Historically Thinking

In 1776 a massive British fleet of more than 400 ships carrying tens of thousands of soldiers arrived outside New York Harbor. Many of these soldiers were German, hired from their princes by the British government. Americans then and now have called them Hessians. For the next seven years, these German soldiers marched, fought, and suffered seemingly everywhere in eastern North America, from the walls of Quebec City to the sandy beaches of Pensacola Bay. When the British army left, many Germans were left behind–both the living, deserters who had found new lives or others who settled with Loyalists in Canada, and the dead. Just this summer, on the battlefield of Fort Mercer, across from Philadelphia, an archaeological dig discovered a grave with the remains of thirteen German soldiers–and that just a fraction of the Germans who died in that place on October 22nd, 1777.  With me to describe the Hessians and their American odyssey is Friederike Baer, Associate Professor of History  at Pennsylvania State University, Abington College, and author of the new book Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War.      For Further Investigation Friederike writes, "for those interested in researching their Hessian ancestors, try this database of records at Hessian State Archives, Marburg, Germany and the Johannes Schwalm Historical Association (which also publishes an annual journal) A digitized collection of maps related to the Revolutionary war in the Hessian State Archives Marburg, Germany (collections 28 and 29)  "A classic to read is" Edward J. Lowell, The Hessians and the other Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. Port Washington, 1965; orig. publ. 1884. "A study with focus on troops from Hessen-Kassel is" Rodney Atwood, The Hessians: Mercenaries from Hessen-Kassel in the American Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980. "On German prisoners of war see" Daniel Krebs, A Generous and Merciful Enemy: Life for German Prisoners of War during the American Revolution. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013 and Kenneth Miller, Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives and Revolutionary Communities during the War for Independence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. "Stephen Conway has published extensively about Britain’s use of foreign troops more broadly." Read Stephen Conway. Britannia’s Auxiliaries: Continental Europeans and the British Empire, 1740-1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. See also Mark Wishon, German Forces in the British Army: Interactions and Perceptions, 1742-1815. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. And here's a list of particularly informative published primary records:  Marvin L. Brown and Marta Huth. Baroness von Riedesel and the American Revolution: Journal and Correspondence of a Tour of Duty, 1776-1783. University of North Carolina Press, 1965. Helga Doblin, ed. An Eyewitness Account of the American Revolution and New England Life: The Journal of J.F. Wasmus, German Company Surgeon, 1776-1783. New York: Greenwood, 1990.  Helga Doblin and Mary C. Lynn, eds. The American Revolution, Garrison Life in French Canada and New York: Journal of an Officer in the Prinz Friedrich Regiment, 1776-1783. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993. Helga Doblin and Mary C. Lynn, eds. The Specht Journal: A Military Journal of the Burgoyne Campaign. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. Charlotte S. J. Epping, ed. Journal of Du Roi the Elder, Lieutenant and Adjutant, in the Service of the Duke of Brunswick, 1776-1778. Americana Germanica 15. [Philadelphia]: University of Pennsylvania, 1911. Bernhard A. Uhlendorf, ed. Revolution in America: Confidential Letters and Journals 1776 -1784 of Adjutant General Major Baurmeister of the Hessian Forces. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1957.

The history of the ancient Near East can seem like staring down a deep, deep well of time, so deep that it gives one vertigo. It stretches back to 3,500 BC: that is, I’ll do the math for you, 5,522 years ago. In thinking about its 3,000 years of history, one begins to think not in terms of years, but in decades and centuries. Yet there were continuities amidst change, not simply within those three-plus millennia, but between then and now. For surely it would be impossible to imagine what 2022 would be like without writing, families, getting right with higher powers, kings and rulers, laws and litigation, cities and watering the garden. And all of those things can be found in the Ancient Near East With me to give a I hour overview of 3,500 years is Amanda H. Podany. She is Professor Emeritus of History at California State Polytechnic University, and author most recently of Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East. By the way, if you were listening to the conversation, you'll recognize our featured image: it's Amanda's drawing of the clay impressions of the feet one of the children sold into slavery, found in the Museum of Aleppo–which has by now experienced its own much more contemporary tragedies. For Further Investigation Amanda writes: "since we talked about brick-makers, an interesting image is of a clay brick with a cuneiform inscription. And this impression of a cylinder seal shows weaving women working at a loom..." "There are just so many books and articles and websites that might be interesting for listeners. Here's a list I wrote recently for Shepherd.com" "Another option is this website created by the British Museum about ancient Mesopotamia, though apparently it will only be available until December, after which it will be retired." Three previous podcasts have gone back to about 1000 BC, which now seems a trivial, juvenile sort of date. They were with Dimitri Nakassis, who discussed Mycenaean Greece and his excavations of the site at Pylos in Episode 33; Eric Cline on the First Dark Ages in Episode 62 (though admittedly he argued that the term "dark ages" was a base slander); and Joe Manning laid out his arguments about the ancient Mediterranean economies prior to the rise of Rome in Episode 164.

