Helen Carr & Suzannah Lipscomb On History Now | History Extra - "‘Historically, the word nostalgia was a sickness, it was, you know, there are records of people even dying of nostalgia. So these these things have changed over time"
Decolonisation To Covid-19: History Education Today | History Extra - "‘It's important we remind ourselves again, by using our skills of, as historians of times when actually there have been real panics about the disappearance of subjects like chemistry, or mathematics. So the threat that history seems to be under right now. And I would actually agree with what Anna said earlier about the numbers of applications falling and it is, it's certainly something we should be considering, I think very seriously. But this is a moment and the moment may shift. And I think it is a product of an understandable push from the government around STEM, which has chimed with, with social forces, including immigration, a changing demographic balance in the UK, perhaps with people coming from outside the UK, from countries, particularly in Central Europe, where there is more of a tradition of technical education. And I think the effect that that can have kind of collectively, particularly in a place like London, where it's a, you know, an absolute melange of people from all over the world, these things can have a kind of building or snowballing effect’"
Extraordinary hoaxes of the 18th century | History Extra - "'The reason why they were taken in partly was because they were exaggerating what they saw. And this is the classic response to spectators who are fooled by magicians, because they tend to exaggerate what they saw, partly because the magician points them in the right direction. But partly because they want to explain to other people that was how impressive the trick is, and but there's no way that they could be fooled. So they make the trick sound much harder than it is, then it's harder for people to come back and say, well, you should have spotted how that was done. And that was precisely what the witnesses to Anne Robinson were doing. They were claiming, you know, crockery was dancing, and they were giving exact measurements of how far a vase will be flying across the room"
Nancy Goldstone On Maria Theresa: Empress, Warrior, Matriarch | HistoryExtra Podcast | History Extra - "‘Maria Teresa was one of the few princesses who got to marry for love. She married Francis Stephen of Lorraine, he had no real, you know, no real property. In fact, he had to sign away his property, he had to sign away Lorraine in order to marry her, which was something he did not want to do, but was kind of forced on him by her father. And he was actually, she was engaged almost from the time she was six, and he was like, 13, or 14. And so she adored him, she just adored him. And, and for a long time, he was, and he loved her. And he was so supportive during the early years of the marriage, but that Maria Teresa ended up having 16 children in 20 years, and that's going to take a toll on you know, and also she's working all the time. And Francis, her husband started cheating. And he cheated, you know, pretty regularly. And she couldn't, she couldn't bear it. And first she tries the tears and then and all that with him and, and tries to make him feel bad, and he would apologize, but he would do it again. So what she did was she, she decided to legislate that all men should have to be, should have to be monogamous to their, you know, should never be able to cheat on them, no adultery in Vienna. So she, she does this kind of Chastity Commission where she sent out that what will eventually evolve into the secret police to go and if you are a sing, single woman walking the streets, even if you weren't a prostitute, they bundled you out of town, she would invade people's parties, their homes or their dinner parties to make sure that nobody, there was no fooling around going there. And a soldier that went to a brothel that she caught him lost his commission. It was just ridiculous. It didn't last for very long. And the funniest thing was that Casanova happened to be in Austria at that time. And boy, did he get out of town fast. That was not his, his idea of a good time...
Louis XVI, very, I think very strongly believe had autism spectrum disorder. This is a guy who, you can read all the records, you read all the records of observations of his behavior. He never looked anyone in the eye. He bare, he didn't speak at all, when he was younger. He shunned, he didn't look, he didn't play with the other children. In fact, he would go up on the roof and chase cats. Later he would go on the roof and shoot cats. He he had, he had to have a very strict routine. Physically, there was something that, he had all these physical mannerisms and he just perceived, you can see that this is a man who perceived the world differently. He was very smart, he was highly intelligent, Louis XVI. But leadership involves other qualities, you have to be able to look at a leader and he could never speak extemporaneously, he could, he could not make a decision, he relied on the, on ministers. And so he was at such a disadvantage in that way. And on top of all of that, he did not understand how sex worked. And and so, Marie Antoinette, Marie Antoinette’s a virgin, she, when she comes, and so the two of them, she couldn't tell him what to do. And he didn't understand what to do. And it would take until her brother came after Louis, after Louis XV dies and Louis XVI takes over. And it was only after that conversation, where he and Marie Antoinette worked on that afterwards that she became pregnant...
