Aztecs, Moors, and Christians: Festivals of Reconquest in Mexico and Spain, by Max Harris. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2000, paper, 309 pages.
Review by Thomas Hansen, Ph.D.
Max Harris gives us a thorough recounting of several interesting local festivals—some of which are still in existence—that show the influence of the Moors on Spain and the efforts of the Christians to rid the country of their dominance. Harris also shows us how parallel festivals have existed for hundreds of years in Mexico—with similar themes and players.
Although the native peoples of Mexico already had their own festivals, some of which were connected strongly to war and invasion, with the advent of the Spaniards came additional festivals focusing on the dangerous Moors, in some cases the Turks, and in some other cases unknown invaders. Harris gives us several different time periods of festivals to consider here.
Harris first tells of the importance of understanding the Moorish influence on Spanish culture and how it had to be fought back. He gives us one chapter each on beheadings of the Moors and on understanding the importance of the masks in the festivals. The more gruesome and bizarre the masks, the more frenzied the spectators watching the parading Moors and the zealous Christians who rout them.
Without giving all the content of the book away, I will say that the author paints very vivid descriptions of the masks, weapons, decorations, dances, music, chants, and cheering indeed. Each locale has its own flavor of festival, and the events are celebrated with great gusto in each case. The author does a very good job of explaining possible origins of some of the stranger customs and decorations, in addition to give giving a strong cultural and historical framework for all the events. Harris beings a great deal of expertise to this discussion.
Harris divides his content on the rest of the festivals this way: Spain 1150-1521; Mexico 1320-1521; Mexico 1521-1600; and Spain 1521-1600. The author has an obvious in-depth knowledge of Spanish, Mexican, and native peoples and their customs and beliefs. He also shows a facility for other languages and this helps him explain the festivals, in some cases adding possible origins of some of the events, traditions, and decorations being used.
Teachers of social studies will profit from using this text as background reading for units on religion, culture, and interaction among peoples from different continents. There are also clear uses for this book in history units, geography units, and world language projects for more advanced students. It is also perhaps interesting personal reading for teachers and administrators with an interest in history, Latino culture, and related topics.
I recommend the book for those uses and also as interesting reading for professional development discussions for teachers of social studies and other subjects. Harris provides a very thorough picture of several festivals in both Mexico and Spain. Certainly units and lessons on those countries can be based on information in this book.
The discussion of the Moors as “dangerous other” threatening other cultures is timely right now, given the fears of Muslim persons harbored by some persons who do not have a complete understanding of the religion and who have heard only parts of what has been happening in world events involving a very small number of Muslims. The fear of diverse people and different religions and customs is an important force to be understood in social studies lessons and units.
Since Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, there has been an increased interest in helping K-12 students understand the historical background and context of the current violence in Israel/Palestine that has now escalated to a war in Lebanon and the possibility of a regional war involving Syria, Yemen, and Iran. On October 20, 2023, The Office of the Texas Governor encouraged schools to use a list of resources shared by the Texas Education Agency “to increase awareness and understanding of the Israel-Hamas war and root causes of conflict in the region” (Office of the Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, 2023). First in a list of four resources hyperlinked to the press release is a document from the Institute of Curriculum Studies (ICS) titled “Support for Classroom Discussion on the Hamas-Israel War,” which in turn includes a link to ICS’s curriculum, “Teaching the History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict Using Primary Sources.”
The Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) is not new to teacher training. Founded in 2005, their website states that 18,000 teachers have engaged in their workshops, and that all 50 states and D.C. are represented within ICS’s pool of participants. The reach of ICS’s influence in secondary school instruction is further facilitated through cooperation with the National Council of Social Studies and many of their state affiliates and local districts, including New York Department of Education; North Carolina Department of Public Instruction; Iowa Department of Education, among many others (ICS, 2024). ICS published its “Teaching the History of the Arab Israeli Conflict Using Primary Sources” in 2022 and has promoted the curriculum as an effective tool for teachers to help students understand the history of the conflict. In addition to the curriculum, which is accessible for free online and includes worksheets and graphic organizers for students (2022a), ICS offers workshops, both online and in-person in collaboration with public school districts across the country (2024). However, key aspects of ICS’s curriculum are misaligned with standards for the study of history and geography and are not conducive to helping students understand the root causes of Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, nor Israel’s widely condemned response. This curriculum, by providing students with insufficient context and inaccurate information, primes students to uncritically condone and support Israel’s ongoing settler colonial violence and dispossession, and contributes to the dissemination of racist, Islamophobic tropes.
Misalignment with C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards
By using standard curriculum formatting and creating materials and activities that can be easily implemented for class instruction, ICS’s curriculum looks like a credible curriculum, and thus may seem like a legitimate tool for teaching about Israel/Palestine. ICS claims that their curriculum is “guided by, and…in alignment with, state and national standards” (ICS, 2018b). The organization points to the Frameworks in the C3 Framework for Social Studies as supposed guiding principles for the creation of their curricular resources, “with a particular focus on Dimension 2: History and “Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence” (ICS, 2018b).The National Council for the Social Studies states that the C3 Framework was developed “for states to upgrade their state social studies standards” and “for practitioners…to strengthen their social studies programs” (2013). ICS claims to specifically and particularly align with two Dimensions within the framework: “History” and “Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence” (ICS 2018b). While ICS does not claim to address “Geography,” its substantial use of (political) maps requires attention to the desired learning outcomes of that Dimension as well. An analysis of the ICS curriculum compared to the learning outcomes outlined in the C3 Framework demonstrates the curriculum’s failure to meet standards for social studies education. This article will highlight specific ways in which the ICS curriculum is misaligned with the C3 Framework’s learning outcomes, and will include resources that, had they been included in the curriculum, would meet the expressed skills standards and learning outcomes. The C3 Framework includes learning outcomes which are used as a basis of the critique of ICS’s curriculum.
C3 Framework Learning Outcomes (achieved by end of Grade 12) (National Council for Social Studies, 2013, pp. 42-49) Dimension 1: History Change, Continuity, and Context “Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context.” Perspectives “Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during historical eras.” “Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.” Historical Sources and Evidence “Analyze the relationship between historical sources and the secondary interpretations made from them.” “Critique the usefulness of historical sources for a specific historical inquiry based on their maker, date, place or origin, intended audience, and purpose” “Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources.” “Critique the appropriateness of the historical sources used in a secondary interpretation.” Causation and Argumentation “Analyze multiple and complex causes and effects of events in the past.” “Distinguish between long-term causes and triggering events in developing a historical argument.” “Integrate evidence from multiple relevant historical sources and interpretations into a reasoned argument about the past” “Critique the central argument in secondary works of history on related topics in multiple media in terms of their historical accuracy.” Dimension 2: Geography Human-Environment Interaction “Evaluate how political and economic decisions through time have influenced cultural and environmental characteristics of various places and regions.” Evaluate the impact of human settlement activities on the environmental and cultural characteristics of specific places and regions.” Human Population “Evaluate the impact of economic activities and political decisions on spatial patterns within and among urban, suburban, and rural regions.” Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources & Using Evidence Gathering and Evaluating Sources “Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the source to guide the selection.”
ICS’s selection and framing of primary source material is misaligned with several learning outcomes outlined within the C3 Framework’s Dimension 2: History. ICS limits the sources provided to official governmental and intragovernmental documents and fails to provide citations for the background information that frames each of the sources and provides the overarching narrative of the curriculum. In this way, ICS fails to provide students with the opportunity to adequately strengthen skills pertaining to the study of history. Furthermore, through their narrow selection of sources, ICS fails to model the effective evaluation of sources and use of evidence for students, as outlined in Dimension 3 of the C3 Framework.
Through its failure to adequately address skills mandates as outlined in the C3 Framework, ICS dangerously misrepresents the historical context and multiple perspectives that are necessary for helping students understand the context of Hamas’s October 7 attack. In order for ICS to meet those standards, it would need to include significantly more primary sources and provide more accurate context. The ICS curriculum implies that Zionist settlers accepted Palestinians as deserving of national sovereignty in their own right and that it was solely Palestinians who rejected Jewish neighbors, beginning with the UN Partition Plan of 1947 (ICS, 2018a). The curriculum emphasizes this implication by providing inaccurate and incomplete information, insufficient, misleading and oversimplified context, and a single perspective of events. Furthermore, it is not grounded in the skills or learning outcomes outlined within the C3 framework, to which ICS claims to adhere.
Inaccurate & Incomplete Information
ICS provides inaccurate and incomplete information within the curriculum, particularly when it comes to the perspectives and experiences of Palestinians. Two serious issues that contribute to this lack of accurate and complete information are the lack of Palestinian-authored sources. Only one source written by a Palestinian is included in the entire curriculum–the Declaration of the State of Palestine (1988), in the final lesson (2022f). The Palestinians are only represented in the curriculum long after decades of representing themselves under the British Mandate. In this way, the designers of the ICS curriculum de-historicize and choose to frame Palestinian “nationalist aspirations” in a document that is comparable to the Israeli Declaration of Independence included in Lesson 4 (2022e). This factually inaccurate portrayal of the inception of the First Intifada misrepresents the most important aspects of the Intifada; namely, that it was a largely nonviolent series of protests and economic boycotts of Israel that were predominantly organized by women, eventually involved the support of Israeli peace organizations and was as much of a surprise to the PLO as it was to the Israeli occupation (Bacha, 2017).
To address the lack of Palestinian perspectives within the curriculum, primary sources that deal with the Palestinian experience of the Nakba should be included to provide an insight into the Palestinian perspective of the 1948 war, particularly given that the Nakba is widely viewed as ongoing to the present day in the context of continued settlement expansion. The Nakba Archive (2002) is a collection of oral history testimony from Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon and provides valuable context for both the Declaration of the Establishment of Israel document and the Arab League Declaration on the Invasion of Palestine, which is the second primary source included in ICS’s Lesson 4 (2022e). Additional incorporation of photographs or videos from the UNRWA Film & Photo Archive, which provides audio and visual documentation of Palestinian refugees since 1948 would provide additional insight into the lived experience of Palestinians during the Nakba and counter the lack of visual representation of Palestinians within the curriculum (UNRWA, 2016).
The inclusion of a wider variety of primary sources such as film, photographs, and posters would provide students with a more accurate representation of the First Intifada and would align with the C3 Framework’s stated learning outcomes. It would also provide insight into the rise of more violent tactics employed by Palestinians since the Second Intifada that would better contextualize the Hamas attack on October 7. ICS states, in framing the First Intifada at the beginning of Lesson 5, that “Palestinians attacked Israelis with improvised weapons and firearms supplied by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which organized much of the uprising” (2022f). This factually inaccurate portrayal of the inception of the First Intifada misrepresents the most important aspects of the Intifada. By inaccurately portraying the First Intifada, ICS legitimizes Israel’s violent response to the uprising and lacks context that would help students understand the cause-and-effect relationship between Israeli military and settler violence and the use of violent tactics by some members and groups of the Palestinian resistance.
Lack of Context
Building on the issues that stem from the lack of accurate and complete information, the lack of sufficient context further strengthens ICS’s implication that Palestinians have only been antagonistic aggressors to Israel and their Jewish neighbors. In Lesson 1 of the curriculum (2022b), the excerpt from Theodor Herzl’s “The Jewish State” (1896) lacks contextualization regarding the existing Palestinian population and their historical ties to the land ignoring the settler colonial nature of Zionism and its impact on the indigenous population of Palestine (ICS, 2022b). In Lesson 3, there is a major gap in source material from May 1948 to June 1967 (ICS, 2022d). This gap leads to a total lack of context for the inception of the 1967 war, as well as the experience of Palestinians in the years between 1948 and 1967. This lack of context makes it impossible for students to investigate Palestinian perspectives and understand cause-and-effect relationships between historical events.
