The Trial of King Charles I - In Our Time

In Our Time will be on BBC Radio Four tomorrow with a new program. The latest issue about the trial of King Charles the first will by then be taken out of the feed.

The trial of King Charles is treated as an exceptional novelty at the time. It replaces the sheer coup with regicide to a process in which the leader of the nation is held responsible before the law. This seems like a logical follow-up to the chapter about the Magna Carta, where also the reign of the king is bound to the law. The next step was to bind the King also to values and principles of Justice. Thus Charles could be beheaded for this and set a precedent for the trial of King Louis in the French Revolution up to the War Crime tribunals after WW II.

The interesting thing in the discussion is that Charles saw it otherwise. He was the sovereign, who but God could hold him responsible. It took him by surprise that they were actually going to execute him. And so this trial also has traits of a staged case. In that respect it also sets precedent for the future that followed. Show trials all over.

More In Our Time:
St. Paul,
Whale evolution,
Magna Carta,
BBC's In Our Time - always recommended,
Brave New World.

World history between 100 BCE and 1200 CE - MMW 3

Here is a final recommendation for the history lecture series MMW 3 The Medieval Heritage by Matthew Herbst from UC San Diego. If you remotely consider looking into this one, go and get your files before UCSD take them off line, as they usually do.

MMW 3 gives world history from 100 BCE to 1200 CE in the widest sense. Whereas most general history courses focus on Western history, MMW attempts to take on every region in the world. This I already wrote in my previous review, that covered the first half of the course and this is all the more true for the second half that I have finished just now. There is attention for West-Africa, Ethiopia, Medieval Europe, Sung China and even the Incas and other nations of the New World, that were still isolated from the rest in this time period.

The strength of this series, that it covers indeed the whole world, comes at a price. Especially by the end, the chronology is very difficult to get a grip on. It is therefore especially important to pick up the last lecture in which Professor Herbst summarizes the main learning points of the course, one of them being contact and exchange. Apart from the Inca Empire, no part is completely isolated and through trade routes, not only goods but also cultural content is exchanged to and fro.

More MMW:
MMW 3,
UCSD's lecture podcasts,
MMW 2,
MMW 4,
MMW 6.

Three recommendations on New Books In History

An excellent podcast of which I try not to miss a single installment is New Books In History. With the amount of podcasts on my playlist, I continuously lag behind on this podcast. Here I will recommend three of the not so recent episodes that are all worth a listen.

The most commendable is Mashall Poe's interview with Matthew Algeo who wrote about Harry Truman's road trip. After Truman left the White House and became a regular citizen again (that was still more or less possible at the time) he took one summer off to make a road trip through the US. Algeo discloses the way the former president had to make ends meet, how the trip was conceived and in how far it could be carried out incognito. Aside from being very entertaining, this podcast gives a great insight in the culture of the early 1950's.

A more specific episode is the one with William Beezley about the Mexican Revolution. Beezley carefully paints out how modern Mexico came into being. The revolution, as it turns out, is more of a process over several decades rather than a sudden shift in a single date.

Joel Lewis wrote a book Youth Against Fascism: Young Communists in Britain and the United States, 1919-1939. This looks like a rather marginal subject, but it is very interesting and also connects quite well with a number of other issues in NBIH. Simply put, communists were the first to recognize the threat of fascism and probably this was so because the fascists saw the communists as the prime targets for their aggression.

More NBIH:
American Exceptionalism,
The Great War in short,
How Rome Fell,
Glancing over the backlog,
Jews in the Russian army.

Defining Environmental History - EEH podcast review

The Environmental History Podcast has begun a series of short podcasts addressing the question how to define environmental history. Host Jan Oosthoek interviews Donald Worster (mp3) in the first chapter.

As it turns out, the field is quickly defined as being about the interaction of humans with the natural world in historical perspective. Even though 'humans' and 'natural world' admittedly may need additional definition, the major points are how this is different from other, main stream history and from other sciences. Is this just a minor field within history that has an strong interdisciplinary character with for example geology?

Worster argues that Environmental History is to be regarded as a major line of historical research. Just as it is of major importance to historically view humans in their societies, whether states or social groups, also the natural world is crucial and has man historically embedded. And just as history has linkages with the social sciences, it necessarily has with the natural sciences. With the profound importance of the climate in the 21st century, the central position of environmental history will only become more apparent. Thinking of the environment requires an historian's help, Worster concludes.

More Environmental History:
Natural Disasters,
Canada and New Zealand,
Environmental history,
Climate Change in recent history,
Urban Air Pollution.

John Gray's cultural pessimism

On LSE Public Lectures and Events I have heard two appearances of the British philosopher John Gray, the first of which will be reviewed here. What both lectures have in common is that Gray forces us to critically evaluate what is taken for grand truths, implicitly or explicitly, in modern thinking.

Under the title Gray's Anatomy: Thoughts on Politics, Religion and the Meaning of life, Gray makes a couple of thought provoking and refreshing observations about the modern world and the thought patterns we tend to take for granted. Examples are belief in progress, in technology, in knowledge coupled with moral progress. Also the idea that prosperity will serve morality and poverty will harm it. During this, he never steps away from common sense.

The result is rather pessimistic and does not point to concrete alternative theories in ethics, politics and on the human nature. The great value, as I see it, is that Gray brings us to stop fooling ourselves and this is done not only by sharp thinking, but also by very practical and recognizable examples, clear language and a very pleasant and patient tone of voice. This is the kind of lecture everybody should hear, if not for conviction then for challenge.

In the next lecture with Gray he will refute the idea ongoing secularization (Religion and the Market).

More LSE Events:
Omniculturalism,
Controversies in the Economics of Climate Change,
Nudge: decision architecture,
The EU and the Middle East,
The British Mandate in Palestine.

The present within modern history - History 1c

UCLA's History 1c is a modern history course that covers the period 1715 unto this day. Usually with these modern history courses (notably like Berkeley's History 5) the narrative more or less stops around 1989. Historians dabble with the past and the closer you get to the present, the past gets to confused in the light of current, unfinished affairs. So even if it goes on beyond this year, you are likely not to get much more than a lecture or two beyond 1945.

The great thing about History 1c is though, that there are more lectures about the post-1945 period and I have greatly enjoyed them. I do not recall getting so much detail about the cold war, decolonization and the question whether Europe is definitively off the map of of power, or that the fledgling EU is going to bring it back.

Especially thrilling is it to get a history of the 1980's that wonderful period in which so much happened. it is not only far enough to have become sufficiently past so that historians confidently deal with it, but also it is part of my own experience. I was 14 in 1980 and as much a devourer of newspapers as a 14 year old can be. The real kick is to compare my own memories, impressions and analyses of the time with what historians tell today. Reagan, Gorbachev, Chernobyl, the fall of the Wall....

More History 1c:
Holocaust,
Nietzsche in a nutshell,
Industrialization and Italian unification,
History since 1715.

Also:
James Mann about Ronald Reagan (UChannel Podcast),
Unexpected Ronald Reagan (New Books In History),
It was 20 years ago today,
A century of Geopolitics.