director, Leonard Nimoy, either believed the myth himself or thought most Americans would not question it. Columbus’s alleged feat is not important to the plot; it’s just a throwaway line used to help explain time travel, which is important to the plot.

  Another reason why the flat Earth myth gets passed on is sheer educational inertia. Many teachers learned the tale in their youth, and their later schooling never challenged it. To break this dreary cycle, middle-school teachers need to challenge the flat Earth story that their pupils may have learned in elementary grades, and high school teachers must remove any residue that is still stuck in students’ synapses. Students enjoy taking on this responsibility for their younger brothers and sisters.

  Perhaps many teachers never questioned the flat Earth myth because it’s such a good story. This raises the question, good for what? Tied to the flat Earth myth is the tale of the near-mutiny that Columbus’s crew mounted, fearful of sailing off its edge. This story fits in with emphasizing how great Columbus was, triumphing over every adversary, even his own sorry crew. It makes him smarter and more courageous than those under him. So the world is as it should be: those on top of our enterprises deserve to be there, because they’re smarter than the rest of us.

  The flat Earth myth is only one of the legends that cling like barnacles to the history of the admiral. Now students can return to their inventory of Columbus’s accomplishments and question other items that may also be problematic.15

  WHY DID COLUMBUS WIN?

  Columbus’s voyages showed the growing power of Europe compared to the rest of the world. The second chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me is entitled “1493: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus.” It points out that Columbus was hardly the first non-Native to get to the Western Hemisphere. People from other continents had reached the Americas many times. Columbus’s voyage was epoch-making precisely because Europe was now poised to react differently. Thus, Columbus’s importance owes to changes in Europe, not to his getting to a “new” continent. Other Europeans would have reached the Americas soon after 1492 if Columbus had not.

  Moreover, in 1492 Columbus did little that the Vikings had not accomplished around 1000 AD. The next year, however, owing to developments in Europe, Spain found it possible to equip Columbus with 1,200 to 1,500 men, 17 ships, cannons, crossbows, guns, horses, and attack dogs. Now Columbus proceeded to make history. He and the Spanish took over the isla
nd of Haiti, an ocean away from Spain, renamed it Hispaniola (“little Spain”), and threw its inhabitants into serfdom and slavery. This was new.16 It was followed by even more stupendous feats: Spaniards subduing Peru and Mexico, Portugal taking Brazil, and eventually Britain taking the Atlantic coast of what is now the United States and Canada.

  What had happened to give European nations this capability?

  Coming near the beginning of a course in U.S. history, this question provides an ideal hook to get students thinking deeply about some of the most important issues they will face in their high school careers. Five crucial factors explain Europe’s growing dominance: arms, social technology, greed, religion, and practice in colonizing islands.17 A critical element of social technology was the nation-state. Societies organized on the village or even the tribal level could not protect themselves against nation-states. A biological factor—resistance to diseases—also helped make possible the conquest of the Americas, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific.

  Underlying the development of most of these factors is Europe’s borrowing of ideas from other cultures. This is hardly surprising: cultural diffusion and syncretism underlie the flowering of most civilizations. Syncretism means combining elements from two different cultures to form something new. A good example is Christmas, which joins elements from the Jewish religion, such as monotheism and the idea of a Messiah, and Northern European “pagan” observances, like the winter solstice date and the emphasis on lights and plants that are green in winter.