What do you think?
Rate this book
Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History
Placing the West's failure to acknowledge the most successful slave revolt in history alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history.
216 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1995
About the author
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
14 books84 followersMichel-Rolph Trouillot was a Haitian academic and anthropologist. He was Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Rolph (as he was known conversationally) was the son of Ernst Trouillot and Anne-Marie Morisset, both Black intellectuals from Port-au-Prince. His father was a lawyer and his uncle, Hénock Trouillot was a professor who worked in the National Archives of Haiti. Hénock was an influential noiriste historian. He attended the Petit Séminaire Collège Saint-Martial, moving on to the École Normale Supérieure. However, faced with repression from the Duvalier regime in 1968, Trouillot joined a mass exodus of students who found refuge in New York.
In 2011 Trouillot was awarded the Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award, which is given annually by the Caribbean Philosophical Association in recognition of work of special interest to Caribbean thought.
In 1977 his first book Ti dife boule sou Istwa Ayiti on the origins of the Haitian slave revolution was published. It has been described as "the first book-length monograph written in Haitian Creole." In July 2012, Université Caraïbe Press reprinted this masterful work. Trouillot's lifetime of work presented a vision for anthropology and the social sciences, informed by historical depth and empirical examination of Caribbean societies.
Trouillot died on July 5, 2012.
In 2011 Trouillot was awarded the Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award, which is given annually by the Caribbean Philosophical Association in recognition of work of special interest to Caribbean thought.
In 1977 his first book Ti dife boule sou Istwa Ayiti on the origins of the Haitian slave revolution was published. It has been described as "the first book-length monograph written in Haitian Creole." In July 2012, Université Caraïbe Press reprinted this masterful work. Trouillot's lifetime of work presented a vision for anthropology and the social sciences, informed by historical depth and empirical examination of Caribbean societies.
Trouillot died on July 5, 2012.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 274 reviews
February 8, 2012
If Marx, Foucault, and Howard Zinn wrote a book together, it would probably look something like Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Silencing the Past. This isn't a slur, though; as you can tell from my five-star rating, I obviously appreciated the book, its author's cobbled personal reflections plus broader historical claims, and its humanity. Part of me wonders why this book isn't as well known (at least in my literary circles) as, say, Foucault's Discipline and Punish or Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, but I guess I already know the answer: Usually when people want to learn about the nineteenth century and the consolidation of Althusserian "ideological apparatuses" like the school, the prison, the concept of nationality, or the field of history, they'd rather read about white American and European countries than about Haiti. I suppose it's true that in the fifteen years since this book's publication several of Trouillot's claims have become so mainstreamed they read a bit like clichés. You probably already know that Columbus Day celebrations vaunt a celebrity Columbus the 15th century wouldn't have recognized. You probably already know that comparatively enfranchised people are more likely to leave traces of their purchases, their properties, their marriages, etc., than their disenfranchised comrades, and thus the history of any society tends to be the history of that society's rich and educated. Still, you should read the book for its methodological framework, its author's diary-like chapter-starters, and plenty of other reasons. Very highly recommended.
February 22, 2021
While much of this book focuses on the history of his native country of Haiti, Trouillot's goal is broader: an epistemological re-evaluation of how our perceptions of history are formed. Of how we understand history to be true. Of how opinions come to be historical fact. It's not light reading, but easy enough to absorb when he moves from the theoretical to the specific. He goes beyond the commonplace "History is written by the victors" to demonstrate by example the four stages leading to this end result.
Those four stages are the moments when decisions are made, intentionally or otherwise, that affect what we come to perceive as history: at the time original records are (or are not) created; at the time those records are selected for retention; at the time they are retrieved and put into a narrative; and at the time that narrative is evaluated for significance. Omissions ("silences") at any point can alter our interpretation of past events.
Silences result not just from disdain or prejudice, but from the fact that the reality is "unthinkable" to the recorder/archiver/narrative developer/evaluator. The Haitian revolution of 1791-1804 provides a vivid example: that the slaves could have, on their own, desired, organized and successfully concluded their own revolutionary war was an idea inconceivable by the French or most others interpreting the record. This section brought to mind a book I read not long ago, Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia. The reality of how the South Pacific was colonized remained unknown (at least outside Polynesian oral history) for hundreds of years because Europeans simply couldn't accept that the Polynesian outriggers could have travelled the distances it has since been proved that they can.
The book is a brilliant framework, illustrating the inherent reasons that the true histories of blacks, women, native populations, and others have been omitted from history. Since we continue to struggle with the ways in which these perceptions mold actions and opinions in the 21st century these are ideas that bear thinking about.
Those four stages are the moments when decisions are made, intentionally or otherwise, that affect what we come to perceive as history: at the time original records are (or are not) created; at the time those records are selected for retention; at the time they are retrieved and put into a narrative; and at the time that narrative is evaluated for significance. Omissions ("silences") at any point can alter our interpretation of past events.
Silences result not just from disdain or prejudice, but from the fact that the reality is "unthinkable" to the recorder/archiver/narrative developer/evaluator. The Haitian revolution of 1791-1804 provides a vivid example: that the slaves could have, on their own, desired, organized and successfully concluded their own revolutionary war was an idea inconceivable by the French or most others interpreting the record. This section brought to mind a book I read not long ago, Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia. The reality of how the South Pacific was colonized remained unknown (at least outside Polynesian oral history) for hundreds of years because Europeans simply couldn't accept that the Polynesian outriggers could have travelled the distances it has since been proved that they can.
The book is a brilliant framework, illustrating the inherent reasons that the true histories of blacks, women, native populations, and others have been omitted from history. Since we continue to struggle with the ways in which these perceptions mold actions and opinions in the 21st century these are ideas that bear thinking about.
April 23, 2020
Can the citizens of Quebec whose license plates proudly state "I remember" (Je me souviens) actually retrieve memories of the French colonial state? ...the collective subjects, who supposedly "remember", did not exist as such at the time of the events that they claim to remember. Rather, their constitution as subjects goes hand-in-hand with continuous creation of the past.
Starting with a pretty tame example of Quebec, Professor Trouillot goes on to broaden his examples, most specifically a comparative analysis of slavery in the Americas, specifically in his native Haiti and its revolution against French colonialism in the early 19th century, and what was happening in the US and Europe at this same point in time. Trouillot provides further context of this "continuous creation of the past" by studying Holocaust denial, history of Texas and the Alamo, and later delves into Christopher Columbus.
The fact that I did both undergrad and graduate level history and archival studies (including a seminar on Atlantic/Caribbean history) and didn't encounter this book until now (22 years after original publication!) is a problem - and it further underlines the premise of the book. However, a quick Google search - and other Goodreads reviews of many others who read this in a classroom - gives me hope, and also shows that even after decades, this book remains an important work of scholarship in historiography.
What we often call the legacy of the past may not be anything bequeathed by the past itself.
Starting with a pretty tame example of Quebec, Professor Trouillot goes on to broaden his examples, most specifically a comparative analysis of slavery in the Americas, specifically in his native Haiti and its revolution against French colonialism in the early 19th century, and what was happening in the US and Europe at this same point in time. Trouillot provides further context of this "continuous creation of the past" by studying Holocaust denial, history of Texas and the Alamo, and later delves into Christopher Columbus.
The fact that I did both undergrad and graduate level history and archival studies (including a seminar on Atlantic/Caribbean history) and didn't encounter this book until now (22 years after original publication!) is a problem - and it further underlines the premise of the book. However, a quick Google search - and other Goodreads reviews of many others who read this in a classroom - gives me hope, and also shows that even after decades, this book remains an important work of scholarship in historiography.
What we often call the legacy of the past may not be anything bequeathed by the past itself.
February 4, 2017
This is one of the ten best books I've read in my life. I can't believe I'd never heard of it until now. The author's thesis is that history consists of two parts: what happened and the narrative of what happened. The latter is what determines the current consensus view.
