The Draft
I recently heard a piece on NPR about 28 black soldiers whose WWII court-martial convictions--over a riot that led to the lynching of an Italian prisoner of war--were overturned. (The prosecutor, by the way, was Leon Jaworski.)
Though all but two are dead, the case was reopened due to Jack Hamann's book, On American Soil, that looked into the case.
NPR quoted Hamann as to how the first draft of history is written by the victors, so he's glad that the record has been corrected. While I agree that it's good to set things straight, there's an implication that later drafts of history aren't written by the victors. But when it comes down to it, don't the victors get to write every draft?
posted by LAGuy @ 1:18 AM
6 Comments:
The idea, I suppose, is that eventually the victors are gone as a government or even a society, and the societies that follow will make their own judgments. It's all a matter of how long you want to wait for your revisions.
Yes, the old victors are gone, and the new victors take over and make their judgments.
LAGuy sounds like one of those demography-is-destiny guys. I'm sympathetic. It's why I support the death penalty: Gotta remember the person who isn't here.
SWMBCg, etc.
?
When an American Egyptologist writes about a particular pharaoh's defeat of the Nubians, I suppose you could call us the victors in a really, really broad sense.
Imagine if the fascists had won in WWII. I expect their interpretation of history would be quite different from ours. I'm not saying there's no objective truth, I'm justing saying history is written by the winners no matter when.
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