Monthly Archives: April 2023

A History of the Inca. Why the sudden interest in the Inca? you might ask. Just before Covid, I was planning to go to Peru with my son and daughter-in-law and little granddaughter. If the ‘vid didn’t kill off the plan, the high altitude with a young child did, and we didn’t end up going (my refunded deposit bought a new washing machine instead). But now I’m reading an Isabel Allende book (in English) Inez of my Soul, and I thought that I’d go back to the Inca podcasts again. Anyway, Episodio 3: Los Moche (in Spanish) or Episode 3 The Moche deals with the Moche society, one of the four that preceded the Incas until about 700-800 CE. I had no idea they existed. Here’s a short travel video about them (in English)– check out The Lord of Sipan- a discovery as jaw-dropping as the discovery of Tutankhamen .

Emperors of Rome Podcast Episode LIX – Martial. And there I was, thinking that I would be listening to a podcast about armies. But no, Martial was a poet, writing during the time of Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. He was famous for his epigrams, short poems that were often satirical or obscene, and the ‘sting’ often came in the last line. Matt Smith, the co-host, likens Martial to a stand-up comedian, which is probably not a bad parallel. Episode LXI – Gladiator (2000) looks at the Russell Crowe film, which I have never seen, so that made it a bit hard to follow what they were talking about. Of course, it’s a fictional film and Maximus is a fictional character, but Dr Rhiannon Evans was at pains to point out that Commodus didn’t kill Marcus Aurelius (which is the whole premise on which the film is based) – in fact, he wasn’t even there. Nor did Marcus Aurelius intend reverting to a republic, and it didn’t. Interlude – The Bronze Head of Augustus talks about the bronze head of Augustus which featured in the exhibition A History of the World in 100 Objects from the British Museum, which was on show at the National Museum of Australia in 2016- in fact, I went to it! You can see the sculpture at https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1911-0901-1 It’s a bit confronting, because the statue still has its inlaid eyeballs, instead of the blank holes in most statues. It was part of the publicity machine of circulating the emperor’s image throughout the empire (a bit like the Queen). It was found in the ancient city of Meroë, in what is now Sudan, buried under the steps of a temple, probably placed there as a victory trophy when the local people defeated Roman troops- they literally walked all over his head. This episode features Dr Lily Withycombe, a curator from the National Museum of Australia.

Witness History (BBC) Richard Dimbleby Describes Belsen . BBC journalist Richard Dimbleby was one of the first journalists to report on Bergen-Belsen. He filed this radio report soon after visiting Belsen, and at first the BBC mandarins were reluctant to release it because his report had not been verified by other witnesses. After they equivocated for four days, he made it clear that unless they aired it, he would never do another report for them again, and so it was broadcast. I don’t know if it’s included in this podcast, but the version I listened to (on Stitcher) had an interview with his son Jonathan, talking about his father’s interview, and then they played Richard Dimbleby’s report in full. It was not an extermination camp, instead it was a ‘holding’ came for prisoners of war, and the emphasis was on the starvation and disease amongst the 40,000 people who were imprisoned there. It’s pretty grueling listening.

The Guardian Long Read The Ciskei Experiment: A libertarian fantasy in Apartheid South Africa looks at the concept of a ‘zone’, much loved by libertarians and economic rationalists where you don’t have to worry about nasty annoying things like democracy or unions. It was promoted as a South African Switzerland, but in reality it was a cluster of sweatshops, especially in the textile industry, where South Africans were no longer citizens of South Africa, but instead of the ‘Bantustan’ Ciskei, nominally an independent country. For all the talk of ‘small government’, it was heavily reliant on the government to subsidize the industries that set up there. Rather soberingly, the episode points out that there are more ‘economic zones’ now than there were in the 1980s, and that they keep being championed as the powerhouse of economic growth.

Radio Ambulante Me autodeclara Negra is a podcast in Spanish, but if you click on the link it will take you to the Radio Ambulante website where you can find a transcript in English. During Dilma Rouseff’s presidency of Brazil, she established a system where universities would set aside quotas for black and indigenous applicants. Lindinês de Jesus Sousa applied unsuccessfully, and it was only when she looked closer that she found that many of these quotas were occupied by white students pretending to be black. As a result of her challenging the process, a board was set up to test applicants using physical characteristics- hair, skin, lips etc. It seemed to be purely appearance-based, without the ‘community acceptance’ criteria that applies in Australia, where I suspect a scheme based on physical distinctions would be much more problematic. Interesting and rather confronting.

