Historically Thinking

If the Parthian Empire is known at all, it’s by students of Roman history who see it pop up from time to time, before disappearing once again. Marcus Licinius Crassus, a member of the first triumvirate– consisting of himself, Pompey, and  Julius Caesar– died in battle against the Parthians. At the moment of his assasination, Caesar was preparing for a campaign against Parthia; and  Mark Anthony, of the second triumvirate, was defeated by the Parthians when he attempted to realize Caesar’s dream. The Emperor Trajan some 150 years later finally achieved victories against Parthia, making his way as far as the shore of the Persian Gulf. But who were the Parthians, on their own terms, not just as antagonists of the Romans? Where did they come from? How did they come to power? What was the extent of their Empire? And how were they integrated with the world around them, apart from their seemingly continual warfare with the ever-growing Roman Empire? With me to answer these questions is Nicholas Overtoom, Assistant Professor of History at Washington State University, and author of Reign of Arrows: The Rise of the Parthian Empire in the Hellenistic Middle East. For Further Investigation Think of this as the second in a series of conversations on the powers and principalities that occupied the territory of Iran. The first of these was with Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, about the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Some time in the next six months we'll get to the Sassanids, who overthrew the Parthians. For more on the importance of nomads, see my conversation with Pamela Crossley in Episode 185; her book on the importance of nomadic thought and culture for all of Eurasia is Hammer and Anvil: Nomad Rulers at the Forge of the Modern World.

I can't introduce Cathal Nolan's book Mercy: Humanity in War any better than he does himself, with these words: This is not a book about war. It is about mercy and humanity… Mercy happens in a microsecond, wrapped inside a surprise moment of mortal danger; it restrains baser instinct and reminds us about higher things. This book shows that mercy limits cruelty in ways laws and honor codes seldom do, because mercy is the highest personal and moral quality any of us achieves. It is above all other virtues, even justice and courage. It is superior to bravery, especially in a soldier. It is the greatest gift we give to those we meet in civilian life who are suffering and for whom it is in our power to aid or harm. Greater still when offered to the defenseless in war. Mercy is the grace that happens between those who have a fleeting superiority of physical power and those who cannot save or protect themselves. It is greater than a gift to the helpless and the innocent, for as Shakespeare wrote, it elevates the merciful, too. Cathal J. Nolan is Director of the International History Institute at the Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor of History at Boston University. His most recent book was The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost, which we discussed in Episode 79.

When the Massachusetts Historical Society was founded in 1791, its august members probably did not anticipate that one day its archives would contain not only family papers, but family dresses–as well as waistcoats, wigs, and at least two scarlet cloaks worn by fashionable men in the late eighteenth century. Kimberley Alexander (who is Director of Museum Studies and Lecturer at the University of New Hampshire) was last heard on the podcast talking about shoes, but more recently curated a 2018 exhibition "Fashioning the New England Family." Our conversation is about the book that eventually accompanied that exhibition, also titled Fashioning the New England Family. In it, with the help of an able supporting cast, Alexander describes the history of New England in what some New Englanders wore over three centuries, from the first English settlement, to the beginning of the twentieth century. For Further Investigation A New York Times article on cochineal Priscilla Mullins and John Alden A swatch from the dress of Priscilla Mullins Alden's dress The tracing of a quilted petticoat pattern from the Leverett family John Leverett's buff coat  Two waistcoats: one from the wardrobe of Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor William Tailer (d. 1732), and a truly incredible one worn by Andrew Oliver, Jr. (1731-1799) Henry Bromfield's wig; and a short history of the rise and fall of the wig Two crimson cloaks: one belonging to Peter Oliver (1713-1791) and another belonging to Henry Bromfield (1727-1820), described as "the last gentleman in Boston to cling to old fashioned styles of the 18th century" Abigail Adams, painted by Gilbert Stuart, an exemplar of how to modulate the latest French fashion in a way that suits you; and a more billowing style, from c. 1830

On April 11, 1865, Abraham Lincoln addressed a crowd gathered outside the White House. He spoke not of recent  victories, or those to come, but to the shape of the peace that would follow. Now that the Thirteenth Amendment had been passed by Congress, he urged that it be ratified. Moreover, it seemed to him, Lincoln said, that it was necessary for “the colored man” to have the right to vote. “I myself,” Lincoln told the crowd, “would prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.” That might now seem like a timid suggestion, but not to one man then standing  in the listening crowd. When John Wilkes Booth heard Lincoln’s words, he turned to a companion and vowed “That’s the last speech he will ever make!” It was not the fall of Richmond, the flight of the Confederate government, or the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s army that finally made Booth decide to act, but the threat of black suffrage. With me to discuss the cause of black suffrage in the weeks, months, and years following Lincoln’s death is Paul D. Escott, Reynolds Professor of History Emeritus at Wake Forest University. He is the author of numerous books, including Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives; The Worst Passions of Human Nature: White Supremacy in the Civil War North; and most recently Black Suffrage: Lincoln’s Last Goal. For Further Investigation Many previous conversations on this podcast are related to this one. For an overview of Reconstruction, see my conversation with Douglas Egerton in Episode 67; how Black Americans created American citizenship was the focus of a conversation with Christopher Bonner in Episode 167; and most recently my conversation with Clayton Butler discussed Unionism as an ideology, and in part how it explains part of the mentality of Andrew Johnson. For a different take on Lincoln than that held by Paul Escott, see my conversation with Michael Burlingame in Episode 242; Burlingame would argue that Lincoln was never interested in colonization prior to the war, and never serious about colonization during the war.

At the end of the 19th century, Amsterdam was home to nearly seventy diamond factories, in which were 7,500 steam-powered polishing mills. The workers who cut and polished the diamonds, brought there from the mines of South Africa, were not all Jewish–but many of them were. Indeed, in the late 1890s Jews were about 10% of the population of Amsterdam, and half of them were economically reliant on what the Dutch called simply “the profession”.  The Jewish community in Amsterdam were not the only Jews who worked with diamonds.  In her new book A Brilliant Commodity: Diamonds and Jews in a Modern Setting, Saskia Snyder traces the involvement of Jews not only in Amsterdam factories, but in the fields of South Africa, in London, and in the growing consumer market of the United States during the late 19th century. She also examines how the involvement of Jews with diamonds became a feature of anti-semitism.  Saskia Coenen Snyder is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, where she is also a core faculty member of the Jewish Studies Program.  For Further Investigation Numerous conversations on this podcast tie in with something mentioned in the course of this conversation. Way, way back in the beginning, when this podcast was newly hatched, is Episode 5: Diamonds are a Problem, which focused on the mining of diamonds in South Africa, and elsewhere in Southern Africa. In Episode 19, I talked with historian Vicki Howard about small local department stores in the United States, which were often founded and managed by immigrants like Jews and Italians. Some of the themes of the "democratization of luxury" were touched on along with many other things in Episode 91: Wanamaker's Temple, which was about the very, very large department store created by John Wanamaker. And most recently we talked about postcards and the importance of mail delivery with Lydia Pyne in Episode 249: Postcards from the Past.

It is perhaps the greatest scandal and sea-story of the first half of 19th Century America that nearly everyone has forgotten. It led to a court martial, endless headlines, a fistfight in a meeting of the President’s cabinet, and quite possibly to the foundation of the United States Naval Academy. And given that nearly everyone who went to see in the early American republic seemed to know one another, there was one degree of separation between this story and James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, and future Confederate naval captain Raphael Semmes. It was nothing less than an attempted mutiny aboard the USS Somers in November 1842, led by–of all the people in the United States of America—the son of the United States Secretary of War who supposedly wanted to become a pirate. With me to discuss this incredible story is James Delgado, historian and underwater archaeologist, whose new book is The Curse of the Somers: The Secret History Behind the US Navy’s Most Infamous Mutiny   For Further Investigation James Fenimore Cooper: proud of his four years a merchant sailor and then a midshipman in the United States Navy, Cooper's fourth novel was The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea, probably the first American nautical novel. Richard Henry Dana, Jr.: now curiously forgotten, Dana was a Harvard dropout who enrolled as a merchant seaman, sailed to California and back, wrote about it in a bestseller titled Two Years Before the Mast, and then went on to become a prominent lawyer. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry: young brother of naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry, "Old Bruin" became one of the most prominent officers of the US Navy between 1814 and 1861, most famously leading the expedition that forced Japan open to trade and international interaction Raphael Semmes: once commander of the USS Somers, he became an officer in the Confederate Navy, and most famously commanded the CSS Alabama Herman Melville: elements of the Somers mutiny can be found in both White Jacket and Billy Budd

In late November, 1864, David R. Snelling visited his uncle, who then lived in Baldwin County near Milledgeville, Georgia. As a boy, he had worked in his uncle’s fields alongside those his uncle enslaved. Now Snelling returned home as a Lieutenant in the Army of the United States, commanding Company I of the First Alabama Cavalry–though detached on temporary duty as commander of the headquarters escort for General William Tecumseh Sherman. The homecoming was not a happy one, at least for Snelling’s uncle. The troopers who accompanied Snelling took what provisions they could find, and then at Snelling’s direction burned down the family’s cotton gin. Snelling and the First Alabama were some of the very small percentage of Unionists who persisted in the Deep South following secession. Yet Clayton Butler argues that their importance in the minds of both the Union and the Confederacy “helps to shed light on some of the most crucial issues of the entire era.”  He examines these Unionists, and those illuminated issues, in his new book True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South During the Civil War and Reconstruction.  For Further Investigation The Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, in Greeneville, Tennessee An informative website constructed by historical reenactors who interpret the First Alabama Cavalry (USV) The image is of a Union scout in Louisiana, during the Red River campaign of 1864. For more,  ""Union Scouts in Louisiana," artist's impression, Harper's Weekly, May 1864, detail," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College For an introduction to Reconstruction, see the conversation in Episode 67 with Douglas Egerton. For a view of the Civil War that dovetails nicely with this conversation, see Episode 132, a conversation with historian Elizabeth Varon.

