Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i History Extra

"The Great War, 1914–1918. We see those dates so often on memorials and in museums, in books and on TV, that it’s easy to forget that this four-year span was not predetermined. The actors of the time did not know when the conflict would end, and some had the power to shorten it dramatically. That, at least, is the contention of Holger Afflerbach, who argues in this month’s cover feature that there were opportunities to bring the war to an earlier close, if only leaders had chosen to grasp them. There were undoubtedly arguments against an earlier settlement, but the human cost of prolonging the slaughter – an average of 11,000 lives lost every day – was considerable, and the turmoil that resulted from the war haunted Europe for decades.…

LETTER OF THE MONTH Female trailblazer I am an avid reader of the magazine, and especially enjoy it when you include articles about the ancient Egyptians. I was fascinated by the recent feature on Egypt’s greatest pharaoh (July), which quite rightly focused on Ramesses II – even if his greatness was self-proclaimed. Toby Wilkinson’s piece explored the merits of five further pharaohs, all of whom deserve a mention as contenders for title of the greatest. However, I was disappointed that not one woman was included – particularly Hatshepsut. Not only did she live in a male-dominated world and society, but she also led her forces south to conquer the Kush and Nubian armies, which led to peaceful times for the Egyptian people. Hatshepsut organised trading routes and, in particular, a…

KING FURIOUS!! DUKE WEDS LOWBORN LOVER IN SECRET …SPARKS NEW LAW HAUNTED HOUSE!! The ‘ghost’ who fuelled a murder enquiry Writer v warrior “My husband DUELLED with military man to defend my honour” – who came out worse? Prime minister dumps wife for “commonest creature” …and his wife is pregnant! CROOKED THIEF-TAKER JAILED Fraudster unmasked – after swiping ££££ rewards NAUGHTY NUPTIALS!! KING'S RANDY BROTHER WEDS WIDOWED COMMONER In November 1771, Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, handed his brother, George III, a note. In it he confessed his marriage to a young widow, Anne Horton (née Luttrell), in a secret ceremony. The horrified king demanded that the couple leave court, declaring that the alliance of prince and commoner “must inevitably ruin him and distress his relations” Within days, gossip…

Snail's pace race The winner of the first automobile race in America clocked an average speed of just 7mph. In 1895, the Chicago Times-Herald sponsored a race for motorised vehicles from the centre of Chicago to the small town of Evanston and back. Six set off, though one had to withdraw soon after the start when it hit a horse. The winner, Frank Duryea, driving a motorised wagon of his own creation, completed the 54-mile route in 7 hours and 53 minutes. Price war On 20 September 1974, a 67-strong Native American tribe, the Kootenai, formally declared war on the US in a bid to draw attention to the loss of their land over the years, and to the appalling conditions in which they were obliged to live. The ‘war’…

Ellie Cawthorne: You write in the introduction to your book that you want it “to set out why people in Britain today should care about their nation’s imperial past”. Why do you think that this is so important? Charlotte Lydia Riley: Beyond the fact that I’m a historian, and I think that trying to know more about history is always worthwhile, I believe there are many reasons why we should care about our imperial past, specifically in Britain. There’s been a peak and a trough in knowledge about empire. For a long time, it was a very obvious and explicit part of our popular culture. Schoolchildren would study under a map on the wall that had the imperial territories marked out in pink, and people were often very celebratory about…

In 1418, the wealthy burghers of Zurich were startled by the sudden appearance of a camp of foreigners outside their city’s walls. The new arrivals were, according to a later chronicler, “strange / and never before seen in this land”. Although their clothes were ragged, they paid for all of their food and wore much gold jewellery. People believed them to be exiles from Egypt. Over the following decades, similar tales of these exotic travellers would emanate from cities as far afield as Barcelona (1447) and Vilnius (1501). These accounts recorded the arrival of the Roma people, and the beginnings of their troubled 600-year history in Europe. This volume is less about the Roma themselves than about European imaginings and prejudice toward them. This approach is necessary because the Roma,…

JAMES LIN is impressed by a scholarly but readable look at what the tombs of ancient Chinese people reveal about past and contemporary beliefs and culture This insightful book examines how one of the major political and economic powers of the 21st century came into being, using archaeological evidence, surviving records and texts discovered in recent excavations. Eleven tombs and one large sacrificial deposit, each representing a particular moment in Chinese history, are examined. Together they tell the story of the three millennia leading up to the unification of China in 221 BC by the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. The burials selected for the book span diverse geographical and cultural regions. Maps of the burial sites are included to make the geographical context clearer. A variety of ambitions and…

