View source for History:Historical revisionism

{{Short description|Reinterpretation of a historical account}}

In [[History:Historiography|historiography]], '''historical revisionism''' is the reinterpretation of a historical account.<ref>{{cite book| editor1-last = Krasner| editor1-first = Barbara| title = Historical Revisionism| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=N7jXDwAAQBAJ| series = Current Controversies| location = New York| publisher = Greenhaven Publishing LLC| date = 2019| page = 15| isbn = 9781534505384| access-date = 4 April 2020| quote = The ability to revise and update historical narrative – historical revisionism – is necessary, as historians must always review current theories and ensure they are supported by evidence. … Historical revisionism allows different (and often subjugated) perspectives to be heard and considered.| archive-date = March 23, 2021| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210323070736/https://books.google.com/books?id=N7jXDwAAQBAJ| url-status = live}}</ref> It usually involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) views held by professional scholars about a historical event or timespan or phenomenon, introducing contrary evidence, or reinterpreting the motivations and decisions of the people involved. The revision of the historical record can reflect new discoveries of fact, evidence, and interpretation, which then results in revised [[History:History|history]]. In dramatic cases, revisionism involves a reversal of older moral judgments.

At a basic level, legitimate historical revisionism is a common and not especially controversial process of developing and refining the writing of histories. Much more controversial is the reversal of moral findings, whereby what mainstream historians had considered (for example) positive forces are depicted as negative. Such revisionism, if challenged (especially in heated terms) by the supporters of the previous view, can become an illegitimate form of historical revisionism known as [[Unsolved:Historical negationism|historical negationism]] if it involves inappropriate methods such as the use of forged documents or implausible distrust of genuine documents, attributing false conclusions to books and sources, manipulating statistical data, and deliberately mistranslating texts. This type of historical revisionism can present a re-interpretation of the moral meaning of the historical record.<ref name="Evans-145">Evans, Richard J. (2001) ''Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial''. p.145. {{ISBN|0-465-02153-0}}. The author is a professor of Modern History at the [[Organization:University of Cambridge|University of Cambridge]], and was a major expert witness in the ''Irving v. Lipstadt'' trial; the book presents his perspective of the trial, and the expert-witness report, including his research about the Dresden death count.</ref> Negationists use the term ''revisionism'' to portray their efforts as legitimate historical inquiry; this is especially the case when ''revisionism'' relates to [[Unsolved:Holocaust denial|Holocaust denial]].

==Historical scholarship==
Historical revisionism is the means by which the historical record, the history of a society, as understood in its [[Social:Collective memory|collective memory]], continually accounts for new facts and interpretations of the events that are commonly understood as history. The historian and American Historical Association member James M. McPherson has said:

{{Blockquote|The fourteen-thousand members of this association, however, know that revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship. History is a continuing [[Social:Discourse|dialogue]], between the present and the past. Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. There is no single, eternal, and immutable "[[Truth|truth]]" about past events and their meaning.

The unending quest of historians for understanding the past – that is, ''revisionism'' – is what makes history vital and meaningful. Without revisionism, we might be stuck with the images of Reconstruction [1865–77] after the American Civil War [1861–65] that were conveyed by D. W. Griffith's ''The Birth of a Nation'' [1915] and Claude Bowers's ''The Tragic Era'' [1929]. Were the [[Finance:Gilded Age|Gilded Age]] [1870s–1900] entrepreneurs "[[Finance:Captain of industry|Captains of Industry]]" or "[[Finance:Robber baron (industrialist)|Robber Barons]]"?

Without revisionist historians, who have done research in new sources and asked new and nuanced questions, we would remain mired in one or another of these stereotypes. Supreme Court decisions often reflect a "revisionist" interpretation of history as well as of the Constitution.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2003/0309/0309pre1.cfm |title=Revisionist Historians |access-date=February 17, 2022 |archive-date=August 23, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130823033432/http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/Issues/2003/0309/0309pre1.cfm |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

In the field of [[History:Historiography|historiography]], the historian who works within the existing [[Social:The Establishment|establishment]] of society and has produced a body of history books from which he or she can claim [[Social:Authority (sociology)|authority]], usually benefits from the ''status quo''. As such, the professional-historian [[Philosophy:Paradigm|paradigm]] is manifested as a denunciative stance towards any form of historical revisionism of fact, interpretation or both. In contrast to the single-paradigm form of writing history, the philosopher of science, [[Biography:Thomas Kuhn|Thomas Kuhn]], said, in contrast to the quantifiable hard sciences, characterized by a single paradigm, the social sciences are characterized by several paradigms that derive from a "tradition of claims, counterclaims, and debates over [the] fundamentals" of research.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kuhn|first=Thomas N.|editor1-last=Lakatos|editor1-first=Imre|editor2-last=Musgrave|editor2-first=Alan|editor1-link=Imre Lakatos|editor2-link=Alan Musgrave|title=Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge|edition=second|orig-year=1970|year=1972|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=0-521-09623-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/criticismgrowth00laka/page/6 6]|chapter=Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/criticismgrowth00laka/page/6}}</ref> On resistance to the works of revised history that present a [[Philosophy:Postcolonialism|culturally-comprehensive]] historical narrative of the US, the perspectives of [[Biography:Black people|black people]], [[Social:Feminism|women]], and the labour movement, the historian David Williams said:

{{Quote|These, and other, scholarly voices, called for a more comprehensive treatment of American history, stressing that the mass of Americans, not simply the power élites, made history. Yet, it was mainly white males of the power élite who had the means to attend college, become professional historians, and shape a view of history that served their own class, race, and gender interests at the expense of those not so fortunate – and, quite literally, to paper over aspects of history they found uncomfortable. "One is astonished in the study of history", wrote Du Bois in 1935, "at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over.... The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value, as an incentive and [as] an example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth".<ref>Williams, David. ''A People's History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom.''(2005) pp. 10–11.</ref>}}

After the Second World War, the study and production of history in the US was expanded by the G.I. Bill, which funding allowed "a new and more broadly-based generation of scholars" with perspectives and interpretations drawn from the [[Social:Feminist movement|feminist movement]], the Civil Rights Movement, and the American Indian Movement.<ref>Williams p. 11</ref> That expansion and deepening of the pool of historians voided the existence of a definitive and universally-accepted history, therefore, is presented by the revisionist historian to the national public with an history that has been corrected and augmented with new facts, evidence, and interpretations of the historical record. In ''The Cycles of American History'' (1986), in contrasting and comparing the US and the Soviet Union during the [[History:Cold War|Cold War]] (1945–1991), the historian [[Biography:Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.|Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.]] said:

{{Quote|... but others, especially in the United States.... represent what American historians call ''revisionism'' – that is readiness to challenge official explanations. No one should be surprised by this phenomenon. Every war in American history has been followed, in due course, by skeptical reassessments of supposedly sacred assumptions... for [historical] revisionism is an essential part of the process, by which history, through the posing of new problems and the investigation of new possibilities, enlarges its perspectives and enriches its insights.<ref>Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. ''The Cycles of American History.''(1986) p. 165.</ref>}}

Revisionist historians contest the mainstream or traditional view of historical events and raise views at odds with traditionalists, which must be freshly judged. Revisionist history is often practiced by those who are in the minority, such as feminist historians, ethnic minority historians, those working outside of mainstream academia in smaller and less known universities, or the youngest scholars, essentially historians who have the most to gain and the least to lose in challenging the status quo. In the friction between the mainstream of accepted beliefs and the new perspectives of historical revisionism, received historical ideas are either changed, solidified, or clarified. If over a period of time, the revisionist ideas become the new establishment ''status quo'' a [[Philosophy:Paradigm shift|paradigm shift]] is said to have occurred. The historian Forrest McDonald is often critical of the turn that revisionism has taken but admits that the turmoil of the 1960s America has changed the way history was written:

{{Quote|The result, as far as the study of history was concerned, was an awakened interest in subjects that historians had previously slighted. Indian history, black history, women's history, family history, and a host of specializations arose. These expanded horizons enriched our understanding of the American past, but they also resulted in works of special pleading, trivialization, and downright falsification.<ref>McDonald, Forest. ''Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir.'' (2004) p. 114</ref>}}

Historians are influenced by the ''[[Philosophy:Zeitgeist|zeitgeist]]'' (spirit of the time), and the usually progressive changes to society, politics, and culture, such as occurred after the Second World War (1939–1945); in ''The Future of the Past'' (1989), the historian C. Vann Woodward said:

{{Quote|These events have come with a concentration and violence for which the term ''revolution'' is usually reserved. It is a revolution, or perhaps a set of revolutions for which we have not yet found a name. My thesis is that these developments will and should raise new questions about the past, and affect our reading of large areas of history, and my belief is that future revisions may be extensive enough to justify calling the coming age of historiography an "Age of Reinterpretation". The first illustration [the absence from U.S. history of external threats, because of geography] happens to come mainly from American history, but this should not obscure the broader scope of the revolution, which has no national limitations.<ref>{{cite book |last=Woodward |first=C. Vann |title=The Future of the Past |year=1989 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0195057447 |page=[https://archive.org/details/futureofpast00cvan/page/76 76] |url=https://archive.org/details/futureofpast00cvan/page/76 }}</ref>}}

Developments in the academy, culture, and politics shaped the contemporary model of writing history, the accepted paradigm of [[History:Historiography|historiography]]. The philosopher [[Biography:Karl Popper|Karl Popper]] said that "each generation has its own troubles and problems, and, therefore, its own interests and its own point of view".

{{Quote|sign=|source=|it follows that each generation has a right to look upon and re-interpret history in [their] own way.... After all, we study history because we are interested in it, and perhaps because we desire to learn something about our [contemporary] problems. But history can serve neither of these two purposes if, under the influence of an inapplicable idea of objectivity, we hesitate to present historical problems from our point of view. And we should not think that our point of view, if consciously and critically applied to the problem, will be inferior to that of a writer who naïvely believes... that he has reached a level of objectivity permitting him to present "the events of the past as they actually did happen".<ref>{{cite book |last=Novick |first=Peter |title=That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780521357456 |url-access=registration |year=1988 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0521357456 |page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780521357456/page/395 395]}}</ref>}}

As the social, political, and cultural influences change a society, most historians revise and update their explanation of historical events. The old consensus, based upon limited evidence, might no longer be considered historically valid in explaining the particulars: of cause and effect, of motivation and self-interest – that tell ''How?'' and ''Why?'' the past occurred as it occurred; therefore, the historical revisionism of the factual record is revised to concord with the contemporary understanding of history. As such, in 1986, the historian John Hope Franklin described four stages in the historiography of the African experience of life in the US, which were based upon different models of historical consensus.<ref>African-American History: Origins, Development, and Current State of the Field | Joe W. Trotter | Organization of American Historians Magazine of History</ref>

==Negationism and denial==
{{main|Unsolved:Historical negationism}}

The historian Deborah Lipstadt (''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', 1993), and the historians [[Biography:Michael Shermer|Michael Shermer]] and Alex Grobman (''[[Unsolved:Denying History|Denying History]]: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?'', 2002), distinguish between historical revisionism and historical negationism, the latter of which is a form of [[Social:Denialism|denialism]]. Lipstadt said that [[Unsolved:Holocaust denial|Holocaust deniers]], such as Harry Elmer Barnes, disingenuously self-identify as "historical revisionists" in order to [[Obscurantism|obscure]] their denialism as academic revision of the historical record.

As such, Lipstadt, Shermer, and Grobman said that legitimate historical revisionism entails the refinement of existing knowledge about a historical event, not a denial of the event, itself; that such refinement of history emerges from the examination of new, empirical evidence, and a re-examination, and consequent re-interpretation of the existing documentary evidence. That legitimate historical revisionism acknowledges the existence of a "certain body of irrefutable evidence" and the existence of a "convergence of evidence", which suggest that an event – such as the Black Death, American slavery, and [[Social:The Holocaust|the Holocaust]] – did occur; whereas the denialism of history rejects the entire foundation of historical evidence, which is a form of historical negationism.<ref>"Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory" by Deborah E. Lipstadt. {{ISBN|0-452-27274-2}}, 1993, p. 21</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Shermer|first1=Michael |last2= Grobman|first2=Alex|author-link2=Alex Grobman |title=Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? Updated and Expanded |date=2009 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-94409-1 |language=en |title-link=Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? |page = 34}}</ref><ref>Ronald J. Berger. ''Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach'', Aldine Transaction, 2002, {{ISBN |0-202-30670-4}}, p. 154.</ref>

==Influences==
Some of the influences on historians that may change over time are the following:

*'''Access to new data:''' much historical data has been lost. Even archives must make decisions based on space and interest on what original material to obtain or to keep. At times, documents are discovered or publicized that give new views of well established events. Archived material may be sealed by governments for many years, either to hide political scandals or to protect information vital for national security. When the archives are opened, they can alter the historical perspective on an event. For example, with the release of the [[Ultra (cryptography)|ULTRA]] archives in the 1970s under the British thirty-year rule, much of the Allied high command tactical decisiomaking process was re-evaluated, particularly the Battle of the Atlantic. Before the release of the ULTRA archives, there was much debate over whether Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery could have known that Arnhem was heavily garrisoned. With the release of the archives, which indicated that they were, the balance of the evidence swung in the direction of his detractors. The release of the ULTRA archives also forced a re-evaluation of the [[History of computing hardware|history of the electronic computer]].<ref group=notes>In 1972, before the release of official documents about ULTRA, [[Biography:Herman Goldstine|Herman Goldstine]] wrote in ''The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann'' page 321 that: "Britain had such vitality that it could immediately after the war embark on so many well-conceived and well-executed projects in the computer field." In 1976 after the archive were opened [[Biography:Brian Randell|Brian Randell]] wrote in ''The COLOSSUS'' on page 87 that: "the COLOSSUS project was an important source of this vitality, one that has been largely unappreciated, as has the significance of its places in the chronology of the invention of the digital computer."</ref> 
** '''New sources in other languages:''' as more sources in other languages become available historians may review their theories in light of the new sources. The revision of the meaning of the Dark Ages is an example.{{citation needed|date=March 2015}}
* '''Developments in other fields of science:''' [[Biology:DNA|DNA]] analysis has had an impact in various areas of history either confirming established historical theories or presenting new evidence that undermines the current established historical explanation. Professor Andrew Sherratt, a British prehistorian, was responsible for introducing the work of anthropological writings on the consumption of legal and illegal drugs and how to use the papers to explain certain aspects of prehistoric societies.<ref>{{cite news|url =https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-andrew-sherratt-6107494.html|title= Obituaries: Professor Andrew Sherratt |work =The Independent|date= March 6, 2006|first = Paul|last = Halstead}}</ref> Carbon dating, the examination of [[Earth:Ice core|ice core]]s and tree rings, [[Earth:Palynology|palynology]], [[Physics:Scanning electron microscope|scanning electron microscope]] analysis of early metal samples, and measuring oxygen isotopes in bones, have all provided new data in the last few decades with which to argue new hypotheses. Extracting [[Biology:Ancient DNA|ancient DNA]] allows historians to debate the meaning and importance of race and indeed current identities.<ref>Christine Kenneally, ''The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures'' (2014)</ref>

* '''Nationalism:''' for example, in schoolbooks' history on Europe, it is possible to read about an event from completely-different perspectives. In the Battle of Waterloo, most British, French, Dutch and German schoolbooks slant the battle to emphasise the importance of the contribution of their nations. Sometimes, the name of an event is used to convey political or a national perspective. For example, the same conflict between two English-speaking countries is known by two different names: the "American War of Independence" and the "American Revolutionary War". As perceptions of nationalism change, so do the areas of history that are driven by such ideas.  Wars are contests between enemies, and postwar histories select the facts and interpretations to suit their internal needs, The Korean War, for example, has sharply different interpretations in textbooks in the countries involved.<ref>L. Lin, et al. "Whose history? An analysis of the Korean war in history textbooks from the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China." ''Social Studies'' 100.5 (2009): 222-232. [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Hoge/publication/249038081_Whose_History_An_Analysis_of_the_Korean_War_in_History_Textbooks_from_the_United_States_South_Korea_Japan_and_China/links/55108ab00cf20352196c0c69/Whose-History-An-Analysis-of-the-Korean-War-in-History-Textbooks-from-the-United-States-South-Korea-Japan-and-China.pdf online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217110137/https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-Hoge/publication/249038081_Whose_History_An_Analysis_of_the_Korean_War_in_History_Textbooks_from_the_United_States_South_Korea_Japan_and_China/links/55108ab00cf20352196c0c69/Whose-History-An-Analysis-of-the-Korean-War-in-History-Textbooks-from-the-United-States-South-Korea-Japan-and-China.pdf |date=February 17, 2022 }}</ref>

* '''Culture:''' for example, as regionalism has regained some of its old prominence in British politics, some historians have suggested that the older studies of the English Civil War were centred on England and that to understand the war, events that had previously been dismissed as on the periphery should be given greater prominence. To emphasise this, revisionist historians have suggested that the English Civil War becomes just one of a number of interlocking conflicts known as Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Furthermore, as cultures develop, it may become strategically advantageous for some revision-minded groups to revise their public historical narrative in such a way so as to either discover, or in rarer cases manufacture, a precedent which contemporary members of the given subcultures can use as a basis or rationale for reform or change.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Shindler|first1=Michael|title=A Discussion on the Purpose of Cultural Identity|journal=The Apollonian Revolt|year=2014|url=https://theapollonianrevolt.com/structure-purpose-cultural-identity/|access-date=April 10, 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150419090905/https://theapollonianrevolt.com/structure-purpose-cultural-identity/|archive-date=April 19, 2015}}</ref>
* '''Ideology:''' for example, in the 1940s, it became fashionable to see the English Civil War from a Marxist school of thought. In the words of Christopher Hill, "the Civil War was a class war." After [[Social:World War II|World War II]], the influence of Marxist interpretation waned in British academia and by the 1970s this view came under attack by a new school of revisionists and it has been largely overturned as a major mainstream explanation of the mid-17th-century conflict in [[History:Kingdom of England|England]], [[History:Kingdom of Scotland|Scotland]], and [[Place:Kingdom of Ireland|Ireland]].
*'''Historical causation:''' Issues of [[Causality|causation]] in history are often revised with new research: for example, by the mid-20th century the status quo was to see the {{wipe|French Revolution}} as the result of the triumphant rise of a new middle class. Research in the 1960s prompted by revisionist historians like Alfred Cobban and [[Biography:François Furet|François Furet]] revealed the social situation was much more complex, and the question of what caused the revolution is now closely debated.{{citation needed|date=March 2015}}
* '''Release of public documents:''' compared to past decades, a huge volume of archived government records is now available under the thirty-year rule and similar laws. These can provide new sources and therefore new analyses of past events.

