Monthly Archives: September 2024

The Rest is History Custer v Crazy Horse: The Winning of the West (Part 2) After the Civil War drew to a close, Custer was sent to Texas, which had never actually been conquered by the North and where there was fear of the Mexican War. This wasn’t what Custer wanted. He wanted either to be in New York and be a tycoon, or failing that, to go to Mexico to fight Maximilian but his next deployment was to Kansas instead with the 7th Company. There he got involved with the political campaign of the new anti-Reconstruction American president, Andrew Johnson which put him offside with other Republicans. The troops in Kansas were largely untrained, rough and very multicultural. He made an enemy of Frederick Benteen, who I gather is going to pop up in this story again. There was a looming conflict with the Cheyenne (Plains Indians) who had come down from the south and feared the coming of the railway. Custer, William Tecumseh Sherman and Scott Hancock were sent to crack down on them. There were some familiar names among the soldiers including Henry Morton Stanley (who later met Livingstone), and Wild Bill Hickock. Much violence on both sides ensued, especially committed by the Dog Soldiers, a group associated with but not part of the Cheyenne. The Cheyenne agreed to go onto reservations, but the Dog Soldiers continued fighting. Winter had come, when hostilities generally ceased, but Custer led a raid on a village at night, crushing the men and taking the women and children as hostages. The 1869 campaign finished when the Dog Soldiers were defeated. President Grant, thinking that the wars were over handed the reservations over to the missionaries, in what looks like a similar Protection policy to that tried in Australia too.

The Shadows of Utopia Cambodia After Angkor (Part 1) This episode covers the time roughly 1431 to 1800 CE. The date 1431 is perhaps not an accurate starting point, as the Angkor kingdom transformed rather than collapsed. The royal family shifted to Phnom Penh, where the confluence of the Mekong and Ton Le Sap gave access to trade, and changed the emphasis from rice-growing to trade. In around 1371 there was the rise of the Thai kingdoms (Siam), originally from China. The Thai and Kymer kingdoms blended together culturally, with movement of people, ideas and rulers – although that didn’t stop the frequent wars between them. During the 16th century Cambodians had their first contact with the outside, with the visits of Portuguese traders. In the Siamese-Cambodian war in 1591-4 the Cambodians sought help from Spanish and Portuguese mercenaries, which led to the introduction of western military techniques and technology. Longvek, which had been the capital of the Kingdom of Cambodia from 1529 to 1594 was overrun and 90,000 Kymer soldiers were captured. Meanwhile, to the east Vietnam was becoming more powerful from the middle 1600s, after shaking off the power of China. The Vietnamese kingdom started moving south, defeating the Islamic Champa in 1471, a conflict that sputtered on for decades, leading to the eventual flight of the Cham to Cambodia in 1692. The Vietnamese expanded into Cambodia, taking over the Mekong Delta which cut off sea access. Cambodia was caught between two powerful competing powers: Siam and Vietnam. The status of the Royal Family had declined, the provinces remained barter economies, with subsistence farming and no road network. There was growing resentment towards Vietnam, encapsulated by the rather lurid and gory folk tale ‘The Master’s Tea’ where 3 Cambodian men are buried, with only their heads showing above the dirt, and the Vietnamese lights a kettle on the tripod of their heads and forbids them to move lest they spill the master’s tea. By 1810 both Siam and Vietnam were similar in size, and both saw Cambodia as a weak and dependent child.By 1840 Cambodia ceased to exist when it was administered by Vietnam.

Emperors of Rome Episode CCXXV – The Exile of Cicero (The Catiline Conspiracy VI) Now that Catiline was dead, Cicero promoted himself as being the ‘Warrior of the Senate’ and the saviour of the Empire. But he’d made lots of enemies, and they weren’t about to forget the execution of senators that he had ordered, and so the Senate refused to allow him to make a farewell speech when his consulship came to an end. Instead of going off to be a governor somewhere, which is what usually happened after being consul, he bought a big house on the Palantine Hill- it must have been big because it had previously belonged to Crassus. He tried to get historians to write up the story of his consulship as history, but they all refused; then he tried to get it written up as an epic by poets, but they refused. In the end, he had to do it himself. Catiline might be gone, but the populares continued, and now Clodius Pulcher took up their cause. Clodius was Tribune of the Plebs, and close to Julius Caesar. In 58 BCE Cicero was summoned to face trial in the Senate and, realizing that neither Caesar nor Pompey were about to come to his aid, he fled. He wasn’t actually exiled at this point- that came later. Clodius confiscated his house, demolished it, and gave the land for a temple. In the end, the exile only lasted 15 months when a new Tribune came to power, and Pompey finally supported him. In 57BCE Cicero returned to Italy, not ever really acknowledging that the Republic would need to change.

