Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong cover image

Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong

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Aug 25, 2020 • 1h 17min

The Origins of Policing -- from the Middle Ages to the First World War

Why do we have uniformed officers called "police" who do things (like patrolling streets and investigating missing persons) that we call "policing"? We trace the evolution of law enforcement over the past two hundred years in response to urban growth, immigration, and labor unrest, and the struggles over who controls the police and their activities. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the recent examination of the "historical" King Arthur -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Further Reading: Roger Lane, "Urban Police and Crime in Nineteenth-Century America," Crime and Justice, Vol. 2 (1980), pp. 1-43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1147411?seq=1 Image: Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge inspects state militiamen during the Boston police strike of 1919
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Aug 12, 2020 • 1h 6min

The Trials of Bolivia: A Conversation with Oliver Rhoads Murphey

Why did the US government support and supply substantial aid to a left-wing revolutionary government in Bolivia in the 1950s, at the same time that it was undermining or overthrowing similar regimes in other nations? What does this striking but forgotten incident reveal about American ambitions in Latin America? And what light does it shed on the strife engulfing Bolivia today, after yet another elected leader has been forced out of power? We discuss and find context with Oliver Rhoads Murphey, whose dissertation seeks to solve the puzzle of American involvement in the heart of Andean South America. Read "A Bond that will Permanently Endure: The Eisenhower administration, the Bolivian revolution and Latin American leftist nationalism" -- https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D87D30RB Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the recent examination of the "historical" King Arthur -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632
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Aug 4, 2020 • 14min

Updates, Thank You, and Teaser: The Historical King Arthur

I give updates on my ridiculous pursuits, and thanks to my 75+ patrons, as well as a juicy teaser for my patron-only lecture on the "real" or "historical" King Arthur. The Twitter poll on what I should address next: https://twitter.com/Historiansplain/status/1290134698690088962 My political campaign website: www.samforcentralmass.com My patreon -- sign up to hear all my patron-only material: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632
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Jul 29, 2020 • 44min

Unlocked: History of the United States in 100 Objects, 8 -- Pueblo Communion Chalice

Unlocked for the public after 1 year: -Ceramic chalice, decorated in Jemez black-on-white style, with crosses -made in pueblo of Giusewa, between 1598 and the 1630s -found in the ruins of the Spanish mission at Giusewa, 1937 A simple pottery chalice, probably made by a local indigenous woman, reveals the early stages of interaction between Spanish missionaries and the ancient Pueblo civilization -- an intermingling that would lead to conflict, and eventually, a massive revolt that some have called "the first American Revolution." Image courtesy of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Laboratory of Anthropology Suggested further reading: Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning, and Renewal in the Pueblo World, edited by Robert W. Preucel, especially Matthew Liebman, "Signs of Power and Resistance: The (Re)Creation of Christian Imagery and Identities in the Pueblo Revolt Era”; Ramon Gutierrez, "When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away" In order to hear the next installment in this series, on a German jug with myserious symbols found in the ruins of Jamestown, please sign up here as a patron at any level! -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/30760619
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Jul 16, 2020 • 60min

Myth of the Month 12: The Arthur Cycle -- pt. 2: The Rise and Fall of Camelot

When Jackie Kennedy told reporters that she and the late President used to listen to the soundtrack of the musical "Camelot," the word immediately caught on as the name for the Kennedy White House -- portrayed as a brief, golden period of wise rule, ended by tragedy; more than a thousand years' worth of romantic associations could be evoked with three short syllables. In this second segment, we consider how the chivalric legend of Camelot and the Round Table was conceived and elaborated, from French courtly romances, through the first English Arthurian epic (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), to the popular novels, plays, and movies of modern times. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the upcoming examination of the "historical" King Arthur -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- www.lyceum.fm/ Suggested further reading: Nicholas J. Higham, "King Arthur: The Making of the Legend"
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Jul 13, 2020 • 1h 4min

Myth of the Month 12: The Arthur Cycle -- pt. 1: Creating "King Arthur"