The excerpt from “The Jewish State” highlights Herzl’s concerns about antisemitism across Europe, proposing the establishment of a Jewish state as a solution. The document reflects the persecution faced by Jews in Europe and their quest for a sovereign homeland. However, the document lacks contextualization regarding the existing Palestinian population and their historical ties to the land ignoring the settler colonial nature of Zionism and its impact on the indigenous population of Palestine (see Table 1 2a & 6a). It also omits Herzl’s recognition of the need for support from the Great Powers for the successful establishment of a Jewish state.
The gap in source material and information on events that occurred between May 14/15, 1948 and the June 1967 war conveys an inaccurate and incomplete depiction of the experience of Palestinians in the months and years after the creation of the state of Israel. This erasure functions in service of the curriculum’s portrayal of Palestinians as exclusively antagonistic and unwilling participants in peacebuilding. Of course, the entirety of “The Jewish State” (Herzl, 1896) is too long of a document to present to 6th-12th grade students, the target audience of ICS’s curriculum; however, the excerpt excludes text that highlights important context for the document (see Table 1 2b & 3d). An aspect of early Zionism that is also apparent in Herzl’s text but excluded from ICS’s excerpt is that multiple locations were considered for the Jewish state. Herzl highlights Palestine and Argentina (Argentine in the text). The selection of Palestine or Argentina for the Jewish state would be left to the Powers and Jewish consensus, “we shall take what is given us, and what is selected by Jewish public opinion” (American Zionist Emergency Council, 1946). Herzl mentions “the present possessors of the land” in reference to either or both Palestinians and Argentinians already living in areas proposed for the Jewish state, demonstrating his awareness that there were people living in both areas prior to Zionist colonization. By adding a few sentences to the excerpt, ICS could better contextualize the document regarding the existing Palestinian population, the settler colonial nature of Zionism, and the role of European imperialism’s support for the foundation of the Jewish state. Palestinian nationalism shifted away from “Arab/Ottoman” to “Palestinian/Arab” in the context of “watershed events” that included the British control of Palestine and the Balfour Declaration (Khalidi, 1997/2010). The ICS curriculum frames nationalism as only legitimately developing pre-World War I, which severely misrepresents the historical contexts in which Palestinian nationalism developed (see 1a, 4a & 4b). Herzl expresses the need for Great Power intervention for the Zionist project to be reified: “Should the Powers declare themselves willing to admit our sovereignty over a neutral piece of land, then the [Jewish] Society will enter into negotiations for the possession of this land” (American Zionist Emergency Council, 1946). Herzl further elaborates on the necessity of Great Power subscription to the Zionist project, “The Society of Jews… [will put] itself under the protectorate of the European Powers.” Herzl’s document demonstrates an amenability to the colonial mandate system that eventually came into effect after the ratification of the Covenant of the League of Nations in 1922.
Another useful addition to the collection of primary sources that would provide much-needed context for the time during May 1948 and June 1967 are the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948) and UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967). UN General Assembly Resolution 194 Article III (1948) codifies the right of return for Palestinian refugees who wish “to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors” and “that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property.” UN Resolution Security Council 242 (1967) of the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” i.e. the 1967 war. and reaffirms the importance of “a just settlement of the refugee problem.” The Israeli unwillingness to honor this right of return coupled with the continuous expansion of settlements since 1967 and continued occupation of the West Bank (and Golan Heights) are major obstacles to peace that are completely ignored by the ICS curriculum.
Single Perspective
The ICS curriculum privileges Great Power perspectives, from which Zionism as a political project was birthed, without providing sufficient information on their imperial context. This serves to legitimize the Great Power intervention in the region beginning after World War I, and the expansion of Israeli settlements since 1967, without providing sufficient information to nuance or question this perspective.
By relying heavily on primary source documents that advance only the Great Power colonial perspective such as the Balfour Declaration, Sykes-Picot Agreement, and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, ICS’s curriculum presents the colonial project and interventions advanced by the authors of these documents as legitimate, without giving students the resources or information to question the right or authority of the Great Powers to undermine the sovereignty of people living within the region following the end of World War I. This legitimization of the Great Power’s imperial project in the region after World War I contributes to the portrayal of Palestinians as antagonistic and unwilling to work towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Additionally, the curriculum developers’ decision to use only political maps (themselves crafted by ICS) that do not align with internationally recognized borders and disputed territories, rather than demographic and land use maps, fail to provide information that is essential to understanding Palestinians’ perspectives. ICS’s curriculum completely ignores the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, confiscation of land, demolition of homes, and displacement of civilians, avoiding any discussion of numerous UN resolutions and United States foreign policy over time. By depicting political boundaries that have resulted from military occupation as if they were incontrovertible facts, the maps erase the issue of territorial annexations that have not been recognized under international law. The illegal settlements in the West Bank are legitimized in the video at the beginning of Lesson 4 (ICS, 2019). They are described as “in locations chosen for their strategic security value,” though there is no explanation of what that “value” might be. The video further states that “the number of settlements remained sparse until the late 1970s. They would become a major issue in later negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.” The illegal settlements and settlement expansion are not mentioned again in the curriculum, despite the fact that settlement expansion and settler violence, along with the right of return for Palestinian refugees, are two of the primary concerns in negotiations with Israelis. Furthermore, settlements have been deemed illegal in successive judgements in institutions of international law, human rights and justice (Amnesty International, 2019).
A primary source that would provide useful insight into the perspectives of people living within Palestine contemporaneous with the other sources included by ICS is the Resolution of the General Syrian Congress at Damascus, which was ratified on July 2, 1919. The congress was composed of members from all regions of Ottoman Greater Syria who described themselves as “provided with credentials and authorizations by the inhabitants of our various districts, Moslems, Christians, and Jews” (1919). The resolution provides important insight into how Arab nationalism was shifting as a result of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Of the ten points included in the resolution, five include important context for several of the primary sources included in ICS’s curriculum, namely the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the British Mandate for Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, and the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement. Point three is a protest against Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations; the Congress unanimously rejected the institution of a mandate. Point six addresses the issue of Zionism. It states, “We oppose the pretensions of the Zionists to create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine” and that “our Jewish compatriots shall enjoy our common rights and assume the common responsibilities.” The Congress was not opposed to the millennia-long presence of Jewish people in the land of Greater Syria, but soundly opposed to the Zionist settler colonial project, an important distinction left out of the ICS curriculum. Point eight of the resolution rejects the separation of Greater Syria into Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, as was outlined in the Sykes-Picot agreement. Finally, point ten calls for the annulment of “these conventions and agreements” whose aim is establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine in light of “President Wilson’s condemnation of secret treaties,” seemingly a direct response to both the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration.
The inclusion of demographic and land-use maps would provide needed information to contextualize Palestinian resistance, particularly to settlement expansion since 1967. Alex McDonald of the Texas Coalition for Human Rights, in a video lesson titled “Letting Maps Tell the Story” (2020), is a valuable resource for educators seeking to help students employ geographic studies skills to examine the geopolitical context of the conflict. Additionally, the inclusion of UN Resolution 2334 (2016) would provide useful information on the ways in which Israel’s settlement expansion continues to make a two-state solution unviable. This would provide students valuable information on the Palestinian perspectives of Israel’s policy of expansion, and additional context for discussing causes and effects. The ICS curriculum developers chose to use only politically contested maps, rather than the very demographic and land use maps that would illuminate the situation under the Mandate before 1948, and which indeed formed the basis for the UN Partition Plan. For the period after 1948, land use, demographic information, and water resource maps would better align with the C3 Framework and provide context for discussing causes and effects.
Conclusion
Not only is the curriculum misaligned with standards for skill development in history and social studies, but it also fails in its expressed objectives. The stated goal of ICS’s curriculum, entitled “Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict” is that “students will become more knowledgeable global citizens and gain confidence in following current world issues” (2022a). Under the FAQ section of the ICS website, under the drop-down menu titled “What is ICS’s commitment to accuracy and balance?” the organization states that “accuracy is a value in itself. At a time when public discourse in America is becoming less committed to accuracy and facts, we think it is all the more important that we study historical documents and ground our understanding of history in them” (2018b). ICS’s curriculum, by providing students with insufficient context and inaccurate information across all five lessons, primes students to uncritically condone and support Israel’s ongoing settler colonial violence and dispossession rather than helping them become “more informed global citizens” (2022a). It fails to meet both its own professed goals and standards for social studies education and skills acquisition. This curriculum prevents students from engaging with the full historical context of the current situation and implicitly claims that the exclusion and erasure of Palestinian voices is an acceptable form of “accuracy.”
References
American Zionist Emergency Council. (1946). Texts Concerning Zionism: “The Jewish
General Syrian Congress (1919 July 2). The resolution of the General Syrian Congress at Damascus proclaims Arab sovereignty over greater Syria (July 2, 1919). In A.F. Khater (Ed.), Sources in the History of the Modern Middle East, 2nd edition (2011) (pp. 158-160). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Institute for Curriculum Services. (2018a, June 4). ICS Episode 3: A place to belong. Vimeo. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://vimeo.com/273382658.
Institute for Curriculum Services. (2019, September 9). ICS Episode 4: War and Peace. Vimeo. Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://vimeo.com/358927133.
Given the often-contentious nature of the subject discussed in the article above, editors for Teaching Social Studies solicited comments from teachers and preservice educators. Those responses are below.
Alysse Ginsburg, Uniondale (NY) High School: I am a 12th grade history teacher with 25 years of classroom teaching experience. The editors asked me to respond to this essay in 250-500 words. Of course, I can’t possibly respond thoughtfully or comprehensively to a 5,000 word essay in the allotted space, but I do have a few thoughts to share. Prior to reading the essay, I had not used ICS materials in my classroom. A colleague with experience using them had good things to say, so I investigated further. As a history teacher, I believe it is important to carefully examine the sources of content I might bring into my classroom to be sure they are accurate and align with standards and best practices. Here are a few things I concluded about ICS’s lessons:
The lessons on the Arab-Israeli conflict align well with both the New York Social Studies Framework and New Jersey’s Learning Standards for Social Studies (which are similar to the C3 Framework).
ICS’s lessons rely on primary sources representing different parties. For example, in the lesson on Jewish and Arab nationalism, I noticed the inclusion of primary sources from a mainstream Zionist thinker and a mainstream Arab nationalist thinker and documents from both the first Zionist Congress and the first Arab Congress. The number of sources provided seemed balanced and appropriate for the available time a teacher would have to teach the lesson.
ICS has been around for almost 20 years and has professional development partners in many state and local education agencies; 21,000 teachers have elected to participate in ICS programs; and ICS is a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Consortium Member.
I was honestly reluctant to submit this response without knowing even more, so I had a call with ICS and asked them to address some of the author’s comments directly. In addition to patiently answering my questions, they said they looked forward to seeing the essay (and even speaking to the writer) so they could understand her concerns and consider improvements, as they often do with teacher input. For example, they told me that they recently updated one of their PD sessions to further clarify the specific reasons why Palestinians and Arabs were opposed to the United Nations Partition plan. I’m an educator who believes in a growth mindset, so this pleased me. Though I had very limited space and time to respond to the essay, I was impressed by what I saw and heard from ICS, and I encourage you to look at their lessons and materials and judge for yourself. My main critique, which I told them, was that they should modify their materials for students at different reading levels. They said they were working on it.
Dianne Pari, former social studies chair, Floral Park (NY) High School: As an educator with experience as a social studies teacher, department chairperson, and currently a supervisor of student teachers, I have observed a growing hesitation among today’s teachers to address the Arab-Israeli conflict in the classroom. Many shy away from student questions about the current situation. Why? There are many complex reasons, but it cannot be overlooked that in today’s politically charged climate, even the most neutral or fact-based responses can be misconstrued, criticized, or politicized. There have been cases where educators have faced backlash from parents and school administrations simply for presenting information that challenges students’ or families’ existing beliefs or biases.
