England’s last witches | History Extra - "‘A lot of witchcraft trials were political, of course, as you suggest. And the first question we really want to think about about this period is why it's so late. I think in the popular mind, certainly for many of your listeners, the idea of witchcraft is rooted in the medieval period. Centuries before, and witchcraft has all these cliches around it, that accusations came from below, came from people who were uneducated, in rural societies, and didn't know any better. The sad truth when we look at the 16th and 17th centuries, the times of great hunts, are that very often, and as in the case of Bideford, which is why it makes this case so fascinating and so terrible. These hunts were driven by elites, people at the upper end of society, the educated rather than the uneducated, and often the urban rather than the rural. So all of these things are challenging, but the witch hunts are actually the product of our modernity, and not an earlier, supposedly less rational age. This is the period of the Royal Society, the period of the Restoration, if we just think for a minute about the marvelous flourishing of the theatre after the Return of the King. It's the cause of Charles the Second, the supposedly Merrie Monarch, although I think, when JM Barrie was thinking of Captain Hook, and muddled him on Charles the Second, he probably just got it about, right. So for all of these reasons, this period that we think of as being proto enlightenment, more rational, more cultured, more like ourselves, is the period we have these great eruptions that lead to the last witch trials that go on in Scotland, until the 1690s in an outbreak in Paisley, outside Glasgow, but Bideford is the last big one in England... Bideford is a real powder keg in the late 17th century. It's gone through the Civil War, it's gone through a plague. It's a place though, where the rich are getting richer, and the poor are essentially getting poorer. Society’s being more stratified. And charity is breaking down. So we've got social problems. We've got as a port town whose wealth is founded on maritime trade, particularly the cod fisheries up in Newfoundland where vast fortunes were made, and in the American colonies along the Chesapeake river. So citizens of Bideford and this may sound weird to say, had far more in common in terms of shared culture, shared religious belief, kinship networks, trade and industrial links, with somebody living in the New American colonies, than maybe they actually did with their neighbors across Devon. The sea lanes were far easier, far more effective way to get around, whereas the road network, particularly in the southwest, was appalling. So the Atlantic is not an enormous boundary to people or ideas. Witch hunts very rarely are created in an instant, the sort of societal and community tensions that create a proper hunt, often take 10, sometimes even 20 years’"
Triumph against the odds: the 1821 Greek Revolution | History Extra - "‘It would be a mistake only to look at this from the diplomatic point of view, because you have to ask what caused this change? What caused the change in the behavior and the calculation of the statesman? And I think what caused the change was public opinion. And so that, I think is where things start to get interesting for the historian, because you can see that along with abolition, the cause of the Greeks was really the first great cause to galvanize public opinion as the political force that we know it is today. Today, we live with public opinion, we take it for granted. But in the 18th century there there was no public opinion, in the modern sense. Public opinion is really a creation of the post Napoleonic restoration, and largely in opposition to the post Napoleonic restoration. And Greece is the cause that galvanizes everybody from Heiner and Byron to Pushkin and Delacroix, and beyond them to whole swathes of society. Brings in women as major political actors for the first time. And so explaining the shift in diplomacy is the rise of the power of public opinion, the cult of celebrity, the cult of the great celebrity creator like Byron, for instance. And what impact this has on the sensibility of hundreds of 1000s of people.’
‘How much did this public opinion draw on the ancient Greek world and the popularity of classical Greece?’
‘I think it was the fundamental presupposition for it. Public opinion was never galvanized by the cause of the Colombians. It was never galvanized by the cause of the Serbs, people remained largely impervious to the plight of the Serbs. They were, their, their sensibilities were touched by the idea that the ancient Greeks had risen again. And were fighting for freedom. And I think it's hard for us to put ourselves in the minds of people in the early 19th century, many of whom genuinely believed this. They genuinely believe that some spirit of the ancient Greeks had come back to life. I think Shelley believed this. We have stories of French philhelenes, who have been at home in France when they read in the newspaper, this proclamation of the Spartans that's been carefully crafted by some Greek revolutionaries in the early days of the revolution, and tells Europe that the Spartans have risen again and need their help. And so these French philhelenes read this, and they take the boat from Marseilles, and they land in the small Ottoman port of Kalamata in the south of the Peloponnese, and the first thing they do when they get off the boat, is they ask somebody, where is the Spartan assembly? And the guys scratch their head and look at them like they're completely bonkers. There is no Spartan assembly. There is no ancient Sparta, there are several thousand pretty tough looking marniote [sp?] brigands in the cafes of Kalamata. And some of their first victims will be the philhelenes. So the Europe is imagining this ancient Greece coming back to life, and that's driving them into action.’"