The book argues that one of the most important events in human history, the slave revolt in Haiti that led briefly to a black-led government, has been virtually forgotten because those who write history (typically white Western men) have found it unthinkable that a group of black slaves could revolt, overturn a government, and establish a modern working state of free citizens. The prevailing narrative of blacks' abilities, intellect, characteristics has always operated on the unverbalized assumption that the black race is inferior in intellect to the white race. Thus, it has been unthinkable to the Western mind that black slaves could revolt and establish an enlightened government. Because of that unthinkability, the historical fact of the slave revolt in Haiti has been continuously silenced by what has been written and not written about it through history.
The revolt and defeat of the French was actually what stopped France from making further incursions into the Western hemisphere and the reason France sold the Louisiana Purchase to the United States. More French soldiers were killed in the Haitian revolt than died at Waterloo.
This is a profound and brilliant book. At first I thought it was over my head, but the more I read the more I understood. The very idea that history is prescribed by those in power is brilliant. The author details the elaborate means by which various European states (and later, the United States as well) refashioned Christopher Columbus to represent things that he had no idea he would be representing while he was alive. The entire IDEA of Christopher Columbus is a series of public-relations gestures by various nations and cultures to claim him as their historical forebear.
This book will transform your understanding of history as narrative.
The book argues that one of the most important events in human history, the slave revolt in Haiti that led briefly to a black-led government, has been virtually forgotten because those who write history (typically white Western men) have found it unthinkable that a group of black slaves could revolt, overturn a government, and establish a modern working state of free citizens. The prevailing narrative of blacks' abilities, intellect, characteristics has always operated on the unverbalized assumption that the black race is inferior in intellect to the white race. Thus, it has been unthinkable to the Western mind that black slaves could revolt and establish an enlightened government. Because of that unthinkability, the historical fact of the slave revolt in Haiti has been continuously silenced by what has been written and not written about it through history.
The revolt and defeat of the French was actually what stopped France from making further incursions into the Western hemisphere and the reason France sold the Louisiana Purchase to the United States. More French soldiers were killed in the Haitian revolt than died at Waterloo.
This is a profound and brilliant book. At first I thought it was over my head, but the more I read the more I understood. The very idea that history is prescribed by those in power is brilliant. The author details the elaborate means by which various European states (and later, the United States as well) refashioned Christopher Columbus to represent things that he had no idea he would be representing while he was alive. The entire IDEA of Christopher Columbus is a series of public-relations gestures by various nations and cultures to claim him as their historical forebear.
This book will transform your understanding of history as narrative.
May 4, 2010
I found Silencing the Past (published in 1995) both fascinating and illuminating, still new, while at the same time anchored in the scholarly discourse of the 1990s. Since the January, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Trouillot’s book seems to have appeared on every bookseller’s recommended shelf. But I wonder why I didn’t know about or read it fifteen years ago. Back then, I was a graduate student in English. Although my focus was Creative Writing, I had a special interest in what was/is called postcolonial literature and theory. Trouillot was not on my reading list in 1998, however, at least not at Sonoma State University.
Although he talks about particular events (the Haitian Revolution, Columbus’s landfall in the Bahamas in 1492) and historical characters (Christophe, Sans Souci, Columbus), the author’s primary concern here is with the production of history and the relation of power to that production with its consequential silences: “Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).”
Trouillot’s stance is neither that of the positivist nor the constructivist. He states rather that “Whereas the positivist view hides the tropes of power behind a naive epistemology, the constructivist one denies the autonomy of the sociohistorical process.” He rejects “both the naive proposition that we are prisoners of our pasts and the pernicious suggestion that history is whatever we make it. History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous.”
I particularly appreciated and remain intrigued by Trouillot’s reminders to his readers regarding the materiality of history, “that history begins with bodies and artifacts: living brains, fossils, texts, buildings” as well as his discussion of the “ethical differences between scholars and intellectuals.” Silencing the Past is nothing less than (and what could be better?) a thought-provoking read.
Although he talks about particular events (the Haitian Revolution, Columbus’s landfall in the Bahamas in 1492) and historical characters (Christophe, Sans Souci, Columbus), the author’s primary concern here is with the production of history and the relation of power to that production with its consequential silences: “Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).”
Trouillot’s stance is neither that of the positivist nor the constructivist. He states rather that “Whereas the positivist view hides the tropes of power behind a naive epistemology, the constructivist one denies the autonomy of the sociohistorical process.” He rejects “both the naive proposition that we are prisoners of our pasts and the pernicious suggestion that history is whatever we make it. History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous.”
I particularly appreciated and remain intrigued by Trouillot’s reminders to his readers regarding the materiality of history, “that history begins with bodies and artifacts: living brains, fossils, texts, buildings” as well as his discussion of the “ethical differences between scholars and intellectuals.” Silencing the Past is nothing less than (and what could be better?) a thought-provoking read.
March 14, 2008
Main points: Historians should own up to their own role in (re)producing history and power relationships. Representation can never replicate the context of the event, but unsilencing is important to prevent things from becoming shrines rather than historical sites.
Read
March 26, 2020did this? Kind of go off? wild
February 24, 2020
Fontos állítása a könyvnek, hogy a múlt bizonyos szeleteinek elhallgatása nem feltétlenül politikai összeesküvés miatt történik, és kevés köze van ahhoz, hogy a múltat óhatatlanul szelektálva megjelenítő történész bal, vagy jobb lábbal kel fel reggelente.
A források létrejötte majd levéltárakba való (nem) kerülése már eleve egy szelekciós és hatalmi folyamat, ráadásul minden múltbéli eseményt már azelőtt elkezdenek értelmezni a kortársak (és így befolyásos narratívákat örökítenek az utókorra), hogy a történészek a helyszínre érkeznének megszakérteni az adott történést. Legyen tehát egy historikus Sorosbérenc vagy Hazafi, öntudatlanul is szelektál a tények és források között, elhallgat dolgokat, s bár nem sejti, de az általa vizsgált témáról alkotott korabeli (nem politikai) diskurzusok már akkor vezethetik figyelmét, amikor még a források közelébe sem szagolt.
Ezt a problémát a szerző a Haitin lezajlott függetlenségi háború elhallgatásán, valamint az eltérő Kolumbusz-értelmezéseken keresztül mutatja be. Haiti egy olyan korban (19. sz. eleje) vívta ki függetlenségét a franciákkal szemben, amikor a feketéket/rabszolgákat nem tekintették embereknek, önállóan gondolkodó és érző lényeknek - egy sikeresen megvívott, katonai géniuszokat termelő rabszolgafelkelés tehát egyszerűen elképzelhetetlen volt a kortársak számára. A függetlenség hírére ezért úgy reagáltak, hogy: 1. fakenews. 2. nemúgyvoltaz, csak pár néger bohóckodott kicsit, amúgy a helyi betegségek verték meg a francia sereget. 3. IDEGEN ERŐK (tm) provokálták ki a lázadást, maguktól eszükbesejutottvolna hisz csak "fekák".
A könyv szerzője nem valamilyen retrospektív PC szemléletet kér számon a kortársakon, szerinte ugyanis az eseményeket nem is lehetett akkoriban másképp elgondolni (azaz mondjuk úgy, hogy emberek lázadtak fel, mert nem akartak szolgák lenni); a probléma ott kezdődik szerinte, hogy a kései történetírás is pontosan így (nem) foglalkozott a témával (a francia történelemből pl. szépen kiíródott az esemény), hiszen a kortársak történelemszemléletét vette át.
A Kolumbuszról szóló rész tanulságos (különösen az a folyamat, ahogy az Egyesült Államok emlékezetpolitikája "kifehérítette" és egy thug life cowboyt csinált belőle), de kicsit kilóg a kötetből.
Hasznos könyv, de nem olyan radikális az ismeretelméleti pozíciója, mint amilyennek el akarja adni magát és mint amilyennek az itteni értékelések alapján sejtettem. Vállalja szubjektív voltát, mellette azonban hitet tesz az empirikus kutatás és a racionális érvelés mellett (ilyen alapon támadja a romantikus gyarmatosítás-elleni "bennszülött" narratívákat is), szóval úgy posztkoloniális a szerző, hogy amúgy egy hagyományosabb iskolához tartozik. Nincs ezzel persze gond, az "egyrészt szubjektív másrészt racionális" egy ősrégi és megoldatlan ellentét a történészi gondolkodás tradíciójában (a szerző szerint örömteli ezen ellentét megélése, lehet, hogy igaza van), de semmiképp sem újdonság; száz éve is leírták már, hogy a történész jelene befolyásolja munkafolyamatát. Ez az ítélet persze nem érvényes a posztkoloniális témák felvetésére, ami valóban újdonság.
