Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2020 i History Extra

As the clock struck midnight on 3 July 1876, the United States celebrated its centenary. In Philadelphia, almost 500,000 people crowded the streets around Independence Hall, where the newly cast Centennial Bell rang out 13 times, once for each of the original colonies. And yet, although none of the revellers knew it, a shadow was falling over the birthday celebrations. Hundreds of miles to the west, a steamer was chugging down the Yellowstone river with the survivors of the most famous military disaster in American history. A week earlier, on 25 June, Lieutenant General George Custer’s Seventh Cavalry had charged into battle against Sitting Bull’s Sioux near the Little Bighorn river, in what is now the state of Montana. Contrary to the swashbuckling legend, Custer was a man on the…

Five hundred years ago, on the night of 30 June 1520, Spanish forces and their allies fled from the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan under attack. Known as La Noche Triste (Night of Sorrows), this shameful retreat marked a key moment in the conquest – or, as it should more accurately be called, invasion – of Mexico. The Spanish were led by Hernán Cortés, whose illegal expedition had begun in February 1519. Cortés had left Cuba against the direct orders of his superior, Diego Velázquez, and evaded arrest several times. He had forged alliances with several indigenous groups, including the Tlaxcalans, who were enemies of the Aztecs. In November, the Spaniards reached Tenochtitlan, where they were received peacefully by Moctezuma II. However, they soon took the emperor hostage as a puppet…

Lucy Worsley’s interview in your May issue (Encounters) argues that photography has been essential to the survival of our royal family. But photography has only been helpful when the royals themselves have controlled what is photographed and have been able to promote a positive image. It has not been helpful – in fact, very destructive – when some members of the royal family have been caught in unflattering situations by paparazzi and others. It is therefore interesting to note that a forthcoming exhibition at Kensington Palace is entitled Life Through a Royal Lens. That will surely offer something quite different to what an exhibition of Royal Lives Through a Lens might look like. Ian MacDonald, Essex We reward the Letter of the Month writer with a copy of a new…

January 1665 opened with “a fine hard frost”. Samuel Pepys, a rising young government official, just short of his 32nd birthday, shared a dinner of a good venison pasty and a turkey with his family, and reflected with satisfaction on his good health and increasing wealth and esteem. 1664 had ended “with great joy to me”, “everything else in the state quiet, blessed be God”, apart from preparations for conflict with the Dutch. And even the formal declaration of war in March was welcomed with optimism and a rush of nationalistic pride. An early naval victory, in June 1665, seemed to fulfil all hopes. But by that time, London knew it was menaced by a growing epidemic: plague deaths were increasing in number and spread. Pepys first mentions rumours of…

In 1849 a letter arrived at the offices of The Times newspaper. Its authors were a group of poor Londoners who lived on Church Lane and Carrier Street in what was then known as the St Giles Rookery. Their names, 54 of them in all, were listed at the end of the letter. The parish of St Giles today stands under the shadow of the Centre Point tower block, at the eastern end of Oxford Street, and includes the wealthy streets and squares of Bloomsbury. The St Giles of the 1840s was a very different place. Home to thousands of impoverished Londoners, many of them of Irish descent, it was an infamous slum, one of the capital’s dirtiest and most unhealthy districts. The letter sent by the slum dwellers to…

Your novel begins with a veteran Roman soldier returning from the battlefield. What intrigued you about this premise? The contrast between the respect awarded to courage in war and the dire social and economic conditions to which veterans returned. The army of the Roman Republic was a militia of conscripted peasant farmers. They could serve for up to 16 years, and while they were away at war, their farms often got into debt. Thousands of legionaries returned to find that rich estate owners had forced their families off the land and out of their homes, either by foreclosure or physical intimidation and the threat of violence. In the last two centuries BC, although these peasant-soldiers conquered a Mediterranean empire for Rome, many survivors came home to face eviction and poverty.…

She may be broadcasting from home rather than standing up in front of a live audience, but the rest of the format of Natalie Haynes’ consistently excellent radio show on the ancient world is essentially unchanged. Every week, the writer and comedian selects a different figure from the dim and distant past to profile. This time around, her focus is on female figures from Greek mythology, including the Amazons and their queen, Penthesilea; Eurydice, wife of Orpheus; and Penelope, clever and long-suffering partner of Odysseus. The series begins with Helen of Troy: what should we make of the manner in which her story has been told down the years? Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics BBC Radio 4 / Due to air on Sunday 17 May…

Physical visits to museums and galleries may not be possible during the ongoing coronavirus lockdown, but several institutions are offering the next best thing: online tours of their latest exhibitions. Two such virtual experiences, both of which are curator-led and elegantly produced, come courtesy of the Tate’s YouTube channel. The first, featuring 19th-century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, charts the remarkable talent of a man who died at just 25. The second explores the forces that drove renowned pop artist Andy Warhol to create such striking work. A more detailed glimpse at the Tate’s Warhol exhibition is also available via the first instalment of the BBC’s new Museums in Quarantine series, as critic and broadcaster Alastair Sooke gains special access behind its closed doors. Tate YouTube channel youtube.com/user/tate/videos Museums in Quarantine BBC…