The Stuart princess who could have deposed Charles I | History Extra - "‘You've found a really incredible painting of her that I really wanted to hear more about. So this is a painting that shows Elizabeth [Stuart] wearing a crown and more specifically, the Tudor crown. Can you tell us a bit more about this painting and why it's so significant?’ ‘It's an incredible painting, and I just stumbled upon it years ago, but I didn't sort of realize the significance of it at the time. I was working on an exhibition and a curator, *something* of the *something* where the exhibition was held, pointed out the painting, and she said, Oh, look, she's wearing what looks like the English crown, the Tudor crown. And I thought, well, it's just a lovely painting, but didn't give it a second thought. And then I started working on a life years later. And then I realized, actually, what I had been looking at was a treasonous painting. So it was quite a dangerous image for any person to have. Because she is, of course, portrayed as a Queen of England, which means at the time, when, when her brother was alive, so that means that someone wished her brother was dead, and that she would sort of be on the throne... Now, we see this happening, for instance, with a trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, that we have Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk on trial, and exhibit one is an embroidered cushion. So just an image and that is just an image of a tree with a sickle cutting a branch and they said this is Mary, Queen of Scots and a lover imagining the death of Elizabeth I’"
The state of history in 2021 | History Extra - "‘The decision in November for Barbados to sever ties with the Crown. Barbados is one of 14 other countries around the world that retain the Queen as head of state, including eight countries in the Caribbean. And for many people, this, this decision by the government of Barbados was about, well, a rejection of Britain. And finally, a a full acknowledgement of their independent status. They, of course, are an independent country, but they've remained having links with the Crown. And that becoming a Republic was a way of really moving on from their imperial past. And in all the discussions around that. And the commen, the ceremony whereby which Prince Charles attended, there was all kinds of discussions about how the issues of, of race and slavery and Empire were going to be at play in that moment of handover, whether the Prince, Prince Charles would acknowledge that, talk about it, which in fact, he did. But for many people, and I'm leading a research project exploring the Crown in the Caribbean during the Queen's reign. And what's interesting talking to people is, yes, for many it was about the fact that Barbados wanted to fully embrace its identity, and in that way, become a republic. But so too, was there, this sense of the impact of, of Windrush in a sense that the British Crown had let them down, and the issue of race was at play, and it did, for many people motivate them. There was a sense that, at the time of the Windrush scandal in the UK, the Queen perhaps should have spoken out and done more. And that was certainly the perspective that a number of different people shared. So, you know, these issues of relationships with the past, and histories of empire and slavery, and so on, are at play in all kinds of ways at the moment’"
How the Beatles were in tune with 60s Britain | History Extra - "'What leads them to break up?'...
'People have always sort of dissected the details of the Beatles breakup... who is really to blame? I mean I think it's pretty clear that certainly 2 of them, John Lennon and George Harrison, were keen to do stuff on their own. And that, I mean, people still argue about how much Yoko Ono,Lennon's new wife, is kind of a destabilising influence. Paul McCartney wants them to carry on. But you know whether they will work with Paul, it's all very confusing, it becomes very bitter. I guess in some ways the question is why wouldn't they break up? You know, they've achieved all that they want to achieve and, you know, at that point, it's not obvious that there's any reason for rock groups to stay together for decades at end. In some ways, the more obvious question... more strange... why do groups like the Rolling Stones stay together. Why don't they break up? It's natural for the Beatles to break up. They've reached the end of the road artistically, they're very much emblematic of a particular moment, which has come to an end. I would say that they break up, you know, it's impossible for young men, very very rich young men now, living in such, scrutiny and under such unprecedented strain, to, it's hard to see how they could have stayed together, actually. And definitely actually because they are more ambitious artistically than let's say the Rolling Stones. The individual members are keen to go and spread their wings, test themselves and do different things, and that's not the case for the Stones, which is happy to play the same kind of stuff. Who are less, kind of, I mean, they are just basically less ambitious and less interested in novelty than the Beatles are. But also the Beatles' dissolution, it kind of feels right coming in 1969-1970, because it's kind of a slow motion collapse, really, because that is the point at which really the optimism of the 60s seems to be fading away, and the Beatles is very much the music of a buoyant, outward-looking, hopeful age. And inflation is biting into the economy, the oil shock is just around the corner. Labour about to be voted out in June 1970 and replaced by a Tory government whose reforming ambitions will lead to outright confrontation with the trade unions, so there's going to be a much, there're conflicts in Northern Ireland have just begun. There's going to be a much harder edge to life in the 1970s, certainly by 1972 or so. So in some ways the question is: if the Beatles had stayed together, what kind of music would they have been making by 1972 given their ability to read the cultural mood so well. It would have been much harder-edged, I would imagine. Much more, much darker. Much more, probably more controversial. So would they have found a place in the 1970s? I mean, that's the interesting thing. Because younger audiences would have wanted something different anyway. Younger audiences in the 70s, I mean if you're 15 or 16 in the early 1970s, do you want to listen to music, the band that people listened to 10 years earlier? I don't think you do. So in a way, breaking up in the 1970s is the best thing that could have happened to them, because it preserves them untouched as the kind of music of idealism, and of hope, before all that curdles by the mid 70s or so. I mean, they could, I suppose they could have ended up as kind of a tribute band to themselves, rather like the Rolling Stones just endlessly recycling their old hits. But I don't think, because of that creativity, I don't think they'd have ever wanted to. So in some ways the breakup was probably inevitable. It's hard to see how they could have continued in the same vein longer than they did'"
How Georgian Royals Brought Continental Food To The British Menu - "From the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9 to the cusp of the First World War, Britain’s monarchs exclusively married German, Danish, or Dutch princes and princesses. Food was one of the ways the British public discussed and understood these transnational betrothals. For example, when the daughter of George IV married a German prince in 1816, the tabloids turned to German food for an appropriate euphemism, comparing the engagement to a poke about in a German sausage shop, with the bride’s grandfather King George III only too eager to make a purchase on behalf of his dear granddaughter. (The sausage in that case was Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the future Belgian inaugural king)."
A History of Political Murder | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘I didn't really want to write a type of Encyclopedia of assassination, because it would be multi volume. I mean, if you look at the Byzantine Empire, you know, I think about 60 out of 100 emperors were, got the chop as it were, probably from their relatives or their guards... [James] Garfield didn't die for a month. And when he did die, it was, because this is pre the discovery of sepsis. About nine doctors sort of put their dirty fingers into his stomach to try and locate the bullet. And of course, they poisoned him. So at this man’s trial, he, his defense, believe it or not, was yes, I shot him, but I didn't kill him. Well, that didn't go down too well... The NKVD had psychiatrists working for them, psychologists. So they would, for example, use somebody to establish whether you would take a take a gift from a relative stranger. So if somebody came up to you in a restaurant or bar and said, oh Mr. So And So, I'd love to give you a box of cigars or chocolates, would you take it? And lots of people do. Now once you've established that principle, the next box of chocolates is going to blow you in half.’"
