New Book

[Hercule Poirot]

Both guilt and innocence huh? I don't know how that works. But you have missed the point. All I am saying is that whatever verdict or verdicts a historian comes to has to be based on the evidence. It has to be. Otherwise it is no more than fantasy or religious faith or pure baloney. That evidence, relied on by a historian, is no different to the evidence that would be produced in a court and the arguments about that evidence would be the same. It seems to me that what you are really saying is you don't have the evidence and feel it is unfair to be asked to produce it.

I think you miss the point. What Jonathan seems to be saying is that even if evidence used by historians and in courts may be the same (physical evidence, testimonies, documents, etc.), the interpretation standards in a court are much more restrictive than those historians rely upon. What may be considered as a valid conclusion made by a historian could often be considered pure speculation in a court and either be non admissable or resulting in specific instructions given to a jury by a judge to ignore such evidence.

Respectfully yours,

Hercule Poirot

[Phil Carter]

Really. I never thought I'd have to bring THIS correction to this place.
David..you are quite wrong and only very partially correct in how WW1 started. Sorry.
Here we go. Lesson No.1.

The immediate cause of WW1 was when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, together with his pregnant wife, Sophie, were assassinated by a Bosnian revolutionary called Gavrilo Princip. He was a member of a Serbian terrorist group called The Black Hand. This triggered off WW1. Why?

Well...Franz Ferdinand was nephew of and heir to Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and Hungary.

Before the assassination, politics in Europe were being brought to a boil by various treaties and alliances between countries. Written into those treaties was the fact that if one country declared war on another, the other alliance countries would have to enter the fray.
Britain and Ireland, France and Russia had an alliance. Called the Triple Entente. Germany had an alliance with Austria and Hungary, known as the Central powers

Now, after the assassination, Austria-Hungary THREATENED to declare war on Serbia. They laid down some extremely tough demands in doing so.
Germany sided with Austria-Hungary. Russia sided with Serbia. After exactly 1 month after the assassination, on 28th July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia... With the backing of Germany. Germany then declared war on Russia 3 days later on August 1st, and on France on August 3rd. Germany invaded France through Belgium. Belgium were neutral, and Britain had agreed to uphold their neutrality. So they declared war on Germany.

So David. .that is how it started only for Britain's sake did the war "start" with one country invading another. (Belgium)
Germany did not invade Britain. Nor Ireland. .but France...through neutral Belgium.

The start however..had nothing to do with invasions. It had to do with an assassination or two.

That is factual history..not courtroom argument.
No semantics. No courtroom huff and bluff.

Phil

[Jonathan H]

P. S. Ii

And this:

By the way, "shadows" and "footprints" are the surviving documents and other artefacts. What we do not have anymore, brace yourself, are the people of the past -- because they are dead.

[Jonathan H]

P. S.

When you crudely dismembered my post you left this bit out:

First of all I am not a historian, serious or otherwise, as I am not an academic; accredited at a college or university who has been peer reviewed - and do not claim to be one.

I make it perfectly clear to the reader that this is the opinion of an high school history teacher attempting to use historical methodology.

If you think I have used such methodology poorly, I have no problem with such an opinion. I have no problem with dissent. In fact I teach it and encourage it.

If you think the book is rubbish, then you have every right to that opinion and to express that opinion.

But to say I claim to be an historian is unfair and inaccurate, and setting up the worst kind of 'straw man' argument.

[Jonathan H]

Actually no, Osrom, that "one country invaded another" is an argument not evidence -- that is. not evidence by your doctrinal standards of what constitutes historical evidence.

Except there is no such thing, is there? Only evidence that you could produce in a courtroom.

Was Napoleon the first draft of Hitler ot the last gasp of enlightened atocracy? Historians have it one way, and both ways.

That won't do, will it. Why don't we start burning such books as they are obviously heretical?

Actually the Great War started because Russa began mobilization; it had not invaded anybody -- yet. But this was enough for Germany to invade France.

Who is to blame the Czar or the Kaiser, or both, or neither?

What I have just written above is entirely disputred by whole schools of hisotrians. It is a very, very complex knot to untangle.

But not for you, where everything is simple and straight-forward.

Well I'm off now because, you know me Mr Barrett, I'm a despicable coward with no evidence.

