The Burning Archive

As the multipolar world takes shape and tensions over Taiwan rise, it is timely to ask, what should be Australia's role in the emerging multipolar world? Are we, as Hugh White suggests in his recent Quarterly Essay, sleepwalking to war with China? Have we given up on framing our own foreign and defence policy to service the will of that "indispensable nation", America. What will it take to develop a new vision of Australian foreign policy suited to history, geopolitics today, and our real place in the world, not in the Atlantic Alliance but on the coasts of Eurasia?

Credit: Hugh White, Sleepwalk to War: Australia's Unthinking Alliance with America (Black Ink, 2022)

Three spectres are haunting America - the ghosts of the American Mind, the American State, and the American Empire. Faced with intertwined crises of culture, governing and international dominance, the 20th century's Uncle Sam has not aged well, and become the 21st century's Bad Granpa Joe. Will America break? That is the question on this episode of The Burning Archive.

When in early 2022 Russia decided to invade Ukraine, the Western world, especially the Anglo-American World, went kind of mad - with anger, fury, and some justified rage. But it also made a strange attempt not just to restore international peace, but to cancel a whole country, Russia, the great Russian cultures that stretch back 1000+ years. It went too far - and continues to go too far. So today on the Burning Archive, Jeff Rich asked what are the reasons not to cancel Russia. What are the gifts of Russia we can be grateful for? How can we put an end to Russophobia in a multipolar world.

Credits: Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, "The Sacrificial Dance" and Mark B. Smith, The Russia Anxiety and How History Can Resolve It.

The Burning Archive revisits the predictions of Samuel Huntington Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) about Ukraine. Is it a "fault-line" state on the borders of a clash of civilizations between the West and Russia? Could Huntington's ideas have both caused and prevented the latest war in Ukraine? This episode also gives an update on the four vectors of the conflict between Russia and NATO - military, economic, diplomatic and cultural. It asks, what will happen to the West if Russia wins the war?

In the fourth and final of the series on civilizations, the Burning Archive contrasts the doom of Oswald Spengler's 1918 classic, The Decline of the West to the over-confident American optimism of the 1991 game, Civilization. What is the story of the Rise of the West? Do civilizations have a life cycle, from cradle to grave? Is the West locked in a clash of civilizations with the Rest? Should we replace the story of the West with the story of Tamerlane's shadow? They are the questions for this episode of The Burning Archive.

This episode is part three of an extended four part series Civilization - the game, the concept and the examples from across the globe. In this episode, I look at four environments and five matching civilizations. First, I look at Sumerian civilization (approx 3000-1500 BC) in the alluvial river valleys of Mesopotamia, the original "cradle" of civilization. Then, I travel to the highlands of MesoAmerica and the Andes to look at the Aztecs and the Incas (roughly 1200-1600 AD). Third, I look at seaboard civilizations and the remarkable trading empire of Sri Vijaya that prospered in Sumatra and the Malay archipelago approx 600-1300 AD. Then finally, I turn to oceans, specifically the Atlantic ocean, and look at the WEIRDest civilization of all that of the Atlantic - Western civilization. Many thanks to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, David Abalufia and Barry Cunliffe for their fine books that have contributed to this show. Full details are at www.theburningarchive.com. Opening music - the ancient Indonesian theme music from Civilization VI.

In part two of an extended four part series of eipisodes on the game Civilization, the Burning Archive examines three types of environment adapted by people for civilization - deserts of ice, uncultivable grasslands and tropical lowlands. These three environments were traditionally seen as hostile or incompatible with the kind of Civilization descended from the cradle of civilization, but are shown in Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Civilizations to have housed remarkable culture of the Saami, the Scythians and the City of Benin. For more details see www.theburningarchive.com

Credit: Opening music of Civilization IV

Civilization, the game, is soon to be released in its 7th edition. In this episode of The Burning Archive Jeff Rich responds to a listener question prompted by this game that puts the player in the shoes of all manner of leaders of civilizations. What is meant by the phrase 'cradle of civilization', and how is the concept of civilization relevant to today's multi-polar world facing climate-change?

This is part one of a four-part show exploring Civilization and history, and recreating a Civ marathon on a podcast.

Full details of the show at www.theburningarchive.com

If you play Assassins Creed you might think the Mafia has its origins in similar medieval or early modern brotherhoods, who despite their dastardly deeds were true patriots and rebels at heart. That is also the story that Italian mafia organisations tell their own members. But is it true, or does the history of the mafia have more to do with Italian Risorgimento politics, prisons and the disruptions of the nineteenth century? And what does any of this have to do with a burning archive?

Thanks to Isaac and Ella for the listener question that began this show, and special thanks to John Dickie, Blood Brotherhoods: A History of Italy's Three Mafias (2014) for all the wonderful stories in this episode.  Thanks too to Sigismondo Castromediano, Duke of Morciano and Marquis of Cavallino, Italian Patriot, for enduring his imprisonment in the jails of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, and then telling the true tale of the origins of the camorra.

Credits also to Assassin's Creed, 'Sounds of Florence' and Godfather 'Theme Song' - brief excerpts played during the show.

Immerse yourself in Renaissance Florence and with the aid of Assassin's Creed take a virtual historical tour through the remarkable lives and turbulent times of the Medici family.

For full details of references from this episode see www.theburningarchive.com