Michael A. Bellesiles

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Michael A. Bellesiles is a former professor of Colonial history at Emory University, and former Director of Emory's Center for the Study of Violence. He wrote the controversial book Arming America, The Origins of a National Gun Culture, which addresses the history of gun culture in America and posited that guns were not nearly as prevalent throughout American history as previously thought. Praised for its innovative use of probate materials as evidence, the book was awarded Columbia University's (N.Y.) Bancroft Prize, although this award was later rescinded on the grounds of "scholarly misconduct".

Shortly after Arming America's release, several researchers, including law professor James Lindgren of Northwestern University (Ill.), pointed to evidence suggesting a pattern of serious errors. In two scholarly articles, Lindgren reported that Bellesiles:

• counted guns in about a hundred Providence, R.I. wills that never existed,
• counted guns in San Francisco County inventories that were apparently destroyed in the 1906 earthquake,
• reported national means for gun ownership in 18th-century probate inventories that were mathematically impossible (given Bellesiles's regional totals),
• misreported the condition of guns described in probate records in a way that fit Bellesiles's thesis,
• misreported the counts of guns in censuses or militia reports,
• had over a 60% error rate in finding guns in Vermont estates, and
• had a 100% error rate in finding homicide cases in the Plymouth records Bellesiles cited.

These scholarly concerns eventually forced Emory University into both conducting an internal inquiry and appointing an external Investigative Committee. Both committees found serious flaws in Bellesiles's work, with the external committee questioning both its quality and veracity. Bellesiles publicly disputed the external Committee's findings in his 2002 statement, claiming he had followed all pertinent scholarly guidelines and corrected all errors of fact known to him. He said, "I have never fabricated evidence of any kind nor knowingly evaded my responsibilities as a scholar." On the day that the report was released, Bellesiles resigned from Emory.

The trustees of Columbia University then rescinded Michael Bellesiles's Bancroft Prize, after which Knopf Press withdrew the book from distribution. Soft Skull Press then picked up Arming America and published a slightly revised version.

Garry Wills, who had reviewed Arming America enthusiastically for the New York Times, later said, "I was took. The book is a fraud." He also told an interviewer for C-SPAN that Bellesiles "claimed to have consulted archives he didn't and he misrepresented those archives," lamenting that Bellesiles did not have to do it, since he had good evidence for many of his claims. Wills added, "People get taken by very good con men."[1] Historian Roger Lane, who had reviewed the book positively for the Journal of American History, offered a similar opinion: "It is entirely clear to me that he's made up a lot of these records. He's betrayed us. He's betrayed the cause. It's 100 percent clear that the guy is a liar and a disgrace to my profession. He's breached that trust."[2] Bellesiles, nonetheless, still has his defenders, the most public of which is Jon Wiener, a historian at UC-Irvine, where Bellesiles received his Ph.D. Wiener claims that Bellesiles's errors are no more numerous than in many other books and that no fraud was involved.

The citation for Bellesiles' original article in the Journal of American History is Michael A. Bellesiles, The Origins of Gun Culture in the United States, 1760-1865, Journal of American History 425 (1996).

James Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern University School of Law, wrote a review of the book, titled "Fall From Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal," which first appeared in the Yale Law Journal 111 (June 2002), pp 2195-2249.

[edit] External links

• Bellesiles' "Disarming the Critics", an early rebuttal via the Organization of American Historians
• Fall From Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal, Yale Law Journal (2002), the final version of this review may be downloaded via this SSRN page
• Counting Guns in Early America, Wm. & Mary Law Review (2002) article may be downloaded via this SSRN page
• Columbia University's press release stripping Bellesiles of the Bancroft Prize
• Clayton Cramer's original criticisms of Bellesiles' research
• Fire at Will by Jon Wiener Jon Wiener's account of the Arming America controversy published in The Nation.
• Emory University's press release announcing the resignation of Dr. Bellesiles.