All,
Just a quick post to say I have tried to tidy up the front page a bit. As you can see there are now two new pages – revision and debates. I have taken the posts on these topics from the newsfeed, and re-posted them there. The aim is make the feed below only for enrichment and history in the news.
Mr Kydd.
Summer 2013 – The Russia season
(part one)
Welcome back Year Twelve, and especially welcome to your Russian dictatorships course. To get you in the mood for the extraordinary journey that you are about to undertake the History Society (the attached image is of an earlier meeting) will be running a series of enrichment programmes after school in T10 from 3.30 this term.
There will be cake…
See you there.
Mr Kydd.
It was Captain Cook in 1770 who first brought the outside world to Australia – well perhaps. However, this article from Australian Geographic presents the possiblitity of earlier contact and trade. This is one of the ninth century Kilwa coins found on a beach in Northern Australia in 1944. It raises the possibility that the Aboriginal people were part of a trading network hundreds of years before Cook, which reached to East Africa. Nothing is certain yet, and research continues. Indeed, there are certainly plenty of other ideas about how the coins got there. However,if this was the case it would a significant change in our understanding of the history of Australia.
Mr Kydd.
There is a super little article here from the BBC website by Andy Walker. It highlights the apparent coincidence that in 1913 Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived Vienna at the same time. The article rightly suggests that this in part was a reflection of the city at that time stating that – “Vienna was its own kind of cultural soup, attracting the ambitious from across the empire”…and continuing “you didn’t have a tremendously powerful central state… If you wanted to find a place to hide out in Europe where you could meet lots of other interesting people then Vienna would be a good place to do it.”
Perhaps. It is certainly attractive to see Vienna fulfilling the role filled in part by the internet in intellectual debate today. I would add however that perhaps this article misses a point. A lot of these soon to be famous men would have remained in the footnotes of history if it was not for the war that broke out in Europe the following year. This not only ended Vienna’s role as the melting pot capital of a multi-national empire, but it also, to quote Trotsky himself acted “as the locomotive of change”.
Have read and see what you think.
Mr Kydd.
As many of you know, this weekend marks the 7oth anniversary of the German surrender at Stalingrad. It is, in itself, a battle of huge significance worthy of study and report. As the most famous text on the topic – Antony Beevor’s 2007 Stalingrad – states, “The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin’s determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, was brutally destructive to both armies. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitler’s territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline.” I have a copy which I am happy to lend to you if you are interested.
It is thought up to 1.2 million people died in this key battle, and it is perhaps this scale that has led to some excellent journalism to mark the date. A good place to start might be the BBC’s news report here and their picture slideshow here. If you really want to understand what happened then episode 9 of the World at War series is pretty definitive (and again I have a copy if you want to borrow it).
However for us as A Level historians it is the this report from the Independent that is most useful. It raises two pertinent questions.
1. It addresses the point that Dani made last lesson about why (and to what extent) Stalin is still popular (even loved ?) in Russia.
“Behind the Mother Russia memorial (shown in the image above) is a museum dedicated to the wartime leader. No Soviet hangover, it was opened just six years ago by a local businessman (who was later shot in a contract killing), and features biographical data and a life-size waxwork of Stalin. On sale in the shop are Stalin calendars with soft-focus photographs of the Generalissimus in various modes: pensive, jovial, warrior-like. “Don’t believe what people tell you about the cult of personality,” guide Irina Rubayeva told a class of 30 schoolchildren touring the museum earlier this week. “Yes there was a cult, but oh, what a personality there was too! ”
2. It considers Russian criticism of Beevor’s work.
“They challenge two dominant clichés in Western scholarship about the Red Army: firstly, that the soldiers were simple peasants with no real loyalty to the Soviet state; and secondly, that they were coerced into battle at gunpoint, and that is the only way that the Soviets got them to fight.”
Perhaps these two arguments overlap. See what you think.
Mr Kydd.
A nice article here from the BBC about the hunt for the final resting place of Giuseppe Garibaldi. It is generated from a BBC Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent programme, which is has a link from the webpage.
As the article suggests, “he had made very clear that he wanted to be cremated…and…he had written that it should be done on a spot near his house, overlooking the sea – and had even specified which type of Sardinian wood should be used. He had said that his coffin should be open, so he would have his face to the sun as his pyre was set ablaze. He hoped ordinary Italians would take away his ashes and mix them with the earth of the motherland, and that from them gardens might grow that would symbolise a new and better Italy. But all these last wishes were ignored. It seems to have been decided that the national hero’s body could not just be burned. Instead, he was buried in a tomb in the grounds of his home.”
However this is not the end of the story. Have a read and see what you think…
Finally, all of this is typical of Garibaldi. Beyond the unification course he is perhaps most noteworthy to us because he is one of the best examples of a historical figure distorted by a romantic haze. We should, as historians, always be wary of this. Today we are more interested broader forces of change like nationalism and economics. To switch from Italian unification to events in north of the Alps in Germany for example, few today would disagree that it was “coal and iron” rather than “blood and iron” that led the Kliendeutch unification.
But then again, it was Bismarck that said that…
Mr Kydd.