At her 80th birthday party Agatha Christie described a conversation she had once overheard about herself. She had been on a train, and there listened to two ladies talking about her, copies of her latest mystery  perched on both their knees. “I hear,” said one, “that she drinks like a fish.” Christie’s latest biographer Lucy Worsley begins her new book with that anecdote because for her it so nicely captures at least three things about the author. First, that she told the story on her 80th birthday shows her longevity. Second, that both of the ladies had a copy of her latest book—Christie was a bestselling author of truly titanic  sales records. Third, that Christie was a close observer of life around her, always ready to transmute it into art. And fourth, that in the story Agatha Christie was part of the background, so ordinary as to not excite any interest from anyone—yet, all the while, being quite extraordinary.  As she describes it, by day, Lucy Worsley is Joint Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces—and by night she enters peoples homes by means of documentary films, and best-selling books–the latest of which is titled, in the United States at least, Agatha Christie: An Elusive Women.   For Further Investigation Lucy Worsley has previously written about another great English author, Jane Austen, in her Jane Austen at Home: A Biography. She has also previously written The Art of English Murder: From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock Agatha Christie was a surfer, maybe one of the first Britons to learn to stand upright on a board. No, really, it's true. Lord Flashheart; and Archie Christie. I rest my case, m'lud. Thought Archie does need a bigger mustache, to be quite honest.

If we know Mikhail Ilarionovich Golenischev-Kutuzov, we know him as Tolstoy imagined him, as an old man, before Austerlitz, “with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over his collar if escaping… in a low chair with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms'' who begins to snore loudly and rhythmically as his generals plan the battle. Why? Because he alone understands the hand of providence, or the finger of fate; because he alone “recognizes that there are forces in the universe that are ‘stronger and more important than his own will’.” Tolstoy’s Kutuzov therefore decides not to decide; diminishes himself in order to triumph; realizes that he is an observer rather than pretending to be an actor. But who was Kutuzov really? And how can we know him? Those are the questions at the heart of Alexander Mikaberidze’s new biography Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace. It is as concerned with Russia in the late eighteenth century, and with what was subsequently made of Kutuzov’s legacy–to the very moment we record this conversation–as he is in Kutuzov’s life story. Alexander Mikaberidze is Professor of European History at the Louisiana State University at Shreveport, where he is also Ruth Herring Noel Endowed Chair for the Curatorship of the James Smith Noel Collection. This is his fourth appearance on Historically Thinking. For Further Investigation Alex Mikaberidize talked about the Napoleonic Wars as a world war in Episode 14,  and then again in Episode 155, after the publication of his book The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History (which won the 2020 Gilder-Lehrman Military History Prize) He also appeared in Episode 241: Doing the Research Brian Cox seems pretty well-cast as Kutuzov; but if you listened to the podcast closely, you'll see that the makeup people made an error

