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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.

A couple of excellent articles from the BBC to mark the centenary celebrations of the ANC. This video contrasts its early roots as a party of liberation with its post-Mandela disappointments. This Today interview from Radio Four looks at the problems of “a one party democracy”.

Do all revolutions disappoint in the end ?

Mr Kydd.

Another excellent audioslide here from the BBC. This one looks at the Gutenberg Bible and the student notes of Sir Isaac Newton (and how writing helped make the scientific revolution of the Enlightenment possible).

As a school boy I can remember my history teacher setting up a class debate “what was the most important invention in History ?” In the end the printing Press used for teh Gutenberg Bible beat penicillin and the Atom bomb. This was because, and the audio slideshow states, “it was the first real book to be mass-produced using movable type printing techniques – and so could be made in a fraction of the time it had previously taken scribes to write by hand.” Soon knowledge would not be just for the rich…

Mr Kydd.