National Narratives and Reenacting the Past

    Today in public history class, my classmates and I discussed the topic of historical reenactment. In the United States and Canada, a lot of historical reenactment is focused on the military, portraying battles from specific wars in their history. In my view, this focus on military history, part of a broader trend in popular history, reflects these countries' national historical narratives. Most if not all countries have national historical narratives, stories about the past that are meant to strengthen their national identity. These stories are inherently problematic in that they generally sanitize a country’s history and present at best overly simplistic narratives of the past. In the United States, the country claiming its independence from Britain through victory in the Revolutionary War is part of this national narrative and is a popular subject for reenactment. Sometimes the connection between national identity, politics and historical reenactment is made explicit. A video from the CBC about a War of 1812 reenactment made explicit references to contemporary political conflicts between the United States and Canada, connecting them to the earlier conflict centuries before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLa0mUWAiVk

    National narratives also bleed into the costumed interpretation found at historic sites such as Colonial Williamsburg. In that case, costumed historical interpreters and reconstructed historical sites represent the years just before the American Revolution. The history of the revolution is directly included in the programming and history taught at Colonial Williamsburg. There are even interpreters portraying figures such as George Washington. National heroes such as Washington are a common feature of national narratives.

    In other historic sites without direct connection to principal national narratives such as wars for independence, they can still risk hewing to the domestic or social history side of national history narratives. They may reinforce nostalgic depictions of the “olden days”, which can still be part of national narratives, which may include ideas about how the people in the past lived in their everyday lives. Interpreters may demonstrate handicrafts such as spinning and weaving, reflecting the preindustrial nature of this nostalgic past. Sometimes this ignores the reality of historical manufacturing networks, even before the industrial revolution. Notably, the portrayal of spinning and weaving as part of everyday life in Colonial America ignores the reality that many colonists in what is now the United States purchased their fabric from abroad, mainly Britain, which had a large scale textile industry even before the industrial revolution. In Colonial America, spinning and weaving one's own fabric was often a political statement as part of boycotts of British goods, not a regular part of society.

    National narratives can be pervasive in historical reenactment and interpretation. However, plenty of those who manage and interpret historic sites are aware of the importance of sharing more accurate and nuanced history and I think they do try to challenge national narratives in their teaching of history, whether by representing the history of people and groups previously marginalized (in society and in the historical record) or simply explaining to visitors the reality women in Colonial America generally did not spin and weave all of their own fabric.