Modern Welsh History: Everything You Wanted To Know | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Many people, certainly in the 19th century felt Wales was different. Tourists turning up, social investigators turning up - the Victorians were big ones for social investigating. But they see Wales as a different place. But then again, when they visit the slums of Manchester or Birmingham, they also look on the working classes as as, as alien as almost like a different species. So some of the things that’s said about how distinct the Welsh are, are really about class. But nonetheless, they are framed in different ways. People do talk about the Welsh as a different race. They start talking about the Welsh as Celts, as as hot headed people, as emotional people, as short people, and to a lot of the Victorian racial thinking, that's applied across the Empire is also applied to Wales, where the Welsh are seen essentially as just not as evolved or civilized, as the English. But in many ways, the only real key difference, you know, if we're, if we're going to be objective about it is language'"
The Transformation Of India’s House Of Jaipur | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "'Getting the princely states to accede to the Indian Union was a was a mammoth exercise. You had a set of 560 odd states. And they basically all have to sign an instruments of accession either to join India or to join Pakistan. And only three in the end didn't - Hyderabad, Kashmir and a small stake with Junagadh, in Gujarat. They were promised that after independence, they would retain, after India's independence that they would retain their autonomy in all areas except for defense, communications and foreign affairs. And they were also promised these, you know, the various rights which they, that they're, they're able to keep their titles. You could still be a Maharaja or a Rajah or an Assam [sp?] or a Nawab or whatever. They could still import their Rolls Royces. And they also were promised privy purses. So an annual allowance… But very quickly, and some of them, some of the biggest states like Jaipur were told that they would remain as independent units as well, because they were considered viable. They were big enough for that. But within a few years, aside from the privy purses the and keeping their titles and a couple of other perks, all that they'd been promised was gradually whittled away. They were incorporated into the Indian Union. Jaipur became part of, you know, the greater state of Rajasthan, along with the other states that that had previously made up Rajputana as it was known before independence. Jai had been made Raj Pamuk [sp?], which was kind of like a, was a special office like a governor, he was made governor of Rajasthan, but that was taken away from him as well. And then gradually, you know, you had in India, a socialist government under Jawaharlal Nehru, and to have these princes enjoying these perks, still getting their privy purses was an anachronism, really. So the pressure was on Nehru and then his daughter, Indira Gandhi, to abolish these titles. The, the other thing that really irked Nehru who never liked the princes and and did nothing to hide his his abhorrence of them and their feudal ways. The other thing that irked him was the fact that a number of these princes started to enter politics. And in opposition to Congress. And whenever they ran for election, they tended to win'"
Too bad Indians aren't white people, so they can't be guilted over broken promises that were made within living memory (unlike Western treaties with indigenous people - which don't always say what activists claim they say)
The Great Statue Debate | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘The kind of statues that we're looking at now, these ones that have come up in the past couple of 100 years, are very overwhelmingly of men and are white men. And that, of course, is something that's changing all over the world right now. But the statues that are contentious from that period, really do come from kind of high period of colonialism, and that kind of era. And it really also ties in very much in my view, with the kind of Victorian fashion for the idea that history was made by great men. Statues really were a kind of visible form of great man history. And there was actually a period called statue mania, in the late 19th century, where statues started going up all over the world. And you know, suddenly, kind of huge numbers of them were going up in Paris and Berlin and London and everywhere, so much so actually, that in Paris, they had to put gates and fences around the parks to stop artists just depositing their statues there as if they were dogs going to the laboratory...
Stalin, you know, really got into this, really started to put up statues himself everywhere. And I think, you know, this is something we've seen with a lot of dictators in the 20th century, you know, from across the political spectrum is this cult of personality and statues is such an effective part of that, because as I say, they really look like people. So if you put up a massive, massive statue of Stalin in the city, there's an element of Big Brother is watching you, you know, there's an element that you feel that he's almost there. And Stalin really did encourage people to treat his statues as icons, you know, to treat them in a kind of quasi religious manner, the massive statue of him that went up in Budapest that was pulled down during the Hungarian rebellion in 1956. So, you know, Budapest newspapers, when that went up were telling people that they should, if they had worries or fears, they should go to the statue, tell it their problems, and ask it for advice, and the problems would be solved. So that was literally being treated as a religious object, really, at that stage...
Trujillo was particularly keen on projecting himself as somebody with immense sexual power. Anyone who's read the novel, The Feast of the Goat, will, of course know a little bit about this, he was somebody with an immense sexual appetite. And he wanted to be known as somebody with great sexual power. So a lot of the time he would build statues, either in front of or nearby, enormous phallic obelisks of himself, and he would constantly put these obelisks up as a sort of statement, really, of his phallic power, and he wasn't even subtle about it. I mean, you know, when they were unveiled, people would say things like, you know, now we can all see the great power of Trujillo...
