Michael A. Bellesiles
Encyclopedia
Michael A. Bellesiles is a former professor of American colonial and legal history
at Emory University
best known as the author of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (Alfred A. Knopf
, 2000), a book that won the prestigious Bancroft Prize
in 2001. The prize was rescinded in 2002 after an inquiry of distinguished historians found Bellesiles "guilty of unprofessional and misleading work." Bellesiles responded that he had "never fabricated evidence of any kind nor knowingly evaded my responsibilities as a scholar," but he nonetheless resigned his Emory professorship the same year.
Bellesiles also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles
. In 1998-99, he was a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Institute, and during 2001-02, a Visiting Fellow at the Newberry Library
in Chicago.
than is commonly believed. The book expanded on his earlier article in a 1996 issue of the Journal of American History
, which Peter Charles Hoffer called "a stunning article on gun ownership in early America." The article asserted that neither the frontier experience nor the Revolutionary War had created widespread gun ownership, that American militias were poorly armed, and that few Americans maintained firearms until after the Civil War, when weapons were mass-produced in large quantities. The article won the 1996 Binkley-Stephenson award of the Organization of American Historians
for the best article published that year in its journal. Similarly, the book Arming America garnered high praise in many early reviews.
and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
, gun rights advocates immediately attacked the book. Actor Charlton Heston
, then-president of the National Rifle Association
, called the book's argument "ludicrous." Conversely, a review by Roger Lane
in The Journal of American History noted that with research that was “meticulous and thorough,” Bellesiles had "attacked the central myth behind the National Rifle Association's interpretation of the Second Amendment," and Lane declared Bellesiles’s evidence so formidable that “if the subject were open to rational argument,” the debate would be over.
Clayton Cramer
, a software engineer, gun enthusiast, and early critic of Bellesiles, later argued that the reason "why historians swallowed Arming America’s preposterous claims so readily is that it fit into their political worldview so well.... Arming America said things, and created a system of thought so comfortable for the vast majority of historians, that they didn’t even pause to consider the possibility that something wasn’t right." Historian Peter Charles Hoffer, himself an advocate of gun control, lent support to Cramer’s charge when, in a 2004 examination of the Bellesiles case, he noted that influential members of the historical profession had indeed “taken strong public stands on violence in our society and its relation to gun control.” For instance, the academics solicited for blurbs by Bellesiles’s publisher Alfred A. Knopf
“were ecstatic in part because the book knocked the gun lobby.”
Bellesiles energized this professional consensus by attempting to play “the professors against the NRA in a high-wire act of arrogant bravado.” For instance, he replied to Heston’s criticism by telling the actor to earn a PhD before he criticized the work of scholars. He pointed out that Cramer was “a long time advocate of unrestricted gun ownership” while he himself was a simple scholar who had “certain obligations of accuracy that transcend current political benefit.” After Bellesiles claimed he had been flooded by hate mail, both the American Historical Association
and the Organization of American Historians
endorsed a resolution condemning the alleged harassment. As Hoffer later wrote, Bellesiles was convinced that whether the entire profession agreed with “his stance on gun ownership (and I suspect most did), surely academic historians would not let their expertise be impugned by a rank and partisan amateur like Cramer.”
In the end, however, the politics of the issue mattered less to historians "than the possibility that Bellesiles might have engaged in faulty, fraudulent, and unethical research." As critics subjected the historical claims of the book to close scrutiny, they demonstrated that much of Bellesiles' research, particularly his handling of probate records, was inaccurate and possibly fraudulent. This criticism included noting several serious errors in the tables published in The Journal of American History article, namely, that they did not provide a total number of cases and gave percentages that "were clearly wrong."
In two scholarly articles, law professor James Lindgren
of Northwestern University
noted that in Arming America, Bellesiles had
Critics also identified problems with Bellesiles's methods of citation. Cramer noted that Bellesiles had misrepresented a passage by George Washington
about the quality of three poorly prepared militia
units as if his criticism applied to the militia in general. (Washington had noted that the three units were exceptions to the rule.) Cramer wrote, "It took me twelve hours of hunting before I found a citation that was completely correct. In the intervening two years, I have spent thousands of hours chasing down Bellesiles’s citations, and I have found many hundreds of shockingly gross falsifications."
The scholarly investigation confirmed that Bellesiles's work had serious flaws, calling into question both its quality and veracity. The external report on Bellesiles concluded that "every aspect of his work in the probate records is deeply flawed" and called his statements in self-defense "prolix, confusing, evasive, and occasionally contradictory." It concluded that "his scholarly integrity is seriously in question."
Bellesiles publicly disputed these findings. He claimed to have followed all of the standards of scholarship and to have corrected all errors of fact known to him. Nevertheless, with his "reputation in tatters," Bellesiles issued a statement on October 25, 2002, announcing that he would resign his position at Emory by year's end.
, the first such action in the history of the prize. Bellesiles's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf
, did not renew his contract, and the National Endowment for the Humanities
withdrew its name from a fellowship that the Newberry Library
had granted Bellesiles. In 2003, Arming America was republished in a revised and amended edition by Soft Skull Press
. Bellesiles continued to defend the book's credibility and thesis, arguing that roughly three-quarters of the original book remained unchallenged.
Bellesiles's most vocal defender has been Jon Wiener
, a historian at UC Irvine, where Bellesiles received his PhD. Wiener argued in The Nation that Bellesiles's errors were no more numerous than those in many other books, that no fraud was committed, and that, at worst, Bellesiles had been sloppy in his use of the probate records. Weiner also criticized the findings of the scholarly investigative committee, saying that it was "marred by a kind of tunnel vision."
Other historians who initially admired Arming America ceased to defend Bellesiles. The nationally prominent historian Garry Wills
, who had enthusiastically reviewed Arming America for the New York Times, later said, in a 2005 interview on C-SPAN
, "I was took. The book is a fraud." Wills noted that Bellesiles "claimed to have consulted archives he didn't and he misrepresented those archives," although "he didn't have to do that," since "he had a lot of good, solid evidence." Wills added, "People get taken by very good con men."
The historian Roger Lane
, who had reviewed the book positively in the Journal of American History
, offered a similar opinion: "It is entirely clear to me that he's made up a lot of these records. He's betrayed us. He's betrayed the cause. It's 100 percent clear that the guy is a liar and a disgrace to my profession. He's breached that trust." Historian Pauline Maier
reflected that it seemed historians had "ceased to read carefully and critically, even in the awarding of book prizes."
As Hoffer concluded, "Bellesiles's condemnation by Emory University, the trustees of the Bancroft Prizes, and Knopf provided the gun lobby with information to blast the entire history profession....Even though H-Law, the Omohundro Institute
, the OAH
, and the AHA
rushed to his side and stated principled objections to the politicization of history, they hesitated to ask the equally important question of whether he had manipulated them and betrayed their trust."
In 2010, Bellesiles published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education
recounting his interactions with a student whose brother had been killed by a sniper in Iraq. After the truth of the story was questioned, notably by James Lindgren
, who had earlier challenged the veracity of Arming America, the newspaper determined that the student had lied to Bellesiles and his teaching assistant.
In 2011, Michael Bellesiles was teaching at Central Connecticut State University
. In 2010 his book 1877: America's Year of Living with Violence was published by The New Press
. A review in the Journal of American History
called the "old-fashioned narrative tone" of 1877 "so delightfully retro that it is almost cutting edge."
"The Origins of A Gun Culture in the United States, 1760-1865," Journal of American History 425 (1996).
Editor, Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History (1999)
"Exploding the Myth of an Armed America", Chronicle of Higher Education (Sept. 29, 2000)
"Disarming the Critics", Organization of American Historians Newsletter (2001)
"The Second Amendment in Action," in Carl T. Bogus and Michael A. Bellesiles (editors), The Second Amendment in Law and History: Historians and Constitutional Scholars on the Right to Bear Arms, The New Press (2001), ISBN-13: 978-1565846999.
Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. Alfred A. Knopf
, 2000; 2d ed., Soft Skull Press
, 2003. Weighed in an Even Balance (2003)
Editor, Documenting American Violence: A Sourcebook (2006), with Christopher Waldrep
"The Year 1877 Looks Awfully Familiar Today," History News Network (May 17, 2010)
"Teaching Military History in a Time of War," The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 27, 2010)
James Lindgren, "Fall From Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal", Yale Law Journal
(May 2002) James Lindgren and Justin Lee Heather, "Counting Guns in Early America," William & Mary Law Review (2002)
Don Williams, "Could Bellesiles's Problems Undermine Gun Control?" History News Network (May 20, 2002)
Jon Weiner, "Fire at Will,", The Nation
(Nov. 4, 2002) Jerome Sternstein, "Shooting the Messenger: Jon Weiner on Arming America", History News Network (Oct. 28, 2002)
Joyce Lee Malcolm, "Disarming History," Reason Magazine (March 2003)
Peter Charles Hoffer, Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud--American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004): 141-171.
Ron Robin, Scandals & Scoundrels: Seven Cases that Shook the Academy. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)
Jon Wiener, Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower. (New York: The New Press
, 2005). ISBN 1-56584-884-5. Clayton E. Cramer, "Why Footnotes Matter: Checking Arming Americas Claims" Plagiary (2006)
Clayton E. Cramer, Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie (Nashville, Nelson Current, 2007) ISBN 1-59555-069-0.
Scott McLemee, "Amazing Disgrace," Inside Higher Ed (May 19, 2010)
Tom Bartlett, "Michael Bellesiles Takes Another Shot," Chronicle of Higher Education, August 3, 2010.
Patricia Cohen, "Scholar Emerges From Doghouse", New York Times, Books, 3 Aug 2010.
Legal history
Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and is set in the wider context of social history...
at Emory University
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
best known as the author of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
, 2000), a book that won the prestigious Bancroft Prize
Bancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft...
in 2001. The prize was rescinded in 2002 after an inquiry of distinguished historians found Bellesiles "guilty of unprofessional and misleading work." Bellesiles responded that he had "never fabricated evidence of any kind nor knowingly evaded my responsibilities as a scholar," but he nonetheless resigned his Emory professorship the same year.
Education and academic career
Bellesiles received his B.A. from the University of California-Santa Cruz in 1975 and his PhD from the University of California at Irvine in 1986. He joined the Emory University faculty in 1988 and was promoted to full professor in 1999. There he served as director of undergraduate studies in history, 1991–1998, and as director of Emory's Center for the Study of Violence.Bellesiles also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
. In 1998-99, he was a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Institute, and during 2001-02, a Visiting Fellow at the Newberry Library
Newberry Library
The Newberry Library is a privately endowed, independent research library for the humanities and social sciences in Chicago, Illinois. Although it is private, non-circulating library, the Newberry Library is free and open to the public...
in Chicago.
Thesis
Bellesiles's Arming America argued that guns were less prevalent in antebellum AmericaHistory of the United States (1789–1849)
With the election of George Washington as the first president in 1789, the new government acted quickly to rebuild the nation's financial structure. Enacting the program of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the government assumed the Revolutionary war debts of the state and the national...
than is commonly believed. The book expanded on his earlier article in a 1996 issue of the Journal of American History
Journal of American History
The Journal of American History is the official academic journal of the Organization of American Historians. It covers the field of American history and was established in 1914 as the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, the official journal of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association...
, which Peter Charles Hoffer called "a stunning article on gun ownership in early America." The article asserted that neither the frontier experience nor the Revolutionary War had created widespread gun ownership, that American militias were poorly armed, and that few Americans maintained firearms until after the Civil War, when weapons were mass-produced in large quantities. The article won the 1996 Binkley-Stephenson award of the Organization of American Historians
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
for the best article published that year in its journal. Similarly, the book Arming America garnered high praise in many early reviews.