A források létrejötte majd levéltárakba való (nem) kerülése már eleve egy szelekciós és hatalmi folyamat, ráadásul minden múltbéli eseményt már azelőtt elkezdenek értelmezni a kortársak (és így befolyásos narratívákat örökítenek az utókorra), hogy a történészek a helyszínre érkeznének megszakérteni az adott történést. Legyen tehát egy historikus Sorosbérenc vagy Hazafi, öntudatlanul is szelektál a tények és források között, elhallgat dolgokat, s bár nem sejti, de az általa vizsgált témáról alkotott korabeli (nem politikai) diskurzusok már akkor vezethetik figyelmét, amikor még a források közelébe sem szagolt.
Ezt a problémát a szerző a Haitin lezajlott függetlenségi háború elhallgatásán, valamint az eltérő Kolumbusz-értelmezéseken keresztül mutatja be. Haiti egy olyan korban (19. sz. eleje) vívta ki függetlenségét a franciákkal szemben, amikor a feketéket/rabszolgákat nem tekintették embereknek, önállóan gondolkodó és érző lényeknek - egy sikeresen megvívott, katonai géniuszokat termelő rabszolgafelkelés tehát egyszerűen elképzelhetetlen volt a kortársak számára. A függetlenség hírére ezért úgy reagáltak, hogy: 1. fakenews. 2. nemúgyvoltaz, csak pár néger bohóckodott kicsit, amúgy a helyi betegségek verték meg a francia sereget. 3. IDEGEN ERŐK (tm) provokálták ki a lázadást, maguktól eszükbesejutottvolna hisz csak "fekák".
A könyv szerzője nem valamilyen retrospektív PC szemléletet kér számon a kortársakon, szerinte ugyanis az eseményeket nem is lehetett akkoriban másképp elgondolni (azaz mondjuk úgy, hogy emberek lázadtak fel, mert nem akartak szolgák lenni); a probléma ott kezdődik szerinte, hogy a kései történetírás is pontosan így (nem) foglalkozott a témával (a francia történelemből pl. szépen kiíródott az esemény), hiszen a kortársak történelemszemléletét vette át.
A Kolumbuszról szóló rész tanulságos (különösen az a folyamat, ahogy az Egyesült Államok emlékezetpolitikája "kifehérítette" és egy thug life cowboyt csinált belőle), de kicsit kilóg a kötetből.
Hasznos könyv, de nem olyan radikális az ismeretelméleti pozíciója, mint amilyennek el akarja adni magát és mint amilyennek az itteni értékelések alapján sejtettem. Vállalja szubjektív voltát, mellette azonban hitet tesz az empirikus kutatás és a racionális érvelés mellett (ilyen alapon támadja a romantikus gyarmatosítás-elleni "bennszülött" narratívákat is), szóval úgy posztkoloniális a szerző, hogy amúgy egy hagyományosabb iskolához tartozik. Nincs ezzel persze gond, az "egyrészt szubjektív másrészt racionális" egy ősrégi és megoldatlan ellentét a történészi gondolkodás tradíciójában (a szerző szerint örömteli ezen ellentét megélése, lehet, hogy igaza van), de semmiképp sem újdonság; száz éve is leírták már, hogy a történész jelene befolyásolja munkafolyamatát. Ez az ítélet persze nem érvényes a posztkoloniális témák felvetésére, ami valóban újdonság.
August 26, 2008
Trouillet isn't writing for a mass-market audience, but he manages to be readable so that a relative lay-person as myself who hasn't been in accademia for almost a decade didn't feel too excluded. The book looks at how the Haitian revolution has been marginalized, misrepresented, or more often entirely silenced. Trouillet contrasts this to the rise of Columbus Day, where a minor (or most likely even non-existant) event became central to American mythos within the last century. Very thoughtful, challenging, and important.
February 2, 2014
This is a book for scholars of history and public history, so it's not a casual read. That said, I wish I had read it twenty years ago. Trouillot's analogies and use of layered stories explain the complexity of memory and history in ways that are both insightful and incredibly useful to me as a professor and public historian. It's one of those books in which I highlighted too many passages, and to which I will return again and again.
November 29, 2021
156 pages of unremitting brilliance !
February 17, 2014
I believe Chuck D said it best, "History shouldn't be a mystery, our story's real history, not his story"
March 25, 2022
History is a contradictory thing. It is, we tell ourselves, the past, what has been and happened, but it is also the stories we tell ourselves about the past, the ways we construct, remember, forget, weave together incidents and phenomena to become the past, to become history. Both of these meanings are fraught with tension: the first suggests that the past is unknowable – we can never know everything that happened, so it must be partial (as in both incomplete and existing for a purpose). The second suggests that the past is a fiction, a series of events woven into a narrative that is also partial, in that it is someone’s narrative and it exists also for a purpose. That is to say, history is all about power – about whose incidents are known, about whose voice is heard in the narration, about whose interests are served. We see this clearly in the current global debates about who is commemorated, whose statues fill our public space and to what end.
This is the problem at the heart of this short, compelling and important book where Michel-Rolph Trouillot unpacks essential questions of narrating history by looking at two key events in the histories of the Americas. Much of the book is turned over to the Haitian Revolution that by 1804 had overthrown the slave economy, fought off the reimposition of slavery, invasions by both France and Britain and declared an independent black led republic in the territory of what was once France’s most important colony. The final chapter then looks at the ways Christopher Columbus’s accidental arrival in what is now the Bahamas became constructed as the foundational moment to be commemorated, stressing that to a large degree that was an invention of the latter part of the 19th century, driven in part by the quadricentenary of that event and need for nations, especially the USA, to assert their global significance and nationhood.
To a large degree the argument turns on the identification and unpacking of two processes. The first is the way in which silence is fundamental to the construction of history: this is a well-trod path: Ernst Renan for instance made a similar case in the 1880s in discussing the formation of nations and adherence to them – but Trouillot shifts the emphasis so the process of silencing becomes an active event, not just a forgetting. The second is how this silencing occurs, and here his highlights dual dynamic of erasure and trivialisation. Both these phenomena: silencing and mentioning, and erasure and trivialisation are dialectically related to construct and sustain each other.
Drawing on these tropes and in a clear and lucid manner Trouillot explores several aspects of the Haitian Revolution to show how they both exclude the revolution as a world historical event and concurrently in the hand sof other scholars it becomes a narrowly nationalist event sustaining the status quo. This, then, is a powerful argument that history only becomes ‘authentic’ not in being true, but in its contemporary use and significance – how it engages us in the present.
It is an essential read if we want to get a grasp on how contemporary debates about history – about empire and enslavement and more – are played out. But it leaves uncertain the character of history, and the status of these contested narratives. This grounding of ‘authenticity’ (not quite truth) in history’s significance to the present leaves me wondering about the status of the ‘many histories’ it suggests, and the lines and continuities of struggle between those who sought change in the past and those in the now – that is to say I am left wondering how Trouillot makes sense of a feeling of alliance between the different generations of actors who link together in history’s telling – and for that I turn to Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s fantastic Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism as the ideal complement for this vital text.
Would that every undergraduate history course had this as its core text.
This is the problem at the heart of this short, compelling and important book where Michel-Rolph Trouillot unpacks essential questions of narrating history by looking at two key events in the histories of the Americas. Much of the book is turned over to the Haitian Revolution that by 1804 had overthrown the slave economy, fought off the reimposition of slavery, invasions by both France and Britain and declared an independent black led republic in the territory of what was once France’s most important colony. The final chapter then looks at the ways Christopher Columbus’s accidental arrival in what is now the Bahamas became constructed as the foundational moment to be commemorated, stressing that to a large degree that was an invention of the latter part of the 19th century, driven in part by the quadricentenary of that event and need for nations, especially the USA, to assert their global significance and nationhood.
