The History Thread

[Shockprowl]

I can't see a general History discussion thread, so thought I'd start one. GodMods please feel free to put it where you think it should go if you don't think it should go here (you know how turned on I get when you use your powers).


So, History. I've been a quiet on and off History studier for several years now. I'm mainly early modern European centric, but occasionally jump into other eras.


Three things to get the thread started. Firstly, seems to me that studying history, European history in particular, is like studying one war after the next. When studying dates and events, it is so easy to forget the Human Equation in it all, and forget just how much suffering and hardship occurred to everyday people, such as us.

Secondly, The Eighteenth Century!!! What a brilliant century for those before-mentioned wars! It is my current main topic of interest. You start off with Louis XIV's final decades and the compelling War of the Spanish Succession. Forward to the expansion of the Hapsburgs, the rise of Prussia, and the dynamic Hapsburg/Honehnzollern wars between Prussia and Austria which includes the Diplomatic Revolution and the 'First World War', the Sevens Years' War. The beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, the ever present drive of Empire building, the constant and inexhaustible rivalry between Britain and France, and then you end the century with the French Revolution and the lead-up to the Napoleonic Wars! You couldn't make this stuff up. And then the personalities! You have the obvious Louis XIV, Napoleon, Frederick the Great, the Hanoverian kings of Britain to name just the obvious. But then you have the likes of Marlborough, and the fascinating Prince Eugene of Savoy who I am particularly interested in at the moment. Born in France, he was refused a military career by Louis XIV due to his weak physical nature. Eugene promptly switched sides, joined the Haspburgs, and promptly kicked French pantaloons on several occasions. He was also a great supporter of the arts.

Thirdly, I would like to bring to your attention what is quite possibly my favorite book of all time. It is the Times Atlas of European History, by Mark Almond. The book is unashamedly light on the detail (the Seven Years' War is covered in a few carefully worded sentences), but that's not the the point of the book. The book is basically the same map of Europe page after page. But as you turn the pages, you get to watch the many incredibly complicated boundries of European change as the years roll by. Empires wax and wain, countries come and go. And from there, you can go off and study the details of particular events and eras, whilst always able to come back to the Atlas and make clear in you mind the exactly geo-political nature of what's going on. It is a masterful piece of work, but sadly quite hard to come by these days.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

History's great. I wasn't that interested in it in school and went down a purely scientific route in higher education and work, but I've been trying to compensate in my spare time for my own interest.

Well-researched historical fiction can be very educational, the inaccuracies due to dramatic licence often being less than the bias and uncertainty you get in "factual" history books. I love the Napoleonic era, largely due to reading "War and Peace" by Tolstoy and Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" novels. "War and Peace" is often criticised for diverging off from the character plot into historical essays about the ebbs and flows of European history, and some editions even omit those chapters, but I'd never read such an edition - they're my favourite parts. And then novels like "Sharpe's Trafalgar" give you a detailed account of Nelson's great sea victory as it actually happened, only with one fictional ship and a few fictional characters added.

On the other hand, "300" is no way to learn about what actually happened in the Greek-Persian wars, and even "historians" of that era like Herodotus should be taken with a massive pinch of salt.

I have "The Collins Atlas of World History". I agree, it's fun to see all the country borders change over time. But they're just human lines on a map - you can't see them from space, and they mean zilch to plate tectonics, weather patterns, diseases, birds and insects. Just humans playing silly human games! The Earth got by just fine for four and a half billion years before countries were invented.

Martin

[Andy Turnbull]

I was always a fan of history in school, in my youth it was Medieval history that was of most interest to me. I have to admit I do enjoy a lot of the material around the Great War to World War II. Deeply fascinating and also quite disturbing when you can see how one event has such an impact further down the line.

There is a fantastic historical podcast I enjoy called Hardcore History by Dan Carlin. These are in effect mini-audiobooks often 2 to 3 hours long and are very engaging. He is currently in the early stages of World War I.

www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hh

The earliest eps are not available for free but can be purchased but there are enough there to give you a flavour of the work and whether or not it will be your thing.

Andy

[legios]

I remember studying history at high school, and not being terribly impressed with the way it was taught at that point in time. It felt very like we were taught a few random things in isolation, but without very much real sense of the play of forces and consequences behind them. And in some cases it felt like we were very much being fed a mythological version of history which did a lot of jumping about.

We were taught about how the Romans came to Scotland but didn't conquer it and then they went away, and then William Wallace fought the English because the English wanted to conquer Scotland and he kept Scotland free until the English beat him, and then Robert the Bruce came along and fought the English at Bannockburn and made Scotland free again, then James the Sixth became king of England as well as Scotland and history stopped until the Industrial Revolution made Woollen Mills happen in Southern Scotland. Then the Germans started World War I because they wanted to conquer everybody so lots of Scottish soldiers went to France to fight them, Scotland and the other bits of Britain won and defeated Germany. And then you did Higher history in fifth or sixth year, and they taught you all that stuff again, still leaving out the interesting parts - like Andrew DeMurray, whose hit-and-run campaign may have done more to keep the English off-balance and from re-establishing control of Scotland than Wallace did, or the fact that the Bruce family was one of the many Scottish noble houses that sided with the English against Wallace and Murray when they saw which way the wind was blowing, that Robert had a rival claimant to the Scottish throne murdered on consecrated ground because he had a stronger claim than Robert did... I lost interest during my Higher history, and spent most of the lesson time reading the other parts of the text-book, like the stuff on the Great Depression and the inter-war period.

