https:/.../2019-06-17_his315l_pt2.mp4

In some ways it's easier than the
daily responses.

It's a basic historical assignment.

One of the things we do as historians,
one of the things Nico, Christina,

Brooks, and Juan Carlos have done
time and again as graduate students

and in the dissertations they're writing,
in the books they're writing,

is read a primary document
and explain the document.

That's what we do as historians.
A very basic thing.

We go to the original source
whether it's Lincoln's second inaugural

or the Mississippi Black Code

or various other ones
that you have linked to Canvas.

We go to that original source,
we read the source,

and we historicize the source.

What does that mean?

Three things that you're doing.

Page one, summarize what
the source says.

Why is the source important?

Second page, tell us how it
relates to the themes

that we've been discussing in the class.

Every primary document on Canvas
is connected to a lecture.

So the easy thing is, why did we
assign that primary document

with that lecture?

How does it connect to those themes?

So the Mississippi Black Code is with
the lecture about Ben Tillman.

Right? What's the relationship between
the Mississippi Black Code

and Benjamin "Pitchfork" Tillman,
would be one way to think about page two.

Page three is your assessment,
your analysis

of what made this document effective
for its own purpose in its time,

and what made it ineffective.

It's not, do I like this document or not,

would it be written the same
way today or not?

No, it's more how and why was
this document effective

in advocating for what it advocated for,
and why was it not effective?

How did the Mississippi Black Code
actually affect and influence things?

How did it not?

Right? How did Lincoln's second
inaugural redefine America?

How did it not?

That's your analysis of what worked
and what didn't work.

The same thing you would do if you
were watching a speech today.

If you went to watch a politician
give a speech,

you'd say, okay, page one,
what did the senator say?

Page two, how does it relate to
what we're talking about today?

Page three, what was effective,
what was not effective

in what the senator --
what she said, right?

That's what you're doing with
this document, okay?

Three pages, very simple.

The documents are all short.

Short document, reading it carefully,
pulling out, when necessary, some quotes,

giving us reference to it.

It's good on page two if you also make
reference to some of the lectures

and some of the other readings.

Three pages, each page
12 point font, double-spaced.

And this is to be submitted online
on Wednesday by 11:59 pm.

We do want these well-written.

Make sure, as Christina said,
proofread. Right?

Proofread this before you turn it in.

Questions?

Or did we cover it all?
>> I think that is pretty much it

for document analysis.

Yeah. You know, students had some
basic questions concerning format,

but I think we covered that.
>> Okay.

>> Three pages, double-spaced,
12 point font.

>> Okay. This is a chance
for everyone to do well.

In the past, people have been
able to raise their grades

with a document analysis.

This is not an assignment that's
actually that hard.

It takes some time, you've got to
pick your document,

you pick one of the documents
that's linked to the lectures

through next week --
through Wednesday.

And you have to read it carefully,

and you have to think about its
relationship to the course

and write about it,
and you have to write well.

But it is not a long assignment,
it is not a difficult assignment,

it's an assignment you can all
do very, very well on.

So I'm hoping that we'll see that.

If you have questions during
today's lecture about it,

just send the questions in.

You can also email your TA's.

I think there was a question about
drafts that came up also.

I talked to the TA's.

If they're willing to read a draft,
that's certainly fine.

It depends on their schedule.

But you really can't give them a draft
at 9 pm on Wednesday

and ask them to read it
and get it back to you.

So I'm going to encourage you,
if you want to send them a draft,

that you send them something,
if they agree to it, by tomorrow,

by Tuesday, right, so they
actually have time.

But it's up to the TA's.

They have to balance
their schedule, so we'll see.

You can talk to them about that.

Anything else?

Okay. So Juan Carlos,
who's not here,

he sent me something,
then he didn't show up.

You see what happens?
You see this guy? Right?

So he sent me one of the
weekly response --

one of the daily responses he was
reading, one of the response essays,

and he wanted me to read it because
he thought it was an interesting point.

And I think I want to respond to it,
'cause it's a really good response.

It's a response essay to one of my
lectures, to I think the first lecture.

And it raises some important issues,
really well thought out.

And I want to first of all praise
this student

and I want to have a chance to
respond to it.

So this is from Margaret M.
I'm not gonna give her full last name

because we also want to
preserve students' privacy.

So this is Margaret M.

