A Short Walk through Our Long History

Well, the Civil War is over.  Mostly.  The big battles are over, and though there are going to be a few more battles, everyone knows that the south has lost.  The question on everyone’s mind is, ‘What’s going to happen now?’  Is this going to be a smooth transition, or a rough one.  Turns out, it’s going to be kind of rough.  

And one of the reasons that it’s going to be rough is what we are covering in this episode - Lincoln’s assassination.  What’s also going to be rough is keeping this episode short, because besides history, my other favorite topic is conspiracy theories, and Lincoln’s assassination is full of them.  In fact, if I ever finish this podcast - this short walk - my next podcast will be on conspiracy theories, and I’ll probably start right here, with the assassination of Lincoln.  For the sake of brevity here, I’ll stay to stick to the generally accepted story, which, oddly enough, includes a conspiracy as part of the story.

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At the same time that Sherman was burning his way through Georgia, but avoiding major battles, Grant was up in Virginia, trying to provoke major battles.  In March of 1864, Lincoln had put Grant in charge of all the Union armies.  General Meade was still the commander of the Army of the Potomac, so Grant took Meade and together they headed into Virginia to try to defeat Robert E Lee.  Grant’s goal was to draw Lee into a huge battle, and destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. 

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The Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, well, the draw at Antietam that forced the South to stop their invasion of the north, was seen as a huge victory in the north, even though the actual battle that day was a draw.  Both armies basically left the field shattered, but since McClellan didn’t follow up and crush what was left of Lee’s army, the Confederates were able to get back to Virginia, and reorganize.  And guess what?  They will be back.  Lee’s going to invade, again, soon, and that’s going to take us to a battle that was even bigger and bloodier than Antietam.  

But first we need to head west, to the Mississippi, and back to our one Union general with a winning record, Ulysses S Grant.  

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The war has been going pretty well for the south at the mid point of 1862, but the south has less men, less guns, less cannons, less of almost everything.  Less manufacturing capacity, for sure.  But time is sort of on the South’s side.  The longer that the Confederacy exists as its own country, the more people are likely to just accept it that way.  And the longer the war drags on, especially if the North keeps losing, the more likely the Northern public is to stop supporting the war.  Again, kind of like it was in the Revolutionary war, the South doesn’t have to win, necessarily, it just needs to not lose, or at least not lose catastrophically, and it will keep existing.  The North, on the other hand, needs to win decisively.  

And they haven’t done that yet, they haven’t really beaten and destroyed a Southern army, even though they won a few battles. The South is still fielding competent armies, and still continuing to exist.  The North really needs a big win, to change the momentum of the war, and to change public opinion.  

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At this point, in late 1861, the war is not going well for the Union.  The early battles of the Civil War were mostly Union defeats, or at least draws where the Rebel army got away.  There were not any definitive victories, that’s for sure.  And because of that, the Confederacy still existed.  It was sort of like the American strategy during the Revolutionary war - as long as General Washington and the Continental Army still existed, the British hadn’t won.  Similarly, as long as the Confederacy still existed, the Union had not won.  And this gave hope to the Confederates, and frustrated the people of the Union.  

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Last episode, we talked about the revolutions in Europe in 1848.  The United States is about to have a revolution, I mean, another one, at least from a certain point of view.  From another point of view, it’s a rebellion.  But we aren’t quite there yet.  

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is accused by the Pharisees of driving out demons using the power of Satan.  And Jesus, in a masterful double entendre, replies, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.’  A house that is internally divided, he’s saying, will not stand, it will collapse.  Jesus’ point was that if he was driving out demons by the power of Satan, well, that satanic house would be divided, and it would collapse.  But he’s also making the point that the house of Judaism, the house of the Pharisees, is also divided, as many people in Judea had begun to follow Jesus, but the Pharisees had not.  The house was divided.  

And much later, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln, running for the US Senate, said, quoting Jesus, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.”  

Well, here we are, at war.  Sort of.  Shots were fired at Fort Sumter, but no one was actually killed in the battle.  But now the battle lines are being drawn.  Lincoln has asked for more volunteers, and the border states of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and most importantly, Virginia, have chosen to leave the Union, rather than provide troops that would be used to attack the south.  

So both sides begin putting together armies.  A lot of men volunteered initially, in part because they thought that this wasn’t going to take long.  Lincoln’s request for new volunteers, for example, was only for a 90 day enlistment.  People in both the North and the South felt like this war would be over in only a few months.  Both sides overestimated their own battle prowess, and felt like they would be able to ‘whip’ the other side pretty easily.  But even more than that, both sides seriously underestimated the other side’s resolve to fight.  

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Well, here we are, right at the brink of disaster.  Things are about to get really busy.  The United States is about to begin a unique, and very bloody, war.  It’s unique in that it was kind of the transitional war from old colonial warfare weapons and strategies, to new modern weapons and strategies.  It’s a bit of both, but it will start off, much more in the old colonial style.  But it’s going to end with ironclad ships, machine guns, revolvers, aerial reconnaissance, and total war.  We’ll get to all that as we go.  

Last episode, I mentioned that even before Lincoln was inaugurated as President, there were places in the South where there were forts that were controlled by troops that were federal, or Union troops.  The US army had forts in several key places in the south.  In some of those places, the commanders and troops were actually northerners, so their allegiance was to the federal government, rather than to the locals.  We are going to get to the really well-known example of this, Fort Sumter, in a moment, but there were others as well.  

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Well, here we are, about to watch a house divide against itself.  It’s not going to be pretty.  

I have to say, as I start this episode, that I really feel like we’re getting somewhere in this podcast.  We’re at the brink of war!  I mean, we’ve been building up to the Civil War for a while now, and here we are, about to see the United States fall apart.  The actual fighting is going to begin next episode, and I then think we are going to linger on the Civil War topic for a few episodes.  I mean, we lingered on Rome for like 12 episodes, so there is a precedent.  But don’t worry, it won’t be that long. 

Last episode, I talked about Kansas, John Brown, and the Dred Scott case, and now we are going to get to the events that really ended up dividing the country.  And so we get to talk about John Brown.  Again.

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Last episode, we looked at the massive flow of people that moved west along the Oregon Trail in the US, and I mentioned that it was part of one of the biggest migrations in history.  Well, part of the reason that there were a lot of people migrating to the west was that there were a lot of people fleeing Europe during 1848.  Why?  Because there were revolutions happening all over Europe, and people were fleeing the tensions and fighting there.  

I’m going to let you in on a bit of a spoiler here:  all the European revolutions of 1848 are going to fail.  In fact, it’s kind of a depressing story.

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This past February, the San Francisco 49ers lost the super bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs, and that brings up the inevitable question, ‘What the heck is a 49er?’  Why are they named that?  I will explain shortly.  

You may also have wondered ‘why the heck do so many Mormons live in Salt Lake City, Utah?’  Again, I will explain shortly.  

Before we get to San Francisco, we sort of have to go to Oregon, because, well, it’s just a lot easier to get to than California, especially if you’re in Missouri and planning on going there by foot.  
  

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Ok, just to be clear here, I’m talking about the Mexican-American war that happened from 1846 to 1848, not the current battle that is taking place on the US Mexico border.  The US is evidently losing that current battle, which I guess is kind of payback for how easily the US won the war back in the 1840’s.  Evidently the cartels currently have a better strategy than the Republic of Mexico had back in the day.

The Mexican American war, though it was short, does have a big impact on the world, in part because of the huge chunk of territory that America acquires, and in part because it was the beginning of the idea of civil disobedience.
   
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Well, we’re back in the United States after talking about Queen Victoria and the British Empire, and honestly, I think I’m going to have to spend more time talking about the British Empire and how it grew during the 63 years of her reign, because the British really did a lot of conquering and colonizing in that era.  But that’s going to have to wait for a bit, because for the next several episodes, I’m going to be looking closely at things going on in the United States.  

We have to take a look at the wild west, and the Oregon Trail, the California Gold Rush, and then we’re going to bog down just a bit on the American Civil War and its aftermath, and I don’t think we’ll come back to jolly old England until after that.  Because in the middle of the 1800’s, until the late 1860’s, there’s just a whole lot of stuff happening in America that does, truly, shape our modern world.  

One of the biggest impacts that America had in the mid 1800’s was on immigration.  People from all over Europe took the giant risk of emigrating to America, lured by the offers of cheap or even free land in the open spaces of the American west.  Between 1800 and 1850, more than 5 million people from Europe emigrated to America.  Granted, that’s only 2 years of immigration under the Biden administration, but back in the 1800’s, it was a huge movement of humanity, something the world hadn’t seen since maybe the massive migrations at the end of the Roman Empire.  It was a lot of people moving to a new place in a short time. 

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Last year, in 2023, the longest reigning monarch in British history passed away.  That monarch was Queen Elizabeth II, and she reigned for over 70 years.  That, by the way, is the second longest of all the monarchs we have record of, that is, if you don’t count the Sumerian List of Kings, which we mentioned back in Episode 2, which was about the Creation narratives of the ancient world.  The longest reign was of Em-Men-Lu-Ana, who reigned for 43,200 years, according to the Sumerian list.  According to modern history, the longest reign was Louis XIV of France, who reigned 72 years.  But we digress.

