Afleveringen
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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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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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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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