In the Shadows of Utopia I was in Cambodia for most of this time, so I immersed myself in Lachlan Peters’ In the Shadows of Utopia podcasts. I didn’t really listen to much else. These episodes are LONG (over two hours) and very detailed. Episode 7 The French Protectorate ( I really wish he’d keep his naming conventions regular: it’s also called Khmer Nationalist and French Rule) deals with the years 1880 – 1938. At first, the French treated Indo-China in a fairly hands-off way but in 1885 the French Government insisted on a new treaty which abolished slavery and tried to disrupt the patronage networks that governed Khmer society. However, after rebellions, these reforms were not carried out, although French interests became uppermost. World War I had little effect in Cambodia, especially compared with Vietnam and the rural ‘old people’ lifestyle remained largely unchanged. In fact, when May Ebihara undertook her ethnographic study of a Khmer village in 1959-1960, published as Svay: A Khmer Village in Cambodia, her research was the first and only study of traditional Khmer life. The nuclear family was the basic unit, there was little mobility and a distrust of strangers. From the 1930s on, Phnom Penh began growing and we had the stirrings of an urban nationalism, spurred by the Buddhist Institute, the introduction of secondary education and the first newspapers.
Episode 8: An Introduction to Communism Part I goes right back to Marx and Engels, starting with Engels and his investigation into the condition of the working class (even though his family were capitalists). Engels and Marx saw all history and activity about the economic struggle, and capitalism would be the second last stage before the final, inevitable clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. At first there was great excitement over the 1848 revolutions that gripped Europe, but they were not led by the working-class, but by liberals and nationalists. Marx blamed the petit-bourgeoisie, and he had to wait until the 1871 Paris Commune as perhaps a better, if short-lived, example of Revolution. Meanwhile, we had the rise of a united Germany as a sign of things to come, but in the end it was backward Russia where first revolution took place. If you’re a bit foggy about Marx and Engels, this is a good place to start.
Background Briefing . Kidnapping the Gods Part II. This is the second and final part of this Background Briefing episode. This episode takes us to the involvement of several ‘art collectors’ including Douglas Snelling, who became an unofficial Australian consul to Cambodia and managed to ‘collect’ many artefacts that he sold in New York. Then we have Alex Biancardi in NSW, whose Egyptian father was also a collector. The Art Gallery of NSW offered to store his huge collection at no cost (probably with the expectation that they might access some of it). He may have been in contact with the notorious ‘collector’ Douglas Latchford. The episode shows the messy links between looters, ‘collectors’ and galleries and museums.
The Rest is History Custer vs Crazy Horse: Horse-Lords of the Plain (Episode 3) The lifestyle of the Native American had changed immeasurably. In 1492, when Columbus arrived, it was thought that there were 3-4 million (and maybe as many as 8-9 million) Native Americans. By 1796 this number had halved. No tribes were on their ancestral lands: they had all been shifted around. In effect, it was a clash between emigrants. The Lakota had been shifted to the plains from their ancestral lands and were a warlike people. There are no photos of Crazy Horse (which was the name he took from his father). He was a medicine man i.e. he had a spirit animal, and had visions. He was a careful fighter- unlike Custer.
The Rest is Politics (US edition) with Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci is one of my regular listens, but I don’t record it because it’s usually too topical, and their commentary will be overtaken by other things. But they have recently had a four part series (only three have been released so far). on How Trump Won the White House. It starts with him winning the Republican nomination after years of bragging about (threatening) to run for President, when no-one took him seriously. The second episode (Did Obama create Trump?) looks at Obama’s ridiculing of Trump at the Press dinner, and speculate about whether this goaded him into finally running for president. The third episode (Collusion Collapse and Chaos) traces through the crazy 2016 election campaign, and the way that the momentum shifted between the Access Hollywood tapes and the accusations of Russian collusion that threatened Trump’s campaign to the ‘basket of deplorables’ and FBI Clinton emails that brought Hilary’s campaign undone. I guess I’m waiting for the last episode.
Emperors of Rome Episode CCXXVI – The Reputation of Catiline (The Catiline Conspiracy VII) At first, Catiline was seen as a by-word for ‘conspiracy’ but over time writers have softened their view of him, often reflecting the political events of the time. In Medieval times, he was re-cast as a Robin Hood type figure, and the Renaissance had a more sympathetic view of him. He was picked up in French Literature, with Voltaire and Alexandre Dumas wrote plays about him, as did Ibsen. The recent, widely panned film Megalopolis uses the names of the protagonists of the Catiline Conspiracy in a film set in an imagined modern United States. I haven’t seen it
Conversations (ABC) My brother’s death- writing the story of a family’s grief and loss. At the Ivanhoe Reading Circle, we always start our meetings with people talking about books they have read recently. A couple of people mentioned Gideon Haigh’s new book My Brother Jaz, a small volume that was written in a frenzy of writing after years of avoiding writing about the death of his brother. The book is less than one hundred pages, and the people reporting on it said that you could get as much from listening to this ‘Conversations’ interview as you would from reading the book. It was very good, although a little distant and rehearsed, which is understandable having written about it.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 