This makes it imperative that curriculum materials on this topic are balanced, historically accurate, and free of bias. I support Chloe Daikh’s assertion that the ICS curriculum on “The Arab-Israeli Conflict” lacks this balance, particularly in its limited inclusion of Palestinian voices and perspectives. Such omissions can unintentionally perpetuate a one-sided narrative, portraying Palestinians predominantly as aggressors and Israelis solely as defenders for example. The Daikh article provides a detailed evaluation of the ICS curriculum, and I agree with her conclusions. Unfortunately, she, nor the ISC, touch upon the issue I raised earlier, that teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict is so polarizing today, that it is often being avoided altogether.
If I were teaching this topic today, I would begin with two foundational lessons to establish historical context, especially of previous conflicts, and then transition to an analysis of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. To ensure a broad and balanced understanding, I would incorporate a range of news sources, including major American outlets and international media such as Al Jazeera that offer valuable resources for classroom discussion. Online, Al Jazeera provides “Israel-Gaza War in Maps and Charts: Live Tracker” (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker).
Students must be provided with balanced, credible, and comprehensive resources that foster critical thinking and informed discussion—especially when addressing complex and emotionally charged global issues such as this one and more importantly, teachers must be supported by school administrators when their lessons are challenged.
John Staudt, The Wheatly School, East Williston, NY: As a teacher and a historian, I largely agree with Chole Daihk’s analysis of the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) curriculum on “The Arab-Israeli Conflict.” There are several significant methodological and historiographical shortcomings, including biases that teachers should explore with students when teaching controversial topics.
The ICS prioritizes using state-centric sources while overlooking everyday experiences of the people most impacted by the actions of state characters. It leaves out numerous critical primary sources – most egregiously – from Palestinian voices and perspectives. The exclusive inclusion of mostly official documents is a prime example of what the scholar Edward Said called “textual imperialism.” Textual imperialism is a form of revisionist history written from the perspectives of the victors, while overshadowing the personal experiences of those who lost and suffered the most. (Said, 1993) By excluding Palestinian literature before the 1988 Declaration, the ICS distorts the history of Palestinian nationalism and erases decades of Arab political activism.
The exclusion of nineteen-years of actions, words and events between 1948 to 1967, reveals a broad gap in the literature and obscures crucial historical information including, among other things, evolution of early resistance movements, the formation of Palestinian political consciousness and the fate of Palestinian refugees. These omissions inevitably distort historically crucial links and obscures important continuities underlying present-day controversies and conflicts. These significant oversights also distort the First Intifada as PLO-initiated violence which minimizes its original non-violent, civic nature.
The geographic mapping options Daikh makes note of demonstrate significant bias. By incorporating political maps that legitimize military occupation, the curriculum normalizes settlements that are recognized as illegal under international law. When coupled with the absence of sources featuring Palestinian perspectives this further exacerbates the historical revisionism in the curriculum. By excluding alternative demographic and land-use maps, students do not grasp the circumstances — displacement, resource distribution, fragmentation — underlying Palestinian perspectives and reasons for resistance.
The ICC’s narrative makes Palestinian activism appear violently aggressive, while misinterpreting Israeli policy as almost entirely defensive. A good example of the problem is the exclusion of Israeli historian Ilan Pappé’s “1948 paradigm.” Pappe challenges the mainstream Israeli narrative of the 1948 war as a struggle for independence, instead arguing it was a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing to expel and displace Palestinians — a perspective he claims has been suppressed in historical discourse. The ICC approach further obscures the structural, settler-colonialism of the Israeli-Arab conflict (Pappé, 2006). I think it is significant to mention that Pappé was born in Israel after the 1948 war and is a Jew whose parents fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Pappé teaches in Great Britain after he was pressured to resign his position at the University of Haifa because of his confrontational views of official Israeli government policies.
As teachers, our goal is to provide students with a range of materials to analyze so they can reach conclusions based on evidence and share with colleagues in respectful conversations. By utilizing selected sources focusing on mostly one perspective of this deeply complicated issue, the ICC’s approach reenforces historical and geographical biases and does a disservice to students and the general public who are interested in learning more about this and other controversial topics. To counter these tendencies, historians and social studies teachers must employ meticulous attention to detail and incorporate perspectives that challenge an educator’s own arguments instead of following preordained interpretive templates.
Erin Smyth, Social Studies Education Student, Hofstra University: As a graduate student pursuing a degree in secondary social studies education, I was asked to review the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) curriculum on the Arab-Israeli conflict alongside Chloe Daikh’s critique of it. On the whole, I agree with Daikh’s analysis. The ICS curriculum fails to provide a complete historical account of the conflict. It leaves out essential historical events and excludes sources from individuals, particularly Palestinians, directly affected by the conflict. This omission hinders students from developing a nuanced understanding of a complex historical issue.
My biggest issue with the ICS curriculum is the absence of Palestinian-authored sources. Aside from the one late inclusion in the curriculum which Daikh notes, the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, there are no primary sources that focus on Palestinian perspectives, even though the curriculum repeatedly includes Zionist and Israeli sources. This imbalance results in a distorted narrative which is evident in the way the Nakba is covered. The curriculum gives little attention to the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948 and omits oral histories, failing to convey how the Nakba is experienced by generations of Palestinians. As a result, students are denied the opportunity to understand one of the long-lasting impacts of the conflict on Palestinians.
These omissions not only negatively impact students’ ability to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict, but shape how they understand power, legitimacy, and justice in history. The inclusion of oral histories and more balanced source material is crucial. Without doing so, students cannot fully understand the causes and consequences of the conflict, nor can they evaluate historical claims with the critical thinking skills the C3 Framework demands.
As a future educator, I believe I have a responsibility to teach with integrity and eliminate bias in order to give my students the most complete understanding of history I can. That means resisting overly sanitized or one-sided curricula and ensuring my classroom is a space where multiple narratives are included and analyzed. The ICS curriculum, in its current form, does not meet that standard.
Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
Review by Alan Singer
Although it was published prior to the 2024 Presidential election, Erasing History serves well as Jason Stanley’s response to the patriotic history being promoted by the Trump 2.0 administration. Stanley was a Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, but he recently announced that he accepted an appointment to the University of Toronto in Canada because of the deteriorating political situation in the United States. His previous books include How Propaganda Works (2015) and How Fascism Works (2018).
In the Preface to the book, Stanley argues “One lesson the past century has taught us that authoritarian regimes often find history profoundly threatening. At every opportunity, these regimes find ways of erasing or concealing history in order to consolidate their power.” Democracy, on the other hand, “requires recognition of a shared reality that consists of multiple perspective” so that “citizens learn to regard one another as equal contributors to a national narrative . . . Erasing history helps authoritarians because doing so allows them to misrepresent it as a single story,” their preferred story.
Social studies teachers are crucial players in the battle to protect democracy because we insist that students examine multiple perspectives and reach conclusions based on evidence and discussion (xi-x). Russia Premier Vladimir Putin recognizes the danger teachers pose to authoritarian regimes and has declared “Wars are won by teachers.” Under Putin, and now under Trump, history classes are supposed to stress patriotism and textbooks are rewritten to whitewash the past (Illyushina, 2024).
Stanley acknowledges that every educational system must decide what is important to know and be able to explain why because a school curriculum cannot include all knowledge. What authoritarian regimes do is erase from the curriculum evidence that people can struggle for change and social justice so that people are willing to accept an unsatisfactory status quo as the only possible circumstance. That is why China’s government outlawed teaching about the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests and Florida wants to block discussion of reasons for the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. “By removing the history of uprisings against the current status quo from the curriculum (or never allowing that history to be taught in the first place) authoritarians leave students with the impression that the status quo has never been and cannot be challenged (xx-xxi).”
Chapters include “How to Create an Autocracy”; “Colonizing the Mind”;” “The Nationalist Project”; “From Supremacism to Fascism”; “Anti-education”; and “Reclaiming History.” Throughout the book, Stanley draws comparisons between past nativist and racist movements in the United States, the Nazi ascendency in Germany, and MAGA authoritarianism in the United States today.
Attacks on universities are a key component of the fascist agenda to erase history and undermine democracy. In contemporary Russia, India, Hungary, and Turkey rightwing politicians and autocratic leaders have sought to destroy academic independence by branding faculty as enemies of the state and trying to mandate a preferred curriculum. A Fox New host quota by Stanley bemoaned that “Our universities have become lunatic incubators, which the federal government funds” (21). Stanley argues that there are similar trends in government attacks in these countries on K-12 education. He quotes W.E.B. DuBois that “Education for colonial people must inevitably mean unrest and revolt; education therefore had to be limited and used to inculcate obedience and servility” (25).
Stanly explains how curriculum and textbooks are used in “colonizing the mind.” As a high school teacher in the 1980s I taught an advanced United States history class using Bailey and Kennedy’s The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, 7th edition (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1983). Stanley includes a quote from the introduction legitimizing colonialism and genocide that I must have completely overlook and did not challenge. It is a statement that well summarizes major components of Trump’s “patriotic history.”
“The American Republic, which is still relatively young when compared with the Old World, was from the outset richly favored. It started from scratch on a vast and virgin continent, which was so sparsely populated by Indians that they could be eliminated or shouldered aside. Such a magnificent opportunity for great democratic experiment may never come again” (2).
However, it did not start from “scratch,” its early institutions and its white people were Europeans, and it definitely was not a “virgin” continent as the sentence acknowledges. What a “magnificent opportunity” to conduct a “great democratic experiment” by exterminating the indigenous population and importing a workforce of enslaved Africans. Hopefully it “may never come again.”
Stanley argues that a movement in the United States to stem the trend towards authoritarianism must reclaim history. That is why social studies teachers, whatever their political views, but because of their commitments to dialogue, evidence, critical thinking, and developing active citizens for a democratic society, are in the crucible of the battle for the hearts and minds of America’s future leaders and defining the kind of country this will become. We are the threat to authoritarianism.
For the book jacket, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md) wrote Stanley that “shows how everything from the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory to the vilification of gay people and feminists to the promotion of myths of national purity and historical innocence all work to demolish democratic agency and freedom.” Stanley “leaves us with the sense that those who fight for the past can save the future.”
This is both a readable and invaluable book for teachers who are concerned about the impact of the Trump administration of the future of education in this country and the survival of democracy in America.
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917- 2017
by Rashid Khalidi (New York: Holt, 2020)
Review by Alan Singer
A year after the brutal attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and the devastating Israeli military response that has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, I reexamined The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917- 2017 by Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, originally published in 2020. A reviewer for The Nation (Hawa, 2020) described it as “one of the best-researched general surveys of 20th and early 21st century Palestinian life, but it’s also a deeply personal work.” A review in The Guardian (Hughes, 2020) called it “informed and passionate. It pulls no punches in its critique of Jewish-Israeli policies (policies that have had wholehearted US support after 1967), but it also lays out the failings of the Palestinian leadership . . . An elegy for the Palestinians.” The New York Times (Anderson, 2020) reviewer was more critical arguing that Khalidi failed to spell out a resolution to the conflicts between Israel and Palestine and dismissing what he did offer as having an “increasingly fantastic quality.”
Rashid Khalidi’s main arguments are that during the 100-year war on Palestine, the dominant powers, including the United States, favored Zionist ambitions and either ignored or thwarted Palestinian nationalism and that Israel justifies inequality and its aggressive nationalism as part of its need for security. Khalidi’s response is that there are two peoples who legitimately occupy Palestine and there can be no resolution until they both acknowledge the legitimacy of the other. This would require removing external support for the discriminatory and unequal current arrangement. At best the United States has paid lip service to the idea of a two-state solution, but it never placed the needed pressure on Israel to make this possible (245-247).
Khalidi comes from a prominent Palestinian family, so the history of Palestine is interwoven with his family’s history and his own personal experiences. Khalidi was born and educated in New York City while his father was a United Nations official. He has lived and taught in Lebanon and frequently visited Palestine/Israel for research and family visits. His Palestinian family included generations of Islamic and legal scholars and government officials. One noteworthy relative warned of the threat of Zionism to Palestinians as early as 1899 (4). His grandfather was Hussain al-Khalidi, an advocate for Palestinian rights, a mayor of Jerusalem, and member of the Ottoman parliament. A paternal uncle, Husayn al-Khalidi, was mayor of Jerusalem from 1934 to 1937 when he was sent into exile by the British to the Indian Ocean Seychelles archipelago. He was not able to return to Palestine until 1943.
