Making of a Historian: Recent Episodes
Making of a Historian
Show notes and more at historian.live!
I recorded this way back in September when I had ambitious dreams of doing a whole series on the history of British social clubs, but I’ve been unfortunately wiped with work and with the emotional toll of American politics lately, so I was never able to get the series off the ground. But what we have is a fantastic conversation with my colleague, Seth Thévoz, talking about his research on clubs in 19th Century Britain. Seth is the author of a really wonderful book on how London gentlemen’s clubs had a massive impact on 19th century politicians and politics. At the height, probably over 19 out of every 20 Members of Parliament were a member of at least one club. We talk about Seth’s book and then talk about the differences we see between clubs in the 18th and the 19th century.
You really need to check out show notes at historian.live for this episode. We have so many videos, images and book recommendations for this one. Also check out the mailing list at makingofahistorian.substack.com and you can get an email whenever I make a thing.
This week I’m joined by my colleague, Dr. Andrea Horbinski, a PhD from Berkeley who now works for Netflix. We talk about a part of her dissertation. First I should say that her dissertation is fantastic, and in the next few years it’s likely to be a book, tentatively titled Manga’s Global Century. You need to keep a watch for it when it does because it’s an eye-opening history that traces the origins of manga from the late 19th century up to the present. We can’t talk about that whole scope in this podcast, so we talk about the story of the Astro Boy TV show. The creator of Astro Boy, Tezuka Osamu, really really wanted to make an animation. But animations were really expensive. He stumbled onto a method that would mark the entire genre of anime. First, he made the animation on the cheap, borrowing from the street performance style of kamishibai. Second, he sold the animation to TV studios at HALF the cost it took to produce, hoping to recoup costs from sales of comics and branded merchandise. It was a gamble, but it paid off. It became the model for future animes. Expensive productions would be bankrolled by merchandise sales. The entire industry was built on people LOVING anime. The people who drew the animation were apprentices who were hoping one day to become masters with their own manga and anime. The consumers were fans who supported the shows and comics they liked by buying merchandise and attending conventions. Dr. Horbinski traces this story through to the fan conventions, and to new ‘circles’ of amateur and professional creators, many of whom made genres for new audiences, like women. We end by talking about the development of Shoujo and particularly Boy’s Love comics, comics oriented towards women, that circumvented the trap of the boredom of traditional heterosexual romantic tropes by exploring same-sex relationships.
It’s a fascinating discussion, and I hope you enjoy it.
For show notes, check the website historian.live. Get email reminders of when I make stuff: makingofahistorian.substack.com
So this episode is an absolute blast. I talk with my old friend Brendan McElmeel—yes, another Brendan M—about his dissertation research on love during the thaw years of the USSR. But before I gush to you about how good the interview is, I have to offer a bit of a mea culpa. I ended the interview too soon! Brendan’s research delves into the limits of the Soviet sexual revolution as well—and how there were a lot of groups left out of the process he’s talking about. But we never get there. Because I ended the interview too soon. I’m a bit worried you’re going to get too rosy a view of what we’re talking about—and take Brendan as being too uncritical or accepting of the people he studies. We’ll have to have him back on the show to talk more about his research when he gets another chapter done so he can correct the record. Now time to gush. Brendan has done such great research into the everyday life of a time period I don’t think we often hear about—that of Soviet Russia. You’ll learn about the horny balconies of group homes, dances, and a brief history of the Soviet Union. And you’ll learn about two Brendans stumbling through the study of history together.
This week I talk with Susan Lanzoni who talks about her book tracing the history of empathy. Empathy has, over the past 100 years, changed a lot in meaning. It started out as one of these untranslatable weird German words that art historians would throw around to discuss the mystical depths of aesthetic experience: einfühlung. This was the ability to literally feel into a thing—usually an object—when you were moved by it. When you were aesthetically moved by a painting of a mountain, you imagined that there was a kind of embodied feeling in the mountain itself. This was translated to empathy—in-feeling. But the term migrated from being applied to things, slowly, to being applied to people. After the Second World War, big professional groups of psychologists and social scientists were struggling with the twin problems of a population brutalized by the Second World War, firebombing and the holocaust, and the prospect of nuclear armageddon. One of the solutions was this human capacity to literally feel for other people—empathy. And slowly this arcane technical word migrated into common usage. It’s a wild conversation that will make you pause every time you use the word in daily speech!
Our website, historian.live, has links, book lists, and more!
