| Title | : | Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0063081695 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780063081697 |
| Format Type | : | ebook |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 |
| Publication | : | First published July 8, 2021 |
| Awards | : | Wolfson History Prize (2022) |
In 2020, history came tumbling down. From the US and the UK to Belgium, New Zealand, and Bangladesh, Black Lives Matter protesters defaced, and in some cases, hauled down statues of Confederate icons, slaveholders, and imperialists. General Robert E. Lee, head of the Confederate Army, was covered in graffiti in Richmond, Virginia. Edward Colston, a member of Parliament and slave trader, was knocked off his plinth in Bristol, England, and hurled into the harbor. Statues of Christopher Columbus were toppled in Minnesota, burned and thrown into a lake in Virginia, and beheaded in Massachusetts. Belgian King Leopold II was set on fire in Antwerp and doused in red paint in Ghent. Winston Churchill’s monument in London was daubed with the word “racist.” As these iconic effigies fell, the backlash was swift and intense.
But as the past three hundred years have shown, history is not erased when statues are removed. If anything, Alex von Tunzelmann reminds us, it is made.
Exploring the rise and fall of twelve famous, yet now controversial statues, she takes us on a fascinating global historical tour around North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia, filled with larger than life characters and dramatic stories. Von Tunzelmann reveals that statues are not historical records but political statements and distinguishes between statuary—the representation of “virtuous” individuals, usually “Great Men”—and other forms of sculpture, public art, and memorialization. Nobody wants to get rid of all memorials. But Fallen Idols asks: have statues had their day?
Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History Reviews
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Cards on the table from the outset, I am one of those historians who saw Colston's statue getting yeeted into the sea in Bristol and immediately thought "Yes, good, History is happening". I have no time and no patience for those who say incidents of statue removal erase History, not least because the number of people I know who knew anything about Colston went from two (me and a mate from Bath) to dozens once his statue took a dunk.
Fall Idols is a book about statues getting pulled down in twelve specific instances, and also about the very idea of pulling down statues and what it means for History (capital H). It's no spoiler to say that Alex von Tunzelmann does not think that removing statues erases History, because she is a historian and we know that it doesn't work that way.
Indeed, this book looks at why statues go up in the first place. The answers are fairly consistent: it's all about glory and trying to write History in place of what is actually happening or happened.
Stalin gets pulled down, and the chapter looks at his efforts to rewrite everything about himself from his name to his relationship with Lenin. Robert E. Lee's statues weren't about celebrating his military prowess (he lost the Civil War) but were put up decades after he died in an attempt to assert white supremacy. Lenin didn't even want statues of himself but the apparatus around him did.
There is so much interesting detail in here. Examples are sometimes obvious, but also sometimes less well known, like the awful Rafael Trujillo. Some of the stories are also hilarious - the Portland Elks is a classic farce, but the trolling vandal who spraypainted the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen with "Racist fish" in 2020 now has my heart.
Maybe even give this book to your angry uncle/friend/colleague who thinks statues are always good. It's certainly well written and argued and they might have some new thoughts after reading. -
What’s in a statue? British historian Alex von Tunzelmann seeks to answer this as she pens this book that explores twelve statues that have been erected and taken down over the years. Drawing on much of the global reaction to stone and metal monuments to glorify political or historical figures that have been yanked down, von Tunzelmann seeks to better understand why this global movement is gaining momentum and what these statues mean, as well as how they are depicted today. Her exploration is both amazing and detailed, as she tries to parse through rhetoric and get to the core understanding so that the reader has some educated background should they wish to engage in some conversation about the topic.
While I could go through the list of statues that von Tunzelmann lists in her book, I would rather leave that to the reader. Rather, it would make sense to look at some of the reasons statues were built. From the pages of the book, I can ascertain three specific reasons that von Tunzelmann feels statues appeared, which correlates with some of what I know about statues in general:
* To serve as a form of hero-worship for leaders who hold a firm grip on a country’s people
* To commemorate a leader whose service was remarkable to the country’s success
* To remind future generations of the impact a person had on society during their lifetime
As von Tunzelmann mentions, these sentiments are in the eye of the beholder, which can cause triggers.
Another theme throughout the book that von Tunzelmann explores is the reaction of those who saw the statue on a daily basis. The first half of the book depicts colonial or suppressed peoples and their having to view these statues on a regular basis. Once there was a change in political or imperial tides, the statues fell, usually desecrated in a variety of ways. That statues represented a past that was never really accepted or supported, simply lived through as oppressed peoples.