In The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, Rashid Khalidi writes a history of the region from a Palestinian lens and deconstructs what he considers to be myths about the founding of Israel and its rise as a regional military power. While Khalidi’s title has the history of the struggle of Palestinians for nationhood beginning in 1917, the book actually begins in the 1890s when Theodore Herzl offered a Zionist vision for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Herzl proposed a settlement plan based on the expulsion of Palestinians that continued to be implemented after the founding of Israel as an independent state in 1948. Herzl believed that European Jews had to “expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country” (4).
Yusuf Diya, the late 19th century Palestinian Mayor of Jerusalem, responded to growing Zionist sentiment in an 1899 letter to the chief rabbi of France. Diya argued that “Palestine is an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and more gravely, it is inhabited by others.” He concluded the letter “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone” (5). Herzl answered Diya’s letter acknowledging that a Jewish state in Palestine would be a European settler colony and argued it would “form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism” (10). In the 1920s, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a British World War I veteran who promoted a militaristic Zionism, called for military action to support a Jewish state. In 1925, Jabotinsky wrote “If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must find a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf . . . Zionism is a colonizing venture, and therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces” (51).
Khalidi believes that the British Empire was never motivated by altruism towards colonized people, but supported Jewish emigration to Palestine because it would buttress Britain’s position in the eastern Mediterranean and solve its own antisemitic “Jewish Problem.” At the same time during and after World War I the British were promising European Zionists a Jewish state in Palestine with the Balfour Declaration, they were also promising Middle Eastern Arab leaders that independent Arab states including a Palestinian state would be carved out of the Ottoman Empire (25). Balfour recognized the contradictory promises that were made, and in a confidential memo to the British cabinet he wrote “we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country . . . the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land” (38).
The hypocrisy of the British position continued when the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine issued in 1922 formalized British control over Palestine. It included a pledge to honor the Balfour Declaration’s promise of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine and while the mandate included a clause that “nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities,” it never directly referenced Palestinians as a people with a right to self-determination, something British and the Americans continued to do in Middle East peace talks into the 1990s (34).
In the 1930s, as Jewish migration from Europe to Palestine expanded, there was growing Palestinian nationalist resistance to the British Mandate including armed battles between the British military and Palestinian rebels that resulted in about one-sixth of the Palestinian male population killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. In response to the uprisings, a British Commission recommended the division of the mandate into two separate states with the formation of a small Jewish homeland on less than 20% of the territory from which the Palestinian population would be transferred, a euphonism for expelled. Khalidi argues that prior to and during World War II, the Palestinian nationalist movement was weakened by British repression and internal division while the Zionist movement was strengthened by British policy that included creating a Jewish Brigade that marched under their own banner in the British Army and arming and training Jewish settlers to help defeat a wartime Palestinian uprising (43-47). The Jewish Brigade and the armed settlers became the core of the Israeli army during the war for independence.
As the horrors of the Nazi extermination campaign became known, with increasing support from diasporan Jews living in the United States and the American and British governments, Zionists positioned themselves for creation of a post-war Jewish state either in a portion of the Palestinian Mandate or in the entire territory (61). After the war, the British Empire receded as the British were forced to accept Indian independence, faced armed colonial resistance in a number of areas, and Jewish settler opposed continuation of the Palestinian Mandate. Great Britain finally turned the future of Palestine over to the newly established United Nations which issued a proposal highly favorable to the Jewish settlers. The Jewish minority would receive over half of the mandate territory to establish an independent state while the much larger Palestinian population would receive a significantly smaller amount of land. The proposed revision led to the Nakba, the catastrophe, the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians from what would become the Jewish state and war between Israel and neighboring Arab states. Khalidi describes the forced removal of Palestinians from their land and villages as ethnic cleansing (72-75).
According to Khalidi’s chronology, the expulsion of Palestinians began in November 1947, six months before the declaration of Israeli independence in May 1948 and before the invasion of a well-armed Israel by virtually non-existent Arab armies, an invasion that Khalidi dismisses as ill-conceived at best and not necessarily intended to benefit Palestinians. It is a myth that a small and ill-prepared Jewish state defeated seven powerful Arab nations against overwhelming odds to secure its independence. The reality, according to Khalidi, is that Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen did not significantly participate, Egypt and Syria were overmatched, and Transjordan, later Jordan, used the Israeli war for independence as an opportunity to seize control over West Bank territory that was intended as part of an independent Palestinian state (75-77).
Israel’s military victory was aided by a shift in American foreign policy from balanced support for both a Jewish state and newly emerging Arab governments in the region, to near total diplomatic and military support for Israel. While elements of the American foreign policy establishment initially expressed concern that support for Israel would hurt American oil interests in the region, that did not manifest as a problem until the 1970s when the United States began sending Israel massive amounts of military aid. Decisions were often made because of domestic political concerns. President Truman reportedly told a meeting of U.S. diplomats “I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents” (79-80).
After independence, Israel treated the remaining Palestinians within its territory as second-class citizens subject to martial law. Dispossessed Palestinians within Israel were prevented from leasing or purchasing land that they had been driven off that was now reserved for Jewish settlement. Palestinians forced into refugee camps in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria were completely dependent on the United Nations for relief aid and for maintaining the most basic conditions for survival. They were never integrated into host countries and increasingly they identified as Palestinians with a desire to return to their traditional homes. Military incursions into Israel by Palestinian nationalist groups were met with disproportionate force and collective punishment by Israel which only intensified the desire for an independent Palestinian state (83-88).
One of Khalidi’s more controversial assertions is that justifications given by Israel for the 1967 preemptive strike that destroyed the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces are unfounded. Israel claimed that it faced an impending attack that threatened its existence. Khalidi cites a report by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to President Lyndon Johnson and Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban stating that no attack was imminent and that if the Arab states actually did attack Israel, they would be easily defeated by a far superior Israeli military. In support of his argument, Khalidi cites Lyndon Johnson’s The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971) and a Department of State analysis from 1967 (Foreign Relations, 1964-1968, Volume XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967). At the meeting, President Johnson added “All of our intelligence people are unanimous” that if Egypt did attack “You will whip hell out of them” (97). According to U.S. documents later published, General Earl Wheeler, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed the President “The UAR’s [United Arab Republic, Egypt and Syria] dispositions are defensive and do not look as if they are preparatory for an invasion of Israel” and a C.I.A. memorandum reported “Israel could almost certainly attain air superiority over the Sinai Peninsula in 24 hours after the initiative or in two or three days if the UAR struck first” (276). Despite U.S. intelligence reports and the meeting between Johnson, McNamara, and Eban, the head of the Israeli intelligence agency informed McNamara that Israel planned to go ahead with a preemptive attack and McNamara gave tacit approval (104). These documents undermine the myth that the preemptive Israel strike on its neighbors in 1967 was necessitated by survival.
Khalidi accuses the America media of being complicit with this country’s one-sided approach to repeated Middle Eastern crises and the treatment of Palestinians. He opens Chapter 4 with a quote from a 1982 communication between Thomas Friedman, at the time the New York Times Beirut Bureau Chief, with editors at the newspaper. Friedman accuses them of being “afraid to tell our readers and those who might complain to you that the Israelis are capable of indiscriminately shelling an entire city” (139), a telling complaint given Israel’s current bombing campaigns in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and Israel’s claims that the bombings are carefully directed at military targets.
Pointedly, United Nations efforts to mediate the conflict between Israel and its neighbors with Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967 made no mention of Palestinians except to call for a resolution of the refugee crisis. Ignoring the existence of the Palestinian people as a party to the conflict contributed to a claim by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in an interview published in the Sunday Times of London on June 15, 1969 (106). Khalidi quoted an excerpt from the interview; however, the full statement is worth citing because of its total denial of a Palestinian nationality. According to Meir “There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either Southern Syria, before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine, including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.”
Israel’s resounding victory in the 1967 war the exposed military weaknesses of the major Arab nations. Khalidi believes their failure to advance the Palestinian cause spurred a sense of political, literary, and artistic Palestinian nationalism and the emergence of Yassar Arafat, the PLO, and Fatah as dominant forces in Palestinian society. Israel countered this resurgence by continually equating Palestinian with terrorist in efforts to discredit the movement in the United States and on the international stage, although the Fatah and the PLO were never a military threat to Israel (110-119). The 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, Khalidi considers them part of a United States Cold War strategy for pulling Egypt out of the Soviet orbit and effectively dividing the Arab bloc, excluded Palestinians from the negotiations (122). They established as a goal respecting the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people” and the creation of civilian “autonomy” on the Israeli occupied West Bank, but not statehood, something Khalidi criticized in Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (Beacon Press, 2013) as “devoid of meaning and content.” Developments since the 1978 agreement bear out Khalidi’s view as Israel has absorbed East Jerusalem, built West Bank settlements that are illegal under international law, effectively blockaded the Gaza Strip, and it has continually blocked efforts to create an independent Palestinian state, even after the PLO and Fatah endorsed a two-state solution, accepting the legitimacy of a Jewish state (126).
Khalidi provides much greater coverage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, than the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In his view it was much more closely linked to the future of Palestine and argues that proponents of a “Greater Israel,” including Ariel Sharon, Menachim Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir, believed the battle to defeat Palestinian forces in Lebanon would destroy the PLO as an effective military force and severely weaken the Palestinian nationalist movement. He quotes former Israeli Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur’s explanation of the war to a Knesset committee that in the “Occupied Territories” it would provide Israel with “greater freedom of action” (142-143). Khalidi also believes that United States Secretary of State Alexander Haig had prior knowledge of the invasion and gave Israel tacit approval.
In an effort to prevent a broader war, the Reagan administration did propose limiting Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the creation of an autonomous Palestinian Authority, but not an independent Palestinian state (151). Despite warnings to Israel, the United States never limited its support for Israeli action in Lebanon, even after the Western press documented Israel’s role in massacres carried out by its local allies at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps (158-162). We see similar warnings by the U.S. today that continued Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza and Lebanon will lead to reduced U.S. support, but in both cases the United States took no action.
Unanticipated results of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon were the emergence of Hizballah as a new armed opponent of Israel, growing international sympathy for Palestinians, and increased militancy by Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza as they realized they could not rely on the either the major powers or Arab nations to mediate conflicts with Israel or to press for creation of the long promised Palestinian state. This new Palestinian awareness led to the spontaneous eruption of the First Intifada in 1987 in Gaza that then spread to the West Bank with street battles between largely unarmed young Palestinian protesters and heavily armed Israeli troops (168-169). The Intifada also exposed a growing rift between the PLO/Fatah leadership in exile and the local Palestinian population directly challenging the Israeli occupation although in 1988, the PLO did issue a Palestinian “Declaration of Independence “(178).
In his discussion of the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 and Oslo Accords meetings in 1993, Khalidi believes an important concession by Israel was acceptance that the Palestinians were a people and that the PLO were their legitimate representatives. However, the Palestinian delegation at Oslo was a delegation of exiles who had not been in occupied Palestine for decades; they were not well versed on conditions there and were ill-prepared for negotiations. In exchange for receiving limited administrative responsibility for scattered areas across the West Bank and the ability to return from exile, the PLO leadership conceded the continuation of the Israeli occupation. Arafat mistakenly believed that future negotiations based on the Oslo Accords would bring further concessions from Israel, something the Israeli’s were never prepared to do as they drew out the timeframe for reaching new agreements. The United States, solidly in the same camp as Israel, blamed the PLO and Arafat for any delays. U.S. bias and Israeli intransigence torpedoed the accords despite PLO willingness to acquiesce on virtually every front, acquiescence that further alienated the PLO from Palestinian activists on the West Bank and in Gaza (194-199).
