Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i History Extra

“Would you like to live in a Victorian slum? For a new BBC Two series, a group of Britons have agreed to do just that – albeit for only a few weeks and in replica 19th-century dwellings. Of course, for the inhabitants of Britain’s Victorian cities, slum life was rarely a choice and the conditions they had to endure could be bleak. In this month’s cover feature, historian Jerry White explores the underside of Victorian London and looks at how these areas were later transformed. Turn to page 22 for that. One of the best-known legends from our early history is that of King Cnut, forlornly attempting to turn back the waves. On page 40, Eleanor Parker retraces the life and times of this remarkable Viking ruler, whose actions helped…

On the night of 20 October 1720, Jack Rackham’s luck ran out. With his black flag showing a skull above two crossed cutlasses, ‘Calico Jack’ was one of the most wanted men in the Caribbean. A pirate who famously sailed alongside two fierce women, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, Rackham had for weeks been cruising along the coast of Jamaica, attacking fishing vessels with impunity. But on this evening he made his fatal mistake. Having anchored his ship, the William, in Dry Harbour Bay, Rackham spent the evening boozing with his men before falling asleep. He probably never heard Captain Jonathan Barnet’s sloop gliding towards him. The first he knew of it was when Barnet shouted out an order to surrender. Rackham ordered his men to fire, but it was…

“Having won the Russian Civil War against the Whites in 1920, the Bolsheviks found themselves isolated in a world dominated by capitalist powers. Meanwhile, White groups in exile sought to destabilise the Soviet government, not least by selling real and fabricated intelligence to western governments in the hope that this would harden their hostility to the socialist state. Soviet external relations were caught between the need to engage in conventional diplomacy to overcome political isolation and establish trade deals, and a desire to extend international socialism. In 1919 the Bolsheviks had established the Comintern to promote international revolution, under Zinoviev, Lenin’s most loyal lieutenant. By 1924 optimism about the prospects for revolution had receded and conventional diplomacy had the upper hand. In the UK Soviet energies were focused on securing…

Sleeping on your back heralded the visitation of an ‘incubus’, an evil spirit that paralysed its victims Struggling to get your eight hours every night? Tossing and turning in bed? Then, if our early modern ancestors are to be believed, you could be exposing yourself to a multitude of dangers, from paralysis to a visitation by evil spirits. This is the finding of a new book by historian Dr Sasha Handley, Sleep in Early Modern England (Yale University Press, 2016). Drawing on diaries, letters, advice manuals, sermons and images, Handley’s research has found that sleep was a source of major concern at the time. “Peaceful sleep was cherished as an unparalleled natural refreshment for body and mind,” she says. “It was judged to be essential for physical and mental health,…

@HistoryExtra: Which do you think was the worst year in history and why? Bryan Priest Has to be 1914. The cracks and divisions that formed within Europe leading to the horror that was the ‘Great War’ and subsequent loss of lives on an unimaginable scale Matthew Lewis 1348, with the Black Death taking hold and spreading. With no sign of a cure and the indiscriminate deaths of up to a third of populations of all ages, races and ranks, there was widespread terror and loss Margaret Fenton The day Hitler came to power in Germany and so started the events that led to the death of millions of Jews and the Second World War Nancyj Jeanne Worst for England by some measure was 1066 when William and his soldiers invaded…

It was impossible to keep bodies clean, and often easier to defecate in the streets than in filthy privies “Tyndall’s-buildings is a court containing 22 houses… the basement story of nearly all… was filled with fetid refuse, of which it had been the receptacle for years. In some… it seemed scarcely possible that human beings could live: the floors were in holes, the stairs broken down, and the plastering had fallen… In one, the roof had fallen in: it was driven in by a tipsy woman one night, who sought to escape over the tiles from her husband.” So George Godwin, editor of The Builder , described a Holborn court around 1859. He could, as he well knew, have been describing any one of an uncountable number of courts and…

