Life in the trenches: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra - "'In any given week or month you wouldn't be in for long. And they tried to make it so the maximum time you're in the front line was two or three days, and then you'd go back to the support line, back to the the reserve lines then out to rest. And you'd be unlucky if you spent more than 10 days in the line in the whole month. People think people went and lived in the trenches and stayed there for three years, they didn't. They were constantly circulating around and the idea of it was to preserve morale, the idea was so that you'd think haha I can go and see that girl in Amiens or I can go and have that pint in, not pint, wine or something at their tavern. It's basically human nature, gives you something to look forward to. This trench is murder but in two days or two nights I'll be out. Uh, you might not be because you might be dead, but at least you've got hope. Now the Germans and French weren't quite so organized on this or certainly not in the early stages and they tended to stay in the line a lot longer and it does affect morale’...
‘When people say oh the Canadians are different, they're more manly than the British soldier, and and sort of 60% of them are British born. And uh, that's it's worth, and the same with the Australia. Of the first lot to go to Gallipoli I think 27% not only were British born but they were adults when they came to Australia. So unless they sort of grew six inches and became much more muscular the moment they stepped off the ship, they're just the same. People often wonder are they treated differently, are the Canadians treated differently from the Indians? Are the Australian treated, are the New Zealanders treated differently? And the answer to that is they're treated differently by each other. Because the one thing to remember about soldiers is it's not just people from different countries that they look down on. And in askance at. For instance they'll always accuse the French or the British or the Canadians of not having clean trenches, clean latrines. Doesn’t matter. But it's not just. That, I mean, for instance the British will accuse Northerners or Scots or people from Southern, I mean South Londoners. It's basically part of that competition that's endemic in the British army. Is there more active and uh an unpleasant, what I would define as racism. Well the answer to that in those days is probably yes’...
‘How much time would a regular soldier spent in combat and how long would they perhaps spend waiting to be attacked or attack themselves?’
‘This, this is an another interesting aspect because it's not like you think. There's a a well-known historian and that's a man called Gordon Corrigan and he pointed out that the British army spent more time playing football than it did going over the top. And now that's obvious because a football takes an hour and a half and going over the top doesn't take very long. Doesn't take any time if you're killed. But Gordon's point is a serious one. It is that the average soldier would only attack or be attacked a couple of times in the whole of their trench experience. Now that is not a hard and fast rule and obviously it depends how long you're in for. But in your two or three days in the trenches you are unlikely to attack and unlikely to be attacked. It's more just just occasional losses through shell fire, sniping, that kind of thing'...
‘How strongly was the sentiment of lions led by donkeys actually felt on the front?’
‘Not at all, as far as I know I appreciate uh certainly the generals particularly Hague, who was the finest commander in chief the British army ever had. Not necessarily the finest General I make that clear. And who, under his uh direction, not, he didn't invent it they came up with the all-arms battle which in the end would win the war. However a lot of it is people writing in the 1930s. The anti-general thing was to a large extent caused by two very prominent politicians. Never make an enemy out of a politician, Emily. And particularly if their names are Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, two of the finest politicians we've ever had. Brilliant at their job. Wrong in every single case of every strategy and tactic they ever wanted to do. And the moment Hague died they tore into him in their memoirs and people pick up on it and then, that it's a 1930s thing, lions led by donkeys and no one ever said. It it was another conservative politician Alan Clark who invented it to put in a book in the early 1960s’...
‘Did those in leadership positions actually do anything perhaps to boost morale?’
‘They tried to. Sometimes they'd organize parades and speak to the men. This was counterproductive... There's a long-standing belief that if the British soldier, this is slightly um apocryphal, if you don't keep the British soldier busy they'll get drunk and cause trouble. Now there is some truth in that. It can be exaggerated but the best thing to do is to keep them busy and the the way they used to do it is, has never changed. It, they still do it. They did it in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sport. TIre them out. Give them sport. Get the games of football, an incredibly competitive company versus company, Battalion versus Battalion, regiment versus Brigade, versus bigger. And they set up these huge things. They'd have sports days...