In the 15th century, Charles VI of France had, also a condition, he had a condition. He would every couple of months, he would lose his identity, he would think he was somebody named George. And he would run around the castle, locked up way, they would lock him in the castle, he would rave, he would be naked. He didn't know anyone else around him. He rolled in his own feces. He did all this stuff. And today we say, okay, Charles VI. Very, very likely was schizophrenic. And that is what happened. And we are able to make that condition. Now, if you don't like a label, if you're a person who doesn't like off, the label of autism spectrum disorder, that's fine. But I would point you to him, there's a very funny movie called Analyze This… Billy Crystal plays a psychiatrist and he has to treat Robert De Niro who is a dangerous mobster and Robert De Niro the dangerous mobster, does, if Billy Crystal says anything to him as a psychiatrist that Robert De Niro doesn't like, Robert De Niro says he's gonna kill them. So Robert De Niro comes to Billy Crystal and he says, I'm having, I'm having these terrible, attacks. I can't breathe. I'm sweating. My heart's palpitating. I'm shaking. And Billy Crystal says, oh, you're having a panic attack. And Robert De Niro says, panic attack. I will never have a panic attack and Billy Crystal’s like, no, no, no, no, it's not a panic attack. It's a sweating, breathing hard, palpitation, shaking attack. So if you don't like Autism Spectrum Disorder, that's fine. Just, whenever you think about Louis XVI, think that he is not looking someone in the eye. He is not responding to them. He can, someone can be in the room with him every day for 19 years, and he doesn't acknowledge them. He, he he doesn't play with other children. You're in, when he grows up. He doesn't go around with other children. He must have a routine, he had a routine even after, they was in prison, they gave him a routine. He needed an emotional support with him all the time, that Marie Antoinette filled that emotional support or a minister earlier filled that emotional support. He made weird facial tics. He couldn't address a crowd. He could sit for hours while crowds screamed and didn't say a word. These are things that, this this is the behavior and then he could, he did not know how to consummate a marriage, he did not know how to have a child."
Inside the prehistoric mind | History Extra - "‘People had knowledge, but how did they regard their knowledge? And this is something that, you know, we've got to think about quite carefully, because one of the things that worries me about people's attitudes to the past, is that people tend to patronize the past. They think they were simple. Whereas in reality, I think the breadth of their experience was a great deal wider than ours. I don't necessarily think that, you know, humanity has progressed hugely as we've moved forward in time. You know, I sometimes think if some of the attitudes of some political leaders had been prevalent in the past, would they have been, would they have thrived the way that some dictators and people have in the present day? You know, would Hitler have been possible in the Iron Age? Personally, I rather doubt it. Whereas I think, in some respects, they were more civilized than us."
John of Gaunt: prince without a throne | History Extra - "'A lot of people seem to think the 100 Years War was a series of famous battles. In actual fact there were very very few battles that were fought during the 100 years war, it was almost a war of evasion in many ways. England would constantly invade France, the English would invade France in various campaigns led by the king or led by, led by his sons, but the French would usually avoid pitched battle because pitched battle didn't go too well for them. Think Crecy, think Poitiers and then later think Agincourt. It didn't ever really go in their favor. What did seem to work was avoiding the English and applying scorched earth policy to the land. So removing any sort of supply, food, access. Any loot from the English path"
Plagues of our past | History Extra - "‘The creation of the modern city. What effect does that have on infectious disease?’
‘Well, cities are a huge part of the story of human disease, because they bring people together, they bring people together. And so they're sharing space, they're sharing air, they're sharing water, they're sharing, they're sharing sewage space, they're sharing insects, they're sharing lice and fleas. And cities were really deadly places. There's, there's just a lot of evidence from a lot of different parts of the world that country life was healthier. People in the country lived longer, they grew taller, they bore less of a burden of infectious disease. But cities still drew migrants, they were economic magnets, they were culturally exciting, throughout most of our past as they are now, and, and so even though there was a huge penalty to pay in terms of health and mortality, cities, drew people and ended up being a demographic sink, and, and creating a kind of place where, where people would go and disproportionately would die. And really no ancient or medieval, or even early modern city could reproduce itself. Its death rates were always higher than birth rates. So they relied on the constant influx of people but but diseases, infectious diseases, thrived in cities. Diseases of waste, like typhoid, diseases of the respiratory tract, like tuberculosis. And so there's a really important dynamic in human history in which cities allow the, the evolution and circulation of diseases and which they create really strong demographic differences between the town and the countryside. But I also want to say cities are places of innovation. And that's a very deep part of the human story’"
Unexpected Edwardians | History Extra - "‘Women now can go to that, that new idea, the department store, and they can go by themselves. And there's a very practical reason why women get this level of independence. It's because they can go out, and they know they'll have somewhere to have a wee. And it's so simple, that's a kind of historical secret in itself. When did women start going out by themselves? As soon as department stores opened with ladies’ bathrooms attached? And it also meant that women could start shoplifting, basically. And there was two sorts of shop, there was the organized shoplifter. And then there was the kind of lady Dowager who saw suddenly went yes, and shoved it into her bloomers. But that demanded a high level of, a number of store detectives, and the store detectives had to be women. But women were still, particularly women in the lower orders, were still pretty invisible in those days. So another typical way that a lady detective might operate would be in a divorce case, where you needed to prove adultery. So a woman, lady detective, posing as a chambermaid could, you know do the business. Could provide evidence whether it was all set up, or whether it wasn't. And then you go back into a slightly more Victorian era. Courting between young women and young men of quality became far easier as women were let off the leash, which of course, meant that young men and young women could meet in private. So it's always handy to keep an eye on what's going on. And who better to spy on them, than a virtually invisible woman, you know, sitting in the park feeding the ducks?’"
Afghanistan: a history of instability | History Extra - "‘Western eyes see this as a problem of quote Islamic fundamentalism, when there's a whole ragbag of different things going on, which are often misinterpreted as religious fundamentalism in inverted commas. In many ways, what I think happened in the last month has strong parallels to what happened in Iran in 1979, where you had what on the surface look like a religious revolution, which certainly brought a religious figure in Iran to power. And the Taliban see themselves as an Islamic Emirate. But behind that lay a whole bundle of, of social, cultural and economic grievances. Why were people raising in Iran against the Shah? It was partly the secret police, partly because of the corruption of the ruling class, partly because of the way that most of the country was not benefiting from the Shah’s rule, the small elite were plundering the country in the eyes of the rural conservative masses. And I think a lot of those factors were to blame for what happened in the last month, there were a lot of people in Afghanistan, who felt a small elite in Kabul were devouring resources that were being poured in. And it was very striking when you went to Afghanistan anytime in the last 20 years that despite the many trillion dollars were supposedly arriving in the country, year in year out, there wasn't even a single road in the country that didn't have potholes, even the, you know, the road from the airport to the presidential palace was was like a backroad in Delhi. And a lot of people felt that this was a matter of justice against injustice, a decadent minority against a worthy, the people, the people in the villages who were missing out, and also just a general conservatism in the face of rapid development. And, and, and this and the word you hear, again, from support of the Taliban is this idea of justice, the idea that the, there was no justice in the old regime, it could be bought, it was the only justice for the rich, the poor, had no access to this. So whether or not one accepts that rhetoric, there's no question that Islamic fundamentalism as perceived from the west is, is a very, very small part of a much more complicated picture of grievances and and motivating factor’...
