Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.
IS HISTORY A MYTH?
A few years ago I went through a phase of studying books about Roman history and especially the history of the Roman conquest of Britannia - including the way the Romans dominated Britannia for about four centuries. I read many books on this subject, but I was struck by two books. The first was Roman Britain by I. A. Richmond. It was Volume 1 of The Pelican [i.e Penguin] History of England, first published in 1955. The second was An Imperial Possession – Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC – AD 409 by David Mattingly, first published in 2006 as part of Penguin’s updating of its history of England. Both Richmond and Mattingly were professional historians, erudite and expert in their field. Mattingly’s book was published 50 years after Richmond’s book, and inevitably Mattingly’s book had some information that Richmond did not have. In 50 years, archaeologists had turned up things, previously unknown, related to Roman Britannia; and therefore Mattingly wrote a different narrative from Richmond’s. Even so, both gave a sound primer in Roman Britain and both were genuinely informative.
But there was one thing that really struck me. Every so often, each historian had a certain bias. Richmond every so often would depict Romans as an advanced civilisation which improved the less-civilised Britons and made them less barbarous. And Mattingly would every so often depict the Romans as imperialist conquerors who attempted to Romanise what was already a viable civilisation – Mattingly’s very title An Imperial Possession tells us so.
What caused this difference between the work of two capable historians? Simply the fact that times had moved on between 1955 and 2006. In 1955, Richmond could still think that Britain was a model for the nations; that Britain still had a large empire, even if it was crumbling; that Latin was still taught in the superior schools; and that many monuments in England were [and still are] modelled on Roman sculpture. But in 2006, Mattingly was living in an environment where de-colonialisation had happened and was still happening. As one by one former colonies became independent nations, imperialism and colonisation became dirty words. Here were two different interpretations of the same historical reality. And the fact is that every history book has always been influenced by the environments in which historians wrote.
So does this mean that history is a sort of malleable fable – or even a myth? Not exactly. There are such things as the hard facts of history. When this plague broke out. When war broke out. When a certain battle was fought. When a certain king or emperor reigned. When democracies rose and fell. When particular laws were created. etc. etc. etc. Such things can be verified in many ways. But even the most astute and honest historians – the ones who do not write for propaganda purposes – will know that they are writing for a certain audience in a certain era.
There is also what I would call “necessary myths”, that is, things that we know are not historically true but that are useful for the peace of a nation. Take the Treaty of Waitangi. It was, so we are told, a binding agreement between the King of England and the Rangatira [Maori chiefs] of Aotearoa. The Rangatira signed the treaty and this was the foundational document of our country. It is an interesting tale… but not entirely true. First, very many Rangatira in the southern part of the North Island never signed the treaty and never wanted to. Second, Deputy Governor Hobson was afraid that the French might claim the South Island for their own. Hobson therefore took only a few signings in the South Island and then proclaimed “by discovery” that the South Island belonged to England. So in reality, the Treaty of Waitangi was, at best, a very flawed and incomplete treaty. Then there is the fact that a few years after the signing of the Treaty at Waitangi, there was the “Northern War”. Many of the northern tribes who had signed the treaty were now disappointed by the outcome of the treaty, and angered that the "capital" had been moved to Auckland. So they waged war on the colonisers. When a treaty turns into war then, by long understanding, the treaty is made null and void. And the fact is that through the rest of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, the Treaty of Waitangi was ignored by the judiciary. Famously – or notoriously – in 1877 Chief Justice James Prendergast ruled that the Treaty at Waitangi was “a simple nullity”. For this statement Prendergast has, in recent years, been vilified and condemned; but like it or not, Prendergast was simply saying what was the norm in New Zealand laws at the time. Of course Governors-General would visit the Waitangi grounds and say nice things about the treaty, but really the treaty had no legal status.
It has only been in the last fifty years or so that the Treaty of Waitangi has once again gained judicial status. A Maori renaissance made legislators consider the ideas of the treaty and write them into law… but this often meant laws that were not apparent in the original treaty and were therefore said to be in “the spirit of the treaty”. What this means is that we are not now honouring the original treaty, but we are honouring what recent lawyers and politicians have devised.
At this point you might think I am belittling the whole working of the Waitangi Tribunal. Not at all. I think the rulings that have been made are to the good. To see Maori culture now flourishing, to see the Maori language once again being widely spoken, to see compensations for those whose land was taken from them – these are all good things. But let us not pretend that all this comes from the Treaty of Waitangi. The treaty is a “necessary myth”, giving a unifying sense of national pride. But let’s not pretend that it’s built on history.
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