Relocated to the West Bank headquarters, the PLO served at consent of the of the Israeli military, and in 2002, during a Second Intifada set off by Palestinian frustration and Israeli provocations, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority were forcibly closed (199-203). Khalidi views the Second Intifada as a setback for Palestinians because scenes of violence broadcast globally seemed to justify the Israeli intransigence that caused the violence (2019).
Following Oslo, the Israeli occupation completely sealed off the Gaza Strip. Awareness that Oslo agreements would never end the occupation eventually brought Hamas to power in the Gaza and created the conditions that ultimately forced Israel to close its settlements there and withdraw. Meanwhile, the United States in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, stiffened laws against terrorism making an even remote connection to an organization or individual on its terrorist list impossible to maintain, isolating the groups, reinforcing their alienation, and preventing any attempts to modify their goals or actions (221).
Khalidi cites instances where Israeli actions ran counter to U.S. policy goals, especially during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. In these cases, the United States attempted to put a break on aggressive Israeli actions, however American governments were primarily concerned with its relationship with Arab governments and not with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Writing before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the Israeli response, Khalidi believed there was a gradual shift taking place in American public opinion recognizing the legitimacy of Palestinian grievances and aspirations. The problem, he saw, was that the political leadership in the country was non-responsive to this shift. The Republican Party was heavily dependent for votes on Evangelical Christian supporters that perceived the State of Israel as signaling the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and both parties relied on wealthy pro-Israel donors to finance election campaigns. Israel’s success in equating Palestinians with terrorists undermined sympathy for the Palestinian cause after al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001 and the Bush administration launched a war on terror that continued into the Obama presidency (228-232).
In his conclusion, Khalidi addresses possibilities for shifting public opinion in the United States to become more favorable to the Palestinian cause. One approach is to identify the Palestinian cause with other liberation movements by colonized indigenous people, specifically South Africa, Ireland, and Native Americans. However, this has been difficult because Zionism claims biblical roots in Palestine and that the ancient Jews are the indigenous population, not Palestinian Arabs. American perceptions of United States history and a positive view of settler colonialism have also made it difficult to change American views about Palestinian statehood (41-242).
A second tactic proposed by Khalidi is challenging the myth that Israel is David hoping for peace but prepared to fight against a powerful Arab Goliath. Khalidi wants to reverse the idea of who is powerful and who is victimized. He also wants to challenge the moral legitimacy of Israel, that it cannot be both Jewish and democratic. The Israeli charter ensures Jewish supremacy which makes it illiberal and discriminatory (243-244).
Khalidi believes that at this point the United States cannot be relied on to broker a fair solution and a massive campaign within the United States is needed to shift public opinion. Palestinians will also need to win support in Europe, Russia, India, China, and Brazil. In Arab countries, Khalidi argues Palestinians must appeal to sympathetic populations rather than unsympathetic regimes (252). It may also be possible to influence Israelis tired of decades of war and the intense fighting and hostage situation in the latest conflict. Palestinians, for their part, need to reject Oslo gradualism, demand an entirely new timetable, and insist on a set of conditions based on the initial United Nations decision to establish two independent states.
Khalidi’s coverage of most of the events in the hundred years’ war on Palestine are comprehensive, however there is almost no discussion of the 1973 Yom Kipper War. I think it is a significant omission because in that war neighboring Arab states did attack Israel in an attempt to regain territory seized by Israel in 1967, and at least at the start, Israel appeared to be vulnerable. For many American Jews and for Israelis the attack on Israel and the successful Israeli counterattack justified their belief that Israel’s survival as a small country was continually threatened by hostile neighbors, could only be ensured through a dominant military supported by U.S. aid, and that the occupation of Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank were essential for Israel’s defense. I can only conjecture that the 1973 war is of limited importance in Khalidi’s narrative because the United States was already committed to one-sided support for Israel in Middle Eastern conflicts and because it did not significantly change the situation for Palestinians in the occupied territories.
International law―the recognized rules of behavior among nations based on customary practices and treaties, among them the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights―has been agreed upon by large and small nations alike. To implement this law, the nations of the world have established a UN Security Council (to maintain international peace and security) and a variety of international courts, including the UN’s International Court of Justice (which adjudicates disputes between nations and gives advisory opinions on international legal issues) and the International Criminal Court (which prosecutes individuals for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression). Yet nations continue to defy international law.
In the ongoing Gaza crisis, the Israeli government has failed to uphold international law by rebuffing the calls of international organizations to end its massive slaughter of Palestinian civilians. The U.S. government has facilitated this behavior by vetoing three UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire, while the Israeli government has ignored an International Court of Justice ruling that it should head off genocide in Gaza by ensuring sufficient humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population. The Israeli government has also refused to honor an order by the International Court of Justice to halt its offensive in Rafah and denounced the International Criminal Court’s request for arrest warrants for its top officials.
Russia’s military assault upon Ukraine provides another example of flouting international law. Given the UN Charter’s prohibition of the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” when Russian military forces seized and annexed Crimea and commenced military operations to gobble up eastern Ukraine in early 2014, the issue came before the UN Security Council, where condemnation of Russia’s action was promptly vetoed by Russia. Similarly, in February 2022, when the Russian government commenced a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia again vetoed Security Council action. That March, the International Court of Justice, by an overwhelming vote, ordered Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine—but, as usual, to no avail. Unfortunately, these violations of international law are not unusual for, over many decades, numerous nations have ignored the recognized rules of international conduct.
What is lacking is not international law but, rather, its consistent and universal enforcement. For decades, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France) have repeatedly used their veto power in that entity to block UN action to maintain international peace and security. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds of the world’s nations do not accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, while more than a third of the world’s nations (including some of the largest, such as Russia, the United States, China, and India) have resisted becoming parties to the International Criminal Court.
Despite such obstacles, these organizations have sometimes played very useful roles in resolving international disputes. The UN Security Council has dispatched numerous peacekeeping missions around the world―including 60 alone in the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union―that have helped defuse crises in conflict-ridden regions.
For its part, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) paved the way for the Central American Peace Accords during the 1980s through its ruling in Nicaragua v United States, while its ruling in the Nuclear Tests case helped bring an end to nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. In addition, the ICJ’s ruling in Chad v Libya resolved a territorial dispute between these two nations and ended their military conflict.
Although the International Criminal Court has only been in operation since 2002, it has thus far convicted ten individuals of heinous crimes, issued or requested warrants for the arrest of prominent figures charged with war crimes (including Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the leaders of Hamas), and conducted or begun investigations of yet other notorious individuals. But, of course, as demonstrated by the persistence of wars of aggression and massive violations of human rights, enforcing international law remains a major problem in the contemporary world.
Therefore, if the world is to move beyond national impunity―if it is finally to scrap the long and disgraceful tradition among nations of might makes right―it is necessary to empower the world’s major international organizations to enforce the international law that nations have agreed to respect. This strengthening of global governance is certainly possible.
Although provisions in the UN Charter make outright abolition of the UN Security Council veto very difficult, other means are available for reducing the veto’s baneful effects. In many cases ―including those of the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts―simply invoking Article 27(3) of the UN Charter would be sufficient, for it states that a party to a dispute before the Security Council shall abstain from voting in connection with that dispute. Furthermore, 124 UN nations have already endorsed a proposal for renunciation of the veto when taking action against genocide, crimes against humanity, and mass atrocities. Moreover, the UN General Assembly has occasionally employed “Uniting for Peace” resolutions to take action when the Security Council has failed to do so.
Improving the effectiveness of the international judicial system has also generated attention in recent years. The LAW Not War campaign, championed by organizations dedicated to improving global governance, advocates strengthening the International Court of Justice, principally by increasing the number of nations accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court. Similarly, the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, representing numerous organizations, calls on all nations to ratify the Court’s founding statute and, thereby, “expand the Court’s reach and reduce the impunity gap.”
National impunity is not inevitable, at least if people and governments of the world are willing to take the necessary actions. Are they? Or will they continue talking of a “rules-based international order” while they avoid enforcing the rules?
How can mass mortality be viewed in a positive light? This is a question that arises when it comes to contemporary discussions of the fourteenth-century Black Death epidemic which wiped out nearly one-third of the population of Europe.[1] It is difficult to understate the immediate negative consequences of the Plague as it dismembered families, ripped apart social structures, and threw the economy into shock. Yet, some historians have now come to see the depopulation of the continent as a sort of necessary evil. Shortages of resources and job opportunities were prevalent by the beginning of the fourteenth century, especially in England, the country this paper will focus on.[2] In contrast, the Plague eliminated the shortages caused by overpopulation which immediately increased demand for workers. This led to increased wage growth and the widening of options of employment for average civilians. So, did the Black Death have a more positive or negative short-term impact on the English labor force? This essay argues that while the epidemic brought about a period of brief devastation, it ultimately eased the shortages of the years that preceded it leading to rapid labor reform which can be seen in first-hand accounts and the post-plague policies aimed at curtailing it.
The Malthusian crisis
The advancements made by laborers as a result of the Black Death can most obviously be seen by comparing their circumstances from before and after the Plague’s onset. As mentioned previously, it is therefore important to begin by establishing the former. This can be done by analyzing “The Statute of Labourers,” a 1351 policy put in place by the English government which attempted to maintain the social structure that was present before the epidemic. In so doing, the law continuously reverts back to the conditions of the “20th year of the king’s reign” which refers to 1346, just one year before the onset of the Black Death.[3] One of the Statute’s stipulations is that most employees, especially in agricultural fields could not be hired for periods less than a year, or other extended tenures that existed beforehand.[4] This severely limited the options of laborers and forced them to remain in jobs that might not pay as well as others. Therefore, not only were there severe shortages of jobs in England during the beginning of the fourteenth century, but workers were often unable to switch jobs, being signed for lengthy terms of service. Furthermore, the Statute makes it clear that virtually no benefits were offered by employers. Laborers were therefore expected to work for their dwindling salaries alone.[5] This shows a circumstance in which there was such a high supply of workers, that employers did not need to create many incentives to fill their openings.
Karakacili furthers the image of pre-Plague life that the Statute of Labourers provides. Her findings show that the majority of workers in England at the time were farmers. And just as the provisions of the Statute mandated certain tenures of service for employees, Karakacili claims that much of the labor by said farmers was completed by serfs. In addition, Karakacili applies the Malthusian crisis she explains earlier to the predicament of English laborers. As such, she claims that “the average output of a farm worker did not suffice…to feed him or herself.”[6] Therefore, wages were so low, and resources were so scarce, that the majority of people were not able to provide for themselves. But workers remained in their struggling positions because it was likely the best they could achieve.[7] So, in this situation as well, workers were limited in their ability to leave their jobs, both because they were legally prevented from doing so, and because there were very few other viable options.
Diminishing Limitations
All aspects of society were affected by the Black Death, and limitations for employees in England were no exception. To this point, Alfani and Murphy explain in “Plague and Lethal Epidemics” that “an inequality decline after a severe mortality is what we should expect.”[8] By this, they mean that various economic consequences of epidemics contribute to a narrowing of the wage gap. This is because as the population declines, so does the supply of labor. And the general rule of economics that Alfani and Murphy outline is that as a resource becomes scarcer, it becomes more expensive.[9] This was clearly the case with the Black Death as it had one of the highest mortality rates of any epidemic in history. Therefore, the mortality of the Plague diminished the supply of workers which immediately led to increased wages and competition between employers for laborers.
