--- Julie Kemp juleskemp@yahoo.com wrote:

Anthere said:

He ! We indeed consider he was the first king of France when he was made Christian by Saint R�mi (even though we usually refer to him as King of the franks ...). He was the one who started the history of France, and we are tought he was chosen by the tribe of franks to be king, and gave its name to our country. But, what do we know ? It is just what we learn in school :-) With no proof he was indeed considered a king at that time. Another future info fork between the french and the english wiki :-)

I respond: I think this is the root of the problem -- What's in textbooks is not always accurate! I don't know how it's done in France, but I think it's similar everywhere in that much is decided by committee. If you subscribe to some of the H-net mailing lists, like I do, or belong to the American Historical Association, you know how bad it can be. Here, the states of Texas and California have a lot of influence on what is included or omitted, because they buy a lot of textbooks. In fact, there are cases of textbooks being revised because Texas won't buy -- a well-known example is a biology text that talked about evolution as something that happened, rather than as a theory along with creationism. I think it's not unlikely that many countries provide their children with history that often does more to uphold a national mythos than troublesome historical fact!

In the French case, what Anthere says, is kinda, sorta right ;-) Clovis was the first Orthodox Christian King of a consolidated Frankish kingdom -- and the name France is derived from Francia, the Latin name for the Frankish kingdom. Where it gets funny is that Francia is also the root for the German land of Franken ... or that (and here's where I find it odd) the Carolingians are much later, yet both Germans and French people consider Charlemagne "theirs." SO what I've been trying to do is to explain why the French school version isn't exactly wrong, but that it's an over generalization -- maybe like remembering that Kozsiuszko (spelling probably way wrong) and DeKalb were heroes in the American Revolution and assuming that made them Americans. BTW (pax to Erik), I was at a conference in March and brought up this issue. There were scholars there from all over, and they all specialized in the period between 300 and 800. Not one of them, including the nice lady from the Sorbonne, said that they would consider the Merovingians to be Kings of France, or even French.

Back until I run screaming ;-)

Jules

That is interesting information; I did not know Germans considered Charlemagne theirs. But then, we share so much :-) (sausages, fries, trenches, ecoregion...) It is curious none of these people at the meeting would agree with what is in the end taught to us. They should be the authors of school programs, should not they ? I think history programms are updated about every 50 years or so, except for a couple of chapters in very recent history. Perhaps, some Merovingians were seen as Kings of France 50 years ago ? Note that if I cannot judge this in history, I can certainly certify this is true in other topics. Some teachers insist in explaining principles and theories in geology, biology or ecology which were valid 20 years ago, but are considered vastly wrong by the research community now. Or, the over-simplification required at young age just lead to near-false statements. To a certain point, this can't be avoided.

Before your next run-screaming, do not hesitate to point out to what you would say are really good articles in history, so I could list them in articles "deserving" translation in french (It would be nice that we attract a nice-lady from La Sorbonne right ?).

That is...I will list them later. I am currently on a sick-leave from the french wikip�dia. Running away screaming might be a female habit :-)

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Julie Kemp wrote:

[...] What's in textbooks is not always accurate! I don't know how it's done in France, but I think it's similar everywhere in that much is decided by committee. If you subscribe to some of the H-net mailing lists, like I do, or belong to the American Historical Association, you know how bad it can be.

I think you're touching on the root of frustration here. Wikipedia is supposed to be a secondary source, not a primary one, which means that every factoid in it should be extracted from somewhere else, preferably from the published work of a recognized authority. When there are multiple authorities disagreeing with each other, it's a difficult situation for editors. For instance, you've alluded to latest research or latest trends among historians, but is the latest trend authoritative? Not really, because maybe it's just a fad and will be discredited by an article - maybe even one of yours! - a year from now. Although we'd always like to pick up the latest info possible, in some cases I think we have to hold back, just use what is at the most recent edge of consensus, and note that more recent claims are not yet settled. (For instance, many of the articles touching on biological taxonomy are full of caveats because recent DNA results are casting old groupings into disarray, and nobody yet knows how it will all shake out.)

Merovingians as not-French is definitely in the radical rethink category, and it may be a decade, or a generation, or even longer, before it comes to be generally accepted. Until then, trying to edit Wikipedia based on the assumption that the assertion is true is going to be hard; you're going against an army of editors who are backed by a horde of published authorities with reputations much higher than your own.

Stan