30 JUNE 1971 Shortly after its crew (right) become the first humans to spend time on an orbiting space station, a ventilation valve malfunctions on the Soyuz 11 Soviet spacecraft. On its return to Earth, a recovery team opens the capsule and discovers the crew inside are dead. 28 JUNE 1846 Having devised instruments such as the saxhorn and the saxotromba, Belgian inventor Adolphe Sax hits the jackpot with his patent for a single-reed instrument made of brass. Once again he names it after himself – the saxophone. 18 JUNE 860 For Constantinople, capital of the mighty Byzantine empire, the day brings ‘a thunderbolt from heaven’. Some 200 ships belonging to the Rus, who had travelled from the Baltic, sail down the Bosphorus, burn suburbs and attack local residents.…

Today it seems unimaginable that a member of the House of Windsor would relinquish his royal duties after falling in love with an American divorcee. But things were very different in the 1930s. On 3 June 1937, six months after Edward VIII had abdicated the British throne in order to marry the woman he loved, he was united, once and for all, with Wallis Simpson. The venue was the Chateau de Candé, near Tours, which was owned by the half-American millionaire Charles Bedaux. But despite the glamorous location, it was not quite the star-spangled occasion for which the couple might have hoped. For one thing, the Church of England refused to sanction the wedding, so they found it very hard to get hold of a priest. In the end, a…

In late April 1945, a squad of German troops encircled a farm on the Dutch island of Texel, briefly stopped to catch their breath, and then set about their gruesome work. First they set fire to the farmhouse, and then they waited for their quarry to emerge. They shot those who made the break for safety, and when others took refuge in a nearby pig shed, they set that ablaze too. However, two men did manage to elude the Germans, taking temporary shelter in the farm’s cellar, and later slipping away under cover of darkness. Exhausted, they hid themselves in a nearby ditch. The following morning, a farmer found them asleep, and alerted the marauding troops. They quickly arrived on the scene and put the fugitives to death. It was…

1 Consign yourself to quarantine Houses in which anyone fell sick of plague were ordered to be shut up, marked with a red cross and “Lord Have Mercy Upon Us”, and watched so that no one entered or left for four weeks, to prevent the spread of infection. This certainly happened, but was much resisted, and was hard to enforce; contemporary sources suggest that, by the later weeks of the epidemic, enforcement was failing. It remains unclear whether quarantine really helped to contain the disease. 2 Steer clear of filth and dung Orders that streets be kept clean, rubbish removed and laystalls (dung-heaps) placed at a distance from habitation reflected the belief that plague was generated by corrupt airs or ‘miasma’ arising from dung and filth. The ban…

Lying in his own blood on the battlefield near Mansoura, his standard covering his grievously wounded body, Emir Fakhr al-Din departed this world on 8 February 1250. He had left his encampment with a handful of guards to assess the army of King Louis IX and devise a plan to defend Egypt from the onslaught of what became known as the Seventh Crusade. But before he could make it back to safety, he was cut down in an ambush. This was a sad ending for someone who only a few months earlier had become the de facto ruler of the Ayyubid sultanate. Luck as well as talent had destined Fakhr al-Din for greatness. His mother had nursed the future Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil, which strengthened the bond between the two families.…

In a world turned upside down by Covid-19, we have retreated into our homes, taking sanitising measures and wondering what the future holds. An intriguing historical parallel for our current situation can be found in medieval Icelandic sagas, which show how infectious disease affected the households of Iceland and Greenland in the late Viking Age, when they became Christian a millennium ago. In Eyrbyggja saga, the arrival in Iceland of a boatload of people from Ireland, the Hebrides and Norway is followed by illness and death. The first to die, a vigorous Hebridean woman called Þorgunna, instructs that her bedding should be burned after she dies. Her command is ignored, leading to further deaths. The theme comes up again in the story of Guðríðr, which appears in both Grœnlendinga saga…

Tucked away behind blocks of flats in central Bristol, on a street close to the harbour, stands a row of houses dating back to the early 18th century. As the latest series of A House Through Time demonstrates while focusing on one of these terrace homes, it’s a location with a rich history. It’s often a troubling history, too, because this was a house built by a sea captain, Edmund Saunders, who made a small fortune from the slave trade. Across four episodes, David Olusoga brings the story of the house’s residents through the years up to the present day. It’s a rich tale that takes in figures half lost to time, scandal and centuries of social change. A House Through Time BBC Two / Due to air in late…

The Derbyshire town of Bakewell has lent its name to multiple dessert confections: a frangipane tart, and its cousin, this rich, easy-to-prepare pudding. The precise origins of both, however, remain stubbornly shrouded in culinary mystery. Online sleuths suggest that the 1836 publication The Magazine of Domestic Economy may have featured the first known instance of a recipe for Bakewell Pudding, although people from the town itself believe the creation can be traced back earlier, to the 1820s. In any case, by the mid-19th century, this sweet treat was celebrated both in Britain and in the US. The mix of almonds and jam remains a classic combina- tion of flavours, belying its slightly ramshackle appearance. Difficulty: 3/10 Time: 2 hrs 20min INGREDIENTS 500g packet ready-made puff pastry Good quality raspberry jam…