And I'm just gonna read her essay,
because I think it's very well done

and it raises some important points.

"In module one --" in lecture one --
"Suri explained --"

I think she's referring to me, not my son.

"Suri explained people's varied reactions
to historical events,

"the similarities between the past
and the present."

We were just doing that with
Hamilton as well.

"And how history shapes the future.

"But he oversimplified --"
I oversimplified --

"...the ways in which
people form opinions.

"To start," Margaret writes,
"Suri's use of celebrity to explain

"how certain figures attract both public
reverence and scorn..."

and I was referring to Robert E. Lee,
Frederick Douglass --

"...was very persuasive..."

Thank you, that makes me feel good.
I was very persuasive.

"...in proving how one historical event
can have dissimilar meanings

"for different individuals."

That was one of the points I made
in that first lecture.

It's interesting, many of us seem to
respond the same way to Hamilton.

But I wonder if we all would if
we were a different kind of group.

Imagine showing Hamilton to
a group of people living perhaps

in another part of the country.

Would they react differently?
Perhaps so. Perhaps so.

I was wondering last night,
as diverse as the group looked,

was it really that politically diverse?

Or is there actually a political
sorting going on? I don't know.

Between who goes to see Hamilton
and who doesn't.

"As with the celebrities in the lecture,"
Margaret writes,

"the time periods in which two celebrities
lived determine their ideologies

and the controversies they dealt with.

But the mixed reactions
to those individuals by the public

persisted across time."

Again, people continue to react
differently from different communities,

to Robert E. Lee.

Some people see Robert E. Lee
as a man of honor,

some people see Robert E. Lee
as a traitor.

The city of Austin has just
removed Robert E. Lee's name

from a high school, for example.

But not everyone agreed with that.

"On the other hand," Margaret writes,
"Suri was less convincing --"

I was less convincing.

If I just got enough time -- if I had more
time, I would be more convincing.

"...was less convincing in arguing that
people's opinions of celebrities

and historical events were polarized.

For example, in his discussion of
Frederick Douglass,"

when I talked about Frederick Douglass,

"Suri explained that certain people would
be intimidated by Douglass,

and others would be inspired,

but also implied that no one
had a moderate opinion of him."

Fair point.

"While this seems like an exaggeration,

the professor made an even less
persuasive statement later,

saying that while facts are universals --"
they're universal,

"people's reactions to them varies."
In fact varies.

"As seen with fake news, facts are
not as universal as Suri argued,

but rather can be stretched and molded
into a multitude of truths,

and cannot be compressed
into one narrative.

In the future of the course,
it is necessary --"

I like when the students are telling
me what's necessary. This is good.

"In the future of the course, it is
necessary to explore how people

form reactions to historical events,

and how nuanced opinions
develop within the boundaries

of polarized reactions
seen in this lecture."

I agree, Margaret.

I think you're spot on,
and I appreciate the critique.

The highest form of praise you can give
someone is to take whatever they say

seriously enough to think about it,
and to critique it.

I think Margaret is absolutely right.

People do react to the same images,
the same figures in different ways,

but they're not always polarized
one or the other.

And it is fair to say that in the first
lecture that you've all listened to,

hopefully all memorized,

I do overstate, I think,
the bifurcation of views.

There are a lot of people who find,
to this day,

Frederick Douglass's image inspiring,

some who still find his image
threatening,

and there are a lot of people
who are in-between.

There's a lot of space in-between.

And it's very important,
Margaret reminds us,

one of many points she makes very well,

that even though we tend to talk about
the world as being polarized,

actually most opinions
fall somewhere in-between.

Right? And the polarization
is more a category,

and it can become self-fulfilling
beyond the realities.

We as historians want the messy reality.

We want to understand how people fit
in-between the categories.

Categories are not reality any more
than a map is reality.

Categories are only guidelines.

They're what we call,
in fancy terms, heuristics.

They give us a guideline
for understanding complexity.

But the complexity is always
different from the guideline.

I can call you all students,

and call the teaching assistants
teaching assistants,

but those are categories.

They -- in fact, they swamp over,
they disrespect in some respects,

those categories, they disrespect
the complexity of each individual.

Even though these three individuals
here are teaching assistants,

they are very, very different individuals.

And being teaching assistant actually
tells you very little about them.

And if you think they're the same

because I've called them
teaching assistants, right,

that actually does a disservice
to who they are.

