Building Upon Supressed memory

Society Hill was once a rioting example of urban blight. Now it is a desirable neighborhood serving as backdrop to INHP. Without preservation efforts, this would not be true. Answering Stapp and Turino’s question, we need more efforts like these even if the scholarship is not as enticing as the façade itself. Ouroussoff’s distortion concern is valid when considering architectural history, but how many remember how it was supposed to be much less how to actually recreate buildings that represent artisan skills of builders long descended to dust?

Memory is of paramount concern to preservers as well as those correctly seeking to complete an entire historical picture that has been erased. The Lowell Experiment demonstrates recent memory and experience can be conveniently erased as memories of dividing conflicts challenge our notions of what nation should be but probably never was. Memory is subject to change and distortion the authors in Slavery in Public History agree. Thus as one of the essays concluded, sites should be forums and not cradles of one dimensional thinking.

Collectively, the essays in Slavery in Public History and The Lowell Experiment show that historians and the public have struggled to come to terms with globalization, present as past, because of American Exceptionalism. Americans refuse to accept that it is a passenger in the new world economy and fail to remember our British, French, Spanish, and African forefathers traded in globalized Atlantic market made possible by African slaves. Americans don’t predate this; we grew from it. Realizing that Americans are not as exceptional as our mores suggest is central to understanding our most lingering national conflict – slavery in the land of the free. Only then, can we study slavery in a global context helping to free some of the national guilt. Exceptionalism forges amnesia, then, now, and in the foreseeable future.

On Public Memory in Time and Place

Charlene Myers and David Glassberg are in agreement when they approach their work with the understanding that popular memory has evolved into a series of sometimes conflicting beliefs that inform a community about its place in the broader world and the individual’s place within that community. This must be the result of a more educated public that no longer trusts what had been passed down from medieval power consolidators determined to impose a singular vision. Glassberg invokes Ernest Gellner, a scholarly pioneer studying what defines and confines a nation. Glassberg emphasizes these beliefs and the study of place while engaging public history and popular memory.

Myers’ Independence Hall employs this method to retell the history of a place while accounting for the community’s that was inspired by, developed around, and worked to evolve the place. But there are gambits here including the risk of making the place primary over human agency. Indeed, Myers often almost makes the building a living breathing thing by overstating the ability of an enshrined object to inspire. It can, but it is far from being a witness and further still an actor

The conflicting component of shared memory is crucial. Although Myers places equal importance on remembering and forgetting, this does not gel with modern nationalistic scholarship which identifies conflict as critical to community formation, not sacrificed for national cohesiveness. As Erika Doss indicates, during national crisis, victory, and political conflict, people are more desperate for memory and tradition. In her Memorial Mania, national conflict has played a critical role in America’s obsession for monuments. So as Susan Crane implies in her thesis, conflict is inevitable in public institutions, and as such, collective memory represents ideological evolution.

Deciphering the “Subjective Good”

             Viewing public history through the lens of isolated communities is revealing. Here it is much more difficult to understand the common good, that is, the subjective history that speaks to a greater portion of the isolated stakeholder than it alienates. Using modern concepts of interpretation, that is, exploring the past via engagement with the subjective individual can help us better understand the subjective good within an isolated area. By contrast against a common good limited to the authoritarian interpretation of what is historically important, the subjective good seeks engagement with all individuals via group participation making the public into partners in efforts to revive a community’s history.

                The latter represents public history in its purist form. Whereas interpreters bypass any notion of instruction, seeking instead to gravitate the individual spirit toward an object, public historians working in the community have an opportunity to employ similar methods in reconstructing history itself. Of course the latter requires sharing authority which implies giving up authority.  For the educated scholar working with (and in most cases for) the layman consumer, this requires a radical separation from ego, bias, and personal expectations. This, I admit is difficult to do. This I say historians must do.

Consider the benefits of deciphering the subjective good. By finding consensus between the researcher and the consumer, far fewer parties would be alienated. Equal partners are far more willing to support the project, cooperate with the process, and accept the end result than the inherently disenfranchised. All historians should concern themselves with answering all questions that arise from research including those that might diverge from their presentation of facts.  Deciphering the subjective good provides another avenue to that end.

