The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History Is Revisionist History

by James M. Banner Jr.

Overview

An experienced, multi-faceted historian shows how revisionist history is at the heart of creating historical knowledge
 
“A rallying cry in favor of historians who, revisiting past subjects, change their minds. . . . Rewarding reading.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
“A wise, erudite, and, perhaps most important, a clearly written examination of the ways historians go about their craft of interpreting and reinterpreting the past.”—Gordon S. Wood, Brown University
 
History is not, and has never been, inert, certain, merely factual, and beyond reinterpretation. Taking readers from Thucydides to the origin of the French Revolution to the Civil War and beyond, James M. Banner, Jr., explores what historians do and why they do it.
 
Banner shows why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be unchanging, why history as a branch of knowledge is always a search for meaning and a constant source of argument, and why history is so essential to individuals’ awareness of their location in the world and to every group and nation’s sense of identity and destiny. He explains why all historians are revisionists while they seek to more fully understand the past, and how they always bring their distinct minds, dispositions, perspectives, and purposes to bear on the subjects they study.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300283273
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

James M. Banner, Jr., a historian of early American politics, historical thought, and the discipline of history, is the author of many books, including The Elements of Teaching, and is the editor of Presidential Misconduct: From George Washington to Today. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Revisions Without End: The Origins of the American Civil War 21

2 The Ancient Origins of Revisionist History 66

3 Revisionist History in the Modern Era 100

4 Varieties of Revisionist History 141

5 Some Fruits of Revisionist History 181

6 History and Objectivity 239

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

A model of accessible, jargon-free prose. . . . A useful and sober contribution to specialist historiographical debate and to the understanding of the discipline of history more generally.”—Donald Bloxham, Times Literary Supplement

“A rallying cry in favor of historians who, revisiting past subjects, change their minds. . . . Rewarding reading for serious students of history.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A work of learning and integrity, deserving a wide readership beyond the precincts of university discourse.”—M. D. Aeschliman, National Review

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2022

“A genuinely impressive book that traverses the history of history, spanning millennia, taking its readers on a literary ride that encompasses countless issues that are historical, historiographical, and philosophical.”—Eric Arnesen, George Washington University

“As James Banner explains in this clear analysis, all good history is ‘revisionist history’ because it is written from the perspective of the ever-changing present to tell us how that present evolved over the past.”—James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom

“A wise, erudite, and, perhaps most important, a clearly written examination of the ways historians go about their craft of interpreting and reinterpreting the past.”—Gordon S. Wood, Brown University

“A wide-ranging, insightful meditation on why the histories inherited by one generation rarely satisfy the next. A book for everyone who sometimes wonders why old historical certainties now feel controversial.”—Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies

“A wonderfully lucid presentation of the way historians actually work, and the way that historical knowledge develops. Instructive and engaging.”—David A. Bell, Princeton University
 
“Over many years James Banner has been relentless in his pursuit of understanding the changing nature of history and how it is taught, written, and understood. Just as important, The Ever-Changing Past brings clarity to the way in which a study of the past helps to explain present-day political, social, and cultural developments.”—Wm. Roger Louis, University of Texas
 
“James Banner’s engagingly written book is the first to highlight and systematically examine the centrality of ‘revisionism’ to historical practice. His lucid and readable overview of how history changes will be illuminating to professional historians, students and general readers alike.”—Sarah Maza, Northwestern University

From the Publisher

2020-12-22
A rallying cry in favor of historians who, revisiting past subjects, change their minds.

All history responsibly practiced, writes Banner—a former professor at Princeton and founder of the National History Center of the American Historical Association—is properly revisionist, acknowledging that “historians’ understanding of major subjects have almost never stood still.” That understanding runs athwart of some readers and interpreters of history—e.g., Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for one, who remarked that he was going to spend a summer reading about the history of slavery, but “not the ‘revisionists.’ ” It is the revisionists, however, who have given us the modern and prevailing view that the Civil War was fought less over states’ rights than over slavery. That view morphed through the “Lost Cause” theories of the Southern agrarians, which “were by no means out of keeping with the general conservative intellectual mood of much of the country,” and the anti-capitalist leanings of Charles and Mary Beard, whose book, The Rise of American Civilization, was required reading a century ago. Historians today give primacy to slavery while allowing “many other, less fundamental immediate triggers of the conflict” to the roster. Other topics of revisionist dissection include the French Revolution, which has been attributed to “monarchical despotism” and “an aroused working class” alike; and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, viewed as both necessary in saving the lives of American soldiers and ending World War II and as a horrific and racist act that is essentially indefensible. With a nod to the distant past, Banner contrasts the historiographic leanings of Herodotus and Thucydides, the former a storyteller who crafted grand moral tales about the struggle between Eastern tyranny and Western democracy, the latter “someone caught up in the events he sought to understand.” In clear, occasionally dry prose, Banner, who has been teaching and writing history for more than five decades, capably defends a method that turns on “fidelity to fact and independence of judgment.”

Rewarding reading for serious students of history.

Kirkus Reviews