Same thing with all of you.
If I call all of you students,

and if I talk about reactions to Frederick
Douglass as being one or the other.

So Margaret is reminding us that even
the professor has to remember

that the categories are not the reality,

and that what we're trying to get at
when we study history,

when we study people like Ben Tillman,
and Booker T. Washington,

and Theodore Roosevelt, all these
figures you've been reading about --

and Jane Addams and various others,

that we're trying to get beyond the
categories to understand them as we are.

We still have to make sense of this,

but there's a relationship between the
category and the reality that's unstable,

and that's actually where a lot of
the interesting work is.

In addition, Margaret makes one other
point I want to comment on, about facts.

And she is certainly right.

As she said so well, I'm gonna
quote her again,

that "facts can be stretched and molded
into a multitude of truths,

"and cannot be compressed
into one narrative."

I think that's true, I think facts can
be stretched, they can be used,

they can be manipulated,

not into a multitude of truths,
into a multitude of narratives.

But I do think there also are
universal facts.

Not all points of view have
a factual basis to them,

and some facts are more
universal than others.

For example, the end of slavery
was the reappropriation of property

from one group of people to another,

and it was the realization,
at least in political terms,

of participation and citizenship for
those who had been denied citizenship.

Not equality, but citizenship.

Those are facts.

Slavery existed as an international --
before the 18th century --

denial of citizenship and subjecthood.

That is a fact.

Now, what those facts mean
can be shaped and molded.

But we do have to recognize that
while the facts can be shaped and molded,

there still are things that are factual
and things that are not factual.

I do believe there is falsifiability
to the work we do.

That's from the philosopher Karl Popper,
who said that we know something is a fact

when there is a way of proving
the opposite if it does not exist, right?

So you can prove whether someone was
the biological child of someone else,

because there's a falsifiable alternative.

Why do I get into this?

Because I think one of the things
we do as historians, as scholars,

as citizens, as serious leaders,
as serious people,

is we do try to get as close
as we can to the universal facts

that could be the basis for the
interpretations we're going to make,

and we judge interpretations by that.

Let me put it even more directly.

It is our responsibility as citizens,
and we're learning that in this course,

to actually, when we think
about opinions around us,

investigate the factual basis for them.

Not all opinions have a factual basis,
not all of them can.

But in many areas there are factual
prerequisites to an opinion

being an acceptable opinion or not.

And so that is an important
part of what we do.

Now, factual knowledge
can evolve over time.

But facts do matter.

Historians at some level have to believe

that there is evidence
to argue for something

and not evidence to argue
for something else.

John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln.

That is a fact.

Abraham Lincoln prosecuted the Civil War,
right, to save the Union.

Those are facts, there's evidence to them.

You cannot argue that Abraham Lincoln
was a martian sent as a conspirator

to do X, Y, and Z.

These factual arguments are important.
Evidence matters.

And that doesn't mean we all share
the same interpretation.

In fact in this course you can have
whatever interpretation you want,

so long as you can find an
evidence basis for it.

So Margaret is right that there are
different narratives.

Margaret is right that we should
all find our own narratives.

Hamilton is giving us its own narrative.

Lin Manuel's narrative of Hamilton.

But we have to be attentive to the facts,

which is coming all the way back to
why we want to know where you learned

what you've learned.

Does that make sense?

You guys agree?

You struggle with this in your
own work.

Do you guys agree?

>> Could you say it over again?

>> (laughing)
No.

>> Yes, absolutely.

>> You agree?

>> Yes.
>> Yeah.

>> That's why there's 500,000 million
books about the American Revolution.

>> Right.

>> Because they've been writing about it
since it happened.

And there's all different perspectives.

>> Right, but there are books that
are legitimate because they're based

on research and facts,
and books that are less legitimate.

>> Where does the martian category fall?

>> (laughing) But we're seeing
this with Hamilton, right?

I mean, we can argue there are areas
where he goes beyond the facts,

but Lin Manuel did a lot of research
on who Hamilton was,

and uses his words in there.

And that's what makes it -- that's what
gives it verisimilitude and legitimacy.

I don't know, do you guys agree?

You work in areas where the sources
are really difficult sometimes, right?

How do you deal with this?

Do you go and...
Christina?

>> I had a though that was great,

and it's escaped me, because
they're having a conversation

that's very great also, about --

>> Oh good, good.
Nice to divert it to them, good job.