‘One of the narratives that gets told about Afghanistan is that it is what's called a graveyard of empires. Is that true? And what you think the reasons for that are, if it is true’
‘So, there are obviously been many, many empires which have ruled whole or parts of Afghanistan perfectly successfully. If you go back far enough, the Kushan Empire had had its capital under under Bagram Airbase, and full of treasures of gorgeous Roman glass and beautiful Indian ivory, furniture and beautiful gold objects and it ruled deep into Uttar Pradesh and India from there. The various medieval dynasties, most famously the, I suppose, the Lodis, and then the Moguls. Kabul was the base for Babur’s invasion of of India and Kabul proved an extremely lucrative base for Babur. Then again, you know, other Timurid empires of Shah Rukh in Herat, and so on, presiding over a golden age of painting and architecture and colleges and education. Gor Harshad [sp?], Bizard [sp?], all the great names of of Western Afghan history. So it's not that empires have not succeeded in Afghanistan, it's that Western colonial empires in recent times have found it very difficult to rule Afghanistan. But that said, as we've been discussing, so have most domestic Afghan rulers found it difficult to rule Afghanistan, it's not a, it's not a problem only faced by colonial rulers. And we are seeing signs even now that the Taliban are going to have a lot of trouble extending their authority, or maintaining centralized authority. They're fighting among themselves, we've heard of, there's still continued resistance in panjshir, and demonstrations around the country. So it is a difficult place to rule full stop. It's not, it's not only colonialists who, who've had that problem. And so I mean, history is full of very successful empires, which have ruled Afghanistan. But it's certainly true that the East India Company, the Raj, the Russians, and the Americans all left with a bloody nose, though none were defeated, outright. And this is the point Bijan was making earlier, it's that the real problem is that Afghanistan can't finance its own colonization. If you invade Bengal, there are two harvests a year, there are spectacular natural resources. And there is a extremely rich merchant and middle class, you can tax and you can use that money to recruit soldiers. And you can, and you can make a profit out of colonialism as the British and the East India Company very successfully did, particularly if you bring opium into the trade and turn yourself into a narcotics empire and run on selling, selling narcotics to China. But more recently, the East India Company, which was making a massive profit out of its operations in Bengal, and Bihar, suddenly went into the red when it invaded Afghanistan, because having to support an army in a very distant place from its centre of operations, transport food and weaponry over vast distances with an entire Sikh army between you and your base, and build forts and roads is an extremely expensive business. It later on with the, with the Russians, it famously broke the Soviet economy or helped break the Soviet economy, the cost of continual fighting in Afghanistan. And finally, now with Americans, it wasn't in a sense that they'd actually been militarily defeated and that the Americans could not carry on resisting the Taliban, it was, it was a, domestic politics found it too expensive in terms of cost and body bags. And the fact is, it just simply seemed to go on forever. And and eventually just Joe Biden made that, made the decision to pull the, disastrous decision to pull the plug. But it wasn't actually a defeat. So it's the cost and the difficulty of financing it, as Bijan said earlier, rather than the outright military impossibility of governing it, that in the end seems to cause all these different empires to come to grief.’"
What Would You Ask A Historian, With Greg Jenner | HistoryExtra Podcast | History Extra - "‘There was a Greek Roman doctor called Pedanius Dioscorides, I think it was and he recommended that, if you had a prolapsed anus, so obviously bottom problems, the cure was to zap it with an electric fish. So it's what's known as a torpedo fish, basically like an electric eel, but a slightly different type. And yeah, he would sort of like, bend over, stand there. And then, you know, a jolt of electricity from from Mother Nature, because there's no electricity generated in the inhuman world, but the animal kingdom produces it. And that obviously, is a terrifying image, but also a very funny image from 2000 years distance safety wise. And I was Googling that just going well, this, that can't that there can't be a modern, surely there's not a modern version of that. And then I found a journal article in 2017, in a respected medical journal that said, yeah, no, we've, we've, we haven't used the torpedo fish. But we have been zapping patients’ bottoms. If they have a prolapsed anus, and it helps. It helps restore the muscle strength, it helps tighten things up. It's important for anal incontinence, this stuff works… which also reminds me of Von Humboldt, sort of the great 18th century explorer who also experimented with electricity, he electrocuted himself, he put a cathode in his anus and an anode in his mouth, and shocked himself to see how it felt’"
George III: the tyrant who lost America? | History Extra - "‘It's fair to say that, for many of the Patriots, he was a hate figure. And they did view him as a tyrant. Why do you think that was?’
‘Well, no, I don't believe they did at the beginning of the war at all. They called it the parliamentary army rather than the Royal army. They didn't start pulling down bits of royal insignia off buildings until after the declaration of independence in July 1776. Which, of course, was a good year and a bit after the war had started. Which, if you have April 1775, as the time when Lexington and Concord saw the first shots fired, as well over a year, where they're fighting against somebody who they don't really consider to be a tyrant. It's very much this extraordinary documents, blind English, beautiful phraseology, almost Shakespearean language of the Declaration of Independence that that created this, this very necessary propaganda myth, as far as the Americans were concerned of a tyrant king.’
‘And in the Declaration of Independence, how was this view of him being a tyrant king justified?’
‘Well, it was justified very largely on ex post facto rationalization because it blamed him for things that had already happened after they had started the war in, in many instances. In about half of the 28 clauses refer to things that were, were after the Lexington and Concord. Shots had already been fired. You see, in the 18th century, if you're looking at Samuel Johnson, his Dictionary of the English language, for example, a tyrant, is either an absolute monarch governing imperiously or a cruel, despotic and severe master and, and George III was neither of those. You know, he was not an absolute monarch. He his his Parliaments and his governments that he had to act through. He never overruled an Act of Parliament for example. He certainly didn't govern imperiously, not least because he didn't actually govern himself at all. And far from being a cruel, despotic and severe master, in fact, he was a immensely good natured man, he was a, was far from a despotic person as possible, certainly not in the slightest bit severe. So, you know, under no circumstances, except for those of the exigencies of the necessity of wartime, would anyone call George the Third a tyrant. But today, that when one looks at the American, you know, cyber sphere, cyber sphere and so on, and then newspapers and endless blogs and websites, he's routinely called a tyrant and a despot and a dictator and all of these various quite 20th century concepts, which completely misunderstand what he genuinely was, you know, we see the word dictator, and we think of Mussolini and Stalin and Hitler and so on, people like that. You know, George, the third could not be more different from those kinds of people.’
‘And the point that you make in the feature you've written for the magazine is that British rule in America wasn't necessarily that oppressive anyway, is that fair to say?’
‘Oh, totally. Yes. I mean, Richard Brookhiser refers to it as the freest society in the world. It did not have, you know, armed forces that were marching down the streets, it did not have newspapers that were being closed down, and editors arrested and so on. It certainly wasn't anything like the genuine tyrannies of some of the European states and their, what they were doing in their empires, you know. You had the Spanish executing any number of people in Louisiana when, when that revolt started. You had the Russians killing 10s of 1000s of people in the Pugachev Uprising. Gosh, all over the world's people were acting in the most abominable ways, in genuine tyrannies, and, and so far removed from that the 13 colonies who were allowed pretty much to get on and do whatever they wanted.’
‘So why then do you think they were so keen to push for independence?’
‘Well, the time had come for independence, they were they were a mature state, essentially. They, they had a raring economy that was getting twice the size of Britain's. They had two and a half million people there, which was significant number population, obviously, 600,000 of them were enslaved people, and so they weren't taking part in the, in the advances of the rest of society, but but the rest of them, you know, we're creating a viable state with them. I don't know, Philadelphia had many more bookshops than the whole of the rest of the United Kingdom combined apart from London. You knowthe this was a proper grown up state ready for statehood. And this is the interesting thing, you see, because they revolted for independence, for sovereignty, for self government, all those good things. And I think that makes them pretty exceptional that they were revolting for that, even though they were not being tyrannized. History is absolutely packed with, with any number of examples of people who grabbed their independence against the tyrannising force. You look at the, at the Dutch against the Austrians in Holland, you look at the Greeks against the Turks, the Israelites against the Egyptians, you know, all the way through history, peoples who have grasped their independence against the despotic Master. What makes America exceptional is that in fact, they grasp their independence against the master who was so light touched that some of the states only had about 17 or 20 royal officials working there...
As far as the overall legacy is concerned, of course, ultimately, it was probably not that bad to have lost America in the late 17, 1780s. Because, you know, it was going to happen one day, it was going to become the most powerful and rich country in the world and if we'd still been constitutionally attached to it, we could have been on the, on the receiving end of a sort of reverse takeover, in fact, so, so I think the very happy History of the English speaking peoples is probably better, now that we're separate states.’"
The turbulent Stuart century | History Extra - "‘I wanted to ask you about the role of the international context in the Civil War because, obviously, of course, we often think of it as a very internalized conflict. But you suggest we need to look beyond that. Why?’
