Historically Thinking

On June 18, 1775, 245 years ago tomorrow, Abigail Adams took up her pen to write to her husband John, far away in Philadelphia at the Second Continental Congress: The Day; perhaps the decisive Day is come on which the fate of America depends. My bursting Heart must find vent at my pen. I have just heard that our dear Friend Dr. Warren is no more but fell gloriously fighting for his Country—saying better to die honourably in the field than ignominiously hang upon the Gallows. Great is our Loss. He has distinguished himself in every engagement, by his courage and fortitude, by animating the Soldiers and leading them on by his own example. A particular account of these dreadful, but I hope Glorious Days will be transmitted you, no doubt in the exactest manner. Joseph Warren was the family physician of the Adams Family, but he was much more . He was arguably the most important man in the Massachusetts rebellion, more so than John Adams, orr even John’s cousin Samuel Adams, or John Hancock. At the moment of his death Joseph Warren was indeed in many ways the most prominent of all the American rebels against the British crown. With me on the 245th anniversary of Joseph Warren’s death to discuss that death but also his life and afterlife of Joseph Warren is Christian DiSpigna, author of Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero. For Further Investigation Christian di Spigna's website "John Trumbull and Historical Fiction"–a splendid lecture, one of a series given at the Yale University Art Gallery in 2013 by John Walsh on "historical paintings" in the gallery. You'll have to watch the series to find out what a historian painting is, and I recommend that you watch them all. Walsh is a brilliant lecturer, who effortlessly conveys ideas, pathos, and context. Imagining the Battle of Bunker Hill–a lesson plan from the American Revolution Institute

Typically the "Scottish Enlightenment" is the term for the great burst of intellectual creativity, centered on Edinburgh and Glasgow and beginning in the 1720's. It saw advances made in philosophy, law,  economics, medicine, and geology,  by such great names as David Hume, Adam Fergusson, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Lord Kames, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, and William Robertson–to name but a few. A typical view sees it as an unlikely event following "a century of relative turmoil" which was capped by the failure of the Darien colony, the Union of Scotland and England of 1707, and the Jacobite rebellions. However my guest today, Kelsey Jackson-Williams, argues that even amidst the turmoil of Scotland's late seventeenth century, there were still intellectual forces at work without which there would have been no subsequent intellectual explosion. But rather than centered on the Scottish cities and Lothian, this "First Scottish Enlightenment" was focused on  great houses in the northeast of Scotland, and on the city and university of Aberdeen. Rather than Presbyterian, it was Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, and Jacobite. And, finally, it was primarily focused upon untangling the history of the kingdom of Scotland, as well as upon its literary heritage. For Further Investigation Kelsey Jackson Williams, The First Scottish Enlightenment: Rebels, Priests, and History The Website of Kelsey Jackson Williams Pathfoot Press: "dae ye ken yer ane leid?"

In early November 1831, Thomas Ruffin Gray was searching for a publisher. He had been one of those whites who had travelled from his home in Richmond to Southampton County, Virginia, to put down the most effective revolt of enslaved persons in the state's history. Gray later returned to Southampton to serve as defense lawyer for the alleged revolutionaries. From November 1 - 3, he interviewed Nat Turner, leader of the revolt, and supplemented that material with interviews of other participants and survivors. Following these interviews, Gray had quickly written the remarkable story; but in the end he had to ride all the way to Baltimore to get it printed. It sold 50,000 copies. In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History is in part Christopher Tomlins' meditation on how Turner's story has been told by generations of whites, most notably by Gray and by novelist William Styron. It is also Tomlins' meditation on the meaning and uses of history, and of the craft of historians. Most important, it is a deeply thoughtful reconstruction of what Nat Turner believed, and how he made sense of the world around him. As Tomlins writes, after years of wanting to write about Nat Turner, "I soon found myself writing about God." Christopher Tomlins is the Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. His recent book was Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865.

On October 22, 1685, King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, the decree promulgated by his grandfather Henri IV which provided French Protestants with a degree of limited toleration. The choices facing those approximately 700,000 French Protestants were stark: they could renounce their beliefes and convert to Catholicism; resist, which could lead to imprisonment or death; or leave France, which was itself an illegal act. Ultimately some 150,000 made new homes across Europe, from Switzerland to Berlin, and from Rotterdam to Ireland. Others went even farther abroad, to Virginia, Carolinas, the West Indies, even as far as the Cape of Good Hope. With me to discuss the Huguenot diaspora, and it changed the society, culture, and politics of the Atlantic World is Owen Stanwood. He’s Associate Professor of History at Boston College, and author of The Global Refuge: Huguenots in an Age of Empire. For Further Investigation Oxford, Massachusetts: The Huguenot Fort and the Oxford Colony New Rochelle, New York Manakin Town, Virginia Purrysburg, South Carolina Owen Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English American in the Age of the Glorious Revolution

