Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2020 i History Extra

“There’s a joke doing the rounds on social media that historians of the future will have to be sorted into which part of 2020 they specialise in. Certainly, we seem to be living in extraordinary times, with a devastating pandemic now overlapping with the Black Lives Matter protests across the globe. In the latter instance, history is very much part of the story, with protestors highlighting centuries of racial inequity, and fervent debates taking place about the future of statues of those involved in slavery and other imperial misdeeds. For us the global quickly became local, as the statue of Edward Colston that was toppled a few weeks ago stood right outside our office. While people in Bristol and beyond have expressed strong and conflicting views on its removal, it’s…

Do statues lead to vital debate, or inflame dangerous passions? And who should they commemorate? Those are just some of the issues being debated on social media following the events of June’s Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol. Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson), a great admirer of Winston Churchill – whose statue has been targeted by demonstrators – believes that “statues teach us about our past, with all its faults. To tear them down would be to lie about our history and impoverish the education of generations to come.” Robert Saunders (@redhistorian) argued that “statues inhabit the present, not the past, and are subject to its jurisdiction. Our relationship with the past, and what we choose to honour, can change over time. It is not an offence against history to reflect those…

Eric Lee’s article The Fight to the End... and Beyond (June) was highly informative, casting light on what was in Britain, until now, a largely unknown Second World War event – the battle of Texel. This battle, which ended on 20 May 1945, was the Nazis’ last battle. But was it the last battle of the Second World War in Europe? I am aware that, at Odzak in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a fierce battle took place, which started on 19 April 1945 and finally ended on 25 May 1945, 17 days after VE Day. It was fought between members of the Croatian Ustashe (which had collaborated with the Nazis during the war) and Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans, the latter of which eventually won. Meanwhile, the last German surrender in Europe occurred on the…

1 The garrotting panic of 1862 Victorian London was a sprawling metropolis, an imperial capital, the nerve-centre of the mightiest nation on Earth. Yet it was also a city wracked by fear. Confronted by rapid industrialisation, crowded slums and graphic media reports of a thriving criminal underbelly, many Londoners may have come to the conclusion that danger lurked in every shadow. And a single mugging in 1862 apparently confirmed their fears. On 17 July, Hugh Pilkington, the Liberal MP for Blackburn, was walking home from a late sitting in the Commons when he was choked and robbed (he survived the attack). The press latched on to this incident and ramped up its coverage on street violence, despite no indication that criminal activity had increased. The public panicked, believing that criminals…

David Carpenter on medieval king Henry III “Henry III hasn’t received as much attention as other medieval kings because he’s not so easy to categorise. But that’s one of the main reasons to study him, and he’s an absolutely fascinating king to study. And because of the amazing source material available, we can know more about Henry III than perhaps any other medieval monarch. The sources paint a picture of Henry as a man of great piety and a connoisseur of art, but also someone with a sense of humour.” Nicola Cornick on the mysterious death of Tudor noblewoman Amy Robsart “I don’t think we can ever get away from Amy’s end, the sadness of her death, and the fact that the mystery will probably never be solved. But I…

Shushma Malik Nero’s literary afterlife is unlike that of any other emperor. From being vilified as an Antichrist by early Christians to being idolised as a supreme decadent in the 19th century, he has horrified, delighted and electrified audiences for centuries. Shushma reappraises the infamous Roman emperor on page 34 Peter Frankopan As an educator and an academic, I think a large part of my job is getting the next generation to be thinking and asking questions, rather than trying to come up with answers myself. Peter offers his verdict on the state of global history studies on page 29 Hannah-Rose Murray My research rediscovers and amplifies African-American testimony in the British Isles, from performances and speeches to written narratives of their experiences of slavery in the US. Hannah-Rose describes…

The British historian Justin Champion, who was emeritus professor at Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), has died after a long illness. He was 59. Champion studied at Churchill College, University of Cambridge and joined RHUL’s history department in 1992. He was an avid proponent of public history and, while department head from 2005 to 2010, established the UK’s first MA in the subject. He was president of the Historical Association from 2014 to 2017, and a year later was awarded the Medlicott Medal for outstanding services to history. “It was an honour and a pleasure getting to know Justin while he was president of the Historical Association,” said its chief executive officer, Rebecca Sullivan. “He was key in our move to cover more diverse histories, particularly black British histories.…

“The deadliest civil war ever fought is now almost completely forgotten” In the 1860s, the world watched in horror as the United States slid into the most deadly conflict in that nation’s history. One and a half centuries later, and the memory of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the great armies that fought in blue and grey uniforms still burns bright in our collective memory. Yet in the same years another civil war was being fought, one that has been almost completely forgotten in the west. That conflict lasted far longer and was fought on a considerably larger scale than the war in America. It raged for 14 years, from 1850 to 1864, and was the most deadly civil war ever fought, yet it has almost no name…

“The US is blind to injustices that history has bequeathed black people” Watching the Black Lives Matter movement unfolding in the States takes me back to the turbulent days of 1968, the assassination of Martin Luther King and the demonstrations that led up to Richard Nixon’s election as US president. I was a student then, and that December in Virginia I was introduced to a woman who as a young person had met someone born enslaved in the antebellum south. It’s not so long ago, is it? History is always there, even when unseen, under the surface, running along like water under ice. And sometimes, like now, it just bursts out. My generation thought that the civil rights movement would signal the inevitable progress to more just and equal societies.…

