Historically Thinking

Today's conversation is a little different. Usually I talk to people who have already written a book. But today's guest Lindsay Chervinsky is in the process of writing a book. I thought it was a good opportunity for listeners to see how the sausage gets made: how a historian puts together an argument, contextualizes, connects sources, and do all the other "moves" of historical thinking that this podcast is concerned with.

Lindsay is studying Washington's "first cabinet." The whole idea of the presidential cabinet is just touched on the Constitution. As with many things in his presidency, Washington has to make it up as he went along. It was further created by the extraordinary collection of personalities that he brought together literally in one room. Thinking about the intended and unintended consequences of Washington's first cabinet seems to me a great way of celebrating America's Independence Day.

[Note: the illustration is from a brand of cigars that emanated from, of all places, Grand Rapids, MI. That I suppose accounts for Henry Knox being rechristened Hendrick Knox. It doesn't explain why they left out Attorney General Edmund Randolph, poor chap.]

Hello, from January 18, to June 28, 1919, the fate of the world seemed as if it would be decided in Paris. There leaders of the victorious powers met to determine the nature of the peace it would imposed upon Germany, and its allies, following the armistice of November 11, 1918. The results were complex and contentious even before the German government signed the final peace treaty—and there were many more treaties yet to be signed, by Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey, a process that went on for over another year.

With me to discuss the Treaty of Versailles, its complexities, controversy, and legacy, is Michael S. Neiberg, inaugural chair in War Studies at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He is the author of many books—most recently, The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America, and The Treaty of Versailles: A Concise History, both published by Oxford University Press.

"Herodotus, from Halicarnassus, here displays his enquiries, that human achievement may be spared the ravages of time, and that everything great and astounding, and all the glory of those exploits which served to display Greeks and barbarians alike to such effect, be kept alive–and additionally, and most importantly, to give the reason why they went to war."

So begins the Histories, or the Enquiries, of Herodotus. He is rightly the father of history since he was the first to use the term. But even in that first sentence you can also see that he is a historian because he not only seeks to preserve, but to understand–and to make an argument about how things happened.

This is part of our continuing series on "Great Historians and Histories". With me to discuss Herodotus is Jennifer Roberts, Professor of Classics at the City College of New York. An eminent historian, Jennifer Roberts has co-edited a translation of the Histories, and written Herodotus: A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press. She is also the author of The Plague of War, a new history of the Peloponnesian War, which will be the focus of a future conversation.

In late 19thcentury Japan, samurai were considered an “anachronistic embarassment, unproductive and useless.” Western dress spread rapidly throughout society. Castles were demolished by local governments. Yet, today, samurai seem to be a nearly ubiquitous symbol of Japan. However many of those things that comprise that symbol—the sport of kendo, swords sharper than razors, the code of bushido—are often impositions upon the historical past. It illustrates a favorite saying of Lendol Calder, a frequent guest on this podcast: it’s not what we don’t know about history that’s the problem, it’s what we know that just isn’t so. In this case, those things we know that just aren't so have often changed the way in which foreign powers have dealt with Japan, and the way in which Japan has thought of itself.

With me to discuss the samurai and their development is Michael Wert, Associate Professor of History at Marquette University. He is the author of Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan and most recently Samurai: A Concise History, published by Oxford University Press.

First an apology. This conversation was recorded in the lobby of a hotel, and at times you'll get to listen in on other people's conversations. It's some of the worst audio ever on this podcast; I certainly hope we never have worse. But I thought the conversation important enough to preserve.

That's because my guest today is the creative and insightful Michael Douma. He's a historian and Director of the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He’s also author most recently of Creative Historical Thinking, published by Routledge. It's an unusual book. Douma wants historians, as teachers and writers, to think of themselves as artists–or at least engaged in a highly creative endeavor. The book is chock-full of examples, case studies, and exercises for use in the classroom–or for doodling on a pad of paper while reading the book. "Thinking outside the box" has become a tiresome cliché–normally when someone asserts that they or someone else has done so, I wish I could persuade them to get back inside the box. But Michael restores the metaphor, at least a little bit.

Michael also wants historians to think of history as a "collective and community-building exercise", not simply as an individualistic pursuit. It's a vision that resonates with the vision of this podcast, so it was natural that I would want to have a conversation with Michael.

