Richard M Eaton On Indian History | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtraAlthough the word Sultan is an Arabic word, the kind of mystique of the Sultan drew upon much earlier Persian ideas of the Shah, or the Shāhanshāh, the King of Kings...by the time the Sultan idea reaches India, in the 12th and 13th centuries, it has already picked up these ancient Persian ideas of an of an absolute monarch, of the whole mystique of the crown, the scepter, the throne, the idea of a hereditary monarchy. The idea that the Shāhanshāh is the shadow of God, all of these ideas are then imported to North India, by way of these Turks. And it's very important to remember it seems to me here, that since the Sultan was identified, juxtaposed to the Caliph who was the religious authority, the Sultan did not necessarily convey the idea of Islamic power or Islamic authority, to quite the contrary, we have the idea of a Sultan as a ruler of all subjects, regardless of what their religion might happen to be...even non Muslims could claim the title of Sultan, which is exactly what does happen in India. We find in the 13th and 14th centuries, a number of states popping up in various parts of India, where the Hindu ruler would claim to be a Sultan. And that, it seems to me is rather dramatic proof or dramatic evidence that the word Sultan had been kind of drained from any explicit association with the Islamic religion and had come to mean simply a, the most powerful term that one could imagine for a ruler...
[On the Mughals] ‘Although they were a dynasty that had originated in Central Asia, although they had originated in, on land power, based on cavalry, when they come to India, what you really see with the Mughals is a merging of two different worlds. A Central Asian world where power is understood as something that is very mobile, mainly through cavalry, where wealth also is mobile, because these were, the Mughals have come from pastoral peoples who moved with their sheep and their goats and their horses and their camels. And wealth was understood as something which moved. And they come to India. And they encounter a world in which wealth was static, was stored up in temples, which were well endowed with, with land. A world that was agricultural and not pastoral, where wealth was understood in terms of grain. And so what the Mughals really represent is a merging of these two different worlds. A pastoral world of Central Asia where wealth was mobile, and an agricultural or agrarian world of India, where wealth was fixed…
Although we call them and they continually call it Muslim dynasty, in fact, they become more and more ethnically or at least culturally Rajput. They adopt Rajput style of self presentation, the way in which the Mughal Emperor, for example, presented himself before his people. Leans on symbols and notions of authority which come directly out of Rajput culture. For example, the tradition of presenting oneself at dawn as the sun is rising before one's population, it's called a darshana, where one is seated above the ground level, and the people are below. This is very much an Indian and more specifically Rajput political institution, which was simply taken over by the Mughals’"
Stella Dadzie On The Resistance Of Enslaved Women | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘One of the myths I think, that surrounds the enslavement of women, particularly in the context of the West Indies, is that men did all the hard labor. And one of the things that's emerged from revisiting plantation records, which were kept in quite a lot of detail. What we see is that on many of the large estates, particularly in Jamaica, but across the West Indies, women form the vast majority of the field gangs. So there's been lots of debates about why that was, it could be that women were seen to have more stamina, as opposed to physical strength. And that may well have been a factor. Certainly, in terms of the buying and selling prices of women, it's fairly evident that their labor was seen as equal, there was very little differential between the price of a man and the price of a woman. But I think one of the most important aspects is, you know, if you think about abolition, 1807, the actual source of the enslaved was cut off. Slavery itself continued, but the actual trade across the Atlantic ceased. And what that meant is that suddenly black women, for the first time in their history, perhaps, were being encouraged to breed'...
'Speaking about women who were kind of forced into close proximity with their oppressors, many enslaved women were forced into or entered into sexual relationships with their oppressors. And you have a very interesting take on this, because you suggested that it could be quite nuanced, and the experiences in those situations can't just be branded with one brush. How do you think that we should view those, those relationships or situations?’
