heathenhistory.co.uk

Churchill is meant to have once said “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it”. Perhaps it is an obvious point to suggest that History tends to be written by the winners, but that does not stop it being a valid one as the example of Alexander the Great proves. Few men in the European subconscious have a better reputation. This BBC report starts off by stating the tradition view that  “Alexander the Great, feted in Western culture as the conqueror of the Persian Empire and one of the great military geniuses of history.” 

However Professor  Ali Ansari (the Institute of Iranian Studies, St Andrews University) then goes on to explain  that “the influence of Greek language and culture has helped establish a narrative in the West that Alexander’s invasion was the first of many Western crusades to bring civilisation and culture to the barbaric East. But in fact the Persian Empire was worth conquering not because it was in need of civilising but because it was the greatest empire the world had yet seen, extending from Central Asia to Libya.”

Have a read and see what you think. There is also a Radio 4 Series if you are interested.

Mr Kydd

As many of you will have the misfortune to know Tudor history is really my bag, and there certainly has been a lot of it in the news recently. As such, I thought it might be helpful if I posted the links here.

Here Clifton Davies argues that “research shows the term “Tudor” was barely ever used during the time of Tudor monarchs” continuing that “years of trawling through contemporary documents yielded almost no references – with only one poem on the accession of James I (James VI of Scotland) recognising the transition from Tudor to Stuart”.

Here Philippa Gregory and Dr Robert Hutchinson discuss on the Today programme why novelists are so fascinated with the Tudor period. “We’re interested now in historical realism… the grime of it, as well as the rare moments of glamour at the top.”

Here Dr Steven Gunn explains why “between 1558 and 1560, almost three-quarters of fatal accidents took place during the summer months.” This can be blamed on “cart crashes, dangerous harvesting techniques, horse accidents and windmill mangling were among the perils facing the Tudor farm worker.” It is of course a bit of fluff, but also perhaps a reminder that little of the renaissance reached the rural England where over 85% of people lived.  This link goes on the strange and stupid deaths of many Tudors (if you accept that term !) – however, as the poster below shows, there were other surefire ways to die…

Mr Kydd

Those of you who can cast their minds back to the posts on last summer’s riots will remember that David Starkey is not an individual shy of a point of view. This week he compared the Alec Salmond, the Scottish First Minister to Adolf Hitler, stating that both shared a common ability to court popularity by “tapping into nationalism and the idea of a common enemy”. He said Mr Salmond thinks that “the English, like the Jews, are everywhere”, before arguing that Hitler was “more democratically elected”. This article from the Daily Telegraph goes into more detail.

It is of course possible to argue that David Starkey is seeking to be controvertial for his own (financial ?) ends. Indeed he seems to suggest he has done as much before in this BBC interview. Perhaps more interesting however is the Irish view, which can be read here .

The American Civil War has always felt to me to be something that I should know more about. The truth is it has always passed me by. This article from the New York Times shows how remiss this is. Recent statistical work (again note how computers are allowing data analysis to challenge many long held historical “facts”) has revised the death toll up by twenty percent to 750,000 Americans – more than the losses of both World Wars combined.

As Eric Foner states, “it even further elevates the significance of the Civil War and makes a dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history. It helps you understand, particularly in the South with a much smaller population, what a devastating experience this was.”

A couple of articles from the BBC from a period of British History that I find fascinating, but perhaps does not get the attention that it deserves. This Today programme report and this news report cover the auction of a poster from Oliver Cromwell. It ordered the arrest of the future Charles II before he had time to flee abroad. It failed. Conversely, this news report reflects the fate of those judges who signed the regicide document once the Restoration had been secured.

When I was at school the Commonwealth was often refered to as the English Revolution. In more recent times this term appears to be used less. In part I think this is because we still struggle to know what to think about Oliver Cromwell.  There is a fairly neutral introductory biography of perhaps the most controversial of all Englishmen here.

With Holocaust Memorial Day approching I thought it would be appropriate to post this article about Treblinka from the BBC. The mass graves found there expose the nonsense of those, like David Irving (see earlier posts), who deny the Holocaust killed so many. You may also like to look at this short film about the world’s oldest Holocaust Museum.

This excellent article from the Sunday Telegraph clearly shows the growing importance of archaeology to our understanding of the past. Just like the earlier article on Calleva Atrebatum it shows how recent archeological discoveries have changed our understanding of an aspect of the past.  As the article states,  “The old view is ‘Romans bad, Britons good’. This discovery muddies the waters. You can’t overestimate the shock and surprise when it was first found.” Read the article if you want to know more. You may also like to look at this short piece of video from the BBC describing the restoration process at the British Museum.

Mr Kydd.