The Resident Judge of Port Phillip

Dan Snow’s History Hit In The Opium Wars Episode 2 Dr Jeremiah Jenne, a professor of Late Imperial and Modern China, and Dan follow up on the other opium wars that followed the Treaty of Nanking. In 1856 the Chinese seized ‘The Arrow’, a ship under a British flag (although this is disputed) which led on to the Second Opium War. This time the French joined in, and once again the British won, leading to the Treaty of Aigun which forced China to legalize opium and open up to missionaries and foreign traders. This was at an anxious time for Britain: the Indian mutiny was under way, America was heading towards Civil War and Russia was circling. The emperor refused to sign the treaty, so in 1860 the British and French returned, this time looting the Imperial Summer Palace and punishing the emperor. This was in effect the end of the 19th century opium trade, which was finally ended in 1907. The wars might have been over, but they formed the bedrock of Communist Party historical narrative right up to today, pointing to a century of humiliation which only now has been overcome.

The Rest is History Luther: The World Torn Apart (Part V) Luther had lit the fire, and now it was out of control. The Peasant Wars took on Luther’s strategy of appealing to the Bible, and more zealous preachers than Luther banned music, the mass, etc. The one man who could have quashed it all, Charles V, was distracted by political events elsewhere, as the culture wars turned into massacres. Luther, leaving behind his monk’s vows, married a former nun and tried to distance himself from the violence. He owed everything to the Elector of Saxony, and he could not be part of this bloodshed, even if he had wanted to. The Reformation that he had invoked spawned atheism, secularism and individualism. What if he had never lived: would there still have been a Reformation? Tom thinks that, in this case, Luther himself did make a difference.

You’re Dead to Me (BBC) Emma of Normanby. Never heard of her, but she was actually the wife of two kings (Aethelred and Cnut – better known as Aethelred the Unready and King Canute) and mother to two more, Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor. She was of Scandinavian origin, and on her second marriage to Cnut she had to negotiate a lot of jostling for the crown between half-brothers. In the end, she got two of her sons to share the throne, although she always claimed that she was ruling too. An encomium written to bolster her position likened her to Augustus, and drew on Roman and Greek history to legitimize her influence. In the end, her son Edward the Confessor turned against her, accused her of treason and stripped her of her land, although he later relented and gave it back again. But from here on, she was sidelined by her son. Features Professor Elizabeth Tyler and comedian Jen Brister (haven’t heard of either of them)

Dan Snow’s History Hit The Early Years of the British Empire Being brought up Australian, I tend to think of the British Empire as all that red on the maps of the world. But in its earliest days of empire, Britain (or rather, England) lagged behind the Spanish and Portuguese first of all, then the Dutch, then finally Britain at the rear. The episode features David Veevers, the author of The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire. At first, the British empire was the province of privateers, although there were connections with the crown as well. He emphasizes the fightback of the indigenous people, who kept the early colonists clinging to the coastline, unable to penetrate further and he reminds us that the East India Company was actually defeated. By the end of the 18th century, Britain had become better armed and was a stronger entity after the Act of Union. The accumulation of land was slow at first, but then continued apace.

The Rest is History: Luther: The Battle against Satan (Part 3) After questioning the idea that Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the cathedral, Tom and Dominic take up the story three years later, when he burns the Papal Bull in Wittenburg, precipitating a crisis. The Roman Church was asserting its authority, and Luther was defying the fundamental teaching of the church i.e. that sinners can pay for release from Purgatory. Moreover, the Ottomans were threatening Vienna at the same time. Printing had been around for 100 years, but Luther was a master of self-promotion and good at public events like book burning etc, which took place in the midst of parades of student floats and a carnivalesque atmosphere. The 95 theses were printed in German and Latin. The Holy Roman Empire was weak, with the aging Holy Roman Emperor expected to die soon, and the position of Luther’s protector Frederick of Saxony was very powerful because he would be electing the successor. Luther denied reason, philosophy and canon law- all the intellectual areas that the Church had branched into- and insisted that we go back to the Bible. Luther himself (did you know that his real name was Luder?) had his own ‘born again’ moment, and with all the bombast of the born-again, declared that others were not Christians because they had not done the personal work of believing. In October 1518 Luther was summoned to meet the Inquisitor Cardinal Thomas Cajetan in Augsberg. Ever the publicity hound, Luther walked there drawing crowds as he went. He and Cajetan had three meetings, but in the end Luther was released from his vows. Then followed a saturation-bombing of pamphlets written by Luther and on 3 January 1521 Luther was excommunicated by the new Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

