Here’s my essay on Historiography… what do you think?
Question by Glen C: Here’s my essay on Historiography… what do you think?
Glen Castleberry
December 2, 2008
English 133TL
Historiography Hinders “True-History”
Historiography studies the processes by which knowledge is received and transmitted. Historiography also examines the writing of histories and the use of historical methods by which such histories are recorded. The chief question question of historiography concerns the reliability of the narrator in historical texts, bringing scrutiny to authorship, sourcing, interpretation, misunderstandings, cultural biases, and personal agendas. Thus, recorded historical events, more specifically the histories of “transpacific space”, are subject to multiple contested versions. Jack London’s Koolau the Leper and Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii are good examples of how historiography can alter the way the history is remembered. Captain Cook was distinguished as an explorer, navigator, cartographer, and ultimately rose to the rank of Captain of the British Royal Navy, there is no contest to this as it is universally recorded and accepted; but Twain’s account of Cook’s voyage to the “sandwich islands” inaccurately portrays him as a sacrilegious man who exploited both the native Hawaiians and his deification by them. Similarly, Koolau, born in Kekaha, Kaua‘i in 1862, “was a cowboy, trainer of horses, expert marksman”and a dutiful father/husband who later contracted leprosy(Chapin). Hawaiian culture highly regards Koolau as a hero, one of the last lepers who was able to outrun Hawaiian missionaries at the time. In a good example of how historiography can skew history, Jack London’s portrayal of Koolau’s elevation to a heroic figure was only made possible because of his misunderstanding of Molokai.
Mark Twain could not have possibly undermined his own credibility as a reliable narrator any more efficiently than his opening line of The Story of Captain Cook: “Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook’s assassination”(CR 21). In a move where Twain will prove to contradict most of his proceeding story, he remarks that Captain Cook’s life and death on the island was in no way romanticized; Yet he inflates his 3-page story of Captain Cook with 1.5 pages of the native Hawaiian’s idolatrous worship, a detail which is exaggerated out of proportion in order to antagonize Captain Cook. When read, Twain’s account introduces Captain Cook to the natives as “their chiefest god…Lono”, whose “coming was announced in a loud voice by heralds”(CR22). It just so happens that “Cook’s arrival to Kealekekua bay coincided with the Makahiki, a Hawaiian harvest festival of worship for the Polynesian god Lono” making it plausible that he was mistook for the incarnation of Lono(Obeyesekere,127). It is important to note that Cook and his men stayed on the island a full month, in order to repair Cook’s ship, the Resolution; and after repairs were finished and the crew left the island, storms snapped the ship’s foremast and it had to return to Kealakekua bay once again for repairs. Twain remarks that during the crew’s second stay at the island, Cook attempted to “purchase for fuel the railing which surrounded the top of the temple of Lono”(CR 23). The thought of destroying a sacred temple in order to use its building materials for fuel, instead of utilizing the verdant island’s natural recurring fuel, such as trees and shrubs, is simply ludicrous; however it does make sense to use a straight, quality-piece of lumber, such as the railing of the natives’ temple, to repair a foremast. Furthermore this so-called “sacrilegious proposition”, as dubbed by Mark Twain, is hardly sacrilegious if it will ensure the safety of their god at sea. It is at this time when the islanders began to become hostile and tensions between the sailors and natives increased. Marshall Sahlins, a prominent American anthropologist, argues that the return to the islands by Cook’s expedition was not just unexpected by the Hawaiians but unwelcome because the season of Lono—which is synonymous with ‘peace’-had ended, and the season of war—dedicated to the worship of the god Ku-had just begun(39); this reason could have certainly fostered more resentment and aggression towards Cook and his crew during their 2nd arrival to the island. Though there is record of celebration of Cook’s re-arrival after Makahiki, in the journal of David Samwell, a Welsh naval surgeon and poet aboard Cook’s ship, there is however no mention of any worship or prostration by any of the natives at this time: “The ships were put under a taboo on account of Kariopoo(brother to the first chief) paying his first visit to day, who arrived here & brought several Presents for Captain Cook” (Samwell, Feb12th). According to Samwell’s journal, and corroborated by Twain’s Letters, two days later Cook sought to meet with the island’s king, Kalaniopu’u, regarding a Cutter boat which Cook’s sailors had observed being stolen by an islander; both Samwell and Twain record that Cook’s plan was to keep th
Best answer:
Answer by dedhead
Well written, very nice. Re-read it again, however, as you have a couple of repeated words and misspellings. Also, watch your tenses. For example: Mark Twain is dead, therefore your verbs and tenses should be steady with that. (was or were instead of is and he wrote instead of writes, etc. When writing any paper on history is it always safe to use the past tense and if you should falter on that, always keep the tenses the same per paragraph when possible) And lastly, from my experience as a history teacher, it is not really correct to write the word ‘histories,’ as there is only one history, however, different for places and people. Thereby, I would change the sentence ‘writing of histories’ to ‘writings of history.’
Good luck, and good essay!
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