The Bigger the Museum…

The Museum is perhaps the most popular forum of Public History. The methods employed by museums vary from one man operations, to diner exhibits, to outdoor parks like Colonial Williamsburg. A theme park does not qualify as a museum in itself, but the rub here is that Williamsburg is not a theme park. It is a public museum that presents an entire enclosed community as its exhibit. Everything is meticulously preserved or reproduced for eye candy and sale which brings me to my point. The bigger the museum, the more it needs and must feed the public to survive.

Institutions are entitled to exist. Regardless of methods employed, they require funding. Many of my haunts such as the Library Company, or the Historical Society of Pennsylvania depend largely on fundraising and engagement with the public for its substantial operating costs. But many have the opportunity to and must cross the divide between nonprofit and business interests. Ironically many of the museums that present the types of exhibits that the public most readily engage with, i.e. intimate community based histories, or present the histories that broad segments of the public would engage in for a near universal appeal such as Williamsburg, depend on door, or in some cases, gate to succeed and build up an operating surplus.

Hoarding operating expenses and making profit, although both are fruits, are apples and oranges in comparison. If an organization or even a private individual has a unique, inventive or “profitable” method of engaging the public’s thirst for relevant history, that organization has a responsibility to nurture flow and protect itself from potential loses, such as those that might lead to deaccessioning.

The Deaccessioning Crisis

The problem of deaccessioning is entirely one of ethics. I will not try to introduce the moral issue of trust into my examination. Ethics and morals are two entirely different concepts. If indeed the public trust is violated by deaccessioning, then the public should take a more active role preserving its history.

Many of the proposed "remedies" including contracts, tort reform, antitrust, and revised ethics all emphasize institutions and neutral actors to compel preservation. Few have emphasized public options. Revised standards are only part of the solution. However, there are several guidelines in place and each institution is free to adhere to either. In addition, each institution has inherent independence to govern its own matters, including having freedom to interpret and to change ethical allegiance to suit self interest. For example, deaccessioning to access more expensive or more relevant items is a nearly universal accepted practice. However it is not difficult to infer this implies that since museums must maintain their collections, deaccessioning for capital improvements to those ends is also acceptable. As in office history, there does not appear to be any way to restrict freedom of choice.

Legal antitrust minutia is intriguing, but courts cannot and must not take the lead. There must be a plaintiff, which inexorably leads us back to the need for the public to act in their own interests. Pre-donation agreements are also a promising avenue, but they depend on public understanding complex agreements. They are also limited as they would only serve to protect new collection items. Existing items would still be vulnerable.

There is no easy solution to the problem. However, a more diligent, informed public is a good place to start. A well funded action committee or two couldn’t hurt.

My Thoughts on The American Revolution Center

Printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, July 8, 2009

Unaltered Beauty Tells Story Best

by Timothy Johnson

The relocation of the American Revolution Center project from Valley Forge to Center City should be applauded for historical as well as environmental reasons. Both the proposed museum and Valley Forge will be better served by the move.

The center is an ambitious effort to create a museum devoted entirely to the War of Independence. The United States' first war has not been given its due in popular culture. Most Americans are familiar with Gettysburg and Normandy, but they blink at the mention of Guilford Courthouse or Monmouth. So efforts like the center's are sorely needed.

But when the project was first announced, public reaction was mixed. At the heart of the controversy was the chosen location on 78 acres of undeveloped land within the park at Valley Forge. Naturally, conservationists rebelled in the tradition of Lexington and Concord.

As a resident of nearby Upper Providence Township, I understand the value of open space. But the most compelling arguments for the relocation are historical as well as environmental. In the case of Valley Forge, the historical cannot be separated from the environmental.

In the bitter winter of 1777-78, George Washington's Continental Army had not yet recovered from a series of defeats resulting in the loss of Philadelphia, the new nation's capital. Washington needed to stay close to the British force comfortably housed in the city, so he headed to Valley Forge to set up winter camp.

Today, visitors can see why this was an excellent choice. The park sits on a hill overlooking the Schuylkill valley, with excellent high ground for defense and lookouts. Head there in winter to experience its chilling beauty, as well as the elements America's first army braved as it struggled for survival and drilled relentlessly. The natural surroundings of Valley Forge tell the story best unaided.