Elizabeth II was the longest reigning queen of Great Britain, but the second longest reign belonged to Alexandrina Victoria, who is better known as Queen Victoria.  She reigned for 63 ½ years, from May 1, 1837 - January 22, 1901.

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Sort of ironic that here we are talking about the time that Texas became an independent from Mexico, and became a republic, right at the same time that there’s a big conflict right on the Texas - Mexico border, and Texas is apparently resisting the US federal government’s efforts to open the border to whatever drug-smuggling and human trafficking invaders want to walk in.  I’ll have to come back to that in a bit.  

Anyway, this episode is about the Republic of Texas.  Texas is not the only state to have been a Republic before it became a state.  Vermont was also a republic, from 1777 to 1791, when it became the 14th state admitted to the Union.  But no other country recognized Vermont as an independent country, however.  Hawaii was also an independent country before it was annexed by the US government in 1898.  Hawaii, by the way, did not want to be annexed.  

But we are talking about Texas.  Texas has a bit of a unique history, and as you may have noticed, Texans are quite proud of it.   So Texas gets its own episode, the only state that gets its own episode.  Well, I guess you could count Athens, which was a city state, which got its own episode back in episode 9, but none of the other US states get their own episode.  Sorry, Oklahoma. 

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In this episode, we are going to talk about Andrew Jackson, who is one of the most interesting men to have ever been the President of the US.  In fact, if it wasn’t for his harsh treatment of the Indians, I mean, if he hadn’t done that, he would be in the running for the most popular president ever.  And by that, I don’t just mean popular - there’s a lot of things that he did as president that strongly agreed with the original principles that the US was founded on, principles that the Constitution tried to institutionalize, but that were often ignored by the growing federal bureaucracy in Washington.  Which Jackson strongly opposed, which is why I guess I kind of like him.  

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So I have to start this episode by saying the Congress of Vienna, well, it isn’t a very dramatic moment.  There’s no battles, no great drama, no moment of someone standing on the Mons Sacre declaring that they will not rest until Europe has this treaty finished.  It’s not that kind of moment.  But it a very important topic, and the agreements that will come out of the Congress of Vienna will shape Europe for the next 100 years or so.  

It was also responsible for temporarily shoring up the monarchies of Europe, but we’ll get to that in a minute. 
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In this episode, we are heading to South America, to take a look at the independence movement that started to happen there in the early 1800’s.  And the key person we need to talk about is Simón Bolívar.  He is kind of the South American version of George Washington, although in a way that kind of sells Bolivar short a bit, because while Washington was one of the founding fathers of the US, Bolivar was THE founding father of south American independence.  There are some other differences, too.  Bolivar had a tendency to want to execute his enemies, that we don’t really see with Washington.  South American politics are different though, so Bolivar lived and worked in a much different environment.  Most scholars still think the comparison is valid, and I agree. 

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The new President, James Monroe, who was elected in 1816, did not want the European powers meddling in the New World, now that they were no longer distracted by Napoleon.  So in Monroe’s Inaugural Address, he said this:  

In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense.…

With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

He’s basically making the point that the US had not, and would not, intrude on any of the European disputes between the European powers.  He’s also making the point that the US hasn’t interfered with existing new world colonies, which, OK, that’s not exactly true, but the US really hadn’t yet done anything in central America or South America.  We had interfered, a lot, with other colonies in North America, and some in the Caribbean, too. 

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So by the beginnings of the 1800’s, the United States was starting to solidify itself as an actual nation, and beginning to spread westward.  But it was also beginning to spread eastward, in a way, because as an independent nation, it was developing a healthy trans-Atlantic trade network with the countries of western Europe and in the Mediterranean as well.  

This meant of course, ships sailing across the Atlantic ocean, carrying American cargo and American sailors.  Our first problem with all this international commerce was the Barbary Pirates that I mentioned in episode 69, talking about Thomas Jefferson’s first term as president.  But scaring off the pirates wasn’t the only problem for our shipping industry.  

Great Britain and France were fighting each other in the Napoleonic wars, and the US was trying to remain neutral.  Part of the reason for being neutral was that the US wanted to try to keep trading with both Great Britain and also France, but neither of those countries wanted the US trading with the other.  In other words, Great Britain didn’t want the US trading with France, it only wanted the US to trade with themselves.   

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Ok, we are coming to the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one.  But it’s not a clear transition this time.  The Middle Ages basically ended with the beginning of the Enlightenment, though of course those two periods overlap as well.  The new era we're moving into is known as the Industrial Age, which will last until our current era, the Digital age, which is also known as the age of idiots on Instagram.  But throughout the Industrial age, Enlightenment values and ideas continued to dominate the worldview of most western societies. 

