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?
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 