[David Orsam]

And you did not answer my question about the origins of the Great War. You glide past it, as if it fits your view of the world as a giant courtroom. It doesn't, so I will try a different example.

I didn't 'glide past' your question. I told you that the evidence to answer it would be the same as evidence in a court room.

But if you press me with the question: 'why did the first world war start?' That is easy. One country invaded another country.

[David Orsam]

You referred to a courtroom, and lawyers and a jury, because that is your world presumably, and again the analogy is fallacious. Our court system is adversarial and juries have to judge guilt or innocence (and are hardly infallible). Whereas historians, and amateurs trying to use such methods, can entertain multiple 'verdicts', both guilt and innocence, or an open verdict, or a probable yet provisional one --as I do.

Both guilt and innocence huh? I don't know how that works. But you have missed the point. All I am saying is that whatever verdict or verdicts a historian comes to has to be based on the evidence. It has to be. Otherwise it is no more than fantasy or religious faith or pure baloney. That evidence, relied on by a historian, is no different to the evidence that would be produced in a court and the arguments about that evidence would be the same. It seems to me that what you are really saying is you don't have the evidence and feel it is unfair to be asked to produce it.

[David Orsam]

I did provide evidence for my position that Andrews was investigating Tumblety, promptly and in detail.

As I said to you at the time:

'I asked you to list your evidence and you have changed it to "evidence/argument". Argument is precisely what I don't want and it is why I specifically asked for short numbered bullet points. I know that you have loads of argument. I am trying to establish what your evidence is. I'm saying there is none but feel free to demonstrate that I am wrong by listing it.'

Your next post in response, which was your last in the thread, did not provide any evidence but, instead, you said you were not going to continue discussing the subject with me.

[David Orsam]

If you think the book is rubbish, then you have every right to that opinion and to express that opinion.

I am not saying your book is rubbish at all Jonathan and I fail to see where I have said anything even remotely approaching this. I have quoted one sentence which I believe is a travesty and does not conform to proper historical methodology.

I am currently in the middle of reading your book so cannot fairly comment on it at present.

[Jonathan H]

I didn't expect you to understand, and you haven't.

I wrote that rebuttal for other readers.

First of all I am not a historian, serious or otherwise, as I am not an academic; accredited at a college or university who has been peer reviewed - and do not claim to be one.

I make it perfectly clear to the reader that this is the opinion of an high school history teacher attempting to use historical methodology.

If you think I have used such methodology poorly, I have no problem with such an opinion. I have no problem with dissent. In fact I teach it and encourage it.

If you think the book is rubbish, then you have every right to that opinion and to express that opinion.

But to say I claim to be an historian is unfair and inaccurate, and setting up the worst kind of 'straw man' argument.

And like all doctrinaire, closed minds you get personal real quick.

According to you I got upset and ran away from the Andrews debate. What an intellectual coward I must be, when up against the Awesome Orsom.

And like all closed minds you cannot see what is in front of you.

I did provide evidence for my position that Andrews was investigating Tumblety, promptly and in detail.

Now you are perfectly within your rights to dispute the veracity of that evidence, or my interpretation of the meagre primary sources.

But to just say I did not do this--well, you're blinder than I am.

Upset?

Not true then and not true now. I welcome debate. I accepted your differing interpretation about Andrews as a very well written revisionist series, until I discovered that you cannot cope with dissent.

What I object to, and find tiresome, is people who are temperamentally unable at the end of a debate to agree to disagree. Who believe that there can be only one correct opinion allowed to be aired -- theirs.

Two of my closest friends in this Ripper-world do not agree with my interpretation and nor do I agree with theirs. But I respect their opinion because, it too is based on ambiguous and contradictory fragments.

But they might be right and I might be wrong. I don't think so, but I am just a single person trying to make sense of a puzzle (fortunately I have a researcher who is much cannier than I am).

By the way, "shadows" and "footprints" are the surviving documents and other artefacts. What we do not have anymore, brace yourself, are the people of the past -- because they are dead.

You referred to a courtroom, and lawyers and a jury, because that is your world presumably, and again the analogy is fallacious. Our court system is adversarial and juries have to judge guilt or innocence (and are hardly infallible). Whereas historians, and amateurs trying to use such methods, can entertain multiple 'verdicts', both guilt and innocence, or an open verdict, or a probable yet provisional one --as I do.

