I hear with my little ear: Podcasts 1-7 April 2024

History Hit Ataturk: Fall of the Ottoman Empire As Australians, we mainly know Ataturk through the Gallipoli Campaign and the words that he is supposed to have said in burying the Australian war dead. But this episode concentrates instead of the fall of both the Ottoman and Habsburg empires at the end of WWI: falls that presaged very different outcomes as Vienna wasn’t occupied, but Turkey was. Ataturk was part of an educated cohort and he was militarily successful and politically active. At first he promoted Muslim Unity but this was largely a generational battle over the incompetence of the generals which led to the loss of Edirne and Thessalonika. Ataturk (or rather Mustafa Kemal) was a dictator, who looked to the Mufti of Istanbul, declaring 1919 as the start of Turkish history. In 1922 Parliament dissolved itself (and along with it the Ottoman dynasty) and in 1923 Turkey declared itself a republic and turned its back on other Muslim, especially the Kurds. They toppled the Greeks (leading Prince Phillip to leave Greece and come to England) and they undertook a ‘population exchange’ (which might more easily be seen as ‘ethnic cleansing’) Further reforms to the language and the script were part of the desire for Turkey to look like Spain, leading to a backlash in the Islamic world. He died in 1938. Current president Erdogan has undertaken several of his projects e.g. reconverting the Sofia Hagia from mosque to museum. I found this episode fascinating. There was so much more to Ataturk than I could have imagined.

Soul Search (ABC) In the spirit of Easter, I listened to Soul Search on Imagining Jesus on screen and in literature. Apparently the Pope had a recent meeting with film maker Martin Scorsese, who made ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ in 1988. The Pope spoke about imagination and Christ, and Scorsese seems to be on board, as are Terrence Mallick and Mel Gibson (groan). Features Dr Adrian Rosenfeldt , Lecturer and Head Tutor in Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University.

The Rest is History Continuing on with Titanic Ep 429 Titanic: Countdown to Disaster Part 3, Dominic and Tom look at the passengers who were in First and Second class. First class was not full- apparently Gilded Age Edwardians liked just not turning up, because they could. Even though the top First-Class cabin had been decked out specifically for J. Pierpoint Morgan, he cancelled his trip which has triggered all sorts of conspiracy theories that he was behind the sinking to get rid of his business rivals. In First Class there were many 3rd generation Jewish Americans, or as someone once waspishly commented “Steerage Twice Removed”. First Class had the first swimming pool, and it was appointed to a level commensurate with the Waldorf Astoria. There was a barrier between First Class and steerage, as shown in the Titanic movie, but this was demanded by US immigration for fear of disease. Second Class is often overlooked. It was a smaller group, comprising clergy, doctors etc. and a group of Cornish miners. It might have been Second Class on the Titanic, but on any other ship it would have been considered First Class.

Things Fell Apart Episode 6 A Hierarchy of Trauma. This podcast seems to be channelling my old-lady curmudgeonliness. Here Jon Ronson explores how ‘deplatforming’, which has been common on college campuses for some time, spread into newsrooms so that we all now need to avoid causing “emotional harm”. He looks at the identification of PTSD in the 1970s amongst Vietnam vets and the way that the language of trauma has broadened and now dominated personal interaction.

History Hit Lawrence of Arabia The older I get, the more I realize that I have snippets of random knowledge that I couldn’t put into a coherent narrative if I tried. The episode about Lawrence of Arabia is a case in point- all I know about is the film and that he died on a country lane. T. E. Lawrence was born in Wales in 1888 and his parents were not married: in fact, his mother had been a governess and his father ran away with her, and they adopted new names and identities. He studied history at Oxford, and in 1909 went on a walking tour of the Levant, looking at medieval castle- his particular interest. It was on this tour that he developed a dislike of the Ottoman Turkish authorities. In these pre-war years, the British used archaeologists as intelligence gatherers for any future British Empire activity in the area. When WWI broke out, it was not clear which side the Ottoman Empire would go on, or whether it would stay neutral, but they aligned themselves with the Germans and Austro-Hungarian Empire (how ironic). In 1916 there was an Arab uprising led by Sharif Hussein which seized Medina and Mecca, two crucially important cities in Islam. Lawrence advised the British to back the revolt and Faisal, one of Sharif’s sons, as the leader. Lawrence joined Faisal conducting raids on the Istanbul to Medina railway. He encouraged the Arabs to attack the port of Aquaba, which they took. Lawrence rode to the Suez Canal and from there to Cairo to pitch to General Allenby a plan for the Arab forces to act as a guerilla army. He received Allenby’s permission and British gold to pay them. It was only after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 that he learned of the Sykes-Picot agreement which divided the Middle East up between the British and French, with no provision made for the Arabs. He was captured briefly by the Turkish forces, who raped and abused him, but let him go free. In 1918, British attention swung towards the Western Front, but then Allenby resumed battle in the Middle East. The Ottomans were defeated, and retreated. Lawrence oversaw a slaughter of 4000 Ottoman soldiers in revenge for a massacre the Turks had conducted at Tafas. He reached Damascus, the big prize, on 1 October 1918 and established a provincial government with Faisal at its head, but then learned that it was to be under French administration. Faisal did manage to establish a brief Arab Kingdom (and even met with Zionists, which could have led to a whole other history), but it was shortlived. In 1920 France invaded Syria, and there were revolts throughout the Middle East. In the meantime, Lawrence was becoming a household name, largely through the publicity efforts of American journalist Lowell Thomas- something that appalled Lawrence. He joined the RAF for a time, but by 1935 was living incognito in Dorset, where he had his motorbike accident. He died on 19 March 1935, aged 46.