[On the Saddam statue] It was actually completely staged, really, that what actually had happened is that American troops there that day, in, in a paradise square in Baghdad, Firdos square. They wanted to create a sort of photo opportunity, they wanted a big dramatic moment that felt like the conclusion of the war. You know, felt like a sort of, you know, exciting televisual moment. So they'd actually been pulling down statues of Saddam Hussein, there were so many, again Saddam put up so many statues himself, they'd been pulling them down for weeks on, basically a daily basis. But none of those statues have been particularly exciting, you know, haven't really come together as a visual image, even though some of them have been filmed. So this one, they kind of staged… Firdos square is not the big square in Baghdad, but it certainly you know, it's substantial and sort of reasonably central. But it really was kind of quite, it's quite complicated, looking into it exactly where all the ideas came from. So there were Iraqis involved. And the interesting question is, to what extent the American troops who helped really came up with the idea themselves, or to what extent the Iraqis did, or was it a kind of, did everybody come up with the same idea at the same time, but it seems extremely unlikely as the Iraqis started trying to pull this thing down. But it was massive and incredibly heavy, and they just couldn't really do it. It's quite a small crowd of Iraqis there. So the only way they got it down was that they were able to use American equipment, American trucks and American troops to an American armored vehicle to pull it down and attaching ropes to it and hauling the whole thing down. And then it was an American soldier who climbed up it and put an American flag at the top of it. And then that created suddenly the Pentagon kind of went wild. No, no, you've got to take that down straightaway, it looks like imperialism. So that that flag very quickly went down and they put an Iraqi flag up instead. But I think even the Iraqi flag, there's some indication that that may well also have been owned by an American soldier. So it was kind of a simulated event. And then, then you had everyone on TV afterwards, all these commentators and so on saying this is a Berlin Wall moment. This is so incredible, you know, this is like, they kept saying, talking about the Berlin Wall. But of course the Berlin Wall really was spontaneously pulled down by people. This has not happened. This was a staged Berlin Wall moment. And of course, what we now know is that it really wasn't the end of the war, this was presented on all these channels as this satisfying conclusion to a story.’"
The Ottoman empire: everything you wanted to know - HistoryExtra - "‘Until Suleyman, the principle of succession was the first of the princes of the household. You know, when a Sultan died, all of his sons would have been set out to be provincial governors, so they would learn statecraft in the field. And then when word of the death of the Sultan reached them, they’d get on the horses and gallop back to Istanbul or Constantinople. And the first one there would be crowned the Sultan, and he'd kill off his brothers, so there'd be no challenger, to threaten his position as Sultan. This fratricidal succession is pretty horrific, and it tells you something about Suleyman that he ends that. And many will say that this is when you have a major shift in the power and ability of Sultans, because from this point forward, it'll be the sons of the ruler as raised in the palace, within the confines of the harem, and without the experience of the field. And that's going to change the Ottoman methods of statecraft. And a lot of people feel to the disadvantage of the virile conquering empire of the first ten Sultans. I wouldn't want to take that argument too far. But I think it's really important to see how you're moving away from the campaigning Sultans who would take the lead and take their army out to the field. And now we're going to see princes of the household, given their education, in the palace, with all of the limits that that imposes on Ottoman methods of rule...
In the later 19th century, I think Britain plays a really important role in preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. You had some Philo-Turkic prime ministers, that's part of it. But you had a conviction among the British political elite, that the Ottoman Empire was an important buffer zone keeping Russia out of the Mediterranean world. And that if you were to allow European powers to begin to do a land grab, at the Ottomans’ expense, they'd soon fall out among each other over geostrategic territory currently under Ottoman rule, so better to have a weak Ottoman Empire preserved than to let it collapse and provoke fights. And in that way, you can see, you know, those last decades of the Ottoman Empire, it's very important to have the Europeans actively preserving the Ottoman Empire. That's where World War One is really the turning point because for the first time, the European powers agree that in defeating the Ottoman Empire, they will dismember it’"
Bewitched cars & mail-order charms: witchcraft in modern France - HistoryExtra - "‘Witchcraft strikes those things that we value most in our lives. And in the 19th century, and then into the 20th century, you get more and more examples of people having things like bewitched technologies. So I've got a really nice case from the 1930s, which concerned a bewitched car. And then that led to this, this court case where people were arguing over when the car was really bewitched.’...
‘A case in 1890, where a woman killed her newborn child immediately after she gave birth. And when she was confronted with this, it turned out the backstory had to do with the father of the child was someone who she believed to have occult powers and who she believes controlled her behavior. The case was repeatedly postponed in order to get expert opinion on what exactly had happened in the case? And, in fact, some of the experts were called in to talk, talk about the case, they were fairly convinced that he could control her mind. Using, you know, a form of hypnosis. She was she was supposedly hysterically suggestible. And he had kind of hip, hypnotized her into killing a child. And that I think the thing that's interesting about that kind of precedent is that that does that precedent goes on to be used in other cases. So there are several other cases in the following years where women who'd killed their own children, more or less successfully argued they had been hypnotized by a man’...