So if you’re like me, you’ve used the phrase ‘object lesson’ to mean some kind of telling real-world example of something. The new parent waking up at 4:30 in the morning to get work done, for example, is an object lesson about the current childcare crisis. But the phrase used to mean something concrete itself: a particular kind of educational practice that put at its center a student's concrete and systematized appreciation of a physical object. A teacher would present an object—be it something everyday, like a window or a ladder, or something special like ginger, or a little classroom museum of interesting things—and then lead the students through a number of practices that allowed them to appreciate the object, first as an object, and then later, as a representative of abstract ideas. This shows a really distinctive way that 19th century Americans thought about objects, and thought WITH objects. When they saw, say, a piece of coal, they had been taught not only to appreciate the coal as an object, and describe it, but to understand it as a process of production, trade, and the economy.
For show notes, links, and book lists, check out our website at historian.live.
Today I talk with Professor Michael Schoeppner, Assistant Professor of History at University of Maine, Farmington, about his book Moral Contagion: Black Atlantic Sailors, Citizenship and Diplomacy in Antebellum America. I was initially drawn to talk with Professor Schoeppner simply because he wrote a book about something I knew nothing about: between the early 1820s and the Civil War, many Southern States had rules that barred free Black sailors from coming into their ports. If you were a free negro seaman and came into a Southern port, you’d be brought ashore and put in jail until your ship departed. But Professor Schoeppner uses these now-forgotten laws to tell a much bigger story about the nature of citizenship in the US. The idea of the Negro Seamen Laws as that free Black seamen brought to the otherwise pacific slaves of the south the moral contagion of freedom. We have a deep conversation about the nature of citizenship both in the past and in contemporary America.
Full show notes, including pictures, further reading, and my PATREON are available at the website, historian.live.
I’m honored to have Professor David Beerling on the podcast this week, to talk about his book Making Eden, which is a deep history of the evolution of land plants. We’ve talked a bit about environmental history in the past, but I’ve been curious about the longer history of the planet. Professor Beerling’s book is a fantastic look into one of the greatest stories of this history: how plants came to evolve and turn a rocky, eroding planet green. If you—like me—know nothing about plant biology, don’t worry. Professor Beerling guides us through our latest understanding of how plants enslaved bacteria, put on coats, learned to breathe, and started making seeds.
Professor Beerling is the director of the Leverhulme Center for Climate Change Mitigation. They just have a new article out in NATURE about how we might mitigate climate change by adding ground up rocks to soil, and thus harnessing the power of plant roots to eat up carbon dioxide.
The title is inspired of course by the great Dylan Thomas poem, which Professor Beerling quotes in the book.
Check out full show notes--including book lists on our website at historian.live
This week we discuss Tom Almeroth-Williams’ book, City of Beasts—now out in a reasonably priced paperback—which looks at how people and animals worked together in 18th century London. We talk about cows, horses, the great geese herds of Christmastime, and why people in London sometimes just wanted to spend some time outside on their horses. The conversation is really fun—as is Almeroth-Williams’ book. But it’s serious, too. In taking an animal perspective of labor in 18th century London, Almeroth-Williams’ pushes us to change the way we look at the Industrial Revolution, social life, and consumer society.
For show notes, and information on supporting the show, check out our website at historian.live
The Nestucca River has been home to salmon and salmon fishers for thousands of years. In this summer-vacation themed episode, I talk with Professor Joseph E Taylor about the 19th and 20th century history of this unique salmon fishery. Combining labor history, environmental history, local history, and a history of recreation, Professor Taylor’s book, Persistent Callings is a deft illustration of how fishing persisted and changed in response to environmental change, changing regulations, and gentrification.
All the proceeds from Persistent Callings go to the Pacific City Dorymen’s Association scholarship fund.
In this episode I talk with Professor Brent Sirota about church history in the long 18th century. People have portrayed religion in the long 18th century as a little boring and staid. In the 17th century you had a civil war over religion in Britain. In the 19th century you had evangelicals, Darwin, and the Oxford Movement. But in the 18th century you have almost a cease fire. Professor Sirota's work looks at the process of how that ceasefire came about, and how it was less about religious toleration and more about a political process. In talking about this we end up talking a bit about the end of the world, and why a lot of people in America now think its coming soon.
Check out our website at historian.live for book lists, and a link to our Patreon!
In this episode I talk with Stanford Professor Kathryn Olivarius about her research on Yellow Fever in antebellum New Orleans. Yellow Fever was bad. It killed around half of all the people who caught it. Why then did young immigrants to New Orleans seeking to make their fortune sometimes willingly infect themselves with the disease? Olivarius’ research shows that immunity to Yellow Fever became a kind of human capital. People who could demonstrate that they were ‘acclimated’ to Yellow Fever were considered bona fide citizens of the Yellow Fever Zone. Everyone else was just a tourist. If you survived, then it was evidence of your grace—your worthiness in the face of risk—a worthiness that translated to success in the cut-throat world of slave racial capital. It’s a great conversation, one that made me think about the current debate about social distancing and COVID in a brand new way. Thanks to number one listener John Handel for recommending Olivarius’ work to me!