As a result of dissatisfaction with how history has been taught to me I have spent a lot of time reading up on topics and periods which catch my interest independently. I did start out with a strong bias towards military history - probably from spending my early years around large numbers of Air Force brats - but rapidly branched out in all sorts of directions from there. My most recent acquisition was a book on the development of the Samurai class in Japan as a distinct social strata, and one of the most fascinating things that emerged from reading that was seeing beneath the veneer of an apparently ordered, hierachical and very strictly controlled society to the way it fractured and factionalised beneath the surface. Made for interesting reading, especially with its examination of the myth of Japan as a "closed country" at one stage. The book highlighted the extensive trade for Chinese books which was going on at the time that supposedly there was an impenetrable wall around the nation - and the fact that on one of the outlying islands a Great Clan was blithely trading with westerners all the time it was forbidden, and allowed to get away with it because they had never quite got around to claiming the island for the Emperor and therefore weren't quite on Japanese territory at the time...
Strangely I am a bit rusty on parts of my European History - the era of Wellington and Napoleon is a bit of a blind spot, but I did do a bit of reading at one stage on the French Revolution, and David Weber's science-fiction novels lead me to do a bit of studying up on Nelson recently (It finally clicked that his protagonist's career deliberately parallels Nelson's in a lot of respects - I kicked myself when the penny finally dropped).

Karl

[Shockprowl]

With Bonfire Night just past, and having celebrated it as we always do, I thought we should have a chat about this fascinating event in history. You just couldn't make it up. Robert Catesby, unhappy with how Catholics are being treated under James I (and Elizabeth I before him), first of all asks the new King of Spain if he'd consider invading England, but when that falls through hatches the incredible and brilliant plan to destroy not only the King but all the Protestant leaders of the country at the one time he knew they'd all be together, at the state opening, and then usher in a Catholic revolt and take over the country. Just such an incredible conception! Catesby planned diligently, recruiting several others to his cause, including the famous Fawkes. The State Opening was postponed several times, confounding the plotters. Did they dig a tunnel? Well, no evidence of a tunnel has ever been found. They were lucky, however, in learning of the availability of the undercroft beneath the House of Lords. It was only the anonoymous letter to the Baron Monteagle, waring him to stay away, that caused the authorities to be alerted. They searched, Fawkes was found, and the plot unraveled. Pursued by the Kings men, Catesby was shot and killed in the ensuing gun battle. As I let loose my fireworks the other night, remembering the events of 1605, several thoughts came to me. I first wondered how many people out there who were letting off fireworks really knew anything about why they were letting them off, what they were celebrating. I wondered why it was celebrated as 'Guy Fawkes' Night, and not 'Robert Catesby' Night. I was cross with how my eldest's (normally outstanding) school taught the children that Fawkes was the leader and he was caught as he was about to set alight the gunpowder. And also I wondered about Catesby, and his fellow plotters, and their incredible plan, and how close they came. I haven't seen it, but one of my work chumbs told me of an experiment done on the Discover Channel where they built a replica of the then House of Lords, and filled it with the equivalent explosive, equivalent to the 36 barrels of gunpowder Fawkes was found with. The replica was obliterated. The plotters came very close indeed to achieving the impossible, thanks to the ingenious, if violent, determination of one Robert Catesby.

[Shockprowl]

Been back into history again for several months now. Filling in the blanks of my 18th century studies, but also a lot of 19th century 'Concert of Europe' stuff (Bloody Europeans, ghastly bunch).

My main topic of study currently is the cause of the First World War. The assasination of Franz Ferdinand was the match that lit the fuse, but it was the deeper political structure of Europe that created the environment for disaster. The Alliance System and Great Power rivalry played a huge part, as did the Ballance of Power, substantially altered as it was by the unification of Germany in 1871, and the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire. Pompous wreckless diplomacy, particularly by the Austrians in the July crisis, was a major factor, but also there is an element of military stupidity, such as the Russians mobilising their vast army even before Serbia had answered the harsh Austrian Ultimatum. There were so many opportunities to climb down during the July crisis. And the greatest irony is the fact that, the one person, the one moderate, who could perhaps have calmed the flames was already dead, assasinated in Bosnia.

The most alien and ridiculous cause of the First Word War seems to me to be the concept that 'War was Good', 'War was Necessary', 'War was Needed'. There were elements in all the Great Powers' governments who wanted a war. A good war to sort it all out. A good war to take care of disatisfaction at home, bring the Nation together. Fat stuffy men too full of arrogant hot air to fit into their own trousers. That's the real cause of the First World War, and every war- Men's Power. (Occassionally the odd woman's power, but usually Men's....).