>> Yes. Well, talking about
facts and truth.

>> Yeah.
>> Or um...

Rachel made a great point that,

"I think 'narratives' is more
accurate than 'truth'.

When I think of stuff like our relations
with Native Americans,

we used to see them as savages,

and saw our wars with them
as 'glorious'.

But a hundred years later,
the narrative is different

and we describe the events with words
like 'genocide' and 'murder'."

>> Correct.

>> So yeah, they're having
a great conversation.

>> That's a great point.
It's a great way --

It's a brilliant way that
Rachel's raised of getting at this.

The narrative is the way we put facts
and assumptions together

to make certain interpretive judgments.

And the narrative had been a narrative
of savages in an earlier time.

Not -- even less than a hundred years ago,
you'll see people referring as savages.

And today we use terms
like "genocide"

that weren't even used
before World War II.

Those are interpretations of facts.

And one can argue over that.

50 years from now, people will have
different narratives. Right?

They will say our narratives didn't
match what they come to know at that time.

But what you cannot deny,
back to my point about facts,

is that large numbers
of Native Americans were killed.

Right? How you explain that,
both in terms of historical causation

and also the moral judgment
you place on that,

because "genocide" has a certain moral
judgment associated with it, right?

"Civilizing," "civilizing" Indians has a
moral judgment associated with it.

Those moral judgments and those
interpretations can differ,

but if you are to deny
that Native Americans,

the American Indians were killed,
then you're denying facts.

That is not a legitimate
point of view, right?

It can be -- how you interpret it
can go different ways,

but you have to acknowledge that fact,

just as you cannot deny
the existence of slavery.

Right? And these don't have to
be bad things. They're also good.

You cannot deny that Lincoln
emancipated the slaves, right?

Whether the emancipation had
the effects he wanted or not,

that's where Hahn and Ngai
and McPherson might differ.

But again, they're -- the facts are
that certain things happened.

The meaning of them
is where we argue.

And I think that's important today,

because sometimes you'll hear
people say things on both sides,

whatever the sides are, that are
denying reality, right?

Again, you can interpret it as you wish.

The global temperature is increasing.

That is a fact. It doesn't matter
what culture you're in.

Right? I'm sorry, that is a fact.

Whether it is human-induced,
whether it's good or bad,

fair, have your arguments.

But that's a fact.

Inequality in the United States
has grown in the last 20 years.

That is also a fact.

Interpret it in one way or another.

Fair to have multiple interpretations.
That is a fact.

One more, right? Which we'll get to
at the end of the course, right?

More African American males
are in prison than in college

in the United States.

That is also a fact.

One can interpret that, one can have
different reasons for why that's the case.

But I will show you the facts on that
when we get to that lecture

toward the end of this -- it's
the second to last lecture or whatever.

I'm just bringing these --
those are facts.

We can argue over which kinds of
criminal policies we should have,

what's caused that,

what has caused global warming,
who's to blame.

Those are interpretations.

But we have to begin as citizens,
as scholars, as people of integrity,

going after the facts,
understanding the facts,

and then building our
narratives off of those.

Yes?

>> I think just kind of going back to
your question about getting at hard facts

and kind of how do we build
the narratives, interpret,

a lot of the subjects I work with,
runaway slaves being the one

that comes to mind, is the fact that they
don't leave behind written documents

about what they were doing
or what they were thinking.

So what I have are policies,
colonial policies,

things written down -- fact,
they exist, they were dictated

and written and agreed upon.

And then I have letters from people
who are complaining about

their slaves having run away
or disappeared.

So I have to use all of these
facts to say okay,

so if I know these things were happening,

and I am aware of a certain situation
happening in a particular

part of the world at a particular time,

I can then kind of weave
a narrative of okay,

maybe the enslaved in this plantation
knew something about territory over here,

or they knew about friendly
Native Americans over here.

So it's kind of doing a triangulation with
the facts that you do know,

and kind of a historical knowledge broadly
to create a possible narrative

that helps explain what people that
we don't have facts on

may have been thinking
at a particular time.

>> That's fantastic.

And someone else could read the letters
and have a different narrative.

>> Yeah.

>> But the narrative wouldn't
be acceptable

if they just refused to read
the letters, right?

So that's the point, right?

That the facts don't tell us
what to believe,

but the facts are the starting point.