==Specific issues==
===Dark Ages===
As non-[[Social:Latin|Latin]] texts, such as [[Social:Welsh language|Welsh]], Gaelic and the [[Social:Old Norse|Norse]] sagas have been analysed and added to the canon of knowledge about the period, and as much more archaeological evidence has come to light, the period known as the Dark Ages has narrowed to the point that many historians no longer believe that such a term is useful. Moreover, the term "dark" implies less of a void of culture and law but more a lack of many source texts in Mainland Europe. Many modern scholars who study the era tend to avoid the term altogether for its negative connotations and find it misleading and inaccurate for any part of the Middle Ages.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Snyder|first=Christopher A.|year=1998|title=An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons A.D. 400–600|publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press|publication-date=1998|location=University Park|pages=xiii–xiv|isbn=0-271-01780-5}}, for example. The work contains over 100 pages of footnoted citations to source material and bibliographic references (pp. 263–387). In explaining his approach to writing the work, he refers to the "so-called Dark Ages" and notes, "Historians and archaeologists have never liked the label Dark Ages... there are numerous indicators that these centuries were neither "dark" nor "barbarous" in comparison with other eras."</ref><ref name=dmas>Jordan, Chester William (2004). ''Dictionary of the Middle Ages'', Supplement 1. Verdun, Kathleen, "Medievalism" pp. 389–397. Sections 'Victorian Medievalism', 'Nineteenth-Century Europe', 'Medievalism in America 1500–1900', 'The 20th Century'. Same volume, Freedman, Paul, "Medieval Studies", pp. 383–389.</ref>

===Feudalism===
The concept of [[Social:Feudalism|feudalism]] has been questioned. Revisionist scholars led by historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown have [[Social:Feudalism#Challenges to the feudal model|rejected the term]].

===Battle of Agincourt===
Historians generally believe that the Battle of Agincourt was an engagement in which the English army, overwhelmingly outnumbered four to one by the French army, pulled off a stunning victory. This understanding was especially popularised by Shakespeare's play ''Henry V''. However, recent research by Professor Anne Curry, using the original enrollment records, has brought into question this interpretation. Though her research is not finished,<ref>Strickland, Matthew (2005) ''The Great Warbow''. Sutton. p,238. {{ISBN|0-7509-3167-1}}</ref> she has published her initial findings that the French outnumbered the English and the Welsh only by 12,000 to 8,000.<ref>Curry, Anne (2005) ''Agincourt: A New History''. Tempus, {{ISBN|0-7524-2828-4}}</ref> If true, the numbers may have been exaggerated for patriotic reasons by the English.<ref>Brooks, Richard (29 May. 2005) [https://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-523-1632547,00.html "Henry V's payroll cuts Agincourt myth down to size"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217110146/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/ |date=February 17, 2022 }} ''The Times''</ref>

=== New World discovery and European colonization of the Americas ===
In recounting the [[History:European colonization of the Americas|European colonization of the Americas]], some history books of the past paid little attention to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, usually mentioning them only in passing and making no attempt to understand the events from their point of view. That was reflected in the description of Christopher Columbus having discovered America. Those events' portrayal has since been revised to avoid the word "discovery."<ref>Kay Larson, and Edith Newhall, "It's a Map, Map, Map World" [https://books.google.com/books?id=i-MCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA97 ''New York Magazine'' Nov 1992 25#43 pp 97+  online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170210131803/https://books.google.com/books?id=i-MCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA97 |date=February 10, 2017 }}</ref>

In his 1990 revisionist book, ''The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy'', Kirkpatrick Sale argued that Christopher Columbus was an imperialist bent on conquest from his first voyage. In a ''New York Times'' book review, historian and member of the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Committee William Hardy McNeill wrote about Sale: 
:he has set out to destroy the heroic image that earlier writers have transmitted to us. Mr. Sale makes Columbus out to be cruel, greedy and incompetent (even as a sailor), and a man who was perversely intent on abusing the natural paradise on which he intruded."<ref name = William>William H. McNeill, [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5DD1739F934A35753C1A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all Review of Kirkpatrick Sale's ''The Conquest of Paradise''] {{Webarchive |url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200414092420/https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/07/books/debunking-columbus.html |date=April 14, 2020 }}, ''{{wipe|The New York Times}}'', October 7, 1990.</ref>

McNeill declares Sale's work to be "unhistorical, in the sense that [it] selects from the often-cloudy record of Columbus's actual motives and deeds what suits the researcher's 20th-century purposes." McNeill states that detractors and advocates of Columbus present a "sort of history [that] caricatures the complexity of human reality by turning Columbus into either a bloody ogre or a plaster saint, as the case may be."<ref name = William/>

=== New Qing history ===
{{main|History:New Qing History}}
Historians in China and from abroad long wrote that the Manchus who conquered China and established the Qing dynasty (1636-1912) adopted the customs and institutions of the Han Chinese dynasties that preceded them and were "sinicized", that is, absorbed into Chinese culture. In 1990 American historians explored Manchu language sources and newly accessible imperial archives, and discovered that the emperors retained their Manchu culture and that they regarded [[Place:China proper|China proper]] as only one part of their larger empire. These scholars differ among themselves but agree on a major revision of the history of the Qing dynasty. <ref>{{cite journal |last =Waley-Cohen |first = Johanna |title =The New Qing History |journal =Radical History Review |volume =88 |issue = 1 |pages =193–206 |date =2004 |doi = 10.1215/01636545-2004-88-193|s2cid = 144544216 }}</ref>

===French Revolution===

===French attack formations in the Napoleonic wars===
The military historian [[Biography:James R. Arnold|James R. Arnold]] argues:
{{quote|The writings of Sir Charles Oman and Sir John Fortescue dominated subsequent English-language Napoleonic history. Their views [that the French infantry used heavy columns to attack lines of infantry] became very much the received wisdom.... By 1998 a new paradigm seemed to have set in with the publication of two books devoted to Napoleonic battle tactics. Both claimed that the French fought in line at Maida and both fully explored French tactical variety. The 2002 publication of ''The Battle of Maida 1806: Fifteen Minutes of Glory'', appeared to have brought the issue of column versus line to a satisfactory conclusion: "The contemporary sources are... the best evidence and their conclusion is clear: General Compère's brigade formed into line to attack Kempt's Light Battalion." The decisive action at Maida took place in less than 15 minutes. It had taken 72 years to rectify a great historian's error about what happened during those minutes.<ref>Arnold, James R. ''[https://www.napoleon-series.org/military/organization/maida/c_maida.html A Reappraisal of Column Versus Line in the Peninsular War Oman and Historiography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200210221158/http://www.napoleon-series.org/military/organization/maida/c_maida.html |date=February 10, 2020 }}'', The Napoleon Series, August 2004.</ref><ref>James R. Arnold, "A Reappraisal of Column Versus Line in the Napoleonic Wars" ''Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research'' LX no. 244 (Winter 1982): pp. 196–208.</ref>}}

===Argentine Civil Wars===
After the proclamation of the {{wipe|Argentina}} in late 1861, its first ''de facto'' President, Bartolomé Mitre, wrote the first Argentine historiographical works: ''Historia de Belgrano y de la Independencia Argentina'' and ''Historia de San Martín y de la emancipación sudamericana''. Although these were criticised by notorious intellectuals such as Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield and Juan Bautista Alberdi and even by some colleagues like Adolfo Saldías, both stated a [[Philosophy:Liberalism|liberal]]-[[Social:Conservatism|conservative]] bias on Argentine history through the National Academy of History established in 1893, despite the existence of [[Social:Caudillo|caudillos]] and gauchos. 

