From: hiscrp@nuscc.nus.sg (C R Pennell)
Subject: Re: Royalty GedCom and GEDCOM program
Organization: National University of Singapore
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 10:00:59 GMT

 fr@compu.com (Fred Rump from home) writes:
: hiscrp@nuscc.nus.sg (C R Pennell) writes:
: >: FR wrote
: >: The vast majority of us are descendents of the ordinary rabble that roamed
: >: this earth and had very little to do with the handful of noble savages among
: >: us. Once we get back to our European lines we are lucky to find even the
: >: tiniest shred of info about who most likely were our serf ancestors.
: 
: 
: >Hm, I'm not sure about this. It raises a question about WHY people do
: >genealogy anyway. You can see it in two ways, I think. As a way of
: >collecting	information about how YOU got to where you are: that's obvious
: >But also as a tool to build up a wider picture of the past.
: 
: I'm not sure with what you are disagreeing here. My point was that kings and
: queens were very few among us at anytime. Sure they made kids out of wedlock.
: Sure there is a better genealogical record available, but thru it all we
: descend mostly from the folks who struggled thru life out on the farm. The
: people who made food also made wealth and power for a relative handful of
: their owners/whatever.

Then let me spell it out for you. Some people use cars to get to work
others use them as a hobby. The one is not less valid than the other. If
you want to trace your ancestors in your personal line and show taht you
are descended either from serfs or from kings  that is your interest. Fine.
I want to do something different. I'm a historian, working on Morocco and
the Straits of Gibraltar in the nineteenth century. I work IN Singapore,
because my job is here, and my family comes from here. Every year I have
to supervise - like all my colleagues - BA dissertations on the history of
SIngapore. The making of a Eurasian/Chinese/Indian elite in this city is
an important issue, and one which has not really been addressed, except at
the very highest level. I'm interested in what has become the Singaporean
middle class: the people who make tick one of the richest, most rapidly
developing societies in the non-White world. For me it matters very little
whether there were very few people involved in the British foreign service
in the nineteenth century, what does matter is how they interacted, and
how they made alliances which allowed them enormous local power.
One of the ways in which these alliances were made - as they were in the
valleys of the central Rif mountains on Morocco's Mediterranean coast -
was through marriage. To other historians, working on other periods and
other times  the royal connections of the British (say) and the  Russian
and the German and the Greek and teh Spanish etc Royal families were also
important: as were their connections WITHIN their countries. I am
personally  completely disinterested in my genes - though I suspect some
people doing genetic research might be very interested in the genealogies
of say the Hapsburgs. All I said was that I, personally, working on a
topic which attempts to USE geneological techniques, simply to get me
from A to B, I PERSONALLY find the software to be inadequate. 


In response to my point that: 
: > Its pretty
: >clear that at every level, and in any society you care to mention, that
: >kinship connections were used to advance - or protect - economic social
: >and political position. For a historian these connections are pretty
: >important. Three examples"
FR writes:
 
: I agree, but your ancestry of a few ancestor lines had a particular calling
: which took them into specific life circumstances.  Very few people were in the
: foreign service at any time.  And who were they before they reached such
: plateaus?
: 
: All those other strains which we can't find are the nameless people who simply
: came and went - we latch onto some we can find and call it our genealogy. It
: may be much more on the nameless side. Ideally you would not track the males
: anyway. 

Who is "you" - me? or people generally. Why should there be only one
"ideal" way to deal with genealogical information? Why can't I or anyone
else decide what use I want to make of it

 Umbilical lines would make a bit more sense being that the child is
: fairly certain to have the mother's genes at least.

For what purpose? for tracing back a genetic line, sure, but suppose I
don't want to? Who says I've got to?
And yes, I know I used a generalising "you" also as in the extract which
follows. But the import is different. I'm not dictating HOW anyone else
sets about doing their genealogical research, or the uses to which they
put it, I'm saying that everyone should be able to pick and choose what
they want, direct their research towards what interests them, rather than
have it determined by the software, or by other people working on the same
field:

: 
: >people:  you should be able to pick and choose who you want in to a
: >particular chart:  excluding "irrelevant" lines for the particular purpose
: >of what you are doing without deleting them from the database.  Secondly
: >you must be able to produce charts wich pick out particlar features:
: >different families represented with different styles of line connecting
: >them, ways of printing different sorts of boxes round different names:  so
: >all the French come out with shadow boxes and all the Germans with Gothic
: >ones etc.  or by profession:  churchmen in gothic (has to be!) traders in
: >boxes made up of little pound signs, or (if you're lucky enough to use a
: >colour printer) in different colours.
: 
: 
: Let's face it. Genealogy had its beginning with somebody wanting to show that
: they were of better breed than their neighbor.

So what? does that mean that it can't be used for different things today?

 No one ever sat down to show
: that they really descended from the scum of the earth. The royal connection
: bit is a part of the past interest in what genealogy was: the search for some
: significance. In the development of a family history, the knowledge of history
: via the royal lines would be shallow indeed.

Who says I, or anyone else, is confining their interest to royal lines?
But if you want to explain, for example, a very topical example too, how
the British Royal family got into its present mess, how that has raised
questions, for the first time in a century, about part of the underpinnings
of a  ruling class, which in my opinion has done its level best to destroy
my country, then knowing how that family has married in the past, how its
choices of marriage partners of the traditional sort have been reduced
over the decades, and as a wider issue how the bulk of the selfish,
self-righteous, incompetents who have dominated political, administrative
economic and educational life in Britain for  fifty-odd years have
maintained themselves in power then an understanding of their marriage
patterns (and perhaps their genetic patterns as well <grin>) IS important.

: 
: Take a look at the living standards of that day of the vast population.
: Research that. Write about that. 

Look, you write about what you want to, and let me write about what I want
to, O.K.?

It would really show our heirs how far we've
: come as a society. The life-styles of our parents, their parents etc. are what
: genealogy is all about - at least to me it is.

Personally. I'm not wild to come alive in the life styles of my
grandparents, but that's purely a personal view!

 It is the only thing that can
: make history really come alive as if we were there.
: 
: 
: >  And what I'd
: >like is a genealogy, as large as possible, of those who claim descent from
: >the Prophet Muhammad .  .  .	
: 
: Why?

Because my primary research interests are in the history of North Africa
and because in most Islamic societies descent for the Prophet (real or
ascribed) is a major basis for social and political power. Morocco has
been ruled for the last 450 years of so by 2 dynasties, both claiming
descent from the Prophet. Jordan is ruled by a Sharifian family, and so, in
the past, have been Arabia, the Ottoman Empire (perhaps spuriously)
Iraq, Syria, etc etc. Go into the Moroccan countryside and see how fast
you lose count of the tombs of sharifs (descendents of Muhammad) and other
holy lineages dotted around the countryside, and visited by many people,
especially women who go there to seek the help of the holy man through
prayer. Personally I find it fascinating. So, evidently, do a great many
Moroccans . . .

Richard Pennell History NUS

[who still hasn't got his ideal software. Oh well. . .]
Newsgroups: soc.roots