To a large degree the argument turns on the identification and unpacking of two processes. The first is the way in which silence is fundamental to the construction of history: this is a well-trod path: Ernst Renan for instance made a similar case in the 1880s in discussing the formation of nations and adherence to them – but Trouillot shifts the emphasis so the process of silencing becomes an active event, not just a forgetting. The second is how this silencing occurs, and here his highlights dual dynamic of erasure and trivialisation. Both these phenomena: silencing and mentioning, and erasure and trivialisation are dialectically related to construct and sustain each other.
Drawing on these tropes and in a clear and lucid manner Trouillot explores several aspects of the Haitian Revolution to show how they both exclude the revolution as a world historical event and concurrently in the hand sof other scholars it becomes a narrowly nationalist event sustaining the status quo. This, then, is a powerful argument that history only becomes ‘authentic’ not in being true, but in its contemporary use and significance – how it engages us in the present.
It is an essential read if we want to get a grasp on how contemporary debates about history – about empire and enslavement and more – are played out. But it leaves uncertain the character of history, and the status of these contested narratives. This grounding of ‘authenticity’ (not quite truth) in history’s significance to the present leaves me wondering about the status of the ‘many histories’ it suggests, and the lines and continuities of struggle between those who sought change in the past and those in the now – that is to say I am left wondering how Trouillot makes sense of a feeling of alliance between the different generations of actors who link together in history’s telling – and for that I turn to Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s fantastic Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism as the ideal complement for this vital text.
Would that every undergraduate history course had this as its core text.
April 13, 2021
This book discusses several moments about which Haitian, European, and American history has been silent in various ways. Such silences are inevitable (27) and enter history at four moments: fact creation (making sources), assembly (archives), and retrieval (narratives), and their retrospective significance (history; 26). Trouillot articulates that there are process and narrative components to history which are conceptually mostly distinct but practically related and often intertwined (3). Those who remember, for instance, are also constituted by those memories (16). He defines the past as a relative position, empty of content (15), the narratives of which are produced by agents, actors, and intentional subjects (23). He then presents as anything but random examples stories of the Haitian revolution and Columbus's landing there and of the stories about those stories that have propagated at various times and places since.
My impression of the book was that it is a philosophical reflection on history and on Haitian history from a man invested in both. I did not find it as significant as I'd been led to expect, however, perhaps because I have actually read about the Haitian revolution and am familiar with many of the perspectives on the telling of history that he shares in the book. That may be an indication of the influence it has had in the 26 years since it was first published.
My impression of the book was that it is a philosophical reflection on history and on Haitian history from a man invested in both. I did not find it as significant as I'd been led to expect, however, perhaps because I have actually read about the Haitian revolution and am familiar with many of the perspectives on the telling of history that he shares in the book. That may be an indication of the influence it has had in the 26 years since it was first published.
August 30, 2020
anytime we read a book in class that mentions the mythology of the alamo i go buck wild
December 13, 2021
Absolutely fantastic exploration into the forces of historical production. Also an incisive reflection on the historical profession, and all from… an anthropologist!
September 13, 2011
"Is history real?" That is a question I asked one of my academic advisers several years ago in the midst of some soul-searching about just why I was writing the thesis I wrote. Oh how I wish I'd know about Trouillot then! This book doesn't suggest that history is (or isn't) real. Rather,
Trouillot's book is about the practice, process, negotiation, and meaning of History. Trouillot moves far beyond the "history is written by the victors" cliche to discuss just how those "victors" create, archive, recall, and describe/narrate "facts."
The chapters on the evolution of Columbus Day and Disney's plans to build a US-history theme park are especially fascinating. In these chapters, Trouillot's arguments about how The Past and present are codependent are clearest and, for me at least, the most accessible.
Alternately meditative, scholarly, and theoretical, this book requires sustained attention and effort to fully process. Trouillot is writing to an academic audience and assumes a degree of familiarity with literary theory, post-modernism, and other subjects.
Trouillot's book is about the practice, process, negotiation, and meaning of History. Trouillot moves far beyond the "history is written by the victors" cliche to discuss just how those "victors" create, archive, recall, and describe/narrate "facts."
The chapters on the evolution of Columbus Day and Disney's plans to build a US-history theme park are especially fascinating. In these chapters, Trouillot's arguments about how The Past and present are codependent are clearest and, for me at least, the most accessible.
Alternately meditative, scholarly, and theoretical, this book requires sustained attention and effort to fully process. Trouillot is writing to an academic audience and assumes a degree of familiarity with literary theory, post-modernism, and other subjects.
Read
February 14, 2011This book was not really what I expected it to be. Rather than an account of the Haitian revolution this is book an explanation of specific events within the revolution and how the history of the revolution came to be what it is today. A history of history, this book requires more background knowledge about certain historical events than I possess and for that reason I have not rated this book by stars because I struggled to completely grasp the true value of what Trouillot has to say. Nonetheless, I think what is accomplished in this book is very interesting. I have not read many books about the way history is written and it is an important subject to understand before one can ever really hope to understand history itself. This book to will appeal to those interested in history and will perhaps change one's perspective on whatever history one has learned.
March 9, 2016
This is an excellent book, for many reasons.
First, it's a book about the history of the Western Hemisphere (mostly), centering on Haiti and San Souci, and then upon Columbus.
Second, it's a book about how history is determined. It's not just a compendium of facts. History is developed and managed based upon certain facts and upon the suppression of other certain facts.
Third, it's a book about what history means, how facts are presented or suppressed, what the history of that history is.
Fourth, it is simply an excellently written book. The language is crisp and accurate, the thought advances at a smooth but swift state, and the author is present in every paragraph and word. There is no hesitancy or evasiveness.
I enjoyed this book. It's a history book, but I enjoyed it.
First, it's a book about the history of the Western Hemisphere (mostly), centering on Haiti and San Souci, and then upon Columbus.
Second, it's a book about how history is determined. It's not just a compendium of facts. History is developed and managed based upon certain facts and upon the suppression of other certain facts.
Third, it's a book about what history means, how facts are presented or suppressed, what the history of that history is.
Fourth, it is simply an excellently written book. The language is crisp and accurate, the thought advances at a smooth but swift state, and the author is present in every paragraph and word. There is no hesitancy or evasiveness.
I enjoyed this book. It's a history book, but I enjoyed it.
January 17, 2011
The four-moment structure of historicism was incredibly useful for analyzing the cases Trouillot presents for study. As far as trying to get near to Berlin and my experiences there this semester, this book was a perfect starting point. The creation of silences, and the typology of historicity (that which happened and that which is said to have happened) Trouillot describes is just the framework I was looking for.
February 3, 2016
This book has completely changed how I look at history. My previous framework for observing the past has been dismantled, and a new one is being built in its place. I will forever study and write history differently. A must read for anyone interested in history.
September 12, 2021
Really thought-provoking with great explanations and examples... a little bit of a mindfuck and confusing at some points, but overall excellent.
September 3, 2021
The importance of this work from Trouillot is not in the history he is talking about, rather, in the explanation how history can be nuanced and been 'Managed' during the time it is created, recorded, and later interpreted. In fact, the history of Haitian freedom he is talking about, while introduces the finer points of the colonialism, freedom struggle from France and the racial fault lines that mad up the Black community, further goes on to explain how the process of creation, recording and interpreting history is inherently biased and needs re-reading of the proofs and contexts that were hidden either intentionally or unintentionally.
"History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots."
Hence the power of the book lies not in the history it narrates, rather, in the ability to use the principles Trouillot is putting forth, to apply and reanalyze any historical event to expose the roots of the problem.
That comprehension can happen when we understand the role of each actor and their stakes in the narrative which they use to influence, subvert and mobilize based on that history. we have numerous examples for this in each of our popular history.
"Tracking power requires a richer view of historical production than most theorists acknowledge. We cannot exclude in advance any of the actors who participate in the production of history or any of the sites where that production may occur. Next to professional historians we discover artisans of different kinds, unpaid or unrecognized field laborers who augment, deflect, or reorganize the work of the professionals as politicians, students, fiction writers, filmmakers, and participating members of the public. In so doing, we gain a more complex view of academic history itself, since we do not consider professional historians the sole participants in its production."
The simple fact of having a name as Sans Souci, creating a non-existent historical connection with that of the Prussian Emperor, Frederick the Great's Potsdam and simultaneously hiding the role played by a person by that name in Haiti is a classic case study of what Trouillot explains as silencing the History actively and passively. By that, it is incredible that the role played not only by the former Bossale slave, Colonel Jean-Baptiste Sans Souci but the entire 'Congos' has been hidden, overwritten and erased by the Creoles successfully.
It is Retrospective significance can be created by the actors themselves, as a past within their past, or as a future within their present. Henry I killed Sans Souci twice: first, literally, during their last meeting; second, symbolically, by naming his most famous palace Sans Souci. This killing in history was as much for his benefit as it was for our wonder. It erased Sans Souci from Christophe’s own past, and it erased him from his future, what has become the historians’ present.
How the larger Haitian society hides the guilt by bringing in a negative connotation to the word Congos and Bossales is telling response on how societies play a role in hiding the past in the aftermath of any historic event.
For the Haitian urban elites, only Milot counts, and two of the faces of Sans Souci are ghosts that are best left undisturbed. The Colonel is for them the epitome of the war within the war, an episode that, until recently, they have denied, any retrospective significance. This fratricide sequence is the only blemish in the glorious epic of their ancestors’ victory against France, the only shameful page in the history of the sole successful slave revolution in the annals of humankind.
Words like Congo and Bossale carry negative connotations in the Caribbean today. Never mind that Haiti was born with a majority of Bossales. As the Auguste brothers have recently noted, no one wondered how the label “Congo” came to describe a purported political minority at a time when the bulk of the population was certainly African-born and probably from the Congo region.
Also, while peeling away the layers of history of Haiti, he explains how the Western society actively Silenced, Muted and later played a role in distortion of its own complicity and the resultant feeling of guilt over Slavery.
Colonization provided the most potent impetus for the transformation of European ethnocentrism into scientific racism. In the early 1700s, the ideological rationalization of Afro-American slavery relied increasingly on explicit formulations of the ontological order inherited from the Renaissance. But in so doing, it also transformed the Renaissance worldview by bringing its inequalities much closer to the very practices that confirmed them. Blacks were inferior and therefore enslaved; black slaves behaved badly and were therefore inferior. In short, the practice of slavery in the Americas secured the blacks’ position at the bottom of the human world.
Even the great western thinkers of yesteryears were graded with shades only differing in the amount of gray as far as Slavery is concerned.
Buffon fervently supported a monogenist viewpoint: blacks were not, in his view, of a different species. Still, they were different enough to be destined to slavery. Voltaire disagreed, but only in part. Negroes belonged to a different species, one culturally destined to be slaves. That the material well-being of many of these thinkers was often indirectly and, sometimes, quite directly linked to the exploitation of African slave labor may not have been irrelevant to their learned opinions.
The western societies response, irrespective of which side they belonged to - Liberal or Conservative - was to trivialize the struggles against the slavery as a set of isolated events triggered by petty concerns of the Individuals who were slaved. By doing so, they refused to acknowledge the vice as whole but condemn it as discrete events of individual discontent due to specific Condition and Context, ensuring the system was never questioned.
most Western observers had treated manifestations of slave resistance and defiance with the ambivalence characteristic of their overall treatment of colonization and slavery. On the one hand, resistance and defiance did not exist, since to acknowledge them was to acknowledge the humanity of the enslaved.
Built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy. To acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong with the system.
By this, Trouillot explains how History is never a binary narration but is built by multiple facts and narrations layered one over the other and that itself distorting the way it is manifested to a reader who is unaware.
It is a revelation to us, when Trouillot goes into the past of Haitian history and reveals how a victor in the past had built a Palace over the dead body of his most dreaded enemy after vanquishing him, that the reason for the construction of Sans Souci by Henry-I dawns on us. Instead, all along the history the Western historians spin a non-existent story of the Prussian Emperor being an inspiration for Henry-I of Haiti to have created a structure in line with the one in Potsdam!
This is a classic case of History being Created, erased and maligned all that happening together to Silence the memory of Colonel Sans Souci.
For this reason, this book is a valuable tool and a revelation for those who are interested in history and want to elevate themselves into a better understanding about historical events.
Article on my blog
"History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots."
Hence the power of the book lies not in the history it narrates, rather, in the ability to use the principles Trouillot is putting forth, to apply and reanalyze any historical event to expose the roots of the problem.
That comprehension can happen when we understand the role of each actor and their stakes in the narrative which they use to influence, subvert and mobilize based on that history. we have numerous examples for this in each of our popular history.
"Tracking power requires a richer view of historical production than most theorists acknowledge. We cannot exclude in advance any of the actors who participate in the production of history or any of the sites where that production may occur. Next to professional historians we discover artisans of different kinds, unpaid or unrecognized field laborers who augment, deflect, or reorganize the work of the professionals as politicians, students, fiction writers, filmmakers, and participating members of the public. In so doing, we gain a more complex view of academic history itself, since we do not consider professional historians the sole participants in its production."
The simple fact of having a name as Sans Souci, creating a non-existent historical connection with that of the Prussian Emperor, Frederick the Great's Potsdam and simultaneously hiding the role played by a person by that name in Haiti is a classic case study of what Trouillot explains as silencing the History actively and passively. By that, it is incredible that the role played not only by the former Bossale slave, Colonel Jean-Baptiste Sans Souci but the entire 'Congos' has been hidden, overwritten and erased by the Creoles successfully.
It is Retrospective significance can be created by the actors themselves, as a past within their past, or as a future within their present. Henry I killed Sans Souci twice: first, literally, during their last meeting; second, symbolically, by naming his most famous palace Sans Souci. This killing in history was as much for his benefit as it was for our wonder. It erased Sans Souci from Christophe’s own past, and it erased him from his future, what has become the historians’ present.
How the larger Haitian society hides the guilt by bringing in a negative connotation to the word Congos and Bossales is telling response on how societies play a role in hiding the past in the aftermath of any historic event.
For the Haitian urban elites, only Milot counts, and two of the faces of Sans Souci are ghosts that are best left undisturbed. The Colonel is for them the epitome of the war within the war, an episode that, until recently, they have denied, any retrospective significance. This fratricide sequence is the only blemish in the glorious epic of their ancestors’ victory against France, the only shameful page in the history of the sole successful slave revolution in the annals of humankind.
Words like Congo and Bossale carry negative connotations in the Caribbean today. Never mind that Haiti was born with a majority of Bossales. As the Auguste brothers have recently noted, no one wondered how the label “Congo” came to describe a purported political minority at a time when the bulk of the population was certainly African-born and probably from the Congo region.
Also, while peeling away the layers of history of Haiti, he explains how the Western society actively Silenced, Muted and later played a role in distortion of its own complicity and the resultant feeling of guilt over Slavery.
Colonization provided the most potent impetus for the transformation of European ethnocentrism into scientific racism. In the early 1700s, the ideological rationalization of Afro-American slavery relied increasingly on explicit formulations of the ontological order inherited from the Renaissance. But in so doing, it also transformed the Renaissance worldview by bringing its inequalities much closer to the very practices that confirmed them. Blacks were inferior and therefore enslaved; black slaves behaved badly and were therefore inferior. In short, the practice of slavery in the Americas secured the blacks’ position at the bottom of the human world.
Even the great western thinkers of yesteryears were graded with shades only differing in the amount of gray as far as Slavery is concerned.
Buffon fervently supported a monogenist viewpoint: blacks were not, in his view, of a different species. Still, they were different enough to be destined to slavery. Voltaire disagreed, but only in part. Negroes belonged to a different species, one culturally destined to be slaves. That the material well-being of many of these thinkers was often indirectly and, sometimes, quite directly linked to the exploitation of African slave labor may not have been irrelevant to their learned opinions.