A museum at Valley Forge could not do the site or the war justice. Philadelphia is a far better choice, giving the Revolution what it needs to cross the divide of public consciousness: context.

Center City's Independence National Historical Park is a treasure trove of resources on both pre- and post-revolutionary America. With the Revolution embedded between these eras, the existing sites and museums would provide the American Revolution Center with the necessary supporting context, not to mention foot traffic guaranteeing its success.

Consider how Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center complement each other. One site tells the story of the constitutional debates; the other highlights the genius of the founding document that resulted from them. Or consider Center City's mix of British Georgian architecture and the similar but contrasting American Federal style.

These symbiotic relationships are common in Independence National Historical Park, combining to tell a fascinating story. With the addition of the American Revolution Center, the epic has a new chapter, ushering in a new age of discovery for a new generation of students.

Those focusing on tax revenues and open space miss the significance of this opportunity. For proponents of commercial development and disappointed representatives of Montgomery County, I offer a bit of advice: The best way to preserve history is to preserve the way it was.

Timothy Johnson is a graduate student in the University of Pennsylvania's History Department. He can be contacted at atimothy@sas.upenn.edu.

Book Review: Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 1967

           Proponents of American exceptionalism cast their rather dubious beliefs upon the erroneous notion that American roots and identity can only be traced back to North American history, most specifically to the period of the American Revolution. Clearly, they would surmise, there is something unique about the American experience that explains our relatively rapid rise to worldly prominence.

Any such mistaken thinkers should quickly locate a copy of Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Bailyn wastes little time establishing that the mores and traditions that reinforce an identity unique to Americans (sentiments not shared by the international community) were in fact shaped and forged over a hundred years ago - in England. It is fitting that Bailyn should make such a conclusion, and based on creditable evidence. Bailyn, one of Harvard's best and an authority on early America and the American revolution, was one of the leaders that later helped redefine early American history by pushing the early twentieth century idea of Atlantic History, conceptualized by WW1 era intellectuals, into modernity.[1]

Using an advanced method, Bailyn manages to compare pre English Civil War literature with the literature that predated the American Revolution by about a generation. His startling conclusion is that both intellectual traditions are too similar in tone, argument, and in such manifest design[2] to be a coincidence or merely effective propaganda. Pre revolution pamphlet authors were well into the revolutionary and nation building stages at least twenty years before the so called intolerable acts and the first of the continental congresses.

To be sure, enlightenment thought played a role, as did classical influences, especially those works that debate Rome's own constitutional crisis in ancient times. But Bailyn thoroughly rejects the New School's Beard and his limited conceptualization of the revolution as a social economic contest between actors encouraged by the enlightenment alone.[3] Indeed, Bailyn's cleaver use of a specific selection of revolutionary literature, pamphlets published between 1750 through 1776, reveal an American mind not previously discovered, with applications ranging from religious concerns to those concerning the American interpretation of the English constitution and common law.

The strengths of this work are its broad Atlantic connections, a Bailyn hallmark. He masterfully uses sources that had previously been unavailable due to the so called Atlantic schism that had long divided scholars and limited history to mostly regional perspectives. Bailyn is also successful in taking a closer look at material that in the past had been disregarded as propaganda. However, although Bailyn spends an entire chapter attempting to bring pamphlets to the vanguard of this period’s historical consciousness, he fails to persuade. It is true that pamphlets were designed to have more content than a broadside. And they afforded more independent content than a newspaper. However, these sources were no more of less effective in spreading the notions of liberty resident during the time.

Regardless of the selection criteria, the sources do speak for themselves. Bernard Bailyn has broken an age old mold that many had previously mistaken as the source of, and still continues to shape American national character today.

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[1] Bailyn, Bernard, Atlantic History: Concepts and Contours, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005)

[2] This is a reference to Thomas R. Hietala’s Manifest Design; central to his thesis is the idea of American nation building and westward imperial expansion long before the revolution much less the 19^th century.

[3] General information on Beard discerned from reference material. Bailyn references Beard’s philosophy in his introduction.