While this may be true, the more modern push for statue removal is symbolic by a people who did not live through events and simply ride a wave of historical selective retelling. I know that this will likely land me in some hot water, but it bears discussing. Those who decry removal of statues based on historic figures simply because today’s lens is placed upon them miss the point of the statue’s original placement. Was a George Washington statue placed to highlight and cheer on slave holding? Would one of Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald be erected to celebrate his overseeing residential schools across Canada to indoctrinate indigenous populations? Could Winston Churchill’s statue have been meant to honour racist sentiments? Likely not, but this is what the movement is (naively?) missing. They cannot see these statues as anything but through modern perspectives. I understand triggers and symbolism as much as the next person, but to erase any mention or depiction of our past is only to forget it and not learn from it. To deny that the reason these statues may have been created, grounded, and viewed is not to show an iron fist, but rather celebrate achievements for the populace to enjoy (and which they did when the statue emerged). It is ignorant not to take a step back and see this as a possibility. While Alex von Tunzelmann may not bluntly be saying this, it bears mention in a book that explores statues and was penned in reaction to 2020 mass global hysteria over the need to remove such statues.
By the conclusion, Alex von Tunzelmann looks back at the twelve men who are explored in this book and tried to decipher how their mark on history was bettered (or worsened) by the statues that were erected. While none were free from controversy, some were more in line with what I mention above as heroes for their efforts at the time. Discussion arises about how removing statues will help the cause, other than serving as a symbolic destruction of the past, as history is not changed and society does not have their minds erased to what took place. The topic is surely controversial, which I hope von Tunzelmann wanted, but it also bears beginning a conversation about history, statues, and how we depict people from the past. School names, public edifices, and even towns remain other pathways that may be scrubbed, which open up additional conversations and I am ready to have them all!
Looking at the book from an analytical perspective, not for content but how the reader can enjoy the journey, I cannot say that I was disappointed. Alex von Tunzelmann offers great analysis of twelve men whose statues have been removed at various points in time. She offers detailed analysis of each, providing readers some context to better understand who they were and potentially why there might have been issues with the statues depicting them. She is level-headed, not grabbing for Kool-Aid to guzzle down, though she is also not dismissive of the arguments made by those who sought to remove the statues. This well-rounded book offers education and entertainment in equal measure while forcing the reader to open their mind up to what could be happening. There are surely those who feel protest means destroying things, but the conversation might be more effective by stepping back and trying to see the lens through which things were crested, rather than using today as the sole perspective for determining usefulness. I am eager to see what others think and am sure there will be those who do not espouse the views I take on this. That being said, freedom to disagree is at the core of this discussion and I applaud its foundational presence.
Kudos, Madam von Tunzelmann, for a book I put off for much too long. I am glad that I took the time to read it and hope others will too!
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/ -
A great example of how to do popular history well, Fallen Idols is at once briskly and accessibly written while also drawing on a great deal of historiography and contemporary cultural debate. Alex von Tunzelmann traces the rise and fall (and occasionally the rise again) of a dozen statues over the past 250 years, from a statue of George III in 1770s New York to one of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 to the 2020 toppling of the statue of the slaver Edward Colston, and uses them to think through issues of history, memory, memorialisation, myth-making and politics.
Von Tunzelmann doesn't advance any particularly new ideas here, and there are times when her breezy approach does steer a bit close to glib. Some may also argue that this is the kind of book that ends up preaching to the choir, unlikely to be read by those who most need to hear its arguments. Still, I think this a timely book, and one which would find a place both in the college classroom and as a gift under the Christmas tree for that one uncle of yours (you know the one). -
The Conservative Right have spent much of the last 18 months with their collective knickers in a twist over the issue of statue removal – principally inveighing against the demolition of sculptures of various colonialists, segregationists, and racists. Right-wingers have variously decried this global phenomenon as another example of ‘wokeism’ and (slightly less lazily) to a liberal-left attempt to erase parts of our collective history that we now find embarrassing or inconvenient. Thankfully, historian Alex von Tunzelmann is on hand with a necessary corrective to these complaints in the form of “Fallen Idols”. In part, this book is a history of such iconoclasm, from the toppling of Royalist figures at the outset of the American War of Independence through to the destruction of the slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol in 2020. But “Fallen Idols” is also about what statues – both in their construction and their demolition – can tell us about historical memory, and how that memory is constructed and challenged.
Von Tunzelmann views statues as a form of historical storytelling, in that which figure goes up on the plinth – and when they are put up – “reflect(s) what some people, some time, thought we should think”. Statues are almost always political statements, echoing the elite opinions and ideologies of their day, and are more a form of propaganda rather than art, holding a place as Von Tunzelmann observes “somewhere between the secular and the religious”. She analyses a dozen examples of statue removal, from the Duke of Cumberland (responsible for the slaughter of the Scots at Culloden), Joseph Stalin (whose figure stood for 5 years in Budapest before being unseated during the 1956 uprising), King Leopold of Belgium (notorious for his genocidal regime in The Congo), Saddam Hussein, and the white supremacist robber-baron Cecil Rhodes.
Through these examples in “Fallen Idols”, we see that the phenomenon of statue-smashing is almost as old as the tradition of putting them up in the first place. Such iconoclasm shows us that there is rarely such a thing as ‘a settled history’, and what statues go up (and stay up) are more a representation of “whose stories we tell” and who at any particular point in time is getting to define our histories.