My guest today is Dr. Ben Jones, Director of the South Dakota State Historical Society and the South Dakota State Historian.  Ben Jones served for 23 years in the United States Air Force, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. During his service he taught  at the Air Force Academy. Subsequently he was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at South Dakota State University from 2013 to 2019, and  Secretary of Education of South Dakota from January 2019 to December 2020. He is now the 9th director in the 120-year history of the South Dakota State Historical Society.  In 2016, he published Eisenhower's Guerrillas: The Jedburghs, the Maquis, and the Liberation of France. Currently he  is working on a history of South Dakota and hosts a bi-monthly podcast, History 605. For Further Investigation Take a look at the Cultural Heritage Center of the South Dakota State Historical Society Jon Lauck was mentioned; we talked way, way, way back in Episode 13 about the history of the Midwest. It's not South Dakota related, but for an interesting insight into Native American history, see Episode 58: What Black Hawk Wore "All Guns Fired At One Time": Native Voices of Wounded Knee, one of the excellent productions of the publishing arm of the South Dakota State Historical Society

For over a generation the history of the American West has been described by scholars as one of violence, including genocide, ethnic-cleansing, and settler colonialism. While it replaced an older history which spoke of “winning the West” and the triumph of civilization, curiously enough both the old and the now aging histories of the west focused on violence. After all, in the popular imagination, every Western town hosted a gunfight in its one street on a nearly daily basis. But what if amidst the violence there were also moments of concord and overcoming difference? What if these moments of concord played out in more or less the same place and time as moments of violence? This is the argument of Stephen Aron in his new book Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West, which investigates moments where unexpectedly peaceful relationships were built in the American West. Stephen Aron is Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA, and President of the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. (The painting by Thomas Cole, done in 1826, is titled "Daniel Boone Sitting at the Door of His Cabin on the Great Osage Lake") For Further Investigation It was mentioned in the conversation, so here is Episode 149: Edges are Interesting, or, A History of Eastern Europe Two other podcasts very much connected to our brief discussion of Dodge City is Episode 101: Yippie-Ki-Yi-Yay and Episode 131: Red Meat Republic, or, the American Beef Economy of the Late 19th Century The book that began the new history of the American west was Patricia Limerick's The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West Also mentioned in the podcast was John Mack Farragher, who has written several books on these themes including a biography of Daniel Boone;  Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Lost Angeles; and most recently California: An American History

In 1780, captured American naval officer Joshua Barney escaped from prison in Plymouth, made his way to London, and with the help of some English sympathizers to the American Revolution was able to take the ferry to Ostend, the principal port of the Austrian Netherlands. During his journey he struck up an acquaintance with an Italian noblewoman after curing her seasickness. Grateful, she insisted that he accompany her by carriage to Brussels, where in a “certain hotel” a porter ushered the two of them into the presence of the Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II of Austria. As Barney remembered it decades later using the third person, he was surrounded by “big whiskered Germans and spruce Italians who eyed him with a stare of surprise equal to his own.” Barney’s was far from the only interaction between American rebels, and the Austro-Hungarian empire, its rulers, or its inhabitants. Take, for example, the proud parents who in 1778 at the baptismal font of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the heart of Vienna had their infant son christened Benjamin Silas Arthur Schuster, his first three names those of the three American commissioners then in Paris–Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee.  This is one of numerous anecdotes and instances that Jonathan Singerton deploys in his new book The American Revolution and the Hapsburg Monarchy, to support the somewhat surprising argument that “the American Revolution had a deep-rooted impact in the Habsburg lands which ultimately lasted through to the nineteenth century.” Jonathan Singerton is currently a lecturer and research associate at the University of Innsbruck; this is his first book. For Further Investigation For previous conversations related to this topic, you might consider Episode 149: Edges are Interesting, or, a History of Eastern Europe (in which I propose the radical and unprovable hypothesis that the Habsburg Empire was doomed because Joseph II hated his Latin tutor); and my conversation with Glenda Sluga in Episode 257 on the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Jonathan Singerton recommends the website Die Welt der Hapsburger (in English, if necessary) when you want "to get into the Habsburg's more" Jonathan says that, for more reading, Pieter M. Judson's The Habsburg Empire: A New History "is essential, as is" Martyn Rady's The Habsburgs: To Rule the World (as it's titled by in the States)