1. A pioneering man of print Considering my job role, I couldn’t fail to be interested in reading about Samuel Jules Celestine Edwards, Britain’s first black editor. Kavita Puri shares his little-known life story on page 18. 2. Slow and steady In this month’s Did You Know? I was fascinated to read that the winner of the first car race in the US managed an average speed of just 7mph (page 45). Formula 1 it certainly wasn’t. 3. Booze cruises There are lots of great details in Robert Blackmore’s piece on Tudor traders. One that particularly stuck out to me was the fact that in just one year (1605) 1.6 million pints of beer were shipped to Europe from ports in Kent (page 62).…

"In an inclusive public culture, Blake’s is a great, passionate human voice" PUTTING AWAY THE CAMPING GEAR AFTER THIS year’s Glastonbury Festival, I found myself reflecting on the idea of alternative cultures. Since its origins, Glastonbury has always been political, and hosts a huge number of side discussions, concerts and seminars. It still gives money to Greenpeace, WaterAid and Oxfam, in addition to a host of local charities. As a festival of music and arts, it plays an important part in public discourse in these deeply polarised times – when, for instance, a journalist from The Times recently argued that the humanities are a waste of effort. I was involved with festival founder Michael Eavis’s Woods Stage this year, collaborating with West Country singer-songwriter Steve Knightley on a show exploring…

Tudor traders On 21 July 1588, the English navy first engaged the Spanish Armada in battle off Devon. The very next day, as the Armada sailed east along the channel to rendezvous with the army of the Duke of Parma in the Spanish Netherlands and invade England, a tiny ship named the Wren left its home port of Sandwich, in Kent, carrying cloth bound for French Calais. On 23 July, the two fleets clashed again off Portland Bill in Dorset. The day after that, another small vessel, the Penny Pot, carried beer to Vlissingen in the Dutch province of Zeeland. Queen Elizabeth I’s England is often presented as isolated from Europe by the Reformation and war. The story goes that the Tudor kingdom ‘went global’, projecting new maritime military and…

On display in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is a simple cotton sack (pictured below) embroidered with a poignant story of an enslaved woman who filled it with items for her daughter, who was sold away at the age of nine. Tiya Miles’ All That She Carried, published in the US in 2021 to extraordinary acclaim, is a history of this remarkable object – and of the Black women named on it, who carried the sack from the 1850s to the 1980s. That Ashley’s sack, as Miles calls it, is known at all is a miracle. Dorothy, daughter of Ruth Middleton – the woman who embroidered it – died in the 1980s; to Miles’s knowledge, she has no descendants. Two decades later, the sack was…

“The notion of sexually integrated combat has never commended itself to military leaders anywhere on Earth at any time in history,” claimed a cocksure American congressman in 1979. This new history of women in the combat zone comprehensively gives the lie to such lazy assumptions. Marshalling her history into three stages, Sarah Percy argues that pre-20th-century battlefields and sieges were rife with women supplying, ministering to and fighting alongside men. Highly militarised nations such as Dahomey (within the borders of what’s now Benin) had female regiments. It was only as European militaries became more organised, and an often-bogus distinction between the home front and front line was conceived, that the all-male warzone became considered normal. Sexism, racism, class snobbery and the fear of having to extend citizenship rights then combined…

What’s the overarching idea of History on the Edge? It’s about stories that have slipped through the cracks of history. It’s investigative journalism, but looking into things that happened in the past that people should know about – particularly if the stories have a resonance with things happening today. One of the stories is about the 1980 Denmark Place fire in London, in which 37 people at a late-night drinking den and a salsa club, both unlicensed, died. What did you discover in this episode? Making the programme, we were very lucky to have the help of a former police officer and a former fireman, who gave us a real insight into how the investigation into the fire – which was the result of a heinous arson attack – was…