And you did not answer my question about the origins of the Great War. You glide past it, as if it fits your view of the world as a giant courtroom. It doesn't, so I will try a different example.

Try reading excellent works on this subject like Paul Begg's "The Facts" or "Scotland Yard Investigates" by Evans and Rumbelow. Both take on Anderson's suspect, and the reliability of that police chief as a primary source, and come to entirely opposed [provisional] conclusions. That does not lessen either work or cancel them out.

I am not going to continually defend myself here, Mr Barrett, as my book is my defence about which I am proud to say I did the best I was able.

Could an historian have done a better job?

Oh undoubtedly.

But it fell to me to tell Macnaghten's and Sims' Ripper story as I understand it, or it would not be told at all. On the balance of probabilities I think it is what happened. Druitt's absolute guilt, however, can never be known by us as it was to them.

[David Orsam]

It is the reason so many secondary sources, e.g. historians, disagree, sometimes diametrically, over the interpretation of what happened in the past, and particularly why it happened. Disagree, that is, over the same topics and the same primary sources.

For example, why did the First World War start just over a hundred years ago?

This looks at the issue in completely the wrong way. As if disagreement means that nothing can be established.

In a courtroom, the parties disagree. The prosecution or the claimant says one thing and the defence says another. Then it is for a judge or jury to decide which are the best arguments based on the evidence. The reader of a book on history is the judge or jury. My point is that the evidence is the same, the arguments are the same, in or out of a court room. They can be strong, they can be weak. That applies exactly the same to the reasons for the outbreak of the First World War as anything else.

[David Orsam]

It shows a lack of understanding that the past is lost to us, unlike perhaps a contemporaneous murder case; that what we are left with are shadows and footprints, not the things that made them -- depending on how far back you are going.

I find that sentence extraordinary. We are not left with 'shadows' or 'footprints' from the nineteenth century. We have documents.

[David Orsam]

I saw this with your pieces about Inspector Andrews, when you turned doctrinaire. That only one interpretation -- yours -- was possible, or could be allowed to stand.

Jonathan, I never said this or anything similar either in my Suckered! Trilogy or subsequent internet posts. What happened in the discussion thread is that I asked you to provide some evidence that Inspector Andrews went to Canada to do anything relating to Tumblety and you failed to do so, appeared to get upset and ran away from the thread. I didn't turn 'doctrinaire' at all, I simply asked for some evidence which would contradict what I was saying.

That being so, to find unqualified references in your book to 'the now-lost report on Dr Francis Tumblety by Walter Andrews, the inspector who had done a background check on this suspect when visiting Canada a few months before' in circumstances (whether you wrote that sentence before or after my Suckered! Trilogy) where you were fully aware that the reason(s) for Andrews' visit to Canada was disputed, and that there is no evidence for such a report, is very disappointing and, I am sorry to say, not what I would expect from a serious historian.

[Jonathan H]

You couldn't be more wrong.

I saw this with your pieces about Inspector Andrews, when you turned doctrinaire. That only one interpretation -- yours -- was possible, or could be allowed to stand.

It shows a lack of understanding that the past is lost to us, unlike perhaps a contemporaneous murder case; that what we are left with are shadows and footprints, not the things that made them -- depending on how far back you are going.

It is the reason so many secondary sources, e.g. historians, disagree, sometimes diametrically, over the interpretation of what happened in the past, and particularly why it happened. Disagree, that is, over the same topics and the same primary sources.

For example, why did the First World War start just over a hundred years ago?

[David Orsam]

But these, I keep repeating, are historical arguments, not ones for a courtroom or a police room.

I read this type of thing quite a lot on the forum and can't help thinking it is based on a misconception. Evidence is evidence. Arguments are arguments. They are either strong or weak. Compelling or ridiculous. This is the case inside a courtroom or outside it. History is what happened, not what a historian likes to think happened. There may be different rules of evidence in a courtroom and differing standards of proof but there should be no difference between the standard of arguments of history and the standard of arguments in a courtroom. They both need to make sense and be supported by the facts, without undue speculation. Otherwise the historian is potentially not writing history but historical fiction.