I must confess that I am rather disappointed that the passing of Mr Lomon has not received more attention. He was the the last surviving British-based member of the International Brigade, who fought General Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War. The International brigade were a volunteer group, whose numbers included George Orwell and Laurie Lee. They were committed to stopping the spread of Fascism. In their own words, “they came because their open eyes saw no other way”. Subsequent events of course would show the far-sightedness of their actions.
The best report on his life is from The Independent here. As the passage below shows, he was a man who had the courage to put his own life at risk to defend freedom. He saw the folly of appeasing a bully and “turning a blind eye”. He certainly never took an easy option. That at least is noteworthy for those of us living in more cynicial times.
“Mr Lomon fought in the battle of Teruel and in the Aragon offensive, where republicans faced overwhelming odds. Franco’s forces were equipped with 950 aeroplanes, 200 tanks and more than 100,000 troops provided by Mussolini. But on 31 March 1938 he was captured and subjected to beatings by guards, starvation rations and verminous conditions. Almost one in five of the hundreds captured did not survive. Eventually, he was freed after a prisoner-of-war exchange in 1938 for Italian captives held in Britain”.
Mr Kydd.
STOP PRESS
An interesting post from someone who clearly knows more about the topic than this Tudor specialist. I have included an extract below – they do say a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous…
“…by the way – two small factual details: George Orwell didn’t fight with the International Brigades, but with the POUM militia. And while Laurie Lee did join the IBs, he probably never actually fought in Spain (he was epileptic).”
Richard Baxell
I will put up a link to Mr Baxell’s site.
January 2013
Please find that link here.
Historians of course consider and use political cartoons in different ways. You will have first come across them as GCSE standard when you looked at them as snapshot comments of the big issues of the day. There really excellent article here from the BBC on this issue. Lord Baker, a former Conservative education and home secretary, as well a party chairman, is something of an expert on the topic. He has a theory that political cartooning is in itself of historical note. He considers it to be a British invention, and argues that it helped us to avoid revolution, stating that “if you can laugh at your rulers, you don’t cut off their heads”…”Laughter is an escape for those kinds of pent up feelings. It helps make society calmer.”
Perhaps. Or perhaps it was the freedom of speech required for political cartooning to flourish that helped us avoid revolution. In others words it was more of a product of political toleration than a cause of it. What is clear is that when Lord Baker was an active politician in the 1980s and early 1990s he took Spitting Image depicting him as a slug (Youtube it) with good grace. Read the article and see what you think.
If you are interested in political cartoons come you may like to know that there is the Cartoon Museum in London (off Little Russell Street). You might also to look at the archive of the incredible Steve Bell’s work for the Guardian (go to www.belltoons.co.uk). In addition, I have an unhealthly large collection of books on many aspects of the topic which you are welcome to borrow.
Finally, if you did do GCSE History with us you will be well aware of the work of David Low. Famed for his early and forthright attacks on the European dictators. There is a very brief collection of some of his work here. Low was so hated by Hitler that his name was on the black book of people to be immediately arrested after the successful invasion of Britain. The image above is a less well known piece of his work; but it is one of my favourites. Entitled “Progress of Man, 1935” it is visually striking, with a pig and a naked gas masked man feeding at the trough of nationalism. The pig is pitying the man, saying “they kill me to eat. But you poor sap – they kill you for your own good.”
It is a comment that still resonates 77 years later.
Mr Kydd.
In many respects this post follows on directly from the last one – which asked what is the purpose of history was within society. Here the Benjamin Zephaniah complains about the diet of black history presented in many schools. I have to say I have always considered Zephaniah to be an original and deep thinker, and as such, much of what he writes here is rather uncomfortable for me.
He argues “most of the history teachers that I come across cannot name any early African philosopher” (I can’t) and he continues that there is a “greater focus on the the work of Florence Nightingale”…than…”the Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole“. I am embarrassed to say that I actually forgot Seacole’s name when the topic came up recently.
Personally, I have always worried about black history being bolted on tokenism,. This is why I have sometimes felt a bit mixed about black history month. On one hand it raises the profile of the topic, but on another I sometimes feel it can be a barrier to the topic being an interwoven part of the history curriculum in its own right.
All of this is a very long way away from the curriculum review that has been leaked here to the Daily Mail. One thing is clear however, the question of what history is taught in schools is a very controvertial issue.
Mr Kydd.
It is an excellent question.
This article from the magazine section of the BBC website discusses it with energy and style. It is really a version of the old “what is the point of a history degree ?” enquiry that those of us who teach A Level have to deal with every year.
Sarah Dunant’s reply is excellent. It starts thus…
“As far as one can tell the thinking goes like this: the study of history, English, philosophy or art doesn’t really help anyone get a job and does not contribute to the economy to the same degree that science or engineering or business studies obviously do.
Well, let’s run a truck though that fast shall we?…”
Have a read and see what you think.
Oh and just so it doesn’t get lost, she concludes, “History. Any society that doesn’t pay proper attention to it not only has dangerously shallow roots, but also risks starving its own imagination.” That’s not a million miles away from what Eric Hobsbawm said in the previous post.
Mr Kydd.