Just to remind you, this is Memorial Day weekend–do not be alarmed if you have forgotten that it's a weekend, let alone that it's Memorial Day. As Professor Wikipedia might tell you, Memorial Day was instituted to remember the Northern dead of the Civil War. It then in time became a memorial encompassing the Southern dead, and eventually the dead of other wars. In the modern American imagination, it's increasingly hard to tell the difference between Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, especially since Memorial Day is now the beginning of summer and not at all a time of reverent memory for the fallen. But given the purpose of Memorial Day, it seems an especially appropriate time to post this conversation about the Battle of Okinawa. If war is hell, then Okinawa is the name of one of Hell's most infernal levels. On April 1, 1945—not only April Fool’s Day that year but Easter Sunday as well—an invasion force of American and British ships landed an army of four United States Army divisions and three United States Marine Corps divisions on the island of Okinawa. These 180,000 men would fight to gain control of the island, the first of the Japanese islands to be invaded, until June 22. It was the bloodiest battle of the Pacific, a battle that in its cruelty and ferocity was akin to a battle on the Eastern Front or to the most vicious combat of the First World War. With me to discuss the Battle of Okinawa and its effects is Saul David. He is Professor of Military History at the University of Buckingham; author of numerous works of history, as well as of fiction; and a broadcaster. His most recent book is Crucible of Hell, which is the subject of our conversation today, and which Amazon has designated as a "History Book of the Month" for May 2020. The story of the picture: Davis T. Hargraves and Gabriel Chavarria at Wana Ridge, 18 May, 1945 The Final Campaign: Marines in the Victory on Okinawa Saul David on the Battle for Okinawa in the BBC History Magazine Recent Books by Saul David: Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport The Force: The Legendary Special Ops Unit and WWII”s Mission Impossible For more about Saul David and his work: www.sauldavid.co.uk www.buckingham.ac.uk/research/hri/fellows/david

Imagine, if you would, a world without either money or banks. How could anyone conduct business? How could anyone procure goods and services? How could you have a diversified economy? How could a person plan for the future?  This was the world of early America, prior the Revolution. One of the many changes brought about by that event was the creation of both money and banks. But neither of them worked in the ways that we now expect.  With us to explore this strange yet oddly resonant world of money and finance is Sharon Ann Murphy. She is Professor of History at Providence College, and author most recently of Other People’s Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic, published by Johns Hopkins University Press as part of their series “How Things Worked.”

My guest today is Thomas J. McSweeney, Professor of Law at the William and Mary Law School in Willamsburg, Virginia. He earned both his JD and his PhD in History from Cornell University, and is the author of Priests of the Law: Roman Law and the Making of the Common Law's First Professionals, which is the subject of today’s conversation.

Most Americans think they know something about the Pilgrims, based on a dimly remembered High School textbook, or perhaps from a second-grade Thanksgiving pageant: that the men wore stove pipe hats with brass buckles, and carried blunderbusses; that they were the first settlers in America, had the first Thanksgiving, got on well with the Indians; that they were uniquely tolerant while others all around them were not; that they were the most important settlers of New England, or the most influential. And just about all of these things are wrong. With me to discuss the Pilgrims, their origins, beliefs, settlement, and their importance is John Turner, author of the new book They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty, published by Yale University Press. John Turner is Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. His previous works include the award-winning Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, as well as The Mormon Jesus: The Place of Jesus Christ in Latter-Day Saint Thought, Artwork, and Sprituality.

Winston Churchill termed the Seven Years War (what Americans think of as the French and Indian War) the “First World War” since its battles took place from Germany to western Pennsylvania to Manila. If that title is accepted, then the “War of the American Revolution” was the Second World War, stretching as it did from the thirteen British American colonies to Europe to India; and thus the Napeoleonic Wars were the Third World War. But neither of those two previous wars could approach the size and scale of the cataclysm that were the Napoleonic Wars. As my guest Alexander Mikaberidze argues, they were the most consequential events between the Protestant Reformation and the Great War of 1914-1918. And like those events, the Napoleonic Wars had effect which continue to our own time. Alexander Mikaberidze is Professor of European History at the Louisiana State University at Shreveport, where he is . He has been acclaimed as one of the “great Napoleonic scholars of today”, the author of what has been described as a “masterpiece” The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History, published this year by Oxford University Press. This his second appearance on Historically Thinking; our previous conversation, held five years ago on this topic, is one of our most popular.

Trees, as you may know, have rings. I don't know about you, but I remember the wonder I first felt when my Dad showed me tree rings. He explained that I could tell about the tree's life from the rings; the wide rings were from years of plenty of rain, and the thin ones from years of drought. Those tree rings turn out to be remarkably useful for not just telling us about a tree’s past, but about that of the world in which it grew. Which means, in a funny way, that trees can tell us something about what it meant to be human—and indeed what it means to be human, at least insofar as we can measure in trees the effects of our causes With me to discuss trees, their history, and human history, is Valerie Trouet. She is Associate Professor and University of Arizona Distinguished Scholar in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, and the author of Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings. Further Links Trouet Lab The amazing bristlecone pine A.E. Douglas, astronomer and dendrochronology pioneer