During the Radical Civic Union government of Hipólito Yrigoyen, historians followed the revisionist view of anti-mitrist politicians such as Carlos D'Amico, Ernesto Quesada and David Peña and their theories reached the academy thanks to Dardo Corvalán Mendilharsu. Argentine historical revisionism could reach its peak during the peronist government. In 2011, the Manuel Dorrego National Institute of Argentine and Iberoamerican Historical Revisionism was established by the Secretary of Culture,<ref>[https://www.argentina.gob.ar/normativa/nacional/decreto-1880-2011-190107|Decreto 1880/2011]{{Dead link|date=October 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, published by the Argentine Government's Official Website</ref> but this one suffered a rupture between [[Social:Socialism of the 21st century|21st century socialists]] and nationalists. Three weeks after the Inauguration of Mauricio Macri, the Institute was closed.

===World War I===

====German guilt====
In reaction to the orthodox interpretation enshrined in the Versailles Treaty, which declared that Germany was guilty of starting World War I, the self-described "revisionist" historians of the 1920s rejected the orthodox view and presented a complex causation in which several other countries were equally guilty. Intense debate continues among scholars.<ref>See Selig Adler, "The War-Guilt Question and American Disillusionment, 1918–1928", ''Journal of Modern History'', Vol. 23, No. 1 (Mar. 1951), pp. 1–28 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1871365 in JSTOR] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170210131801/http://www.jstor.org/stable/1871365 |date=February 10, 2017 }}</ref>

====Poor British and French military leadership====
The military leadership of the British Army during [[Social:World War I|World War I]] was frequently condemned as poor by historians and politicians for decades after the war ended. Common charges were that the generals commanding the army were blind to the realities of [[Earth:Trench warfare|trench warfare]], ignorant of the conditions of their men and unable to learn from their mistakes, thus causing enormous numbers of casualties ("[[Philosophy:Lions led by donkeys|lions led by donkeys]]").<ref>Lions Led By Donkeys
*Thompson, P.A. ''[https://www.churchillbooks.com/detail.cfm?item_num=38200&is_mil_book=1 ''Lions Led By Donkeys: Showing How Victory In The Great War Was Achieved By Those Who Made the Fewest Mistakes''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927044244/https://www.churchillbooks.com/detail.cfm?item_num=38200&is_mil_book=1 |date=September 27, 2007 }} T. Werner Laurie, Ltd. 1st English Edition. 1927
*Bournes, John. [https://www.firstworldwar.bham.ac.uk/donkey/index.htm "Lions Led By Donkeys"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091208132234/http://www.firstworldwar.bham.ac.uk/donkey/index.htm |date=December 8, 2009 }}, Centre for First World War Studies, [[Organization:University of Birmingham|University of Birmingham]].</ref> However, during the 1960s, historians such as John Terraine began to challenge that interpretation. In recent years, as new documents have come forth and the passage of time has allowed for more objective analysis, historians such as Gary D. Sheffield and Richard Holmes observe that the military leadership of the British Army on the Western Front had to cope with many problems that they could not control, such as a lack of adequate military communications, which had not occurred. Furthermore, military leadership improved throughout the war, culminating in the Hundred Days Offensive advance to victory in 1918. Some historians, even revisionists, still criticise the British High Command severely but are less inclined to portray the war in a simplistic manner with brave troops being led by foolish officers.

There has been a similar movement regarding the French Army during the war with contributions by historians such as Anthony Clayton. Revisionists are far more likely to view commanders such as French General Ferdinand Foch, British General Douglas Haig and other figures, such as American John Pershing, in a sympathetic light.

===Reconstruction in the United States===
Revisionist historians of the Reconstruction era of the United States rejected the dominant [[Unsolved:Dunning School|Dunning School]] that stated that Black Americans were used by carpetbaggers, and instead stressed economic greed on the part of northern businessmen.<ref>Bernard Weisberger, "The Dark and Bloody Ground of Reconstruction Historiography", ''The Journal of Southern History,'' Vol. 25, No. 4 (November 1959), pp. 427–447 [https://www.jstor.org/pss/2954450 in JSTOR] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217110143/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2954450 |date=February 17, 2022 }}</ref> Indeed, in recent years a "[[Social:Neoabolitionism (race relations)|neoabolitionist]]" revisionism has become standard; it uses the moral standards of racial equality of the 19th century abolitionists to criticize racial policies. "Foner's book represents the mature and settled Revisionist perspective", historian Michael Perman has concluded regarding Eric Foner's ''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877'' (1988).<ref>Michael Perman, "Review: Eric Foner's Reconstruction: A Finished Revolution", ''Reviews in American History'', Vol. 17, No. 1 (March 1989), pp. 73–78 [https://www.jstor.org/pss/2703129 in JSTOR] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217110206/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2703129 |date=February 17, 2022 }}</ref>

===American business and "robber barons"===
The role of American business and the alleged [[Finance:Robber baron (industrialist)|"robber barons"]] began to be revised in the 1930s. Termed "business revisionism" by Gabriel Kolko, historians such as Allan Nevins, and then Alfred D. Chandler emphasized the positive contributions of individuals who were previously pictured as villains.<ref>Kolko, Gabriel. "The Premises of Business Revisionism" in ''The Business History Review'', Vol. 33, No. 3 (Autumn, 1959), p. 334</ref> Peter Novick writes, "The argument that whatever the moral delinquencies of the robber barons, these were far outweighed by their decisive contributions to American military [and industrial] prowess, was frequently invoked by Allan Nevins."<ref>{{cite book |last=Novick |first=Peter |title=That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical profession |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780521357456 |url-access=registration |year=1988 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0521357456 |page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780521357456/page/343 343]}}</ref>

===Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Stalin===
Prior to the collapse of the [[Place:Soviet Union|Soviet Union]] and the archival revelations, Western historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Conquest |first1=Robert |title=The Great Terror |year=1990 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0195055801 |page=[https://archive.org/details/greatterror00robe/page/486 486] |url=https://archive.org/details/greatterror00robe |url-access=registration |quote=20 million. |access-date=May 6, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Rummel |first1=Rudolph |title=61,911,000 Soviet Victims: Totals, Estimates, and Years |url=https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.TAB1A.GIF |access-date=May 6, 2019 |archive-date=August 7, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190807044727/https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.TAB1A.GIF |url-status=live }}</ref> After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives also became available and provided information that led to a significant revision in death toll estimates for the Stalin regime, with estimates in the range from 3 million<ref>{{cite web |last1=Ellman |first1=Michael |title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments |url=https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf |work=From 1921 onwards about 3–3.5&nbsp;million seem to have died from shooting, while in detention, or while being deported or in deportation. |access-date=May 6, 2019 |archive-date=May 25, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190525134942/http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> to 9 million.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Snyder |first1=Timothy |title=Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse? |date=January 27, 2011 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/01/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/ |work=The total number of noncombatants killed by the Germans – about 11 million – is roughly what we had thought. The total number of civilians killed by the Soviets, however, is considerably less than we had believed. We know now that the Germans killed more people than the Soviets did [...] All in all, the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12&nbsp;million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million. These figures are of course subject to revision, but it is very unlikely that the consensus will change again as radically as it has since the opening of Eastern European archives in the 1990s. |access-date=May 6, 2019 |archive-date=September 20, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190920180922/https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/01/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/ |url-status=live }}</ref> In post-1991 Russia the KGB archives remained briefly open during 1990's, which helped creation of organisations such as Memorial, which engaged in research of the archives and search of secret mass burial grounds. After Putin came to power however, access to archives was restricted again and research in this area once again became politically incorrect,<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Satter |first=David |title=It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2011 |isbn=9780300192377}}</ref> culminating with forcibly shutting down the organization in 2021.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Hopkins |first1=Valerie |last2=Nechepurenko |first2=Ivan |date=2021-12-29 |title=As the Kremlin Revises History, a Human Rights Champion Becomes a Casualty |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/world/europe/russia-memorial-human-rights-center.html |access-date=2023-09-06 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

=== Soviet Union and Russia ===
[[Place:Soviet Union|Soviet Union]] frequently resorted to changing its [[History:Official history|official history]] to suit changes in state policy, especially after splits in the Bolshevik leadership or change of political alliances.<ref name=":0" /> The book History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) was subject to numerous such changes to reflect removal of Bolshevik leaders previously trusted by Stalin but did not support him unanimously.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kołakowski |first=Leszek |title=Main Currents of Marxism |quote=Its lies and suppressions were too obvious to be overlooked by readers who had witnessed the events in question: all but the youngest party members knew who Trotsky was and how collectivization had taken place in Russia, but, obliged as they were to parrot the official version, they became co-authors of the new past and believers in it as party-inspired truth. If anyone challenged this truth on the basis of manifest experience, the indignation of the faithful was perfectly sincere. In this way Stalinism really produced the ‘new Soviet man’: an ideological schizophrenic, a liar who believed what he was saying, a man capable of incessant, voluntary acts of intellectual self- mutilation.}}</ref> [[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] was also redacted frequently, with subscribers of the paper book receiving letter to cut out pages e.g. about Lavrentiy Beria or [[Biography:Nikolai Bukharin|Nikolai Bukharin]] and replace them with unrelated articles.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hIN1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA2 |title=The Materiality of Text – Placement, Perception, and Presence of Inscribed Texts in Classical Antiquity: Placement, perception, and presence of inscribed texts in classical antiquity |date=2018-10-22 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-37943-5 |language=en}}</ref> Historic photos were also frequently edited to remove people who later lost trust of the Party.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=King |first=David |title=The Commissar Vanishes |publisher=Canongate Books |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-86241-724-6}}</ref>
The process of rewriting history of USSR and post-1991 Russia was once again restarted in 2010's after Russia's first attack on Ukraine and intensified after 2022 full-scale invasion in Ukraine. History school books received significant changes which reflected the changes in the official history narratives: for example, while 2010 books openly mentioned decrease of [[Biology:Life expectancy|life expectancy]] in Soviet Union caused shortages and insufficient spending on public healthcare, new 2023 books vaguely states that life expectancy has generally increased and instead focused on unspecified "achievements in the sphere of education and science". In chapters on Stalin, he's once again presented as a great tragedy to ordinary Russians and any mentions of repressions have disappeared. Similar changes were introduced in chapters discussing Soviet economy, space program, Brezhnev, collapse of USSR, perestroika and glasnost, where the phrase "freedom of speech" started to be used in scare quotes and presented as something harmful. [[Religion:Soviet–Afghan War|Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979]] which was presented as Soviet contribution into the fight against radical islamism, completely contradicting both Soviet and post-Soviet narratives.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-09-02 |title=«Именовали умершего вождя тираном»: что изменилось в учебнике истории |url=https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6187400 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230902083030/https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6187400 |archive-date=2023-09-02 |access-date=2023-09-06 |website=Коммерсантъ |language=ru}}</ref>

Also since 2014 Russian law enforcement started to prosecute public statements which do not comply with the current version of Russian history. Article 354.1 of Criminal Code of Russia which makes "rehabilitation of Nazism" a crime has been applied both to actual statements praising [[Social:Nazism|Nazism]], but also to statements which recalled Nazi-Soviet cooperation 1939-1941 or Soviet war crimes conducted in other countries. In some cases article 20.3 of Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses is also being applied in these cases.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Как в России судят за «фальсификацию истории»: доклад «Агоры» |url=https://meduza.io/feature/2018/05/10/kak-v-rossii-sudyat-za-falsifikatsiyu-istorii-doklad-agory |access-date=2023-09-06 |website=Meduza |language=ru}}</ref>

===Guilt for causing World War II===
The orthodox interpretation blamed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan for causing the war. Revisionist historians of World War II, notably Charles A. Beard, said the United States was partly to blame because it pressed the Japanese too hard in 1940 and 1941 and rejected compromises.<ref>Samuel Flagg Bemis, "First Gun of a Revisionist Historiography for the Second World War", ''Journal of Modern History'', Vol. 19, No. 1 (Mar. 1947), pp. 55–59 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1875652 in JSTOR] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170210131658/http://www.jstor.org/stable/1875652 |date=February 10, 2017 }}</ref> Other notable contributions to this discussion include Charles Tansill, ''Back Door To War'' (Chicago, 1952); Frederic Sanborn, ''Design For War'' (New York, 1951); and David Hoggan, ''The Forced War'' (Costa Mesa, 1989). The British historian A. J. P. Taylor ignited a firestorm when he argued Hitler was an ineffective and inexperienced diplomat and did not deliberately set out to cause a world war.<ref>Martel, Gordon ed. (1999) ''The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: A.J.P. Taylor and the Historians.'' (2nd ed.)</ref>