Scrutiny
Because the book's thesis bore upon ongoing political controversies about gun controlGun control
Gun control is any law, policy, practice, or proposal designed to restrict or limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of guns or other firearms by private citizens...
and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights.In 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court issued two Second...
, gun rights advocates immediately attacked the book. Actor Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
, then-president of the National Rifle Association
National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association of America is an American non-profit 501 civil rights organization which advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection...
, called the book's argument "ludicrous." Conversely, a review by Roger Lane
Roger Lane
-External links:**...
in The Journal of American History noted that with research that was “meticulous and thorough,” Bellesiles had "attacked the central myth behind the National Rifle Association's interpretation of the Second Amendment," and Lane declared Bellesiles’s evidence so formidable that “if the subject were open to rational argument,” the debate would be over.
Clayton Cramer
Clayton Cramer
Clayton E. Cramer is a historian, author, and software engineer. He played an important early role in documenting errors in the book Arming America by Michael A. Bellesiles, a book that was later proven to be based on fraudulent research. His work was cited by the United States District Court for...
, a software engineer, gun enthusiast, and early critic of Bellesiles, later argued that the reason "why historians swallowed Arming America’s preposterous claims so readily is that it fit into their political worldview so well.... Arming America said things, and created a system of thought so comfortable for the vast majority of historians, that they didn’t even pause to consider the possibility that something wasn’t right." Historian Peter Charles Hoffer, himself an advocate of gun control, lent support to Cramer’s charge when, in a 2004 examination of the Bellesiles case, he noted that influential members of the historical profession had indeed “taken strong public stands on violence in our society and its relation to gun control.” For instance, the academics solicited for blurbs by Bellesiles’s publisher Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
“were ecstatic in part because the book knocked the gun lobby.”
Bellesiles energized this professional consensus by attempting to play “the professors against the NRA in a high-wire act of arrogant bravado.” For instance, he replied to Heston’s criticism by telling the actor to earn a PhD before he criticized the work of scholars. He pointed out that Cramer was “a long time advocate of unrestricted gun ownership” while he himself was a simple scholar who had “certain obligations of accuracy that transcend current political benefit.” After Bellesiles claimed he had been flooded by hate mail, both the American Historical Association
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...
and the Organization of American Historians
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
endorsed a resolution condemning the alleged harassment. As Hoffer later wrote, Bellesiles was convinced that whether the entire profession agreed with “his stance on gun ownership (and I suspect most did), surely academic historians would not let their expertise be impugned by a rank and partisan amateur like Cramer.”
In the end, however, the politics of the issue mattered less to historians "than the possibility that Bellesiles might have engaged in faulty, fraudulent, and unethical research." As critics subjected the historical claims of the book to close scrutiny, they demonstrated that much of Bellesiles' research, particularly his handling of probate records, was inaccurate and possibly fraudulent. This criticism included noting several serious errors in the tables published in The Journal of American History article, namely, that they did not provide a total number of cases and gave percentages that "were clearly wrong."
In two scholarly articles, law professor James Lindgren
James Lindgren
James Lindgren is a professor of law at Northwestern University. Born in 1952 in Rockford, Illinois, Lindgren graduated from Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School , where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He received his Ph.D...
of Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
noted that in Arming America, Bellesiles had
- purported to count guns in about a hundred wills from 17th- and 18th-century Providence, Rhode IslandProvidence, Rhode IslandProvidence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
, but these did not exist because the decedents had died intestate (i.e., without wills); - purported to count nineteenth-century San Francisco County probate inventories, but these had been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire1906 San Francisco earthquakeThe San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
; - reported a national mean for gun ownership in 18th-century probate inventories that was mathematically impossible;
- misreported the condition of guns described in probate records in a way that accommodated his thesis;
- miscited the counts of guns in nineteenth-century Massachusetts censuses and militia reports,
- had more than a 60% error rate in finding guns listed as part of estates in Vermont records; and
- had a 100% error rate in the cited gun-related homicide cases of seventeenth-century PlymouthPlymouthPlymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
.
