Nizolan

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Again, welcome! Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:36, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

lang template

Just wanted you to be aware that there is both a {{lang}} template (which is <span> based), and a {{lang block}} template (which is <div> based). I don't know whether you have begun marking blocks of text, but there are situations where the former simply cannot be used. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:32, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for this—do you happen to know if there's something like a {{lang block/s}} {{lang block/e}} pair available when it's split across pages? Extended Latin footnotes with multiple paragraphs, of which one is split over a page, have been a particular nuisance and I've simply used the span template in these cases. For the extended text in the body I've used the block template in the header and footer of the proofreading pages and invoked it separately in mainspace (i.e. {{lang block|la|<pages ... />}}; not sure if this is poor practice (see Petri Privilegium/III/Appendix 1 for an example). —Nizolan (talk) 00:04, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Chapters

The norm on Wikisource is for chapter subpages to be titled "The Eternal Priesthood/Chapter 11" rather than "The Eternal Priesthood/11". See Wikisource:Style guide under "Page titles". --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:39, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I will move them in the near future. I had read the style guide but took the point to be less binding than it is. —Nizolan (talk) 23:51, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: I have moved the chapters as requested. —Nizolan (talk) 00:16, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Creating author pages

When you create new Author pages, please include a suitable license and the {{authority control}} template, see --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:24, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

American Historical Review, intellectual history, etc.

Hi, I notice you have been working on articles from The American Historical Review, and from your selections it appears you may share my interest in journalism and intellectual history. If you have the time, I'd appreciate additional eyes, and perhaps a validation or two, of Bourne's article, The American Historical Review/Volume 6/The Legend of Marcus Whitman.

Also, beyond Wikisource work, I'm also curious for any insights into its role in the history of this contentious subject. From some of what I've read, this article was considered to have decisively ended a decades-long debate, carried out in many western newspapers and journals, about the role of Marcus Whitman in leading the great Oregon migration of 1843, and/or in persuading the U.S. government to claim Oregon as a U.S. territory. But other sources indicate that a number of people continued to argue against Bourne's position. I'm not a true scholar of history, so I don't know much about what constitutes a "settled" historical debate, and I don't know if this matter is considered "settled," and if so what authors are credited for having settled it.

I've collected some of the relevant works at Portal:Marcus Whitman, but as it's grown I've realized it may be futile to try to build something authoritative there; it's such a sprawling topic. Anyway, if any of this overlaps with your interests or expertise, I'd be very interested to hear your take. -Pete (talk) 00:31, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: I am an intellectual history grad student in real life so well spotted, lol. Happy to validate the article when I get the chance (a bit exhausted at the moment so might have to wait a bit). As a matter of fact I don't know anything about this topic but it sounds fascinating—I will have a browse of the portal. Generally I would say a journal article would end the debate if it covers the question so thoroughly in terms of its evidence and analysis that there's nothing useful anyone else can add. I did do a quick search and found (1) a more recent source from the 50s here taking issue with Bourne which might be WS-eligible (nothing in the copyright records db), and (2) a journal article published just last year on this exact topic, titled "The Legend of Marcus Whitman and the Transformation of the American Historical Profession", which looks like it might have some answers [1]. Not sure if you have/can get access but I've downloaded it and will read through it in a bit. Interestingly, based on the abstract, the article from last year argues that this was an example of American historical studies moving away from religion, and the 1950s source is by a Presbyterian minister. —Nizolan (talk) 00:53, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Ah, this is great. The 1950s piece is fascinating, and sheds light on some dimensions of the saga that have escaped my notice. It would be excellent to bring that to Wikisource, and I'd gladly work on a transcription, but lacking "partner login" credentials at Hathi Trust, I can't download the full PDF; if you're able, it would be most welcome if you could upload that to Commons. I'm also not able to read the more recent article, but maybe you could tell me the sense of it once you've reviewed it.

My original interest in this originates with my curiosity about Frances Fuller Victor, who was the earliest proponent of the "myth" theory, and who considered her related work her most important achievement. She is known as the "Mother of Oregon History" for having been the first to take a rigorous approach to vetting sources and verifying claims. If she was on the wrong side of this debate that would be unfortunate from the perspective of the storyteller, but an interesting thing for any student of Oregon history to know. I appreciate your comments here, and look forward to any further insights your reading might impart! No rush on any of it, of course. -Pete (talk) 01:10, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: Just to summarize the 2018 article, the argument is along these lines. Part of why the Whitman legend was generally accepted in the 19th century was that it was based on trustworthy oral testimony from many different people and spoke to an idea of history as governed by divine Providence that was shared by American historians and the public at the time. Around 1900, though, many historians were dropping this openly religious style of argument about Providence and presenting themselves as being scientific and objective, in line with general end-of-the-19th-century ideas about progress.

Some of these ideas were bound up with the race pseudoscience of the time: Bourne for example was particularly interested in the religion of "primitive peoples" and saw the Whitman case as a kind of primitive superstition unworthy of good Anglo-Saxons. Another major theme was a complete rejection of oral testimony as evidence, which of course is the type of evidence the Whitman legend was founded on. Bourne's article didn't say much that was new, but it raised the stakes massively by framing the issue in terms of a sweeping story about superstition and progress, and became famous because it played to the interests and prejudices of the new "scientific historians". The Whitman legend then quickly became enshrined as an example of a debunked myth by academic historians, even though their conclusion was still contested by people who stuck to older views about history, particularly Myron Eells. These people were generally relegated to the popular press.

Koenig points out that 21st-century historians are much less critical of oral history and generally reject the sorts of ideas of progress that Bourne's argument was motivated by, so it's likely that his "definitive" takedown wouldn't be seen as quite as definitive nowadays. (Fwiw, this is something that stuck out to me when I glanced at the "critical response" you linked at the AHR article—Bourne is arguing from "scientific history", the critique is based on oral history.) In a sense people like Bourne had an idea of progress not too different from the ideas of Providence they were attacking, and Bourne himself was a religious Protestant who saw giving Christianity a rational basis as part of his mission. But a lot of the themes of the debate about Whitman are still open questions, e.g. how "secular" history-writing has to be, how big of a weight to give oral testimony, etc., so it's hard to make a conclusion either way.

Hathi's full pdf option is off limits for me too but you might want to ask the Scriptorium help board since I know at least one editor told me they can put together pdfs for upload from there. —Nizolan (talk) 02:08, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Wow, thank you so much for that in-depth summary. Super helpful, it's a whole dimension to the story I was totally unaware of, and I'll have to mull it over some. I'd better rewrite the intro at the top of Portal:Marcus Whitman and probably a bunch of stuff I've sprinkled through Wikipedia as well, at least to be less definitive in tone. I just stumbled on this old editor's note from the 1907 Oregon Historical Quarterly, I think you'll find it amusing, for how certain he was that the matter had been decisively settled... -Pete (talk) 18:03, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

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Sincerely,

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