History Cafe

We may think the main controversy surrounding American, naval commander, Robert Peary’s claim to be the first to reach the North Pole on 6/7 May 1909 was whether he, and the other ‘invisible’ five men accompanying him, actually got anywhere near the Pole. However, it’s a much more complicated and sinister story than that…. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What was the driving force behind the settlement of the American west? Was it the so-called ‘anarchocapitalism’ so admired by the Hoover Institution and some of the followers of President Trump? The violence they fetishize turns out to have been only in those places populated by young men – we’re talking not just cowpokes or gold and silver prospectors, but also vigilantes in the towns back east. The majority of frontiers-people were peaceful Americans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A series of land grabs and cruel clearances by the Federal government from 1781 triggered a crazy, barely-contained movement west, spearheaded by gold prospectors, cattle ranchers, homesteaders and the railroads. By 1892 it was generally agreed that the American character was forged in the violence of the shifting frontier. We look at the popular fiction and entertainment that helped create this belief: Deadwood Dick, Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, Mark Twain’s Six-fingered Pete and many others. And we examine what really went on! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Having considered the arguments in favour of defining Sir Isaac Newton as an early 'scientist', we now consider the other side of the coin. Newton’s best-known breakthrough – the identification of gravity – belonged not to the latest tradition of European Cartesian rationalism, but to a very English strand of occult philosophy. In fact it was only because Newton worked in this tradition that he was able to think of gravity as an unseen and mysterious force. Europeans like Leibnitz wrote the idea off as magic. More striking, like other English philosophers, Newton believed that all this had been known to ancient thinkers going back to Noah, and spent much of his life trying to decode the myths and symbols they left behind. He was, he believed, the only man in his generation privileged to understand them. The last of magicians? Maybe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The short answer to the question, ‘was Newton the last of the magicians?’ is, yes …. And also … no. Newton and alchemy turn out to be ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ We toss a coin and take a heads-and-tails approach. In this podcast we argue that the alchemical experiments he undertook had nothing to do with magic. Newton’s alchemy now looks to historians like good science (although he would have called himself both a natural philosopher and a chymist). It was well conceived and measured and drew on the work of his contemporaries and of many men before him. And Newton was certainly not the last person in Europe to practise alchemy of this kind. Within fifty years of his death it would simply evolve into modern chemistry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Henry VII invented the idea of the Wars of the Roses and the notion that he alone could end them. With a comparatively weak claim to the throne he found a novel way to deal with the nobility - through extortioners and hatchet men. He could only get away with this because the Black Death had fatally damaged the status of the nobility and caused the rise of the small independent farmer. Feudalism in England and Wales was over… or at least we thought it was, until now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One common-girl-denies-king-until-he-marries-her, two kings, three royal murders in the Tower, and the Queen's mother accused of witchcraft. Just about standard for late 15th Century England and Wales. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By the time Henry VI finally lost the last bit of England's French Empire in 1453 he could no longer go to war in France to occupy and enrich his nobility. This small, interrelated and bickering group, cooped up in England with an agricultural depression settling in, now resorted to what the historian Michael Postan long ago (in 1939) famously called ‘political gangsterdom.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why was the 15th century in England and Wales so violent? It certainly wasn’t York v Lancaster, white-rose v red-rose rivalry. Monarchs were useless but that’s not unique to the 15th century. So what was it that defined this period? It has everything to do with the plague… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why do we know so little about medieval history? About England and Wales in the fifteenth century? The Wars of the Roses (Lancaster v York) lasted 4 months not the traditional 85 years. Even the roses were (mostly) inventions. And was it even medieval? The execution of the King’s chief minister as a traitor in 1450, by sailors dissatisfied with an ineffective king, was shocking. It revealed that the common people believed the true crown was the community. You can’t get more modern than that. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY - Mrs Pankhurst claims she won women the vote through ‘marvellous leadership.’ An all-male conference of MPs counters that it gifted women the vote. We reveal that neither is true. The door to women’s suffrage is finally opened in January 1917 through brilliant negotiations behind the scenes by Millicent Fawcett, the president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage, her female colleagues and the enlightened MPs who work with her. [Please note on our logo the NUWSS colours of berry red and leaf green - not often seen today] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY We go back to the great number of unsung women and men who made great strides towards women’s votes and female emancipation by 1900. Emmeline Pankhurst sets up her Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903 as a pressure group for votes for poor working-women in the cotton mills. By then a majority of MPs is already consistently in favour. But the public are uninterested and no government will therefore act. The question is whether the WSPU can find a formula for making ministers give votes to women. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY The WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes - begin in the Manchester Labour Party in the 1890s and learn their publicity-grabbing tactics from Labour. But these tactics turn out to have the worst possible effect – making women’s votes even less likely than before. They are so bad, in fact, it makes you wonder whether the Suffragette leadership had some other agenda. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY The militant strategy of the WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes - is delivering them headlines. It gets them nowhere with the government but it makes enormous sums of advertising revenue from fancy retailers, and funds Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst’s society lifestyle. Rich London ladies in silks and satins pour in the money, while working-class activists take all the risks. WSPU officer Theresa Billington drafts a constitution to give everyone a say but Emmeline Pankhurst tears it up and manoeuvres anyone with a socialist agenda out. Who exactly is this organisation for? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY From 1912 the WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes – are out of control and dangerous. But that is not how they're remembered. Anyone who disagrees with the violence either leaves or is thrown out. Whatever they later claim about their ‘wonderful leadership’, it is their young, poor members who are inventing new and increasingly dangerous ways of intimidating the government. The WSPU leadership claims it never threatened life, only property, but this is manifestly not true. Axes are thrown, full theatres set on fire, bombs put on trains, acid poured into mail-boxes and the leaders do nothing to contain this ‘terrorism’ with deadly intent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY November 1912 sees the first defeat for women’s votes since 1891. The government has been struggling with law and order after two years of mass strikes. That year even school children go on strike. The violence of the suffragettes is barely noticed and can definitely not be rewarded. For the first time in a generation, Parliament turns against women’s votes. What little sympathy there was for women’s suffrage among the wider public ebbs away. But Christabel Pankhurst, from her cosy Paris apartment, is enjoying the fight. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY Suddenly, after 1913 votes for women looks inevitable. Not through the chaotic, dying campaign of the suffragettes. But through the political brilliance of Millicent Fawcett and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Their 1913 alliance with the Labour Party changes the whole political balance. Now Liberal Prime Minister HH Asquith’s blockheaded intransigence over women’s votes is costing his party dearly and letting the Tories in. At the 1915 election all three parties will be vying to give women the vote. But then… war breaks out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY The reason we all believe Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst achieved women’s votes in Britain is because that’s the narrative created in the 20s and 30s by former suffragettes. The reality of what Emmeline and Christabel got up to post 1918 is shocking. Suffice it to say it involves racial purity and telling working women they can buy silk underwear, shapely shoes and fur hats, not by improving their working conditions but by giving into the feminine desire for shopping. What? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the war US and British bankers continued to send cash to Germany, while American companies in Germany were drawn down a slippery slope of collaboration. American bosses may have kept in touch with German subsidiaries via neutral hang-outs (like the fictional Rick’s Bar in the 1942 film Casablanca). Some made use of prisoners of war for slave labour. The five-figure tattoo on every death camp inmate began as an IBM-Dehomag punch card number. Nobody was going to be called to account for trading with the Nazis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1937, the new British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, believed he single-handedly could ensure world peace. He told the King, George VI, that he would do this by pursuing his objective of Germany and England being ‘the two pillars of European peace and buttresses against Communism.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.