Throughout “Fallen Idols”, Von Tunzelmann takes a wrecking ball to the various right-wing arguments against statue removal; not least that conservatives can quite hypocritically be in favour of pulling down certain statues when it suits them (see Stalin and Saddam), but also the bogus contention that these monuments are adequate way of educating ourselves about our shared histories. What sustains her case is that “Fallen Idols” is written with a sly, mischievous wit (just one example being the peculiar case of Rafael Trujillo – dictator of the Dominican Republic – whose monuments to himself tended to take on a rather priapic form). It’s no mean feat to write such a frequently entertaining book, particularly when you are dealing with such a rogue’s gallery of psychopaths, slave traders, and genocidal maniacs.
What “Fallen Idols” is about is not just a defence of iconoclastic statue removal, but also of the whole concepts of historical analysis and free debate. As Von Tunzelmann so adroitly puts it: “In a free democratic society, there can be no limits on which historical figures can be discussed and reassessed ... statues do not have rights - they stand at the pleasure of those who live beside them”. Recommended for anybody with an interest in how historical memory is constructed ... or anybody who recognises the necessity of continually debating and reassessing our historical myths. -
#goodreads rating 4.12
Fallen Idols. It's a book about statues around the world that have been felled or taken down, and the movements and the people behind them.
The book spans 350 years as it tells us the stories of these 12 men (all men), notable in their lifetimes, famous or perhaps even infamous, but who certainly encountered far more notoriety after their deaths than they might have hoped for.
From King George III who was toppled around the time of the American Revolution as an act of showing Britain the middle finger (as that moment in history demanded), to Stalin whose enormous bulk came crashing down, all except for his boots, through the efforts of hundreds of thousands of charged Hungarians, to the real story behind the much televised historic tumble that Saddam took in Baghdad, this book covers histories we know and many we don't.
It's informative in all the broad and finer details it reveals, but for me, perhaps, more hearteningly, it shines a light on how history has marched on, from being written and "owned" by a few white men, to now being something alive and dynamic that all of us have access to. Where voices hitherto unheard of, matter.
We Indians fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, as a former colony, on the world stage our story is authentic and our voices find representation. But we have failed to look within, failed to confront our own past, look it straight in the eye and acknowledge, apologize, reconstruct.
This book though. It's the best thing I have read all year. Highly recommend. -
definitely different and stands out to the ones i’ve read and heard about. i would say it’s especially relevant to this current time period, however not the most urgent nor pressing manner. still thought provoking
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This is the first of the six books on the Wolfson History Prize shortlist. I'm planning to read all of them before the winner is announced.
Fallen Idols by Alex von Tunzelmann is, if I look at the other titles on the list, probably the book most aimed at the general reader. It is also the book that ties itself most obviously to contemporary politics. The impact of the "culture wars" is the background to this book and how that has impacted on how we talk about and study history. As von Tunzelmann says in her introduction, "This is a book about how we make history." *It would link nicely with "What is History, Now?" edited by Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb. A book which features an essay by Alex von Tunzelmann.
The book looks at the removal of the statues of twelve people, starting with the removal of the statue of George III in New York by American revolutionaries in 1776 and finishing with the fall of a statue of George Washington in Oregon in 2020. Each statue is contextualised and their falls are contextualised. Or, in the case of Leopold II of Belgium, why some of the statues haven't been removed.
Two of von Tunzelmann's examples - the statue of George V in Delhi and the various 'imposing erections' of Rafael Trujillo's Dominican Republican dictatorship - are drawn from areas she has written about in other places books: Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (2007) and Red Heat. Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean (2011). But there's talk of Stalin, Lenin, the Duke of Cumberland, Saddam Hussein, Cecil Rhodes, Robert E Lee and Edward Colston also.
This breadth of examples offers up different reasons for their fall and different results, but it allows von Tunzelmann to challenge the arguments presented by those who would use the fall of statues to defend a status quo. She shows how statues represent a 'great man' mythologised version of history that - and forgive the pun - can't be set in stone because how we see ourselves and the world changes. History is a dynamic subject. It is an ongoing debate between what we think we know, what we'd like to think of ourselves and 'what really happened'.
The examples are all stories interestingly told. Von Tunzelmann writes clearly and well. The best reason for reading this book though is that it is a defence of history as a subject and an explanation of how it works:
"Any written history, even the blandest series of historical documents, can only ever be a map, not the actual territory of history, which vanishes as soon as it has happened. History is gone. What we have is the memory of history, and that is always contested. " (p. 8)
It would actually make a good book for teaching history at schools or as introductory parts of university courses. When I did my history degree the first part of our course was 'What is History?' and they used historical 'mysteries' to introduce us to the methodologies and practices of historical study. We looked at things like 'Was there a Robin Hood?', 'Who Killed JFK?', 'What Happened to the Romanovs' etc. It gave you an insight into the subject that opened it up in a fun and intelligent way. That's what von Tunzelmann's book does. It tells the stories of twelve statues to show us what history is, which I can only applaud.