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Ok, I have to acknowledge at the start here that I should have probably put this episode about Franklin before Adams or Jefferson, surely before Napoleon, but I was trying to follow the general flow of history, and Franklin kind of transcends the flow, you know?  He’s undeniably one of the most important founding fathers, but at the same time, he doesn’t ever become the lead actor on the stage in the same way that Washington, Adams, or Jefferson did.  But Franklin played a role in all the big moments.  As I mentioned in episode 64, there’s only 6 people who signed both the Declaration and the Constitution, and the only one that really matters is  - Benjamin Franklin.  I mean, just to say that you signed both these docs makes you a kind of a big deal, but Benjamin Franklin, on top of that, is arguably one of the most famous and influential Americans, ever. 

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I mentioned last episode that the only other Founding Father who could really rival John Adam’s resume was Thomas Jefferson.  And you could kind of say that everything Adams did, Jefferson did too, and did it, well, better.

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Ok, we are back to the new world, after lingering in France for more than 50 years, so we’ve gone from France to America, and we’ve gone back in time just a bit, so we can catch up on what’s been happening in America while France was enjoying a quick Reign of Terror.  When we last left America, the United States had adopted its Constitution, and Washington was the President.  
 

John Adams is one of my favorite historical characters, in part because he just happened to have an absolutely awesome life at an absolutely awesome time to be alive, but also in part because he’s kind of an anti-hero.  He was brash, abrasive, deeply principled, a fantastic writer,  very loyal to his friends, and extremely committed to duty. 

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Well, we’re still in France. In this episode, we’re going to talk about one of the most famous Frenchmen ever, Napoleon Bonaparte.  But I should start by pointing out that Napoleon, who eventually will become the Emperor of France, was not actually, well, French.  He was Corsican.  He was born on the Island of Corsica, which is an island in the Mediterranean, between France and Italy.  It’s just north of the larger island of Sardinia.  Ethnically, the Corsicans were mostly of Italian descent, rather than French.  In fact, Napoleon’s parents were descended from Italian nobility.

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Well, last episode I tried to summarize the French Revolution, and I realized that there is no way to cover it in just one podcast episode, so here we are in part 2.  So in this episode, we’re going to look at the part of the French Revolution that is known as the Reign of Terror, and how that will eventually lead to rise of a new emperor.  

Now, this is kind of obvious, but the American revolution didn’t have a period known as the reign of terror.  Like I said last episode, the two revolutions happened in very different environments, and they had very different enemies.  The enemy of the American revolution was the British government, and the British army and navy.  But the enemy of the French Revolution was, well, whichever Frenchman was against you, whether in policy or class or the type of pants you wore. So one of the reasons that the French Revolution has a reign of terror, is that different groups who held power were pretty ruthless about eliminating their enemies. 

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So in the New World, there’s a new country, with a new Constitution and a new central government.  This had never happened before, it was an astounding thing in world history, and that fact was not lost on the people of the Old World.  People all over Europe were watching what happened in America with great interest.  And when the United States was able to actually throw off the British government, and then were also able to come together and successfully create a new form of government, the people of Europe were impressed, and also inspired to begin to think about creating new forms of government for themselves. 

And one of the countries that was the most eager to think about new forms of government was France.  But France was a very, very different place than the United States, and its process of altering and abolishing the old form of government and instituting new government was also very different. 

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Well, you probably guessed from the title of the episode what this one is about.  It’s about the US constitution, which starts with the amazing line, ‘we, the people.’  And though the US constitution is being ignored and circumvented at many levels in our world today, it is still the very best design of a government that was ever created.  

Before I get into the constitution itself and how it came to be, and the amazing minds behind it, I want to point out that in a way, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are two pieces of the same idea.  You can kind of see them as one document, in two parts.  The Declaration of Independence declares the ideals of a group of people who are about to leave a tyrannical government and start a new one for themselves, and the Constitution is the working out of those ideals. 

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Well, the colonists have gone and done it.  They have declared themselves independent of Great Britain, who has basically laughed off the Declaration of Independence, and is now ramping up their military to go whip those darn colonists back into line.  

And like I said a couple of episodes ago, Great Britain was the world super-power in 1776.  The colonies had only a few small militias, made up of mostly farmers.  

But the colonists had home-field advantage, and that is going to mean a lot for them as they begin to go to battle with the British army.  And the colonists had one other trump card - their commander in chief, General George Washington.  We’ll talk about him more in a moment, but I’ll just say here that there probably wasn’t any other person, in all the colonies, who could have won the revolutionary war for the colonists. 

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Ok, last episode, I talked about how the Declaration of Independence came to be drafted, and I decided that it was really such an important document that I needed to take an extra episode to explain some of the important ideas within the document, and how they shaped our modern world.  