Mary Beard’s Being Roman (BBC) Episode 7: The Whistleblower takes us to Britain in 61CE and the repression of Boudicca’s revolt. Procurator (i.e. finance officer) Gaius Julius Classicianus is appalled by the harsh repression meted out by the local Governor. So he dobs on him, and advises the rebels to wait until a new Governor is sent out, and they might get bigger terms. Classicianus has a huge tomb in the British Museum

All in the Mind (ABC) How to Help a Conspiracy Theorist: An Ex-Believer and an Expert Weigh In. This episode has three participants: Jane, a mother who has lost her son to conspiracy theories; Professor Karen Douglas, a researcher who studies them; and Brent Lee from the Some Dare Call It Conspiracy podcast. Jane is walking on eggshells with her son, and Professor Douglas had some suggestions about meeting him on neutral ground and curtailing the conversation. Brent Lee was the most interesting, especially when he described how his beliefs were shaken. He had believed Pizzagate etc. as being a satanic child sacrifice conspiracy, but when Sandy Hook happened, he just couldn’t believe that the parents were crisis actors, and it didn’t fit in with his child sacrifice scenario. He described his conspiracy beliefs as being like Jenga blocks, where you could reject one or two elements, but eventually the whole thing came tumbling down. All three spoke about the importance of maintaining contact, no matter how difficult it is.

Some Dare Call It Conspiracy. After hearing All in the Mind, I hopped across here. As a historian myself, I was attracted to History is Written by the Whiners: Neil Oliver Dismantled What? Handsome young Scots historian Neil Oliver, striding across the heather, the wind in his hair. Oh dear. He seems to have gone “off”. I’m not even game to watch any of his YouTube videos lest the Algorithm Gods decide that I’m actually interested in what he’s saying. That said, I wasn’t particularly enamoured of the snide comments by the presenters of this podcast, Brent Lee and Neil Sanders. The name-calling and snarkiness seemed unnecessary.

New York Times Podcast I listened to this so long ago that it is now completely overtaken by events! Inside Trump’s Search for a Running Mate Trump takes up so much oxygen that we haven’t really heard about who is going to have as Vice President. Michael Bender, a political correspondent for The Times, explains that this time round, Trump demands absolute loyalty (which he feels he didn’t get from Mike Pence), doesn’t want anyone who is going to cause him any problems, and definitely doesn’t want anyone who is going to overshadow him. As far as Bender is concerned, the front runners are: 1. J. D. Vance (author of Hillbilly Elegy), who criticized Trump in 2016 but was his supporter by 2020 when he became a Senator. He’s a good media performer, but there’s a risk that he will be too good and overshadow Trump. 2. Marco Rubio. Even though Rubio was very critical of him during his first term, he has since become an important behind-the-scenes worker and a good attack dog. 3. Doug Burgum from North Dakota, another rich white man, who made his money through Microsoft. He’s in his mid-60s and a rather mediocre media performer, and very anti-abortion and conservative. Wait and I see, I guess.

History Extra: Breastfeeding in the Middle Ages features historian Hannah Skoda. She points out that in the Middle Ages, breastfeeding was more about loving relationships within the wider family, rather than between mother and child. Colostrum was seen as poisonous, and breast feeding only began three days after birth and tended to last for two years. It was done casually, and there was no routine. If milk was insufficient, there was pap (a mixture of grain and water), a wet nurse or milk sharing between close acquaintances. Wet nurses were often slave women – remember that there was slavery in Europe. Florence stands out as an example where at the Foundling Hospital, women fed the abandoned children – although there is some evidence that they were actually the mothers themselves who couldn’t afford to keep their children (a practice that the hospital frowned upon). It was believed that breast-feeding worked as a contraceptive, which was a problem for wealthy women and especially their husbands, who relied on her reproductive fecundity.