WALKING FOR RIGHTS In 1932, a group of hikers charted a course over the high moorlands of the Peak District. This was no ordinary recreational ramble, but a mass trespass – a protest against the lack of public access to open countryside. The Kinder Scout trespass has since been mythologised as a key moment in the ‘right to roam’ movement, but does it deserve that title? Ben Anderson joined me to discuss this rule-breaking walk, and how we should remember it today. historyextra.com/kinder-pod ONE MAN, ONE VOTE A couple of decades after the Luddites’ campaign, Britain was once again the stage for a dynamic working-class protest movement. This time, the aim was not to protect jobs, but to attain voting rights and political reforms. As Joan Allen revealed in an…

Across 1 Plantagenet king who spent nearly all of his 12th-century 10-year reign away from England (7,1) 5 City often considered to be the birthplace of western civilisation (6) 10 Flanders birthplace of John of Gaunt (5) 11/21 Queen of England whose wedding was on the same day as the execution of Thomas Cromwell (9,6) 12 National park established in 1951, in what was then British-controlled Tanganyika (9) 13 The former colony of the ____ East Indies became Indonesia in 1949 (5) 14 One of these, usually conducted each decade, was not taken in Britain in 1941 (6) 16 An archaic Christian term for anyone who followed the religion of Islam (7) 18 A European queen reigning from 1948 until her abdication (in favour of her daughter) in 1980 (7) 20 Battle of 479 BC, a turning point in…

Broadcaster Ashley John-Baptiste chooses IN PROFILE Walter Tull was a professional footballer and British Army officer of Afro-Caribbean descent. He played for Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town, among other teams, and was only the third person with a mixed race heritage to play in the top flight of the English Football League. He later served as a second lieutenant in the First World War but was killed in action in 1918, aged just 29. “ He led 26 men on a nightraiding party and was recommended for a Military Cross after being killed in action ” When did you first hear about Walter Tull? When I was asked to present a piece about him for The One Show in 2019 – the film marked an anniversary for the charity Action For Children.…

Emily Brand “The scandals of the gossip-hungry Georgian era might make even modern politicians blush, but they can tell us so much about the values and anxieties that underpinned British society at the time.” Emily reveals eight scandals that rocked Georgian society on page 27 Charlotte Lydia Riley “My new book explores the many and varied ways in which the empire suffused British society, politics and culture, and the long hangover from British imperial rule today.” Charlotte unpicks the complicated legacy of the British empire on page 66 Christopher Harding “It is the fear that stalks every resident of Tokyo today: the coming of the next big earthquake. The 1923 earthquake stands as a vivid reminder that the flipside of Japanese culture’s worship of nature is a deep sense of…

THE CONVERSATION "Britain’s first black editor achieved so much in such a short life" WHEN I RECENTLY CAME ACROSS THE MAN considered Britain’s first black editor, I was surprised that I had never before heard his name. Samuel Jules Celestine Edwards was born in Dominica, the youngest of 10 children, near the end of the 1850s. In 1870 he travelled to North America and then, some seven years later, to Edinburgh, where he worked as a labourer. He later spent time in Sunderland, where he reconnected with his Christian faith, practising as a Methodist, and became a vocal proponent of temperance. He then moved south to study theology at King’s College London. In a photograph from the university archives dated 1888, he is noticeably the only person of colour pictured…

November 1314 Robert the Bruce gives the Anglo-Scottish nobility an ultimatum: to support his kingship or be disinherited. 1318 Bruce captures the English stronghold of Berwick-on-Tweed. 1318 and 1319 Bruce launches major raids into the north of England as far as Pontefract in Yorkshire. March 1322 Following a bitter feud, Edward II has Thomas, Earl of Lancaster beheaded. Lancaster is accused of colluding with Robert the Bruce. 1327 Edward II is deposed. His son is crowned Edward III. He will later institute a new method of managing Anglo-Scottish politics echoing his grandfather Edward I, ‘Hammer of the Scots’. 1328 The English resign all claims to sovereignty of Scotland. They also consent to a marriage agreement between Bruce’s son David and the English princess Joanna. This marks the end of the…

Fifth century AD In the confusion of the post-Roman era, many polities emerges, some claiming connections across the North Sea. Early seventh century The Anglian realms of Deira and Bernicia enter into a dynastic union to form the kingdom of Northumbria, whose name referred to the area north of the Humber. 632-33 Alarmed at Northumbria’s growing influence, a combined Welsh and Mercian force defeats and kills Northumbrian king Edwin at the battle of Hatfield. 634 Bernician prince Oswald defeats Cadwallon of Gwynedd at the battle of Heavenfield. He becomes arguably Northumbria’s greatest ruler. 664 At the Synod of Whitby, King Oswiu decrees that Northumbria will calculate the date of Easter according to the customs of Rome, rather than following the method then used at Iona. 20 May 685 Northumbrian hegemony…

