One of the few Ghanaian historians to touch these issues, Akosua Adoma Perbi, writes that "slavery became an important part of the Asante state [the Gold Coast's most powerful] right from its inception.
But any art historians in touch with that organisation will by definition share its biased outlook, according to which every restoration is a betrayal and every old master exhibition an exercise in criminal damage.
Although he never directly addresses any of the questions being raised in the media on the shooting, there are quotations sprinkled throughout the Web site — attributed to prominent philosophers, writers and historians — that touch on some of the themes being discussed in the public sphere: racism, and standards of evidence, in particular.
The truth is, though, that our best historians, being touched with madness, transcend publishers' formulas and assume that readers will happily spend weeks sharing their obsessions.
The historian Jacob Soll touched on this outpouring of emotion as it relates to Greece in a column in the New York Times last week, and his conclusion is that Germans must regain their cool if they want to lead Europe.
The palazzo was completed around 1520, following a plan ascribed to Raphael, and many art historians discern his touch in the elegantly geometric façade.
As long ago as the 1930's, a member of the American History Association invoked Walter Scott's Dr. Dryasdust to warn that professional historians were losing touch with readers beyond the academy.
Barr McClellan, the author of a book that makes similar accusations against President Johnson and who was a central interview subject in "The Guilty Men," said he was disappointed that none of the three historians got in touch with him, or the film's producer, Nigel Turner, to ask about their sources or their evidence.
Film historians might be touched to see that, however scathing a modern director yearns to be, the spirit of Frank Capra will still find a way in, but audiences, I suspect, will walk away confused.
But of the two men, Cardinal O'Connor had the common touch, while historians likened Cardinal Law to the Cardinal O'Connell who was archbishop of Boston from 1906 to 1944.
