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Post by Jim Boylston on May 9, 2009 10:36:35 GMT -5
Gary, to this I can add a resounding AMEN. In researching our forthcoming Crockett political biography, Allen and I were astonished at how often primary and contemporary secondary sources were edited, misquoted, gilded, and flat out misrepresented by people trying to forward some agenda. Tom Lindley once cautioned me to trust no interpreter, even him, when researching. It has proven to be excellent advice. Jim
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Post by stuart on May 9, 2009 13:46:15 GMT -5
Absolutely
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Post by Kevin Young on May 9, 2009 15:16:08 GMT -5
Gary, to this I can add a resounding AMEN. In researching our forthcoming Crockett political biography, Allen and I were astonished at how often primary and contemporary secondary sources were edited, misquoted, gilded, and flat out misrepresented by people trying to forward some agenda. Tom Lindley once cautioned me to trust no interpreter, even him, when researching. It has proven to be excellent advice. Jim Both of you summed it up!
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Post by marklemon on May 9, 2009 17:31:16 GMT -5
"So if someone asks, don't you trust IMPLICITLY the historians and researchers who came before me? All I can say is, "Are you kidding?" '
Exxxactly.......!
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Post by stuart on May 10, 2009 0:36:00 GMT -5
But sometimes, perhaps usually, its just a misplaced desire to be helpful. About 20 years ago a historian of some reputation in the political and social field ventured into military history and finding a reference to Highlanders discarding their fusees after firing a single volley, rather sententiously declared that this was because matchlock muskets (fired with lengths of slowmatch or in laymans terms a slow fuse) were notoriously slow and awkward to reload. What he, poor man, failed to realise was that a fusee was actually the correct/original pronounciation of fusil - in those days a very up-to-date firelock/flintlock musket.
In other words it was a well-intentioned but completely erroneous reading of an original text which he ought to have left alone.
Slightly off-topic perhaps, but this kind of thing happens all the time without resort to any kind of agenda and that's why I'm so wary of the high likelihood that Torrea's reference to a blue flag may actually be a "helpful" interpolation
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Post by Kevin Young on May 10, 2009 8:25:52 GMT -5
Stuart-That is an extermly good point. My experience with Mexican historians--and in particular-Mexican military historians is that they are not detailed driven no do they really have an interest in material culture. The newer generation of historian is developing different than the old so we might see some changes. Most of their history is political and socially driven. There is some real exciting new research coming out of the academic circles in Mexico: I read an excellent new look at the story of the Ninos that has come out....
At a conference on the Mexican War held in Arlington, the Mexican Government sent up their offical military historian, a retired general officer, who I also believe was working with the PBS folks. He was suppose to be their big authority on the Mexican Army. He was a very nice fellow, but his talk turned out to be large block quotes taken right out of Hefter (I actually have a copy of the speech that I was asked to review for one of the foundations that sponsered the event). I do not think he was puposely doing anything bad, but rather reflecting the degree of research that was exceptable to his circle....
I sometimes wonder how much "in the files and archives" work Lamego did...any faults of his work I note by the way should not be taken as a lack of resepect for his attempts at getting the information out there....as to the flag information I have to agree with Stuart that Torrea's work is still a secondary source.
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Post by marklemon on May 10, 2009 9:22:21 GMT -5
I sometimes wonder how much "in the files and archives" work Lamego did...any faults of his work I note by the way should not be taken as a lack of resepect for his attempts at getting the information out there....as to the flag information I have to agree with Stuart that Torrea's work is still a secondary source. I don't doubt that what you say is true especially concerning Lamego, as his work seems, when examined, to be derivative of some of Torrea's much earlier data. But that being said, what we are left with is Torrea's work from the 1930's, as not a primary source, but rather a secondary source, which makes it currently the "best evidence." Personally, I wouldn't presume to just assume that Torrea was lazy, sat there and concocted a story about the blue flag that was "in front of him." There is undeniably the possibility that he may have just gotten his facts right. FACT is, we don't know and it's no more sound to say he was playing fast and loose, of just lazy, with the facts as it is to say he got it right. Comes down to a 50-50 thing doesn't it? And right now, that's the best we have.