Adolf Hitler was in a particularly foul mood on the afternoon of 23 October 1940. Pacing furiously about the railway platform at the French town of Hendaye, near the Spanish border, he held his arms rigidly at his side in the way that had set Neville Chamberlain’s teeth on edge at the Munich Conference two years previously. Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s train was late, confirming the German delegation’s suspicions that the Spanish were a hopeless lot. When at last the pudgy little general with the squeaky voice alighted from his railway carriage, the smile on Hitler’s face belied a premonition that he was heading for an exasperating encounter. And he was. “I would rather have four of my teeth pulled out than deal with that man again,” Hitler reportedly confided to…

Sir Douglas Haig Haig had served in the army for some 30 years when, in December 1915, he was appointed to command the British Expeditionary Force on the western front. By June 1916, he had overseen the planning for the battle of the Somme. General Haig bore a huge responsibility for the battle of the Somme. As the man in command of the British Expeditionary Force he had – in conjunction with the French commander-in-chief General Joseph Joffre – set the overall parameters of the battle. He then supervised the conduct of his subordinate generals during the terrible fighting of the summer of 1916. In early autumn, and with winter fast approaching, he reviewed the situation on the Somme in a letter to King George V on 5 October 1916.…

Gerwarth skilfully portrays a vast international ideological conflict This is an important, compelling book with a fascinating and chilling narrative The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 by Robert Gerwarth Allen Lane, 464 pages, £25 In two years’ time, centennial commemorations will mark the end of the First World War. Participants might do well to read Robert Gerwarth’s revelatory book, which highlights the fact that, in much of Europe, November 1918 brought no peace. Across central and eastern Europe, defeated empires dissolved, ethnic conflict flared and paramilitary adherents of new, extremist ideologies employed violence to enforce their utopian visions. This fighting and repression cost countless lives and fatefully undermined the foundations of what the victorious western Allies hoped would be a new democratic order. Gerwarth contends…

Stranger than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the 20th Century by John Higgs Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 320 pages, £9.99 Just over 100 years ago, argues John Higgs, we were subjects of a handful of empires in which the rule of the elite was accepted as normal. Now here we are, all connected through decentralised, democratic networks that celebrate multiplicities. And the decline of the old social hierarchies has been accompanied by the collapse of certainty in science, art and thought. Yet we’ve become accustomed to a world in which there are no absolute, universal truths: use a satnav and you’re relying on quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity – all of which contradict each other. In this compelling and insightful account of the 20th century, Higgs…

Winston Graham brought Poldark to life after meeting a Second World War RAF pilot on a train Poldark TV BBC One scheduled for September With its windswept vistas and Cornish accents, it’s tempting to think of Poldark as a bucolic historical romance. That’s not how scriptwriter Debbie Horsfield sees it. Rather, she says, it’s more akin to “a British Gone With the Wind”, a drama set in “turbulent” times – specifically, the late 18th century, the era of the American and French revolutions and the early industrial revolution. “You get the best of both worlds,” she says, “because you get the lovely Jane Austen-style drawing room scenes, which are all about manners and looks exchanged between people, but you also get a real sense that it’s rooted in the real…

EXHIBITION Opus Anglicanum: Masterpieces of English Medieval Embroidery Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1 October–5 February 2017 - 020 7942 2000 • vam.ac.uk/opus This new exhibition, taking its title from the Latin for ‘English work’ – the fine needlework for which England was renowned between the 12th and 15th centuries – displays masterpieces of medieval embroidery from the V&A’s world-class collections, plus works returning to England for the first time since they were created in the Middle Ages. Embroidery was one of the glories of English art in the Middle Ages, and enjoyed an international reputation, sought after by kings, queens, popes and other high-status individuals. The exhibition features works associated with notable figures from the period, including Edward I and his queen Eleanor of Castile, Thomas Becket, Edward the…

1. Which South African town was named after the wife of a rifleman in Wellington’s army? 2. What links Moseley Old Hall, Bentley Hall and Heale House? 3. Which English monarch was crowned by the bishop of Carlisle? 4. In May 1865 nearly 200 Welsh settlers sailed from Liverpool aboard the tea-clipper Mimosa . Where were they going? 5. Which are the odd ones out? Benedictines, Cistercians, Carthusians, Dominicans? 6. Who sculpted this London statue commemorating the polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott? QUIZ ANSWERS 1. Ladysmith, after Juana, wife of Waterloo veteran Sir Harry Smith, the governor of South Africa’s Cape Colony 2. They were all used as hiding places by Charles II during his escape after the battle of Worcester 3. Elizabeth I 4. Patagonia 5. Dominicans. They were…

