Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong

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We consider the turbulent history and politics of the country most often blamed for the outbreak of the First World War -- Germany. The youngest of all the combatant nations in World War I, The German Reich's deep class, regional, and religious divides drove Kaiser Wilhelm and his inner circle to seek national aggrandizement abroad as a source of unity at home--which inadvertently led them to unite their rivals against them and dragged them into a war not of their making.

Suggested further reading: Christopher Clark, "Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia"; Mary Fulbrook, "A Concise History of Germany."

Image: Hand-Colored Photograph of Kaiser Wilhelm II in Tangier, Morocco, 1905

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We examine the complex and tumultuous history of the lands around the Caribbean basin, including the rise of the massive sugar-plantation colonies of Jamaica and Saint Domingue, which depended upon an enormous traffic in enslaved African workers, the emergence of distinctive creole languages and spiritual practices, the flourishing of piracy amidst inter-imperial wars, and the long struggle of resistance by slave rebels and defiant Maroons which eventually culminated in the catacylismic upheaval known today as the Haitian Revolution.

Image: Women at a linen market, Dominica, by Agostino Brunias, ca. 1780.

Our previous lecture on Creating the Caribbean: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/creating-the-caribbean-the-colonial-west-indies-pt-1-1496-1697

Suggested further reading: Richard Dunn, "Sugar and Slaves"; Trevor Burnard, "Master, Tyranny, & Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves"; John Sensbach, "Rebecca's Revival"; Marcus Rediker, "The Slave Ship"; Rediker & Linebaugh, "The Many-Headed Hydra"; Christopher L. Brown, "Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism."

Please support to keep this podcast coming and to hear patron-only lectures including on the Dead Sea Scrolls: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

We examine the tumultuous history--from the Portuguese Inquisition to the American Revolution to modern-day multi-million-dollar legal fights--surrounding a pair of rare colonial Jewish ceremonial artworks called "rimonim" or Torah finials. We consider the unique life and career of the Jewish silversmith who made them, and the symbolism that they encode, centering on life, hope, and regeneration.

Please support this podcast! -- https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

See my latest video on “Red, White & Royal Blue” on youtube: https://youtu.be/MoaQXcLhkx4 – or without ads on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/110423206

Suggested further reading: Laura Leibman, “Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life”; Guido Schoenberger, “The Ritual Silver Made By Myer Myers,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, Sept. 1953.

Sign up as a patron at any level to hear this full lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls, on patreon for patrons only: https://www.patreon.com/posts/doorways-in-time-109054869

The most massive and momentous manuscript discovery of modern times, the Dead Sea Scrolls blew the lid off of the long-mysterious world of messianic and apocalyptic ferment before the destruction of the Second Temple—yet it took decades of conflict and struggle to bring them to public light. We trace why the scrolls became the object of a long international struggle, what they actually say, and what they reveal about the roots of the Bible, Christianity, and modern Judaism.

Suggested further reading: Lim, “The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Very Short Introduction”; Collins, “The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography”; Shanks, ed., “Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review”; Eisenman & Wise, “The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered”; Wise, Abegg, & Cook, eds., “The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation.”

Image: The Great Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1 as displayed in the Shrine of the Book

To conclude our series on the origins of World War I, we trace how combat broke out on three different continents in the late summer and fall of 1914, and then examine the various real and imagined causes of the Great War, from the Anglo-German naval rivalry to French revanchism, and finally consider the deeper transformation in the idea of sovereignty in the West that gave a feud between an old empire and a new nation-state in the Balkans the power to ignite a global war.

Image: Mehmet Pasha Sokollu Bridge, Višegrad, Bosnia, with section destroyed, 1915.

Sign up as a patron at any level, in order to hear patron-only lectures on Germany, Japan, and the events of the July Crisis: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Recently unlocked lecture on Bosnia & the Assassination: https://www.patreon.com/posts/origins-of-first-86366245

We consider the rich, often mysterious, and fraught history of Bosnia -- a longtime borderland of East and West, disputed between rival empires, religions, and civilizations -- and trace how the politics of this small, mountainous Slavic country set the stage for the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, and in turn, the outbreak of a global war.

