Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 i History Extra

“There are more worlds in the sky than anyone could count – and I have not yet conquered one of them.” So said Alexander the Great (at least, according to the Greek author Plutarch) on discovering the true size of the universe. And while Alexander’s conquests were limited in their reach, his legend was not – soaring far further than his armies ever could. As Edmund Richardson relates in this month’s cover feature, Alexander’s story took on a life of its own in the centuries after his death until he became the world’s first global icon. Head to page 18 to find out more. The outer limits of Alexander’s empire included what is now Afghanistan, a country that has dominated the news recently following the US withdrawal and the return…

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In his first address to the United Nations in September, US president Joe Biden urged global co-operation through “a decisive decade for our world”. In response, University of Oxford historian Peter Frankopan (@peterfrankopan) asked: “Which was the ‘least decisive decade’ in the past 2,000 years?” As you’d expect, the answers were suitably imaginative and wide-ranging. Rich (@pibasedlifeform) replied: “‘It must be 1430 to 1440. According to the history I was taught at school, nothing happened from Agincourt to the start of the Wars of the Roses – certainly nothing worth talking about.” Priya Kale (@priya_kale) commented: “I always feel that 1900 to 1910 was the boiled egg white of historical decades – insipid, boring, and frankly, no one pays it any attention unless one has no other choice.” Historian and…

“We should salute a towering figure in the history of photography” Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. He has presented numerous BBC series, and his books include The Story of China (Simon & Schuster, 2021). His Twitter handle is @mayavision BBC Photography has changed our world. And this autumn sees the hundredth anniversary of the death of perhaps the greatest photographer: John Thomson, pioneer of social documentary, and founding father of photojournalism. Thomson’s towering achievements in the 1860s include not only producing one of the most important early photographic records of China and the far east, but also creating some of the most famous images of the Victorian poor. Thomson was born in Edinburgh in 1837, the eighth of nine children. After apprenticing to…

LETTER OF THE MONTH Fighting prejudice As an ex-amateur boxer, I was interested in the reference to black American world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in Prejudice on the Pitch (October). My great uncle Alan fought Johnson in Portsmouth on 11 June 1908. Because of Home Office interference, only a “demonstration” bout was permitted – so although a huge crowd attended, the gate money was modest. Johnson took the lot. Ex-mercenary Alan was satisfied to enter the record books. Perhaps of equal interest is George Dixon, the first black boxer to be awarded a world title in 1890. He arrived in Britain claiming to be the world bantamweight champion, but had won it in America. The British regarded this title as belonging to the invincible Edwin “Nunc” Wallace of Birmingham. Dixon…

When news broke that the beautiful, charismatic and wildly popular princess had tragically died, it sparked an outpouring of public anguish on a scale never seen before in Britain. The nation was plunged into mourning as people tried to come to terms with the shock of losing a princess who had captured their hearts from the moment she had appeared on the royal scene. But grief soon turned to retribution, and the monarchy’s public image plummeted. Suddenly, this centuries-old institution looked as if it was at risk of losing all support from its subjects. Sound familiar? To anyone born in the 1980s or earlier, it will be. But the princess in question wasn’t Diana, the late, estranged wife of Prince Charles, who died in a car accident in Paris in…

Marie Favereau on the legacy of the Mongol empire “This was a moment of globalisation that we have completely forgotten. We cannot understand the development of the world from the 16th century up to today, if we don’t understand the Mongol period. This is really the beginning of something completely new. They put together communities, and they created new roads, they also created new trade rules.” Tyler Stovall on the links between freedom and racism “Time and time again I came across a basic contradiction: nations that grounded themselves in the idea of freedom also frequently practised racist practices. The US, for example, championed its revolution against the British as a revolution for freedom, while at the same time practising slavery. And I decided that freedom had to be seen…

What’s the key idea behind your Bronte Mysteries books? I was writing a novel set in the West Yorkshire village of Haworth, and considered including a cameo from the Bronte sisters [who wrote most of their novels in the village] exploring the same mystery as my heroine. At once I realised that the idea deserved its own platform, and the Bronte Mysteries were born. These bright, curious, determined women would have made brilliant sleuths! At what point do we catch up with the Brontes in your latest novel? It’s summer 1846, and the sisters have just had their book of poetry published. They receive a letter from Anne’s former pupil Lydia, who in my story is asking for help after her husband is abducted. Secretly, the siblings travel to London…