*It would link nicely with "What is History, Now?" edited by Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb. A book which features an essay by Alex von Tunzelmann. -
An easy and enjoyable primer on the issue surrounding the current removal of problematic statues, which I read in preparation to visiting the newly supine Edward Colston statue in Bristol (mentioned in the book).
As the subtitles makes clear, the book presents the stories of 12 such statues, together with potted histories (each around 10 pages) of their subject and of the erection and downfall of the statues. It's all very portable and reader-friendly.
This only real criticism that can be levelled here, (and probably to most books of similar intent) is that von Tunzelmann is very likely to be preaching to the choir, and that the people who need to read this book and gain some perspective on statue removals are very unlikely to hear her clear and intelligent voice.
In addition to the case studies she presents, von Tunzelmann also provide a handy argumentation to answers the four main constantly recurring objection to the taking down of statues. This can be useful for discussions on social media... -
Great reading that manages to be both very informative and entertaining at the same time, not easy to achieve. Alex von Tunzelmann analyses the recent kertuffle over removing statues by analyzing in detail 12 cases, ranging from rebelling colonists tearing down King George III in 1776 to more recent removals like Robert E Lee and Edward Colston. I'm not going to review in detail, but I leave you with this quote: "Minds can change, when they want to." Highly recommended.
4/22/2022 - the book made the Wolfson History Prize shortlist. An even better recommendation than mine! -
Fallen Idols goes into the stories of twelve statues, specifically their reasons for going up and the (always political) reasons they came back down to earth. The author does a great job providing details that move along each story while also giving the necessary context about why statues go up in the first place and the back-and-forth in the public sphere about why they should or shouldn't remain. A good pop history read, especially if you enjoy tales of megalomaniacs and their places in history being rightfully challenged.
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A really solid analysis of the motivations behind toppling civic statues of men, and the arguments on both sides. (Has a woman's statue ever been toppled? There aren't many to start with.) Even if you're only mildly interested in the subject, it's a page-turner.
There's quite a lot of range in the 12 "idols" she chose. Stalin and Lenin are included, of course, but so are Edward Colston and Rafael Trujillo. Von Tunzelmann cleverly devotes her first and last chapters to the demise of two Georges-- statues of America's last king and its first president.
The context for each toppling could hardly be better stated-- a Goldilocks formula, neither too much nor too little to understand the background of the man and what brought about both his monument and its demise. If I have a disappointment, it's that she occasionally lapses into statements that are so general and obvious that they're silly, e.g. "Removing statues is not enough [to reform a nation]" (duh) and "It is impossible for a process of truth and reconciliation to work without the truth" (ditto). But on the whole, a lively study of a persistent political phenomenon. -
Thought-provoking and insightful, this book is the kind of work that brings history to its relevance today. It is the kind of book that makes you think critically at every page and that helps you widen your understanding of the complex issues that surround the toppling of statues in general.
Von Tunzelman starts her book with an introduction on the meaning of statues and what they represent. She proceeds to list the 4 main arguments that people who criticize the pulling of statues usually make:
1. The erasure of History
2. The Man of His Time
3. The Importance of Law and Order
4. The Slippery Slope
Then, she outlines a thought experiment that claims to show all 4 arguments are fallacies. However, I consider that her thought experiment only addresses 2 of them: The Man or His Time and The Slippery Slope. And in my view, her experiment comes as unconvincing. First, because she takes the most radical examples that one can find: Hitler and Stalin, 2 of the most murderous men of the 20th century. Relying on a comparison with Hitler or Stalin is overused and has become a weak argument because it's an easy one and takes the most extreme approach possible. In addition, the Man of His Time argument usually applies to individuals who lived in periods where it is demonstrated that people had different mindset and values. Stalin and Hitler both lived less than 100 years ago, which is very recent. As for her thought experiment claiming that no one used the Slippery Slope argument when US troops blew up the Nuremberg marble swastika on April 22, 1945, it is again a weak comparison: comparing the destruction of a Nazi symbol by soldiers who endured suffering and losses in the final days of one of the most brutal conflicts that humankind has ever known. This was not the protest of civilians contesting the existence of offending symbols supported by their government. It was the destruction by the victors of a vanquished enemy whose defeat came at a terrible price. The context is widely different.
Therefore, Von Tunzelman's thought experiment is, in my view, a failure. However, I do agree with her that most of the arguments are fallacies. She could just have used a better example to refute them.