Patrick Buchanan, an American [[Philosophy:Paleoconservatism|paleoconservative]] pundit, argued that the Anglo–French guarantee in 1939 encouraged Poland not to seek a compromise over Danzig. He further argued that Britain and France were in no position to come to Poland's aid, and Hitler was offering the Poles an alliance in return. Buchanan argued the guarantee led the Polish government to transform a minor border dispute into a major world conflict, and handed Eastern Europe, including Poland, to Stalin. Buchanan also argued the guarantee ensured the country would be eventually invaded by the Soviet Union, as Stalin knew the British were in no position to declare war on the Soviet Union in 1939, due to their military weakness.<ref>Buchanan, Patrick J. (2009). ''Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World''. Three Rivers Press. {{ISBN|978-0307405166}}.{{page needed|date=May 2021}}</ref>

===The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki===
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have generated controversy and debate. Historians who accepted President Harry Truman's reasoning in justifying dropping atomic bombs in order to force Japanese surrender end of World War II are known as "orthodox," while "revisionists" generally deny that the bombs were necessary. Some also claim that Truman knew they were not necessary but wanted to pressure the Soviet Union. These historians see Truman's decision as a major factor in starting the [[History:Cold War|Cold War]]. They and others also may charge that Truman ignored or downplayed predictions of casualties.{{sfnb|Kort|2007|p=31-32}}

===Cold War===
{{main|History:Historiography of the Cold War}}
Historians debate the causes and responsibility for the [[History:Cold War|Cold War]]. The "orthodox" view puts the major blame on the [[Place:Soviet Union|Soviet Union]], while a "revisionist" view puts more responsibility on the United States. {{Citation needed|date=July 2022}}

====Vietnam War====
''America in Vietnam'' (1978), by Guenter Lewy, is an example of historical revisionism that differs much from the popular view of the U.S. in the Vietnam War (1955–75) for which the author was criticized and supported for belonging to the revisionist school on the history of the Vietnam War.<ref name="tri"/><ref name="reverse">{{cite journal| first1 = Robert A.| last1 = Divine|date=September 1979| title = Review: Revisionism in Reverse| journal = Reviews in American History| volume = 7| issue = 3| pages = 433–438| doi = 10.2307/2701181| last2 = Lewy| first2 = Guenter| last3 = Millett| first3 = Allan R. |  jstor=2701181}}</ref> Lewy's reinterpretation was the first book of a body of work by historians of the revisionist school about the geopolitical role and the U.S. military behavior in Vietnam.

In the introduction, Lewy said:

{{Quote|It is the reasoned conclusion of this study ... that the sense of guilt created by the Vietnam war in the minds of many Americans is not warranted and that the charges of ''officially, condoned'' illegal and grossly immoral conduct are without substance. Indeed, detailed examination of battlefield practices reveals that the loss of civilian life in Vietnam was less great than in [[Social:World War II|World War II]] [1939–45] and Korea [1950–53] and that concern with minimizing the ravages of the war was strong. To measure and compare the devastation and loss of human life caused by different war will be objectionable to those who repudiate all resort to military force as an instrument of foreign policy and may be construed as callousness. Yet as long as wars do take place at all it remains a moral duty to seek to reduce the agony caused by war, and the fulfillment of this obligation should not be disdained.|''America in Vietnam'' (1979), p. vii.<ref>Guenter Lewy, ''America in Vietnam'', p. VII.</ref>}}

Other reinterpretations of the historical record of the U.S. war in Vietnam, which offer alternative explanations for American behavior, include ''Why We Are in Vietnam'' (1982), by Norman Podhoretz,<ref name="tri">{{cite web| website = Reviews in History| date = February 2007| first = Ian| last = Horwood| title = Book review: Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965| publisher = [[Organization:Institute of Historical Research|Institute of Historical Research]]| url = https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/horwood.html| archive-url = https://archive.today/20121223110521/https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/horwood.html| url-status = dead| archive-date = 2012-12-23}}</ref> ''Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965'' (2006), by Mark Moyar,<ref>{{cite book |author=Mark Moyar |title=Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 |year=2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-86911-0}}</ref> and ''Vietnam: The Necessary War'' (1999), by Michael Lind.<ref>{{cite book |author=Lind, Michael |title=Vietnam: The Necessary War |year=1999 |publisher=Free Press |isbn=978-0684842547 |url=https://archive.org/details/vietnamnecessary00lind}}{{page needed|date=September 2014}}</ref>

=== Pre-colonial African civilizations ===
Revisionist scholars such as Simon Webb<ref>https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryDebunkedsimonwebb</ref> have rejected the notion of African empires as a myth invented in the 1980s and claimed that settlements like [[History:Great Zimbabwe|Great Zimbabwe]] are being erroneously categorized as cities to avoid causing offense to the Afro-descended diaspora, while also asserting that the indigenous peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa remained in the Stone Age within the past 35,000 years until the era of European [[Social:Colonialism|colonialism]].<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w1UzHVLdk8</ref><ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYO-Fj4WRTI&t=361s</ref><ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2O0n0g1CGI</ref><ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13D2rocqOcU&t=332s</ref>

=== Chronological revisionism ===
It is generally accepted that the foundations of modern [[Physics:Chronology|chronology]] were laid by the humanist [[Biography:Joseph Justus Scaliger|Joseph Scaliger]]. [[Biography:Isaac Newton|Isaac Newton]] in his work [[History:The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended|''The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms'']] made one of the first attempts to revise the "Scaligerian chronology".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hunt|first=Lynn|url=https://books.openedition.org/ceup/819|title=Measuring Time, Making History|year=2008|publisher=Central European University Press |isbn=978-9639776142|access-date=September 21, 2021|archive-date=September 21, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210921131043/https://books.openedition.org/ceup/819|url-status=live}}</ref> In the twentieth century the "[[Biography:Immanuel Velikovsky#Revised chronology|revised chronology]]" of [[Biography:Immanuel Velikovsky|Immanuel Velikovsky]] can be singled out in this direction, perhaps it initiated a wave of new broad interest in the revision of chronology.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Meynell|first=Hugo|date=February 1985|title=Ancient History in Chaos—Velikovsky's Chronological Reconstruction|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43247679|journal=New Blackfriars|volume=66|issue=776|pages=56–61|doi=10.1111/j.1741-2005.1985.tb02681.x|jstor=43247679|access-date=September 21, 2021|archive-date=September 21, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210921131041/https://www.jstor.org/stable/43247679|url-status=live}}</ref>