Right? Nico, did you want to add anything?
Is that similar to your work?

>> No.
(laughing)

No, I have so much information
than Christina,

because I -- in some way I study
more like...

Some of my guys are more like
politicians, and...

Well, spies, people who all share --
like, wrote a lot.

But just thinking about all the
discussion that you're having

in the chat and also what Jeremi
just said, and Christina,

is like the discussion about facts
is really important, but --

well when I was doing
my undergrad, it's like this

like in the early 20th century, like
the way how most of the people

understand history was like the
search for the truth,

but this objective truth.

And then we -- like, historiography
changed and understood in some way

that it's also like different
interpretations of the past.

And the interpretation
depends also on the present.

So actually certain -- you create certain
questions because of your present day.

>> Yes.
>> So I don't know.

So maybe 100 years ago, nobody wants
to write a history of a slave.

And now with all politics about identity,

and like after the -- sorry,
the Civil Rights Movement and stuff,

like, issues such as slavery became
an important thing to study.

So every time creates its own subjects
to study and its own questions.

And that's why we have different
interpretations of facts.

But the important things are the facts.

>> Yeah. That's a fantastic point.
Also, it connects to Hamilton.

Because for so long, Jefferson got so much
more attention than Hamilton.

But in a world of different questions
about immigration and cities,

Hamilton becomes more interesting
exactly in that way.

Okay, I want to thank Margaret M. again
for an excellent response.

That was a classic example of how
this assignment should be done,

and very good points.

And I always appreciate your critiques
of the lectures too, that's fantastic.

Please continue along those lines.

So now we're gonna move on to
two other things I wanted to make sure

we talk about today, because they relate
to the topics of the lectures

and the readings for this week,
especially the first half of this week.

Two big words appear in these lectures:
imperialism and populism.

Imperialism and populism,

and these are words
you will still hear today.

You will hear people today call the
United States imperialist,

or hear the United States
call China imperialist.

And then you'll hear people
claim that they're populist.

Sometimes it's used as a positive,
sometimes as a negative, right?

People who don't like figures,

non-traditional figures
who are becoming popular,

they call them populist
as a way of putting them down.

Many of those figures call themselves
populist as a way of saying

look, we're attacking the establishment.

So what do we mean by these terms?

Why do they come up in this
course when they do,

both at the end of the 19th century and
the beginning of the early 20th century?

It connects to just what
Nico was talking about.

The world we live in influences
the way we think about history.

Much of what we're seeing in the
late 19th century in the course right now

echoes many elements of our own world,
or precursors --

that it provides a precursor to many
elements of our current world.

In the late 19th century, the United
States was coming into a world,

a world now where the United States was
a major industrial capitalist producer,

a topic of our live session last time
and many of our lectures in the last week,

and the United States was in a world
that was much more unstable

than the world had been before.

And one of the questions for American
policymakers and citizens

was would the United States play a more
active and aggressive role in the world?

Most Americans believed that the
United States should not be an empire

like Great Britain, or an empire like
France, or an empire like Spain.

Those were the alternatives,
those were the others,

those were the things we defined
our revolution against.

But with the amount of power
and interest the United States had,

there was a concern about getting
more involved in the wider world.

To protect markets,
to protect missionaries,

to protect citizens operating
in different places,

just as we think today.

And the question of imperialism
was a question of how the United States

should be involved in the wider world.

Those who advocated for a more
aggressive set of American policies

were often those who were responsible
for major expansion in American power

into Cuba and the Philippines,
the topic of one of our lectures

and of some of your reading.

That expansion was criticized by those
who were opposed to it as imperialism.

What did they mean by this term?

Some people claim they were
anti-imperialists,

and some were labeled as imperialists
for being on the other side of this.

Anyone know where the term
comes from and what the term means?

Just like we defined capitalism,
it's important that we define imperialism.

What is imperialism?

What did people mean when Mark Twain,
for example, criticized the imperialism

of American society?

And you all had that image also of the
gilded age that he gave us.

That's also a phrase from Mark Twain.

What did he mean?
What is imperialism?

And why do we continue to use
that term today?

What are we talking about?

Let's see what we get from that.
Any comments?

>> Still waiting.
>> They're typing.

>> They're typing.
>> They're typing.

>> We can hear the keys.

>> You can hear the keys going,
the imperial keys.