The Importance of Law and Order argument is actually mentioned by Georges Washington in the first chapter regarding the toppling of King Georges III's statue in NY, who disapproved of the act. Von Tunzelman goes on to say: "Of course, revolutions are not always carried out with perfect decorum, no matter how much their commanders might wish it" (p. 31). She basically says that "we don't make an omelette without breaking eggs". This kind of violence is inevitable when a just cause such as a revolution is taking place. This gives an insight in the author's point of view because she makes it sound as if she did not agree with Washington's wish. For her, that's how things are and we should accept it. I personally find that a poor argument. While I recognize that revolutions do not happen without violence, it does not mean we should condone it or be happy about the destruction they cause. In the case of the French Revolution for example, how many works of arts were lost due to the rage of individuals who had no knowledge of what they were destroying? Washington should not be chastised for wishing that such events occur peacefully. While it may be naive, it is still commendable.
In any event, it is not really an honest comparison to compare the pulling down of a statue representing someone considered a symbol of a present enemy in the heat of passion resulting from tensions and a conflict that are occurring at the moment. Georges III's statue was pulled down during the American Revolution, not after. This is very different from pulling down a statue representing someone from another era, sometimes centuries later, especially when the author rightly points out that it any case, most people don't even know the statue of such person exists or that they might pass in front of someone's statue everyday and never know who it is.
What is interesting as well is that that last sentence also goes both ways and Von Tunzelman mentioned it: most people who criticize the toppling of statues oftentimes have no idea whose statue it was until they learned of the toppling. It is therefore funny that they should suddenly care. But as I said, it goes both ways: most people who support statue toppling never knew about the statue in the first place until they heard about it in the news and suddenly they started caring.
Beyond this consideration, Von Tunzelman goes on to provide context surrounding the different figures who have had statues commemorating them and the latter being the target of human passion decades or even centuries later. She does so effectively, addressing Stalin, Lenin, Cecil Rhodes, Sadam Hussein, King Leopold II, and some more, including, surprisingly, Georges Washington himself. In many cases, she shows that the person was not even appreciated during their lifetime. Cecil Rhodes and Leopold II for example, or the Duke of Cumberland were notoriously criticized. As a result, Von Tunzelman pushes us to question why those statues exist in the first place and why we shouldn't assume they represent men worth celebrating just because they exist. This effectively debunks the Man of His Time argument although I am personally not entirely convinced the argument is invalid. Indeed, Von Tunzelman explains that since there was no pollsters in those days, we can't measure whether or not topics such as slavery were widely accepted. She also goes on to say that we know for sure that slaves themselves did not view slavery as a good thing ans since they represent a non negligible part of society, they (rightly) cannot be discounted. Finally, she explains that we have numerous testimonies of individuals criticizing slavery or men such as General Lee or Edward Colston. Therefore, it is proof that in those days, people did not think very differently from today. This makes sense, until it does not.
First, it is true there were no pollsters in the days. However, if we could not measure whether or not slavery was viewed positively, we cannot measure whether or not it was viewed negatively either. Furthermore, if there are a lot of testimonials from people criticizing those men or slavery and colonialism, there are also a lot more texts that support slavery and colonialism. One just has to observe the strength of abolitionist movements to understand that the majority of society either supported slavery or, at least, did not care for it. Which brings me to another point: that the vast majority of people in European societies during the times when slavery was practiced in the last few centuries did not support or condemn slavery for a very simple reason: they were too busy getting by, living difficult lives with high mortality rates in births and from disease or malnutrition. Therefore, the vast majority of people did not really consider the issue of slavery and of those who could, the elites, most of them supported it. And it does not take a genius to conclude that someone who lives in a violent society, or a society where death is much more common, will have a different outlook on life than a privileged individual living in the Western world in 2022. This has been demonstrated by historians such as George Minois in his monumental history of the Hundred Years War where it could be observed that even in those violent times, there were incredible bouts of violence, even for those times, not because those people were inherently bad, but because they lived in violent societies that were experiencing numerous crises: war, famine, plague, etc.
Therefore, in my view, the Man of His Time argument still stands. Yet, it does not work for everyone and the best way to counter it is by actually relying on the other individuals of the time. If the people who lived at the same time of the person commemorated by the statue despised him, then there is a good chance we should judge him by their standards as well. One just has to think about King Leopold II to understand that Belgians of his time were appalled by him.
All in all, this makes us understand that we should not take the view that toppling statues is inherently wrong or right. Statues were put up by certain people to convey a message. This message might not be relevant today and/or it might be a far cry from the actual truth about the figure it represents. As the author says, statues are poor ways of telling us who a person was when human beings are complex beings. Every case where a statue has been removed or is asked to be removed should be considered on a case by case basis. And we should not put statues on a pedestal where no one has the right to question them. In fact, we need to keep the right to question anything and everything. That is what makes the study of history so alive.