Critics also identified problems with Bellesiles's methods of citation. Cramer noted that Bellesiles had misrepresented a passage by George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
about the quality of three poorly prepared militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
units as if his criticism applied to the militia in general. (Washington had noted that the three units were exceptions to the rule.) Cramer wrote, "It took me twelve hours of hunting before I found a citation that was completely correct. In the intervening two years, I have spent thousands of hours chasing down Bellesiles’s citations, and I have found many hundreds of shockingly gross falsifications."
Emory investigation and resignation
As criticism grew and charges of scholarly misconduct were made, Emory University conducted an internal inquiry into Bellesiles's integrity, appointing an independent investigative committee composed of three leading academic historians from outside Emory University. Bellesiles failed to provide investigators with his research notes, claiming the notes were destroyed in a flood.The scholarly investigation confirmed that Bellesiles's work had serious flaws, calling into question both its quality and veracity. The external report on Bellesiles concluded that "every aspect of his work in the probate records is deeply flawed" and called his statements in self-defense "prolix, confusing, evasive, and occasionally contradictory." It concluded that "his scholarly integrity is seriously in question."
Bellesiles publicly disputed these findings. He claimed to have followed all of the standards of scholarship and to have corrected all errors of fact known to him. Nevertheless, with his "reputation in tatters," Bellesiles issued a statement on October 25, 2002, announcing that he would resign his position at Emory by year's end.
Aftermath of the scandal
In 2002, the trustees of Columbia University rescinded Arming Americas Bancroft PrizeBancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft...
, the first such action in the history of the prize. Bellesiles's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
, did not renew his contract, and the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
withdrew its name from a fellowship that the Newberry Library
Newberry Library
The Newberry Library is a privately endowed, independent research library for the humanities and social sciences in Chicago, Illinois. Although it is private, non-circulating library, the Newberry Library is free and open to the public...
had granted Bellesiles. In 2003, Arming America was republished in a revised and amended edition by Soft Skull Press
Soft Skull Press
Soft Skull Press is an independent publisher founded by Sander Hicks in 1992, and run by Richard Eoin Nash from 2001 to 2009. In 2007, Nash sold Soft Skull to Counterpoint LLC, where it continues to function as a division of the press...
. Bellesiles continued to defend the book's credibility and thesis, arguing that roughly three-quarters of the original book remained unchallenged.
Bellesiles's most vocal defender has been Jon Wiener
Jon Wiener
Jon Wiener is an American professor of history at the University of California Irvine, a contributing editor to The Nation magazine, and a Los Angeles radio host. He was the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its files on John Lennon.-...
, a historian at UC Irvine, where Bellesiles received his PhD. Wiener argued in The Nation that Bellesiles's errors were no more numerous than those in many other books, that no fraud was committed, and that, at worst, Bellesiles had been sloppy in his use of the probate records. Weiner also criticized the findings of the scholarly investigative committee, saying that it was "marred by a kind of tunnel vision."
Other historians who initially admired Arming America ceased to defend Bellesiles. The nationally prominent historian Garry Wills
Garry Wills
Garry Wills is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and prolific author, journalist, and historian, specializing in American politics, American political history and ideology and the Roman Catholic Church. Classically trained at a Jesuit high school and two universities, he is proficient in Greek and Latin...
, who had enthusiastically reviewed Arming America for the New York Times, later said, in a 2005 interview on C-SPAN
C-SPAN
C-SPAN , an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming via its three television channels , one radio station and a group of websites that provide streaming...
, "I was took. The book is a fraud." Wills noted that Bellesiles "claimed to have consulted archives he didn't and he misrepresented those archives," although "he didn't have to do that," since "he had a lot of good, solid evidence." Wills added, "People get taken by very good con men."
The historian Roger Lane
Roger Lane
-External links:**...
, who had reviewed the book positively in the Journal of American History
Journal of American History
The Journal of American History is the official academic journal of the Organization of American Historians. It covers the field of American history and was established in 1914 as the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, the official journal of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association...