Ask a Historian by Greg Jenner W&N, 352 pages, £16.99 This rewarding romp through the highways and byways of the past comes from the pen of a master communicator of public history: Greg Jenner, host of BBC podcasts ‘You’re Dead to Me and Homeschool History. The concept is imaginative: to answer some of the burning questions you’ve always had about history, but didn’t know who to ask. Organised thematically, the book responds to 50 questions submitted by members of the public on topics ranging from the quirky to the serious, the intriguing to the historiographical, and even, occasionally, the irreverent. They include “Who gives historical periods their names?”, “What conditions did members of the Windrush generation meet when they arrived in the UK?” and “What did The Flintstones get right…

“Jane Goodall didn’t see chimpanzees as numbered experiments — she individualised the animal world” Can you tell us a little about your new drama, In the Shadow of Man? It’s a dramatisation of Jane Goodall’s 1971 book, which documents the first 10 years she spent studying chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania. It starts in 1960, but it’s also interwoven with a present-day interview I conducted with Jane, which brings the story up to date in the sense that we’re looking at it through the lens of now. Was a woman going to Africa an unusual thing to do in the sixties? From the age of 10, she had this dream of going to Africa and working with animals – and an opportunity arose. But for a young woman at that time,…

Rebecca Wragg Svkes “Creating the TrowelBlazers project has been so powerful; not only discovering and sharing stories connecting past women pioneers, but also forging new networks, by working alongside the three other brilliant women co-founders.” Rebecca reveals why the 1930s was a golden age for women in archaeology on page 64 Edmund Richardson “Two thousand years ago, the Greek historian Arrian asked: ‘Why does the world need another book about Alexander?’ The answer: from Iceland to Ethiopia, from antiquity to today, everyone finds a different Alexander.” Edmund explores how different cultures have portrayed the ancient conqueror on page 18 Mary Ann Lund “Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy is both a literary masterpiece of the Renaissance, and an acute exploration into just how fragile the human mind can be.” Mary…

Expert speakers Join leading historians live as they discuss their thought-provoking new books, spanning everything from the experiences of a Second World War tank regiment to the real George III Q&A sessions Each 45-minute lecture is followed by a dedicated Q&A session, allowing you to put your historical queries direct to the experts Signed books Pre-order each of the featured books, signed by the author or with a signed bookplate, via independent bookseller Fox Lane Books Easy access Tickets cost £12 and provide remote access from anywhere in the world. Sign up to our newsletter to get advanced notice about our upcoming events: historyextra.com/newsletters Clare Jackson 4 November James Holland 11 November Fatima Manji 18 November Malcolm Gaskill 25 November Amy Jeffs 2 December Andrew Roberts 16 December ONLINE EVENTS…

Fashions may come and go, but new analysis of animal bones found in a cave in Morocco suggests that clothes have been part of human life for tens of thousands of years. Experts examined bones from Contrebandiers Cave, on the country’s Atlantic coast, which is known to have contained the remains of early humans. Some are thought to have been used as tools to transform animal skins into clothing. The rounded ends of one device, known as a spatulate, could have been employed to scrape connective tissues from pelts without damaging the skins themselves, while other tools may have been used for working leather or fur. Bones from animals including jackals, wildcats and sand foxes, meanwhile, appear to bear patterns of marks where the fur was removed, pointing to their…

12 DECEMBER 1870 In Washington, DC, the formerly enslaved Joseph Rainey is sworn in as congressman from South Carolina, becoming the first black American to sit in the House of Representatives. 20 DECEMBER AD 69 Vitellius is pelted with dung and murdered The Roman emperor’s corpse is then dumped in the Tiber The Roman emperor Vitellius was a very fat man. “His besetting sins,” wrote the historian Suetonius, “were luxury and cruelty. He divided his feasts into three, sometimes into four a day: breakfast, luncheon, dinner and a drinking bout; and he was readily able to do justice to all of them through his habit of taking vomiting agents.” On the road he would “snatch bits of meat and cakes amid the altars, almost from the very fire, and devour…