Latin American History Podcast The Conquest of Peru Part 6. This episode started off with cheering and tooting horns to celebrate Argentina’s victory in the World Cup – not quite what I was expecting! So there are Atahualpa and Pizarro sitting there in in Cajamarca looking at each other after the Spanish troops defeated the Inca and Atahualpa had been taken captive. Atahualpa was still worried about his half-brother Huáscar, who he had defeated in the Civil War. He might pop up again, thus rendering Atahualpa irrelevant. So he suggested that he would pay a huge ransom in gold, to be brought in over the next seven months, and he suggested that they all go to Cusco, which was a Huáscar stronghold, to collect it. Pizarro wouldn’t come at that, so Inca and Spaniard troops went off to Cusco, which they looted from Huáscar’s supporters. The Spanish had no appreciation of the religious significance of the gold they plundered, or of its workmanship, and they just melted it down. Meanwhile, rumours were circulating that another of Atahualpa’s half-brothers was gathering an army (he had 50 half-brothers and the rumour never specified which one) so Pizarro had Atahualpa tried for treason, and executed. Atahualpa converted to Christianity to avoid being burned to death, and he was strangled instead. Meanwhile Almagro turned up, and Pizarro found himself just as threatened by his own Spanish compatriots as the Inca. Even though they were given instructions to colonize, they knew that once they reported that they had colonized an area, that would be counted as the geographical extent of their territory, and that other Spaniards would come and take the ‘unexplored’ land. So it was in their interests to keep conquering, to take as much land as they could.

Emperors of Rome. Interlude – The Singing Colossus of Memnon. Just a little short 10 minute podcast this time about Hadrian’s visit to the Singing Colossum of Memnon, near Luxor in Egypt. Actually, there were two statues there, standing guard over Amenhotep’s memorial temple. The biggest one had a crack in it, probably caused by an earthquake, and it made a noise in the middle of the night or as the sun rose, which was said to be the statue ‘singing’. Memnon was a hero during the Trojan War, which is probably why Hadrian wanted to see it. As was custom of the day, he left his signature and Julia Balbilla, a Roman noble woman and poet who was travelling with Hadrian as part of the court, wrote a . Whilst in Thebes, touring Egypt as part of the imperial court of Hadrian, wrote three epigrams which were inscribed on the leg of one of the statues. Episode LVII – Little Soul, Little Wanderer, Little Charmer It’s probably good advice not to end up a Grumpy Old Man, because that’s how you will be remembered. Hadrian was suffering from degenerative heart disease, and took a long time to die, just as was foretold in a curse uttered against him by an erstwhile successor whom he later put to death that he would “long for death but be unable to die”. He was a testy old bugger in the last few years. He chose his former brother-in-law and his son as possible successors, then executed them; then he chose a young, sickly man who also predeceased him, and then finally chose the future Emperor Antoninus Pius, along with Lucius Ceionius Commodus (not the later Emperor Commodus- he’s a way off yet) and Marcus Annius Verus as a three-way bet. Episode LVIII – Tacitus looks at one of the most important historians of the Julio-Claudian and Flavian dynasties. We don’t know much about Tacitus himself e.g. when he was born, when he died, even his real name. The little that we do know about him came from his biography of his father-in-law Agricola, which probably only came down to us because of the connection with Britain. Tacitus himself was a consul and a senator. He wrote 5 works covering 14CE and 96CE but the most famous ones were his Histories and Annals, which drew on Senate records and oral testimonies, even though we’re missing about half of them. He was dramatic, engaging and a bit sententious. He was on the side of the Senate, and the emperors who respected the Senate.

You’re Dead To Me (BBC) The Colombian Exchange is a modern day term (invented in the 1970s) to describe the interchange of animals, food, plants, people and culture between the New World and Europe. Featuring Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock, author of On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe and comedian Desiree Burch. In relation to animals, the Spanish introduced cattle, sheep, goats and pigs (i.e. big domestic animals) and nearly wiped out llamas. Flowing back to Europe were birds in particular and cochineal from insects (which was used for the colour red). The plants mainly went from South America to Europe, including Brazil wood and rubber tobacco (the act of smoking was described as ‘drinking smoke’), tomatoes, beans, squash, potatoes, pineapple. Instead the Europeans gave them cauliflower, wheat, rice, olives. There was an interchange of diplomats e.g. In 1544 Mayan lords visited Phillip II, bringing gifts of chocolate and feathers and taking back crosses and religious items (they wuz robbed). Pennock reminds us, too, that tens of thousands of South Americans ended up in Europe as slaves and servants.