Check out Olivarius’ article Immunity, Capital, and Power in Antebellum New Orleans in the AHR. And keep your eye out for her book out next year Necropolis: Disease Power and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom.
If you like the show, give us money on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/makingofahistorian
In this episode, I sit down with Craig Johnson, “the most returningest” guest in the history of this podcast. I ask him to talk about historical parallels to our current quarantine, and the conversation quickly goes in a direction I didn’t expect. Listen! It’s probably the most political episode we’ve done yet.
You can find Craig on Twitter @HistOfTheRight. if you want to hear more from Craig (and you should), listen to his podcast, Fifteen Minutes of Fascism.
If you like the show can now support us on Patreon! (patreon.com/makingofahistorian)
This week we have returning guest Kyle Jackson—who last came on to tell us about the Panama Canal. Today he’s coming on to practice his orals. I ask him to tell us to give us three different dates when we could start the beginning of US history. It’s a great discussion. You’ll learn a lot. Both about US history, and also about how historians think about history.
Can’t get enough of Kyle? (We can’t.) In his other life he’s a producer / rapper dubbed Nahvocado. You can find him on his Insta @nahvocado.
We're inaugurating a new podcast interview series during this weird time of isolation with recurring guest, Varsha Venkatasubramanian. Varsha is studying for her comprehensive exams in like TWO WEEKS and she was gracious enough to join us to talk about what it's like to read a thousand books when you don't have library access. We discuss the history of decolonization, which Varsha masterfully guides us from the ideological origins in the American Revolution, through the Haitian Revolution, to Woodrow Wilson's 14 points, to Indian independence. Probably the most educational and fact-dense interview I've ever done!
This is the last (or next-to-last!) episode in the series, and we talk about something that can be both work AND play: sex. We look at sex within marriage, masturbation, and prostitution, paying special attention to prostitution as a form of lower-classed labor.
This episode, we talk about beer. Beer isn’t just an enjoyable beverage. You’ll learn:
How beer started off as part of a complete breakfast
How capitalist brewers destroyed the way of life of the village alewife
How IPA became cool for 19th century hipsters
And more!
Check out show notes at historian.live and we now have a Patreon at patreon.com/makingofahistorian
In this--another short episode!--we talk about a group of workers who are often written out of the story of the Industrial Revolution. The mostly female ranks of domestic servants, who cleaned houses, made food, educated children, made medicine, and generally made the home a homey place to be. When historians usually deal with servants, they treat them like holdovers of an old regime--their work never really gets mechanized, and they seem to slowly fade away over the 20th century. But I argue here that they are actually precociously modern: they do emotional labor, and so anticipate the modern service industry, where we not only have to WORK, but we have to evoke particular EMOTIONS. We're all servants now.
A tired Brendan talks about the history of vacations, briefly! We discuss how Romantic poets helped make the wilderness beautiful, rather than scary, and about how capitalist entrepreneurs got rich off of a new consumer society devoted to vacationing.
We're been on a bit of a hiatus in this series. Who knew it'd be hard to juggle teaching, raising a kid, and writing a dissertation? But given the shelter in place of COVID-19, I thought it would be a good time to resume the podcast and try to get through the rest of the episodes in this series.
Warning: I'm joined in this podcast by a special guest, my three month old daughter Bina! She has a lot of opinions in the early minutes of this episode, and kinda gets her dad off of his game a little bit.
This episode we talk about how in general people in Britain over the second half of the 19th century worked LESS, and how we can use this to understand some of the different ways that historians understand what moves history forward.
In this episode, we talk sleepily about two parts of labor in the Industrial Revolution that tend not to get a ton of love: craft labor and the professions. We usually think of the image of the factory, but only a very small portion of work was factory work. Many more people worked with their hands. At the same time, there was an expansion in the number of professions. That's it!
This episode we talk about the history of the experience of time. Yes, even our experience of time itself changed during the Industrial Revolution. The big change we can think of as a change from task-orientation—where we think of our days as devoted to particular things—to time-orientation—where we think of our days as cut up into particular buckets like work-time, play-time and sleep-time. We talk about this change, and how our current experience of time might be changing yet again as new technologies bring work back into the home, and new kinds of surveillance allow for ever greater control of work-time.
Check out full show notes at historian.live
In this new season, we will be following along with the class I am teaching this semester on Work and Play in the Industrial Revolution. In this episode, we go through the rationale for the course, and we talk about the before part of the story: the popular culture of the long 18th century, filled with drinking, maypoles, and seasonal work.
Check out the website at historian.live for images and book-lists!
For more detailed shownotes, go to our website at historian.live
This episode is a co-production with the Journal of History of Ideas Blog’s podcast, In Theory. If you like this show’s format, you’ll love In Theory. Also be sure to check out the JHI Blog itself, which consistently produces some of the best academic writing for a general audience out there. If you dig through the archives, you might even find some of my essays!