The western societies response, irrespective of which side they belonged to - Liberal or Conservative - was to trivialize the struggles against the slavery as a set of isolated events triggered by petty concerns of the Individuals who were slaved. By doing so, they refused to acknowledge the vice as whole but condemn it as discrete events of individual discontent due to specific Condition and Context, ensuring the system was never questioned.
most Western observers had treated manifestations of slave resistance and defiance with the ambivalence characteristic of their overall treatment of colonization and slavery. On the one hand, resistance and defiance did not exist, since to acknowledge them was to acknowledge the humanity of the enslaved.
Built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy. To acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong with the system.
By this, Trouillot explains how History is never a binary narration but is built by multiple facts and narrations layered one over the other and that itself distorting the way it is manifested to a reader who is unaware.
It is a revelation to us, when Trouillot goes into the past of Haitian history and reveals how a victor in the past had built a Palace over the dead body of his most dreaded enemy after vanquishing him, that the reason for the construction of Sans Souci by Henry-I dawns on us. Instead, all along the history the Western historians spin a non-existent story of the Prussian Emperor being an inspiration for Henry-I of Haiti to have created a structure in line with the one in Potsdam!
This is a classic case of History being Created, erased and maligned all that happening together to Silence the memory of Colonel Sans Souci.
For this reason, this book is a valuable tool and a revelation for those who are interested in history and want to elevate themselves into a better understanding about historical events.
Article on my blog
September 6, 2021
I am reading this for my graduate class and I have to start out with the factual problems that already have turned me off for the book. If the author cannot get some of these facts right, obviously I am dubious of his work.
This addresses the problems with the Alamo right off:
I know this because I am a personal friend with the historian at the Alamo...
Chap 1
• Santa Anna arrives in late February not mid February 1836.
• “Few traces of the Franciscan priests who had built the mission more than a century before survived” the compound and all the buildings present on march 1836 were still intact, they were in a similar condition as they were when the mission was secularized in 1793. The battle of the Alamo was the only assault that ever took place as the site.
• “ a few English speaking squatters occupied the place” this marginalizes the fact that there were Mexican Texans in the Alamo as well some of which (Juan Seguin) did not speak English at all. The overwhelming Anglo population were not squatting. They were Mexican citizens. Men like James Bowie had been living in Tejas, Mexico’s northern most province for 10 years, married into a Mexican family, converted to Catholicism, and learned fluent Spanish. To say they were squatting is highly inaccurate, this was a revolution for Mexican independence that boiled over into Texas.
• “the structure itself was weak” the Mexican army pounded the walls with artillery from Feb 23rd to March 5th and never breached a single wall.
• “Santa Anna blew the horns that Mexicans traditionally used to announce an attack to the death” I have no idea what he means here. Santa Anna is not on the battlefield on the morning of march 6th. He’s nearly 800 yards away, the night before the battle he issues his battle orders. He says all camps and artillery will go silent at 10:00p.m, the men will remove any items to include canteens that might make noise. On the morning of battle no alarms are given, the Mexican army wants complete silence, the move so quietly in fact they kill some of the Texans on the outer perimeter who were supposed to be on guard duty.
• “Later on that day his forces finally broke through the fort” the battle of the Alamo lasted 30 to 90 minutes. I put the number at 45, the breach of the compound happened very quickly. Mexican officers say the battle was over by sunrise. The sun set at 7:03 a.m on March 6th.
• He claims that Santa Anna went on to become the leader of Mexico four more times, this is inaccurate. Santa Anna was the leader of Mexico over 10 times.
• The Natives that are buried near the Alamo for the most part are buried off the Alamo fort footprint. We are working with a council of leaders from various tribes to repatriate remains found on our grounds. There’s a tribal monitor on site every day when archaeological work is done as well as any construction to ensure if anything is found of significance its treated correctly. None of the burials can be traced to a specific tribe and are general marked under one unifying name Coahuiltecan (co-weel-a-tek-an).
• P. 9 “…moment of glory that during which freedom loving anglos…chose to fight until the death” again, the were natural born Mexican Texans fighting in the revolution. The anglos were called Tejanos and were considered Mexican citizens.
• He alludes to annexation on page 9. As if the American Government was behind a coup of some sort. The American government could of got involved at any time and chose not to. Even after Texas wins its independence and tries to join the united States its told firmly no not once but twice.
• Page 9 “…56% nominal Hispanics many of whom acknowledge some native American Ancestry” where is this study? I would love to see it. No census has taken place to record the indigenous population of San Antonio. What has been discovered is that many people who are brown are willingly stealing indigenous identity in San Antonio. A struggle I have seen play out many times. It’s important to note that no living relatives exist for the people buried at the mission, at least not to my knowledge.
• Page 10. Travis’s line in that sand myth has been debunked, not a single historian I know believes that and its agreed it was a fabricated story by a man named Zuber. This was debunked in the 1990s
• Page 10. The Catholic church sold the Alamo to the state. I can find the deed if you need it. This is a ludicrous claim.
• Page 10. “Did Bowie bury treasure on the site?” Bowie was bedridden by the second day of the siege and likely died in his bed. He was in no state to be burying treasure. Bowie negotiated because he wanted to save the lives of his men. Bowie was friends with several Mexican officers and bargaining for certain terms of surrender was commonplace at that time period.
• P. 20“books sell even better than coonskin caps at the alamo gift shop to which half a dozen title by amateur historians bring more than $400,000 a year” I would love to see this source. I am one of many who approved the current booklist in the alamo gift shop. The overwhelming majority of our books are written by people like Dr. Bruce Winders, Dr. Donald Frazier, William C. Davis, Dr Hardin and many others. These are not amateur historians but chairs of history departments at major universities. This author should know better than to use generalizations like that.
• P.21 He makes a comparison of Americans learning their history from Hollywood, hes not entirely wrong. But he did no real research that I can see regarding the Alamo. HEs just as guilty here.
• He speaks to one sidedness on p. 22, we have primary sources from both sides of the battle of the Alamo. Why he didn’t use them I’m not sure.
This author questions the narrative of the battle which I find fascinating. The narrative we teach and have taught for the past 30 years is from the viewpoint of a slave. William B. Travis’s slave Joe was present at the battle and was the only adult male to survive the battle. He gives an unbiased account of the battle, and it aligns pretty well with the accounts of the Mexican Army.
People (this author included) do not devote the proper time to understanding why the Mexican revolution is taking place. They scratch the surface and do not realize how deeply complicated the event is so they simplify it and use broad claims to push an agenda. I see no sources or footnotes listed and most of what he has written here is from the 1990s. Every few years a book just like this pops up (one was published last year called to forget the Alamo) and the author makes broad sweeping claims that leaving Borderlands Historians like me scratching our heads
This addresses the problems with the Alamo right off:
I know this because I am a personal friend with the historian at the Alamo...
Chap 1
• Santa Anna arrives in late February not mid February 1836.
• “Few traces of the Franciscan priests who had built the mission more than a century before survived” the compound and all the buildings present on march 1836 were still intact, they were in a similar condition as they were when the mission was secularized in 1793. The battle of the Alamo was the only assault that ever took place as the site.
• “ a few English speaking squatters occupied the place” this marginalizes the fact that there were Mexican Texans in the Alamo as well some of which (Juan Seguin) did not speak English at all. The overwhelming Anglo population were not squatting. They were Mexican citizens. Men like James Bowie had been living in Tejas, Mexico’s northern most province for 10 years, married into a Mexican family, converted to Catholicism, and learned fluent Spanish. To say they were squatting is highly inaccurate, this was a revolution for Mexican independence that boiled over into Texas.
• “the structure itself was weak” the Mexican army pounded the walls with artillery from Feb 23rd to March 5th and never breached a single wall.
