2022 年 1 巻 1 号 p. 153-162
Bygone events and noteworthy individuals have long been used to market goods, services, places, people, and ideas. However, the stories these campaigns tell may neglect and sometimes even reject scholarly accounts of history. Instead, they may embody a narrative of heritage, which tends to be a rather selective, romanticized, and self-serving view of the past. Though the marketing of heritage can be relatively innocuous in the case of brands or stores, at a macro level it may become highly toxic when it supports socially undesirable attitudes and behaviors and fosters partisan politics. Serious historical research grounded in diverse perspectives and data sources is important for challenging erroneous heritage marketing and mitigating its undesirable consequences. This commentary explores the topic of history and heritage with three instances from the United States - the Texas Creation Myth, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, and the Winning of the West. Similar tensions with fact-based history also apply to many other heritage marketing movements worldwide.