I should start by warning you that this episode is a good bit longer than most in this podcast.  The Declaration itself is just 1300 words, but there are so many good and important ideas in it, that it’s going to take a while to unpack it.  I suggest, also, that if you can, while you listen, have a copy of the Declaration of Independence open to read as we go.

So far in this podcast, it’s been pretty rare that I devoted an entire episode to one person - that’s happened 8 times so, but this will be a first for me.  I’m devoting 2 episodes to one document.  But like I said, I think you can make a case that the Declaration of Independence is the most important document that humans have ever written.  It’s certainly in the running.  

But why is it so important?  What is it about this document that makes it worthy of considering as one of the most important collections of ideas in all of history?  

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Well, it’s 1776.  Things are about to happen.  We just had the Boston tea party, Patrick Henry’s speech, and the battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Battle of Bunker Hill.   The British have shelled and burned several colonial towns, including Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia.  These are their own colonies, and they have burned the towns.  

The colonies are in open revolt against the British government.

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At the end of the last episode, we left colonial Boston chafing under British military rule.  Now Boston was a big port, a very important commercial center of New England, but it wasn’t all of New England, and it wasn’t even a very big city.  In fact, Boston, at the time, was entirely on one small peninsula of land, in the middle of Boston Harbor.  It was connected to the mainland by one small isthmus of land to the south.   Nowadays, a lot of the harbor space around Boston has been backfilled, and so the old part of Boston isn’t quite as isolated as it was back in the colonial days.  

But back in 1774, it was pretty easy for the British to cut off Boston harbor and cut off the city of Boston from the rest of Massachusetts.  And after the Tea Party, the redcoats fully imposed martial law.  There was a strict curfew, and restrictions on gatherings and crowds.  But there was still an underground network of patriots, meeting secretly, and making plans.  And they had spies amongst the British loyalists.

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Things in Boston are about to get really dicey.  In this episode, we’re going to look at several events that happened in Boston starting in about 1770 that all are part of the buildup of tension that leads to the beginning of the American Revolution.  

Last episode we talked about the French and Indian war, and how that was part of the larger 7 Years’ War that Great Britain fought with the French and Spanish.  Though Great Britain was the clear winner of that war, the British government did end up in a great deal of debt, and so, they did what governments always do - they raised taxes.  If you’re a government, that’s just what you do. And of course, no one likes it.

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In this episode, we’re going to look at a world-changing war, that was started by an small Indian and colonial raid on a French patrol.  That Indian raid included a few members of the Virginia Militia, including a 22 year old Lieutenant colonel named George Washington.  This little raid was later described as “the volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America that set the world on fire.”

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Well, last episode we surveyed the 13 original colonies, as they were at the start of the 1700’s.  And as I mentioned, a lot happens in the 1700’s.  And as I mentioned 2 episodes ago, one of the things that was happening at this time in Europe was the Enlightenment, which was in full swing by the 1700’s.  

Anyway, the Enlightenment had a unique expression in America.  The Enlightenment had a big effect in Europe, but its expression in the colonies was different.  Like I said last episode, the group of people who had migrated to the American colonies was a fairly well-educated group to begin with - the first generation was usually someone who had been educated in England, and had been strongly influenced by both Reformation and Enlightenment thinking.  The ideas of the Reformation and the Enlightenment, especially the idea of liberty of conscience, were part of reasons why people emigrated to the Americas in the first place.

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Well, buckle your podcast seatbelts, because we are getting to a point where a lot of stuff happens in a really short time.  Welcome to the 1700’s!  If you ask the question, which century ‘shaped our modern world’ the most, I think I might pick the 1700’s.  A lot of influential stuff happened in the 1700’s.   

So as we start this crucial century, I thought I should set the stage by talking about each of the 13 English Colonies in the New World.  But before I get to them, I should mention what else is going on in the New World, besides the English colonies.  The English colonies were all on the Atlantic coast, from what is now Maine down to the Florida Georgia line.

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When we last left the British Monarchy, back in episode 53, King James had come to the throne, and finish writing his famous King James Bible.  No, no, of course he didn’t write it, but he did commission it, and for its day, the scholarship and translation was very good.  It be meant to be a replacement for English translations of the Geneva Bible, which was what was used by the Puritans.  The King James Version was written and authorized to be used in Anglican churches, so the Puritans didn’t like it.  James' preference for the Anglican Church is about to set off a civil war.