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Post by Allen Wiener on May 10, 2009 10:58:11 GMT -5
In researching our forthcoming Crockett political biography, Allen and I were astonished at how often primary and contemporary secondary sources were edited, misquoted, gilded, and flat out misrepresented by people trying to forward some agenda. Tom Lindley once cautioned me to trust no interpreter, even him, when researching. It has proven to be excellent advice. Jim We found documents that no one else has ever mentioned, which is par for the course, given current technology that enables a researcher to find more of them these days. However, it became clear that some crucial sources that were available years ago were deliberately ignored if they contradicted a pet theory, agenda, or a conclusion-driven work. There is also a pattern of laziness on the part of some authors, who simply parrot the results of earlier works, flawed or not, as if they were gospel, rather than re-examining the evidence and drawing their own conclussions. AW
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Post by garyzaboly on May 10, 2009 13:08:50 GMT -5
Stuart-That is an extermly good point. My experience with Mexican historians--and in particular-Mexican military historians is that they are not detailed driven no do they really have an interest in material culture. The newer generation of historian is developing different than the old so we might see some changes. Most of their history is political and socially driven. There is some real exciting new research coming out of the academic circles in Mexico: I read an excellent new look at the story of the Ninos that has come out.... At a conference on the Mexican War held in Arlington, the Mexican Government sent up their offical military historian, a retired general officer, who I also believe was working with the PBS folks. He was suppose to be their big authority on the Mexican Army. He was a very nice fellow, but his talk turned out to be large block quotes taken right out of Hefter (I actually have a copy of the speech that I was asked to review for one of the foundations that sponsered the event). I do not think he was puposely doing anything bad, but rather reflecting the degree of research that was exceptable to his circle.... I sometimes wonder how much "in the files and archives" work Lamego did...any faults of his work I note by the way should not be taken as a lack of resepect for his attempts at getting the information out there....as to the flag information I have to agree with Stuart that Torrea's work is still a secondary source. Another problem concerning flags, and the rest of the history, is that much research HAS been done, but it often never gets published. Along this line, and speaking of Joseph Hefter, back in 1993 Colonel John R. Elting answered my questions regarding Hefter's fate, my interest then being in trying to track down the latter's notes: "His 'estate' papers, etc. remains an upsetting puzzle. Joe had befriended a fellow Austrian---female and (from the few available descriptions) rather cracked. Seems not to have been any sexual hook-up; he was lonely and sicker than we realized and probably wanted company. He reportedly had a stroke and fell down an outside stairs onto a concrete area. First American to get to him found him conscious, but unable to talk, and female grabbing all his property. She had a boyfriend, and apparently threw out all of Joe's archives to make room so said boyfriend could move in with her. Being a health/ecology freak, she wasn't interested in all that (much of it irreplaceable) material! Since then, have heard one rumor that some of it might have been recovered, but nothing has come out of the bushes to prove that. Must be a sort of a private hell to know you were dying in a foreign place, alone amid foreign faces and the gabble of foreign speech, with nobody to look after the survival of your life's work." I wonder if the notes taken by the other researchers in Mexico, from Torrea to Lamego and others, are still held by THOSE families. If so, it would surely be an easier task to try to get a peek at them rather than to keep buffeting against the closed doors of the Mexican archives.
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Post by Kevin Young on May 10, 2009 18:22:22 GMT -5
I would also not presume to call Torrea lazy...it would just be nice to where the research came from...and you are right, it is the best we have, but remains a secondary source.
There was a Texas professor who used to give a pretty stable talk on the financing of the Texas Revolution. He would always mention how the ladies of one town raised money and made roundabouts for the cause. Now, he had been giving this talk for years--and at one conference he joking added that he didn't know what a roundabout was, but these ladies did make some.
You would figure he would have looked up what a roundabout was: but to him, the material culture was not as important as was the general information.
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Post by garyzaboly on Feb 2, 2010 15:44:18 GMT -5
I wonder what the original SPANISH version of de la Pena reads concerning Lt. Torres' supposed "taking" of a garrison flag. Another version, Mexican as well, simply says he PLANTED a flag. No mention of him capturing one. What is the supposed unimpeachable source of the "taking a flag" episode? Any chance of its having been mistranslated, as so many Mexican accounts have been?
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Post by sloanrodgers on Feb 7, 2010 17:51:09 GMT -5
Those are good questions, but I don't have the answers. Perhaps some researchers just assumed that this officer replaced a Texican flag with a Mexican one without any actual evidence.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 7, 2010 20:36:07 GMT -5
I wonder what the original SPANISH version of de la Pena reads concerning Lt. Torres' supposed "taking" of a garrison flag. Another version, Mexican as well, simply says he PLANTED a flag. No mention of him capturing one. What is the supposed unimpeachable source of the "taking a flag" episode? Any chance of its having been mistranslated, as so many Mexican accounts have been? Gary, I'm no expert on this material, but it seems that what we need is good translation of the Mexican documents re: the Alamo and surrounding events. Such translations must include both the original Spanish-language version as well as the translation. Otherwise, researchers cannot be certain about the accuracy of the translation. For example, in the "crucial" section of DLP dealing with Crockett, Carmen Perry uses Crockett's name twice, whereas the original only includes his name once. Allen
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Post by Kevin Young on Feb 8, 2010 10:55:25 GMT -5
I wonder what the original SPANISH version of de la Pena reads concerning Lt. Torres' supposed "taking" of a garrison flag. Another version, Mexican as well, simply says he PLANTED a flag. No mention of him capturing one. What is the supposed unimpeachable source of the "taking a flag" episode? Any chance of its having been mistranslated, as so many Mexican accounts have been? Gary, I'm no expert on this material, but it seems that what we need is good translation of the Mexican documents re: the Alamo and surrounding events. Such translations must include both the original Spanish-language version as well as the translation. Otherwise, researchers cannot be certain about the accuracy of the translation. For example, in the "crucial" section of DLP dealing with Crockett, Carmen Perry uses Crockett's name twice, whereas the original only includes his name once. Allen Amen!
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Post by TRK on Feb 8, 2010 11:21:56 GMT -5
Such translations must include both the original Spanish-language version as well as the translation. Otherwise, researchers cannot be certain about the accuracy of the translation. I second that motion.
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