History Extra An Audacious Escape from Slavery. This episode features Ilyon Woo, the author of Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom which tells the story of Ellen and William Craft, a married couple who escaped enslavement in 1848. They both held rather anomalous positions as slaves, as William was an independent craftsman who could earn his own money, and Ellen had good seamstress skills. Ellen disguised herself as an ill male slaveholder and her husband acted as her (his?) manservant. Even once they reached the northern states, they could still be recaptured and sent back to enslavement. After a journey of over 1000 km, they became speakers in the abolition cause, and moved to the UK where they were feted in anti-slavery circles.

The Rest is History Custer vs. Crazy Horse: Civil War (Part 1) I have never been into ‘Cowboys and Indians’. I never watched them on TV as a child, and do not remember them at the movies. And so, I didn’t know whether I really wanted to embark on this series, but I did anyway. The podcast starts in 1876 at the Battle of Little Big Horn, which was seen as the last moment of the old world of the American South. News of the battle reached the east coast on the very day of the centenary of Independence Day. Custer is often seen as a romantic figure, redolent of the Old South, but he actually fought for the Union. He was born in Ohio to a Methodist family and was politically aligned more with the Democrats than the new Republican party. He liked dressing flamboyantly, had a high sex drive, and was more into ‘japes’ than military strategy at the West Point academy where he accrued 726 demerits. When the Civil War was declared, most of his friends went off to fight in the south, but Custer stayed. He finally graduated as the most junior officer of the US army, was by 1863 was promoted to brigadier-general when he was still 23. Was he a good soldier? He certainly was willing to take a gamble, and he had the killer instinct. He married Libby Bacon, the daughter of a judge who initially refused his permission. He as appointed to serve under the modern and unheroic Ulysses Grant, Sherman and Sheridan. He was there at Appomattox, and in fact his wife had a walk-on role when she was given the surrender papers.

Guardian Long Reads My Family and Other Nazis This was actually written as an edited version of the Krzysztof Michalski Memorial Lecture, given by Martin Pollack at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in June 2024. It is beautifully read by James Faulkner. Pollack was born in 1944 into a German Austrian family, which always saw themselves as more German than Australian. His whole family was strongly anti-Slav, seeing them as a demographic threat, and strongly anti-Semitic. The author was in his late 50’s when he began researching his family history, when he discovered that he had a different father than his sisters did. His mother had embarked on an extramarital affair with his father, who had freely joined the SS Gestapo (as, indeed, all of the author’s extended family had done). After a hunting accident his father was sent to Poland, where he was involved in putting down the Warsaw uprising, then on to Slovakia. His mother’s marriage had broken up, and so his parents married. Post war, his father escaped to Europe and he planned to take Martin and his mother to Paraguay, but he was shot by the guard taking him over the mountain pass in expectations of finding the Nazi gold that ex-Nazis were suspected of hiding. His mother then remarried her first husband for a second time. This is beautifully written, with the narrative shuttling back and forth- well worth listening to.

In the Shadows of Utopia Interview 1: Tom Chandler In this episode Lachlan interviews Australian graphic designer Tom Chandler, who has been involved in the Virtual Angkor project. This fantastic website has recreated Angkor at its peak – a city thought to be the size of Los Angeles although not as dense- moving away from the temple-centric approach to depict Angkor as a living city. They have relied heavily on the fragments of observation from the Chinese envoy, Zhou Daguan, who visited Angkor in 1296–97, supplementing it with sounds and movement in a type of “home movie” of the ancient city. The soundscape on the site is just so effective in bringing it to life. Tom Chandler is the son of Cambodia expert David Chandler, and he had no intention of following in his father’s footsteps, but after a career doing many other things, he has found himself contributing to this project. Go to the Virtual Angkor site- it’s fantastic.

The site is at https://www.virtualangkor.com/

Emperors of Rome Podcast Episode CCXXIII – The Championship of the Oppressed (The Catiline Conspiracy IV) Catiline arrived in Florence with the fasces, the symbol of authority, thus setting himself up as emperor (i.e. “I didn’t lose that election”. Sound familiar?) He was declared an enemy of the state, and Cicero was given emergency powers for a crisis and he made sure to use them. He tried to get the Gallic tribe the Allobroges to fight alongside him, but they doublecrossed him by going to Cicero and reporting Catiline’s approaches to them. Cicero gave another speech to the Senate and the people, then arrested the magistrates and co-conspirators who were still in Rome. A very rushed trial was held with the Senate, already convinced of their guilt, to decide between mercy or death. Caesar argued for life imprisonment and leniency, while Cato drew a hard line, arguing for old-fashioned Roman values. The conspirators were executed that same day. Meanwhile, Catiline up north with 3000 troops, fought with the Roman army but was slain fighting to the end. to be honest, both Cicero AND Catiline had abused their authority, and the underlying social problems were still unsolved. And to get to this point, Cicero had made enemies.