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Ok, I need to step back for an episode, and step away from the narrative of the English colonies in North America, which I really want to talk about, and instead spend a bit of time talking about one of the most important intellectual parts of the early modern era, because this whole intellectual trend really influences everything that happens in the next few episodes.  It’s really the ideas of the Enlightenment that drive the whole Modern era, actually.  The Enlightenment is every bit as important as the Renaissance or Reformation, historically, and it’s more important in terms of shaping the ideas, values, and society of the Modern Era.

So that brings up the obvious question of, ‘What is the Enlightenment, anyway?’ And why is it called that?  What lights came on?  Another term that is used to describe this era is ‘The Age of Reason,’ which seems a little cocky to me, like the people before this era had not been reasonable, or not using their brains or something.  The Greeks and the Romans had themselves made a big deal of Reason, and using Reason to explore truth and how things worked. But something did change in the 1700’s.  Well, several things.  And we’ll look at some of them this episode.  

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After a little while in Holland, the Puritans from Yorkshire felt like they were being over-influenced by the permissive culture of Holland, and that they were also losing their Englishness.  So in 1620, the puritans hired two ships, the Speedwell and the Mayflower, to take the entire congregation to the New World, and found a colony there.  They were led by John Carver, William Brewster, and William Bradford.  They set sail on August 15th, 1620, but the Speedwell was taking on water, so it stopped at Plymouth.  About 100 people set sail on the Mayflower, on September 16th. 

Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.com

email:  [email protected]

This episode is kind of a cross-over.  We’re looking at the early English explorations of the New world, and their first colonies, which started during Elizabeth’s reign, so they are kind of part of the Middle Ages.  

But they are kind of part of the modern era, too, because these first colonies set the stage for the founding of Plymouth Colony, which set the stage for Boston, and Massachusetts, and eventually for a group of united colonies, which are definitely part of the modern era.  

So I’m including this episode in the Modern world, but you could argue with me on that, if you wanted. 

Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.com

email:  [email protected]

Wow, our 51st episode.  We’ll be talking about the modern world any day now.  But before we get to the New World, the Enlightenment, The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the chaos of the 1800’s, the further chaos of the 1900’s, and the soul-crushing angst of the new millennium, let’s take a look back at the chaos of the 400’s, the chaos of the Vikings, the soul-crushing angst of feudalism, the awe-inspiring majesty of the Renaissance, and the paradigm-shifting insights of the Reformation.  

So just to summarize the timeframe, the Middle Ages began with the fall of Rome in AD 476, and they kind of end sometime in the 1600’s.  Some scholars will say that the 1700’s are the beginning of the modern era.  But unlike the fall of Rome, there’s no clear defining event that says, well, that era is over and a new era is beginning.  The Middle Ages kind of Peter out, and the modern age kind of Peters in.  Shakespeare is really part of the end of Middle Ages, as is the King James Bible, but Rene Descartes and his book Discourse on the Method, which was published in 1637, just 25 years after the KJB, is part of the modern era.  Plymouth Colony was founded in 1620, and well, that’s much more a part of the modern era than the Middle Ages. 

Well guys, we’re right at the end of the Middle Ages.  [much rejoicing clip ] It’s been a longer process than I thought it would be back when I decided to call this podcast a ‘short’ walk through our long history.  It’s   taken us 50 episodes to get through all of human history up to AD 1600.  We covered the ancient world in episodes 1 through 26, and then covered the Middle Ages from episode 27 though this episode, episode 50.  And it feels fitting that we end the Middle Ages on a high note, as we talk about one of the most important, interesting, and mysterious figures in the history of literature.

If you ask, who are the most influential authors in human history, there are two who are in a category all by themselves.  Everyone else is a step down from these two.  The first, who we talked about way, way back in episode 6, was Homer.  And the other person in that category is William Shakespeare.  

Last episode, I spent a bit of time on Henry VIII, who was a very important monarch - but I didn’t give him a full episode, he was just shoehorned into the episode on the Reformation spreading to England.  But this time, I’m giving the whole episode to one ruler - Queen Elizabeth the first.  I might need to eventually give Elizabeth the second her own episode too, but I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.  

Why am I giving Elizabeth the first her own episode?  I haven’t given that many people their own episode, actually.  8 so far, in fact, before Elizabeth.  Whom, you may ask?  Alexander, Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Jesus, Constantine, Charlemagne, Gutenberg, and Luther.  A few other episodes have kind of been about one person, including Homer, Mohammad, and Columbus.  I mean, that’s quite the list, isn’t it?  When you’re asking about who the 10 most important people in western history are, all of these people would be in the discussion.  And so would Queen Elizabeth.  She’s that important.  

