[andrew_]

Had me right up until the last paragraph. One does not have to be a colonialist or carry bias to have misconceptions about the midevil period. Ignorance is a fine reason. I myself am a huge fan of history but mostly ignorant about that time period. It's just never been my jam. I'll admit I'd probably think the "bring out your dead" and "oh Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here" sketches in Monty Python's Holy Grail was somewhat accurate before reading the article.

[Osmose]

The article doesn't claim that the misconception makes you colonialist, it says that this kind of ignorance ultimately _perpetuates_ a colonialist interpretation of history, which is why she feels strongly about what may seem like a minor issue to others. It's not about blaming you in particular, it's about why this was important enough to her to write about.

[goto11]

Ironically, the depiction of the middle ages in Holy Grail is satirizing the popular misconceptions about the middle ages as a place of filth and stupidity. Terry Jones, the director of the movie, studied medieval history at Oxford before becoming part of Monty Python, so he knew better, but they had a lot of fun with the caricature.

[southerntofu]

> One does not have to be a colonialist or carry bias to have misconceptions about the midevil period.

No obligation indeed, but there is a historical correlation, at least where i come from (France). Myths about the medieval era as times of barbarism and suffering have emerged with the "renaissance" (and its witch hunts which did not take place during the medieval era) then the "enlightenment" (Lumières) of the 18th century.

That's entirely correlated with the emergence of the "civilizing mission" of republican colonialism [0], whereas king/church-driven colonization before that was based on the idea that colonized peoples were not human and did not have a soul, as was ruled during the Valladolid trials of the 16th century [1].

In Western Europe, to my knowledge, it took until the late 19th/early 20th socialist/anarchist thinkers (Friedrich Engels, Pierre Clastres) to recognize that there were different cultures and that social/societal progress was not universal and linear. These ideas are still not really accepted across society as the entire field of economics is based on the idea of linear material progress and that those poor "backwards"/"underdeveloped" peoples need help from us "enlightened" westerners (see also David Graeber for a critique of such productivity metrics [2]).

[0] For example, a famous french politician who's remember in the nationalist propaganda as the father of public schools (Jules Ferry), would say that it's "the role of more civilized peoples to educate the lesser peoples".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valladolid_debate

[2] Managerial Feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes