Pseudo-history, and related issues

[Nathan Ross]

I am always bemused by the fact that ancient history is a subject that many feel they can turn their hand to, without having had any instruction whatsoever. We don't seem to see the same thing happening in other disciplines. I can't suddenly decide to be a barrister, for example, and pitch up at the law courts one morning. Usually, we have to demonstrate our expertise in some way... but publishers seem to fall over themselves to publish anything and everything. I recently had the misfortune to review a book entitled Cartimandua, and I have absolutely no idea how it ever got across an editor's desk -- if it had been submitted as an undergraduate dissertation, it would have been shredded.

Perhaps the main offenders are writers who have not studied their source material diligently, and/or are unaware of the limitations of their source material, and/or are willfully ignorant of the range of relevant source material...

I notice you're diplomatically not mentioning the author's name, but was it this book?: [url:otk5q2z0]http://antoninuspius.blogspot.com/2009/05/romans-in-fantasyland.html[/url] The blogger in this case certainly seems to share your opinion!

I wouldn't be so sure that the same thing isn't 'happening in other disciplines' - at least in terms of history writing. Even the more conscientious and accredited historians are now facing the added pressure from publishers to deliver new and saleable work to a tight schedule, thus cutting down on research time and necessitating reliance on secondary sources and cut'n'paste quotation - the time that once might have been spent on peer reviews and in-depth study is now being lost to the demands of editorial and marketing department deadlines. As for peer reviews - I think much of the time the only 'review' a book is likely to receive prior to publication will be from the publisher's editor, who will seldom have anything but a passing familiarity (at best) with the material. Not surprisingly, this leads to a drop in standards.

This sort of work has been called 'popular history', but it's also (very often) specifically narrative history as well. What we see, particularly, is an emphasis on literary sources (often themselves narrative) over more analytical disciplines (prosopography, numismatics, even archeology), except where their 'evidence' can be used to support the 'plot'.

An example, in one of those 'other disciplines': I recently attempted to punt an idea for a book about the 1857 Indian Uprising to a number of publishers... thier eyes glazed over. Then I mentioned that the book would also concern a radical Islamic fundamentalist plotting to destroy the British Empire. Eureka! "That sounds fantastic," I was told, "how soon can you let us see the manuscript?"

:roll:  

- Nathan