Samuel Cook, who performed professionally as Sam Cooke, was an American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur. Dubbed the ‘King of Soul’, and blessed with a distinctive vocal style, he notched up a string of hits with songs including ‘Wonderful World’ and ‘Twistin’ the Night Away’. He also founded a record label and publishing company, and was an influential figure in America’s civil rights movement. He was just 33 when he was shot and killed by a Los Angeles motel manageress, who claimed that she acted in self-defence. When did you first hear about Cooke? My parents would play his music in our house every Sunday, without fail – and I might have been only a few years old but I instantly fell in love with him and his music. I can still…

So you’ve decided to study history at university. How do you know which degree is right for you? According to the Complete University Guide, 95 UK universities now teach history, offering a bewildering array of options. From Aberdeen to Bournemouth, and from Bangor to Canterbury, history degrees come in all shapes and sizes. Though there are plenty of non-academic factors to consider, I am going to focus on key considerations regarding the courses themselves. First and foremost, you need to look closely at course content because this varies significantly between degrees. “History is the synthesis of all social sciences turned towards the past,” wrote French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. Perhaps no other subject contains such a broad array of approaches and methodologies. Indeed, many historians would take issue with…

Your dream is a career in history. Perhaps you’re planning, or are already studying for, a degree in history or a related subject such as archaeology. You’d like to be a museum curator, perhaps; maybe you hope to work on a history magazine or manage a heritage property. But how do you break into such a career? And what would the job be like? We spoke to eight people whose jobs involve history, to ask them about their roles. What qualifications did they need? What has been their career path so far? What does the future hold? And finally, what tips would they offer to someone who is planning a career in history? “I love the fact that it’s very diverse. Each year of the20 that I have worked here…

History 94% student satisfaction (2016 NSS) At Plymouth University we offer a BA (Hons) History, which can be studied as single honours or in combination with English, Politics or International relations. We offer a wide range of specialisms including early modern British and European History, US History, Maritime History and World History. We also offer BA (Hons) Art History. The focus is on working with primary sources, historical debates and there are a range of field visits. You will acquire excellent communication skills, gain high levels of critical analysis and develop problem solving abilities, to take into post-graduate training and a career. Many of our students volunteer at local history and heritage sites while they study, where they gain valuable experience. We also have an international exchange programme that gives…

Richard J Evans The most fascinating and at the same time the most challenging part of writing a history of 19th-century Europe was covering unfamiliar topics such as the human impact on the environment and countries new to me like Portugal or Bulgaria. • Richard explores the century from Waterloo to the Great War on page 51 Eleanor Parker Cnut was the most successful Viking king, famous for both piety and ruthlessness. I’m fascinated by trying to understand how being part of his Scandinavian empire affected Anglo-Saxon England. • Eleanor traces the exploits of a formidable Viking leader on page 40 Steven Gunn It has taken me 30 years and work in more than 60 archives to reconstruct the careers of the ‘new men’ who ran Henry VII’s government. But…

“In voting to leave the EU, Britons repudiated the judgment of the prime minister, the leader of the opposition, and three-quarters of MPs”DR ROBERT SAUNDERS The decision to leave the EU, on 23 June 2016, struck British politics like an earthquake at sea. Within days a tidal wave had swept through the political establishment, devastating a settlement established just a year earlier at the general election. With one vote, the electorate had overturned the central principle of foreign and economic policy since the 1960s, toppling the prime minister and igniting a civil war within the Labour party. Scrabbling for a precedent, historians compared what had happened to the collapse of the British empire or the failure of the Munich Agreement. Yet a better analogy might have been the ‘Crisis of…

There’s more to say on the EU The essay by Professor Tombs on The Reluctant Europeans (September) would have given a more complete and rounded picture of the UK’s sojourn in the EEC/ EU with the addition of just a few words to two sentences. He pointed out that, despite the pessimism of the 1970s “… rather than disappearing from the international scene Britain has remained one of the world’s half-dozen or so most powerful and internationally active states…” The addition of the words “while a member of the EU” would avoid giving the impression that this would have been the case even had we chosen to remain isolated over that period, something that could only be surmised in the realm of counterfactual imagining. It would avoid any similar confusion…