, offered a similar opinion: "It is entirely clear to me that he's made up a lot of these records. He's betrayed us. He's betrayed the cause. It's 100 percent clear that the guy is a liar and a disgrace to my profession. He's breached that trust." Historian Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier is a popular scholar of the American Revolution, the preceding era and post-revolutionary United States. She is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ....
reflected that it seemed historians had "ceased to read carefully and critically, even in the awarding of book prizes."
As Hoffer concluded, "Bellesiles's condemnation by Emory University, the trustees of the Bancroft Prizes, and Knopf provided the gun lobby with information to blast the entire history profession....Even though H-Law, the Omohundro Institute
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture was founded in 1943 and is jointly sponsored by The College of William & Mary and The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. In 1996, the College and Colonial Williamsburg added Omohundro to the Institute's name in recognition of a generous...
, the OAH
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
, and the AHA
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...
rushed to his side and stated principled objections to the politicization of history, they hesitated to ask the equally important question of whether he had manipulated them and betrayed their trust."
Life after Arming America
For roughly five years, Bellesiles virtually disappeared from academia, writing only a few book reviews in scholarly journals. In 2006, with Christopher Waldrep, he co-edited Documenting American Violence: A Sourcebook, which includes an article defending Bellesiles.In 2010, Bellesiles published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty, staff members and administrators....
recounting his interactions with a student whose brother had been killed by a sniper in Iraq. After the truth of the story was questioned, notably by James Lindgren
James Lindgren
James Lindgren is a professor of law at Northwestern University. Born in 1952 in Rockford, Illinois, Lindgren graduated from Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School , where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He received his Ph.D...
, who had earlier challenged the veracity of Arming America, the newspaper determined that the student had lied to Bellesiles and his teaching assistant.
In 2011, Michael Bellesiles was teaching at Central Connecticut State University
Central Connecticut State University
Central Connecticut State University is a state university in New Britain, Connecticut, United States.The school was moved to its present campus in 1922...
. In 2010 his book 1877: America's Year of Living with Violence was published by The New Press
The New Press
The New Press is a not-for-profit, United States-based publishing house that operates in the public interest. It was established in 1990 as an alternative to large commercial publishers, and is supported financially by various foundations, groups and corporations including the Ford Foundation, the...
. A review in the Journal of American History
Journal of American History
The Journal of American History is the official academic journal of the Organization of American Historians. It covers the field of American history and was established in 1914 as the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, the official journal of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association...
called the "old-fashioned narrative tone" of 1877 "so delightfully retro that it is almost cutting edge."
Writings by Bellesiles
Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier (1993)Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
, 2000; 2d ed., Soft Skull Press
Soft Skull Press
Soft Skull Press is an independent publisher founded by Sander Hicks in 1992, and run by Richard Eoin Nash from 2001 to 2009. In 2007, Nash sold Soft Skull to Counterpoint LLC, where it continues to function as a division of the press...
, 2003.
Further reading
- Jack N. Rakove, Gloria L. Main, Ira D. Gruber, Randolph Roth, and Michael A. Bellesiles, "Forum: Historians and Guns,"
Yale Law Journal
The Yale Law Journal is a student-run law review affiliated with the Yale Law School. Published continuously since 1891, it is the most widely known of the eight law reviews published by students at Yale Law School...
(May 2002)
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
(Nov. 4, 2002)
The New Press
The New Press is a not-for-profit, United States-based publishing house that operates in the public interest. It was established in 1990 as an alternative to large commercial publishers, and is supported financially by various foundations, groups and corporations including the Ford Foundation, the...
, 2005). ISBN 1-56584-884-5.
External links
- Contra Costa County (CA) Historical Society statement on its holdings. (2002)
- Report of the Investigative Committee in the Matter of Professor Michael Bellesiles (7/10/02)
- Bellesiles response to the Emory report and resignation statement. (2002)
- Emory University's press release announcing the resignation of Dr. Bellesiles (10/25/02)
- Columbia University's press release rescinding Bellesiles' Bancroft Prize (12/16/02)
- "How the Bellesiles Story Developed," History News Network timeline