Historians From The United States

"I cannot help thinking that it shows battle weariness rather than a considered opinion."

"Yet long before 1937 people had suggested a non-Greek origin to Greek mathematics; and long before 1943 people had pointed out that sacred books of the East contain the ‘Pythagorean numbers’ [and indeed the ‘theorem’]. Such numbers are mentioned in the Sulvasutras; ancient Indian works on altar constructions. […] Neugebauer does not mention the Sulvasutras in his book Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Antiken Mathematischen Wissenschaften, nor does B. L. van der Waerden them in his book Science Awakening. Why this omission?"

"[…] nor did he [Thibaut] formulate the obvious conclusion, namely, that the Greeks were not the inventors of plane geometry, rather it was the Indians. At least this was the message that the Greek scholars saw in Thibaut’s paper. And they didn’t like it."

"If the Indians invented plane geometry, what was to become of Greek ‘genius’ or of the Greek ‘miracle’?"

"‘a number of points in Greek geometry are illuminated by the hypothesis that it started from a tradition of peg-and-cord constructions of the kind we find with the Vedic ritualists’ [45]."

"Certainly, in time, after being told repeatedly that they were in fact Goths... was [there] no question in anyone’s mind that they were indeed Goths."

"The only recent treatment of Gothic history to dissent from the Vienna school and its focus on aristocratic traditions is that of Peter Heather. But Heather, too, accepts the basic historicity of Jordanes’ migration narrative, viewing it as evidence for the large-scale migration of a free Gothic population whose size was such that its ‘Gothic-ness’ was widely understood by adult male Goths. Thus for both Heather and Wolfram, as for many earlier scholarly generations, the story of the Goths starts in a distant northern land, far from the Roman frontier, whence either migration or ‘ethnic processes’ bring the Goths or the Gothic identity to the edges of the Roman world. For both, in other words, the controlling narrative is that of Jordanes... Peter Heather’s Goths and Romans, 332–489 (Oxford, 1991) is the best treatment of its subject available in any language, even though my interpretation of motive and causation in Gothic history differs substantially from his. Unfortunately, Heather’s more recent works, The Goths (Oxford, 1996) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2005), restate the same arguments as the first book and shear them of all their nuance, advocating instead a neo-Romantic vision of mass migrations of free Germanic peoples. Heather’s idée fixe – that the Huns were responsible for the fall of the Roman empire and the end of the ancient world – is simple, elegant, and wrong. The literature on ethnogenesis is vast, but Herwig Wolfram’s History of the Goths (1979; English trans., Berkeley, 1988) is the most widely available. Its mixture of outlandish philological speculation, faulty documentation, and oracular pronouncement remains very influential. Less bizarre, if wholly derivative, accounts of ethnogenesis are available in works by Wolfram’s Anglophone apostles..."

"[T]he history of the barbarians, specifically the Goths, can be understood entirely as a response to Roman imperialism."

"Gothic history, as it appears in every modern account, is a story of migration. Traditionally, it begins in Scandinavia, moves to the southern shores of the Baltic around the mouth of the Vistula river, and then onwards to the Black Sea. Depending upon what study one reads, one can find it stated that written sources, archaeology, and linguistic evidence all demonstrate that just such a migration took place, if not out of Scandinavia then at least out of Poland. In fact, there is just a single source for this extended story of Gothic migration, the Getica of Jordanes... It is only the text of Jordanes that leads scholars to privilege the Wielbark connection... The Gotones mentioned in Tacitus, Germania 44.1 and located somewhere in what is now modern Poland would not be regarded as Goths if Jordanes’ migration stories did not exist."

"Wildcat strikes can be looked upon from two sides. The wildcat strike usually erupts either because there is no union or the union’s leaders have failed to provide leadership to fight the boss. Leftists have sometimes romanticised the wildcat as the authentic expression of the workers’ will, an act that developed spontaneously out of the workers’ resistance to the boss. Some see it as the harbinger of the general strike that will overthrow capitalism and bring the workers to power. At the same time, one has to recognise that workers had to go on a wildcat strike because they hadn’t taken control of their union and couldn’t use the union as the expression of their power. The wildcat is both an expression of workers’ direct power at the point of production, but also a demonstration of their failure – because of the power of the bosses and the labour bureaucracy – to build a democratically controlled union that could express their will."

