Heroes and Villains: A Historian's Check-List

Abstract

(London: Vintage, 2006), p.153 4 Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, p.484. The story is by no means all bad. In 2010, Belfast solicitor Alastair Rankin visited Gujarat, where he was warmly welcomed by the members of the Church of North India - a union of various Anglican and Protestant churches, one of which had been founded by his great-great-grandfather in 1840. 5 Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, pp.58–59. 6 Thomas Keneally, Three Famines: Starvation and Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2011). 7 Enda Delaney, The Curse of Reason: The Great Irish Famine (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2012), p.85. 8 Terry Golway, Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America’s Fight for Ireland’s Freedom (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998), p.25. 9 Golway, Irish Rebel, p.33. 10 Peter FitzSimons, The Catalpa Rescue: The Gripping Story of the Most Successful Prison Break in Australian History (London: Hachette, 2019), xxxv. 11 FitzSimons, The Catalpa Rescue, p.350. 12 FitzSimons, The Catalpa Rescue, p.353. 13 Golway, Irish Rebel, p.313. 14 S J Connolly (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.190. 15 J Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA (Abingdon: Transaction Publishers, revised 3rd ed., 2017), p.648. 16 See John Marshal, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.58. 17 Connolly, Oxford Companion, p.140. 18 Connolly, Oxford Companion, p.568. 19 Christopher Hibbert, Wellington, A Personal History (London: Da Capo Press, 1997), p.61. 20 Hibbert, Wellington, pp.268–272. 21 Patrick M Geoghegan, Liberator: The Life and Death of Daniel O’Connell 18301847 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2012), p.137. 22 ibid., p.141. 23 Irish Government, ‘Proclamation of Independence’, https://www.gov.ie/en/ publication/bfa965-proclamation-of-independence/. 24 American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and beyond, ‘Act of Abjuration’, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/before-1600/plakkaat-vanverlatinghe -1581-july-26.php. 25 National Archives, ‘Declaration of Indepedence’, https://www.archives.gov/ founding-docs/declaration-transcript. 26 Constitution of India Project, ‘Purna Swaraj’, https://www.constitutionofindia. net/historical_constitutions/declaration_of_purna_swaraj__indian_national_ congress__1930__26th%20January%201930. 27 The Selected Works of Ho Chi Minh (New York, 2011), pp.85–87. There is no reference to Marxism in this speech by Ho Chi Minh, although the American Declaration and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen are both honoured. 28 nidirect, ‘Historical Topics Series Information Leaflet 5: Solemn League and Convenant’, https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/publications/historical-topics-seriesinformation -leaflet-5-ulsters-solemn-league-and-covenant. Studies • volume 109 • number 435 284 Edmond Grace SJ Heroes and Villains: A Historian’s Check-List Felix M Larkin Historians like me are trained to think about significant figures from the past not as heroes or villains, but in a more nuanced way. We must acknowledge that the people we study were real human beings, just like us – flesh and blood, each a mixture of the good and the not-so-good, each with talents and shortcomings, each with failures as well as achievements. Historians should not enlarge or diminish them beyond what they were in life. We seek to understand them and explain their actions, not to celebrate or condemn them. We aim to get ‘the best obtainable version of the truth’, to quote Woodward and Bernstein.1 Nevertheless, historians too are human – with their values, and their simple or not-so-simple likes and dislikes. It is inevitable that we will have strong views about some of those that we study – and while we must try to disregard our prejudices in our work, it is rarely possible to do so completely. In this article, I will consider the four people from the past that I admire the most and the one that I abhor above all others – and why. John F Kennedy The first of my heroes – and the one of longest standing – is John F Kennedy, 35th president of the United States. I was twelve when JFK was assassinated in 1963 – and that event prompted me, at that early age, to begin reading about Kennedy, and about the US presidency andAmerican history generally. It was...