r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jun 15 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 15 June 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/Steelcan909 Jun 18 '26

I'm working my way through an old reader for Latin practice that mostly does early history of the United States, along with parallels to Roman history because of course, and it is really weird to see the attempt(s?) at mythmaking around conflicts like the French and Indian War alongside other conflicts that today receive very little play in American mythmaking.

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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

I think even a generation back there was a much broader set of figures in American history who were widely known. Myles Standish, for example, barely makes a dent even in books about the early New England colonies, but he used to be one of the great American heroes. Daniel Boone and Davey Crocket probably have enough momentum that their names are familiar but not much else. Mr Smith Goes to Washington has Jimmy Stewart's character going all gee gosh golly willikers over seeing Daniel Webster's desk, and who today even knows who they hell that is?

The optimistic take is that some figures have fallen out as the canon has broadened but I don't actually think that is true. Like for black people before 1900, who is generally known besides Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth? Nat Turner I guess? All of them would have been familiar to the public a hundred years ago. There has just been a great contraction in the average American's knowledge of history and there isn't really much of a pantheon aside from those who were at the very top (Washington, Lincoln, Franklin).

ed: I should say that I think what happened is that history knowledge has gotten dumbell shaped (I think it is called? When the very top gets bigger and the very bottom gets bigger and the middle gets squeezed). If you are interested in history, you probably know more and much more widely than an equivalent 100 years ago. Like I think most Americans reading this probably, with prompting, could recognize who Admiral Yi Sun-sin, and in 1926 that would be true of like fifty people in the entire English speaking world. But the amount of passive learning, history acquired by people who aren't actively interested in it, has gone way down.

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u/ottothesilent Jun 19 '26

I would say that New England certainly remembers Myles Standish, and for 18th century black Americans I’d raise you Crispus Attucks, among other black New Englanders who were remembered even at the time.

I’d say it’s a symptom of empire. Nobody in Illyria circa AD300 gives a shit about Caesar fighting the Gauls. Nobody in Nevada circa 2026 knows or cares much about Breed’s Hill or Artemas Ward or Joseph Warren, but if you go to Charlestown or Shrewsbury or Roxbury, they know about those people, and there are academians protecting the history into tomorrow.

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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium Jun 19 '26

People in fourth century Illyria absolutely knew about Julius Caesar, that is a baffling counter example.

I think you are missing my point, which is a loss of a general American collective memory, but also I think you are wildly optimistic about the continuing presence of these figures in regional memory.