Last episode, we looked at the Reformation spreading out of Germany, and into other parts of Northern Europe, particularly looking at how England was affected.  One of the side effects of the north part of Europe leaving the Catholic Church was that Catholic Church itself was also forced to change.  The Catholic Church needed to take a hard look at itself, and decide how to go forward.  That process was called the Counter Reformation.  At least, that’s what the Protestants called it.  The Catholic Church usually calls it the Catholic Reformation.  I’m going to call it the Counter Reformation, because that feels accurate to me, because it does really seem that the Catholic Church was reacting to the challenges of the Reformation. 

Well, did you enjoy our brief excursion into hell last episode?  I did.  Since the world didn’t end, and we didn’t get to experience the afterlife first-hand, I guess we’re stuck here for a while.  So let’s keep looking at history, and see if there’s anything we can learn from it.  

Before everything went to hell, we were talking about Martin Luther and the beginning of the Reformation.  Again, the Reformation was kind of exclusive to northern Europe.  Part of the reason for this is that the south of Europe had almost 1500 years of history of being dominated by Rome, and everything, society, politics, economy, religion, even language  - they were just more connected with Rome than the northern part of Europe was.  So people felt more freedom to complain about Rome, in the north, and more freedom to separate themselves from Rome’s influence. 

Fair warning here up front, this episode is a bit long.  The history of hell is, appropriately, long and convoluted, so the episode has run on a bit despite my best editing efforts. 

I should also give fair warning here at the beginning, that some of what I’m going to say is not exactly in line with the conventional teachings of some churches today.  So, if you’re a church-goer, I’m just giving you fair warning that I may some things in this episode that you might disagree with.  I will also say, to you church goers, that I firmly agree with Luther’s principle of Sola Scriptura, so I’m trying to be guided by that, rather than what the church tends to believe.  The modern church, in many cases, likes to try to make things clear and simple, when in reality, the Bible is much more vague, and if you try to hold closely to the principle of Sola Scriptura, you have to admit to vagueness in some places where you really wish there was clarity.  Hell is one of those places.  

So what do you think of when you think of the idea of hell?  You’ve probably got an image of a floor made of boiling lava, and horned demons gleefully poking poor burning sinners with pitchforks.  I’ll just start off by saying, that image is not from the Bible.  It’s much more an image that comes from Dante’s Inferno, and medieval paintings, but we’ll get to that here in a bit. 

There are occasionally, in the history of the world, those singular moments, an instant in time, when everything changes.  One single action, one quick moment, and then everything after that is altered.  The course of history is changed.  Caesar crossing the Rubicon, the guy in crow’s nest of the Santa Maria shouting ‘Tierra!!’  (Land).  The first gunshot at the battle of Lexington,  the arch-duke of Austria-Hungary being assassinated, John and Paul meeting for the first time in Liverpool.  Those kind of moments, that happen all the time, and in the moment, they seemed like a small, normal, everyday things, but then later, everyone looks back and realizes, ‘wow, that was really significant.’  

This episode, we’re looking at one of those moments.  A small act of rebellion, a simple statement of things that needed to be talked about, that led to a long chain of really significant changes, that literally changed the world.  

Obviously, I’m talking about Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg. 

Episode 10 -  The Peloponnesian Wars

Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. 

This is Episode 10 -  The Peloponnesian Wars.  

The Golden Age of Greece, which we focused on last episode, lasted from around 528 BC to 323 BC, and it was a time of great prosperity in Greece.  And that very prosperity brought about some inter-city rivalries, as the city-states of Greece competed for their share, or more than their share, of the riches.  

When I say rivalry, what I actually mean is some fairly long brutal, bloody, battles.  This wasn’t just a political or economic rivalry, it was armies in the field, destroying each other’s cities and territory.  

The two main cities in this war, were of course Athens and Sparta.  But the other cities of Greece were basically forced to choose sides.  Fighting took place all over Greece, hence the name of the war:  The Peloponnesian Wars.  

Episode 8.1 -  Ancient Greek Military Strategy

Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. 

Welcome to Episode 8.1 -  A side trip to look at ancient Greek military strategy and weapons.  Specifically hoplites and triremes.  I’ve mentioned that ancient Greece wasn’t that large of a place, and they weren’t as populous as some of the other larger empires that they fought against, but they were still somehow able to defeat many of their enemies.  Eventually, under Alexander the Great, they will conquer the largest area of land, and create the largest empire, that the world had ever seen, to that point, but we’re not there yet. 

Episode 8 -  The Persian Wars

Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. 

Welcome to Episode 8 -  The Persian Wars.  We’re talking today about the ancient wars between Greece and Persia.  I’ve mentioned that Greece has had an important impact on the western world, but did you know that ancient Greece was almost wiped out?  A couple of times?  Greece was a small country, but they tangled with the biggest empire of their time:  The Persians.  The battles between these two countries will become legendary, and will give us a couple of the best quotes of all time.  Also, Pheidippides!  And his famous last words.  Lots of good quotes in this episode.  

