What Is Revisionist History?

Revisionist history has a bad name, unnecessarily. Often it is associated with World War II, but it goes back further than that. The acknowledged founder of revisionist history (or historical revisionism) was the American historian Harry Elmer Barnes (1889-1968). 

Traditionally, revisionist history is based on a re-examination of documents in the light of subsequent events, or new documents that may only be declassified or come to light years, decades, in some cases centuries, later. To take one non-controversial example, in 2012, the skeleton of Richard III was unearthed in Leicestershire. Previously, his body was believed to have been thrown in the River Soar.

Another, somewhat more controversial act of revisionism was Piltdown Man. This fossil was allegedly found in 1912 and was believed to have been a previously unknown human ancestor. Four decades on it was shown to be a clever fake.

The discipline of revisionist history places greater reliance on documents than on personal testimony which years or decades later may be unreliable or dead wrong because human memory is fallible. Sadly, what is often overlooked is that documents are also fallible, because they are created by humans, who may be dishonest or simply mistaken. Even documents that are generated by machines may be fallible. For example, CCTV stills of the 7/7 attacks in London eighteen years ago appear to show railings at a railway station coming out of two of the terrorists’ arms, suggesting the images are not real or have been doctored. Many people have been deceived by this and similar anomalies because they don’t understand how cameras work.  If you heard a poor quality recording of a pianist, you’d think nothing of it. Poor quality images are no different from poor quality recordings.

Returning to manually created documents, the information in them may be contemporaneous, but that doesn’t mean it is accurate. Before we kept all our data on computers there was an old joke that every company had two sets of accounting books: the one is submitted to the taxman, and the other which reflected its real transactions.

One of the most notorious defamation actions of the late Twentieth Century resulted in victory for the plaintiff partly because of a fake diary. A decade and more on, the truth came out resulting in Jeffrey Archer receiving a four year sentence for perjury. His original diary was produced at the criminal trial.

An even more notorious if transparently fake document that was widely disseminated more recently was the Steele Dossier which was used by Hillary Clinton and most of the American mainstream media to smear Donald Trump as some sort of Russian agent, sabotaging his campaign and his Presidency. Absurd though it may have been to suggest that an American President was in the pockets of Russia, the evidence now indicates that an American President is in the pockets of China, and any other country that will donate to one of his family’s shell companies.

One final word regarding witness testimony. Every time an appellate court quashes a conviction it is revising history to some extent, but it is worth bearing in mind especially when considering legal issues that given enough time and resources, evidence can be adduced to convict an innocent man or to exculpate a guilty one. The recent case of E Jean Carroll v Donald Trump was a clear example of the former, while the disgraceful and slanderous campaign of the Innocence Project to exculpate murderer and serial rapist Rodney Reed is a clear example of the latter. However much money is spent on and however many lies are told by Reed’s supporters, he will never walk the streets again. Don’t though imagine the world has heard the last about the Trump defamation case. History may well need revising again if a recent revelation about Carroll’s activities on Twitter is anything to go by.