Should we judge historical figures by the morality of today?

7th June 2020 was not an ordinary Sunday in Bristol, UK. A group of people consisting mostly of anti-racism protestors pulled down a statue of Edward Colston, rolled it down one of the principal city throughways, Anchor Road, and pushed it into Bristol Harbour during a series of emotional protests in connection with the Murder of George Floyd in the USA. The name of Colston Hall was then a short time afterwards in this cauldron of emotion changed to Bristol Beacon. ‘Presentism’ is a view of history that tends to make moral judgments based on seeing issues that happened in the past through the moral prism of the present. Professional historians at leading universities as part of their research methodology traditionally have been careful to restrict themselves to describing what happened and attempt to refrain from using language that passes judgment on people’s actions in a particular era in the past far removed from their own. For instance, when writing history about slavery in an era when it was widely accepted as a normal thing, there has been a tendency that we need to look at events from the perspective of the people of that time; letting our own contemporary, ‘superior’ values or attitudes influence judgment about a group or individual would be considered as ‘presentism’ and therefore should be avoided. The passionate actions emanating from Black Lives Matter in which pictures and statues have been defaced or even removed because of their subjects’ oppression of disadvantaged groups have driven historians, sociologists, activists, and politicians to pose a crucial question: “Should we judge those from the past by the standards of today?” and whether is it true to ban statues or monuments or art created in honor of those who contributed a great deal to the economic and cultural life of the cities involved also acted in a way that would by today’s standards be deemed racist.

Edward Colston was a member of the Royal African Company, which had held the monopoly in England for trade along the west coast of Africa in gold, silver, ivory, and slaves. Around the reign of King Charles II, many people from the elite class of the society including such ‘enlightened’ figures as the philosopher and physician John Locke (later drawn back because of outweighing personal values) invested in the establishment of the Royal African Company. Many of the most prominent figures in these colonizing companies invested much of the wealth they gained from their endeavors in cities back in the ‘Mother Country’. The reason why there is an Edward Colston monument exists is the huge positive impact and benefit on the city of Bristol derived from the actions of the figure for whom such a prominent statue was erected. Colston invested in the social and cultural infrastructure of the city; he founded alms-houses for the poor, endowed Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital school, and helped found Colston’s Hospital (a boarding school which opened in 1710), gave money to schools in Temple and other parts of Bristol, and several churches and the cathedral. Even a friend of him quotes that “When friends urged him to marry, his response was apparently to say that ‘every helpless widow is my wife and her distressed orphans, my children.’” After the death of Edward Colston, The Colston Society operated for 275 years until its closure in 2020. Another example of this colonizing benefactor who strove for riches in far-off lands while helping those back home is of Cecil Rhodes whose statue took “pride of place” in the center of the British intellectual capital of Oxford and which later had parts broken off during ‘anti-racist’ protests organized to remove all references to Rhodes in the university. One interesting fact was this: One of the protestors of Cecil Rhodes – former prime minister of cape colony in the late 1800s, founder of British South Africa Company, conqueror of Southern African Territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia) – was studying in Oxford thanks to receiving funding from a Rhodes Scholarship. In both cases, people are not reacting to the existence of these statues for hundreds of years and after a certain event in the 21st century, protestors come and destroy their symbolic impact on society and criticize their actions in the past by today’s standards. In the Edward Colston case for instance, at his time in the late 17th century, people did not find his involvement in Royal African Company evil, hence, they thanked and even honored him with his benefit to the city with the money that was earned largest from slave trading. So, the key question is this: “Is it a legitimate point of view to criticize people’s actions that happened in the past by employing today’s moral values?”.

All societies have ethical and moral values, and these values are constantly changing throughout the history of humanity. The writer of “The End of History” book famous philosopher Fushiyama claimed that: Protests, queues, social campaigns, will continue to occur in the present and future. However, society will move to a more democratic and a single general ethical values liberal democratic phase even if this evolution lasts for centuries. Similarly, Hegel’s thesis that morals and ethical values are to separate things; the society will evolve to a perfect state which is based on general ethical values that champion a ‘sensible consensus’ of conflicting views. Immanuel Kant’s ideas consist of similar ideas: “The supreme principle of morality is a standard of rationality, Categorical Imperative (CI), and all immoral actions are irrational because they violate the CI. Locke, Hobbes, Aquinas, and many more similarly support those moral standards should be based on rationality in other words “ethics”. To go back to history, we can see that society is in a constant state of evolution. Ideologies, Policies of governments, living standards of people, religion, and people’s perspectives on religions are constantly changing.  If we compared our own moral attitudes in 2021 towards key issues such as race with those of our parents’ generation, could we say they are identical? So, with these thoughts in mind, it is necessary to touch on the methods that enable the evolution of societies.

Values are transferred at an intellectual level via institutions such as schools, universities, books, newspapers, media, art, and so on. The biggest manipulation of societies initiated with “La mission civilisatrice”. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, West European countries accepted eastern and African cultures as primitive cultures, and themselves are required to civilize them with the supreme European culture. They also included religious examples such as many prophets coming to the Middle East to fix their culture, or holy books telling them they are superior nations compared to others and should spread the culture to all the countries. In addition, leaders manipulated the society by including racism in art, such as building only statues of white people, including only the achievements of white people to books, giving prizes to white people, and making people think black people are unable to think and not clever at all. From literature we can give Shakespeare as an example, considering that certain groups in his plays are seen as weaker than others e.g. non-Europeans. After a certain time, society started to evolve, accepting all these contents as normal. However, in today’s world, these actions are considered strongly racist. Overall, society is changing and getting manipulated in certain ways and history is moving forward creating a more democratic place. Therefore, the question to be asked referring to the Edward Colston event, should we expect a figure in the past such as Colston to have the same ethical values as us?

Slavery has existed in different forms since the beginning of human history. To give solid examples, Archaeologist Mark Lehner and his co-workers concluded that the obligatory work done during the construction of pyramids by slaves of that time differs greatly from the general definition of today held today. Moreover, societies like ancient Egypt and Hindu Indians have a legal hierarchical order in their society. This separates individuals to different classes without their specific preference but according to their families’ background, seeming completely unacceptable in today’s world. Andrew Roberts asks a very substantial question in his book Head of Zeus: “Pyramids, the Parthenon and Rome’s Forum, were all built with slave labor. Have Thutmose, Pericles, and the Caesars have somehow predicted that the morals espoused by the supporters of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall movement are ultimately more important than their desires to enter heaven gloriously, laud the goddess Athena and house the Roman senate?” By considering this we would expect leaders and activists to question the existence of Pyramids in the 7 Wonders of the World List, removing them from educational materials, and banning them from books and media. There are many examples similar to those of the Egyptian pyramids in history and roughly speaking in many past civilizations we see examples of slavery. Throughout this, we cannot ban everything from books or even destroy them.

By looking at all these examples, there is a suspicion. Are these anti-slavery activists real activists? Bill Gates once said in his speech that African societies have seen large increases in their populations. Indeed, the population of Africa is expected to double by 2050. This will most probably increase poverty rates too. To solve extreme poverty one solution is limiting Africans to prevent them from having more children. Under the cover of attacking poverty, Bill Gates could be said to have totalitarian racist ideas. So why do anti-racism activists still buy Microsoft products? Similarly, although no one used to care about Edward Colston’s “evil” background, suddenly people gather and start protesting against a monument after an event in a country thousands of miles away, one of the protestors receives a Rhodes Scholarship, coming from a former slave trading business and then goes to destroy Cecil Rhodes monument. Similarly, those activists do not say anything regarding the mass forced construction of pyramids by the ethnic minorities of the past and even go there to see them and take smiling photos near the pyramids. To give an analogy to better understand, let’s assume a vegan who claims animals also have rights and therefore it is evil to consume them but advertises a cosmetic product that is pre-tested on animals.

Well, as understood clearly, societies are racist by default and nationalism is racist by default. We see that there is a public awareness spreading to all nations however the evolution of society is still not concluded and yet not at a perfect state. So in the future, it is highly probable that people will criticize us according to their future values. To give anticipation about potential criticism that could be made against is post-modern slavery. Today many young individuals consider Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and similar “uber-unicorn” owners as their role models. However, according to the BHRRC’s 2018 annual assessment of transparency statements by FTSE 100 companies, nearly all have modern slavery within their supply chains. Rachel Wilshaw, ethical trade manager for Oxfam in the UK claims there is no financial benefit for suppliers, producers, or recruitment agencies to provide good practice. “They cannot comply because the cheap labor conditions do not allow it,”.

Another perspective can be that in the future many jobs will be done by robots and Artificial Intelligence software. Future historians may consider all human power work done today, from a construction site worker to farmer or even to white-collared workers be against human rights. Finally, although there are some exceptional cases, generally considering the past with today’s values is a biased point of view and lacks our understanding of history. Also creates artificial realities to soften specific events that happened in the past. This might and is blurring our look through history and by definition, presentism is completely against the fundamental practice of history, namely to look at events of the past from as detached a perspective as possible so as to not allow contemporary value judgments to interfere with our attempts to look at the time-context bound actions of the protagonists of past eras.

Author: Ramazan Ege Solak

Editor: Yasemin Arık

Resources:

*Painting by William Walcutt. 1854. Mob pulling down the statue of George III at Bowling Green, New York City, 9 July 1776.

(1) Hughes, C. (2018, August 10). Presentism: Don’t Judge our Ancestors’ Actions by Today’s Standards. Voices and Images. https://www.voicesandimages.com/presentism-dont-judgeancestors-actions-by-todays-standards/

(2) Hlophe, Wadantu (1 April 2015). “HLOPHE: Rhodes must fall everywhere”. Yale Daily News.

(3) Hall, Martin. “The symbolic statue dividing a South African university”. BBC News. Retrieved 4 April 2015

(4) Hanham, Andrew A. (April 2006). Hayton, David; Cruickshanks, Eveline; Handley, Stuart (eds.). “Colston, Edward II (1636-1721), of Mortlake, Surr”. The History of Parliament. Cambridge University Press / Institute of Historical Research.

(5) “COLSTON, Edward II (1636–1721), of Mortlake, Surr”. History of Parliament Online.

(6) Morgan, Kenneth (1999). Edward Colston and Bristol (PDF). Bristol: Bristol Branch of the Historical Association. p. 3.

(7) Should we judge historical figures by the morals of today? HistoryExtra. (2021, June 24). https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/historical-figures-statues-judge-moralstoday/.

(8) Wood, A. (1990). The concept of morality. In Hegel’s Ethical Thought (pp. 127-139). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139172257.009

(9) Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958). “Modern Moral Philosophy”. Philosophy. 33(124): 1– 19. doi:10.1017/S0031819100037943. ISSN 0031-8191. JSTOR 3749051.

(10) Fukuyama, Francis (1989). “The End of History?”. The National Interest (16): 3– 18. ISSN 0884-9382

(11) Kelly, F. (1998). An Analysis of Hegel’s Theory of Social Morality: A Non-Normative

(12) Theory of Ethics. ARSP: Archiv Für Rechts- Und Sozialphilosophie / Archives for

(13) Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, 84(2), 167-194. Retrieved June 30, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23680662

(14) Johnson, Robert and Adam Cureton, “Kant’s Moral Philosophy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/kant-moral/>.

(15) Mathew Burrows, « ‘Mission civilisatrice’: French Cultural Policy in the Middle East, 1860-1914 », The Historical Journal Vol. 29, No. 1, 1986 (lire en ligne)

(16) “Historical survey: Slave-owning societies”. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 23 February 2007.

(17) “What is India’s caste system?”. BBC News. 25 February 2016. Retrieved 27 May 2017. Independent India’s constitution banned discrimination on the basis of caste, and, in an attempt to correct historical injustices and provide a level playing field to the traditionally disadvantaged, the authorities announced quotas in government jobs and educational institutions for scheduled castes and tribes, the lowest in the caste hierarchy, in 1950

(18) David, Rosalie (1 April 1998). The Ancient Egyptians (Beliefs & Practices). Sussex Academic Press. p. 91.

(19) Dunn, Jimmy (24 October 2011). “Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Egypt” • Everett, Susanne (24 October 2011). History of Slavery. Chartwell Books. pp. 10–11

(20) Roberts, J. (1982). Shakespeare and Women. Shakespeare Quarterly, 33(4), 533-536. doi:10.2307/2870150

(21) We know most global companies have modern slavery in their supply. (2015). We Know Most Global Companies Have Modern Slavery in Their Supply Chains. ‘We know most global companies have modern slavery in their supply chains’ | Reuters Events | Sustainable Business

(22) Rejai, Mostafa (1994). Political Ideologies: A Comparative Approach. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. p. 74. ISBN 9780765633781..

(23) Who Built the Pyramids? (2019, June 6). Harvard Magazine.

(24) https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html