Those Who Control the Present...

The things popular opinion gets wrong about history are legion. A quick scan of a copy of History Magazine prompts the following random collection:

- Britain is commonly accused of rapaciousness in trading opium to China. Not fair. Opium was a common medicine; nobody considered it harmful. Britain was the first country to ban it, in 1878.

- The Catholic Church is commonly painted as intolerant for the Albigensian Crusade, the crusade against the Cathars. It is worth remembering that the Cathars, not the Catholics, were the aggressors. The Cathars seized control of Toulouse and murdered the Papal Legate.

- The West is commonly portrayed as a band of racist bandits in the sack of Constantinople in 1204, who could not tell the difference between Muslims and Eastern Christians. The truth is more complex. The throne of Constantinople was held by a usurper. The Western crusaders had been invited in by the rightful heir. They returned him to power, and withdrew. He was then deposed and murdered by the usurper’s faction, which refused to pay the debts he had incurred to the crusaders. They sacked Constantinople to get their pay.

- Magna Carta, the foundation of all the liberties of modern liberal democracy, is usually described strictly as a rebellion by the barons of England. But the primary instigator, and the true author of our liberties, was the Catholic Church. The dispute was caused by John’s demand to name the Archbishop of Canterbury. And just check out what the Magna Carta actually says: Article 1 guarantees the freedom of the church.

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/magna-carta.html

- Note another thing, in relation to the common claim that women were accorded a lesser status than men throughout history. Several of the articles of Magna Carta grant special rights to women (article 7, 8, 11). There seem to be no special rights granted to men.

- Europeans are commonly blamed for introducing all sorts of diseases to the Native Americans—as if this were something intentional on their part. But it is probable that syphilis went the other way. It quickly infected about 13% of the European population in the years just after Columbus’s voyage; and was, in those days, as fatal as AIDS today..

- Canadians are commonly under the delusion that they scorched the White House in the War of 1812. It was the British Navy.

- The Catholic Church is commonly blamed for insisting for many years that the sun revolved around the earth. In fact, Copernicus was a Catholic clergyman, and the church raised no objection to his work. The religious objection to the heliocentric thesis was raised by Martin Luther; and the Protestant John Donne puts Copernicus in hell as a lieutenant of the Devil himself in Ignatius His Conclave. The Catholic reaction to the new theory was altogether much milder; Catholics had never believed in a literal interpretation of scripture.