Finally, I'll take a jab at Von Tunzelman and her critic of the Great Man theory. Although I would not go as far as saying that it is the dynamic that drives society and drove the world until today, in my view the place of exceptional individuals to make changes through their inner capabilities cannot be downplayed. Yes, those individuals, men and women, could not have done what they did without the support of the masses. But the masses could not have done what they did without the out of the ordinary individuals, or when they did, their impact was limited. A good example is the Yellow Vests movement in France in 2018, which shook French society but eventually dissolved itself as there was no leader to give it direction. And it is difficult to deny that our societies remain fascinated by the possibility of things being changed by the will of a single individual. There is something inspiring in this belief although there is also something inspiring in the belief that we can do so much as a group. Those two views are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
In any case, Von Tunzelman's book is, as I said earlier, thought-provoking and highly relevant. It was a pleasure reading it and challenging or agreeing with its arguments. -
The title of this book really caught my eye as it seemed such a niche topic. It wasn't about twelve pieces of art in general but statues specifically. I thought it was rather delightful that the author got into a subject that particular. I was really curious as to what she uncovered and the insights she was going to share about it.
The opening was very promising. In the introduction von Tunzelmann discussed some of the themes and ideas tackled in the book, such as statues are not neutral and “our reactions to them depend on who they commemorate, who put them up, who defends them, who pulls them down, and why.” More than “lumps of stone”, statues “represent the individual but also national, cultural, or community identify.” She points out that “raising questions about flaws in the individual depicted also raises questions about flaws in the nation itself.”
One observation in particular really stuck with me, that being:Statues of individuals are a three-dimensional freeze-frame of a moment, willing you to examine the person they represent as the tangible human they once were. This may be one reason why some people react so strongly when they are destroyed. Seeing a mob smash in the face of something that looks like a person is shocking. Many cultures throughout history have made statues into idols, bathing and dressing them, bringing them offerings, and talking or praying to them. It’s hard to form that human connection with an obelisk.
It seems so obvious at first and yet it was a perspective I had never considered before.
von Tunzelmann also proposes to answer four common reactions to the desecration and destruction of statues, those being:
1. It is a destruction of history
2. You can’t judge the past by the morals and attitudes of the present
3. You can’t have “the mob” deciding what should go, and
4. It’s a slippery slope
In the conclusion von Tunzelmann comes back to these questions and reviews what she’s presented throughout the book in response to them. I found this to be a tidy wrap-up and a clear summarization of these key ideas, especially number two, which is the “a man of his time” argument (use the answer to clap back the next time you hear someone using this as a defense against turfing a statue). von Tunzelmann gets into this in the Colson chapter and I enjoyed her arguments (and receipts) debunking of this particular chesnut.
But in between the opening and the conclusion, the content proves disappointing. The bulk of each chapter consists mostly of a very broad, high-level biographical sketch of the person in question of whom a statue has been made or who commissioned statues be made (of themselves and/or others). This sketch is no different than what you’d get via Wikipedia and rarely offers any deeper insights or analysis.
Past that, discussion of the statue (or statues) in these chapters often does not show the kind of thoughtful insight and analysis promised by the introduction. At worst, a chapter may be little more than the summary biography and some basic discussion of the statues that went up and, eventually, came down. This is particularly true of the Rafael Trujillo and Lenin chapters: Trujillo put up a lot of monuments to his dick; Russians put up a lot of monuments to Lenin.
(To be fair, with respect to the Lenin chapter, von Tunzelmann touches on the fact that Lenin’s preserved body constituted a “living sculpture” and that was a thought-provoking bit of analysis I liked.)
I think the strongest chapters were Saddam Hussein and Edward Colston. Hussein’s chapter really stuck with me, not because of the inevitable Wiki-bio but for a really interesting connection and analysis von Tunzelmann makes between the pulling down of Hussein’s statue and the theory of hyperreality (“a state in which you cannot tell the difference between reality and a simulation of reality”) as put forth by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. At first I couldn’t understand why von Tunzelmann was suddenly discussing this theory but as she got into the events leading up to the toppling of the statue it became clear. Not only was it a genuinely fascinating discussion, one that stayed with me after I finished the book, but it really gets you thinking about how that same concept applies in the information we consume today.
(Check out this 2021 Guardian article where von Tunzelmann discusses this. It’s essentially the chapter minus the biographical bits:
The topping of Saddam’s statue: how the US military made a myth)
And that’s the thing I found frustrating about much of the book: I wanted more of that type of insight, not a regurgitation of basic information. -
I found this absolutely fascinating - both in its descriptions of contentious statues and their removal, and in its account of how history is reinterpreted and contextualised throughout time. Highly recommended
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ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for review.
Overall, a good introduction to the topic of historical statuary and when and why they come down. It's clearly aimed a general audience and doesn't make assumptions about what you do or don't know about history, which is important because not every historical person in the book is widely taught in your average curriculum. I think a lot people would find the chapters to be enjoyable bite-size sections, and for that reason I suspect the audiobook will be a popular version.
Unfortunately for von Tunzelmann, she is likely preaching to the choir. Those who would most benefit from considering a broader perspective of the history of statue removal are precisely those least likely to pick up the book. The choir will likely enjoy it anyway, and that's probably all any history author can hope for these days. -
One of my favorite books read this year. Anyone else find it entertaining as much as it was informative? Wish all nonfiction was that engaging. Love that the premise of the book is to dismantle the four fallacies for why we cling to our stories and heroes and love that the book ends on them too. A very easy must-read for anyone who wants to know what is critical thinking.