• “Santa Anna blew the horns that Mexicans traditionally used to announce an attack to the death” I have no idea what he means here. Santa Anna is not on the battlefield on the morning of march 6th. He’s nearly 800 yards away, the night before the battle he issues his battle orders. He says all camps and artillery will go silent at 10:00p.m, the men will remove any items to include canteens that might make noise. On the morning of battle no alarms are given, the Mexican army wants complete silence, the move so quietly in fact they kill some of the Texans on the outer perimeter who were supposed to be on guard duty.
• “Later on that day his forces finally broke through the fort” the battle of the Alamo lasted 30 to 90 minutes. I put the number at 45, the breach of the compound happened very quickly. Mexican officers say the battle was over by sunrise. The sun set at 7:03 a.m on March 6th.
• He claims that Santa Anna went on to become the leader of Mexico four more times, this is inaccurate. Santa Anna was the leader of Mexico over 10 times.
• The Natives that are buried near the Alamo for the most part are buried off the Alamo fort footprint. We are working with a council of leaders from various tribes to repatriate remains found on our grounds. There’s a tribal monitor on site every day when archaeological work is done as well as any construction to ensure if anything is found of significance its treated correctly. None of the burials can be traced to a specific tribe and are general marked under one unifying name Coahuiltecan (co-weel-a-tek-an).
• P. 9 “…moment of glory that during which freedom loving anglos…chose to fight until the death” again, the were natural born Mexican Texans fighting in the revolution. The anglos were called Tejanos and were considered Mexican citizens.
• He alludes to annexation on page 9. As if the American Government was behind a coup of some sort. The American government could of got involved at any time and chose not to. Even after Texas wins its independence and tries to join the united States its told firmly no not once but twice.
• Page 9 “…56% nominal Hispanics many of whom acknowledge some native American Ancestry” where is this study? I would love to see it. No census has taken place to record the indigenous population of San Antonio. What has been discovered is that many people who are brown are willingly stealing indigenous identity in San Antonio. A struggle I have seen play out many times. It’s important to note that no living relatives exist for the people buried at the mission, at least not to my knowledge.
• Page 10. Travis’s line in that sand myth has been debunked, not a single historian I know believes that and its agreed it was a fabricated story by a man named Zuber. This was debunked in the 1990s
• Page 10. The Catholic church sold the Alamo to the state. I can find the deed if you need it. This is a ludicrous claim.
• Page 10. “Did Bowie bury treasure on the site?” Bowie was bedridden by the second day of the siege and likely died in his bed. He was in no state to be burying treasure. Bowie negotiated because he wanted to save the lives of his men. Bowie was friends with several Mexican officers and bargaining for certain terms of surrender was commonplace at that time period.
• P. 20“books sell even better than coonskin caps at the alamo gift shop to which half a dozen title by amateur historians bring more than $400,000 a year” I would love to see this source. I am one of many who approved the current booklist in the alamo gift shop. The overwhelming majority of our books are written by people like Dr. Bruce Winders, Dr. Donald Frazier, William C. Davis, Dr Hardin and many others. These are not amateur historians but chairs of history departments at major universities. This author should know better than to use generalizations like that.
• P.21 He makes a comparison of Americans learning their history from Hollywood, hes not entirely wrong. But he did no real research that I can see regarding the Alamo. HEs just as guilty here.
• He speaks to one sidedness on p. 22, we have primary sources from both sides of the battle of the Alamo. Why he didn’t use them I’m not sure.
This author questions the narrative of the battle which I find fascinating. The narrative we teach and have taught for the past 30 years is from the viewpoint of a slave. William B. Travis’s slave Joe was present at the battle and was the only adult male to survive the battle. He gives an unbiased account of the battle, and it aligns pretty well with the accounts of the Mexican Army.
People (this author included) do not devote the proper time to understanding why the Mexican revolution is taking place. They scratch the surface and do not realize how deeply complicated the event is so they simplify it and use broad claims to push an agenda. I see no sources or footnotes listed and most of what he has written here is from the 1990s. Every few years a book just like this pops up (one was published last year called to forget the Alamo) and the author makes broad sweeping claims that leaving Borderlands Historians like me scratching our heads
February 17, 2019
This book was mentioned in Killing Orders by Taner Akcam in which the author main argument is to validate that Ottoman Empire indeed carried out a genocide against its Armenian population between 1915 and 1918 that resulted in over one million Armenians lost their lives. The Ottoman Empire, and its subsequent heir of the much reduced in size and influence, Turkey has maintained that the genocide never happened.
On similar vein this book touched on Haiti Revolution and Columbus, topics that I must admit I’m not familiar with. I recall rather vaguely about Haiti Revolution as a backdrop in a novel written by Isabel Allende, “Island Beneath The Sea.” Like most people, I accept the version that Christopher Columbus was an explorer and my curiosity never go beyond that. This is not an easy book to read particularly when what’s involves in the production of history (what’s get recorded or discarded from the “official version” and on who’s order) is not your main interest. OK, I admit it’s too tedious for me. However, for any habitual reader surely, we are seasoned enough to notice when we come across irregularity on what supposed to be facts. In my opinion, it matters not what you read, it’s a good practice to ask yourself: that’s great but what’s not being mention here and why
On similar vein this book touched on Haiti Revolution and Columbus, topics that I must admit I’m not familiar with. I recall rather vaguely about Haiti Revolution as a backdrop in a novel written by Isabel Allende, “Island Beneath The Sea.” Like most people, I accept the version that Christopher Columbus was an explorer and my curiosity never go beyond that. This is not an easy book to read particularly when what’s involves in the production of history (what’s get recorded or discarded from the “official version” and on who’s order) is not your main interest. OK, I admit it’s too tedious for me. However, for any habitual reader surely, we are seasoned enough to notice when we come across irregularity on what supposed to be facts. In my opinion, it matters not what you read, it’s a good practice to ask yourself: that’s great but what’s not being mention here and why
Read
June 6, 2023A pretty incredible 150 pages!
August 25, 2022
Very good book, a bit difficult for me to understand. Despite this, definitely would recommend to pretty much anyone. Even if it’s a challenging read, there’s a lot of interesting and eye-opening points made
My wife left me :(
My wife left me :(
November 11, 2023
Overview:
There is power in the production of history. History is produced by competing groups and individuals. Competitors with uneven contribution. Competitors who do not have equal access to the production of history. While some competitors leave many traces to be left to be used as sources, others are silent for their lack of traces left behind. A seeming consensus hides a history of conflict. A conflict between past and present narrators. Humans are both agents in history, and history’s narrators. History incorporates what happened and the process about what happened.
Power shapes the narrative. An integral part and cannot be removed from the narrative. How history happened cannot be separated from who wields power. Power to include or exclude information. Power to share information, or to silence information. What is referenced and the silences of what is not, are determined within the production of history. From the creation of the sources, to the assembly of the information, to the retrieval of information in the process of making a narrative, to finding the retrospective significance. Silences are inherent in the historical record. For some events and experiences leave behind sources, while others do not. Even within sources, the narrator chooses which to use and exclude. The process of historical production is shown using the Haitian Revolution, slavery, and Cristopher Columbus.
Positivist or Constructivist?
There are two major schools of thought on history which are the positivist, and constructivists. Those who are influenced by positivism, believe in the separation between historic facts and how those facts are narrated. Those who are influenced by constructivism, do not separate facts and the narration. Constructivist see a historical narrative as a fiction among others. Constructivists do not consider the sociohistorical process.
There is more to the production of history than the dichotomy between positivism and constructivism. The author rejects claims about people being prisoners of the past, and rejects claims about purely socially constructed history.
Historical narrative needs to take account of the distinction and overlap between process and narrative. To embrace the ambiguity. The production of history occurs within context.
How Is Historical Fact Made?
There is a difference between a fake and a fiction. Fabricating sources and evidence produces a fake, as they violate the claims to historical truth. Rules of history that is different in time and place. History is not just fiction, for history leaves behind material evidence that limit the range of narratives, while also setting the boundaries for future historical narratives.
Facts always have meaning, for they only become facts because they mattered, no matter how minimally. Facts are not created equal. Facts are interdependent with other facts. Each fact has meaning in relation to other facts. Facts compete with other facts for room, earning the right to exist among other facts. Some facts will be requalified with new facts. New knowledge must acknowledge and contradict previous understandings.