Henry V The Conscience of a King Malcolm Vale In Shakespeare’s work, Henry V appears as a single-minded warrior-king. But in this deeply researched volume, the author introduces the real Henry: an exceptional hands-on monarch who was innovative, pious, reluctant to use force except in pursuit of justice, and acutely conscious of his subjects’ welfare. 16 b/w illustrations Hardback £20.00 Æthelred The Unready Levi Roach Notorious for his domestic and international failures, the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred ‘the Unready’ has long been considered a weak and ineffectual ruler. In a much-needed reassessment, this first biography of the infamous English monarch presents a rich portrait of a complex king driven by faith and devotion. 21 b/w illustrations Hardback £30.00 Medieval Europe Chris Wickham Vast changes transformed Europe during the 1,000-year span known…

Between 1878 and 1899, slum clearance schemes in central London led to 45,334 men, women and children being evicted. Those, at least, are the official figures; the real numbers may be much higher, because it was in the slum landlord’s interest to evict as many people as he could before the official valuation of his property – empty rooms having greater letting potential than houses filled to the rafters. There is no figure for those thus ‘winkled out’, but even the official number is huge – equivalent to the population of Rotherham in the 1890s. Who were these people? The short answer is: we don’t know. The voice of the evicted slum-dweller is, for all practical purposes, silent. Some among them would have been intelligent and articulate, literate and skilled.…

She half-carried the feverish marquis past soldiers to her townhouse, where she hid the fugitive in her bedchamber The death of an elderly Scottish lady on 15 May 1823 in the village of Ville d’Avray, between Paris and Versailles, was itself unremarkable. Yet the life of the woman, Grace Dalrymple Elliott, had been full of intrigue, ordeal and courage. She had consorted with dukes, lords and earls, reputedly bearing a child by the Prince of Wales; she had saved a marquis during the French Revolution; and she had endured a hellish stay in jail alongside (she claimed) a future empress. Born around 1754, Grace was brought up in her maternal grandparents’ house in Edinburgh till her mother’s death around 1765, when she was sent to school in France. Soon after…

One striking aspect of British political life in the aftermath of the EU referendum is the prominence of women in the political sphere. Women are in, or have challenged for, leadership positions at all points of the political spectrum. Within three weeks of polling day, the Conservative party had appointed its second female prime minister, Theresa May. Angela Eagle briefly threw her hat into the ring for the leadership of the Labour party. Nicola Sturgeon and Leanne Wood head the SNP and Plaid Cymru in Scotland and Wales respectively. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Hillary Clinton is the favourite to win November’s US presidential election – and become the most powerful person in the world. Some who have mused about this feminisation of politics have suggested that it was evidence of…

Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport Hutchinson, 448 pages, £25 Told through the eyes of a colourful cast of expatriates in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in 1917, Helen Rappaport’s book is a gripping narrative account of the implosion of the tsarist state and the birth of the Soviet regime. By skilfully weaving together the eyewitness testimonies of journalists, diplomats, governesses, businessmen, doctors and engineers, Rappaport thrusts the reader into the very cockpit of the Russian Revolution. Men and women such as British ambassador George Buchanan and American journalist Florence Harper witnessed the rumours, the plotting, the unravelling economy, the famished workers first pleading and then rioting for bread, the collapse of law and order and the transformation of Russia’s great imperial capital into a “red madhouse”. Rappaport edits their perspectives…

The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam by Christopher Goscha Allen Lane, 672 pages, £30 This major general history of Vietnam is an ambitious work of synthesis, challenging existing histories of modern Vietnam, which assume ‘modernity’ came with French colonialism in the 19th century or approach it from an American viewpoint. Instead this volume is inclusive – neither west-centric nor Asia-centric – and emphasises that “Vietnam has never been an ethnically homogeneous polity”. Indeed, as Goscha points out, ‘Vietnam’ has no real meaning before 1945; it is more accurate to speak of multiple Vietnams, and this diversity and complexity is the main theme of his book. The first three chapters focus on the centuries before the arrival of the French. They demonstrate vividly the religious, geographical and political variety of the…

