In the midst of a serious (and difficult in many respects) read of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands (in German translation in my case), a just released Ezra Klein podcast popped up on my screen and lo and behold with the respected (and sometimes polarizing) Yale historian as guest. I usually listen to Ezra’s podcast via Apple or the NYT website, but the first is device dependent and the latter probably on subscription so here embedded is the Spotify version.
Ezra Klein in conversation with Timothy Snyder March 15 2022
Professionally, in the last weeks Ezra has found himself (and almost exclusively so) confronted with this heinous war of Vladimir Putin against the Ukrainian people. And, personally, he seems as moved to outrage as the most of us. It would be fair to say, foreign policy is not usually Ezra’s primary focus, but he is embracing it and probably learning along with his listeners. Also, I rather imagine, as a new second time father, Ezra is coming to terms not just with a present danger but one that will surely affect future generations.
This discussion with Snyder is only the most recent of a number of excellent podcasts released since the beginning of hostilities – including with other such qualified figures as Adam Tooze and Fiona Hill (who mentioned Bloodlands as a must read that offers some historical context to the current situation), and I expect there will be more to come.
Whether I will be able to find words to adequately describe the human and moral catastrophe with which one is faced in reading Bloodlands, I don’t know. What I do know is: Timothy Snyder would surely have not predicted, a dozen years after its publication, that – for all the wrong reasons – there would be a new readership for his book; people like me seeking some historical and cultural context for this war in the middle of Europe that is, at once, upon us and removed from us.
on January 20th 1942, at a lakeside villa on the outskirts of Berlin, the fate of millions of European Jews was sealed.
Am Großen Wannsee 56–58, where the Wannsee Conference was held – now a memorial and museum.
I recall vividly reading about the Wannseekonferenz for the first time, and how shocked I was at the cold-blooded, bureaucratic precision in which the gathered elite from the SS and political apparatus made specific the plan to annihilate the Jewish people – the so-called “Final Solution”. My initial horror was later reinforced by other accounts and documentaries, and I especially remember the British film, Conspiracy, in which Kenneth Branagh gives a brilliant and chilling portrayal of Reinhard Heydrich.
Now eighty years after the event, the German public television channel ZDF remembers that meeting, and its consequences, with a new TV film titled simply Die Wannseekonferenz. The link is to the ZDF internet site where it is already available for viewing, and it will be televised next week here in Germany. It is not as yet subtitled nor is there an English synchronization – hopefully we will be spared the latter. There is also a documentary piece, and a number of resources, unfortunately also only in German.
The internet site of the “Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz” (the memorial that has evolved right there at the scene of one of the most grotesque of crimes) is, however, excellent and does have an English presence. Of especial interest is the infamous protocol; the only documentation of the event, and upon which all secondary material is based. Following, is an informative – and captioned – video; just one of many excellent resources featured on the site.
The protocol of the meeting held on 20th January 1942.
Be it in the ports and industrial centers of Britain or those of continental Europe, or whether just another small town, like that of Angoulême in south-west France, of which Emma Rothschild tells of in this aeon article, the tentacles of the slave trade and the societies that subsisted from its labors and the wealth accrued through its brutality and the denial of human dignity, stretch across oceans and continents and are indelibly entwined throughout much of modern history; from out of the so-called Age of Discovery, through the years of “revolution” and “enlightenment” and beyond.
Slavery; certainly, long (or belatedly) recognized by most as a monumental moral failing, but too often regarded as an unfortunate consequence of the human quest for improvement and expansion – a weak defense of colonialism and tainted by theories of race and white superiority. Only in the most recent of times, have the complicated threads of slavery come to the forefront of research and public discourse, and as being more than just a factor, but a defining factor, in the course of the Modern era, and one still having a profound (and detrimental) effect on societies around the world. A history revolving around the once accepted narratives of great men and great events has been, if not superseded, greatly complemented by this shifting focus. If telling the story of slavery is long overdue, it is also an important consequence that in doing so other influencing strands in the historical narrative have gained traction – of families, of women and children, about work and play; in other words, the stories of ordinary people who lived and died, who made good choices and bad, and were never just the set decorations to the epochs adorned with the jewels of State – monarchs, politics and church.
Emma Rothschild’s essay compliments her latest book, An Infinite History, in which she explores the extended family of her subject over many generations, bringing to the fore, amongst other things, a complicity in slavery – to be read as a microcosm of that of a greater society, and the responsibilities that follow out of that. As she explains it:
[…] An Infinite History is a micro-history, in the sense that it starts with an individual, and it is also a medium-scale and even a macro-history, in the sense that it moves outwards from the individual, by the relationship of contiguity, to her immediate family, to her acquaintances and neighbours, in the social space of Angoulême, and to her posterity over time. It has turned out, along the way, to be a history of what individuals knew about far-off slavery, and of what it meant in their lives.
Emma Rothschild’s book, An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries is published by Princeton Press, and there is more information on their website, including a Q. and A. with the author, and another short essay on the “hidden economic lives of women”; also a concern Rothschild develops in her book. I should say, the book has its own website with a number of interesting resources; for example, a family tree and maps.
Below embedded is a short taster about the book – a project, really, on a particular way of telling history – on SOUNDCLOUD.
“An Infinite History” by Emma Rothschild, Princeton University Press, 2021.
Enjoyed very much this long read (a couple of months old) by the great Amartya Sen at The Guardian; adapted from his memoir, Home in the World: A Memoir , that was published in the UK this summer by Allen Lane. This particular extract, which is memoir only in that it harks back to the India of his youth, resembles more a miniature lesson in post-colonial imperatives, and one in which Sen refutes some of the spurious arguments in defense of the Raj that regularly do the rounds.
For example, the oft spun notion of the inherent isolationism of the sub-continent, regional kingdoms and ethnic and religious fragmentation; purportedly to be solved only through imperialism. Sen offers instead alternative narratives of what might have been from which follows an imagined history, but nevertheless one that inspires a more thoughtful awareness of how India’s long history was (and still is, he would suggest) embellished and appropriated to fit a particular world view. Contrary to the social and economic arguments that show British rule in a good light, Amartya Sen emphasizes the two centuries of, amongst other things, economic stagnation and low literacy rates that all the virtues of parliamentary governance and public service can not recast. Of course, the East India Company can not help but make its ugly presence known, and this reminds me of William Dalrymple’s 2019 book The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, reviewed here at The Guardian. (Dalrymple also contributed a very worthy long read on the aforesaid in 2015.)
Amartya Sen was on my mind not so long ago – well, on reflection, longer than I thought, last year actually – when he was awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade – clumsy, I know, but their English translation not mine!); usually a very big deal in Germany – lots of fanfare, sometimes controversy, and the presentation televised on the final day of the Frankfurter Buchmesse. Unfortunately, the 2020 honouring of Sen got somewhat lost in the cancellation of the Book Fair (Covid!) but, through the wonders (!) of our digital second-life, the laudatory remarks from the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeir (but delivered by Burkhart Klaußner because …you guessed it – Covid quarantine!) and Sen’s gracious acceptance speech are available here.
Should one dare claim acquaintance with Thomas Cromwell or, better said, the man so vividly brought within a hair’s breadth of life in Hilary Mantel’s three monumental works of fiction (last spoken about by me here), then publication of new research into Austin Friars, the place (also brilliantly described/imagined by Mantel) that Cromwell called home, is a matter deserving of attention.
The former Augustinian Priory complex from the “Copper-Plate Map” of c.1550 (1 – Church; 2 – Cloister; 3 – Cromwell’s House; 4 – Gate-House)
The University of Exeter historian, Nick Holder, who has spent his (still short and oh so promising!) academic life researching the medieval friaries of London, has published a wonderful article in the Journal of the British Archeological Association (and for all to read!), in which he reconstructs the historical Thomas Cromwell’s original tenement on the Augustinian estate and the expansive residence that he later developed on adjacent land; purchased as his status and circumstances rose, and to be enjoyed only briefly before his grisly demise. Referencing an array of documentary evidence – surveys, deeds, letters – Holder richly illustrates his findings with his own drawings and plans and there is a particularly fine artist’s reconstruction of Cromwell’s mansion on Throgmorton Street in 1539 by Peter Urmston. The piece is detailed – chock a block full of information on purchases, artisans and tradesmen, building materials – but such fun to read and look at and imagine along with, that the lay time traveler is not left behind, rather taken along, back to the hurly-burly of medieval London. Evidenced, also, is a location that thrives from commerce and merchant endeavor and prospers from its cosmopolitan custom and flair – Italians, French, Germans, Dutch. Welcome to the London of the Tudors! (Puts to shame some little England sorts of these days! I say not Brexit, years on I remain in denial!)
As intimated, I consider Mantel’s descriptions of interiors, exteriors, even of posteriors to be absolutely dazzling, but I can’t think that she wouldn’t have been delighted to benefit from Holder’s work. Or perhaps she had been allowed a glimpse, because I did notice Holder’s first engagement with the subject was in his doctoral thesis in 2011 (also available! an academic obviously not adverse to sharing of his scholarship! he shall have his reward!) on the Friaries of London in general; that before the publication of Mantel’s second book.
Beyond the spatial reconstruction, amongst many there has been quite some interest in inventories (of artwork, books, etc.) that have been uncovered, and that seem to suggest Cromwell was not quite the zealous religious reformer that some would portray him, but rather a traditional Catholic of the day. I actually find myself not so surprised; for Mantel’s Cromwell, irrespective of his bluster and impatience with religious fervor, did seem to me to have at least some sympathy with those of the old faith, if not the more fundamentally inclined papists. Certainly, Cromwell’s lengthy, youthful Florentine sojourn (and all the catholic accoutrements that would have implied), seems to have clearly influenced his aesthetic tastes, not to mention provided him with an apprenticeship in the interaction of religion with the politics of sovereignty and power (just think, around about that time, for instance: Medicis, Borgias, Machiavelli, Savonarola!). While, any higher religious imperative that Cromwell may once have had, may at least have been diminished by his pursuit, and hanging on to, of political power and the King’s favor, I recognized an inherent spiritualism, an attraction to mysticism and a respect for the pious (especially when they were women, for instance, Catherine of Aragon and her daughter Mary Stuart, Th. More’s daughter Margaret Roper) that would have been anathema to the Protestant zeitgeist.
The way to recognition of Juneteenth has been long and sometimes contentious, but then such are the highways and byways of the Lone Star State and the routes leading out, but yesterday the US Congress passed a bill to make June 19th – “Juneteenth” – the United States’ eleventh federal holiday.
Until last year I had only heard vaguely of this particular day, or of its origins – and I defy many outside of the US to even pretend otherwise! And, I now read that there are an awful lot of Americans equally as ignorant. It seems, over some years now, many of the States have adopted a variety of “Emancipation” or “freedom” days that relate to their specific history, and so there is some reason to question, as Kaitlyn Greenidge does in her guest piece at the NYT, the sincerity of a unison national embrace around an event that honors the implementation of the Emancipation proclamation (of Jan 1st 1863) in Texas (two and a half years after the fact!). Kevin Young, in his essay, shares some of her misgivings but is more hopeful that Juneteenth will maintain its celebratory characteristics but evolve from being a mainly Black day of festivity into a shared national experience. Yes, to be hoped; after all, freedom now, as then, requires two committed parties: one in need of being freed and another willing to free, and an awareness that freedom is not unconditional but being permanently tested and renegotiated.
The bill as introduced to the 117th Congress.
Irrespective, today, President Biden will sign the bill into law, and another small but important step is taken by the United States on a path towards a new culture of collective memory. That can’t be a bad thing, and reason enough to celebrate.
As a matter of interest, in terms of legislation, the Congressional Research Service arm of the Library of Congress is one of the providers of information to members and committees to assist in their decision-making process – which didn’t deter fourteen (all Republicans) from dissenting on the Juneteenth legislation. The relevant so-called “Fact Sheet” is available here at the CRS, or may be directly downloaded below.
Generally, these Fact Sheets offer some very accessible insight into even complex material (of which this example is actually not one), and a place to go when the media gobbledygook gets too, well… convoluted …or worse, suspiciously too well spun!
While writing last year about Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, and the fictional childhood town of her protagonists, with its “coloured” populace peculiarly intent on becoming about as fair-skinned as they could; I diverged to mention the town of Eatonville near Orlando in Florida – one of the first all-black municipalities to be founded after Reconstruction – which was lived in and then “fictionalised” by Zora Neale Hurston. I didn’t investigate any further into where other such communities may have evolved and what their fate may have been. This week, though, I have learnt about one such other. Ended well did it not.
From May 31st into this June 1st day in 1921, a white mob descended on the prosperous Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, murdering hundreds of residents and destroying more than a thousand homes. One hundred years late(r), a US President will visit a place, revisit an abominable event that has found no place in history books or civics classes, and pay respects, homage … and probably not much else. The careful dance around reparations, in this case as in others, and generally, will continue.
What can be said, though, is that remembrance of this event has come at a time when ignorance can no longer be an excuse – not for governments, nor institutions and not for the public. The tragedy of Greenwood is out there for all to come to terms with. It is telling, I think, that it is another glaring omission both in the national historical narrative and, it follows, from many – or most – of the school history curricula in the United States. (If you don’t believe me or the mainstream media on this, Tom Hanks has his say. A rare high spot in the new genre of “celebrity woke essay”!) And it is a tribute to the tenacity and courage of those who have kept the memory alive, who have fought for recognition and justice.
In The New York Times; an excellent photographic and multi-media essay that juxtaposes the flourishing community that was, pulsing with human endeavour and industry, against the decimated remains after the rampage. And thisNYT Magazine piece by Caleb Gayle (Black and from Tulsa) about the contemporary legacy of a trauma and a history too long wrapped in silence and rarely admitted to is a good read.
5th May 1821: On this day, the publication in Manchester of the first edition of The Manchester Guardian and, on Saint Helena, the death of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Today The Guardian celebrates its 200 year anniversary – no mean feat when one considers the fragile nature of media enterprises, not just in our own time, but the struggles for survival of newspapers and periodicals from their very beginnings.
The Manchester Guardian No. 1, May 5, 1821.
The Manchester Guardian (as it was called until 1959) was founded by John Edward Taylor in the aftermath of the closure of the Manchester Observer. This more radical publication had been charged with sedition for their role in agitating for parliamentary reform and promotion of meetings on St. Peter’s Field in Manchester, that culminated in a mass gathering on 16th August 1819 during which the cavalry charged into the crowd of thousands of mostly ordinary folk protesting against economic hardship and demanding the rights of greater suffrage and representation.
A coloured print of the Peterloo Massacre published by Richard Carlile
The massacre would become known as Peterloo, a portmanteau created from the location, St. Peter’s Field, and the Battle of Waterloo that had taken place four years earlier. That battle, which marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars, was also the beginning of trade restrictions and the infamous Corn Laws in Britain that benefitted the gentry and land owners but, by raising the price of food staples, brought hardship to the working classes. Some in attendance in Manchester that day would very well have been there on those Belgian fields and participated in one of Britains greatest military victories. Just is that not.
That on the very same day as the publication of the first edition of The Manchester Guardian, that same French emperor who had been defeated at Waterloo should die (and with his boots on) on a remote island in the middle of the South Atlantic, could hardly have been expected to be reported upon – long as it was before even rudimentary undersea telegraph cable – but the coincidence would surely have later been noticed and remarked upon. [And indeed it was, following a July 14 (just had to be didn’t it!) report from Paris, on July 28, and here it is from the The Guardian archives]
Napoleon on Saint Helena, watercolor by Franz Josef Sandmann, c. 1820
And so it is, two hundred years after his death, Napoleon’s shadow still looms large in the annals of history; he continues to fascinate, for better or worse, and France still struggles to come to terms with a legacy full of contradictions. And The Guardian is still around to tell us about it.