"When workers recognise this, at least in a period of social upheaval, they have in the past sometimes attempted to take power in their unions and turn them into fighting organisations. Wildcat strikes then can become the source of energy that fuels rank-and-file movements, as has been the case in heavy industry for more than a century and among public employees for 75 years. The great advance of American workers in the 1930s that led to the founding of the and a vast expansion of the derived from just such wildcat strikes in the rubber plants, the auto industry, among electrical workers and many others. Workers walked out by the thousands, some occupied their plants, while others created mass picket lines, fought scabs and police. Wildcat strikes spread during the Depression decade like a virus through the United States, drawing in small industrial shops and retail workers. A similar thing happened in the 1960s and 1970s with teachers and public employees who walked out in illegal strikes to found their unions. Rank-and-file upheavals also transformed the in the 1970s and shook up other unions as well."

"Surely there must be other such strikes and sit-ins that haven’t been covered by the press, and we know there are many other protests by all sorts of workers, particularly important among them teachers and nurses, though we do not include those in this discussion, important as they are. The wildcat strike holds a particular place in the history and theory of the labour movement, as well as today reaction to the bosses and the government during the coronavirus pandemic. We notice that these strikes involve both highly skilled and highly paid workers – such as those at the ’ Bath shipyard – and also lower paid workers such as those at the Purdue chicken processing plant in Georgia and the bar and restaurant in Portland, Oregon. One can make the case that black workers – Pittsburgh sanitation, Kathleen, Georgia, Purdue chick, and Memphis Teamsters – play a leading role in the strikes. Yet workers at Bath shipyard are overwhelmingly white, while autoworkers are black, Arab, white and Latino, and GE’s Lynn jet engine plant also has a racially mixed workforce. No doubt workers of all genders can be found in these protest, and we hear both men and women giving voice to the workers’ concerns. While the central demands are about workers’ health, we can see that already they begin to raise demands about wages, benefits and working conditions, as well as job security."

"What is most extraordinary about these actions is that union officials have not called them. In some cases, there is no union. In other cases, such as auto, there is a union and workers are forced to strike against it as well as the company. In certain cases, such as the Bath shipyard, it seems that union officials may have tacitly supported the workers’ walkouts, though the situation is unclear. Sometimes these unofficial strikes violate a union’s contractual non-strike provisions or in the case of public employees such s may also violate the law. Yet workers have organised themselves to carry them out with few resources beyond social media and traditional word-of-mouth, in order to protect their health and to save their jobs."

"Across the United States, we are seeing workers walk off the job in wildcat strikes in response to the employers’ failure either to shut down the workplace or to make it safe. The strikes are too few to call them a strike wave, but we should be aware that on their own initiative workers are taking what practically is the most powerful action they can: withdrawing their labour. The strikes are taking place in both the private and , in both unionised and non-union s large and small."

"For 150 years, workers have struck over safety and health in myriad industries, most memorably in the twentieth century the miners’ strike over black lung. But we have not seen anything exactly like this before – wildcat strikes over health and safety in response to an epidemic, with workers making strong demands on the employers and sometimes winning. And these strikes are taking place in the midst of politicians’ ignorant and sometimes deceitful statements and government failures at all levels. Consequently, these strikes – even when only directed at a particular employer – have not only an economic but also a political character. We’re now seeing such strikes in a variety of industries in several states."

"When practicing science, we understand that we must alter our paradigms to fit new evidence, but ideology makes us alter new evidence to fit our paradigms. Many argue that we should allow free speech and consider alternative viewpoints because 'we might be wrong.' Actually, we should consider alternative viewpoints because we are certainly wrong and the only way to be less wrong is to have our views challenged. Ideological thinking stifles this open-mindedness that would help eliminate errors in our thinking."

"... harassing problems must often be solved in order to produce scholarly biographical writing regarding the supporting actors upon the historical stage. For example, it is commonly difficult to find adequate source materials. In addition, a serious problem of organization frequently occurs. Thus it is not easy to achieve unity in an account of the activities of a minor personage who played a relativity small part in various scenes. Again, there is an almost overwhelming temptation to exaggerate the importance of such a person."

"Man is greatly tempted to see in past events the directing hand of God, or ineluctable Fate, or historical laws. The Americans were long inclined to believe that they were a chosen people, that they had a special mission, that the Deity guided them as He did the ancient Israelits. The historian, alas, must obtain his information from defective human records and remains. He cannot find the decree of the Divine declaring such to be His intentions."

"I can only answer that I tried to tell the truth and, if not be objective, at least be fair; history is not served when reporters prize trepidation and propriety over the robust journalistic duty to tell the whole story."

"Walter Goffart... is a more serious critic, but to some extent even he is tilting at windmills... Goffart's main point is that one cannot heal the Germanische Altertumskunde - the study of Germanic Antiquity - by surgically removing the racist element as if this was just a recent blemish of limited size caused by Nazism. In fact, he says, what one needs is a full-scale rethinking. The racist element is not just something that was added by the Nazis, but was inherent in the way Germanic Antiquity has been studied for centuries. In Goffart's view the Germanische Altertumeskunde was connected with a large body of anti-Enlightenment thought and nationalism long before the Nazis came and took from it whatever they could use... Goffart is mistaken in his analysis... Goffart is aiming his guns at a position that has long been abandoned."