There's one wonderful story of somebody who sent a a a just a parcel and you know and they sent it out to Gallipoli and I still remember this, I put it in one of my books and they sent out a sort of some socks and some some a cake and something and in the middle of it before they sent it from England to Gallipoli which is 2 000 miles away they'd put a bunch of bananas and the bloke said that it just sort of turned into some sort of thing from Dante's Inferno and that even the socks had surrendered to the general dissolution...
Gas was to make you put your gas mask on and then you can't quite hear properly outside. You've got a thing over your eyes so you can't see properly and your breathing's restricted. So when you try and say load the gun, big 5.9 inch gun or 18 pound, again it's it's difficult. You run out of breath, you can't hear the orders of command and and it's just you are unable to carry out your functions as a soldier properly and that's why they put gas down, to render you useless. If you kill you that's uh that's good as well from their perspective but what, that's not what they're trying to do. That's later on in the war when they've all got gas masks. The main killer is artillery gunfire and that's relentless’"
Living through the Troubles | HistoryExtra - "'The intimacy of the killing in Northern Ireland was such that most people died at about 300 meters of their own front door… going into the shops even could be a challenge'"
Tudor childhood: from dodging death to nursery rhymes | HistoryExtra - "‘I think perhaps we have a perception of children being treated as almost mini adults. Was this really the case or is this just a bit of a myth?’
"‘Well they are but I always say, well that's the same with modern children isn't it? You know when I go see my grandchild who is um at the moment coming up to four she's always made to say goodbye and thank you for coming and when she has her, um you know she's not allowed to fling the food about all over the place. So there has to be with the bringing up of a child an expectation of the being an adult, you are treating them as a small adult. And I don't really see any great difference in that respect between Tudor England and modern England. The old idea was that because you saw children in portraits dressed like little adults that somehow they were less childlike than they would be today but the equivalent of those portraits would be something like a wedding photograph where you've got little bridesmaids and little pages. And they of course are dressed in miniature, uh adult costume as well. So you have to be very careful about your source and trying to um elicit um ideas of the past from it... It used to be thought in the sort of mid 20th century that because there was a high degree of child mortality, that parents would have been more indifferent to children's illnesses or accidents and deaths than they are today. And it's very very difficult to find information. But Human Nature has not changed. You've got examples of parents recording their children's births and deaths very very carefully. And you've got odd anecdotal evidence in in literature about it. There's lovely passage in a school book which is for boys to translate uh English to Latin or Latin to English. One of the passages is that um last year my brother died and my mother was wont to sit weeping for such a long time that it would have made anybody sad to see her. Well clearly that envisages a mother being as sorry over the death of a child as would be the case today’"
Britain in the 1990s: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra - "'On the Brit pop it is worth noting I think the biggest selling British band in the 1990s was the Beatles'"
Why revolution engulfed 19th-century Europe | HistoryExtra - "‘How do you think we should understand the relationship between those social hardships and revolutionary fervor? Is it a direct or simplistic connection?’
‘This is one of the really deep questions of 1848. Did did being distressed make people become politically active? You know in a sense the first answer has to be no in the sense that you know people have very often been distressed throughout history and but but large revolutions on this scale are actually very rare so clearly the correlation can't be that tight. On the other hand um there's been a lot of good work done which shows the strong linkage between the the sort of socioeconomic crises which which proliferated in waves across Europe uh in 1829 to 32 and again in 1846 47 and there clearly was a link. I think that you know in the case in the case of 1848 what you have before the revolutions is a very a very bad harvest which eats into the grain supply in 1846 47. That produces food riots, price spikes and um, and generalized anxiety in um in 47. But by 1848 that problem is is starting to restore, it's starting to go away because the the new harvest is not so bad. What is important though is that the crisis caused by that, agrarian crisis in the previous year, it now begins to eat its way into the manufacturing sector, into small businesses and artisan workshops and so on...
We think of revolutions as as events that are made by revolutionaries. So you know revolutionaries think let's have a revolution and then they make one happen. That's not how 1848 happened. It may not be how any Revolution happens. It seems to me it's much more the case that revolutions make revolutionaries than other, than the other way around'...