This episode I’m joined by Joshua Fogel, Professor at York University in Canada to talk about his new book, A Friend In Deed. A Friend In Deed talks about the unlikely friendship between on of 20th Century China’s most important writers, Lu Xun, and a Japanese bookstore maven in Shanghai during the interwar period, Uchiyama Kanzo. It’s a fantastic book that does what few history books can do—it really shows you a rich human relationship.
In talking about the book, we discuss Chinese-Japanese relations in the interwar period, the cosmopolitain city of Shanghai, and the nature of friendship itself. It’s a really fantastic interview with a truly generous scholar.
We're back after an extended break with a great episode. In this episode I walk with my colleague Christopher Lawson about two really big things that happen in the 20th century: deindustrialisation and neoliberalism. These are hard topics to deal with on their own, and Christopher tells the story of how they both interact by telling the story of Scottish steel plants. The big question: should Britain's industry be efficient and globally competitive? or should it build local communities?
We talk about so much more!
And a programming note: I'm going to try to keep up with the episode a week schedule, but sometime in December, we're going to abruptly stop because our family is expanding! My wife is expecting a kid, due in December, so the podcast will probably go on the back burner at that time.
In this episode I speak with PhD Candidate Soufu Yin about Chinese political culture. If you're anything like me, your idea of China is pretty monolithic: politics is all about emperors, bureaucrats, and the civil service examination. But Shoufu argues that much of this is a trick of perspective, and that when we look at Chinese political culture we find lots of examples of a very different kind of politics. In this episode we talk about medieval public opinion polls, and female military commanders.
In my conversation this week with my colleague Amada Beltran, we talk about some of the biggest problems in history: the state, modernity, and how on earth do historians come to understand the past? Amada talks about how her careful study of wills showed her a key moment in the relationship between the family, the church, and the modern state in 19th century Mexico. I won't spoil it for you here, but it's a great piece of detective work. Listen if you're curious about modernity, the Catholic Church, the Habsburgs, or the Emperor Maximilian, the crummy Bourbon monarch of Mexico.
Check out the show notes at Historian.Live
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This week we have on PhD Candidate B.K. Williams, who talks to us about the history of Indonesia after the Second World War. If you're like me, you probably can't keep your Sukarnos and your Suhartos straight. But B.K. helps us look at the rich story of war, independence, repression, and development. With a walk-on part from Mr. Richard Nixon. Both me and B.K. had colds, so there is unfortunately some coughing this episode.
If you like the show, be sure to subscribe! Rate us and review us! And check out the website at historian.live
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This episode we learn all about the Lebanese Civil War, which lasted a whopping FIFTEEN YEARS from 1975 to 1990. If you know anything about the Lebanese Civil War, you know that it is complicated. It’s sometimes presented as a sectarian conflict—Christians against Muslims; but it’s also a conflict between the city and the country, a regional conflict, and a stage for the Cold War. But this episode will help you understand all the ins and outs of the conflict. PhD Candidate Emily Whalen, from UT Austin (now on a pre-doc at Yale) explains the history of the Lebanese Civil War remarkably clearly. For Whalen, the civil war is a way of understanding democracy, pluralism, and the nation. Along the way we learn about the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Mandate system, and we talk about whether the nation-state is really worth it.
In this episode we talk to returning guest, Craig Johnson, about the history of right wing politics. Craig tells us how the right wing developed after the French Revolution, why historians tend to ignore it, and how to understand fascism.
Follow Craig on Twitter (https://twitter.com/HistOfTheRight) and Medium (https://medium.com/@HistOfTheRight/)
You HAVE to check the shownotes for this one. Go to https://www.historian.live/home/2019/4/17/episode-130-battle-raps-of-the-high-middle-ages RIGHT NOW
There? Good. Our guest today Dr. Jenna Phillips has been kind enough to give us a great series of musically accompaniments to today's talk.
Dr. Phillips tells us about a fascinating form of singing in the high middle ages that’s basically like medieval battle rap. Two singers debate a topic in song, and make appeals to two judges, who then declare the winner. It’s a great episode because it has everything. We discuss just what on earth the High Middle Ages are through talking about the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Then Jenna takes us into the world of popular singing: the troubadours and the crusaders. Finally we talk about one particular style of singing, the juex partis. Then, as an added bonus, Dr. Phillips talks to us about how an archival discovery let her understand how people actually sang the jeux partis back in the day.
This is such a great episode. I am proud to welcome Professor Ted Underwood, author of the new book, Distant Horizons. Professor Underwood uses computers to understand long-term, large-scale changes in literature. We don't talk about the methodological stuff, though--instead Professor Underwood gives us a really rich history of how literature over the past three hundred years has changed. How have we developed new genres? How have those changed? How has the gender of writers changed? And how have those writers written about men and women? If you're curious about digital humanities, the history of literature, or you're just and English lit buff, this will be a must-listen.
Apologies for my sound quality on this one. I got a new mic... and accidentally... spoke into the wrong end.
Check out more show notes at historian.live
This episode I sit down with Berkeley Professor of Latin American and Atlantic History Elena Schneider to talk about her fantastic new book, the Occupation of Havana. It's a fantastic conversation. We talk about one of the big wars of the 18th century--the Seven Years War. And we focus in on one part of the war: the British siege on the Cuban city of Havana. We usually forget this story because when the war ended, Havana was returned to the Spanish. Professor Schneider tells this story, uncovering the forgotten histories of the black people who kept the city going during the siege and occupation. This is such a great episode. Especially worth a listen if you're into Atlantic History, Cuban history, or military history.
You can find the book on Amazon, and follow Professor Schneider on Twitter @elenaschneid
This week's episode, I talk about the history of chemistry with historian of science Henry Schmidt. We focus on one of the most important elements: nitrogen. Nitrogen is incredibly important for plant and animal growth. It also makes up over three quarters of the air. How did people figure out what nitrogen was? And once they did figure out what it was, how did they think to use it. Henry traces this wild idea of the circulation of nitrogen that points to a way of thinking about natural resources as if they are not expendable. Spoiler alert: it kinda leads to mercantilism.
We had some recording problems on this one, unfortunately. My computer ate an INCREDIBLY fascinating discussion me and Henry had about the history of milk adulteration. We'll get him back on soon and re-do it so you all can learn all the crazy stuff I learned about the history of milk.
This week I bring you a wild conversation with my friend S. Prashant Kumar, who's writing a dissertation in the history of time itself. To tell this story he's looking at a bunch of cosmological inquiries in India. We talk about the beginning of the story, this telling moment when a smart young man on the make, Reuben Burrow, went to India to make his fortune. He worked as a surveyor. But he also mucked around with astronomy and anthropology, and believed that he had discovered proof of the existence of paradise.... He believed that by studying Indian astronomical data, he had found evidence of a time when the earth had not spun on its axis, when there were no seasons, and when everything was perfect.
It's a great conversation, and I can't wait for you to hear it.
As always, check out show notes at historian.live
"Every generation of historians is really just trying to understand their parents," my colleague Sarah Stoller tells me in his week's interview. And that's what we do--we go back to the 70s, 80s and 90s to learn about the history of working parents.
Check out show notes at historian.live
In this episode, we talk with PhD Student Varsha Venkatasubramanian about the history of dams in the 20th century. Dams became symbols of development for both capitalist and communist regimes: they provided electricity, water, and big building projects. Then in the 1980s, spurred by a controversial dam project in India, the popular perception of dams started to shift. Maybe dams were dangerous! They displaced people, and destroyed natural habitats. Was the destruction worth the development? How as anyone to tell? Join us for a really interesting conversation that really GOES PLACES.
We were going to save this one for when the new royal baby came, but I loved the conversation so much I just couldn't wait. In this episode I talk with Dr. Michelle Beer about early modern queenship. Now I used to think that Queens were relatively powerless, but in this conversation Dr. Beer sets me straight. Queens had a lot of power, and used that power in rich and complicated ways. There was politics in what clothes the queen wore, and how the king acknowledged the new royal baby, and how the royal couple were married.
For more of Beer's work, check out her new book! Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain, available from Boydell and Brewer press.
To celebrate the release of the latest expansion for Civilization 6, Gathering Storm, we're going to be talking about the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal is World Wonder introduced in Civ 6: Gathering Storm that lets you build an exceedingly long canal. On this episode I talk to historian Kyle Jackson about how the Panama Canal got built. You'll learn about American canal envy, yellow fever, and how the Panama Canal was nearly the Nicaragua Canal.
This marks the beginning of a new season for the show. We’ll be doing a series of interviews with historians at every stage of their career: early career grad students, folks on the job market, and honest-to-goodness tenured historians.
In this episode, we are graciously joined by Professor of History and South and Southeast Asan Studies, Peter Zinoman. We talk about how the story of the Vietnam War has changed, and the importance of learning Vietnamese History.
If you have a suggestion for a person you think should be on the show, send me an email!
One of the BIG THINGS these days are the ‘Digital Humanities’—a set of approaches that bring the power of computers to traditional humanistic questions. I was asked to present an introductory talk about Digital Humanities: here is a version of that talk.
The problem is that people aren’t really sure just what the Digital Humanities are. The joke is that every conference, talk, meet-up or working group about DH begins with the question “Just what is Digital Humanities.” I think that’s because there are two different views of what DH should be.
First is the ‘soft’ view—DH is just a ‘big tent’ designation for whatever it is that humanists do when they get access to computers.
Second is the ‘hard’ view—DH is a fundamentally different way of doing scholarship, that might not even be particularly humanistic.
A lot of detractors of Digital Humanities take the hard view. They say that DH is a con-game. Practitioners say that it’s just a collection of methods, but really it’s a sneaky trick of the neoliberal establishment to replace politically radical humanistic scholarship with merely useful computer tricks.
I think that BOTH the hard view and the soft view are true. DH is confusing because it is a method-led scholarly project, rather than a theory-led project. The past generation really got the most wind in its sails from theories—new theoretical orientations that let them see their subject in new lights, and make new claims. And so they look at DH and wonder where the theory is. But DH is firstly a bunch of methods. What both camps kinda miss out on is that eventually the new methods WILL lead to new theoretical orientations, new projects, and new problems. It’s just that we don’t know EXACTLY what those are.
In this episode, we look at how the history of inequality affects the stories we tell about the Anthropocene.
Reading list:
Trevor Jackson on Inequality (https://jhiblog.org/2018/04/04/review-essay-after-piketty-sutch-scheidel-and-the-new-study-of-inequality/)
Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty, 2015. “Carbon and Inequality from Kyoto to Paris.”
Schiedl, Walter. 2017. The Great Leveler. Princeton University Press. Selections.
Duncan, Mike, This is How Republics End
McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Political Polarization and Income Inequality
In this episode we talk about how coal transformed transportation, shrinking the world and creating new kinds of unequal power relationships between countries. Then how in the 19th century, coal was joined by another new player--oil.
Anthropocene 105: Consuming Things, Bird Hats, Railroads, Restaurants by Making of a Historian
In this episode, we look at the history of the Industrial Revolution. What caused it? Why was it important? We boil down the main strands in historical thought right now. One camp says that the Industrial Revolution happened when and where it did because British society was special. The other camp says that the Industrial Revolution happened because British people had easy access to coal.
This episode was recorded at the dinner of the Pacific Coast Branch American Historical Association Conference with Professor Amy Froide of UMBC. We talk about the financial revolution of the early 18th century--and the unexpected role some women played in it. Check out her book on the subject, Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors during Britain’s Financial Revolution, 1690-1750 which is out now.
In this episode, we hear a version of a paper I will be presenting at the PCB-AHA 2018 Conference, on change ringing and masculinity. Over the long 18th century, British men made clubs to practice a weirdly intricate form of bell ringing called change ringing. Why? I argue that it allowed middle classed men a public way to demonstrate their middle classed skills in a way that was distinctively cool. They showed off their conspicuous complexity--not the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy.
I'm back! After a research trip and a car accident, I take on guilds.
Check out historian.live for reading lists, images, and other bonus content.
In this podcast we look at the history of the steam engine, from Hero of Alexandria, to Thomas Newcomen, to James Watt.
Shownotes available at historian.live/home/coalpower
Show notes at historian.live/home/coal-4
The new economy was built on cheap iron and cheap coal. We talked about cheap coal last episode. Now we're going to talk about cheap iron. Ironmaking is a complicated and multi-stage process but spoiler alert: once people started to figure out how to use cheap coal to make iron, iron got a lot cheaper. The big thing to remember is that making iron takes a lot of energy. You need fire at high heats to melt the iron in order to refine it and forge it. For a long time people got that fire from charcoal, which is heavy, bulky, and expensive. In the 18th century people like Abraham Derby and Henry Cort learned how to make iron with coal, which was much cheaper than wood. This meant iron became less expensive, and could be made anywhere with cheap coal--which in Britain meant a lot of places.
For show notes and book lists, find the episode here: https://www.historian.live/home/2017/8/11/history-of-coal-3
This episode looks at coal in 18th century Britain. First, I give a rough overview of what 18th century Britain was LIKE, Men wore wigs and sometimes swords. There were queens and three kings, all named George. It was a time of change, and even maybe Enlightenment. Then I look at how coal remained cheap over the century, despite the fact that demand skyrocketed. It's a story of canals, wagonways, pumps, and the backbreaking work of miners.
Today we talk about coal before the Industrial Revolution. People needed a lot of wood in the past to heat their houses, cook their food, and make stuff like buildings, bridges and navies. When population increased, people shifted from wood to coal. After the Black Death, population in Britain slowly crept up meaning more expensive stuff. But things got really bad in the middle of the 17th century--the Little Ice Age. It was cold. It was crowded. People needed fuel, but the forests were shrinking. Big cities like London shifted to coal. Coal miners had a field day. Coal started to replace wood in a bunch of industrial applications. Boiling stuff was easy: salt, beer, alum. Other things were harder, like glass or baking bread. In the 17th century, Britain became something new: a society that got most of its energy from a rock, rather than from the sun.
Music by Jonathan Lear. Image by Duncan Barton. For book lists, images, and graphs check out https://www.historian.live/home/2017/7/28/a2ipq6n6zn0bn91pyye5fo66fr7vfg
Show notes--including a wonderful custom made image!--at historian.live Making of a Historian is BACK doing a season on the history of coal. We start at the very beginning, in the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago. Then giant plants got trapped in oxygen-poor bogs and started to form the black burnable rock that will be at the center of our history. Questions? Feedback? Treats? Tweet me @mackieteacher Music by Jonathan Lear (jonathanlear.bandcamp.com) Images by Duncan Barton (instagram.com/duncandraw/)
Episode 79: Stumbling Over Civil Society (First Modern Century 7) by Making of a Historian
Episode 78: The End of the Ancien Regime (First Modern Century 6) by Making of a Historian
Episode 77: Industrial Revolution Revisions (First Modern Century 5) by Making of a Historian
Episode 74: The Murder of Tradition, Reconsidered (The First Modern Century 2) by Making of a Historian
Episode 73: Birth, Death and Fen Drainage (The First Modern Century 1) by Making of a Historian
Episode 72: Circadian Rhythms (Social Life in the Anthropocene 9) by Making of a Historian
Episode 70: Unwanted Visitors (Social Life in the Anthropocene 8) by Making of a Historian
Episode 68: City of Darkness, City of Light (Social Life in the Anthropocene 7) by Making of a Historian
Episode 67: Strangers in the City (Social Life in the Anthropocene 6) by Making of a Historian
Episode 66: Technologies of Distance (Social Life in the Anthropocene 5) by Making of a Historian
Episode 65: The Organized Society (Social Life in the Anthropocene 4) by Making of a Historian
Episode 64: Intimate Things (Social Life in the Anthropocene 3) by Making of a Historian
Episode 63: Fine Dining, Fast Food, Freedom (Social Life in the Anthropocene 2) by Making of a Historian
Episode 62: Food and Energy (Social Life in the Anthropocene 1) by Making of a Historian
In this potentially wonky episode, I try to think my way through different theories of capitalism.
In this episode, I tackle one of those big 3 a.m. questions. Historians call it the question of structure versus agency. You'll call it the question of whether individuals can do anything to change the world.
It may just be that I am delirious due to a head-cold, but in this episode I argue that our commonsense view that capitalism drives companies to constantly search for ever higher profits is wrong. Instead capitalists often want economically irrational things, like country houses and Oxford educations. Large organizations also work to protect industries at large from competition by making cartels.
Books: Parker, Global Crisis Nye, American Technological Sublime Wolfgang Behringer, A Cultural History of Climate G.D. Wood, Tambora
Books Jo Guldi, Roads to Power Cassis, De Luca and Florio, eds., Infrastructure Finance in Europe David Headrick, Tentacles of Progress Kander, Malanima and Warde, Power to the People
Books: The Visible Hand, Alfred Chandler Government and Expertise, edited by Roy MacLeod Rule of Experts, Timothy Mitchell Sidney Pollard, Genesis of Modern Management
In this episode we look at the East India Company, which went from weird little company state holding a network of commercial forts, to taking over an entire continent.
Books: Emily Erikson, Between Monopoly and Free Trade (GREAT!) Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink Phil Stern, the Company State
In this episode, I realize with horror that: People still leave voicemails In my last episode on modernity I completely forgot that women exist In this episode, I try to rectify that, and argue for an understanding of modernity that includes women's experiences
In this SUPER BURNED OUT EPISODE I try to make the case that urban life leads to modernity.
Books David Henkin, City Reading Miles Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity Michel de Certau, Practice of Everyday Life
In this episode, I look at how problems of open discussion in anonymous cities led to the creation of an idea of politeness. This was good because it let people talk freely with strangers and people of different ideas without devolving into rancor, violence and civil war. I think it's an important part of Western society.
Book list: Donna Andrew, the Aristocratic Vice Philip Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society John Kasson Rudeness and Civility
Book List: Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital Jason Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life
In this episode we talk printing presses, newspapers, Wooten desks, and memos. Also we explain why it's okay you don't really know who your Facebook friends are.
In this episode, I argue that Britain and Japan offer two models of development. The world took the British route: fossil fuels and global expansion. But when the fossil fuels run out, we may need to take the Japanese route: personal restraint and state control.
Reading List John Richards, Unending Frontier Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, the Many Headed Hydra
In this episode, we have a special guest on the show, Craig!
Craig's another grad student studying for his orals. We talk about his larger project, and the ways in which British and Argentinian history run into one another in the 19th century.
Books: David Henkin, Postal Age Simon Potter, News and the British World Francis Fukuyama, Trust Gary Magee and Andrew Thompson, Empire and Globalisation Jessical Harland Jacobs, Builders of Empire
In this episode, I try to explain my interest in organizational sociology without sounding too half baked.
After a two-day break (due to burnout? birthday? President's day?) our humble podcaster returns to talk about voluntary associations in the 19th century.
This is a high-wire act, because this afternoon he has a meeting with his advisor about this topic, and he doesn't feel like he has his narrative super solid yet!
Can he boil down what turned out to be a 25 minute episode into a tight three minutes in four hours? Check back next time to find out...
In this episode, I try to sum up changes in work and class over the 18th and 19th century. Everything changes. But these changes are different everywhere. Don't just think of women slaving away in factories, think of women slaving away at home over sewing machines. And don't just think of the rise of the working class, think of a confusion about who belongs where, about how society is ordered, about what exactly it is that makes a community.
In this episode I talk about how workers used to get Monday off, and now get Saturday off.
Also my accent goes wonky here. I seem to inconsistently pronounce the word 'leisure.'
Don't worry. It annoys me too.
Books: Hugh Cunningham, Time Work and Leisure Hans-Joachim Voth, Time and Work in England, 1750-1830
In this special burnt-out birthday episode, I talk about women and work in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Reading List: Joyce Burnette, Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain Anna Clark, the Struggle for the Breeches (SUPER GREAT BOOK) Deborah Valenze, First Industrial Woman
In this episode, we talk about why middle class people in the 18th century had bad dreams about the grim reaper disguised as a debt collector.
Reading List: Davidoff and Hall's Family Fortunes (probably the single most interesting book I've read all year) Peter Earle The Making of the English Middle Class Margaret Hunt, The Middling Sort
Today we talk about how the three piece suit got made, how women's fashion was helped by bike-riding socialists, and whey in fashion everyone steals from everyone else.
In this episode I compare the rise of restaurants in the 18th and 19th centuries with the rise of domestic home cooked meals in the same period.
In this episode, we talk about the consumer revolution of the 18th century, a weird time when commemorative plates were like MAGA hats.
In this episode, I try to make a big narrative about how the Industrial Revolution happened.
In this episode, I run through three stances on what the Industrial Revolution actually was.
In this episode, I try to sum up two weeks' of reading about capitalism, finance, markets, and machines into one minute.
And I fail. The episode is twenty minutes. College try, though!
We tackle one of life's only certainties: taxes, and how changes in warfare led to two very different tax systems in Britain. Book: Martin Daunton: Trusting Leviathan
In this episode, I argue for a periodization of European history based on particular era's drug of choice. First spices, then coffee, then gin and opium.
Books: Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise Zheng Yangwen, The Social Life of Opium In China
In this episode, we look at another explanation for the spread of empire and capitalism. Technology Books today are David Headrick, The Tools of Empire David Headrick, the Tentacles of Progress Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts
I this episode we explore how war and peace affected the creation of the modern financial system from around 1700-1800. In only twelve minutes. I left a lot of stuff out. Guess we'll need to come back to this later?
I tell you the secret THEY don't want you to know: WHO'S TAKING OUR JOBS!
(It's machines.)
We're going to talk about the 19th century economy over the next few weeks. It was in the 19th century that you get something like a global economy. Why? Today we take a quick look at how factories, finance and the firm knit the world together, only to collapse with the start of the First World War.
Books: The Cambridge History of Capitalism The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution and Age of Capital and Age of Empire Richard Grossman, Unsettled Account Thomas McGraw, ed., Creating Modern Capitalism
I have a meeting with my advisor today, so I scrambled to make some kind of synthesis of all the readings I've done on the Victorian family and home. I find three big themes. Number three will shock you! (Probably not.)
Reading list: Cambridge Economic History of Britain Cambridge Social History of Britain Deborah Cohen, Household Gods (2010) Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (2005) John Gillis, A World of Their Own Making (1997) Ruth Goodman, How To Be A Victorian (2014) Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight (1992)
This is one of those podcasts you record and then say to yourself: I can't believe I forgot to talk about dildos.
Put another log on the fire, get your blankets, and clutch your cup of hot chocolate for dear life, on this episode we're going to see how the coziness of the Victorian home was based on the daily backbreaking work of women.
In this episode we look at the world of international trade by dipping into a few global commodities. You'll learn where IPA comes from! Also, why tapioca is one of the most important plants in the world.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was hard for everyone to get enough to eat. We talk a bit about hunger, and how it hit the poor, women, and the colonies hardest.
In this EXTRA SLEEPY EPISODE we talk 19th century childhood: Christmas, child labor, and the cult of the family.
In this episode, we figure out how Mount Everest got its name, and why it was very hard to do a census of India.
In this episode I talk a little bit about the rise of the counted world in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. We touch on the census, on the General Records Office, and the feud over whether Paris or London had more suicides. More information at historian.live.
Welcome to Making of a Historian, a podcast chronicling one graduate student's quest to study for his comprehensive exams. In this episode, I explain what the comprehensive exams are, and why they freak graduate students out.