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.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 