Historians hate Email.

[Fishi3]

One way that Historians learn about the past is by reading the private letters that people send to each other. In particular they hunt for letters from Famous people. Generals, scientists and politicians. While scientific letters and reports or the draft of a bill may tell you what happened it'll rarily tell you why and it's the why of it that is history. Which means that Historians are going to need to better journalists and do their research while the Famous people are still alive to talk to them about it. Historians much prefer dealing with dead people. Dead people don't throw heavy objects at you and scream at you to leave them alone you damn vulture. I suppose this means we are going to see a whole new wave of Papparazzi intrusions into peoples personal lives. Only now it'll be to get solid data on what people say and think.

People kept and keep letters for many personal reasons. But I doubt the intent was ever to allow them to be made public. Letters usually get into the Historians hands when a generation inherits them that never knew the person sells them or donates them.

Basically if your in any way famous and you want your private life to remain private you have to remember to destroy your letters in a non-recoverable fashion. Mandating their destruction in your will may not be enough.


I'm a big fan of history but I tend to dislike the fact that Historians and Archeologists often intrude on the privacy of dead folks who went to alot of trouble to be left alone. Re: Tomb excavations. The answer is simple. Write the book beforethe source is dead. Make History a living dynamic thing rather than a B&E perpetuated on and desecrating the dead.

A Mummy was once a person. A person with beliefs as to how he/she was to be buried and cared for after death. A person who had religious beliefs that are profaned when someone comes along and digs him/her up and puts them on display.

But then I probably have a strange view. I believe the dead remain people even after death. That they have the right to privacy in their tombs and graves and in their personal corespondance.

[ivanelme]

Problem was back then not a lot about personal life was ever recorded in public record. As it stands now, future historians only need to search on the internet to find out about the lives of famous people who lived in the computer age. It was excavations of people like Tutankhamun that allows historians to dispell the myth that he was killed. Our science is growing at an exponential rate, we are able to better understand out past now. We have found a lot of our medical advancements are really nothing more then rediscoveries of those used in the Roman and Greek empires.

It's funny, but in many ways we think we have advanced, we have only just started to surpass our ancestors. Remember, the first real steam engies was invented by Archimedies, passed over because of how cheap slave labor was at the time. It would be a wonder to think about how much more advanced we would have been if we had started using that technology at that point in time.

(also it can be noted that the library of Alexandra used a steam engie to open it's massive doors. it was told in stories, and they made a reconstruction and found proof of concept.)

[Myz_Lilith]

I dunno. If I ever become famous then I'd rather future historians dug me up and experimented in all kinds of weird ways on my remains, than relied on Wikipedia to tell my story...

Although on a side note, I think purely the fact that slaves are no longer ecomnomically more vaiable than manufactured machinery is one mark of progress in itself, one that by necessity may have needed a couple of thousand years of humans (metaphorically) bashing their heads against walls to achieve. This may be our natural rate of progress in those terms. I also think that in another 1000 years we may not be as hyper-scientifically advanced as has been suggested... but then again, we might have found a way to manufacture slightly more advanced goods without needing what are in essense slave nations. And that too will be massive progress.

(I still want my hovercar NOW though. Science Fiction LIED to me!)

Of course we might all be extinct. Due to some kind of global nuclear-powered sheep catastophe. Which in theory is another way in which you can stop future historians digging up your corpse and meddling with it.

Hmmmm....

To Do List.

!. Become famous.
2. Start research program into nuclear-powered sheep production.

[ivanelme]

a mega catastrophe not included, advancement is taking off an a highly excellerated rate. And to be honest, moral implications as well as a need for faster production was what led to the stopping of slavery. When in all honesty, low wage workers in this era are pretty much the same thing, excluding the beatings and what not. I am talking more in terms of technology we've really just started surpassing what our ancestors knew, or confirming it. I mean, we have made some amazing strides, but a good amount of things we have now they had back then.
Ironically a lot of amazing acheivements can be traced to military use. Not all mind you, but an amazing amount.

