Colonial Williamsburg addresses questions: What is history, and how should it be told?

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Exhibition Review | Colonial Williamsburg
An Upgrade for Ye Olde History Park
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: April 6, 2007


(Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)
Despite its gloss on the darker aspects of colonial times, slavery has become part of the picture in this historical village.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Patrick Henry was sitting just to my left in the Virginia House of Burgesses as the debate raged about the events that had been following the Boston Tea Party. Mr. Henry was a brilliant hothead, of course, though not yet moved to pose his famous nonnegotiable alternatives, demanding liberty or death. But when Governor Dunmore of the Virginia colony strode into the room, even Mr. Henry rose, out of respect to the authority of the king, as did we all, even those of us carrying digital cameras, umbrellas and souvenir bags.

Then the governor announced to these local legislators, landed gentry every one, that he was dissolving the House of Burgesses because of their rebellious deliberations. Discussion about the imminent political crises of 1774 were adjourned to the tables of the Raleigh Tavern.

We hangers-on would have been happy enough to join in or just listen. But further debate was not to be heard until later, leaving time to check in with the saddlemaker, with whom I discussed battles in the not-yet-fought Revolutionary War. Then it was off to a small room of another 18th-century building, where I overheard three slaves debating alternatives after reading a declaration from Dunmore promising them freedom if they escaped and joined him in defense of the crown.

Being a colonial tourist is a bit disorienting, particularly on days like the recent ones I spent, in rain and off-season, with scarcely another person in modern dress to be seen. Instead there were ruffles and bonnets and velvet cloaks, the coal fires of the blacksmith, and much to-do among the gentry about gunpowder and taxes.

Colonial Williamsburg, where all this took place (about 150 miles south of Washington), is variously called a historical village or a living museum. But that means much more now than it once did. Aside from dramatizing historical controversies, the town is also caught up in living ones: debates about who writes history and how it is told, about what historical realism is and how it should be portrayed, even about what aspects of our past are to be celebrated in this strange combination of education and entertainment....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/arts/06will.html

[Virginia Dare]

1. Williamsburg is a very nice place to visit...

but it isn't "living history", it's interpretive history, and must be taken with a grain of salt.

Yes, we are acknowledging that black people were enslaved, but notice how the slave interpretors in the picture are all happy, smiling, clean and well-dressed? See, slavery wasn't all that bad!