In the mid-1590s, up to 4,000 tonnes of quicklime (calcium oxide) and slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) were dispatched each year from Dover to the Netherlands. Made by heating limestone – like chalk, without oxygen – this was used in mortar and cement as well as to deacidify soil. During the 12 months from September 1598, around 288 tonnes of cast-iron cannons called demi-culverins, sakers, minions and falcons were shipped from Rochester harbour. Most were taken by the Dutch to Amsterdam for the war effort against the Spanish. In 1605, the year of the gunpowder plot, about 1,595,000 pints of beer were shipped to Europe from Kent alone – mostly through the port of Sandwich. Some ships specialising in this trade had appropriate names, like the Drunkard of Dieppe. The same…

Elizabeth Fremantle discusses Disobedient, a novel reimagining of the life of renowned 17th-century Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi What drew you to write about Artemisia Gentileschi? She was an extraordinary woman of rare talent and determination who overcame both rape and torture to make an indelible mark on history and art. Also, her story resonated with me on a personal level. Your book is described as a ‘feminist retelling’ of her life. How did you reframe her story? Art historians resist judging Gentileschi’s work as a response to her rape, seeking to judge it on its own terms. But the work of a novelist is different, and for me the violence in her paintings – so visceral and shocking – can only have been drawn from experience. I saw her…

The Tudors have long dominated the field of historical study. It is regrettable, however, that the family’s improbable rise from humble Welsh origins has escaped the attentions of generations of historians. To mark 500 years since Henry VII’s accession, in 1985 Professor Ralph Griffiths sought to rectify this oversight, collaborating with former PhD student Roger Thomas on the first accessible account of this remarkable chapter. The result is an engrossing, authoritative overview of the much-neglected earlier Tudors, introducing us to figures who paved the way for their more-famous descendants. It was through encountering such characters that I first developed an enduring interest in this topic. I was fascinated by figures such as Rhys and Gwilym ap Tudur, who posed as carpenters to seize the king’s castle, and Owen Tudor, the…

We know that the Earth is a sphere. It seems so obvious that it’s tempting to take that knowledge for granted – but we shouldn’t. The story of what James Hannam calls “humanity’s first great scientific achievement” is more complicated – and interesting – than you might have imagined. Through 23 chapters packed with compelling personalities, Hannam whizzes us around the globe between historical conceptions of our planet, from ancient Mesopotamia (a round disc) via ancient China (a square set in a spherical heaven) to our modern oblate spheroid. Challenging the commonsense intuition that we live on a basically flat surface raised all sorts of puzzling questions for pre-modern scholars: if the Earth is a sphere, what keeps it all together? Why don’t people on the bottom fall off? If…

The view from the top of Lincoln Cathedral, which towers over the city and surrounding countryside, is surely as stunning today as in centuries past. On a clear day you can see three counties: Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. Tucked away in the East Midlands, Lincoln is a city steeped in history. It takes its name from Lindum Colonia, believed to be a Latinised version – it was originally colonised by the Romans – of the Celtic name Lindon. Famous for its cathedral and castle, it now has a third must-see historical attraction, the International Bomber Command Centre, which opened in January 2018. A “tale of two cities”, as my walking tour guide, Brant, observed, Lincoln is divided between an ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ city. The two are connected by a picturesque…

Across 1 Oates 4 Saunders 10 Telegraph 11 Blake 12 NORAD 13 Tony Blair 14 Katanga 16 Inches 19 Mehmet 21 Tourney 23 Abu Simbel 25/1D Mavia of Tanukh 27 Nehru 28 Chou En-lai 29 Rotation 30 Stane Down 2 Tyler 3 Segedunum 5 Ashanti 6 Nabob 7 El Alamein 8 Spears 9 Martha 15 Trebuchet 17 Coulmiers 18 Dynamite 20 Tobacco 21 Talbot 22 Ragnar 24 Inuit 26 Volta Five winners of 1964: Eyes of the Storm N Jones, Somerset; H Anstey, Norfolk; P Sullivan, Wiltshire; A Brown, Shropshire; C Dunford, Wellingborough…