‘Well, you know, if you, if your starting point is that survival is a form of resistance, then you can begin to understand those women who either bought into the role of the concubine or took advantage of the little power that they were given to, survive and live to tell the tale. And I think it's very easy, particularly through a sort of black nationalist lens, to try to present enslavement as one sided or one dimensional. It wasn't. And obviously, in a society where colorism was so entrenched, where the closer you were, in terms of your appearance to white, the more chance you had of being given a halfway decent survival rate. What you see is quite a lot of women, both black but, but also mixed race women, who not only had slaves themselves, if they managed to be freed, but who also were accused of quite significant brutality. Now, that's an uncomfortable truth. But it has to be placed in the context of the time, as does any violence that we talk about, because as I say in the book, when we talk about the violence that was meted out to slaves, that was by no means unique to the West Indies, and they were still putting people's heads on poles and disempowering them alive in the courts of British palaces. So, within that context, you know, the brutality was horrendous, but it wasn't unique. But yes, what you see is that women, women sometimes bought into that, and women are sometimes accused of perhaps trying too hard to emulate their white overseers and oppressors’"
Presumably collaborators with the Nazis were resisting by surviving
Jim Leary How Medieval People Moved Around The World | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘We probably forget nowadays, just how important pilgrimage was particularly in the, in the medieval period, in Britain, you would have had people going, you know, *something* entire households going out on pilgrimages at particular times of the year, you know, particular holy days, and it would have been a rather fun time, I mean, there is almost sort of a festival on, a festival feeling around some of these pilgrimage centers during Holy Days, and you would have gone with your, your household and perhaps some neighbors, and you would have made a nice day of it, or maybe a long, you know, longer than that. And, and it would have all been, you know, rather rather fun. Of course, there's a, there's a flip side of that, which is wherever you have, mobility is freedom, there's mobility as restriction. And so people were often forced to go on pilgrimages as penance for committing some crime, you know, adultery, or whatever it might be. So, you know, it wasn't always fun for everyone and others may have gone sort of, with, you know, with, with their sackcloth, on and or barefoot or whatever...
We have the, the Statute of Winchester. 1285, which means, which restricts people moving around at nighttime, as a, you know, you might be caught by the nightwatch. And what are you doing up at this time? Because if you're not sleeping, then that means you're probably sleeping during the day and, and therefore very limited economic value to people. You know, so, so this restriction is a big, a big part of, restricting mobility is a big part of controlling the people’"
Strange. I thought the profit motive was the fault of capitalism
Elena Woodacre On Tudor Queens On Screen | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘One of the things that we can clearly see in terms of our interest in and perhaps our more recent interest in Queens on screen, and women in power in the early modern period, is our interest in women in power today... Now, that is obviously changes the way that we look back on the past and the way that we look at women and power and authority and governance in the past as well. But it also helps pique our interest as well. And we are whether we are doing it deliberately, deliberately or subconsciously, making those connections between women in power today and women in power then. The question is, because feminism and because that's part of our modern makeup, it's part of our modern landscape. It's part of our, we're picking it up by osmosis again, however you feel about it. And that goes into the films that we make as well. And one of the kind of dangers of that is that we are kind of turning the queens of the past into proto feminists, that we're looking to make the women of the past kind of demonstrate values and behaviors that resonate with us, but may not have been something that they could have identified... I mentioned how many dissertations I've had on Anne [Boleyn]. My former PhD supervisor, when, when she was teaching undergrads basically said, I will not have another dissertation on Elizabeth I. Leave her alone. Yeah, she's had enough.’"
The Regency Era, Everything You Wanted to Know | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "[Jane Austen’s] also known for not writing about what she didn't know. So famously, she doesn't have any scenes where there are just men in the room, because she'd never, she would never know what how men would talk to each other, when there's no women present. So there's a real legitimacy there. But it makes it a very limited view. So it's confined to the upper classes, and the sort of upper middle classes. It’s to domestic concerns, to the female experience. And then we can see these glimpses of darker corners of the Regency world, she doesn't really delve into that reality of poverty and infant mortality and disease and war and all of this. And that's a conscious decision on her part, she doesn't want to make things up, and she doesn't want to dwell on misery… it is a great starting point. But it's important to remember that they are fiction, and her stories are the product of a woman's imagination, and they're also designed to appeal to people, and, and to sell books, essentially, and among a particular type of audience, and I think that can get lost in the fandom that surrounds her. And one thing I would say is that I would recommend anyway is to if you're interested in Austen, to really read her letters as well as her fiction, because you actually get a better sense of the reality of her life and what it was to be a woman of her class in that time. And she's got a really wicked sense of humor. So she's making jokes about going into London and being seduced into a life of sex work by brothel keeper. And she jokes about a woman having a miscarriage because her husband is so ugly, and it's just this side is wicked, really side of Austin that is completely sanitized and polished, and never made it into the novel. So it's best to see that side of her that's probably not deemed fit for public consumption."
Stephen Bourne On Black Britons In WW2 | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘How much racism did black people encounter during the Second World War? And what kind of reception did they get from the, from the wider British public?’
‘I would say, as I've said in the book, on the whole, although there were racist attitudes, some of them quite virulent… for the duration of the war, the British people, with some exceptions, embraced the West Indians and the West Africans that came to this country to support them in wartime, because they, most of them would be in uniform. And that really helped break down the barriers. The same thing happened when the thousands and thousands of African American GIs came to this country and were treated appallingly by the American military. They were segregated, the British didn't like that. I mean, you see, we didn't segregate in the armed services. I'm not saying the armed services were always perfect. The RAF, for example, would not recruit men of color, until 1941... But once black people were in uniform, or were seen to be doing war work, whether it be air raid warden, or stretcher bearer, they were respected, I think, on the whole.’