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An insightful book that puts some of history in an interesting perspective. I personally found it a well written and enriching read.
Gets you thinking about your own opinions, so for that reason alone I will already recommend. Also, the handful of illustrations (eventhough not many) are pretty nice! They're also on the cover but I like them a lot. -
There is something about the front and back cover of this paperback edition: It features the drawn heads of the men (for they all are) whose statues are central to the book. They are all in a proper statue-like pose, looking towards but not at us, slanted at the same 45 degrees angle. Apart from Lenin, who seems to critically appraise us from the corners of his eyes, they are not at all engaging with us. And then there is the picture of the author, Alex von Tunzelmann, accidentally or intentionally printed at about the same size. She looks directly at us, with large expressive eyes and a half-smile. As engaging as the statue heads are distant.
It is appropriate. For this is a book about us, and the conversation (or lack thereof) among us people of today about the fate of statues. The subjects of the statues themselves are almost incidental to it. The real tension is between those who put up the statue, and those who want to pull it down. Of course some of the portrayed people put up their own statues (Stalin, Saddam, Trujillo) but that does not necessarily change the issue. In the midst of the bitter culture wars, the author engages with us, seeks to have an exchange based on rational and considered opinions. Her opinion is plainly that there is a good case for pulling down most of these statues, at least as good a case as there was for putting them on their pedestals. It is, to my mind, a largely convincing case. In many cases the motivation for creating the statue was flawed from the start. And it is that motivation, the message that the statue was intended to broadcast, that interests the historian far more than its subject.
It is not entirely wrapped up, however. I would have liked to see Tunzelmann make a case for keeping a statue. The author uses a plain “reductio ad absurdum” to make the case that obviously, there are statues that should be removed. But are any worth keeping? In the heady days of iconoclasm, some voices were heard that argued for, essentially, a purity test. But all people are inherently flawed. Where do we stop, and what shade of grey still entitles its carrier to public remembrance? And who determines that?
As far as I can tell, Tunzelmann’s position on this is dual. Primarily she argues for public monuments that would celebrate not the few but the many. Moving away from statues that celebrate “Great Men” or “Great Women” whose idolising belongs to an antiquated view of history, and instead using our public spaces to memorialise members of the public. She gives the example of the ‘Stolpersteine’ that remind us of the victims of the Holocaust. On the other hand, she is positive about monuments that remember the heroes of the past without glorifying them. She gives the example of a pair of statues of Churchill and FDR sitting on a bench in Bond Street in London: A bench is not a pedestal or a column. It is fine to have statues of flawed people, as long as you are honest about it. (Attaching a commentary plaque to a statue, often the compromise position, has little impact.)
A very interesting and thoughtful book. It is not long, and easily one could write more about each of these cases. But it is sufficient to make the case. It is obviously engaging with a hard-fought controversy, but does so without bitterness and with an occasional funny swipe. -
I have finished reading “Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History” by Alex Von Tunzelmann
Do toppling statues stop history or make history? Why were statues built in the first place. These are difficult and important questions that the author addresses. To do this the author looks at famous statues from across the globe that became infamous and were removed by legal means and otherwise.
I will not recount the full list, but there are some interesting and reoccurring themes that follow the histories of each statue. The author is correct in pointing out one obvious flaw in the argument that statues are history, therefore destroying statues is by definition destroying history. The big problem with this argument is that as the author rightly states; “statues are not neutral”. What statues all have in common is that their function is to promote their subjects in specifically glorifying lights.
To have a statue made of you is an honour, not a mere dry recording of history. But what is interesting is that it is not just the supporters of the world views of these figures that have been opposed to taking down these statues. Sometimes in newly independent countries, government officials have been wary of taking down statues from previous colonial regimes, perhaps out of some sort of conservative instincts to not push waves of revolution too far.
The chapter I found most intriguing was one of the statue of Edward Colston in my own city of Bristol. The history given by the author of the figure was straight and dispassionate enough. The years long campaigns to remove the statue, or add explanatory plaques to it were well researched, even mentioning certain notorious local political figures impeding both of them. What I thought was puzzlingly lacking was any kind of canvassing or snapshots about ordinary Bristolian’s opinions about the taking down of the statue. The issue has proved divisive and many Bristolians sadly see the incident as an attack on their history. Some claim less plausibly that Colston remains a hero to the city. I beg to differ.
Overall, I think this book was insightful and accessibly written. However, being a bit of a nerd, I did have a few issues with some of the histories that were recounted. For instance, the chapter about the Congo was curious in how it portrayed the DRC’s first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. While the author portrayed Patrice Lumumba as an innocent victim of a CIA assassination plot, Martin Meredith’s book on Africa makes clear that he was quite an unstable figure.