‘Around two thirds of those who were suspected of being witches were men. And what do you think is behind that?’
‘It's so hard to answer. Why, why would be that that more men are thought to be witches in this in this period in modern France, than women? I think the first thing to say is that the association that we have with, with women in witchcraft, that is something that exists, that has existed in a lot of cultures, you know, European cultures, but also other cultures around the world. There seems to be a strong association between harmful magic and women. But it's never been total. And you know, during the period of the early modern witch hunts in Europe, there were whole regions of Europe, Switzerland, as the obvious example, but also Normandy, which of course, is part of modern, modern France, where male witches always dominated. So it's never been, it's never been a kind of one to one fit, that kind of association between women and witchcraft. Why it would be that men are more associated with witchcraft in the materials I look at is really hard to answer. I suspect there are a few things going on. The first is that these are, these are court cases, dealing with crimes that aren't witchcraft itself. And we know from lots of other evidence that men are more likely to be taken to court in these cases. So it may be that there are lots of cases involving women that just, they never make it to court. I think the other things to say that there is this long standing association with Norman male witches, and a lot of the cases in my research are from that region. The other. I mean, it's not, that's not the only region of France, in fact, where male witches predominate, almost all of Northern, the northern part of France, male, which is predominant, and it's only in southern France, in my period, where there are more female witches than male witches, there are lots of other things I could say about it, it gets more and more complicated and less and less plausible, perhaps. But one thing I've talked about before is or written about before, is the possibility that it has to do with inheritance disputes, because the French have a very strict and patriarchal in fact, system of inheritance introduced at the beginning of the 19th century. And one thing that that creates is a lot of tension between male brothers and cousins, and things like that. And then that may lie behind some of it.’"
Weird. I thought witchcraft accusations are just an expression of misogyny
Early Medieval Britain: everything you wanted to know - HistoryExtra - "‘The reason people tend to prefer the term unfree instead of slave is because there's, there's an implied contrast here with the Roman and ancient world. Slaves are generally thought of as being a part of the Roman world, but less so in the early Middle Ages. Now. There were plenty of people who were called slaves in early medieval Britain, servus in Latin, this is where we get serf from in modern English. Whereas in Old English, they had terms like thael or wealh, which is actually the the word that gives rise to Welsh and Wales, which gives you some clue to the social dynamics of slavery in in early medieval England, that a lot of their slaves were were people perhaps, of British extraction. But there are three main reasons why I think that unfreedom and slavery can be helpfully kept distinct. And the first is that they operated in a early medieval slavery operation, a very different way to Roman slavery. One thinks of, you know, you think of Gladiator you think of, you know, I, Claudius, all these things, where you have sort of mass of household servants, you have chain gangs of slaves on big estates, whereas most early medieval slaves were agricultural workers. And they didn't operate in those big gangs on big estates in the same way as their Roman predecessors had done, and even in the Roman world that wasn't universal at all. Second, servitude had different connotations in the early Middle Ages. Everyone thought of themselves in terms of service to someone, but it was a question of what you did and on what terms that mattered. So, service to the king in some honorable capacity like like fighting or waiting on him and his household was one component of elite secular status of being recognized as what was called a thane in early medieval England, but having to do heavy agricultural labor, meant something else all together. The third thing is that that status was negotiable. Unfreedom meant lots of, unfreedom meant lots of different things. There were plenty of outright slaves who had no say over their own time or their own person, their relationships with other people. But beyond that, there was a very complicated sliding scale of partial degrees of freedom and partial degrees of servitude. So that actually a lot of the people that we might think of as, as slaves were actually, would not have called themselves slaves and did not spend all their time. So there was part time slaves, so they might have to do servile labor, say two days a week, but work for themselves on the others. And how many days a week you had to do, where you had to do it, how much flexibility you had, that was as as important as having to do something at all, if that makes sense. There are also examples we have of people selling themselves into servitude, which sounds absolutely horrific. But again, it wasn't necessarily seen as all that bad. It was something that people saw was actually quite a sort of bargaining chip. The problem here is that laws and other texts written among elites, and especially elites working in a Roman tradition tended to deal in absolutes, one of which was that selling yourself into slavery was a bad, bad thing. But the records dealing with actual people on actual estates, actual communities show a much more nuanced picture where freedom was a kind of bargaining tool...
If there was a so called secret crime committed like you stole something or you, you killed someone in secret, that was seen as actually a much bigger, scarier threat to the community. Because normally, if you killed someone, but everyone knew about it, that was obviously not good. But you could just pay compensation, you might need to go into sort of penal servitude to pay off that debt. But still, there was a recognized way of doing things. Whereas with secret killing, if they found out who'd actually done it that carried a much more severe penalty, as did theft. Stealing stuff, trying to get away with doing something by subterfuge was seen as much, much more serious. So again, theft, carried the death penalty, often in, at least in early medieval England. Whereas just taking something you know, while in full view of everyone was actually much less serious, again, that required just, just settlement. This is actually the difference between killing and murder. In early medieval law, murder, morth, was one of these these crimes that was secret and extra scary.'"
Censorship: waging war on free speech - HistoryExtra - "‘When you read about an authoritarian government barring speech that, you know, barring dissent, we can sort of understand that, we can understand the futility of it. But at the same time, that's a rather simple calculus. The more, censorship gets more interesting when it's in effect, benevolent. When it's trying to advance a more positive narrative, or whether you know, where the, where it's not just a jealous guarding of authority, where it's something that's trying to mold the public discourse in a positive way. And we have that with hate speech laws. We have that with fake news laws, which I would love to talk about. And we have that also with Holocaust denial laws. Ernst Zündel, was a resident of Canada, originally from Germany. And he was a part of this crop of Holocaust denier, you know, Nazi sympathizers, and he published a book, a pamphlet called Did 6 million really die? And he, in that he denied, you know, the very factuality of the Holocaust. These laws are in place in order to not allow anti semitic narratives from overwhelming you know, the truth of it. He was put on trial, effectively, Canada didn't have a Holocaust denial law, per se, but they found something similar. And they put him on trial. And he showed up to trial every day, wearing a banner saying free speech, saying, you know, this is my, my right effectively, like a lot of the extreme rights say when they're caught saying terrible things to say, well, free speech. If, he lost a, the first few rounds, and then he ended up winning before the Canadian Supreme Court, which held that it is wrong to freeze any historical narrative in one place, even at this cost. And they reminded Canadians and Americans of the slanders that were rendered against African Americans and and native Canadians and native Indians that they were inferior, stupid, deserve to be conquered, etc. and reminded us that those narratives were frozen in history, were taught as truth until they were undone. And it was a bit of a bitter lesson. And also, nothing pleased Zündel more than being tried for this, I mean, he, it gave him more legitimacy than he ever had before. And so, even when you try and censor, I mean, who can argue with a Holocaust denial law, even when you try to mold the public discourse in a positive way, it can backfire. Hate speech laws. You know, again, who can argue with trying to reduce the level of hatred, try to reduce the level of you know, hurt and slander. There are certain things that press my buttons, there are certain things that I'm sure press yours, that we hate, that we hate hearing, but we always have to think at least in this context and in the context of fake news laws, who's doing the censoring, and for what purpose? Hate speech laws are now inevitably used to quell dissent. Fake News laws are inevitably used to quell truth. I really believe that, that even laws that sound benevolent or efforts that are benevolent, when they come to using authority to mold speech, inevitably, we're going to get results that we didn't intend or that in effect could be more harmful...
I've seen a lot of speech laws that address harm, but inevitably have poor results. I think we have to make a really big distinction and it’s very, very hard to do, between tolerance and approval. You know, the notion of freedom of speech is built on tolerance. It's built on allowing speech that as Justice Holmes here in the United States said, allowing thoughts we hate, to be voiced, to be tolerant of an open marketplace of ideas is not necessarily to approve what is being said...
It's never you or me, or maybe even the listeners of this program, who vindicate the rights of the masses. It's the obnoxious ones. It's the grotesque ones. It's the ones that we don't want to have dinner with, you know, it's the outsider voices that that mark the limits that we all really enjoy’...
‘You write that the ancients believed that words and ideas took on a physical form, and that they could only be wiped out by by burning’"
Someone tried to criticise me for supporting free speech by saying I'd be supporting 3 generally socially despised people that he named. But it is precisely the most despised among us whose rights we need to defend, because if even the most despised of us have rights, all of us do. Presumably liberals want hardened criminals to be deprived of legal representation and due process as well