'It was often a rather serendipitous moment. I mean in the, in the case of for example of Berlin, that's a particularly interesting case. The revolution began when, uh after a confrontation between crowds on the on the Schlossplatz the sort of big square in front of the Royal Palace. Huge crowds had gathered there. And the mood wasn't actually very negative. They actually gathered to cheer the king because the king had just, was announcing that certain various concessions were being made on under the pressure of a growing protest movement in the city. But but when the crowds refused to disperse, troops were ordered to sort of disperse the square. And there was a long-standing dislike, a long-standing antipathy between urban crowds and troops. Not just in in Prussia but right right across Europe. And the crowd started chanting troops out troops out… and at this point as some dragoons were kind of moving forward into the crowd on horse, on horseback, two of their rifles went off by accident. One was, was got caught in some part of the saddle or something and it hit the tree here and the thing went off into the air and another one I think was knocked by someone's stick or something. Neither of them um neither the bullets struck anybody but the sound, when you're in a crowd you can often not see very much but you can hear and the crowd often thinks with its ears. And so in in Berlin, once this, the the sound of these shots was heard, people said they're firing on the people and from that moment the situation is out of control. And something very similar happened in Palermo where nobody knew who'd put it there. But a poster appeared saying there's going to be a revolution in a few days. And everybody said oh that's interesting. It was signed the Revolutionary Committee. Well there was no Revolutionary Committee. It was all done by a young guy called Francesco Bagnascoi as a kind of a prank. Because he thought you know Sicilians are ready to rise up and perhaps this will be enough. And indeed it was enough. I mean it was enough at least to bring people into the city because they were curious to find out you know what's going to happen. Is there going to be a revolution? Who who's going to plan it? And so on. In the meanwhile the authorities of course had also responded and they'd redoubled and tripled the military presence in the city so you had the same situation. Lots of soldiers, big crowds and then shots fired. And uh the next thing you know the situation is out of control... La Martine, a French liberal who wrote a history of the Revolution, said that in the Parisian case it was almost as if the crows, the curiosity of the crowd who had come to witness an event engendered that event'"
So much for the Marxist lens for explaining all unrest
Russian tsars: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra - "‘The time of troubles was originally caused by Ivan the Terrible's killing of his son eldest son Ivanovanovic who was the heir to the throne. Now it's interesting in Russia there was no kind of rule of succession. That the ruler could just choose his successor. Again, something that's true now. But you know the trouble with that system is that, um, if you kill your heir, then you have a big problem. So when he killed his heir he was only enough with a very inferior heir. When he died as well there was no heir to the to the kingdom. And, um Boris Godunov who was one of Ivan the Terrible's henchmen who he'd promoted to sort of high position actually claimed the throne for a while, tried to found a new dynasty. He made himself Tsar but he lacked the authority and when he died um the the Empire just fell into complete chaos. Um there were a series of different claimants. Three of them were called Dimitri, the false Dimitris which will, which of course are loved by schoolboys, we think it's terribly funny, that they all call themselves Dimitri and they claim to be the missing heir to the Muscovite throne. Um and each of them rose to power and lost power, was murdered and in the end the Muscovite um principality began to completely disintegrate. It was invaded from all sides, from, from the south the Mongol khans of of the Crimea, from the north from the Swedes and from the east from the Poles and it, this is where um the Russian fear and suspicion of Poland originates from. Because the Poles, there was a time when the Poles actually took Moscow, and occupied Moscow. It looked like Russia, Muscovy would cease to exist as a state. There were moments when it looked as if Poland could have, could have been the Empire of the East in which case there would have been a Catholic Russia or Catholic, a Catholic Polish Empire which would have been a very different animal to um to Russia. But the Nobles, the Cossacks, the Army, um the the Church all gathered together and chose the Romanov Dynasty to be a new Dynasty. And they chose Michael Romanov who was an imperfect, um an imperfect, you know child. Weak, bad eyesight, limping. But he was closely connected by family to the Rurik Dynasty which was now extinct. He was a teenager, he had the advantage that no one disliked him. He'd been hunted down by the invaders who wanted to kill him and he'd been hidden in various monasteries. And he was pure, he was untouched. No one could say he was controlled by any group. And so they went to find him. Such was the state of Muscovy that when they went to offer him the throne, he and his mother sobbed and begged for them to leave, but they insisted that he accepted the throne several times and in the end he accepted it and became the Tsar.’...
