The Riddle of the Sands - Forgotten Classics

For the British, one of the shocks of the Great War was that they suddenly were pitted against Germany. The Germans and before them the Prussians had always been seen in a rather friendly light. The French had always been the enemy. When in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian war, Germany came into existence and developed into a great power, some saw the coming confrontation, but largely it had to take until 1914, until the Germans could really be broadly perceived as the real enemies. A 1871 invasion novel - The Battle of Dorking - which envisioned a German invasion of Britain was quickly forgotten.

Yet, by the early twentieth century the tide began to turn and a 1903 novel which describes how two English sailing tourists stumble upon a German invasion fleet not only marked a changing attitude, it even is acclaimed to have alerted the English to what was threatening them. This book, The Riddle of the Sands, featured as the conversation subject in an old issue of BBC's In Our Time (In Our Time on The Riddle of the Sands. Only available in stream). Melvyn Bragg and his guests hardly touch upon the novel and mainly speak of British attitudes towards Germany and vice versa.

If you want to hear the novel being read and find out a bit more, listen to Forgotten Classics. Host Julie gives a magnificent reading of the book (chapters 1-2, 3-5 and the just released 6-7) in which she captures the two main characters Carruthers and Davies each with their peculiarities. I was particularly delighted by the story as I have sailed the Frisian Islands some twenty years ago, as Carruthers and Davies do. That and the thought of the book's historical significance makes it a true delight.

More Forgotten Classics:
The message of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Cooking with Forgotten Classics,
Forgotten Classics - podcast review.

More In Our Time:
Frankfurt School,
The history of the Royal Society,
The weekly treat,
New season of In Our Time,
St. Thomas Aquinas.

Diversity and sensitivities in Christianity

For the fourth post on a row, I will touch upon religion. It just so happened that yesterday's post triggered quite some discussion. It serves to take a look at the comments and follow the discussion around what is Catholic and what not. This digs into the history of Christianity and its many divisions (and the ensuing sensitivities). For that subject, I have many podcasts to direct you to. Let us start with one that I found recently.

The podcast series from Eastern Michigan University by Rick Rogers: World Religions (History 100) gives a general and easy to access introduction in the five major religions (feed). For the purpose of yesterday's discussion, and since I had come around those chapters anyway, I listened to the the six episodes about Christianity. Each is about 20 minutes long and one by one they set you up very neatly into Christian history, doctrine, church and holidays. Actually, I found the section about Christianity the best I have heard so far (with only Islam to go). You sense that this is Professor Rogers' own field of research.

Other podcasts that I can warmly recommend for getting up to date about the history of Christianity and its divisions are:
Phil Harland's Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean
UCSD's MMW3 The Medieval Heritage (Charles Chamberlain, Matthew Herbst) which runs this semester as well (with a.o. David Jordan).
Yale's New Testament History and Literature (Dale Martin)
Stanford's Historical Jesus (Thomas Sheehan)
LSE's Christianity's past and futures (Diarmaid MacCulloch)

Catholic Stuff - facts or doctrine

Catholic Stuff You Should Know is a podcast that was recently recommended to me. This came after I looked into and abandoned the Catholic Laboratory Podcast (Cathlab in short). Also The Pope Podcast is a Catholic podcast. What these have in common is that they take on their subject with an explicit Roman Catholic perspective. The issue that comes up is: does this turn up to be about facts or about doctrine?

Of course the two are in such a framework naturally intertwined, but when the doctrine part takes over, the facts tend to become stretched. Catholic Stuff You Should Know shows this in their issue about the Holy Sepulcher. The way they tell about this Jerusalem church makes it sound like it is an exclusively Catholic church and since they claim to have been there in actuality why would you check up on this? A peek at Wikipedia about the Holy Sepulcher already points in another direction. I have been to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher myself and I can see this from my own experience: what you run into in this Church is Armenian, Greek, Syriac, Coptic and only in a very limited way Roman Catholic - as opposed to many other famous churches in Israel, such as those in Nazareth, Capernaum and Mount Tabor.

More obvious is a small item about the etymology of Monday. (EDIT: I got this wrong. They discussed Maundy, not Monday) I thought: this is Moon-day and Wikipedia on Monday matches that expectation. However, this apparently is too pagan for the Catholic podcasters and so they propose two Latin, Biblical possibilities: Mandatum and Mendicare. Well, that is taking it very far from what would widely be considered factual and so, the conclusion must be: this podcast is about doctrine. As such, it is an interesting one. Find out about Arius, about the Ethiopian Church, Stylites, Indulgences and more. It is also short (no more than 10 minutes) and presented in a very free conversational style. (feed)

EDIT: As one of the readers pointed out in the comments below (thank God for comments); the issue was Maundy Thursday and where the addition Maundy comes from. Indeed Catholic stuff that I should know. Well maybe not absolutely have to, but it certainly helps to keep my feet out of my mouth.

Secularism - Thinking Allowed (BBC)

In conjunction with the last Philosophy Bites issue I wrote about (on Morality) I think it is a good idea to listen to a rather recent issue of BBC's Thinking Allowed. Laurie Taylor had a fascinating and spirited discussion with Rebecca Goldstein, Eric Kaufmann and Tariq Ramadan under the title Secularism under Threat?

Part of the problem is a confusion in terminology, which Tariq Ramadan takes on, by separating Secularism, from the modern ideological atheism that is heard from so often. Secularism, is a way of organizing society and political authority independent from organized religion and leaving place for all sorts of religious streams. And here it serves to keep Susan Neiman in mind as she spoke on Philosophy Bites and reformulated with the Enlightenment was all about secular society.

Once this is settled, it is relevant to view the non-fundamentalist religious, who are secularists in the political sense. And so, secularism under threat is an issue of secularism being challenged by the religious literalists. However, somehow, related but also different is the question of the rise of Islam in Europe. Both these are discussed. What is left out, is a rise of spiritualism, which, probably opposes the atheist kind of secularists.

More Thinking Allowed:
History and sociology,
Boffins and WW I,
Richard Hoggart,
Secular vs. Religious,
Renoir and Slumming.

Jesus - Egalitarian or Apocalyptic

It was a theme I did not recall so vividly from the previous podcast series on the Historical Jesus I followed (Stanford's Historical Jesus, with Tom Sheehan - feed) Although I do recall that Sheehan repeatedly mentioned John Dominic Crossan and his view on Jesus, I do not recall any mention of E. P. Sanders. It is such a long time ago...

The current theme in Philip Harland's Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean is the historical Jesus. And Harland juxtaposes the views of Crossan and Sanders. He shows how Crossan comes to a view of Jesus in which he is an Egalitarian spiritual teacher. Sanders, however, has a view that is radically different, he sees Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet. Harland takes no position. He simply shows how Crossan and Sanders arrive at these fundamentally different positions that are each defensible in their own right.

The consecutive chapters have begun to dig deeper into the sources. Harland combines what little written sources about Jesus there are, with a more general historic knowledge about the time and place (Galilee at the beginning of the CE calendar), based on broader sources and upon archeology. I have no idea yet where he will be going. Will he be arriving at a conclusion different from Crossan and Sanders, at either one of them or stop at the inconclusive facts? We will have to wait and see.

More on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean:
Historical Jesus (2) - Philip Harland,
Historical Jesus (1) - Philip Harland,
New Testament, history and literature,
Da Vinci Code,
Early Christianity podcasts.

Volcanoes in European History - EEH podcast

The Exploring Environmental History Podcast has just published a very timely and fascinating issue about the effect volcanic eruptions may have had on European and World History. While Europe has not felt such effects in many many years, with the recent eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull on Iceland, starting with the disruption of air traffic, this has changed. Apart from traffic, the ash plumes are likely to affect crops, sun light, the climate and thus, economic, social and political history.

Host Jan Oosthoek digs into a couple of established events in the Middle Ages that show a combination of bad crops, decreased sun light and lowering of temperatures. He cites research that suggests volcanic eruption and ash plumes as an explanation for these. By extension, this connects famines, migrations, plagues and social instability to volcanic eruptions. It could mean that the Plague and the Renaissance may indirectly have been caused by volcanism. Oosthoek mentions no known volcanic eruption that could be a candidate for this explanation.

In turn, he goes over the recorded effects of the Laki eruption of 1783 (also in Iceland). Here he has no major occurrences such as famine, epidemic and revolution to report, yet the effect on weather and harvest in 1783 and 1784 seems considerable. In short, without being able to give definitive indications, with the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull we see environmental history in action.

More Exploring Environmental History:
Environmental History in the Middle Ages,
New weeds in Africa,
Biological invasions and transformations,
Environmental history: an applied science,
Defining Environmental History with Marc Hall.