The increase in competition for English laborers can be seen in various accounts of serfs leaving their old employers behind as there were finally better options available. As such, after the Black Death, there are abundant instances showing the diminishing disconnect between serfs and their masters as the former could now achieve sustainable compensation. An account of the East Riding estates of Meaux Abbey in the 1350s outlines several examples of serfs discovering new opportunities in the wake of the Plague. In one instance, the account describes a series of serfs bound to the church in the town of Wawne. However, it goes on to ridicule them saying that despite their long history of being bound to serve the church, they have declared themselves free of their service. Still, it does not say that they just left to wander about the country. Rather, they called themselves servants of the king as they “apparently considered it more glorious to be…royal serfs.”[10] Another example of this trend comes in the Durham hallmoot book of 1350-55 which discusses the experiences of a lord in northern England whose serfs abandon him. These farmers are described as “malicious” as their actions were seen as a betrayal of the master they were bound to. Again though, they are not seen as completely leaving their jobs altogether, but with the intention to “tak[e] holdings elsewhere.”[11] This shows the occurrence of the pattern that Alfani and Murphy discuss. The Black Death wiped out so many workers that demand for them increased dramatically thereby widening the prospects of the labor force. As a result, workers who previously had no hope of ever leaving their insufficient circumstances, could now easily find work elsewhere and for better wages. The serfs of Wawne and Durham are emblematic of this trend as they departed their old livelihoods for better ones in the wake of the Black Death upheaval.
Post-Plague Policies
The Black Death’s economic consequences can be seen not only in firsthand accounts, but also in the legislation instituted by governments following it. Leading Plague historian Samuel Cohn discusses such legislation in his article “After the Black Death: Labour legislation and attitudes towards labour” in which he outlines the motivation behind it and its differences throughout Europe. Cohn explains that these policies were put in place to stimy the supposed advancements that laborers were making as a result of the fear and anxiety that accompanied the great mortality.[12] As Herlihy explained, the Black Death represented an unalterable shift in the labor dynamics of the fourteenth century[13] and this perception was felt throughout Europe just as Cohn describes. Therefore, the reverberations of the Plague on English labor can be seen in post-epidemic policies aimed at curtailing them.
An example of these post-Plague policies is that of Simon Sudbury who as the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1370s was the foremost religious leader in England behind the Pope. In a 1378 letter to the Bishop of London, Sudbury lays out both his displeasure with the changes in labor, and his solution to them. He thus begins by describing his own priests as “infected with the sin of greed” for they had been selling their services for “vastly inflated salaries” outside the church.[14] In response, the Archbishop raises the wages of the priests in order to get them to stay, but also imposes strict penalties for those would still not adhere to the new salaries.[15] Sudbury’s letter thus proves that post-plague advancements were not only occurring for farmers and serfs, but also for members of the church. This situation widens the scope of Black Death reform from the lowliest peasants to include the clergy as well.
The hallmark of English post-Plague labor legislation came in the form of the aforementioned 1351 Statute of Labourers which attempted to return the social order to the characteristics it embodied five years earlier.[16] It therefore made it illegal for workers to sign employment contracts that were binding for less than a year, instituted strict salaries for various jobs that were not to be exceeded, and required that employers offer no benefits to their laborers.[17] Its fears of workers making advancements are confirmed by the various accounts of individuals being charged for violating it. In a 1353 case in the town of Lincoln, a ploughman named John Skit is described as fleeing to “distant parts,” fearing his prosecution for accepting a new job under better working conditions before his contract was concluded.[18] In a similar 1360 case from Bolingbroke, a bishop named Alan is recorded as being charged forty pence for leaving his employment to a figure known as “Lady Roos” before his term of service was over.[19] Another case from 1374 describes a so-called “vagabond” named Richard Rote as being placed in stocks until he agreed to work again. However, the case also claims that two people attempted to free Rote, openly defying the provisions of the Statute of Labourers.[20] There are countless examples of violations of the Statue, thereby showing how labor reform was in fact taking place.
Conclusion
It is not at all difficult to point out the destructive repercussions of the Black Death. By eliminating one-third of the population of Europe, it tore apart institutions, families, and impacted nearly every corner of society. However, there has emerged a sound argument for the Plague having a positive effect on English labor. Before the epidemic ravaged the country, England, like most places in the continent, was suffering immense shortages in both resources and job opportunities. However morbidly, the Black Death’s mortality ended this crisis and opened up the job market. As there were now shortages of workers, employers were forced to raise wages and benefits, and laborers could now leave their jobs (albeit illegally according to the Statutes) as there were other viable options. This trend was not without resistance and the English government attempted to stimy the advancements of employees in order to maintain the social structure. But, these policies prove that reform was indeed taking place, especially since there are many documented violations of them. As such, these circumstances beg the question, was the English workforce more positively or negatively affected by the Black Death? By ending the Malthusian Crisis of the early fourteenth century, the Plague opened up the job market increasing wages and opportunities for average English workers in a way that would not be seen again for centuries.
Uses for Education
At this point, it seems appropriate to ask, so what? What does an epidemic from the fourteenth century have to do with your classroom today, 700 years later. Well, especially considering the events of the last few years, it seems almost more relevant than ever before. The Coronavirus Pandemic we all experienced is perfect fodder for a compare and contrast activity. A clear example is the fact that the Coronavirus was classified as a pandemic but was less deadly. Why was this the case? What were the characteristics of each that they were classified differently? Furthermore, one could easily conduct a simulation with this lesson. It might be a good idea to have the students imagine the methods they would use to handle the Black Death epidemic which might rationalize some of the actions taken by Plague doctors. And if you’re looking for a lesson specifically concerning the labor reforms discussed in this article, consider tying it in with your economics unit. It’s a clear example of supply and demand. There is definitely no shortage of options for lessons on this topic, which could be an eye-opening, yet relatable subject for your class.
References
Secondary sources
Alfani, Guido, and Murphy, Tommy. “Plague and Lethal Epidemics in the Pre-Industrial World.” The Journal of Economic History 77, no. 1 (2017): 314–43.
Bardsley, Sandy. “Women’s Work Reconsidered: Gender and Wage Differentiation in Late Medieval England.” Past & Present, No. 165 (Nov. 1999): 3-29
Cohn, Samuel. “After the Black Death: Labour Legislation and Attitudes Towards Labour in Late-Medieval Western Europe.” The Economic History Review 60, no. 3 (2007): 457–85
Herlihy, David. “The New Economic and Demographic System.” In The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 39-57
Karakacili, Eona. “English Agrarian Labor Productivity Rates before the Black Death: A Case Study.” The Journal of Economic History 64, no. 1 (2004): 24–60.
Primary Sources
Rosemary Horrox, ed. and trans., The Black Death (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994).
“Difficulties in finding tenants,” pp. 326-331
“Rebellious Serfs at Wawne,” pp. 331-338
“A selection of cases from Lincolnshire,” pp. 319-320
Simon Sudbury, “Simon Sudbury increases priests’ wages,” pp. 311-312
“The Statute of Labourers,” pp. 312-316
[1] Guido Alfani, and Tommy E. Murphy. 2017. “Plague and Lethal Epidemics in the Pre-Industrial World.” The Journal of Economic History 77 (no. 1), 318.
Alfani and Murphy discuss the Black Death’s emergence in the Himalayas in the 1330s and its recognition by the Mongols in control there. From central Asia, it traveled west eventually reaching the shores of the Black Sea, the Hellespont, and then the Mediterranean. Because of the wide area affected by the disease, mortality rates ranged from place to place. The one-third rate discussed in the first paragraph of this essay refers to that of Europe at large and is estimated to be closer to two-thirds in some regions throughout the continent.
[2] Eona Karakacili. “English Agrarian Labor Productivity Rates before the Black Death: A Case Study.” The Journal of Economic History 64, no. 1 (2004), 25.
[3]“The Statute of Labourers” in The Black Death, ed. and trans. Rosemary Horrox (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 312.
[11] “Difficulties in finding tenants” in Horrox, The Black Death, 327
[12] Samuel Cohn. “After the Black Death: Labour Legislation and Attitudes Towards Labour in Late-Medieval Western Europe.” The Economic History Review 60, no. 3 (2007), 457
The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross, by Jon Meacham
Reviewed by Hank Bitten
The role of religious belief in world history is both a mystery and a connection to understanding continuity and change over time in history. The major beliefs of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam have had an enduring influence on civilization for the past five millennium. They are also a critical part of the world history curriculum in New Jersey’s public schools. The Hope of Glory by Jon Meacham is a concise perspective of his personal understanding of the Christian faith, his scholarly research of distinguished individuals across several centuries, his years of nurture through Episcopalian clergy, and an understanding of Jesus Christ as an historical and spiritual leader. It is a useful perspective for educators, especially social studies teachers.
“I am one among that innumerable company and this book is a series of reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the cross – words spoken on a Friday afternoon that is at once impossibly remote and yet imaginatively close to hand.” (Page 6).
Most teachers have their students read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) to understand the teachings of Jesus and in my classroom, I asked students to also read from the teachings of Moses (Ten Commandments), the teachings of Confucius (Analects), Lao Tzu, Muhammed (Koran), Siddhartha Gautama (Four Noble Truths), and the Ramayana. The enduring teachings about life, love, humility, forgiveness, relationships go beyond the ideas of our civilization. In fact, they are timeless and have endured more than 50 centuries. It is important that students have a cognitive understanding of the leaders of each faith and for many students in the United States, the Judeo-Christian heritage is familiar through the architecture of temples and churches, holidays and culture, and the experiences of their friends.
“His (Jesus) Sermon on the Mount and his frequently repeated messages, rooted in the scriptures of Israel, about the centrality of love can hardly be improved upon as guides to goodness and generosity. He does not, however, endure because he offered a corner of the Roman dominated world a message of radical love. He endures not only because of what he said but because of who he was – in the words of Peter, “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Christianity’s foundational belief is that Jesus was in fact the “Christ” – in Greek, the ‘anointed one’ – who died and rose again to redeem and restore a fallen world that is to be reborn as what John the Divine called “a new heaven and a new earth.” (Pages 8,9)
The message of the Christian faith, although familiar to many, remains one of mystery. It is the only major religion that is for everyone in the world (the Gentiles). Christianity is not defined by birth, geography, or ethnicity. Jon Meacham states it cleverly: “We are all in a sense, like the Greek philosophers who came to Paul in Athens seeking clarity about the Christian message. ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?’ they asked him in the Areopagus. ‘It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.’ The apostle then preached the gospel, saying that God through Jesus, ‘will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Pages 11,12)
The historical context of the thread of a Messiah that began in Judaism is presented in Psalm 98 and the 35th chapter in the Book of Isaiah. In The Hope of Glory, the thread of this context continues into the context of the Roman Empire and the establishment of the teachings of the Christian (Roman Catholic) church.
“Paul admitted the difficulty” ‘But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.’ A king who died a slave’s death? A human atoning sacrifice? A resurrected messiah? As Paul asserted in one of the earliest known writings in the New Testament, however, the heart of the matter was just that: Jesus ‘gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from the present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.’ Why invent something with no historical basis in the preaching of Jesus himself? The Christian salvation story was singular and specific, offering a peculiar religious riff on the extent symphony of Judaism. That the disciples understood Jesus so poorly at the time of the Passion is evidence of the power and prevalence of the existing theology of God’s kingdom, a theology that anticipated an imminent final struggle between the forces of good and evil.” (Pages 22,23)
Students need a reference point in understanding the common and the unique tenets of the major religious beliefs. Each one references love, relationships, a world order, forces of good and evil, and the power of the divine. Some reference an afterlife, a rebirth, a pilgrimage, prayer, sacrifice, a free will, or a mandate of heaven. Teaching with visuals supports memory and thinking. Unfortunately, the role of religion in world history is mostly dependent on text sources, although paintings, mosaics, and architecture are useful for student understanding. Here is a perspective that supports continuity and change in chronology:
“History is what happened in time and space. Theology can be understood as what people think history means in relation to a presumed order beyond time and space. History is horizontal, theology vertical, and their intersection is a motive force behind our religious, national, and personal imaginations. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we love, and how we live are furnished and fired by the factual and the fabled. History and theology are inextricably bound up with each other, and together, I submit, they create truth. Fact is what we can see or discern: truth is the larger significance we extrapolate from these facts.” (Page 27)
It is helpful for students to understand that reading sacred writings is different than reading an historical narrative or primary source. For students, all primary sources are likely the same. The critical insight of Jon Meacham is useful when reading texts from Confucius, Lao Tzu, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
“It’s certainly true that for the searcher or the believer; the point of reading sacred writings is not the same as reading, say the history of the Punic Wars or of World War II. The texts are directive documents. As the second Epistle of Timothy says, ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (Page 43)
The sacred writings are expressed prophetically, poetically, historically and perhaps with another form of expression. Students need to understand that context matters, and that criticism engages thinking, analysis, and interpretation. Reason and faith are both helpful starting points for an educational conversation.