[Fishi3]

I'm rather amused whenever people say Slavery ended for moral reasons. Slavery and the Moral objection to it has been around since the first person was enslaved. Moral Objections was the excuse not the reason for liberation of the slaves in the US. The Emancipation Proclomation was a weapon used to try and disrupt the Souths economy. If the North had been as dependant on slave labour we'd still have slaves today. So why did the North move away from slavery? A slave is generally the very picture of a disgruntled employee. The worst kind of disgruntled. So it doesn't make economic sense to use slaves in a factory.
The liberation of the slaves is an accident of circumstance. To mistake it for a purposeful attempt to take the moral high ground is to draw the wrong conclusions from events. Basically your buying the white wash. The South wanted to break free of the North for the same reason the British colonists in the Americas revolted against Britaian. Unfair trade restrictions and economic exploitation. The difference is that the South lost the war and thus Northern propaganda has made it's way into the history books.

[Negs]

I'm rather amused whenever people say Slavery ended for moral reasons. Slavery and the Moral objection to it has been around since the first person was enslaved. Moral Objections was the excuse not the reason for liberation of the slaves in the US. The Emancipation Proclomation was a weapon used to try and disrupt the Souths economy. If the North had been as dependant on slave labour we'd still have slaves today. So why did the North move away from slavery? A slave is generally the very picture of a disgruntled employee. The worst kind of disgruntled. So it doesn't make economic sense to use slaves in a factory.
The liberation of the slaves is an accident of circumstance. To mistake it for a purposeful attempt to take the moral high ground is to draw the wrong conclusions from events. Basically your buying the white wash. The South wanted to break free of the North for the same reason the British colonists in the Americas revolted against Britaian. Unfair trade restrictions and economic exploitation. The difference is that the South lost the war and thus Northern propaganda has made it's way into the history books.

Ya know what, most of the times I don't agree with you ... but with this you hit the nail right on the head.

[ivanelme]

The reasons for the American Civil War were as much economical as they were political. The moral objection to slavery was evident well before the Civil War even started. England and Mexico had abolished it well before America did. You can't say moral objections didn't play a role in getting rid of that whole system, it played a major role. The Civil War became nothing more then a medium to abolish slavery about half way through it.

And how could the The Emancipation Proclamation be used as a tool to disrupt the Southern economy? It took no effect until the North occuipied the state. Not to mention states already under Union control, or those that never seceded weren't even subject to it. At best the Emancipation Proclamation became a tool used to keep England from siding with the Southern states; and it kept them from siding based on moral objections. England didn't want to support a rebellion that used slaves as their main labor force. Hell slavery of the South kept England from formally declaring any support for the Southern rebels. By the time of the Emancipation Proclamation the Southern economy was already in ruins due to the complete destruction of all infastructure the South had created due to the newly aquired tatic of total war.

[Boinky]

As a Historian/Archeologist finding your tomb with the text entitled "My Life in It's Entirety - please don't dig up my grave" I'll understand nobody can be trusted to give an accurate, honest depiction of everything about them so I'll keep the book and dig up your remains anyway.

[Fishi3]

I'm fighting a war. My enemy uses slaves. My side largely doesn't. I write a proclomation declaring the slaves of my enemy free with the expectation that his slaves will abandon him enmass and flee to my lands where they can become soldiers or laborers for my cause.

That the proclomation didn't cause slaves to flee enmass doesn't change it's intent.

[ivanelme]

but then intent wasn't a tool against the south's economy. as i said, it was already in shambles by the time the thing was created. the anaconda plan was already in full effect, southern factories and railroads were pretty much destroied. the tool was completly moral, as if a "hey look at us, we want to free these people, the south doesn't. if you fight with them you are totally immoral." economics weren't even an issue at that point, it was more of a question of how much longer would the war last.