Why does the earliest known picture of King Arthur show him riding on a goat and charging towards a deadly cat-monster? How has the tale of King Arthur and his knights evolved since it first emerged from Celtic folklore? We consider the shaping of the Arthur story from the songs of mysterious Welsh and Breton bards to the high medieval romances of French courtier-poets. Proceed to part 2 here: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/myth-of-the-month-12-king-arthur-pt-2-the-rise-and-fall-of-camelot Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the upcoming examination of the "historical" King Arthur -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- www.lyceum.fm/ Suggested further reading: Nicholas J. Higham, "King Arthur: The Making of the Legend"
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12 snips
Jul 7, 2020 • 1h 32min

Unlocked: Myth of the Month 8: "The West"

After one year on Patreon for patrons only, Myth of the Month #8 becomes open to the public: The notion that there is a coherent society that can be called "the West" or "Western Civilization" -- running from Greco-Roman antiquity to modern North America -- originated during the upheaval of World War I, thanks to an eccentric German history teacher named Oswald Spengler. We consider whether any common thread or trait can be said to unite "the West," and why different nations like Egypt or Poland get tossed in or out of the basket of "the West" at different times. Finally, we consider why the idea of "the West" is often linked to conspiracy theories involving Jews, Marxists, post-modernists, or Jewish-Marxist-banker-Freemason-postmodernists. (Yes, I make an oblique reference here to Jordan Peterson.) The recent debate involving Douglas Murray, "What Is Killing Western Civilization?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZqKKFn3Hk Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the next Myth of the Month, on the framing of US Constitution and the origins of the Senate & Electoral College: https://www.patreon.com/posts/29819013 cover image: Capitoline temples of Sbeitla, Tunisia, photograph by Bernard Gagnon
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Jun 11, 2020 • 1h 42min

Crossing the Waters: Britain in the Dark Age

Romans, Brythons, Picts, Angles, Gaels, Saxons, and Jutes -- how did this kaleidoscopic welter of contending tribes crystallize into the medieval Christian kingdoms we know as England and Scotland? We consider the most tumultuous and mysterious period in British history, following the Roman withdrawal, as locals and Germanic migrants sought to assert power and maintain stability. Despite the great uncertainty, Britons mastered new knowledge, developed a poetic tradition, and passed on an enduring obsession with the sacred power of water. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the upcoming examination of the King Arthur cycle -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- www.lyceum.fm/ Cover image: 6th-century Anglo-Saxon inlaid gold disk brooch, found in gravesite in Kent. Image courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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May 26, 2020 • 41min

History of the United States in 100 Objects -- 11: Human-Effigy War Club, ca. 1640s

--Made of Hickory wood, shells, and copper on the Atlantic coast of North America, ca. 1640s --Held in the collection of Skokloster Castle, Sweden This elaborately carved and ornamented wooden weapon was most likely ceremonial, created by a Lenape Indian artist to represent the authority of a chieftain or warrior. But how did this priceless Native American artifact end up in the collection of a castle in Sweden? This object and its journey tell a largely forgotten story of Sweden's moment of imperial glory and ambition in the mid-1600s, which left a mysterious imprint in North America. Please support this podcast in order to keep the lectures coming regularly and hear all of the History of the United States in 100 Objects -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested further reading: James Nordin, "The Center of the World," Journal of Materical Culture, 2013 -- http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1032.4165&rep=rep1&type=pdf Image courtesy of Skokloster Castle.
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May 5, 2020 • 1h 9min

The Spanish Flu, pt. 2 -- The Great Flu and Modern Memory, 1920-2020

What is the legacy of the greatest pandemic to hit the globe in the past two centuries, carrying away 3% of the entire human race? What has been its after-life through the past century? What health and psychological impacts did it leave behind? What are the enduring questions and mysteries that science and history must unravel? And how has our art, literature, and popular culture remembered -- or more often, forgotten -- this great disaster? Please support this podcast and hear all lectures -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- www.lyceum.fm/ Suggested further reading: Laura Spinney, "Pale Rider"; Alfred Crosby, "America's Forgotten Pandemic." image: angel monument, Hendersonville, N.C., which formerly belonged to the Wolfe family of Asheville, N.C., and inspired the title of the novel, "Look Homeward, Angel"

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