"From the mid-1990s onward, Walter Goffart and his school (Gillett 2002b; Goffart 2006) have directed their critique not against any current views, but against the old Wenskus “kernel of tradition” model: according to them, it was only a more sophisticated way to maintain German nationalist claims of ethnic continuity. The only way out of nationalist myths was to show that ethnicity was irrelevant in the migration age, as were the barbarians altogether. Therefore, Goffart’s approach is a vigorous attempt to prove Roman continuity after the “fall of Rome,” and to deny any barbarian impact on the end of the Western empire."

"Walter Goffart... A Canadian, perhaps significantly of Belgian extraction... [has] gone a long way towards denying any great significance to Germanic incomers to the Roman world... It is difficult to know how important were Goffart's experiences as a Belgian refugee."

"Goffart simply summarizes the positions of his opponents, without providing us with direct quotes; instead he regularly paraphrases and generically comments, giving no room for alternative opinion... The author emphasizes over and over again that we really need to differentiate among the various Germanic peoples instead of talking about an attack by the Germanic barbarians as a national movement against the Romans. It seems incomprehensible to assume that any serious historian (Goffart attacks primarily German-language scholars) would hold such a position today. No one assumes that there was anything like a German nation attacking the Roman empire. This is simply in the head of the author who fights a straw puppet.""

"There were no Germans until a Germany materialized little by little in the European Middle Ages. Rome faced outward toward multiple and mutually antagonistic peoples. The existence of an ancient common Germanic civilization reaching deep into the B.C. period is a learned invention of sixteenth-century Germans, based on classical sources well known to us... There was no "Germanic civilization" long ripening north and east of the imperial frontiers."

"The debate has led to an unfortunate division between Walter Goffart with his disciples, on the one side, and the so-called ‘Viennese School’ and scholars working with an ‘ethnogenesis’ paradigm, on the other. Scholars have been cast — especially by Goffart and his allies — as being either the good ones or the bad ones."

"One of the primary exponents of this relatively sunny view of the fifth-century 'transformation' has been Walter Goffart... Goffart sets out how the fragmented foreign peoples once living on the edges of the Empire participated with the Romans in the larger stirrings of late antiquity.' Rome did not fall, it experienced 'stirrings'; barbarians did not invade and conquer, foreign peoples 'participated' with the Romans in the 'stirrings'. This is the essence of the revisionist 'trans-formation and accommodation' view of the fall of Rome. This revisionist approach got a great boost from the European Science Foundation's ongoing project on The Transformation of the Roman World which, since 1995, has sponsored conferences and workshops, and published papers in a monograph series (The Transformation of the Roman World) that has now reached fourteen volumes. This project has turned the transformation-of-Rome theory into a scholarly industry. It tends to reflect the political climate of the contemporary European Union, with values such as multiculturalism, relativism, and a distaste for judgements..."

"When Goffart launched his theory of peaceful 'accommodation'... it fell on fertile ground. Goffart himself seems to have intended his book to play down the role of the Germanic peoples in European history... The European Union needs to forge a spirit of cooperation between the once warring nations of the Continent, and it is no coincidence that the European Science Foundation's research project into this period was entitled 'The Transformation of the Roman World'—implying a seamless and peaceful transition from Roman times to the 'Middle Ages' and beyond."

"The faith in Germanic continuity has prevailed for many centuries, damaging everything it has touched: Germans and other Europeans need to be assured that they can dispense with a link to the Germanen, that there is such a thing as historical change, and that the transgressions of national pasts can indeed be outgrown."

"There was no Germanic world before the Carolingian age."

"Experts in Germanic literature... solemnly assent: emigration from Scandinavia is an authentic "tribal memory"..."

"The myth of the Germans before Germany is hard to suppress because, owing to its great age and genesis in the sources themselves."

"[The] theme-the "early Germans"-is still far from being repudiated."

"[M]any scholars of today in Europe and the United States still cherish the existence of a "Germanic world" long antedating medieval and modern Germany."

"If Europe has had a supreme invented tradition, that of the Germans before Germany is it-so much so that most people who speak about it do not realize that they are dealing with fiction."

"[[w:Gustav Kossinna|[Gustav] Kossinna's]] ideas about the early Germans, which have long circulated apart from his name, have been only superficially purged from the writings of today."

