Historically Thinking

In April 1769 a small British vessel sailing along the southern coast of Hispaniola discovered a shipwreck near the current border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. An investigation found no survivors aboard. But they also found a log which identified that ship as the Black Prince. And there the mystery might have ended. But over the next eight years, “ship’s crew members surfaced in unexpected places and recounted its demise.” That demise is part of the story in James H. Sweet’s Mutiny on the Black Prince: Slavery, Piracy, and the Limits of Liberty in the Revolutionary Atlantic World. But so too is how the Black Prince came to be wrecked on the Hispaniolan reef; how its crew escaped; and how the owners of the ship, and the interest they represented, took their own revenge. Above all it is a story of how Atlantic slavery was linked not only to commerce, but nearly every other corner of the 18th century world. James H. Sweet is the Vilas-Jartz Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a past president of the American Historical Association. He has previously been the prize-winning author of Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770 and Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World.

Colin Elliot, a Professor of History at Indiana University and host of the Pax Romana podcast, delves into the life and influence of the often-overlooked Roman historian Cassius Dio. They explore Dio's unique role as a participant-observer in the Roman Senate, his bilingual background, and how his perspective contrasts with other historians like Tacitus. The conversation highlights the challenges of interpreting Dio's work and his lasting impact on Byzantine scholarship, revealing key insights into the complexities of ancient narratives.

Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford and author of "Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasant’s War," delves into the dramatic German Peasants' War of 1525. She highlights the uprising's massive scale, involving over 100,000 peasants and catalyzing social upheaval. The discussion covers Luther's impact on peasant freedom, the significance of communal identity expressed through attire, and the bold demands articulated in the 12 Articles. Roper also contrasts the revolutionary visions of Thomas Munzer and Martin Luther, illuminating the era's theological tensions.

Yanni Kotsonis, a Professor of History at NYU, dives deep into the Greek Revolution, a defining event that reshaped nationalism in the 19th century. He discusses how layers of imperialism and social upheaval led to Greece's independence. The complexities of nationalism are unpacked, alongside the unexpected emergence of revolutionary fervor among Greeks. Kotsonis also highlights the pivotal role of trade in forging Greek identity and reflects on the financial struggles that have persisted from the revolution to modern times.

Josiah Osgood, a classics professor at Georgetown University and author of 'Lawless Republic,' dives into the world of Marcus Tullius Cicero, exploring his rise from a lawyer to a pivotal political figure. The discussion highlights Cicero's legal prowess and the dramatic cases that shaped his career, like the notorious Sextus Roscius trial. Osgood also sheds light on the Roman judicial system's public spectacle and the challenges Cicero faced during the Catiline conspiracy, revealing how such events influenced both law and society in ancient Rome.

He was and has been criticized as a “mere burrower into archives”; as a dry man without any ideas; as a painter of miniatures rather than of broad portraits; as a conservative by liberals, and insufficiently dogmatic by conservatives; as motivated by the Lutheran religion of his forebears, but also as a scholar set against teleology and mysticism. This was Leopold von Ranke, born in 1795, dying in Berlin in 1886. Over his long life, he not only influenced the historical world by his writings, but by his students, and their students. Through his teaching and his examples, he altered not only the historical profession in Germany, but in the United States as well through the horde of Americans who passed through faculties of history whose members had been trained by Ranke, or by one of his students. He did  not invent the footnote or the insistence upon using primary sources, but arguably more than anyone else established them as part of the apparatus of history as a social science. With me to talk about Leopold von Ranke is Suzanne Marchand, Boyd Professor of European Intellectual History at Louisiana State University. This September, she was elected to the Presidency of the American Historical Association for 2026. This is her fourth appearance on Historically Thinking; she was last with us as part of our continuing series on intellectual humility and historical thinking.

Catherine Fletcher, a Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of "The Roads to Rome," dives into the captivating history of Roman roads. She uncovers how these seemingly mundane paths shaped societal views on travel and authority. Listeners are treated to her personal reflections on childhood memories interwoven with the roads, as well as the infrastructure's pivotal role in trade and pilgrimage. Fletcher also delves into the romantic perspectives of the 19th century and the legacy of Roman roads in modern ideologies, illustrating their enduring cultural significance.

“He was a bold man who first ate an oyster,” observed Jonathan Swift; and in fact the first human interaction with the Atlantic Ocean was probably eating shellfish, traces of which can be found along the Western Cape of South Africa dating back 160,000 years ago. When humans began to finally live in numbers along the ocean coast, their culture changed. They took their food from it, and from the shoreline, and their metals from the rocks and marshes along its coast. In time they built boats capable of venturing along those coasts, and then gradually farther and farther out. All of this, my guest John Haywood argues, was foundational for what was to come. He writes:  The history of the pre-Columbian Atlantic is…the where and when that Europeans served their apprenticeships in ocean navigation, commerce and colonialism, and that saw them formulate the ideologies they used to justify their territorial claims and their exploitation of colonized peoples. When Europeans finally broke out onto the world’s oceans in the sixteenth century, they already had everything they needed to secure global domination. John Haywood is a historian of the Vikings, and of the early maritime history of the North Atlantic. The author of numerous books, his latest is Ocean: A History of the Atlantic before Columbus.

“India has 2,000,000 million gods, and worships them all,” wrote Mark Twain, following his 1896 speaking tour of British India. “In religion other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.” Twain was exaggerating, but perhaps only a little. Consider that Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism all took form some 2,500 years ago in South Asia, that they and their offshoots are now practiced by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and you will see how that wealth has been spread about.  In his new book Religions of Early India: A Cultural History, Richard H. Davis explores how that wealth was accumulated, and how it began to be spent. Beginning from before the earliest written records–which are, for a Western historian, astonishingly early–he traces the story forward to thirteen hundred years before the present, in approximately 700 AD, just as the entire Afro-Eurasian world was about to be transformed by the advent of Islam.  Richard H. Davis is Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Religion at Bard College.  His primary research and teaching interests include classical and medieval Hinduism, Indian history, South Asian visual arts, and Sanskrit. He is author of, among numerous other books, The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography. Religions of Early India is his most recent, and is the subject of our conversation today.

Clare Mulley, an author known for uncovering the stories of women in World War I and II, joins to discuss Elzbieta Zawacka—a Polish mathematician turned courageous resistance fighter. They explore Elzbieta's daring life, from leading women's military training to organizing espionage networks in Nazi-occupied Poland. Her unique role as the only female parachutist during the war is highlighted, alongside the struggles she faced post-war. The conversation reveals the often-overlooked contributions of women in the fight for freedom, illuminating their heroism and resilience.