A new study of intricately decorated ostrich eggs found in Italy suggests that the ancient world was more interconnected than previously thought. By comparing chemical analysis of the shells with 21st-century examples, researchers were able to trace their origins – revealing that the artefacts could have been traded across the Mediterranean, north Africa and the Middle East during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Archaeologists from the universities of Durham and Bristol also attempted to replicate the methods used to produce decorative patterns (such as those seen below), but were unable to do so. Have a story? Please email Matt Elton at matt.elton@immediate.co.uk…

Lockdown aids rain research A project to fill in gaps in Britain’s historical weather data has been completed thanks to thousands of volunteers stuck at home as a result of the coronavirus lockdown. The Rainfall Rescue campaign called on the volunteers – many of whom suddenly had a lot more time on their hands – to digitise data previously only available as scans of original paper records. As a result, 5.25 million measurements of precipitation recorded in rainfall gauges around the UK between 1677 and 1960 have now been collated digitally. Brutal conditions at Nazis’ Alderney camp revealed An archaeological survey of the former site of a Nazi camp on Alderney, in the Channel Islands, has confirmed eyewit- ness testimony of its harsh environment. Lager Sylt was built as a…

Why the Nazis lost In your interesting Why Did the Allies Win WWII? debate (May), a better question to pose might have been: “Why did Germany lose WWII?” Here, as in most cases, the outcome was determined by which side had the strongest economic and logistical capacity. History is full of examples where the losers win most of the battles but ultimately collapse because of materiel shortages resulting from combinations of poor organisation, low industrialisation levels and international isolation. Despite acquiring huge economic assets by 1940, the Nazis squandered them by imposing idiotic ideological practices. These included looting machine tools from factories, disdaining industrialisation (especially in refusing to embrace modern mass-production methods), and relying on inefficient slave labour. Even the relatively small British armaments industry was out-producing the Nazi empire…

Who built Stonehenge – and why? Chosen by Mike Pitts When the crowds have gone and jackdaws strut high above on the megalithic lintels, I can bask in the quiet majesty of Stone- henge. It is 40 years since I first directed an excavation there. In that time, we have learnt more about the monument and the people who erected it than I imagined possible. But can we at last say why Stonehenge was built? I would say no. The more we learn, the greater the mystery. We build our picture of the ancient past from things we dig up and things we imagine. The oldest stories about Stone- henge tell how a wizard flew the stones across from Ireland. You can still make out the imprint of a heel…

You pick up Cromwell’s story in 1536. How much has he changed from the man we met in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies? When The Mirror & the Light begins, it seems a crisis is behind Cromwell; Anne Boleyn’s head has fallen. But the court is still in a panic. History tells us that no more of the queen’s ‘lovers’ would be tried and executed – but no one knew that at the time. Possibly even the king could not tell what might emerge from the tangle of bizarre accusations that flew around in the early summer of 1536. The defeat of the Boleyns clears a path for Cromwell, but the deals he has struck bring their own complications. The months after Anne’s death are crowded, and even…

MEDICINE In the 1110s and 1120s, Stephen of Pisa journeyed to Antioch in search of Arabic knowledge, specifically philosophy. His desire for learning the superior sciences of the Muslims led him into other fields, including medicine and astronomy. In Antioch, he led a team, including a Muslim convert to Christianity, to translate various works into Latin for European scholars. It is thanks to the list Stephen composed as a result of his translation of Ali ibn al-Abbas’s The Complete Book on the Craft of Medicine that many Arabic medical names entered the medieval vocabulary in Europe. Some, such as ‘cornea’ and ‘abdomen’, are still in use today. FALCONRY Emperor Frederick II developed such a passion for falconry that he once decided to author a book on the subject. He first…

It’s probably safe to say few viewers remember which team won University Challenge in 2017, but there’s little doubt which competitors were the stars of the series: Bobby Seagull and Eric Monkman, rivals who became friends. The economics of broadcasting mean the geeky double act that’s followed was probably inevitable, but no less welcome for that. For their latest TV outing, the duo’s focus is on the industrial revolution, the Victorian era and the scientific break- throughs that have done so much to shape our world. The series begins in 1759, with the story of John Harrison’s marine chronometer, the eventual winner of the £20,000 Longitude Prize. The duo use a pedalo to show how the invention transformed travel across the oceans by helping seamen to plot their locations. The…

Scandalous sex lives of the Byrons Lord Byron has gone down in history for being “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. But his ancestors were hardly paragons of virtue either, writes Emily Brand, whose new book explores three generations of Georgian debauchery. She shares a few of the notorious scandals – from shipwrecks to incest. historyextra.com/scandalous-byrons The Norman conquest Why did William the Conqueror win the battle of Hastings? Why is the battle called that, when it was fought somewhere else? And how did Harold II really die? In a recent podcast interview with Marc Morris, we went back to basics on the Norman conquest. historyextra.com/ total-normans The real history behind Mrs America As the new TV drama Mrs America revisits the 1970s fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment…