The Pedigree of Power

By Jonah Kijel

We strive to find the truth, but the categorization of fiction and non-fiction we find in the library may be deceiving. In The Pedigree of Power, author Jonah Kijel seeks to explore this divide and bring history to life in a more authentic way.

Readers are invited on a journey to uncover the pieces of our history that

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Apr 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637300824

Book preview

PART 1

DRIVERS

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

From the conversations I’ve had over the course of writing this book, I’ve come to realize that many people believe that the inspiration to pick up the pen comes from an epiphany of new knowledge, or a middle-of-the-night idea that you can’t shake the next morning. For some, this might follow accordingly, but for me, I argue that the moment is much less grand. It was less of an instantaneous realization and more of a gradual uncomfortableness that drove me to undertake this project. That uneasy compulsion was driven by, admittedly, a more personal desire to learn rather than share, but throughout the process, I’ve come to embrace the duality and respective benefits of each. It is my hope that each reader comes away with more than an understanding of my passions and interest in the topic. I wish for it to be a call to action, a rallying call to be inquisitive rather than accepting, and to, like the famed tragedian Euripides once said, question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.¹ While it may have been an amazing jumping-off point, my story does not begin in ancient Athens, or even with a profound quote such as that.

Instead, its inception finds itself in a library squared away near the edge of my town, tucked between city hall and the local police station. The library was nothing special and relatively unimpressive by all accounts, but its complete silence called to me throughout the course of my childhood. Up until high school graduation, I’d often go to the library on weekends, alone and without any sense of purpose other than to pick up a random title, read the first thirty pages, and find the next until the afternoon passed by. Gradually, as I grew up, the library played two roles in my life: an academic resource, and a refuge from social stress, drama, and life as a teenager. As high school droned on and the free time I had dwindled away, I strangely found more time to get out and spend time there. Strange, meaningless tasks would nestle themselves into my mind, tugging at the curiosity in me. I would walk around the building, count all the entrances and exits, and repeat this three times over. Sometimes I tried to guess the numbers of books I’d have to stack to reach the arched ceiling that might have been four hundred feet above ground level for all I knew. Curiosity also drove me to the shelves. I began to pick up books and read them through, cover to cover. It was my me time. I never worried about being disturbed, simply because everyone else was self-absorbed. In a way, it was, to me, the most selfish and intimate place in the world.

While I flirted with magazines, journalistic styles, and science fiction (and yes, the Percy Jackson series), I always gravitated toward the theoretical, what-if books that teetered the line between fiction and non-fiction. Dystopias that imagined a world where reality was an instrument of those in power and where the separation between fact and fiction was impossible. But at the end of the day, that is all they were—stories, carefully crafted to draw in a reader and keep them there for two to three hundred pages. Or were they?

In the spring of 2019, I was on my sixth read of the famed novel 1984 by George Orwell. The book’s impact on me has been far-reaching—it’s one of the reasons I decided to pursue political science in school. For me, Orwell reaches deep into the idea that history is a social fabric fashioned by those that have the ability to do so. The implication of Orwell’s construction is the realization that there is simply no way to distinguish the objective from the subjective. Even more importantly, what we actively believe to be a historical truth could be, and for long time has been, fabricated. At what point, therefore, do we draw a line between what we can identify and verify and what we cannot? Although my interest in political science largely grew away from theoretical scenarios like the one in 1984 and more toward qualitative analyses of historical leaders, the main themes have always stuck with me.

Winston Churchill once said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and I, as a young student influenced heavily by the musings of Orwellian dialogue and the dangers of a totalitarian society, was ardently committed to following his advice.² However, the more I learned about certain political figures—politicians, dictators, influential decision-makers, nineteenth-century monarchs—I came to discover a more linear path to understanding than I would have hoped.

For mainstream political figures such as US presidents, like Ronald Reagan, and UK prime ministers, like Margaret Thatcher and even Churchill himself, there existed a plethora of discussion and debate over their legacies. Opinions were varied, sides were taken, and evidence was presented for a compromise that encouraged new lines of thinking. But for more controversial, less politically beautified figures—like the heads of dictatorial regimes, architects of the French Revolution, or conquistadores during the Age of Exploration—historical perception was clear and cut strictly at the polar ends of the scale of good and bad, with no space in the middle for debate. Textbooks I read in school and assessments I took on these subjects forced me to take a definitive stance on their impact based off of the same small sample of evidence that was provided. It seemed forced, like their legacies were cemented in history, and to revisit and challenge those assumptions was likened to opening up a can of worms.

This type of bias never sat right with me and reminded me of Orwell’s ideas. If history was easily bent to the inclinations of those that controlled the distribution of information, was it not more opinion that fact? It was this question that led me down a path of exploration that has become this book. I have infused my curiosity into the historical interpretations of the legacies of political leaders. I have decided to build an inquiry to test the identity of history as an objective record. I will look into controversial political figures of the last millennia and investigate how historical misconceptions have altered our perception and have infringed on our ability to have an objective analysis of their key decisions and moments.