Take Me To Your Leader (ABC) Rishi Sunak It didn’t surprise me at all that Liz Truss defeated Rishi Sunak in the first ballot after Boris Johnson. I always expected that Tory voters would prefer a woman over a man of colour when push came to shove, but that ended up being a disaster. The prominence of women and people of colour in the Conservative party never ceases to amaze me, particularly considering the dearth of both in the Labour Party, but this is the result of David Cameron’s concerted efforts to increase the representation of both. He is described as ‘Asian’ in the United Kingdom, which has a different meaning than in Australia, but both his parents actually came from Africa. He had an elite education, and his wife is very, very rich. As one of the commentators pointed out, in Britain it is now not a matter of race, but of class. He promised to calm things down, which he has, but he is quite hard-line (e.g. over Brexit) without engaging in culture wars. However, neither Johnson or Truss have gone away, so perhaps this still has some way to run. The guests were Baroness Kishwer Falkner of Margravine, British politician and member of House of Lords; Sir Craig Oliver, former British news editor and former Director of Politics and Communications for British prime minister David Cameron and George Brandis, former High Commissioner to the UK and former Australian Attorney General.

The Latin American History Podcast The Conquest of Peru Part 5 The Spanish sent their first envoy to Atahualpa, who kept him waiting. Both sides thought that they had each other’s measure, and so the vastly-outnumbered Spanish agreed to meet with Atahualpa in Cajamarca, a large square surrounded by mountains. After Pizarro read the Requerimiento, a legal document (“requirement”) drawn up in 1513, to be read before initiation of the conquest of Amerindians offering them Christianity, Atahualpa asked to see the Bible that was being brandished around. Not having ever seen a book before (let alone a Bible), he dropped it on the ground and Pizarro ordered his hidden army to attack. Six thousand Inca were killed, with no reported Spaniard deaths, and Atalhualpa was captured, thus replicating Cortez’ ‘success’ with Montezuma.

A History of the Inca I saved this to my podcast feed ages ago and haven’t really listened to it. I was excited when I found it, because it has episodes in English and in Spanish. The English version was done first, and then the presenter Nick Machinski decided to translate them into Spanish, read very clearly by Alicia Yantas. I’m about Intermediate B1 in Spanish, and I was able to understand her quite easily. Episode 1 is just a five-minute introduction, then Episodio 2 Bienvenidos a los Andes in Spanish (or Episode 2 Welcome to the Andes in English) talks about the terrain and the climate, especially the influence of El Nino and La Nina, and the development of ayllus as a way of spreading the risk of drought or flood amongst loosely linked communes. Actually I saw an ayllu (below) when I was in the Atacama desert, and I didn’t realize what it was.

Kerning Cultures A Past Life I’m quite attracted to the idea of a past life (or lives) but I don’t really believe it. However, adherents to the Druze faith certainly do believe in reincarnation. Possibly this is because you can’t convert to the Druze faith: you need to be born into it, and rebirth keeps the numbers stable. This is the story of Heba, who lived in both America and Lebanon, who as a child called herself ‘Amad’ and spoke of ‘Amin’, her husband. People from her parents’ village back in Lebanon told her family that Amad had died, and that they had known her. As an adult, Heba went back to Lebanon to locate this family, but found herself enmeshed in a family that she did not know or remember.

History This Week Fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Saturday 25 March 1911 was the date of this appalling fire, which led to the deaths of 146 garment workers within 15 minutes – 123 women and girls and 23 men in a 10 storey building opposite Washington Square in New York. This episode features David Von Drehle, author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America who points out that the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was actually one of the most well-lit and modern of the garment factories which replaced the sweatshops in tenement buildings. The fire broke out on a Saturday afternoon as the employees were about to pick up their pay and leave for the weekend. (Even though the vast majority of workers were Jewish, they had to work on Saturdays). The shirtwaist factory occupied the 8,9 and 10th floors, and was conducted by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, former garment workers themselves. But by now they were entrepreneurs, suspicious of their workers and vehemently anti-union. When fire broke out, the fire brigade found that their ladders only reached to the 6th floor. The lift operators were in many ways the heroes here, running the lifts up and down to the burning floors for as long as they could (after making sure that all the management staff were evacuated from the top floor, that is). The water did not work and escape doors were locked to prevent theft, but both owners escaped punishment. However, the fire prompted changes to working conditions …eventually, once Tammany Hall politicians began distancing themselves from the factory owners. I was amazed that the building was still standing when we visited New York back in 2011, and it has plaques on the wall commemorating the tragedy. So strange to think of so much death occurring right opposite Washington Square Park.