‘Well, certainly contemporaries fitted it into the sort of way in which continental Europe is being convulsed by war. And for those who wanted to see confessional warfare everywhere, there was plenty to see in Germany through the 1630s. And some people felt that actually, Charles the First had been right to keep England out of this great sort of conflagration on the continent that was laying waste so much territory. But then, as historians like John Morell, have said, England then had its own wars of religion in the 1640s. Initially, there is a lot of continental involvement or at least continental experience. So there's been a lot of work done, for example, on the way in which the Scottish covenanting army, a lot of their forces had continental experience in particular the armies of Gustavus Adolphus in Sweden and elsewhere. So initially, there is quite a lot of both expertise, personnel that's brought in. Once the dynamic starts to shift in favor of Parliament from the mid 1640s onwards, part of that is the Cromwellian view of the New Model Army as not being a an Army made up of foreign strangers, that this is an English army fighting for England's interests and seeking a settlement with Charles that only extends to England. And then that's sort of reflected very much in the way in which it's an English decision to put Charles the First on trial. And it's an English decision to execute him. And that's much to the horror of the Scots, even the Scots who have fought against him’
‘How did foreign powers respond to the regicide? Was it universal horror,
‘There is universal horror in 1649. This is why England is devil land. It's not only the execution of the monarch, it’s the public execution of it and the sort of ceremonial that attached to it. I mean, another theme of the book as well is the frequency of assassination. Continental audiences and are very used to the idea of monarchs perhaps being assassinated by a lone extremist, but the idea that you could sort of try and clothe what they see as a totally sacrilegious murder with some form of sort of judicial clothing is utterly unacceptable. What also underlies the horror though, is also a sense that this is something that the English do. It was, after all, Elizabeth the first that puts Charles's grandmother Mary Queen of Scots on trial, and ordered her execution even though she was also a divinely ordained as she saw it, monarch who had been a former Queen Consort in France, as well as a Queen of Scotland. So there is a lot of sense particularly in France, where the shock of Mary Queen of Scots’s execution in 1587 had been extensive, a shock but a sense of what, this is what the English do. I mean, this is why they cannot be trusted. This is why they are out of control.’"
The Spanish Armada: everything you wanted to know | History Extra - "‘The Tudors invented propaganda in our modern sense of propaganda. And we live with myths which the Tudors created to this day. I mean, there's a myth that here is David fighting this gigantically powerful Goliath of naval power. It's not true. In fact, the Armada had fewer ships at sea fighting the English than, than English, the English had, you know, 70 more ships, and they did, they had few, the Spanish had fewer guns than the, than the English. 138 heavy guns compared to the the English’s 251. They had a third less firepower...
Let's just finish with one little piece of propaganda, which which the government disseminated after the Spanish Armada retreated, and it was, it's in the British Library. It's a printed verse, set of verses printed in black letter at the time. And it's all about, it's a government's first official health warning on record. And it's all about is it safe to eat fish, if they have been feeding on the diseased corpses, mainly with venereal disease, diseased corpses of Spanish sailors? And back came the answer: yes, it is. This is how you prepare your fish. Black propaganda but I love it. I love it as a, as a first government health warning.’"
The Medici: everything you wanted to know - HistoryExtra - "‘You did mention myths to do with Catherine poisoning people… how many people did she poison? Do we know? Or is it all myth?’...
‘This is not a period when they had, you know, CSI and forensics, you know, almost anybody who dies an untimely death, particularly if they're involved in politics, and have got some enemies, a rumor of poison pops up. And it's actually very, very difficult to prove. I mean, there are cases where individuals are tortured into confessing, there are cases where there's kind of quite strong circumstantial evidence. I've not particularly seen, you know, there are much better cases for the Medici engaging in poisoning of people… there are much better documented cases of poisoning by members of the Medici than anything I'm aware of attaching to Catherine.’"
The battle over the Benin Bronzes - HistoryExtra - "‘There are some hilarious I think hilarious depictions of of what the Portuguese look like when they arrive. So I highly recommend any of the ones that include the Portuguese alongside. They have sort of pointy noses and little beards, and they have those Conquistador type helmets on. And I recommend those...
I think it is useful to have something in a variety of world cities where lots of Nigerian people live. That, you know, reminds people outside of Nigeria, that if Africa had these artistic traditions, and you know, it's constantly a battle, as somebody who teaches African history, it's constantly a battle to get people to know that, you know, it was not the quote unquote, dark continent, right, like that, that has all these artistic traditions and and then these complex forms of State Building, etc. But I think that actually the best way of doing that, and this is not a, this is not an official position. This is just my own personal view is that actually, the technology for making replicas is so good these days that actually we could give the the originals back to Benin City, and have replicas in the other museums.’"
Of course she has to see the modern value of the Benin Bronzes in terms of identity politics - so much so that the Bronzes should be in cities where lots of Nigerians live
If the technology for making replicas is so good, they can give replicas to Benin City
The Trials Of Ethel Rosenberg | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘There were no Jews on the jury. But again, many Jews, prospective jurors had excused themselves, because the Jewish community was completely divided. It's one of the most interesting aspects of the story that successful Jews wanted to distance themselves from these commie Jews who they felt weren't patriotic. I mean, Ethel and Julius argued that they were patriotic, they just wanted a better America. And they felt that Russia deserved to share in this information. They wanted to bring a little bit of the idealism they believed they saw in communism into America. We could debate whether that's patriotic or not... Irving… in his summing up, accused Ethel because she was three years older. I mean, there's the misogyny of the period, a woman who's three years old must be the master and leading her young husband astray. And she's really a senior partner in all of this. So there's horrific sexism at work...