The thesis of the book is based on the words of Jesus from the cross on Good Friday. For teachers who have their students read selected verses from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, these words should prompt thinking, analysis, and understanding. The first words spoken from the cross are only written in the gospel of Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
These words are similar to the atonement of sins on Yom Kippur in Judaism, the triumph of good over evil in Islam, and the search for the enlightenment in Buddhism. However, the Christian faith has paradoxes and forgiveness of enemies, our persecutors, and people who do evil is one example. The message of forgiveness is what gave momentum to the acceptance of the Christian faith in the Roman Empire by Constantine and the Edict of Thessalonica by Theodosius in 380 C.E..
The second words are from Luke: 23:43: “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” If your students are engaged with learning history in small groups, the application of the last words of Jesus from the cross fit nicely into seven groups of three or four students. The context of Jesus entrance into Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover gave reason to speculate over a political or militant uprising to challenge the power of the Roman government in Israel. Jesus was popular and his preaching about the arrival of the kingdom provided hope to the Jewish people in Jerusalem. However, if this was a political plot of revolutionaries, why were none of the followers who were with Jesus arrested or executed? Students need to think critically about the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount or in his parables.
These words of Jesus are beyond our imagination or comprehension. They speak to the depth of the mercy and grace of an all-powerful God. Students will likely focus on the clarity of the first word, ‘Assuredly’, the definition of ‘today’, and the etymology of the word ‘Paradise’. These words have endured twenty centuries and will continue to inspire in the future in the search for answers about the human condition and existence. It is an example of continuity without change over time.
The third words are spoken first to Mary, Jesus’ mother, “Woman, behold thy son!”They are followed by the words, “Behold thy mother!” to one of his disciples. (John 19: 25-27) These words are spoken as commands, a charge to care for another person. There are links here to the religious teachings of right relationships by Confucius, being your brother’s keeper in Judaism, caring for others as reflected in the Eightfold Path and giving alms in the Five Pillars of Islam. The application of these words from the cross speaks to how we understand the meaning and purpose of love and serving others.
The fourth words speak to the human suffering of Jesus on the cross. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 45,46) There is no other religious teacher associated with the major religious beliefs who experienced the pain and fear that was present in the final day of the life of Jesus. Confucius died a normal death, very little is known about the death of Lao Tzu, Abraham lived beyond a full age of people in 1800 B.C.E., Siddhartha likely died from illness after reaching Nirvana, and Mohammed died peacefully in his home. If Jesus knew that He would return to life in three days, what is the meaning of these words? This is the power of the invisible and the mystery of the unknown. In this context, how do your students understand the meaning of this question and the context of how it was spoken? Which visual image has best represented the Christian faith over time: the cross, the empty tomb, or something else?
The fifth words spoken are: “I thirst.” (John 19: 28,29) On the surface, these words are unlikely to engage students in a meaningful discussion or application. Jesus was given vinegary wine on a hyssop branch with a sponge attached to it. The symbolism of hyssop is an important connection to the Passover in Judaism as it was used to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the doorposts to guarantee God’s protection. Kind David was cleansed in Psalm 51:7 with the hyssop plant. In this context, it is important to emphasize the spiritual cleansing of forgiveness that is a core belief of the Christian faith. The ‘thirst’ is connected to the Passover in Judaism, the importance of how forgiveness changes our lives, and how the church forgives sins through confession, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. For teachers, using the Sermon on the Mount, in addition to the words spoken in the final hours of Jesus, consider the words of Matthew 5:6, “Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness” support a meaningful discussion with many questions for deeper inquiry and application.
The next to last words spoken from the cross, “It is finished” are written in John 19:30. The meaning of these words for 21st century Christians is different than what the words meant for the first century followers and the eyewitnesses at Calvary. The Greek word, tetelestai means finished, completed, or accomplished. Paul preached to the Romans, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested…through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”(Page 86)
However, the creeds of the church that were written after the death and resurrection of Jesus have believers professing that all is not finished because Jesus is to return from heaven. Heaven, as mentioned in the Bible, is not a future destiny or a distant place. Instead, it is a hidden dimension in our life. Another way to think about heaven is that it is God’s space. (Page 88) Students will be asking questions about heaven, hell, eternity, war, sickness, and the list will continue. These questions are important for inquiry by teenagers. It is also important to understand that answers are determined by knowledge and the only clear knowledge we have in the Christian religion is to love God and to love one another as ourselves. This is the time to ask the essential question about the role of religion in world history, which is likely in your curriculum. There is mystery in all the major religions and students need to understand this difficult concept.
The final words spoken by Jesus are written in Luke 23:46: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” The eyewitnesses watching the hours of Jesus dying were left with sadness and confusion. They expected a kingdom, a new earth and a new heaven. They only saw darkness. The most scholarly theologians are unable to fully explain the meaning of redemption. The religions of Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and the teachings of Daoism and Confucius also leave students with unanswered questions. The common thread in each religion is the universal search for grace, a better world where good triumphs over evil, and hope!
The religious faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have become politicized as people in different periods of historical memory have persecuted, attacked, interpreted morality, and defined culture. The tenets of their foundational beliefs have endured trade, prosperity, the Crusades, scientific discoveries, schisms, epidemics, Age of Reason, imperialism, World Wars, a journey to the moon, and genocides. It is important for students of world history to understand how ordinary people live their lives with the same questions we are asking.
This is why we teach the role of religion in history.
Teachers are going to really enjoy this approach to story-telling that focuses more on themes than on the old fashioned linear method of discussing history. Themes and topics such as the use of tools, differences in diet, domestication of certain animals and what that has meant for mankind, and the use of weapons, jewelry, boats, and architecture through history will astound and captivate the more technically oriented readers looking into this glossy, beautiful book.
More general readers, perhaps fans of the story of Homo sapiens up to current times will also love this book and will wonder what is next in mankind’s journey. This book tells us of great adventures in the past and gives us hints of what is in store, given our talents, strengths, and weaknesses. Pamela Toler has assembled here some incredibly cool ways to talk about the history of mankind and does something very new and unique: using modern drawings and actors to portray the stages of mankind over time. This makes for very interesting and lively illustrations.
Toler also uses a great deal of scenarios—created to advance theories of how wheat was first sown, how people reacted to the “Sea People” invading around the Mediterranean and bringing their women and children with them, and ways people thought and acted. The rationale for different actions over time are interesting to consider, and she uses them throughout the book to make the major and minor events alike more understandable.
As long as readers understand that is her method, they will be alright as they watch mankind progress through the themes, wars, discoveries, changes in regime, and differences in lifestyles over time. The use of the themes and topics, again, is very interesting. Chapter Five, for example, is called “Plagues.” The book tells us where the words “algebra” and “algorithm” come from also, in addition to many other facts important to showing the contributions of many cultures to world knowledge
A third thing Toler does is uses clever phrases and humor in the book. This will make the book even more entertaining for those readers who want a little more “fun” in their dealing with the story of us.
For example, when discussing the supposed complete disappearance of Neanderthals from the earth, she reminds us that recent research has shown that the Neanderthal genome makes up between 1 and 4 percent of the DNA of humans who are not from Australia or sub-Saharan Africa. She states comically, “Evidently the rumors of Neanderthal man’s extinction are exaggerated. He lives on in us” (p. 16).
Without giving too much content away, I will say this book is a “must-read” for educators and all other readers who need a new and refreshing way to look at the history of us. It is a shiny, interesting, innovative, and thrilling book indeed. I am so lucky I was able to receive a copy to review!
The book could also be a clever tool to get some students interested in the story of us and to watch as they consider the photos, drawings, and scenarios presented in this lively and colorful presentation of history. Many short sidebars and other bits of information fill the book, much as in many current high school books and undergraduate textbooks. I would champion the use of this book to see if teachers can “hook” some students into the realms of history, science, and discovery.
The design of the book is shared by the History Channel. It is also available via download to own, in Blu-Ray, DVD, eBook, and graphic novels. These other formats may be just what the teacher ordered for some students to be able to handle—and to reach them using technology they prefer.
As an educator, I can see many great uses for this book. It could also stimulate some wonderful discussions among teachers of science, technology, history, social studies, culture, mathematics, art, design, religion, and language.
As with many such books, interdisciplinary units can be crafted rather easily by creative teachers who will see many possible connections. Helping students become constructivists themselves and see connections is yet another possible use for the book as both a reference source and reading for getting good in-depth conversations going among secondary school students.
As with each and every book teachers use with students in K-12 settings, a thorough reading is important before students are encouraged to read the book. Some adult topics arise in the book and should be considered, of course.
A Brief History of the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of the Nazis, by Martyn Whittock.
Reviewed by Thomas Hansen, Ph.D
Martyn Whittock assembles here the accounts of what is what like to be a German and go through all the things that happened before, during, and after World War II. He includes stories from people coming from all walks of life, and he adds his own theories and ideas.
In 22 chapters, Whittock describes the economic, political, and spiritual life in Germany leading to the Nazis seizing power and discusses both German complacency and involvement in contributing to the party’s rise to leading the nation. Whittock talks a great deal about Hitler’s reasons and motivations leading to some of the worst decisions possible.
Hitler had a tendency to make very dramatic and quick decisions without listening to the advice of those who would try to help him, or help Germany, in times of crisis. Hitler tended to stretch resources too thin and to make decisions which caused other greater problems unforeseen.
Without giving away too much content, I will say that this book does include the strength of using so many different persons’ stories to give the reader different perspectives on how the Nazis were actually able to get as far as they did. It is important to continue to read such accounts to try to sort out what makes sense and what does not.
Whittock gives the reader a great deal of information on the concentration camps and on how they were run. He does give us a glimpse into the desperate lives of the Germans who assisted in the murders, as he does regarding all of the persons who helped Hitler come to power.
There was something in it for everyone, it appears, and Whittock attempts to explain how and why the Germans allowed the Nazis to take so much power. He also provides the death tolls and discusses the methods used for murdering the inmates. Whittock provides a full description of the murders and numbers. However, he also uses more contemporary examples of bloodshed such as the Rwanda murders.
Maybe this is done to show that murder on a huge scale is to be expected in the world? Nothing could compare to the Nazis’ slaughter of entire peoples and communities, so that idea is lost on this reader—and on most all readers, I would assume.
The reader can profit from trying to understand what happened in Germany during those say 50 years of time. Teachers can perhaps get a little better understanding of how to begin to explain what was going on in the minds of Germans who watched all of it.
This is important reading because of the different perspectives revealed here.
Death Transformed: How the Black Death Impacted the Dying in the 14th Century
Tyler Klinsky
From 1348 to 1350, Europe was consumed by a deadly plague that left one-third to one-half of the population dead. All aspects of society at the time were impacted in some way by a large number of deaths. People lived in fear of this invisible foe, bodies littered the streets, resulting from the overwhelming amount of death all at once. Cemeteries and churches could not continue traditional ways of burying the dead and death was no longer celebrated as a community event with friends and family. Bodies were collected from houses and from the streets and buried in mass graves, with no bells, no singing, and no one to accompany the dead as they were buried in their final resting place. Sometimes bodies remained at the place of death for days until the body collector eventually reached that part of town, the smell of rotting corpses could be smelled across the city. The dying suffered alone, friends, family, and even doctors were too afraid to be in contact with the infected, no priests would visit for last confessions and the infected would die with no one at their side. How did the Black Death impact the practices and experiences surrounding death? This essay will argue the Black Death dehumanized the traditional funerary practices, methods of handling the dead, and the experiences of the dying in society. The Black Death disrupted the normal functions surrounding death by no longer allowing for funerary traditions and as a result, new methods of handling and burying the dead were practiced. The abandonment of friends and family as the dying suffered added to the dehumanization of society’s experience as a whole. The term dehumanizing is used in this context to show how the infected were treated like animals and their bodies were disposed of in inhuman ways that would be considered criminal in the present time.
