In the Nineteenth Century with Lara Nicholls

'In the nineteenth century’ is a podcast series about the wild, wonderful, brave, eccentric, and at times dastardly, people who characterised this remarkable period. It looks at their inspiring discoveries and reforms, and the sometimes, shameful events and spectacles they created. Some historians have referred to it as ‘the long nineteenth century’ spanning 125 years between the French Revolution in 1789 through to the outbreak of the first world war in 1914. The dramatic changes and discoveries that took place created a legacy which has lived well into the twentieth century touching our lives today. The laundry list of nineteenth-century moments is very long, indeed. Among the highlights is the women’s reform movement, which improved educational opportunities for women and girls, and agitated changes to discriminatory property laws which did not allow women to own their own income or property. Following such reforms was the eventual passing of laws allowing women the fundamental right to vote. The rise of worker’s rights movements and the passing of laws to protect child workers were also notable highlights. In the nineteenth century, we witnessed the potent rise of the Abolition movement and sweeping changes to the unethical and inhuman practice of slavery. This sparked the Civil War in America. While such outcomes did not cure western society of institutionally entrenched racism, the success of the anti-slavery movement in the nineteenth-century reversed one of the most deplorable humanitarian failures of the proceeding centuries. The darker side of the century contains the colonisation of First Nations Peoples and in many instances, the tragic histories of genocide and erasure. Yet, there are also remarkable stories of survival and the continuance of the oldest Indigenous cultures on earth. In the nineteenth century radical transformations took place in every aspect of our lives: science, politics, philosophy, literature, art, fashion, engineering, medicine and sociology, to name a few. The first atomic theory was postulated, Dimitri Mendeleev formulated the Periodic Table, Charles Darwin published the ‘Origin of Species’ and rewrote how we understand the evolution of life on earth. Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium, the electron was isolated, Neptune was discovered, anaesthetics were invented, the telephone was invented, gaslight and electric light bulbs lit up the world. Steamships accelerated sea voyages, cement was made and rubber tyres were invented. The machine gun was developed, as was the telegraph wire transforming warfare. Photography emerged and went through numerous technological transformations and changed the entire way we viewed and remembered the world. Then there were the railways, which carved up vast tracts of the countryside and connected towns and people in ways never before conceived. The coal that powered them indelibly transformed our environment for the worst, the cost of which we still pay for today. So much happened in the nineteenth century, and to unravel its secrets I will be joined by a group of brilliant experts, scholars and enthusiasts who will share their insights and knowledge with us on a regular basis. From radical theories to the flicking of a light switch, so much went on during this ambiguous and contradictory time that it warrants looking at again from a new perspective.