Image: interior of the "Painted Mosque," Travnik, Bosnia

Please sign on at any level to hear patron-only lectures, including on Germany, Japan, and the July Crisis --https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

We review the diplomatic landscape of Europe on the eve of war in the summer of 1914—and then follow the dizzying cascade of events that followed after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. We trace on the ensuing crisis that ricocheted through embassies, banquet halls, and barracks all across Europe, and plunged all the great powers of the continent into a war that soon spread around the world.

Suggested further reading: Christopher Clark, “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914”; Margaret MacMillan, “The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914”; Barbara Tuchman, “The Guns of August.”

Image: Photograph of nine kings (George V of Britain seated, center; Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany standing, in red), at Windsor, for funeral of Edward VII of Britain, May, 1910.

Sign up here to listen to the entire lecture, as well as lectures on Germany, Japan, and Bosnia & the Assassination: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105028218

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What is "culture"? And how did a metaphor from gardening invade social-science discourse in 19th-century Germany and America and then take the world by storm? We consider the myriad, often contradictory, ways that "culture" is deployed in current rhetoric, usually to sneak in hidden value judgments; then we trace how an ancient Latin term for gardening came to refer to the "cultivation" of good character, then to the shaping of society by high art and refined customs, and then ultimately, under the influence of German and American imperial politics, to a purportedly unified, organic whole encompassing the sum total of all learned behaviors in a given society.

However you define it, I make the case that it is the defining myth of our time, and that we should get rid of it.

You can also play this episode on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/myth-of-month-22-82746773

Image: "Old New York" diorama, Museum of Natural History, New York

music: "Fandango," by Scarlatti or Soler, early 18th cent.; Midi version by El Gran Mago Paco Quito

Suggested further reading:

--Michael A. Elliott, "The Culture Concept: Writing and Difference in the Age of Realism"

--Hammersley, "The Concept of Culture: A History and Reappraisal."

This is the audio track of my latest video:

"Red, White & Royal Blue: A Historian's Analysis, pt. 1: "We Really Need to Get You a Book on English History" -- The Historical Context of RW&RB"

We start our detailed analysis of the recent gay romcom, Red White & Royal Blue, by considering the expansive historical background that gives meaning to the fictitious love affair between a British prince and a son of the US President -- from the constant scrutiny of royals' bodies and love lives, to the political symbolism of royal marriages, to the reactions to homosexuality in the palace, to the awkward and paradoxical role of the American presidency and the so-called "first family," and finally to the shifting and fraught diplomatic relationship between Britain and America in the two World Wars. We conclude with a comparison between RW&RB and its post-war forerunner, "The Americanization of Emily."

See an edited version of this video on youtube (with ads) here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAWtgmGyk-w

See this video in full without ads here --https://www.patreon.com/posts/103674430

Watch the introductory video of this series ("I know I Owe You an Explanation") here -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/red-white-royal-98784602

music: J.S. Bach, "Shafe Konnen Sicher Weiden," performed by Marco Cera. Marco Cera's youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@marcocera993

We examine the prophetic warnings from scholars and bureaucrats that a great-power war in the twentieth century would lead to bloody stalemate, mass destruction, and a wave of revolutions; and we trace how war strategists and generals reacted to the prophets of doom, formulating new war plans, from Russia’s blundering steamroll, to Germany’s precarious and ill-fated Schlieffen plan, to Britain's devious and mercurial scheme of economic warfare.

Suggested further reading: Barbara Tuchman, “The Guns of August”; Nicholas Lambert, “Planning Armageddon”

Nicholas Lambert’s discussion of Britain’s hope of economic warfare, “The Short War Assumption” -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7jJ-POo90&pp=ygUQbmljaG9sYXMgbGFtYmVydA%3D%3D

Margaret MacMillan’s lecture on war planning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RUFHkal6Jk&pp=ygUbbWFyZ2FyZXQgbWFjbWlsbGFuIHBsYW5uaW5n

Image: Cartoon of the dispute over Alsace-Lorraine as a medieval romance, Puck Magazine, 1898

Please sign up as a patron to support this podcast, and hear recent posts on Germany and Japan in the lead-up to World War I -- https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632