In 321 BC, a very strange procession set out from Babylon. Alexander the Great was on the move. He had died two years earlier, in 323 BC, at the age of 32. Over the course of a few brief years, this astonishing soldier and statesman had transformed the ancient world. He marched his army from Macedon through Asia Minor to Egypt. He defeated the Great King of Persia, Darius III, in two enormous battles. The cities of the Persian empire – Babylon, Susa and Persepolis – fell before him. By his mid-20s, he had more wealth and power than any European in history. But it was not enough. Alexander marched his army further and further east, across the heart of Asia and the mountains of Afghanistan, into battle with elephants…

Matt Elton: How important is it to understand the history of Afghanistan to make sense of recent events? Bijan Omrani: It’s vital. Afghanistan’s long history, and the way in which that history is a result of its geography and ethnic make-up, plays a crucial role in the forces acting on the nation today. The fact that neighbouring regions have frequently tried to treat Afghanistan as a frontier territory, despite its geography not really offering easy territory for it to be a frontier, has been a real motor for the way in which the region has developed. William Dalrymple: The history of foreign interventions in Afghanistan haunts its former invaders, who came to a variety of unsatisfactory ends – whether withdrawal, bankruptcy, or outright defeat – and the Afghans themselves, who…

CHILDHOOD Warring parents led to years of misery Charlotte: Charlotte’s parents’ marriage was one of convenience. The relationship got off to a disastrous start. Upon meeting Caroline, George fled from the room in horror, leaving his prospective bride to reflect: “I think he’s very fat, and he’s nothing as handsome as his portrait.” They separated almost immediately, but not before George had got his new wife pregnant. Charlotte’s birth drove a further wedge between the couple, and the very public spats between the “warring Waleses” blighted the princess’s childhood. Diana: Diana was the third daughter of John Spencer, Viscount Althorp and Frances nee Roche. Her parents had hoped for a boy, and the increasingly pressing desire for an heir added strain to their relationship. The birth of their son, Charles,…

Ellie Cawthorne: You argue that “most, possibly even all, human beings everywhere truly believe in ghosts”. Why do you think humans are inclined to believe that the dead might return to exist among us? Irving Finkel: In the modern world, ghosts have a funny status. Most people don’t wear their ghosts on their sleeves, because there’s a good chance they’d be branded idiots for believing in such things. But when you look into the matter historically, we have plenty of testimonies concerning ghosts, coming from all over the world and covering a huge span of time. They date right back to the very first written material that we have – cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq, developed before 3000 BC. And this earliest written evidence is…

Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain by Jeremy Paxman William Collins, 320 pages, £25 In a grand historical sweep from the 16th century to the present day, Jeremy Paxman’s latest book provides a new account of coal’s role in the rise and (in some respects) fall of modern Britain. In his customary sharp, crisp prose, and with a particular focus on the past 250 years, he charts the way in which coal drove the British industrial revolution, transforming a small island into an industrial powerhouse at the head of the global economy. As he heads through the 20th century, Paxman weaves this history into that of the two world wars, the rise of the trade unions and the labour movement, and waves of social unrest and economic…

White Malice: The CIA and the Neocolonisation of Africa by Susan Williams C Hurst & Co, 688 pages, £25 As African states gained independence from colonial rule during the 1950s and 1960s, the world’s rival power blocs jostled to secure influence and control. While the Cold War reached a peak elsewhere, it also spread into African arenas. With its vast mineral resources, the continent was considered too valuable a prize to lose, and the position that each newly independent government adopted towards the west or the Soviet bloc was seen as key. Intelligence agencies on all sides were hard at work, bribing and plotting. Susan Williams’ main focus is on the chaos that erupted in Congo after its independence from Belgian rule in June 1960, and the fate of its…

EUROPE The Burgundians: A Vanished Empire by Bart Van Loo (Head of Zeus, 624 pages, £30) European superstate By the end of the 15th century, Burgundy had reached its day of reckoning, undone by poor military and marital decisions and dynastic wrangling. Yet for over 1,000 years, the kingdom – then duchy – had dominated Europe, influencing its politics and philosophy, trade and traditions. This suitably epic account of Burgundy’s rise and fall has proved a huge success since it was first published in Belgium in 2019. LANGUAGE The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen (Profile, 304 pages, £12.99) Root words All of the surviving texts written in Old English, the language brought to Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the fifth century, total just over 3 million words. These…

