This has been floating around my FB and twitter TL. As with most revisionist histories, if you read it in conjunction with the dominant narrative you might start to get something approaching a good take. 1/
time.com/6072141/alamo-…
time.com/6072141/alamo-…
Like if your takeaway about Santa Anna is that he was an abolitionist, and not, say, (also) a war criminal and dictator who unilaterally revoked the Mexican constitution and imposed a new, centralized one, you're probably not getting the full picture of him. 2/
If you're examining the Texas revolution, but not taking account of the fact that a large portion of Mexico also tried to secede in response to SA's revocation of the constitution . . . ehhhhhh . . . 3/
Like, to make the "Alaska" analogy work, you'd have to have Trump revoke the constitution and have the entire Pacific coast attempt to secede. 4/
Even the history of the Alamo is pretty one-sided. Like, why would we accept the testimony of Mexican troops uncritically? Not saying you should *dismiss* it, but it isn't as if they didn't have a narrative they want to push as well. Everyone does! 5/
And they "only" slowed SA down by four days? The whole thing was over six weeks later, and the "revolution" up to that point was basically a giant evacuation staying a few steps ahead of SA's army. Google the "Runaway Scrape." 6/
That's not to say that there isn't a mythology around the battle of the Alamo, but I'm also not sure that this is a revelation. Most of the stuff discussed in the article is at least familiar to me. 7/
Regardless, as with things like the 1619 project, you should give it a read, modify your priors a bit, but you should do so critically. 8/8
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