Imagine a story that unites people like Einstein, the Pope, John Paul Sartre, certainly in France, but in many other countries, of Europe, of Australia, they all felt it simply was not necessary to electrocute a woman. I mean, the death penalty in general was already under discussion. We didn't abolish the death penalty in England until 1965. So you know, we did still kill people, but for murder. I think the point is that Ethel was being killed for a crime other than murder, the only woman in modern American times to suffer that penalty’"
Weird. I thought it'd be sexist to say that the woman couldn't be responsible because she was a woman
Highland Clearances: Everything You Wanted To Know | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Why do some people blame the English for the Highland Clearances? Is that something you've come across?’
‘Well, I wouldn't come across it in serious historical work or anything like that. But you also see it in popular culture, I mean, there's a tradition in Scotland of blaming the English for everything...
[On migration] If you look a relatively short period between the early 1850s and the early 1860s, around about a decade, especially in the West, and the Western islands, we're talking about maybe 25,000 people removed. Either by charitable agencies, or by, or by landlord decision, and landlord support. And interestingly enough, what's mixed into that story is rampant racism. The fact is that people are arguing in the southern newspapers, how did it come about that one part of a modernized Great Britain, you know, the the the industrial society par excellence, the world's most powerful economy. Why is it in that one area there is this degree of poverty, and even crisis and famine, and the conclusion they increasingly came up with, that the people were inadequate, they were racially inadequate. The Celt, like the Irish Celt, didn't have the capacity for self help and enterprise. And one guy, one very influential government official, Sir Charles Trevelyan who'd also been active during the Irish famine crisis. He tried to engineer the great program of the expulsion of 45,000 Gaels, that is Highlanders. And the places which had been vacated, would then be peopled by incoming Germans who, of the Teutonic race, because as he put it, they were much more capable of industriousness and enterprise than the the racially inadequate Celtic population. There was an extraordinary situation to happen because it meant also that there was a racist dimension to clearance, which increasingly there was, that made the people, that ensured that people would be tra-, would be treated in a much harsher way. Because they were regarded as, if not subhuman, yet, not in the same level, as people of the, of the lowland or English race, or even, in fact, the Teutonic German German race’...
‘How many people died in the clearances?... How significantly was the population of the Highlands reduced?’...
‘There’s no significant evidence of what you may call a clear increase in mortality. Even during the period when the entire population of the Western Highlands zones was threatened by the potato failure, one does not see any clear evidence, there’s obviously a degree of increase in mortality. But it's very limited and it's ephemeral. It's nothing like the Irish situation… What does leave a dent in population is through the actual act of eviction. And through the fact that at the end of the day, this society could not support a very large increase in population. Because of its limited areas of arable land. Its lack of raw materials and minerals such as coal. And its failure to industrialize because of competition from the lowlands. So if you have a 50% increase, or 60% increase in population, as you did have in some parts of the Highlands, in the first half of the 19th century, it's either destitution or leave... Eviction aggravated that process of an imbalance between resources and population. But fundamentally, it did not cause it. If there had been no clearances, many of the population would still have had to leave. Because by the later part of the century, the 19th century, to live in that, those kind of destitute conditions, was becoming increasingly intolerable. And they saw, they saw greater opportunity elsewhere. I mean, if you move to Canada, for example, you're still able to take a plot of land or even greater than a plot of land. And one of the great advantages of going to Canada or the USA, was there were no landowners. If you went to Canada, you became your own proprietor. Even it was a very small area. And that also was an interesting incentive. And what you therefore also see, sadly, in some parts of the Highland diaspora, and we see it, especially in Australia, in relation to Aboriginal people. There's clear evidence there, that Highlanders who had been evicted or encouraged to, to move during the period of compulsory emigration, were beginning to act in the same way towards the Aboriginal population, as they had been treated in the Highlands’"
Weird. We're told that race was invented to justify colonialism outside Europe by Europeans