“Since the gold rush, California has functioned as a tabula rasa on which the rest of the US has projected its grandest aspirations Some places you visit, history grabs you by the throat. I have strong memories of standing inside the Palace of Minos at Knossos on Crete as a nine-year-old child: hot, dark, forbidding, the Bronze Age menacingly close at hand. I’ve most often had that vertiginous sense of stepping into the past in Britain, where one is forever blundering into objects of serious vintage without intending to. So perhaps it seems perverse to choose for this piece a place such as California, where the majority of history, as conventionally told, has occurred only since the mid-19th century. The territory was a straggling collection of coastal villages until 1848…

“You’re passionate about history. Perhaps you’re planning to study it at school or university, or are part way through a degree and thinking about postgraduate study or job options. If so, this guide is for you. Over these 16 pages you’ll read a series of articles designed to help you plot your course through the world of history. We’ve got information and advice on choosing history at A-level or studying it at degree level. We’ve also spoken to professionals in various roles to ask them how they got there and what it’s really like to work in their field. We hope you’ll find this a useful guide to help you plan a fulfilling and fascinating career in history.” Sue Wingrove Acting deputy editor…

1 STAFF Do your research on the people who will be teaching you. Look carefully at department websites and individual staff profiles. 2 SCOPE OF THE COURSE Gain a clear sense of the courses, looking at the chronological, geographical and thematic range of modules on offer. 3 OPEN DAYS Go to open days and applicant visit days. Arrive with some key questions in mind. 4 GRADE OFFERS A course may look great – but can you meet the typical grade offer? Some places will be more flexible than others – ask the admissions tutor. 5 CONTACT HOURS How many contact hours will you have each week – the amount of direct contact with tutors? This can differ significantly. 6 TEACHING STYLES What methods are used? Look carefully at the balance…

Tintagel boasts an ancient royal site Archaeologists have discovered metre-thick walls at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, suggesting that it could have been a royal residence in the sixth century AD. These walls form part of a dense complex of buildings that may have been the centre of the ancient kingdom of Dumnonia. Other finds, in the first excavation of a five-year English Heritage project, include pottery from the eastern Mediterranean and tableware from the west coast of Turkey. Himmler’s diaries shed new light on SS chief New details are emerging from the Second World War journals of Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler, which were recently found in a defence ministry archive in the Russian town of Podolsk. The diaries, which date from 1938, 1943 and 1944, juxtapose the mundane with…

Lambeth police court was treated to a most unusual sight in the 1890s. Standing in the dock were Fredrick and Emily Hampton, fishmongers, who were charged with the theft of a silk umbrella, valued at 7s 6d (around £36 in today’s money). The umbrella belonged to Louisa Squires, who lived in Vauxhall, a well-known middle class area of London at the time. On the evening of 15 October, Louisa had been walking along the Kennington Park Road, when she saw “a horse and cart coming towards her followed by a dog”. Suddenly, the dog seized hold of her umbrella, and pulled it with such force that Louisa was forced to let go, and the dog ran off following the horse and cart. Not long after this, the Hamptons were arrested…

In Ancient Encounters (August) an illustration was included of Xuanzang in the ‘Chinese travellers in India’ section. However, I would have liked him to have been discussed in the text as well. Xuanzang was a very interesting figure. He left China in 629 and arrived in India in 630. He then left India in 643 and arrived back in Xian, China in 645. In Xian it is claimed that the documents he brought back were translated in the city’s Great Goose Pagoda. His travels also formed the basis of The Journey to the West, one of the four classical Chinese books. According to this text, his companions were the Monkey King (Sun Wukong), Pig Face (Zhu Bajie) and the Monk (Sha Wujing). Some readers may have seen the rather offbeat…

“Divisions within religions are growing ever more dangerous” “I’m sitting at the old refectory table, polished by centuries of use, in the Byzantine monastery of Hozoviotissa on the Greek island of Amorgos, stirring thick sweet coffee made by the monks (with a tot of rakomelo on the side!) Rebuilt by Emperor Alexios Komnenos in 1088, it’s a staggering sight, clinging to the rock a thousand feet up a red cliff. Out of the window, just sea and sky: the primordial separation of creation in the Book of Genesis. Here you can sense one source of the religious impulse found in all human societies. It was built a few years after the most fateful division in the history of Christianity. Bigger even than the Catholic-Protestant divide, this was the split between…

