Howdy folks. Time for another update on my book on the 1812-13 revolution in Texas. Short summary of my journey: 2015-16 master's thesis. 2017-18, first draft, Jan.-Aug 19 second draft, Aug-now Third. And I'm nearly done.
This book has taken a lot longer than I would have ever dreamed, but it's very complex. My wife complains that I'll never finish, but I'm getting there. Unlike a scholarly work by a professor on a timeline, I've been able to explore a lot of angles that have been overlooked by other writers on this topic. I have no doubt that I've gone far beyond anything they've ever done. It's not even close. I have all of their sources, plus some they definitely never saw.
The biggest insight, I guess for a general history discussion, is how error creeps into history, digs its claws in and won't let go. A lot of historians, either from time constraints, preconceived notions or source limitations, simply adopt these whole cloth and perpetuate them. Then you get people saying, "well, of the 10 articles on this topic, 9 of them are sure of this fact." But then when you peel back the onion on their sources, it turns that all 9 of them are essentially repeating one source. But they THINK it's multiple sources, because of the way errors perpetuate themselves in an echo chamber.
I won't get into all the detail, but I'll frame one of the key issues in my work: Most historians are wedded to a scenario on how the expedition came about that in the first place posits a 1830s mentality into 1812. But these are generations, and they changed in the old days just like they change now. This is like interpreting all of World War II as if it were fought by Hippies from 1970. (Think "Kelly's Heroes" as authentic history).
In the second place, the standard (there is actually disagreement, don't get me wrong) interpretation is based on a very surface reading of the facts. For example, they take a letter written to James Monroe, and interpret him as consenting because he never takes a certain action. But when you put all of the letters in a big spreadsheet, as I have, including tags showing travel times for the news, you realize that Monroe can't possibly know Fact X before event Y takes place. Once you see it, you can't unsee it, and the whole initial premise falls away.
This is where technology comes into play. The standard view is based on research done in the 1930s. This was a historian who had to write a letter to the national archives, wait for a response, get on a train to Washington, stay a month in a fleabag hotel during the depression, sit there with old paper documents, take notes furiously *(but still not be able to transcribe everything), then take a train home, put the notes together, realize their missing something, write another letter, etc.
What I did was first of all exhaust all the research I could do digitally first. This includes getting most of the Spanish archives of Texas in a digital, keyword-searchable format, emailing various archives and buying copies of documents for a few dollars, and searching through digitized census files, digitized books, etc. Then armed with a better set of questions and ideas as to what I'm looking for, I went to the National Archives, and rather than combing through all of it there, I just photographed everything, brought it home and went through it there.
My overall point is I found a lot of stuff no one has ever found and was able to see it the way no one has done. But I'm not the only person who can do this. Anybody can. There are a lot of unanswered questions in history, and ones that have been answered incompletely, which can be opened up for future research. I'm living in my tunnel vision world, but think of any point in history where "we just don't know" is a part of the answer, and in pure Lee Corso form, I simply say, "Not so fast!" We're on the tip of the iceberg on this stuff, technologically. Wait 'till artificial intelligence-assisted searches, digitized cursive writing, face-recognition software that works well with portraits as well as photos, and other technologies kick in. "Closed" or "solved" historical puzzles will have to be opened again. Will it reshape every event in history? Probably not. But some event that suffers from really limited source materials like my war, is open and exposed. You're not going to find a new front in WWII. But you might find some Roman source, that combined with a Greek source, compared with an economic source, that identifies a biblical event which is either confirmed or disputed.
When I started this journey, I thought I knew the story 100 percent, now my old understanding looks quaint. I say this because I also think I understand a lot of things from the Civil War or the Pacific in WWII, etc. very well, but am I not being too sure on these now. There is always more to learn.
This book has taken a lot longer than I would have ever dreamed, but it's very complex. My wife complains that I'll never finish, but I'm getting there. Unlike a scholarly work by a professor on a timeline, I've been able to explore a lot of angles that have been overlooked by other writers on this topic. I have no doubt that I've gone far beyond anything they've ever done. It's not even close. I have all of their sources, plus some they definitely never saw.
The biggest insight, I guess for a general history discussion, is how error creeps into history, digs its claws in and won't let go. A lot of historians, either from time constraints, preconceived notions or source limitations, simply adopt these whole cloth and perpetuate them. Then you get people saying, "well, of the 10 articles on this topic, 9 of them are sure of this fact." But then when you peel back the onion on their sources, it turns that all 9 of them are essentially repeating one source. But they THINK it's multiple sources, because of the way errors perpetuate themselves in an echo chamber.
I won't get into all the detail, but I'll frame one of the key issues in my work: Most historians are wedded to a scenario on how the expedition came about that in the first place posits a 1830s mentality into 1812. But these are generations, and they changed in the old days just like they change now. This is like interpreting all of World War II as if it were fought by Hippies from 1970. (Think "Kelly's Heroes" as authentic history).
In the second place, the standard (there is actually disagreement, don't get me wrong) interpretation is based on a very surface reading of the facts. For example, they take a letter written to James Monroe, and interpret him as consenting because he never takes a certain action. But when you put all of the letters in a big spreadsheet, as I have, including tags showing travel times for the news, you realize that Monroe can't possibly know Fact X before event Y takes place. Once you see it, you can't unsee it, and the whole initial premise falls away.
This is where technology comes into play. The standard view is based on research done in the 1930s. This was a historian who had to write a letter to the national archives, wait for a response, get on a train to Washington, stay a month in a fleabag hotel during the depression, sit there with old paper documents, take notes furiously *(but still not be able to transcribe everything), then take a train home, put the notes together, realize their missing something, write another letter, etc.
What I did was first of all exhaust all the research I could do digitally first. This includes getting most of the Spanish archives of Texas in a digital, keyword-searchable format, emailing various archives and buying copies of documents for a few dollars, and searching through digitized census files, digitized books, etc. Then armed with a better set of questions and ideas as to what I'm looking for, I went to the National Archives, and rather than combing through all of it there, I just photographed everything, brought it home and went through it there.
My overall point is I found a lot of stuff no one has ever found and was able to see it the way no one has done. But I'm not the only person who can do this. Anybody can. There are a lot of unanswered questions in history, and ones that have been answered incompletely, which can be opened up for future research. I'm living in my tunnel vision world, but think of any point in history where "we just don't know" is a part of the answer, and in pure Lee Corso form, I simply say, "Not so fast!" We're on the tip of the iceberg on this stuff, technologically. Wait 'till artificial intelligence-assisted searches, digitized cursive writing, face-recognition software that works well with portraits as well as photos, and other technologies kick in. "Closed" or "solved" historical puzzles will have to be opened again. Will it reshape every event in history? Probably not. But some event that suffers from really limited source materials like my war, is open and exposed. You're not going to find a new front in WWII. But you might find some Roman source, that combined with a Greek source, compared with an economic source, that identifies a biblical event which is either confirmed or disputed.
When I started this journey, I thought I knew the story 100 percent, now my old understanding looks quaint. I say this because I also think I understand a lot of things from the Civil War or the Pacific in WWII, etc. very well, but am I not being too sure on these now. There is always more to learn.