"Superfluous... is the unthinking modern transposition into history of a common "Germanic" language family-a concept borrowed from comparative philology. The history of a language as known to philologists has nothing to do with that of human beings... No discernible benefit comes from our being reminded again and again in modern writings that many of these barbarians at each other's throats probably spoke dialects of the same language. The G-word can be dispensed with."

"[[w:Herwig Wolfram|[Hewrig] Wolfram]] is listened to with approval in all countries that care about this subject."

"The prehistoric Germans never existed... they are an illusion of misguided scholars. The nonexistence of ancient Germans is perhaps the most important thing one can say about the barbarians of late antiquity... The "Germanic world" is a damaging modern invention and usage that badly needs to be abandoned."

"At one end of the spectrum stands Walter Goffart who, fearful of modern German nationalism, has for decades fought a dogged campaign against any “Germanic” influence in early European history, including any significant role for barbarian invasion in the fifth century. His latest book is entirely true to form. For Goffart, the “Germanic invasions” of the Western empire never really happened, and the barbarian peoples who did settle in Roman territory during the fifth century were largely there at the invitation of the Romans, and then very rapidly adopted Roman ways. Important changes happened, but Germanic settlers played little part in bringing these about — and anyway we should never call these peoples “Germanic”, lest this gives modern Germans dangerous ideas about their importance in history. In the early 21st century, this blanket fear of Germanism is perhaps a little obsessive, and more appropriate for an immediately post-war audience — though Goffart has a large and very loyal following among scholars and students in the US and Canada (where he has taught for many years). But whatever one thinks of his conclusions (and I am not a fan), Goffart’s ideas are certainly radical: the defeat of Rome and the Germanic invasions do not need to be explained, because they never really happened."

"Germanic collectivity exists in linguistics but never existed anywhere else... [A]n "early Germanic world"... had no existence anywhere until it took form in the minds of scholars in sixteenth-century Europe and was thoughtlessly espoused by everyone else."

"As long ago as 1972, I expressed a wish that someone should write a history of the Migration Age detached from German nationalism... Nothing has happened since then to fill this desideratum. On the contrary, the front of the stage has been occupied by talk of "ethnogenesis" and of the importance of ethnicity in late antiquity. Philology, archaeology, comparative religion, etymology, and whatever else have been exploited in the tried and true fashion of deutsche Altertumskunde in efforts to render the "tribes" more tribal than ever. As little thought as possible has been given to making them less resolutely German... This model... found regaining strength after World War II in the Gottingen historian Reinhard Wenskus, in the Cambridge classicist A. H. M. Jones, and in hundreds of scholars outside as well as inside Germany, all agreed in seeing an existing "Germanic world" getting the better of a "Roman world." That vision of outsiders intruding successfully where they were not wanted is an illusion fostered however innocently and festering ever since the sixteenth century."

"[D]eutsche Altertumskunde... [is a] still honored "science" of German antiquity."

"What we call the Fall of the Western Roman Empire was an imaginative experiment that got a little out of hand."

"My central concern in the present book is... to liberate barbarian history from the German nationalism that has suffused it ever since the sixteenth century and, in whatever disguises, continues to do so today."

"Strange as it may seem to hear it said, there were no Germanic peoples in late antiquity. The illusion that there were can be outgrown."

"I would be content if "German" and its derivatives were banished from all but linguistic discourse on this subject."

"The adjective "German;' an umbrella term for many of the diverse northern barbarians of the late Roman period, is the key to such unifying compounds as "the Germanic world;' "Germanic migrations;' "Germanic peoples;' "Germanic style;' "Germanic law;' "Germanic grave goods": wherever it turns up it simplifies and unifies, and presides over collective actions that did not take place... "German" will not go away by itself; it has to be stubbornly shown the door."

"The main goal of this book is to reform thinking and writing about the barbarians in late antiquity by driving out the anachronistic terms "German" and "Germanic" and the baggage that goes with them."

"President Trump has violated many of the norms and laws on which our democracy depends. He circumvents Congress by declaring the “crisis” at the border a national emergency. He orders his staff to ignore s. He uses his presidential status to enhance his family’s wealth. He demands absolute loyalty from his appointees. He treats truth like a despot and jokes with Vladimir Putin about his “fake news” problem. He boasts about his misogyny and spews racist insults. Trump is not a despot. But neither were Mussolini and Hitler early on. No black or march in our streets. President Trump’s enablers wear white shirts and black robes. They are unified. Democrats are not."

"Mussolini and Hitler promised to restore national glory and depicted themselves as the last defense against radical socialism. Neither appealed to racism at first. Not even Hitler, who muted his virulent anti-Semitism in public to attract voters during the late 1920s. New followers told themselves he had mellowed, but his base and his Jewish targets never doubted his true intentions."