In reply to:
Barbara Tuchman's best-selling (for a) history "A Distant Mirror : The Calamitous 14th Century". what is the editorial bias therein?
Hey Tsuwm - I've afforded you the dignity of 'proper' quotes. lol! More seriously...
1. I have not read the work in question, and may or may not do so. My responses, therefore, will be based purely upon your post,and a generalised prediction set about possible bias.
2. Start with the title - why 'mirror', why 'calamitous'? Some possibilities
Mirror
Likely that the author is selling the idea that the 14th century in some way parallels our own. That we can, therefore, learn from it by studying it, and perhaps apply those 'lessons' to our own lives/society. This is, of course, bias, because any such connection is pattern-forming (metaphor-using). The author will have presented a thesis, and evidence to support it. Evidence that will not support it will,most likely, either be ignored (even if 'sub-consciously'), or discredited.
Calamitous
For whom? And what is the standard for calamity? The seventeenth century saw the bubonic plague sweeping Europe. The twentieth century saw the Holocaust, the Soviet pogroms, Pol Pot, Rwanda, the slaughter in the trenches of the Great War, the famine in Ethiopia and more. Which century better deserves the title 'calamitous', particular 'THE calamitous', as opposed to 'a calamitous'? Again, there appear to be signs, in the title alone, of authorial bias.
3. I haven't a clue as to the author's historical 'project'. Chances are her (Barbara is female, yes?) historical vision is a conflation of social structure theory and 'great man' theory. She will probably 'explain' the happenings of the century in terms of (i) the people who influenced what happened, and (ii) the social/technological/political factors that prevailed (including religion). In this itself there is bias because the historian is trying to 'explain'. Random events - a volcano, an epidemic, a flood, a hunting accident - are downplayed, or, gamefully shoehorned into one or the other side of this theory. We humans dislike the idea that random events (the unexplained, and possibly inexplicable) can affect our lives, and all our theories tend to downplay the effect of random occurences. When faced with incontrovertible evidence of randomness, we resort to synchronicity, and coincidence theory, and eventually, the Prime Mover. My point is not that randomness is the only causal factor in history, nor even that it is the most important. But if (if such a thing were possible) an objective measurement showed that random events had a 20% influence, say, on the course of that century's history, and at least 20% of the explanation, or detail, in her book was not given over to this, then there is authorial bias.
I'm sorry if this 'analysis' is rough and generalised - I haven't read the book...
cheer
the sunshine (suspecting strongly that this thread probably belongs on a different board, but prepared to carry on regardless) warrior
