Historically Thinking

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

On March 15, 1938, Adolf Hitler addressed 250,000 Austrians in Vienna, announcing the end of the Austrian state. Close by on that same day, Nazis entered the apartment of Dr. Sigmund Freud and his family. They were literally bought off when first his wife Martha offered them cash, and then daughter Anna Freud opened a safe and gave them the equivalent of $840. At this point “the stern figure of Sigmund Freud himself suddenly appeared,” writes my guest Andrew Nagorski, “glaring at the intruders without saying anything…They addressed him as Herr Professor, and backed out of the apartment... After they left, Freud inquired how much money they had seized... He wryly remarked, 'I have never taken so much for a single visit'." It seems astonishing that the author of Civilization and Its Discontents, who seemed to have so few illusions about mankind and its “aggressive cruelty”, should have been there to witness the Anschluss. It’s even more astonishing that even after the Anschluss he continued to insist that his life was safe, and that it was possible to “ride out the storm.” But a circle of friends and disciples not only persuaded Freud to leave, but then arranged his emigration to England, where he lived he last sixteen months of his life. Andrew Nagorski was bureau chief for Newsweek in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, and Berlin. Author of seven books, his latest book is Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom, which is the subject of our conversation today.   For Further Investigation One of Nagorksi's previous books is Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power. We discussed a part of that dystopian country's terrain, and how it came into being with horrifying speed, in a conversation with Peter Fritzsche that you can find in Episode 244: Hitler's First One Hundred Days. The general recommendation for the first place to read Freud are the lectures he gave at Clark University in 1909, published as Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Given the topic of Nagorski's book, you might also want to have a look at Civilization and Its Discontents The Sigmund Freud Archives in the Library of Congress; and a brief history of the collection Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna Freud Museum, London

New college students usually get lots of advice.  “Go to office hours.” “Ask good questions.” “Declare a major as soon as you can.” “Take some time to figure out who you are.” “Get some research experience.” “Get good internships with real-life experience.” “Sit in the front row.” “Avoid procrastination.” Some of this advice is obvious, some of it is contradictory, and some of it is bad.. It almost never explains why, or even how. So the new college student is apt to ignore all of it. In their new book The Secret Syllabus: A Guide to the Unwritten Rules of College Success, Jay Phelan and Terry Burnham begin at the most foundational level, and work upwards. The result is probably the best book that you could give to a first-year college student–or a second-year college student. Or maybe even a senior who’s finally getting it together.    For Further Investigation At the end of the conversation, I said that students should be given this book before going to college, while their parents should read Chambliss and Takacs, How College Works. I stand by that recommendation, and to see why you can listen to my conversation in Episode 56, in which I talk to Dan Chambliss. There are a lot of other conversations about higher ed on the podcast, and here they all are gathered under the title "Higher Ed: A Guide for the Perplexed." Among them are some of the best conversations I've had on the podcast.

The pandemic  of 1346–the Black Death–in some areas of Europe killed as much as 50% of the population. But this first outbreak, while the worst, was not the last. For three centuries it persisted, with at least 30 further outbreaks. Such numbers indicated that the Black Death resulted in unimaginable suffering and tragedy from which no-one was untouched. But the Black Death also brought about a cultural and economic renewal. Labor scarcity encouraged the development of new or improved technologies, like wind power, water power, and gunpowder. A growth in disposable incomes led to an increase in consumption of silks, sugars, spices, furs, gold, and slaves.  It was not despite the Black Death that Europe flourished, argues my guest James Belich, but because of the Black Death.  James Belich is the Beit Professor of of Imperial and Commonwealth History at the University of Oxford, and cofounder of the Oxford Centre for Global History. His books include a two-volume history of New Zealand, but his most recent book is The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe, which is the focus of our conversation today. For Further Investigation Belich's two-volume history of New Zealand is comprised of Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century and Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders, 1880-2000 Most recently Belich wrote Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, which as he mentioned in the conversation raised many questions in his head that required him to write The World the Plague Made We've previously talked about some of the more immediate consequences of the Black Death with Mark Bailey in Episode 207: After the Black Death. Another conversation which discussed disease and history and much more besides, from a very wide perspective indeed, was with Philip Jenkins in Episode 209: Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith

In December 24, 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. They entered a country already engaged in a civil war. Figuratively, Afghans had been engaged in a war for nearly 100 years over their identity and direction. Dissension had finally led to political violence in 1978, as Afghans sought to impose upon one another their preferred model of statehood. What happened in Afghanistan, argues Elisabeth Leake, was never determined solely by the rules of the Cold War, or the desires of policymakers in Moscow and Washington. It was the crucible of regional desires, and above all the crucible of Afghan desires, plans, and dreams. “This failure of Afghan politics,” she writes, “was not preordained and was a messy, protracted affair.” Elisabeth Leake has been Associate Professor of International History at the University of Leeds, and as of August 1 is the Lee E. Dirks Chair in Diplomatic History at Tufts University. Previously the author of The Defiant Border: The Afghan-Pakistan Borderlands in the Era of Decolonization, 1936-65, her latest book is Afghan Crucible: The Soviet Invasion and the Making of Modern Afghanistan.

The Dictator and His Daughter (c. 1934) On the morning of November 10, 1918, the overnight train from Berlin arrived in Warsaw station. One of its passengers was Josef Pilsudski. For twenty-six years he had been striving for the liberation of Poland from the Russian Empire, and its re-creation as an independent state and culture. Now, at the end of that train journey, he not only found himself at long last in a free Poland but surrounded by ever-growing crowds that saw him as the leader of the new nation.  Pilsudski did become the leader and defender of that nation, and in 1922 ceded dictatorial powers to democratically elected representatives. Yet just four years later this avowed champion of democracy, pluralism, and federalism seized power in a coup, and ruled Poland as a dictator to his death in 1935. He imprisoned his enemies, suppressed the press, ignored the legislature, and turned old friends against him. ”So much did his style of rule change,” writes my guest Joshua Zimmerman, “that he is often portrayed as if he were two entirely different men…Poland’s greatest champion for freedom and independence…abandoned the principle of democracy as freedom bound by the rule of law.”  Joshua Zimmerman is is Eli and Diana Zborowski Chair in Holocaust Studies and East European Jewish History and Professor of History at Yeshiva University. Two of his previous books include The Polish Underground and the Jews: 1939-1945, and Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892-1914. Given that, it was as close to inevitable as a historian could allow that his most recent book would be Josef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland. For Further Investigation Joshua Zimmerman recommends, for further reading about Pilsudski, Waclaw Jedrzejewicz, Pilsudski. A Life for Poland (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1981) and Antony Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland (1972) You might also consult Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland. Volume II relates the story from 1795 to the present. The Jozef Pilsudski Institute of America George Washington had his seasoning; Josef Pilsudski has mustard. Earlier podcasts that recall some of the themes in this conversation are my discussion with David Bell in Episode 176 about his book Men on Horseback: Charisma and Power in the Age of Revolutions. While it ends long before Pilsudski's life, he also was a man on horseback. Also my conversation with Rick Hernandez way back in Episode 65 on the first year of the Russian Revolution.

When the Bavarian naturalist Moritz Wagner travelled in the kingdom of Georgia, in 1819, he encountered there thousands of Germans, some of them living in what he described as a “ganz deutscher Bauart”, a German-designed village. They or their parents hhd emigrated there after the Napoleonic Wars. What Wagner found in the Caucusus could also be encountered elsewhere in Russia, as well as in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, “the triangular area between Cincinannti, St. Louis, and St. Paul”, and in places considerably closer to his native Bavaria. They were communities of people who were, as my guest Glenn Penny describes them, “German and something else.” Their stories are the heart of Penny’s new book, German History Unbound: From 1750 to the Present. Glenn Penny is Professor of History and the Henry J. Bruman Endowed Chair in German History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His most recent publications include In Humboldt’s Shadow: A Tragic History of German Ethnology. He is currently working on a book entitled Belonging in the Southern German Borderlands since 1800.   For Further Investigation One interesting moment in the conversation was when it turned to imagining German history without necessarily including the Third Reich. A couple of conversations from the podcast do indeed discuss German history without the telos of Adolf Hitler. They are Episode 119: The Curious Case of the Lion's Blood, or, How Anna Zieglerin Came to Be Burned at the Stake and Episode 190: Porcelain We talked about Germans who emigrated to Russia; and some of that population who then left Russia for the Americas. Here's the Germans from Russia Heritage Society, where you can learn more about these peripatetic people. They even have a list of German villages in the Caucasus.