We

Episode 7 -  The Kingdom of Israel

Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. 

Welcome to Episode 7 -  The Kingdom of Israel.  Back in Episode 5, I mentioned that Israel had an outsized influence on the history of the Western world, considering its size and significance in Ancient history.  If you were able to go back in time to the ancient world, and gone to visit someone in some other part of the Mediterranean, like Greece, and asked them about Israel, they would have said, ‘Who?’

Israel was really pretty insignificant in the ancient world, to be honest.  It only really matters to the affairs of the great nations because it’s occasionally in the way, kind of like my small dog Chipper is often in the way when I’m trying to go to the kitchen.  Assyria wants to attack Egypt, and on their way to the kitchen, I mean to Egypt, they have to go through Israel.  

Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. 

Welcome to Episode 6 -  The Iliad and the Trojan War.  

One of the most famous events of the ancient world is war between the Greeks and the Trojans, which is told in the epic novel the Iliad, and then finished in the Odyssey.  Funny thing is, we don’t know for sure if this war really happened!  

Regardless of whether the battle really happened, the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey are two of the most important and famous written works in all of human history.  So today we’re going to look at the stories, their author, their historical background, and the impact they had on Greek society, and on history.  

Episode 5.1 -  The development of written language and literacy

[intro music]

Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. 

Welcome to Episode 5.1 - The development of written language and literacy.  

Next time, we’re going to be taking a look at one of the great stories of the ancient world -  the Iliad.  But before we get dive into that, I wanted to step aside for an episode, and discuss the something that’s crucial to our understanding of history:  written languages.  As I’ve said before, it’s really hard to nail down the dates of ancient events before about 1000 BC.  Part of that is because there really isn’t that much written documentation of the events before that; at least not a lot of documentation that has survived.  

Once written languages became more common, a lot more stuff got recorded, and so our study of history gets more accurate, and much easier to cross-reference between cultures.  

So today, I thought we’d take a side journey into something that I find really fascinating:  the development of written languages.  And we’re also going to do something else a bit different - this episode will be an interview, with someone with much more experience in ancient languages than I have.  

Welcome to Episode 5 - Early Greece and the first City-States.  Last time, we looked at one of the great civilizations of the ancient world - Egypt.  Our modern culture was not all that directly influenced by Egypt, though you could say our modern culture was very influenced by the Israelites that came out from Egypt.  It’s interesting to me that a small, relatively powerless, backwater nation as Israel was for most of its existence, had such a profound effect on the western world.  One could argue that it was one of the 3 most influential ancient cultures, at least as far as influencing the modern world.  One of the others, not surprisingly, was Rome.  We will get to Rome in due time.  The other major influence on the western world was Ancient Greece.  

It’s hard to overstate how important ancient Greece was in terms of influencing the western world.  Art, government and politics, literature, philosophy, athletics, math, architecture, and worldview - all of these were hugely influenced by ancient Greece.  Who is the most influential philosopher of all time?  Well, it’s either Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle.  They were all Greek.  Where did democracy originate?  Greece.  You could maybe argue that Rome was more influential for a longer period, but you could also argue that Rome was simply spreading Greek learning and values.  Rome had its own valuable contributions, as we will see, but Greece was incredibly influential to the western world.  

Welcome to Episode 4 - The Gods of Egypt, and the Law of Moses.  Today we are going to look at one of the more important, and durable, civilizations of the ancient world - Egypt…

While most of the world was living in tents and small towns, scraping out a meager existence, Egypt started building huge cities of brick and stone, with massive monuments and even pyramids.  Did you know that the Great Pyramid at Giza was the tallest building in the world for over 3800 years?  It shows their abilities as builders. When the pyramids were being built, most of the rest of the world was living in small villages barely surviving on subsistence farming and livestock.

Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. Welcome to Episode 3 - The Biblical creation narrative.  Today we’re going to take a closer look at the creation story that’s found in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible.  The story in Genesis is very different from the other creation narratives of the ancient world, in tone, content, and scope. 

Every ancient culture had creation narratives, but not all of them survived.  Some of them we have good chunks of, and others mere fragments.  

The creation narratives of the ancient world, including the biblical book of Genesis, were written in part to answer both of these questions:  Why are we here?  And also, ‘Why is life so hard?’  People in the ancient world had to wake up too, and they probably asked that same question, especially on school days.   Many ancient cultures had creation stories that sought to answer why the world is the way it is.  Why does the world exist?  And, Why is life so hard?  

We’re going to look at some of the creation narratives, and a couple of elements that they have in common.  We’re also going to talk about just how hard it is to piece together the earliest bits of human history.