What I think this book did well is to illustrate the similar controversies and arguments taking place globally over statues. Modern statue building came from the ‘Great Man’ Theory which heralded from the Victorian era. Have we grown beyond seeing our history as being merely about “great men”? Perhaps we would argue less if there were more Great Women who were recognises in statues. Or maybe we would argue more. -
The author examines the “lifespan” of twelve statues, some of which were toppled by mobs of people. She begins with King George III in New York City in 1776. George Washington was there at the time and disapproved – more so on the perspective of the unruly crowd. In 2020 a statue of George Washington was brought down in Portland, Oregon, triggered in part by the Black Lives Matter movement.
The author is erudite and thought-provoking in discussing both the history of the statues and the men they represented (the twelve statues represented men, not women).
She discusses the standard arguments against removal of statues. One very common claim is that the man - whether racist, misogynist… merely reflected the thoughts of the era. The author points out that this is not true – there were always people who opposed racism, slavery, colonialism and exploitation. Definitely, the slaves themselves vehemently opposed their condition.
Also, while sometimes very little in the way of public approval is sought to put up a statue, there is an outcry when the statue is slated for removal. This leads into a bureaucratic labyrinth that can take years of wrangling. Hence, desecration and toppling ensue!
Another argument often presented to maintain the statue is that it represents “part of our history” – whether good or bad. That is fatuous – as the author states using other words. Statues are made to glorify and venerate the person on display (as Simon Schama says (page 263) “an invitation to reverence”). When facts show beyond a doubt that the person represented by the statue was a slave-holder or an exploiter who was responsible for the deaths of thousands or millions, like Stalin or Trujillo of the Dominican Republic – this is obviously offensive to many of those who perished or to their survivors.
Much of this is due to the propagation of erroneous history. The founders of the American nation (like George Washington) owned slaves and pushed forward their agenda for the expansion of American settlers into Indian homelands – stealing their land and killing thousands of Native Americans. This is seldom taught in the school curriculum. In a real sense, it fits into the books' title of “Fallen Idols”. When history is examined, our idols often do not live up to the halo surrounding them.
The author connects well the relationship between past and present. It is an interesting look at a diverse group of statues that were idolized and removed – and to a frightening degree have been resurrected in some countries. Stalin is a prime example. -
Fallen Idols is a collection of stories about "Great Men" from across nearly 350 years of history, and each one shares a common event: the statues of these men being pulled down. Each of the twelve stories make a unique point about the nature of iconoclasm and why people choose to take action, leading directly into the author's conclusion about what this activity says about us today. This is a short book (275 pages of main text in my copy) and each story is a brief, engaging ride through the rise and fall of an icon. There was a surprising amount of irony/humor considering the often dark subject matter, and I loved the way this was presented.
What spoke to me most in Fallen Idols was the author's comments about the honesty of history. I had no prior knowledge of Donald Trump's 1776 Commission, a project that aimed to encourage "patriotic" education in the U.S. following the fall of Portland's statue of George Washington in 2020. What this ended up being was a complete disregard for much of the country's controversial history to reinvigorate the pride in classic American figures such as the Founding Fathers, which some would argue to be the cultural glue which keeps the States united. The Commission's final report was not even written by historians. This was really frustrating to read about, because progress cannot be made unless we can interact with history in a purely truthful manner. The United States is a different country than it was 245 years ago. The story surrounding it's creation is no longer a cultural pillar to many Americans whose ancestors have no colonial roots (and were in many cases enslaved/oppressed by those colonists). Realizing this and discussing it does not equate to hating the U.S., it allows someone to interact with the history of other Americans in a more understanding way.
This book is by no means centered on the United States, it is simply what resonated with me because that is where I am from and is a place I love. I highly recommend reading this no matter where you are from and no matter your politics. As quoted in the book "Minds can change, if they want to."
I'll leave you with one of my favorite pieces of irony I came across while reading: "...the Novosibirsk statue [of Joseph Stalin] still stands- behind a high wall. These days, Stalin must be protected from the wrath of the proletariat." -
Fallen Idols studies the employment of statues as a method to define history and thus control the present. The introduction, conclusion and much of the analysis in the 12 chapters gives great illumination into the significance of statues of representing ideas and thus importance they have to how present society views and defines itself. Through the lens of 12 torn down statues of once venerated figures Tunzelmann explores the complexities of using statues to honour public figures and leads us to questions such as does the erection of statues inherently lead to the creation of historical myth? Is the tearing down of a statue an act of historical and artistic expression in and of itself? Are statues no longer relevant or desirable to society? She ends the book by challenging the notion that tearing down statues is attempting to 'erase history' by suggesting that history amounts to much more than statues and actually, statues in some ways stand against the study of history. As Simon Schama points out, history is debate; by inviting reverence, statues shirk such debate. I very much enjoyed this book because it let me ponder many new perspectives which are very relevant in modern societal debates.