For centuries the Kingdom of England faced northeast, across the northern seas towards Scandinavia. Indeed, under King Canute, England was part of Scandinavia. But with the Norman invasion–even though the Normans were eponymously “North-men”–that changed dramatically. Within a few decades, the French and English royal trees began to intertwine, to graft branches to one another, to make love and war, sometimes at one and the same time.  Catherine Hanley's new book Two Houses, Two Kingdoms: A History of France and England, 1100-1300 with these words: This is a book about people. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the personal could influence the political to a great extent, and nowhere is this better exemplified than in the relationship between the ruling houses of France and England, whose members waged war, made peace and intermarried – sometimes almost simultaneously – in a complex web of relationships. These people, these kings and queens, siblings, children and cousins, held positions determined by birth; positions that often involved playing a role on the national and international stage from a very young age. Their life stories, their formative experiences and their interpersonal relationships shaped the context of decisions and actions that had the potential to affect the lives and livelihoods of millions.  Catherine Hanley was last on the podcast in Episode 122, discussing the Empress Matilda, the subject of her previous book Matilda: Empress, Queen, and Warrior. She was born in Australia, lives in Somerset in the west of England, and when watching cricket supports “Somerset, Australia, and Tasmania—in that order.” For Further Investigation Two books by Catherine who are set within the period she chronicles in Two Houses, Two Kingdoms, are the aforementioned Matilda: Empress, Queen, and Warrior and Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England, For just a taste of what comes after the end of Catherine's book, that whole "Hundred Years War" business, you might listen to Episode 66: A People's History of the Hundred Years War An introduction to medieval France, from the Metropolitan Museum Medieval English timeline at the British Library The Magna Carta Project, which Catherines says "has some good stuff about the early thirteenth century, King John, and Louis’s invasion" Relevant primary sources for England and for France at the invaluable Internet Sourcebook

For thousands of years humans have in war and peace attempted to poison one another—or, perhaps for variety,  burn each other to death. We might think of poison gas, biological weapons, or the use of unwitting victims to spread epidemics as being modern innovations, but such horrors have been employed since the earliest recorded history.  Moreover, for nearly that entire time humans have debated the morality of employing those weapons.  My guest Adrienne Mayor describes this history in Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Unconventional Warfare in the Ancient World, now being issued in a revised and updated edition by Princeton University Press, along with her collection of essays entitled Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws. As she does in all of her books, in both of these she travels through that complicated landscape where the borders of history, science, archaeology, anthropology, and popular knowledge all adjoin each other, and seeks there the realities and insights embedded in myth, legend, and folklore.  Adrienne Mayor’s other books include The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy, a finalist for the National Book Award. She was previously on the podcast in Episode 107 discussing her book Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology.

In 1815, John Adams wrote to a correspondent of the importance, of all things, of the Boston Committee of Correspondence in the 1760s: …I never belonged to any of these Committees and have never Seen one of their Letters Sent or received... But in my Opinion the History of the United States never can be written, till they are discovered. What an Engine! France imitated it, and produced a Revolution. England and Scotland was upon the Point of imitating it, in order to produce another Revolution and all Europe was inclined to imitate it for the Same Revolutionary Purposes. The History of the World for the last thirty Years is a Sufficient Commentary upon it. That History ought to convince all Mankind that Committees of Secret Correspondence are dangerous Machines. That they are Causticks and Inscision Knives, to which Recourse Should never be had but in the last Extremities of Life; in the last question between Life and Death. My guest Micah Alpaugh believes that John Adams was, despite his typical gift for epistolary hyperbole, absolutely and interestingly correct. And Alpaugh makes that argument in his new book Friends of Freedom: The Rise of Social Movements in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. Micah Alpaugh is Associate Professor of History at the University of Central Missouri; this is his second book. For Further Investigation The English cartoonist James Gillray, who has claim to be the first great political cartoonist, made the London Corresponding Society a frequent target of his artistic abuse. The "London Corresponding Society, Alarm'd" imagined the members of the corresponding societies as feral subhumans, alarmed at the charges made against Tom Paine for the second part of his Rights of Man. On the other hand "Copenhagen House" was an almost sympathetic depiction of a mass-meeting of corresponding societies–with plenty of dissenters and abolitionists among them. A related conversation, covering the curious connections between revolutions in Europe and the Americas, was in Episode 176: Men on Horseback, or, What Charisma Has to Do With It. And for a deep dive into the French Revolution, see the conversation with Jeremy Popkin  in Episode 144: The French Revolution; and Episode 234: The Fall of Robespierre

