Medievalism and fakery: A review you might want to read

Just now I've been reading a review of Bak, János M., Patrick J. Geary, and Gábor Klaniczay, eds. Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalists Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Europe. I am unlikely to read the book, but just the review of this collection of essays has made me re-evaluate my understanding of history, or rather the history of scholarship.

My interest in history originated in a desire to establish and understand the true facts of history, and correcting misunderstandings in previous scholarship. In my callow youth it was easy to think that historical writing could be divided into "wrong" (or mostly wrong) and right (which established the true facts). Of course in grad school I was exposed to a more sophisticated understanding of how history in its many forms is created. 

This book made me aware of how important "forgery" has been in the overall project of history, with its focus on the 19th century, when nationalism created a need for new histories that validated claims for a new understanding of the present, which provided a basis for new loyalties and priorities. Think of Walter Scott. Sure, he wrote historical fiction, honestly labelled as such, but he created such compelling pictures of various parts of the past that anyone who knows anything about European history is still affected today. (Robin Hood; RichardLionheart; the Crusades; Scotland.)

Many people took a different route to creating the past that they wanted: Forgery. That word strongly implies criminal activity for profit, but this collection shows how complex the phenomenon is, and how much forgery there was in the 19th century.