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In the late 19th century, the French philosopher Ernest Renan wrote a seven-volume history of Christianity. It was a vast, wide-ranging publication, spanning centuries and continents. Yet one of these volumes was dedicated entirely to the reign of one man: the Roman emperor Nero. Nero ascended to power in AD 54 following the death of his step-father, Claudius. Fourteen chaotic, blood-spattered years later it was all over, Nero dying – perhaps by his own hand – at the climax of a rebellion against his rule. But this, Renan said, wasn’t the last the world would see of him. Nero would return to Earth again, and his second coming would signal the time of the apocalypse. “The name for Nero has been found,” the philosopher declared. “Nero shall be the Antichrist.”…

I’m loving Dynasty by Tom Holland, and coincidentally I’ve got Normandy ‘44 by his bro James Holland lined up next. @Threnody2 Pompeii by Mary Beard, which I bought in the Herculaneum gift shop back when we could still travel the world. @HarryWatson63 The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan – an ambitious re-evaluation of world history, from ancient to modern times. Marlena Cîşleanu After having it sat on my bookshelf for over four years, I’ve finally plucked up the courage to tackle Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich... Anthony Silk How Was it for You? Women, Sex, Love and Power in the 1960s by Virginia Nicholson. Over 50 years on, we continue to face a lot of issues our parents were facing then. @anne75114040 The excellent Mistresses: Sex and…

" Grace pleaded with her father to go to the rescue, despite his initial refusal because of the almost gale-force winds" When did you first hear about Grace Darling? During the Second World War, I was evacuated from Newcastle, which was being bombed, to the village of Bamburgh on the Northumberland coast. I went to school there, and everyone knew about Grace because she was the local heroine. So I’ve known about her since the age of five. What kind of woman was Darling? I identified with Grace from the minute I learnt about her, and she was a real inspiration to me. She was a non-conformist who flouted convention, and she did a man’s work, helping her lighthouse-keeper father William at Longstone Lighthouse. It’s still flashing away on the…

Bearing only the enigmatic title Portrait of a Woman , this painting’s subject long remained a mystery – but has now been revealed as Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister. A team of experts analysed the wood on which the image was painted, matching it to that used for a portrait of Lady Herbert, wife of Mary’s great-grandson, which was part of a set that decorated Windsor Castle 300 years ago. Archival research, meanwhile, revealed inscriptions identifying both portraits. Although they were painted at the same time (probably in the 1630s, when Mary was long dead), it’s thought that Mary’s portrait (now part of the Royal Collection) was separated from the rest due to her being painted in 16th-century, rather than 17th-century, dress. Have a story? Please email Matt Elton at matt.elton@immediate.co.uk…

1 AUGUST 1714 Queen Anne suffers a fatal stroke The monarch’s death marks the end of the House of Stuart By the summer of 1714, Queen Anne was in dreadful health. She was only 49 but seemed older, swollen by dropsy and half-crippled by gout. To cap it all, she took political stresses personally – and this was a summer of intense political turmoil. In recent years Anne had relied heavily on Robert Harley, who is sometimes described as the first prime minister in all but name. But their relations had long since broken down, and in July she told the cabinet that he had come to work drunk and late, and treated her with “ill manner, indecency and disrespect”. On 27 July she sacked him as Lord Treasurer, and…

Poisoning his brother Nero’s earliest alleged crime was the poisoning of his step-brother, Britannicus. As the natural son of Claudius, the previous emperor, Britannicus may have been expected to assume power. Unfortunately for him, however, he was only 13 when his father died in AD 54. And so it was Nero, whom Claudius had adopted as his son in AD 50, who became emperor. Nero, we are told, was wary of his step-brother, fearing that he might go on to threaten his position. And so, at a dinner in early AD 55, Nero took matters into his own hands, apparently poisoning Britannicus’s drink. When the boy was taken ill, the emperor assured everyone that he had suffered an epileptic fit and would recover. Britannicus died later that night. Murdering his…

Murmurs spread around London’s Finsbury Chapel, quickly followed by shouts and the thunderous stamping of feet. “It’s not true!” an audience member cried out, his voice ringing out loudly from the almost 3,000-strong crowd. It was May 1846. Standing on the platform addressing the audience was radical activist and formerly enslaved African-American Frederick Douglass, who had provoked the audience member’s wrath with his attacks on slavery. Douglass had listed countless facts to prove his assertions. With blistering rhetoric, he argued that each American enslaver should be “surrounded by a wall of antislavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and his system glaring down in letters of light”. He spoke passionately and forcefully because his cause was urgent: Douglass knew that as he spoke in London, black…

It’s certainly been a strange summer for the world of publishing. But if there’s one small silver lining on our current situation, it’s that some of us have more time for reading than ever before. And as we move towards autumn, there’s plenty for book-lovers to look forward to. The news agenda has been dominated recently by the Black Lives Matter protests, and there’s plenty of books coming up that provide vital historical background for understanding current debates. I’m especially interested to learn more about the game-changing people of colour that shaped our nation in Patrick Vernon and Angelina Osborne’s 100 Great Black Britons. Olivette Otele’s African Europeans, revealing the long and untold history of Africans on this continent, promises to be another enlightening read. Meanwhile, the Middle Ages continues…

Ellie Cawthorne: Your new book surveys a vast array of magical beliefs throughout human history. How do you define magic? Chris Gosden: My definition of magic is a human openness to the universe. And a universe’s openness to people. Let me give you some examples. In Oxford’s Bodleian Library, there are 80,000 astrological diagnoses, dating from between the late 16th century and about 1660. Around 60,000 people visited three astrologers and asked questions about a whole range of things, from health and career choices to lost children. The astrologers were highly methodical in how they recorded these consultations – they made a note of the question, drew an astrological chart of where various bodies were in the heavens at the time a particular event occurred, and recorded a diagnosis. In…