At one point according to her he hanged a rat by their marital bed. It was a sort of punishment for something that the rat had done. He spent his whole time drilling soldiers. He worshiped Frederick the Great and Prussia and hated Russia. Catherine was brilliant. She became the the Russian candidate for the throne. She learned perfect Russian, she charmed everybody at court, charmed all the men. She was very attractive, blue eyes, auburn hair, curvaceous, highly intelligent, very funny. She said that the key to the court was making friends with the old women and she learned the names of all their their poodles and pug dogs. And that was very useful. And when Elizaveta died, Peter III succeeded to the throne and within six months he offended and alienated every single faction at court. The Army, the Church, the nobility and he was threatening to have Catherine herself, his wife, arrested, possibly killed. And so she seized power in a coup... inevitably he was strangled by her faction… in a very kind of Russian touch um the press release that was put out said that he'd actually died of piles, of hemorrhoids. When Daronbert [sp?] the French, um the French philosophe was invited later by Catherine the Great to visit her in Saint Petersburg he said um I don't think I'd dare go because I suffer from hemorrhoids which in Russia can be a fatal condition...
Paul was extremely like his father Peter III. And though people often say, you know people often implied that Paul wasn't the son of Peter the Third, seems pretty likely he was because they both, they were very similar. They were very good alienating people, they lacked empathy which you need, you needed to be as a Tsar. One of the problems of Russian power, particularly the monarchy but also now, is that there's no real way to get rid of a Russian ruler. And that means that often the only way to get rid of them is to overthrow them in a coup and then kill them... it's a feature again of the Russian monarchy that they're virtually always overthrown by their own family and their own courtiers...
There was a plan to try them in Moscow possibly which of course would have ended with the execution of the Tsar and the Tsarina probably but not necessarily the children. But as it looked like the Tsar and the family might fall into the hands of the Whites, Lenin decided to have them executed to have them murdered. I mean Lenin was an extremely ruthless person. He, he often said you know what's the point of a revolution without firing squads? And he regularly specified how people were to be hanged in public and mass executions and so on... One of the tragedies of this whole story… is that they had sown into their clothes um the jewels of the Romanov Dynasty which were incredibly heavy as you can imagine. Their underwear was full of these jewels… virtually all of them were still alive after the first volley and this was partly because of the diamonds. The diamonds were like a bulletproof vest'"
Mindbending experiments: how drugs shaped modern science | HistoryExtra - "'In the 19th century, cannabis, cocaine and even heroin were widely available over the counter at the local chemist. Respected scientists and doctors tested out laughing gas and chloroform on their friends at dinner parties, and artists and philosophers dabbled in drug taking to try and unlock different states of consciousness and even access the spirit world... Humphry Davy the very famous chemist and president of the Royal Society who made his name back in 1799 with a series of experiments on nitrous oxide, laughing gas in which he inhales enormous quantities of it uh, did his very best to describe what was going on in this kind of cosmic experience, this epiphany that he had, and then gave it to um his friends who included you know for example the Romantic Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey who all tried to outdo each other in describing this experience. And from that point on you know Davey became, you know he was a great hero of Science and he became a touchstone of how to self-experiment heroically and boldly and you know this was a mark of seriousness that you were prepared to do this. There wasn't anything delinquent about it... They were doing this because they were doing science in a world where everybody was doing this and if you didn't do it then everybody else knew something that you didn't'...
‘How aware were people of the potential dangers of these substances? Was there a sense that people knew for example that they were addictive?’
‘You have to remember of course that there was at this point no aspirin, no paracetamol, no ibuprofen. You know if none of these things had come along we'd probably still be using opiates in one form or another. And addiction was not really the big danger with opiates. People understood that if you were taking them you had to keep taking them every day. But of course we still have plenty of medications these days that you have to take every day. That's not a big deal if it's cheap and easily available. The real danger with opiates was uh that there was a very narrow dosage window. You know only about three or four times the active dose could be a fatal dose. So doctors were very worried and concerned about that. There was also a concern around suicide because it was such an easy uh easy method for that’"
Crusader states: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra - "‘The Turks themselves, they're not a native people. They have recently arrived. And so as they conquer much of this region, naturally they displace and subjugate the various peoples who ruled there previously. And then the Crusaders arrive. And so in fact much of the history of the Crusader States, much of the history of the 12th century, is a prolonged struggle between various Turkish powers, Seljuk Turkish powers trying to push the Crusaders out, and the Crusade is trying to push inland. But in many ways this is a contest between two conquering powers, it's not a contest between one conqueror and then native peoples. It's, it's and that's where the major source of competition comes from for the Crusader States. It's also where a major source of competition comes from from the Seljuk Turks’ perspective because the Crusaders threaten their ability to control and dominate the region’...
'When the Kingdom of Jerusalem was conquered in 1099 there were various names put forward as to who should be the initial ruler. And initially it wasn't even clear that Jerusalem would be set up as a kingdom. There were various people who said well look Jesus is the king of Jerusalem and therefore it would be wrong to have a king in Jerusalem alongside Jesus so the initial title that was suggested was that the ruler should be called The Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre'...
‘The Knights Hospitaller. And they have a massive Hospital in Jerusalem with beds for a thousand people. And one of their regulations is that anyone who is admitted to the hospital should be given the best food available which in their perspective is pork. So you should be given pork dishes twice a day. But there is a regulation in the Hospitallers’ sort of statutes that says if the patient can't eat or doesn't want to eat pork, they should be supplied with chicken instead. So clearly they have thought this through and they're being sensitive to different religious sensibilities in this era. Another example, I'm going to stick with food. Why not stick with food? Is a cookbook which was created for an a prince, a Muslim Prince. One of um Saladin's descendants in fact. And this cookbook includes many recipes. Um Saladin's Dynasty is from a Kurdish background so there are Kurdish recipes. But there are also Turkish recipes, there's Armenian flatbreads, there's even a Frankish roast’"
Clearly it's only colonialism when white people do it
What can Richard I tell us about medieval masculinity? | HistoryExtra - "‘We need to be careful about applying modern labels to historical figures’...
'Richard's sexuality or indeed allegations of what we would now call homosexuality has actually come from 20th century writings. So 20th century, early historians so Lawrence Havey in 1948 kind of pens this history and he focuses on the specific quote from a 12th century chronicler Roger Howden and talks about Sodom as in the city of Sodom, the biblical city of sodium and how in Harvey's eyes Richard has undertaken this transgression, and this transgression is interpreted as being one of same-sex physical activity. So same-sex affection towards other men. And it's Richard’s transgressions here which is why this myth of sexuality starts to circulate. But if you actually go back and look at Howden's phrasing itself, what Howden has actually written, it's not to do with sexuality at all. It's not to do with transgression in terms of where we usually think sodomy comes about. This transgression is more to do with Richard erring in terms of not being hospitable, in terms of not being virtuous or a good King'...
They share the same plate, they're sat next to each other and they later go on to share a bed and this is seen as very intimate. You know these acts are very much ones of political closeness, and that bed sharing moment, you know, is obviously something that's going to ring a lot of bells for people and being like, hang on how often do we have King sharing beds with each other? You know how often do we see people sharing a bed with each other in the medieval period? Surely this means something. And it does mean something, you know, but it doesn't mean what you'll immediately jump to. It means that Richard and Philip are actually very close at this point. This is an example of particularly close affection within the context of male friendship. It's not immediately sexual. And if you look at bed sharing throughout the medieval period there are, of course there are definitely instances where there is a sexual connotation to it. But this isn't one of them, in my opinion. This is something where we're looking at Richard and Philip showing evidence of their male friendship, showing their closeness of one another as Kings of England and France. And they want to publicly display their friendship with one another... Richard's father Henry II. And he is someone else who I've written about who undertakes this political act of bed sharing with one of his really loyal followers, William Marshall. And William Marshall, is, you know one of those enduring figures of medieval Knighthood. He serves five Kings of England. I mean the man just carries on going as this archetype, this epitome of a medieval knight. And we again have this act, this political act of bed sharing between Henry and William. And we don't see that speculation again of sexuality. We don't see any kind of rumors circulating around Henry and William the same way that Richard and Philip seem to have drawn attention. And therefore we've got evidence in the very near past of bed sharing being a political act, not a sexual one'"
So much for queer history and liberals mocking historians for saying "obviously" gay people were friends and not partners and lovers since they shared a bed
Life on Britain’s WW1 home front | HistoryExtra - "Those who join up willingly may actually have skills which are far more important to the nation than being infantry soldiers on the Western Front, with the risk of course you might be killed within days of arriving at that front. So if you have language skills, if you're a scientist, if you have a particular expertise, that is war related. That expertise should be used to its maximum effect. And it's not just the things that are war related. It is also going back to the point about Britain being a crucially important producer in this war. It's also about people being in vital Industries. And that's where it all begins. So much skilled labor joins up in 1914, I mean of the order of 20% skilled labor in in the big heavy industries. That that is actually hitting production at the point where the country needs to build ships, to build guns, to produce munitions. And it's more important that those people stay at their workplaces in factories and in shipyards than they serve at the front. So by, when the Ministry of National Service is set up, by the end of the war what it is doing is ranking, where manpower should be for maximum military effect. And the Army ranks third in that, after the needs of things like building ships, which, the shipbuilding program is vital. With unrestricted submarine warfare going on in the Atlantic. And with the need to bring a mass American army across the, the seas to France in order for this war to be won, as well as the need to maintain imports to Britain and to Europe to enable the war to go on. Shipbuilding has to assume a greater priority than the Army does. So what national service enables you to do is not just keep the Army up to strength, which is what it does do, although that strength diminishes from 1917 through to 1918. But it's also a way of having a rational division of labor. The best to support the war effort. This is another way in which Britain learns from its experience of the First World War in the Second World War. That rational division happens at the very beginning when conscription is introduced. In this case before the war actually breaks out at the beginning of 1939. It's introduced in January when of course the war breaks out in September… by 1918 one of the principal reasons that the allies are winning this war is that they are outproducing their opponents. . And so you are able to sustain a war effort on multiple fronts, particularly on the Western Front. You're able to attack at several points sequentially and even simultaneously just because you now have enough guns and ammunition to do that, which you absolutely did not have in 1914, 1915 and 1916. And what it's also enabling Britain to do is to help other countries to fight. Most of the borrowing that Britain does in the United States before 1914 and 1917. It’s borrowing in order to to support war production of war Industries. But most of that borrowing is to fund Russian purchasing, to arm the Russian army, so there's an active Eastern Front between 1914 and 1917"
Lost civilisations of the Mediterranean | HistoryExtra - "Carthage and Tunisia, Tunisia in general, North Africa has arguably better preserved Roman ruins than Rome, and then then other areas. The best preserved Roman temple I've ever seen is Baalbek in Lebanon and some of the amphitheaters in in North Africa are just as impressive as the Colosseum. So I think mainly it's to do with you know, with with how the countries of these places are in, are perceived politically and geopolitically by potential visitors and the difficulties of like travel and security and visas. Um but also it's it's you know it's who writes the history books I mean Rome has remained a capital um and so for that reason it's it's high on priority lists and the same, Athens has remained a capital... there aren't many tourists there and that's a totally different experience and you can get this the sense of treading in the footsteps of other historic travelers and this just, sense of, connection with the past and silence. Like in Tyre you can stand in the middle of a Roman Hippodrome, one of the biggest in the world and you can be the only person there and you can listen to the wind and the grass and hear the call to prayer in the distance and all these and which you don't have in Rome. The Colosseum is amazing but it's very difficult to be the only person in the Coliseum"