Hitler’s global war Klaus Schmider on why the Nazi leader chose to join Japan’s battle with the US following the attack on Pearl Harbor Beatlemania Dominic Sandbrook highlights the social changes reflected in the Fab Four’s music Books of the year A selection of Britain’s best-loved historians pick their favourite reads of 2021 Festive food Annie Gray describes the contents of Christmas dinners in centuries past…

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EYE-OPENER The next chapter Chronicling the mythic adventures of a Sumerian king and dating back to the second millennium BC, the Epic of Gilgamesh is thought to be the world’s oldest work of literature. Now one of the tablets used to record a version of the story – the 3,500-year-old artefact pictured right – has returned to the region in which it was created. The section is written in the Akkadian language of ancient Mesopotamia – a region of western Asia that included what’s now Iraq. It tells the story of the titular king relating his dreams to his mother, who interprets them as foretelling the arrival of a new companion. The tablet’s location was unknown for more than a decade after it was looted from a museum in Iraq…

What was the Statute of Westminster, and when was it enshrined? The Statute of Westminster was a key moment in the journey of Britain’s dominions towards independence. It passed through parliament in December 1931 – 90 years ago this month – enshrining in law the 1926 Balfour Declaration’s recognition that Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, Newfoundland, New Zealand and South Africa were equal, not subordinate, to Britain, freely associating as members of a “Commonwealth of Nations”. The statute removed Westminster’s right to legislate for the dominions, thereby establishing their legislative independence. They could now legislate beyond as well as within their own borders, join the League of Nations (except Newfoundland), conclude treaties with other states, declare war on their own behalf and develop diplomatic representation abroad. New Zealand was…

• Seventh century AD The start of the Muslim conquests of Afghanistan, which replaced a range of faiths including Buddhism and Hinduism and greatly influenced the culture and religion of the country over the following centuries. • 1747 Ahmad Shah Durrani (pictured right), often regarded as the founder of the modern state of Afghanistan, is appointed king. He reigns for 26 years, during which he extends his rule throughout the region. • 1839 The British empire and East India Company intervene in a succession dispute between Shah Shujah, who they had installed in Kabul, and Dost Mohammad, sparking the First Anglo-Afghan War. • 1842 The war ends in defeat for the British empire and the East India Company. It is the first skirmish in the “Great Game”, Britain and Russia’s…

The World According to Colour by James Fox Allen Lane, 320 pages, £25 Human culture attaches meaning to colours, then uses those colours to articulate and explore new meanings. In this brief, compelling book, James Fox shows that the meanings connected to particular colours aren’t arbitrary but are instead materially, socially and culturally determined. Once black became equated with darkness (though in some ways it’s anything but), its association with fear became cemented. In blue – hard to detach from the beauty of lapis lazuli in rings and Renaissance painting – lies discovery: of precious stones from the east, and of the Earth itself, viewed from space. Purple is most striking for its rarity and evasiveness, the improbability of red encountering blue in the natural world. The powerful and astonishingly…

The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages by Katherine Harvey Reaktion Books, 296 pages, £20 For a book about the medieval era, The Fires of Lust is surprisingly timely. In September 2021, the US state of Texas signed a bill into law that severely restricts abortion. Some commentators have lambasted the legislation, which bans abortion at around six weeks, as “medieval”. Yet, as Katherine Harvey demonstrates in her meticulously researched book, such legislation is a very modern phenomenon. The medieval church was actually rather lenient about terminations performed before what was termed the “quickening” – foetal movement that becomes detectable at between 15 and 20 weeks of pregnancy. Well-meaning critique of so-called “medieval” legislation belongs, in Harvey’s words, to “a long tradition of associating the Middle Ages with…

IN PROFILE Emile Zola was a French novelist, playwright and journalist. He also played a key role in the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer wrongly convicted of treason. Zola won acclaim for his 20-volume Les Rougon-Macquart series of novels about the history of a family during the reign of Napoleon III. He died in Paris, aged 62, from carbon monoxide poisoning, thought to have been caused by an improperly vented chimney. “By accusing the French army and government of obstruction of justice and anti-Semitism, Zola endangered his career, and indeed his life” Michael Rosen is a children’s author, poet and broadcaster. His latest book is Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS (Ebury, 2021) When did you first hear about Zola?…