Today, we’re caught in the same trap of easy definitions and historical misinterpretations. Blanket characterizations reign supreme, especially in the cases of some of history’s most controversial figures. Leaders who emerged during events of extreme political and social unrest are largely etched into history by a certain defining act—which later becomes their most noteworthy contribution. These range from the miniscule fallacies to the large, consequential ones. But through popularization and universal acceptance, anything can become a truth. On the small, harmless end of the spectrum, take for instance Marie Antoinette. Queen of the French Republic during the Revolution, Antoinette is remembered simply by her most famous phrase: "let them eat cake." It’s catchy, funny, and slightly deeper when considered in context of the millions of starving peasants who were disgruntled with the economic conditions in France. Virtually every high schooler encounters this quote during their first European History class, and its popularization makes it so that it’s inextricably bound to her personality. Antonia Fraser, prolific author, historian, and host of a freshly produced documentary on Antoinette, finds that her persecution and public execution were far from a personal grievance against a heartless monarch. Rather, it served as a deliberate blood bond that realized the goals of radical revolution and anti-conservative sentiment.³ What’s more, Fraser points out that Antoinette was not so inactive during the Revolution at all; she, not Louis, was actively spurring action on the side of the royalists and prompting foreign intervention to defend the monarchy.⁴ It might not paint her in a more empathetic light, but it does serve to underscore the discrepancies in what we believe and what scholarly information exists, patiently waiting for an eager hand.

Antoinette’s example is small but consequential. Two important questions emerge: if something as popular, as universally accepted, as a simple phrase can be falsified, then what else have we gotten wrong? And, arguably more important, why is it that we’ve let it just mill around?

Regardless of our own interpretations, these historical misconceptions have undisputedly passed by unchecked as we grew up and learned more, and have therefore grown with us. It is not necessarily due to a lack of checkpoints that are supposed to filter them out, but rather that these checkpoints, such as institutions like education systems and psychological biases that exist unconsciously, are actually reinforcing mechanisms of this sort of historical misinterpretation.

In other words, it’s a lose-lose situation. And, what’s worse is nobody really wants to go back and correct themselves, to relearn a bunch of things that they had previously held confidence in. It goes against our own socially constructed idea that we move forward, not backward. Ultimately, that’s the current state of the world. We see a layered cake and only bite into the top layer without thinking about going deeper. Educational institutions like high school and university promote this, and we unconsciously find no need to think deeper about it, and so that cycle repeats itself. The question we’re left with is: how do we confront problems that we psychologically don’t want to confront?

In studying history, political science, or any liberal arts subject, really, we’re taught to not only be evaluative of current perspectives, but also add to the conversation. But how can we add to the conversation when our opinions are molded by historical misconceptions that have persisted for centuries? This is, in essence, my motivation for writing this book. I am writing this to shed light on these misinterpretations, why, through the test of time, they persist, and why they’re embraced, quoted, and championed as the truth even with a lack of foundational evidence. It’s my philosophy that picking away at the leaves of an issue is ineffective in comparison to digging up the roots, and that is what this book is about. Infatuated with European, American, and classics history ever since I entered high school, it was the nonconventional political figures who kept me coming back for more. I had hoped that as I advanced through academia, I would gain a more diverse perspective, and I did, but my frustration grew. Now, I’ve decided to take this project on and arm myself with more knowledge than just the classroom could provide. I’ve interviewed professors, historians, and best-selling authors, amassing a collection of both primary and secondary sources that have helped me piece together a more accurate and shocking historical record.

My theory is that we ignore the difficult, the controversial, and the contrarian parts of history because it’s easier work for us. We’ve taken Occam’s razor to extremes and have oversimplified much of the historical narrative as a means to fit what we want it to be.⁵ It’s not so much that we avoid complexity, but rather we enjoy sensational controversy. But in doing so, we often close our minds to important contextual information or blatantly accept stereotypes. As a result, history loses a diversity of perspective and becomes bottlenecked into the linear, two-dimensional plane that discourages dialogue. Due to a multitude of institutional and psychological factors, the historical record looks more like a bridge with a bunch of holes in it rather than the sturdy and wide platform that it is described to be. Therefore, by looking specifically at these controversial figures in history whose reputations and legacies are inherently complex, an examination of their historical perceptions and the fallacies that exist will prove that historical misinterpretation is alive and well.

This book is centered on the historical misconceptions about controversial political, cultural, and military leaders across generations, but its scope stretches the realm of political science. While they seem independent, their connection lands in the representation of three distinct branches of pseudohistory. Furthermore, it enters larger discussions of the psychology of our capacity to understand as humans, and the institutions we’ve built that have supplied that understanding. Now, this narrative that I’ve created is certainly meant for the history junkie and the individuals looking for engaging stories of political strife, war, and cunning strategy. Avid fans of the HISTORY Channel and Top-10-Facts-You-Didn’t-Know Google-searchers will also be pleasantly surprised, if at least by the interesting aha facts they might slice out of the following pages. But as a general rule, I believe that different parts of the book will resonate with readers uniquely, yet the general message encourages a critique of the old way of doing things. It is meant for all students of history, news, and storytelling.

At the beginning of this introduction, there was a call to reject universal acceptance in favor of a more inquisitive attitude. I ask that you question everything, largely because that’s what I’ve done here. This book stays true to that philosophy; the last page will leave you with more questions than answers. This is precisely why, in my opinion, you should read it through. In the spirit of good faith, I should warn you that, throughout the entire process of writing this book, I never intended to produce a single, all-encompassing answer to the questions I pose. As you read, you might realize that doing so would be