Historical Thoughts and Interpretations

In this episode, we look at some of the factors and effects of centralization in pre-modern European states such as England, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire.  We also briefly analyze why the German-centered Holy Roman Empire failed to centralize effectively.

This episode is a little different in that I just introduce a series that I am planning to develop.  In this series, I will look at, compare, and contrast different types of communism.  Communism, like so many other broad topics in history, is not a monolith.  There is variation and change, and there are many different manifestations of communist ideology, with the most well-known ones being Soviet Stalinism and Chinese Maoism.  There are other forms of communism as well, such as Ho Chi Minh Thought, Juche, and the forms of communism that governed Yugoslavia, Cambodia, and Albania.  There are even communist parties in Canada and the United States.

I want to look deeper into these ideologies.  While I won't promise to look at all these variations of communist thought, I certainly plan to look into them and see how they were similar to and different from each other.  What were their impacts on history?  What framework should I use to analyze them?  Take a listen to this episode to find out!

In this episode, I interview Professor Natalia Telepneva.  She is a Lecturer in International History at the University of Strathclyde.  Her specialty is the Cold War-era Soviet Union and socialism, with a specific focus on Africa.  And today we will discuss her first book, "Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961-1975," in which she details the roles of Soviet and even Czechoslovak bureaucrats and spies in the anti-colonialist wars in Portugal's African colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique.  We will talk about what connected the Soviet Union with the local independence movements, how the Communist Soviet government supported Marxism-inspired leaders in Portuguese Africa, and how the anti-colonial wars played out.  You may download Professor Telepneva's book as a free e-book at this link.

Image: Portion of a 1987 Soviet stamp remembering the 10th anniversary of a Friendship and Cooperation agreement between the Soviet Union and Mozambique.  The time of this stamp is outside the scope of this podcast, but I thought it was an appropriate image. Credit: Wikipedia.

Note: We did experience some connection issues during the interview, so I apologize for that.  Between timestamps 11:49-55, Prof. Telepneva meant to mention the Central Committee (of the USSR's Communist Party) and its International Department.

In this episode we will take a very brief look into the lives of British Empire Loyalists after they moved to what remained of British North America after the Thirteen Colonies won the American Revolutionary War.  What prompted Loyalists to leave the Thirteen Colonies?  What issues did they face in what is modern Canada?  How did the British government respond?

Please note: at about 13:13 I said "hypothetical." It should be "hypocritical."

In this episode I give a short review of Catherine Merridale's excellent book "Ivan's War: The Red Army 1939-45."  The book brought the Soviet WWII experience to light in the Western market, which has usually been filled with war stories from Western Allied sides or even the Germans.

[Re-uploaded October 24, 2022]: In this episode, I go a little bit beyond what I discussed in the last entry.  Last time, I used Hayden White's literary framework to try and categorize an old Russian history textbook.  Today I critique White's framework a bit further.  I also talk more broadly about two types of historical works - historical research and historical fiction.  I argue that, contrary to White's position, historians are different from novelists.  I also give some cautions that must be considered when crafting or reading historical fiction.

I re-uploaded this episode because in my first upload, I made a mistake at about 26:00-27:00.  I had mentioned a film that I believed was making an anachronism, but I later found out it wasn't.  Hence, I decided to change that part and put the episode up again to correct my mistake.

And apologies for another mistake at about timestamp 16:14, where I called a history book "A History of Europe Under Roman Rule." It should have been "A History of Egypt Under Roman Rule."

Today I analyze one of my old Russian history textbooks, A History of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Beyond: Sixth Edition, 2002, written by David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran.  I use the literary framework of Hayden White to categorize the textbook, and I give some of my thoughts on it.

In the podcast's second episode with a guest, we sit down with CJ Leung, who hosts the "Cool History Bros" Channel on YouTube.  "Cool History Bros" presents deep topics in Chinese and East Asian history and literature in a lighthearted way, and it is a great resource for learning about the region's history.  Today on the podcast, CJ talks with us about Confucianism, which is more commonly known as Ruism in Asia.  We discuss the philosophy's origins, misconceptions about it that have been transmitted since Jesuit missionaries' encounters with it, and how Ruism was historically applied in China, Korea, and elsewhere.

The Cool History Bros Channel can be visited via this link: https://www.youtube.com/c/coolhistorybros

Thanks also go to my wife Patricia, who helped me plan the podcast's content.

Note: Apologies for some of the technical issues.  There were some network timing issues, and my voice is a little slower than usual.  We also unfortunately lost a bit of CJ's voice between 47:16-20.  However, the recording otherwise went very well, and we had a great time during the interview.

Welcome to the 40th episode of the podcast!  Thank you for all of your listening and support.  It has been great, and I look forward to producing many more episodes for your listening.

In this episode, we will look into Russian-Serb relations during the Breakup of Yugoslavia.  We will look into some shared history and memory, but we'll especially see how the common faith of Orthodox Christianity played a role in how these societies saw the Yugoslavian War.

In this (very short) episode, we will look into Leo Tolstoy's thoughts about what makes a "good civilization" as he expressed in Hadji Murad, which was his short novel about the Imperial-era Russian wars in Chechnya.