Well, this is something new. After 279 podcasts, someone is asking Al Zambone questions about the podcast. Carol Adrienne, recently heard talking on Episode 278 about her book Healing a Divided Nation: How the Civil War Revolutionized Western Medicine insisted that it was a really good idea that she be allowed to record a podcast about this podcast. So she did. It turns out to be a pretty good introduction to the podcast, if you're new to the podcast, as many references are made to past episodes. Even if you've listened to most of those 279 episodes, you'll still learn something as Zambone explains  the methods and perspectives that enables him to put together the podcast. For Further Investigation Here's the Edmund Morgan quote which still blurbs Charles Royster's book: "[The book] is social history, intellectual history, institutional history, political history, and not any single one of them, which is to say that it is good history." Boundary crossers Elisabeth Leake and Jamie Belich Three historians writing one big book in many volumes: Dominic Sandbrook, Tom Holland, and Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. Multi-lingual historians of the medieval and early-modern Mediterranean World: Hussein Fancy, Daniel Hershenzohn, Hannah Barker Thomas Gieryn discuss "truth spots" in Episode 106 Based on the advice of Professor Wikipedia, Zambone is forced to withdraw his remarks about Jerusalem Syndrome, despite this Culture Trip essay; or Paris Syndrome. Statistically. given the number of visitors to Jerusalem or Paris, it seems insignificant.

Stephen Berry begins his new book Count the Dead: Coroners, Quants, and the Birth of Death as We Know It with these two paragraphs:  This is a book about death and data or, more specifically, about the dead as data. The dead and the formerly living are not the same. The formerly living built the Parthenon and the Brooklyn Bridge…[they] also made brutal wars and ghastly decisions we are still struggling to live down. Revered or reviled, however, the formerly living have always counted because we still talk about them. Loved or hated, they built our world. This is a book about a group that did not count for a very long time—the actual dead—the great ghostly horde who made their mark not in their living but in their collective dying, producing patterns of mortality that proved critical to the systematization of public health, casualty reporting, and human rights… In Berry's telling, one of the greatest episodes in the history of humanity is the doubling of life expectancy between 1850 and 1950. But for him this is not a story simply of medical progress. It begins with the seemingly simple, mundane, and boring creation of death registration, beginning with the 1850 census when for the first time causes of death were recorded. This, Berry argues, was the foundation of the public health profession, and of the progress that followed. Without knowing a thing, without naming a thing, progress could not be made. Stephen Berry is a "historian of mortality", which craft he practices at the University of Georgia, where he is Gregory Professor of the Civil War Era. He has authored or edited six books, including House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, a Family Divided by War, and Weirding the War: Stories from the Civil War's Ragged Edges.

When Confederate cannons fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, the United States Army was comprised of only 16,000 soldiers. Its medical staff was numbered just 113 doctors. And here’s another fun fact: taking into account all of the doctors then practicing in the United States, possibly as few as 300 doctors in the entire United States had witnessed surgery, or seen a gunshot wound.  Over the next four years all of those numbers would dramatically increase. To meet the unprecedented casualties of the American Civil War, American medicine had to make unprecedented changes. As my guest Carole Adrienne describes in her new book Healing a Divided Nation: How the American Civil War Revolutionized Western Medicine, these changes are reflected “in every ambulance, every vaccination, every woman who holds a paying job, and in every Black university graduate.” Carole Adrienne received her B.F.A. from Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia.  She has organized an archive for Old St. Joseph’s National Shrine, twice chaired “Archives Week” in Philadelphia and has served on advisory panels for the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historic Research Center, The Mutter Museum’s “Civil War Medicine” exhibit and its “Spit Spreads Death: The 1918 Flu Epidemic” exhibit.  She is working on a documentary film series on Civil War medicine and lives in Philadelphia, PA.   For Further Investigation You might think of this conversation as a prequel to Episode 252: The Great War and Modern Medicine; the Civil War changed the culture of American medicine, and possibly accelerated the postwar changes in the field. The Great War–the First World War–changed nearly everything about medicine everywhere. For another related discussion, this time on rabies and medicine in the late 19th century United States, see Episode 133: Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers. The United States Sanitary Commission  Frederick Olmstead and the United States Sanitary Commission Clara Barton National Historic Site Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Museum A video introduction to Thomas Eakins' Portrait of Dr. Samuel Gross (The Gross Clinic) Dorothea Dix, Social Reformer, Superintendent of Nurses Cornelia Hancock