In 1497 Perkin Warbeck, the pretender to Henry VII’s throne, claimed that the Tudor king had “none in favour and trust about his person” but men “of simple birth”, whose advice led him into “misrule and mischief”. In some respects, Warbeck – who was hanged by the king after attempting to raise rebellion – was wrong: Henry did take counsel from great churchmen and trusted nobles. But, for all that, there was more than a kernel of truth to Warbeck’s allegations. Henry was increasingly relying on a group of ‘upstart’ advisers who had used their considerable skills to rise to the top of the political ladder from comparatively humble origins. And, in doing so, the king was transforming the way his nation was governed. By their ideas, their actions and…

There is a sense that King is having fun with stories and characters Blood and Land: The Story of Native North America by JCH King Allen Lane, 672 pages, £30 In the introduction to this new book, JCH King describes his approach as “that of a museum curator”. Given that he worked for decades in the British Museum and subsequently became a fellow of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, such a perspective comes with fine credentials. Here they are put to good use as King takes his reader on a sprawling and exhaustive (and, at times, exhausting) tour of the cultural landscape of indigenous North America, concentrating mostly on the 20th century and looking largely at the US but also Canada and Greenland. Readers…

Shieldwall Justin Hill (2011) In the first decades of the 11th century, England teeters on the brink of anarchy during the reign of the weak king, Æthelred ‘the Unready’. When Æthelred dies, the Danes under Cnut threaten to take complete control of the country, but the dead king’s son Edmund Ironside and the young thane Godwin lead native resistance to the invaders. Hill’s earlier, equally impressive novel brings the distant world of the Anglo-Saxons to vivid and vigorous life. Hawk Quest Robert Lyndon (2012) In the 1070s, a mercenary named Vallon gathers together a motley crew of misfits and leads them first to Iceland, to capture a rare white falcon, and then through the heartlands of Rus to a rendezvous with the Muslim sultan who desires the bird as ransom…

1 The Flodden memorial NORTHUMBERLAND Where a Scottish king was cut down The best place to start any tour of Flodden is the granite cross memorial. Erected in 1910 to commemorate the dead of both nations, it offers wonderful views across the battlefield. Fully illustrated boards help you to visualise the battle as you walk around the site. visitnorthumberland.com 2 Selkirk THE SCOTTISH BORDERS Where a sole survivor is honoured Legend has it that, of all the men from Selkirk to fight at Flodden, just one survived. His name was Fletcher and the Fletcher Monument, a statue of this defiant warrior holding aloft a captured English banner that he brought back to Selkirk in the aftermath of the battle, takes pride of place in the town centre. visitscotland.com 4 Hornshole…

BEST TIME TO GO Any time. Summer’s a popular season to visit, but March to early May is one of California’s most beautiful times of year. GETTING THERE Flights are available from many parts of the UK, then rent a car to plan your own road trip. WHAT TO PACK Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, based on a series of road trips he made in the late 1940s and early 1950s, many passing through the state. WHAT TO BRING BACK The classic WPA travel guide California in the 1930s. Compiled at the behest of Roosevelt’s New Deal, by a motley crew of unemployed artists, novelists, historians and photographers, this has been republished by the University of California. READERS’ VIEWS I’d highly recommend Old Town in San Diego. It was…

 In the past couple of years there have been major curriculum changes in schools at Key Stage 3 (ages 11–14 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland), GCSE and A-level. Keeping abreast of these can be daunting. Schools are currently in the midst of all these changes, so it is difficult to predict what the outcome will be. Universities see history as a good all-round qualification and indicator of potential Recently, history has been a popular subject at A-level. Since A-levels were given an overhaul in 2000, history has been taken by between 5 and 7 per cent of sixth-form students – slightly higher in the independent and grammar school sectors. It is often regarded as a ‘facilitating’ subject by leading universities, which see it as a good all-round qualification and…