History Extra The Abbasid caliphate: everything you wanted to know The heyday of the Abbasid caliphate was between 750 and 950 AD, although they continued to play a political role until 1258 and the Mongol siege of Baghdad. (It just occurred to me that this was at the same time as the Angkor empire) At its peak their influence stretched from Tunisia, through the Khans and into Pakistan. Their capital was in Baghdad. They were not direct descendants of Muhammad, and they challenged the ruling Umayyad dynasty to take power and institute the ‘Golden Age of Islam’. The Abbasid court was very hierarchical, with palaces, uniforms and seclusion of women. The caliphate was divided into provinces with governors and troops, similar to the system used by the Roman Empire. The Byzantines, who took up the mantle of the Roman Empire were their most hostile and intellectual challenge, and after a period of consolidation in the 900s, the Abbasid caliphate began to fragment, with power flowing to Iran and Egypt. It was a multicultural society, happy to import textiles, knowledge (e.g. numbers) and science from other cultures. They were tolerant of Jews and Christians, as long as they accepted their secondary status. With the breakdown of the irrigation system, the government was unable to raise sufficient taxation, and so the 10th century elites moved to Egypt. With the Mongol capture of Baghdad in 1258, the last Abassid caliph was executed and the caliphate came to an end.

History Hour (BBC) History Hour is a compilation of segments from the shorter BBC program ‘Witness History’, featuring interviews with people who actually witnessed an event. This episode American Presidents sticks pretty much to this format, and it looks at several events, all related to American Presidents (given that this is all we can think about at the moment) . It starts with the first televised press encounter – it wasn’t actually a debate- between Eleanor Roosevelt (Democrat) and Margaret Chase Smith (Republican) on ‘Face the Nation’. It was a question and answer session until their final statements when Smith went the attack, much to Eleanor Roosevelt’s surprise and displeasure. Segment No. 2 was the Nixon/Kennedy debate which led to a long hiatus of sixteen years between debates, largely because Nixon was so pissed-off about the debate and how badly he came over in it, and it led to the creation of the Commission of Election Debates in 1987. As one of the contributors points out, social media has changed the nature of electoral debates because the political commentary now happens in real time, without waiting for the media pundits to review the debate later. Segment No. 3 was the rise of the Moral Majority led by Jerry Falwell which united Jews, Catholics and Evangelical Christians, who used direct mail to make their presence felt on American politics. Segment No. 4 was the Gore/Bush election, which took weeks to resolve with the ‘hanging chads’ and butterfly-voting systems. The seat of Florida was first called for Gore, but as time went on it became less clear and was eventually resolved by the Supreme Court suspending the vote recount (and with Trump’s stacking of the Supreme Court even further, how would that play out today?). The final segment was an interview with Pete Souza, the Chief Official White House Photographer during Barack Obama’s presidency, who was present during the briefing room meeting where politicians and generals sat around the table, watching the raid that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. I hadn’t realized that Barack Obama had attended the Press Dinner the night before, where he delivered his comedy routine. Apparently there was a gag in that about Bin Laden, and he asked to leave that one out, but no-one knew why at the time and the whole operation was a tightly held secret.

In the Shadows of Utopia Episode 2: The Early Khmer Empire Much though I am very much enjoying this podcast, I found myself rather frustrated at how long Lachlan took to get going with this story. Lots of definitions and goal-settings and objectives: just start, man! Anyway, one interesting distinction from all the defining terminology with which he starts is the observation that ‘Angkor’ can be used in much the same way as ‘Rome’ or ‘Washington’ can be used: i.e. as a geographical city location; as an empire; as an intellectual milieu. Kymer is a word for the dominant people in the space between India and China. He talks about the two periods which preceded Angkor and uses the analogy of Windows operating systems to describe the similarities and differences between these Kingdoms. The Funan period from about 100BCE to 600 CE was more a loose assembly of kingdoms. The Chenla Era operated between about 600 and 800 CE, and we don’t know much about that one either. Located between India and China, there were strong cultural influences from both sides, but with the emergence of hereditary Kings, there was a stronger leaning towards Hinduism (i.e. India). Temples became part of the economy and part of kingly power. In around 800CE we had the first God King Jayavarman who relied on the support of smaller kingdoms to gain political and cultural independence from Javanese domination. The rise of the ‘Devaraja cult’ saw him worshiped as a manifestation of Vishnu. He established the capital at Angkor and built temples and lakes, and mastered the water system of the East Baray river to establish canals and reservoirs. There’s an adage that it goes ‘water, land, rice and power’, and it played out here: mastery of waters through reservoirs and canals meant that they could double or triple the amount of rice grown (something that Pol Pot would later aspire to), which freed up labour for building and the army. This made Angkor the largest pre-industrial city in the world, with the West Baray still the largest hand-dug reservoir.