John Hooper got around, both geographically, intellectually, and spiritually. In 1535, he was a Cistercian monk, facing the dissolution of his monastery. Twenty years later he was burned at the stake by the Catholic monarch of England for being a Protestant heretic–a death that was, even by the standards of burning at the stake, unusually gruesome. But the time of his death Hooper had been a convert to Protestantism, an intellectual refugee in Switzerland, married, and Bishop of Gloucester.

The curious life of John Hooper is a fitting introduction to the history of Puritanism, the "warmer sort of Protestants" as a contemporary Englishman termed them. My guest Michel Winship is an eminent historian of Protestantism and Puritanism in early modern Europe, the E. Merton Coulter Professor of History at the University of Georgia. In his new book Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America, he offers us a history of puritanism that covers both sides of the Atlantic. It is compellingly written for a wide audience, but sure also to provoke specialists.

Another "Behind the Book" bonus episode, and one very appropriate for Memorial Day. This time I'm talking with John Slaughter, in his office at the Cowpens National Battlefield. John is the Superintendent of the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution Parks Group, which includes Cowpens, King's Mountain, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail,  and Ninety-Six. As you'll discover, John is afire with enthusiasm for what he superintends. I think you'll enjoy listening in to our chat, and I hope that you'll consider visiting one or all of these parks as soon as you can. Certainly I will.

Cowpens National Battlefield

King's Mountain National Military Park

Ninety-Six National Historic Site

Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail

"Remembrance Days": an essay I wrote years ago after first visiting some of these sites; the genesis of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life

The story of American public education is complex and long. Beginning with the Revolution, Americans began to experiment with modes of public schooling. They experimented not only with educational methods and principles, but perhaps most importantly with the politics of schooling– with methods of taxation and financial support, and of school supervision and governance. The legacy of these changes lives with us today.

On the podcast to discuss its origins and purposes of American public schools is Johann Neem, Professor of History at Western Washington University, and Senior Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He is the author most recently of Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America, published by Johns Hopkins Press as part of their series “How Things Worked". He also has a new book coming out this fall titled What’s the Point of College?

The 1930s were not a great era for the American economy, but they were wonderful for experiments in higher education. In 1933 the New School for Social Research began its Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, its “University in Exile” for Italian and German intellectuals seeking intellectual asylum from Nazism and Fascism. Robert Hutchins transformed the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Chicago, and it in turn was adopted by a small college in Annapolis that was on the verge of closing—St. John’s College is now famous for its “great books” curriculum. Down in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina, Black Mountain College taught art as the central pillar of a radical and interdisciplinary approach to the liberal arts; and up in Vermont, Bennington College was founded as a women’s college emphasizing self-directed learning and hands-on experience. Though some of these experiments failed, all of them changed the culture of higher education, to one extent or another.

Strange that for the last several decades, that there have so few experiments in higher education. My guest today aims to correct that. David J. Staley is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Humanities Institute at the Ohio State University. His latest book is Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education is filled with suggestions of how we might re-envision college. Warning: you're going to hear some odd things in this podcast.

For Further Investigation

The web page of David J. Staley at the Ohio State University

David Staley, "The Future of the University: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education"

David Staley, History and Future: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future

In August 1780, following the second defeat of an American army in South Carolina within one summer, the British government seemed to have regained control of Georgia and South Carolina. If for some reason peace talks had begun at that moment, there was a real possibility that both colonies would have remained under control of the King, along with Florida and Canada. But just a year later, the British Army controlled only the towns of Charleston and Savannah, and the perennial dream of a “Southern Strategy” by which Britain would first win the south and then the rest of the colonies was in ashes…and this was before Yorktown finally ended hopes of maintaining a loyal North America.

John Buchanan has written about the first phase of these events in his book The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The Revolution in the Carolinas, which follows events through the the second half of 1780, and up through the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, on March 15, 1781. Now he takes up the story again, as the British Army marches away from that bloody field, shadowed by Major General Nathanael Greene and his Southern Army. So begins The Road to Charleston: Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution, just published by the University of Virginia Press, which completes Buchanan's story of the American Revolution in the South.