In general, revisionist chronological theories suggest halving the duration of the Christian era, or consider certain historical periods to be erroneously dated, such as [[Biography:Heribert Illig|Heribert Illig]]'s ''[[Unsolved:Phantom time hypothesis|Phantom time hypothesis]]''<ref>{{Cite book|last=Illig|first=Heribert|title=Das erfundene Mittelalter. Die größte Zeitfälschung der Geschichte|publisher=Econ|year=1996|isbn=3-430-14953-3}}</ref> or the materials of the "[[Unsolved:New chronology (Fomenko)|New Chronology]]", a proposed revision of eras by academician [[Biography:Anatoly Fomenko|Anatoly Fomenko]], albeit one widely rejected by mainstream scholars as [[Unsolved:Pseudoscience|pseudoscience]],<ref>{{cite periodical |last1=Ginzburg |first1=Vitaly L. |others=Translated from the Russian by Gary Goldberg |lang=en |title=Pseudoscience and the Need to Combat It |magazine=Nauka i Zhizn' |date=2000 |issue=11 |url=https://humanism.al.ru/en/articles.phtml?num=000051 |access-date=12 December 2021 |publisher=Russian Humanist Society: humanism.al.ru |id=[https://www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/5372/ Also, in the original Russian] |archive-date=October 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211024191933/http://humanism.al.ru/en/articles.phtml?num=000051 |url-status=live }}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Philosophy:Dialectic|Dialectic]]
** [[Dialectical research]]
* ''Mea culpa''
* [[History:Official history|Official history]]
* Post-publication peer review
* [[Unsolved:Pseudohistory|Pseudohistory]]

===Cases of revisionism===
* The 1619 Project, a revisionist look at American history with a focus on slavery and its legacy
* [[Social:Afrocentrism|Afrocentrism]], historical scholarship with a focus on African peoples
* [[Biography:Christ myth theory|Christ myth theory]], a fringe revisionist theory that Jesus never existed
* ''[[Philosophy:Donation of Constantine|Donation of Constantine]]'', exposure of a forgery
* Historical revision of the Inquisition
* [[History:New Historians|New Historians]], a group of Israeli historians with alternative views about Israel's history
* Revisionism (Spain)
* [[Religion:Revisionist school of Islamic studies|Revisionist school of Islamic studies]]

==References==
'''Informational notes'''
{{reflist|group=notes}}

'''Citations'''
{{Reflist}}
'''Further reading'''
* Banner, Jr., James M. (2021). ''[https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300238457/ever-changing-past The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History Is Revisionist History]''. Yale University Press. {{ISBN|978-0300238457}}.
* Burgess, Glenn (1990). "On Revisionism: An Analysis of Early Stuart Historiography in the 1970s and 1980s." ''Historical Journal'', vol. 33. no. 3, pp. 609–627. {{JSTOR|2639733}}.
* Comninel, George C. (1987). [https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/george-c-comninel-rethinking-the-french-revolution-marxism-and-the-revisionist-challenge.pdf ''Rethinking the French Revolution: Marxism and the Revisionist Challenge''.] Verso.
* Confino, Michael (2009). "The New Russian Historiography, and the Old—Some Considerations." ''History & Memory'', vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 7–33.  {{JSTOR|10.2979/HIS.2009.21.2.7}}.
* Gaither, Milton (2012). [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/history-of-education-quarterly/article/revisionists-revived-the-libertarian-historiography-of-education/000E426E28D3A02FC6E31BDCFAC29774 "The Revisionists Revived: The Libertarian Historiography of Education."] ''History of Education Quarterly'', vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 488–505.
* Jainchill, Andrew, and Samuel Moyn (2004). "French Democracy Between Totalitarianism and Solidarity: Pierre Rosanvallon and Revisionist Historiography." ''Journal of Modern History'', vol. 76, no. 1, pp. 107–154. {{JSTOR|10.1086/421186}}.
* Kopecek, Michal (2008). ''Past in the Making: Historical Revisionism in Central Europe After 1989''. Central European University Press.
* {{cite journal |last=Kort |first=Michael |date=2007 |title=The Historiography of Hiroshima: The Rise and Fall of Revisionism |url=https://www.fairbanksonline.net/Fairbanks_Online/Atomic_Bomb_Trials_Research_files/truman_bomb.pdf |journal=New England Journal of History |volume=64 |issue=1 |pages=31–48 |access-date=February 17, 2022 |archive-date=May 10, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170510104213/https://www.fairbanksonline.net/Fairbanks_Online/Atomic_Bomb_Trials_Research_files/truman_bomb.pdf |url-status=dead }}
* [[Biography:Vladimir Lenin|Lenin, V.I.]] (1908). [https://web.archive.org/web/20210514101621/https://revolutionarycommunist.org/wweb/leninindexfiles/1908-rev.htm "Marxism and Revisionism." ''Karl Marx—1818-1883''] (symposium).
* Markwick, Roger (2001). [https://books.google.com/books?id=iZGDDAAAQBAJ ''Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography 1956–1974''.] Springer.
* Melosi, Martin V. (1983). "The Triumph of Revisionism: The Pearl Harbor Controversy, 1941-1982." ''Public Historian'', vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 87–103. {{JSTOR|3377253}}.
* Palmer, William (2010). "Aspects of Revision in History in Great Britain and the United States, 1920–1975." ''Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques'', vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 17–32. {{JSTOR|41403681}}.
* Riggenbach, Jeff (2009). [https://cdn.mises.org/Why%20American%20History%20Is%20Not%20What%20They%20Say_3.pdf ''Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism''.] Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute.
* Rothbard, Murray N. (February 1976). [https://mises.org/library/case-revisionism-and-against-priori-history "Revisionism and Libertarianism."] ''Libertarian Forum'', pp. 3-6.
* Viola, Lynne (2002). "The Cold War in American Soviet Historiography and the End of the Soviet Union." ''Russian Review'', vol. 61, no. 1, pp. 25–34. {{JSTOR|2679501}}.

==External links==
[[Category:Historiography|Revisionism]]

{{Sourceattribution|Historical revisionism}}