Silences are born contemporaneously with the found traces. While some events are noted immediately, other are not. Some facts leave behind a physical or psychological impact, other do not. Unequal experiences by the agents of history, leads to uneven historical power to inscribe their traces. Sources build on these traces, which privilege some over others. Sources choose what to include and exclude. Sources imply choices. Some facts make it to history, from others there is only silence. Silences are inherent in history, for historic facts always have missing parts. Some parts are recorded, while others are left out.
Assembling archives is not a passive act. They prepare facts for historical intelligibility. They set the rules for credibility and interdependence. Provide the choices of which stories have relevance, which stories have significance. Classifications and terminologies matter. Depending on the lexicon used, determines the categories an event goes into.
The Unthinkable:
There are events that are unthinkable. Events for which alternatives cannot be conceived. Unthinkable events that defy how the questions are phrased. When the unthinkable events do happen, the event is recast to fit a reality of possibilities.
Caveats?
The examples used showcase the production of history are limited. They were not meant to and do not provide a comprehensive understanding of the events.
There is power in the production of history. History is produced by competing groups and individuals. Competitors with uneven contribution. Competitors who do not have equal access to the production of history. While some competitors leave many traces to be left to be used as sources, others are silent for their lack of traces left behind. A seeming consensus hides a history of conflict. A conflict between past and present narrators. Humans are both agents in history, and history’s narrators. History incorporates what happened and the process about what happened.
Power shapes the narrative. An integral part and cannot be removed from the narrative. How history happened cannot be separated from who wields power. Power to include or exclude information. Power to share information, or to silence information. What is referenced and the silences of what is not, are determined within the production of history. From the creation of the sources, to the assembly of the information, to the retrieval of information in the process of making a narrative, to finding the retrospective significance. Silences are inherent in the historical record. For some events and experiences leave behind sources, while others do not. Even within sources, the narrator chooses which to use and exclude. The process of historical production is shown using the Haitian Revolution, slavery, and Cristopher Columbus.
Positivist or Constructivist?
There are two major schools of thought on history which are the positivist, and constructivists. Those who are influenced by positivism, believe in the separation between historic facts and how those facts are narrated. Those who are influenced by constructivism, do not separate facts and the narration. Constructivist see a historical narrative as a fiction among others. Constructivists do not consider the sociohistorical process.
There is more to the production of history than the dichotomy between positivism and constructivism. The author rejects claims about people being prisoners of the past, and rejects claims about purely socially constructed history.
Historical narrative needs to take account of the distinction and overlap between process and narrative. To embrace the ambiguity. The production of history occurs within context.
How Is Historical Fact Made?
There is a difference between a fake and a fiction. Fabricating sources and evidence produces a fake, as they violate the claims to historical truth. Rules of history that is different in time and place. History is not just fiction, for history leaves behind material evidence that limit the range of narratives, while also setting the boundaries for future historical narratives.
Facts always have meaning, for they only become facts because they mattered, no matter how minimally. Facts are not created equal. Facts are interdependent with other facts. Each fact has meaning in relation to other facts. Facts compete with other facts for room, earning the right to exist among other facts. Some facts will be requalified with new facts. New knowledge must acknowledge and contradict previous understandings.
Silences are born contemporaneously with the found traces. While some events are noted immediately, other are not. Some facts leave behind a physical or psychological impact, other do not. Unequal experiences by the agents of history, leads to uneven historical power to inscribe their traces. Sources build on these traces, which privilege some over others. Sources choose what to include and exclude. Sources imply choices. Some facts make it to history, from others there is only silence. Silences are inherent in history, for historic facts always have missing parts. Some parts are recorded, while others are left out.
Assembling archives is not a passive act. They prepare facts for historical intelligibility. They set the rules for credibility and interdependence. Provide the choices of which stories have relevance, which stories have significance. Classifications and terminologies matter. Depending on the lexicon used, determines the categories an event goes into.
The Unthinkable:
There are events that are unthinkable. Events for which alternatives cannot be conceived. Unthinkable events that defy how the questions are phrased. When the unthinkable events do happen, the event is recast to fit a reality of possibilities.
Caveats?
The examples used showcase the production of history are limited. They were not meant to and do not provide a comprehensive understanding of the events.
January 20, 2020
‘Any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences’ says the author and he attempts to expose those silences in 4-5 historical case studies. According to Trouillot, most of the time silences in the historical texts are planned and conscious omissions and in that, they are all ‘active’, namely they serve a purpose: They make populations governable, individuals submissive and states legitimate.
The book then places this historical materialist lens on Sans Souci, the Haitian Revolution, the American slavery and ‘Cristobal Colón’. The dates, the leaders, the events that you know and remember and that you did not even hear about are all carefully crafted by the literati of the ruling classes, so are our minds and aspirations and thus our behaviour. ‘I am tired,’ said a student of Trouillot once: ‘to hear about this slavery stuff. Can we hear the story of the black millionaires?’
The author makes an interesting point when he writes about what he calls ‘the unthinkables’ of history. Every historical period has thinkable concepts, their interlinkages and theories which allow societies to make sense of the world. But behind them, hidden are the unthinkable ways of conceptualizing the world which impose its limits on even the critical, progressive intellectual and historian. So be careful about the ‘unkown unkowns’.
Certainly this is a good book. But in the 21st century, didn’t it become a common wisdom to say that historical narratives are constructed and biased? Any Marxist, or critical social scientist would take Trouillot’s expositions as given now. Therefore, the book has less to teach to those for whom this knowledge is now common sense.
The book then places this historical materialist lens on Sans Souci, the Haitian Revolution, the American slavery and ‘Cristobal Colón’. The dates, the leaders, the events that you know and remember and that you did not even hear about are all carefully crafted by the literati of the ruling classes, so are our minds and aspirations and thus our behaviour. ‘I am tired,’ said a student of Trouillot once: ‘to hear about this slavery stuff. Can we hear the story of the black millionaires?’
The author makes an interesting point when he writes about what he calls ‘the unthinkables’ of history. Every historical period has thinkable concepts, their interlinkages and theories which allow societies to make sense of the world. But behind them, hidden are the unthinkable ways of conceptualizing the world which impose its limits on even the critical, progressive intellectual and historian. So be careful about the ‘unkown unkowns’.
Certainly this is a good book. But in the 21st century, didn’t it become a common wisdom to say that historical narratives are constructed and biased? Any Marxist, or critical social scientist would take Trouillot’s expositions as given now. Therefore, the book has less to teach to those for whom this knowledge is now common sense.
December 11, 2018
Michel-Rolph Trouillot was writing about the European and American Colonial paradigm for the most part. However, there are enough parallels to the field of history and historical memory production within other paradigms as well, that I found this book salient for general reading.
His perception on the "why" many groups in power continue to alter history as well as some of the overt and subtle mechanisms were very accurate, and many surprising. Fields that are not usually covered but produce historical memory were included, and these made the book worthwhile.
However, there was a distinct lack of organization and "flow" for my tastes. While his style might be agreeable to other readers, I personally wanted a more structured work that built upon each preceding lesson. However, that would be applicable to a generalist work on construction/manipulation of history and historical memory and not the narrative on the specific geographic region and time that Trouillot was focused on. So the criticism is a personal preference only.
Overall I would recommend the book for those interested in how history has been and currently still is being manipulated by various interested parties.
His perception on the "why" many groups in power continue to alter history as well as some of the overt and subtle mechanisms were very accurate, and many surprising. Fields that are not usually covered but produce historical memory were included, and these made the book worthwhile.
However, there was a distinct lack of organization and "flow" for my tastes. While his style might be agreeable to other readers, I personally wanted a more structured work that built upon each preceding lesson. However, that would be applicable to a generalist work on construction/manipulation of history and historical memory and not the narrative on the specific geographic region and time that Trouillot was focused on. So the criticism is a personal preference only.
Overall I would recommend the book for those interested in how history has been and currently still is being manipulated by various interested parties.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 274 reviews