History Extra George VI’s Nazi Dilemma During WWII, George VI (i.e. Elizabeth’s father) faced a dilemma on two fronts. The first was his brother, the disaffected former Edward now Duke of Windsor. The second was his advisors, including Chamberlain and his foreign secretary Halifax, who both urged appeasement – and indeed, George himself leaned towards appeasement at first. This episode features Alexander Larman, the author of The Windsors at War: The Nazi Threat to the Crown The Duke of Windsor, he says, was cunning but not clever and he worried more about communism than fascism. Although not a Nazi himself, he did have Nazi sympathies. He harboured fantasies that perhaps he might be invited back as King, and he thought that he might be able to act as a puppet leader for Hitler, whom he admired till the end. He did do intelligence work for Britain early in the war, but then gave intelligence to the Nazis e.g. the layout of Buckingham Palace so that there could be targeted bombing. There was still residual warmth for the former king, so it was decided to send him to the Bahamas as Governor rather than have him tried for treason in England (for which there would be grounds). In effect, George VI found his mettle during the war and became good friends with Churchill.

The Ancients Beast Hunts. Our image of lions in the Colosseum underplays the industrial scale of importation of animals for spectacles that were held throughout the Roman Empire. The killing was on a massive scale: 9000 beasts were killed in the 100 days festival of the opening of the Colosseum. The logistics of locating and shipping animals from the provinces required organization, and provinces could be taxed in animals rather than money. The animals were often used for meat afterwards. But so were condemned non-Roman criminals who were fed to the animals, the ultimate form of death-shaming. Emperors used displays of animals to show their power, although Pompey’s plan to ride into his triumph on elephants was brought undone when they didn’t fit through the gate!

Rear Vision (ABC) War in Ukraine: The Political Story. I learned more from this episode than I did from the earlier one (The Military Story). The central and eastern nations in NATO had been warning about Russia for some time, but were largely disregarded by the ‘older’ NATO nations of Germany and France. Finland and Sweden are now looking to join NATO, thus bringing NATO right to the Russian border (one of the reasons that Putin put forward for moving into Ukraine). Finland has always had a large army, and Sweden (which previously prided itself on its neutrality) was already building up its armed forces after allowing them to run down. The Baltic States, Finland and Sweden are now more aligned than they were. Central Asia, which has had a strong relationship with Russia in the past, are wary, and are looking more to southern Asia as an alternative. Turkey is useful to Russia because of its presence in NATO, and Iran is providing weapons. The non-Western countries e.g. South America, Africa are cynical about the West’s response, and largely keeping out of it.

Emperors of Rome. Episode LIV – There and Back Again (An Emperor’s Tale) After a short time in Rome (having taken the long way home), Hadrian sets off again on a four year tour. First he went west to Gaul, Brittania (where he left the 3-metre thick Hadrian’s Wall) and España; then he went east to Syria and Turkey, then he went to Greece which is where he really wanted to be (because he loved all things Greek) and stayed there for two years. This four-year peregrination was more about diplomacy than anything else- he did lots of building along the way as part of marking Rome’s dominance across the provinces. Wherever he went, he left troops in a peace-keeping role. It was while he was in Greece that he met his beautiful boy Antinous. Episode LV – What Hadrian Loves Best. Three things. 1. Impressive buildings. Even though it was hard to find space in Rome after all these centuries, he did, and he built the big 10-column temple to Venus and Roma. He rebuilt the Pantheon for the 3rd time. But although he liked leaving buildings with his name on them in the provinces, he was careful not to do so in Rome which would have seemed crass. 2. His wife Vibia Sibina. Well maybe he didn’t love her that much. Nonetheless, she was an Augusta and their marriage was a way of strengthening the Romano-Spanish contingent in Rome. 3. Antinous. He really did love Antinous. Lots of Roman men had boy lovers, but Hadrian seems to have been particularly besotted by him. Nonetheless, it’s debatable whether Hadrian was ‘homosexual’ in our sense of the word today. There is debate over Antinous’ death: was it an accident? suicide? even murder? What is not debatable is that Hadrian was heartbroken when he died. Episode LVI – May His Bones Rot Although he had no intention of expanding the Empire, Hadrian was intent on consolidating what he still held. There had been discontent bubbling away in Judea for some time, and the stubbornly monotheistic Jews were an intractable problem in a polytheistic culture like Rome. Hadrian had plans to rebuild Jerusalem, which was still in ruins after the first Roman-Jewish war of 66-73CE, as a distinctively Roman colony, and he outlawed circumcision. An anti-Roman insurrection broke out, led by the Messianic Simon bar Kokhba, and led to a three year guerilla war of attrition. According to Cassius Dio, Roman war operations in Judea left some 580,000 Jews dead and 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed. Hadrian erased the province’s name from the Roman map, renaming it Syria Palaestina, and had Jerusalem rebuilt in the Greek style after re-naming it Aelia Capitolina.