Episode 3: The Kymer Empire Part II brings us to King Suryavarman II in 1113, who constructed the temple at Angkor Wat in homage to Vishnu. The sandstone to construct the temple was floated from 40 kms away, in a quarry which was itself a sacred place. Present-day Angkor Wat consists of these stone structures, but the city that surrounded it has been lost until LIDAR technology has made it possible to trace its outlines. Over the next 100 years, they were attacked by the Champa from the Vietnam region, who even controlled Angkor for a while. It was Jayavarman VII who defeated the Champa and brought the Kymer empire to its zenith. He embarked on a thirty-year building program, and built more than the rest of the previous Kymer kings combined. A practising Buddhist, he saw himself as someone who deferred enlightenment in order to help others. He built hospitals and rest-stops, but it cannot be denied that the pace of the building he ordered was brutal. The decline of the empire is dated to the 13th century, but this is a rather slippery number. It was still impressive when it was described in writing by Chinese diplomat Zhou Daguan at a time when supposedly the decline had begun. Zhou’s remnant writings (about 1/3 of the original) are now published as ‘The Customs of Cambodia’. His work has made it possible for us to see some of the lives and culture of the time. Zhou mentions in his book the ongoing wars, and by 1431 it was considered that the golden era of the Kymer Empire was at an end. Why? First, the rise of stronger empires from Thailand; second, the spread of the more severe form of Theravada Buddhism which changed the relationship between the people and their king. Finally, there was environmental change when the monsoons stopped, then returned with a vengeance. However, although 1431 is seen as the end of the empire, people continued to live at Angkor.

History Hit The Real Moriarty Conan Doyle’s Moriarty character was inspired by German-born Adam Worth (1844-1902) who emigrated to America as a child and first popped up during the Civil War. He faked his own death at the Battle of Bull Run and drifted to the New York underworld. Small and intelligent, he soon graduated to bigger crime and moved from country to country. He set up a bar in Paris, with gambling upstairs, and in 1890 moved to London where he was known as “Henry J. Raymond”. In a situation reminiscent of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he was accompanied by Piano Charlie (Charles Bullard) and Kitty Flynn, and both men seem to have been her lovers at times. In London, he was responsible for the theft of the Gainsborough painting of the Duchess of Devonshire, which he ended up returning. The Pinkerton Detective Agency was on his trail, and he had an odd relationship with them- they organized the return of the Gainsborough and his son ended up working for them. What an odd story.

History Extra The Far Right: History Behind the Headlines. This ‘History behind the Headlines’ feature in History Extra gets two historians to talk about current events. In this case, the discussion was held after the UK race riots following the stabbing of the young girls at a dance class. Rather oddly, they had medieval historian Hannah Skoda on the show, along with a historian of fascism Nigel Copsey. Skoda, of course, could only really draw on the Peasants Revolts from her expertise in medieval history, but she drew out examples where mobs forced people to say ‘bread and cheese’ to unveil whether they were Flemish through their accents (and then they bashed them), or when the Peasants described themselves as the ‘true commons’ as distinct from the ‘beasts’. Violence was seen as a political tool, and part of the political process during the Middle ages. As a historian of fascism, Copsey had more to draw on of course. He notes that the early 20th century people were happy to describe themselves as ‘fascists’, but now they use the term ‘nationalists’ instead. He notes that the term “far right” was stigmatized by its association with Nazism and skinheads, so now they distinguish themselves between the ‘radical right’ and the ‘extreme right’ in a mixture of ethnic and cultural nationalism. He points out that Oswald Moseley originally came from the Labor Party and embraced a form of radical Keynesianism. In a slightly hopeful ending, Skoda points out that the Peasants Riots provoked a backlash of mutual support for the groups that had been targetted- I wonder if that is true of today too. Will there be a wave of kindness and solidarity?