Historiography
The Black Death, also known as the bubonic plague, was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. It is estimated that the disease killed one-third to half of the population in Europe during the 14th century (Horrox) from 1348-1350, and its impact on the population and treatment of the dead was significant and important to be researched. The historiography of the Black Death has been shaped by various factors, including the availability of primary sources, and the methodological approaches of historians from secondary sources. Although these sources have various points and information they come together for supporting information.
The first article that explores the gruesome realities of the Black Death is “The Black Death in English Towns” by author Richard Britnell. This article offers a glimpse into the horrors of the Black Death, from the mass graves that were used to dispose of the bodies of the dead to the role of “body collectors” who were tasked with gathering the corpses and disposing of them. The author explains the dangers the “body collectors” faced and the horrific jobs they were expected to complete. In this article, the methodologies of archeology and social history, are shown from the included examples of how the dead were collected and buried and how society adapted to a large number of dead. In the second source “The Politics of Burial in Late Medieval Hereford” written by Ian Forrest, the author expands on how the social and cultural development of burials was impacted because of the Black Death. The religious practices that impacted how bodies were buried during this time of great death are also included in the article. The author includes information on how the large number of bodies piled in the cities and families abandoning each other became the new normalcy in cities.
The third secondary source “Plague Violence and Abandonment from the Black Death to the Early Modern Period,” by author Sam Cohen, examines the ways in which the sick and dying were abandoned as the fear of the plague grew and the violence created between family members tore society apart from within. The article also includes social methodology examples, of the violence in society, the refusal by doctors to treat the sick, and the abandonment of loved ones caused no hope of traditional burials and funerary practices. The final article, “The Black Death, 1348”, written by John Carey on Eyewitness to History, provides a variety of information on the topics surrounding the responses to the Plague. Further information on the ways bodies were disposed of and the social responses to the impending danger, inform the readers why there was no concern for the health status of neighbors, friends, and sometimes family members as well. Again like the other articles this one contains archeological and social methodologies are included in this article.
All four secondary sources contribute to the overall thesis of the paper, providing information that the plague impacted the ways in which society dealt with death during the plague and how it affected the many principles that contributed to death. These principles include the new methods of burying the dead, and how the experiences of the dying were no longer peaceful because they were suffering alone and believed to be dying with sin. I agree with the author’s overall thesis and points because it contributes to the thesis of this paper however, the only holes I have found were small the amount of information on the experiences of the dying moments before death and how the stress of giving confession before death was so important to the citizens, along with the hopes of a “good death” not being possible during this time. Although they are secondary sources rather than primary sources it is unrealistic to expect first-hand experiences to be included, however, It would have been helpful to have more general information on how the victims came to terms with the inevitable death and help reinforce the overall thesis. Instead of continuing where they left off, I will fill the holes of important points and information that each article did not include and will reinforce their information with the completed research from the primary sources included in this essay.
Funerary traditions
The Black Death impacted traditional funerary practices in society, as a result of a large number of people dying, no longer were services held in the households of the dead for people to come to say their final goodbyes. Traditional gifts were not able to be sent because of fear of transmission through the gifts “No one shall dare or presume to give or send any gift to the house of the deceased,” (Chiappelli, P.197). No longer were family members attending funerals because of the ordinances preventing them, however, they were too afraid to risk attending, one source noted, “It was rare for bodies of the dead to be accompanied by more than 10 or 12 neighbors to church” (Boccaccio, p. 31). As the death toll started to increase the more the traditional funerary activities changed, no longer mourners or criers to honor the dead. No longer could the sounds of bells be heard or prayer groups be seen, the fear of death had traditional practices in a chokehold, as one author describes the experience, “No prayer, trumpet or bell summoned friends or neighbors to the funeral, nor was massed performed” (Boccaccio, P. 23). The fear of death played a great role in disrupting the normal religious and community traditions.
Regardless, if someone was too scared to leave their house no longer was there any notification that a person has passed, without any bells, tolled, invitations sent, posters hung, or chairs set up in the streets there was no way to know when someone had died as one author points out, “mourners should not gather in the houses of the dead, nor should banners or seats be placed in the streets, nor should other customary observances be present,” no longer was there any way of honoring the death of a friend or family member, even the customary religious practices were also provoked, instead “crowds should not be invited, but instead, people should pray for the dead and attend vigil and mass”(Muisis, P. 53). The religious practices surrounding death also broke down as a result and other activities were done by living members of society to fill the time normally spend doing religious works.
Members of society quarantine themselves and blocked out all the death-related obligations of attending funerals, ringing bells, and partaking in mourning groups that they were previously held. The Black Death was impactful on traditional funerary practices that normally brought friends and family together to honor the dead, instead, the accustomed practices were altered as a result of the epidemic, and these experiences as a whole were dehumanizing to all cities struck by the plague across Europe.
Impact on Burial Practices
The great plague in Europe during the 14th century resulted in one-third to half the population dead, the traditional methods of burial were unable to keep up with the large number of people dying on a daily basis, and a change in the way of burial was needed. The known tradition of burying loved ones as a family event with friends in attendance was no longer a possibility considering the dangerous circumstances and the great fear of contracting the disease. The conventional way in which bodies were buried was substituted with a more efficient way to account for the dramatically large amount of death. No longer were the dead buried in single graves with other dead family members, instead, mass graves were dug and the bodies of the dead were placed with strangers. Also, as a result, bodies were disposed of in inhumane ways without receiving blessings or last goodbyes from family members. One way of disposal as described by Horrox was, “the townspeople dumped as many of the bodies they could in the sea” (Mussis, P.17). Eventually, of all the people dying the bodies could not be disposed of as quickly because not as many people were working. This caused rotting bodies to be in the streets for days and rather than the corpses of the dead being taken from their houses by a hearse with their families, the bodies were left on the streets until a body collector reached them for pick up. One author explains how the long time between death and burial caused “movement of the bones within the corpse” (Forrest, 1117). This movement was referred to as “Bone Float” and was another side effect of the bodies not being buried in a timely matter.
Experiencing the large number of bodies in the streets is described by the author Boccaccio, “the bodies of the dead were extracted from their houses and left lying outside their front doors” and “Funeral biers would be sent for and it was by no means rare for one of these biers to be seen with two or three bodies at a time” (Boccaccio, P.32). By the time the body collectors reached the rotting bodies they were not in good shape, Buboes might burst, leaking rancid pus. Flea bites that transmitted the deadly bacteria Yersinia pestis could become infected. The terrible stench of rotting flesh was unable to be blocked out from the nostrils of the collectors. Instead of bodies being buried in caskets like today’s standards, the bodies were exposed to mud and bugs in the soil. One author included, “a third of all burials, whether in one of the trenches or in an ordinary grave was in a coffin”(Britnell, 205). Buried like animals with no “Grave Markers” as the author also mentions, no way of identifying where loved ones were laid to rest. The job was disgusting and dangerous for these body collectors, they knew the risks, however, someone needed to complete the job. Clothing and any belongings from a diseased person could transfer the disease to one of these body collectors, which increased the risk of the job. After the bodies were collected no longer was single graves a possibility because of the sheer amount of bodies needed to be disposed of.
A new way of burying bodies in large trenches rather than singular graves was called “mass graves”. This was described by the chronicler Bocaccio, “when all the graves were full, huge trenches were excavated in the churchyards, new arrivals were placed by the hundreds, each layer of corpses being covered by a thin layer of soil till the trench was filled to the top” (Boccaccio, P. 33). There was also new regulations referred to as ordinances in some cities in Europe, such as Pistoia in 1348. Some of these ordinances were created to affect the way in which people were buried and handled, in Pistoia, “The bodies of the dead should not be removed from the place of death until enclosed in a wooden box” (Chiapelli, P.196). These ordinances were created to stop the stench of the dead to contaminate or infect the person handling them. Other regulations were created in Pistoia regarding the requirements for burials. One requirement created was that “each grave shall be dug two and a half armlengths deep” (Chiapelli, P.196). This was done to stop the stench of the rotting bodies to reach the surface of the ground. The Black Death caused many inhuman ways of transporting and burying bodies to be seen during the 14th-century plague.
Dying alone
The plague during the 14th century caused a wave of fear to encompass all of Europe, the disease was an invisible enemy that could not be seen but, was very much felt. With no one at the bedside of the infected moments before death, the desire for a painless sin-free “good death” was no longer possible for the victims of the Black Death. The hope of the last confession as an attempt to clear the sins of the infected was no longer possible in Europe during the 14th-century Black Death. The fear caused the abandonment of dying friends and family as people search for a safe place to escape the disease. The hope to be cleared of sin was no longer a possibility many of the priests were too afraid to visit the dying, but in some cases, “the priests, panic-stricken, administered the sacraments with fear and trembling” (Mussis, P.22). Not everyone was so lucky, in some parts of Europe many people died without giving a confession, in hopes of having a clean slate while entering the afterlife.
Not only were priests abandoning the sick and their duties, family, and friends no longer cared for their loved ones, “when one person lay sick in a house no one would come near, even dear friends would hide themselves away” and the children’s cries were loud as one author describes, “Oh father, why have you abandoned me? Mother where have you gone? Do you forget I am your child?” (Mussis, P. 22). Instead of people caring for their neighbors like they once did, they avoided them at all cost. Instead of hiding some people, “formed small communities, living entirely separate from everybody else. They shut themselves up in houses where there were no sick, eating the finest food and drinking the best wine very temperately, avoiding all excess, allowing no news or discussion of death and sickness, and passing the time in music and suchlike pleasures” (Carey, 2020). The ways in which society interacted with one another were altered. In some cases people would have survived if they received some type of help or care from another person, whether it be food or water brought to them, the abandonment aided in the cause of death in some cases. The dying suffered alone with no one at their bedside, and the hope of a “good death” was no longer possible, without family members surrounding the dying members to be made comfortable, the sick often were treated terribly by loved ones who at one time promised to always be there for them, one author described the experience, “the sick are treated like dogs by their families-they give them food and drink, then flee the house” (Heyligen, P. 44). It was a dehumanizing experience for those infected.
The fear caused by The Black Death increased the abandonment of the dying, the social construct continued to collapse and doctors and physicians would no longer visit the infected and let the disease run its course. Author Sam Cohen includes information on the social breakdown of medical care during the plague, “the same connection between ferocious contagion and the social consequences, causing physicians not to visit the stricken” (Cohen, 2017). Living and dying were the same thing during the Black Death, everyone suffered regardless of being infected or not, the fear caused abandonment from loved ones, and the chances of receiving a final confession in hopes of a traditional “good death” was unlikely, the social breakdown of no one caring for other and medical personal abandoning their duties of helping the sick aided in the death toll being so tremendous. The abandonment added to the inhumanity of the experiences caused by The Black Death in all parts of society.
Conclusion
The period of the Black Death in the 14th century was a dehumanizing experience for all members of society. The traditional funerary practices and methods of handling the dead were no longer a possibility. The great number of people sick and dying prevented community get-togethers to honor the lives of those who passed, instead, people were buried without friends or family in attendance. A large number of dying caused “mass graves” to be the new method for burial because it was a faster way of burying a large number of corpses at once and was more space efficient, now three to four bodies could fit the same space of one traditional grave. The fear of the plague caused the abandonment of friends and family in society, the infected died alone without doctors tending to them or priests present to clear their sins before death. The main points contribute to the argument that the Black Death was a dehumanizing experience for those who lived in Europe during the epidemic.
Cohn, S. (2017). Plague violence and abandonment from the black death to the early modern period. Annales de démographie historique, 2 (134), 39–61. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26627248
Forrest, I. (2010). The politics of burial in late medieval hereford. The english historical review, 125(516), 1110–1138. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40963124
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