‘Now, as you as you just mentioned, you write in the book, that the arrival in Britain of tens of thousands of American GIs had a sort of quite an impact on the experiences of black people in Britain. I just wanted to go into a little bit more detail on that, please.’
‘The African Americans. Well they brought, the Americans, the American military, brought with them their racist practices. As I say they were segregated. And a lot of the British people try to protect them and support them, and some of the black West Indians and, and others. Black British people, were very supportive of them. And so you had instances where there was friction, I think it was in 1944, the famous battle of Bamber Bridge. And that involved a lot of friction between the white American military police and the black Americans who are going to the local village pub, and integrating and making friends. And it caused a lot of friction that the white military police did not approve, and it ended up in violence, terrible situations. And there were examples of that. They, of course, the Americans, at that time had outlawed or had always outlawed mixed marriages that, you know, in Britain, we did not do that. We did not outlaw mixed marriages. So black and white could marry. It may not have been socially acceptable in some quarters, but it was not outlawed. But in America, it was. So if a white woman was seen with an African American GI, it could cause all sorts of problems. But what I discovered in the course of the research, was that I think it was 1942. You had instances where white American GIs would see a Jamaican or Trinidadian walking along Oxford Street with a white girlfriend and they would literally cross over the road and punch him. Assault him. And it got to such a level of violence towards non-black-Americans. Like black British or or Caribbean or African men, servicemen that they, the government almost introduced a little badge, a Union Jack badge for black British, Caribbean origin, West African servicemen and women to wear so that white American GI could differentiate. And if they saw them wearing this little Union Jack badge, they knew it was hands off. They didn't introduce it, but it got that close’"
Americans imposing their cultural context on the whole world is not new. But this is a new nadir
History Of Medicine: Everything You Wanted To Know - HistoryExtra - "‘As vaccination becomes an accepted practice, slowly in the 19th century, states start to want to make people get vaccinated, and that immediately creates anti vaccination movements. So there were in the middle of the 19th century, British working class anti vaccination movements that just didn't want the state ruling their bodies. Very like today, and a lot of conflict about whether or not they could resist. And it's a template for I think where we are today, in terms of people arguing that the state should not have the right to inject something into their bodies… The humoral system lasted for about two millennia. And I think one of the appealing parts about it is that it's pretty simple in some ways, like I just explained it. You can have a much more complicated explanation. But the way it worked, it sort of fit with lived experience pretty well. It explained, for example, that women are colder and wetter than men, they don't burn off their food as well. And because they don't burn off their food as well, they have to menstruate, that's going to get rid of that extra stuff. But we know that very skinny dancers, for example, might not menstruate. Why is that? Well, they're doing so much exercise that they're burning that off, and that's why they don't menstruate. So it seemed to work with lived experience. I think if you have a head cold and you're blowing your nose all the time, you can't think right. Well, that's phlegm, isn't it? You know, that's what you're blowing out into your hankie. It fits with how people lived in their bodies, and seemed to have a lot of explanatory power...
Many women were pregnant or lactating for a lot of their adult lives. And so they didn't menstruate nearly as often, and they were undernourished. And we know that that can also make women not menstruate. So our modern kind of every 28 days, you know, alleged regularity was probably not what premodern women experienced, was probably much sort of relatively rarer occurrence.’...
‘When did magic stop being considered medicinal?’
‘Ah, that's a lovely question. And of course, it all depends on what you mean by magic, right? I mean, if you think of magic as hidden causes, which is what it was usually meant to mean in an earlier time period, you know, it's still magical today. I can't explain to you how a CAT scan machine works, I might be in one and get scanned, but I can't tell you how it takes a picture of my insides, or, placebo effect. You know, the placebo effect works for many people, for some things. You know, we could consider that sort of magical. We have another explanation. It's psychological. But you could consider it magical. So it really depends on what you count as magical. But broadly speaking, I would say late 18th, early 19th century if I had to pick a time, but I think there are practices that probably continue that nobody around them maybe thought were magical, but they still did them. One of my favorite examples is actually from Bristol, which is, a woman in the 18th century who wore her doctor's prescription on a little piece of paper on a string around her neck. She didn’t get filled, she just thought that it had these magical properties. And it's just really small scale, but it tells you a lot about how ordinary people might have understood the power of the written word’"
Of course, all the feminists who mock men for not thinking that 28 day calendars are period calendars imagine that all women have 28 day cycles, and that women's periods are as regular as the cycles of the moon - even with modern standards of nutrition