In Our Time (BBC) Julian the Apostate ruled between 361-363 (so only a short reign) after being proclaimed Caesar by his troops in Gaul. He was born in Constantinople and raised as a Christian after his uncle Constantine had converted to Christianity and introduced a policy of toleration of Christianity across the empire. Julian himself was attracted to Platonic philosophy and neo-Platinism which combined religious, philosophical and mythological strands and a leaning towards Greco-Roman polytheism. He was a bit of philosopher king himself, writing satires about the other Caesars, and writing a lot about himself. To bolster his legitimacy (he did, after all, challenge his cousin for the position of Emperor), he launched a series of battles in Persia, which backfired. His big mistake was not to have a succession plan when he died in battle. The three historians James Corke-Webster from Kings College London, Lea Niccolai from Cambridge and Shaun Tougher from Cardiff University note that, ironically, he united the squabbling Christians in opposition to him. It wasn’t so much that he persecuted Christians, as that he revoked the privileges that Constantine had given them. Paganism had continued throughout Constantine’s reign too, so it’s not black-and-white. Very much ripe for what-if history. (I’d forgotten that Julian was a theme in Julian Barnes’ Elizabeth Finch– my review here).

Three Million (BBC) The final episode 5.Ghosts looks at the legacy of the Bengal famine which, compared with the D-Day Landing celebrations, is decidedly low-key. Retired teacher Sailen Sarkar has been travelling throughout Bengal, interviewing the now very-old survivors, who mainly wondered why they hadn’t been asked about it before. As one of the historians who contributed to this series points out, what with the loss of Indian lives fighting for the Commonwealth, Partition and natural disasters, there was a series of mass death events in India. It was the Black Lives Matter protests in England that prompted a re-evaluation of colonial administration on the part of the British Empire, and there is now mention of the famine in a military museum in London. Doesn’t seem quite enough somehow.

Emperors of Rome Caillan Davenport features in this episode on CXI The Equestrian Order. The equites belonged to a class of Roman citizen dating back to the kingdom of Rome. The numbers of Senators was capped, so the equestrian order kept expanding. It was a conditional status- every five years at the census you had to prove that you still met the property requirement, and you could be removed for lapses in civic and moral virtue. The Equestrians portrayed themselves as being less corrupt than the Senators. The reign of Augustus was a turning point, when he gave the Equestrians a role in the civic celebrations. The number of Equestrians expanded from 5,000 to 20,000 under Augustus, and gradually a career structure emerged. Equestrians were permitted to wear a special ring, a tunic with a narrow stripe and could sit in the first 14 rows of the theatre. There was no specified meeting place for the Equestrians (unlike the Senators, who had the Senate) and so they expressed their feelings at the theatre. By the late 3rd century the role of Emperor had become open to those who were promoted through the army, and then under Constantius the number of senators was increased, thus decreasing the status of the Equestrians.

History Extra Death By Nostalgia: The curious history of a dangerous emotion This episode features Agnes Arnold-Forster, the author of Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion. She defines nostalgia as a bitter/sweet, wistful feeling about the past. At the end of the 17th century it was seen as a medical disease, related to place, and a form of pathological homesickness. People could die of nostalgia as they starved themselves to death, and mercenary soldiers, university students and domestic servants were particularly prone to it. In the early twentieth century psychoanalysts became interested, and it shifted from a medical to a psychological problem. Nostalgia is often characterized as being working-class, backward looking (e.g. Brexit, Trump) but the Left can be nostalgic too, especially the Soviet bloc countries and people who yearn after the NHS. However, now nostalgia can be seen as a form of therapy, to make people feel better.