Historiansplaining: A Historian Tells You Why Everything You Know Is Wrong

--Made of leather, sinew thread, and wampum (quahog shell) beads, ca. 1400s --In possession of the Onondaga Nation, central New York This most ancient and precious ceremonial wampum belt, created by the Ondondaga tribe to record the proclamation of the Great Law of Peace at the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy (or more properly, the Haudenosaunee), was the subject of more than a century of legal wrangling, confusion, and controversy, even appearing at one point at the Chicago World's Fair, before finally returning to its home in upstate New York. Image: photo of the Hiawatha Belt, ca. 2015, by Stephanie Mach. See my recent article "Into the Fairy Castle" here: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/into-the-fairy-castle-the-persistence-of-victorian-liberalism/ Please support historiansplaining podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Unlocked after 1 year for patrons only: America's oldest bowling ball, found in the backlot of a colonial house in Boston, and what it reveals about the Puritans' futile struggles against vice -- drunkenness, fornication, gambling, and even witchcraft. Please support this podcast and hear the entire lecture on the Nag Hammadi discovery -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Michael of "Xai How Are You" and I discuss the history of the Chasidic / Hasidic movement, a Jewish lay mystical and pietistic movement, which applies the insights of Kabbalah to everyday life and prayer, and which originated among Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe in the 1700s, flourished in the 1800s, survived the pogroms and world wars, and in recent years has been reborn as both a pillar of Orthodox Judaism and a bridge to the Reform and secular worlds. Please support historiansplaining podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested further reading: "Hasidism: A New History," by Biale, Assaf, Brown, Gellman, Heilman, Rosman, Sagiv, and Wodzinski.

Michael of "Xai How Are You" and I discuss the different ways that Jews have distinguished themselves into groups and sub-groups, from the Biblical tribes to the Sephardic and Ashkenazi ethnic groups to the modern Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative movements. We lay the groundwork for an upcoming discussion of the origins and character of Chasidic Judaism. Please support historiansplaining podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

We consider the narrative structure, symbols, and meanings of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the context of the Middle Ages and the Arthurian cycle, and how the movie has been adjusted to speak to modern sensibilities. I argue that the Green Knight myth has relevance today as a parable about shame. "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." Previous lectures on the Arthur Cycle: 1. Creating King Arthur: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/myth-of-the-month-12-the-arthur-cycle-part-1-making-king-arthur 2. The Rise and Fall of Camelot: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/myth-of-the-month-12-king-arthur-pt-2-the-rise-and-fall-of-camelot 3. The Historical King Arthur: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/unlocked-myth-of-the-month-12-finale-the-historical-king-arthur Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

How did the early colonists in Virginia know that they could profitably grow a species of tobacco from South America? They learned about it from the series of mostly short-lived English, French, and Dutch colonies and outposts in tropical South America, between the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, in the area called "Guiana." We discuss with historian Melissa Morris how these early colonies, despite being almost totally forgotten by historians, left a lasting imprint on the Americas, and reveal the haphazard and unpredictable nature of early global empires. Please support this podcast and hear the entire lecture on the Nag Hammadi discovery -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

I mark the milestone of surpassing 100 patrons with a thank-you and a clip of my patron-only lecture, "Doorways in Time: The Great Archaeological Finds -- 2: The Nag Hammadi Library," which deals with the discovery a massive trove of Egyptian documents blowing the lid off of the secretive Gnostic movement of mystical Christianity in the early church. Please support this podcast and hear the entire lecture on the Nag Hammadi discovery -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Released to the public after one year for patrons only: Archaeology, geography, linguistics, textual analysis -- all of these fields of knowledge must be brought to bear on a centuries-old question: Was there a "real" King Arthur? Answer: It's complicated. We discuss the likelihood that some "historical" personage underlies the layers of legend. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested further reading: Higham, "King Arthur: The Making of the Legend."

1066 -- the year of the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest -- is the most famous date in English history. Few understand, though, that far more happened in this cataclysmic and pivotal year than just the Norman defeat of an English army on a field in East Sussex. The culmination of centuries of shifting struggle over control of England, the events of 1066 show how even epochal changes in a society can hinge on minor accidents of timing, weather, health, and personal whim. Image: Modern re-enactors representing Harold Godwinson's army at Hastings. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Were the Dutch proto-capitalists? Were they Americans before America? What was the Dutch East India Company, and how did it work? I talk to Deborah Hamer -- historian, research associate at the Omohundro Institute, and associate editor of the New York history blog Gotham -- to discuss her work on marriage and gender in the early Dutch colony in Batavia (as they called the conquered city of Jakarta), how it illuminates the Netherlands' obsessive efforts to create a stratified, orderly, and moral Protestant society in Southeast Asia, and what it reveals about the wider European colonial mindset in both Asia and America. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Who the heck are the "Anglo-Saxons," and why are Americans getting all lathered up about "Anglo-Saxon institutions"? Find out where the Anglo-Saxon myth came from and how over the past three hundred years it's been used to justify Parliamentary supremacy, the Rhodes Scholarship, the American entry into World War I, immigration restrictions, and college admission quotas. You never knew you were suffering under the Norman yoke, but now you do. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Image: Statue of King Alfred, Winchester Previous lectures about the original Anglo-Saxons: -on Dark Age Britain: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/crossing-the-water-britain-in-the-dark-age -on Anglo-Saxon England and the Vikings: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/anglo-saxon-england-and-the-vikings-757-1066 -on the Sutton Hoo treasure: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/doorways-in-tim

Travellers, Tinkers, Gypsies, Kale, Scottish Travellers, Gypsy Travellers, Romani Gypsies, Romanichal, Pavee, Showmen, Van People, Boat People, Bargers – All of these multivarious peoples, with different ancestries, religions, and traditions, their different languages, dialects, and “cants,” share in common a longstanding itinerant lifestyle and the distinct identity that stems from it. Roving all around the British Isles and sometimes settling down, the various tribes of Travellers have provided metal goods, horses, music, and entertainment to British and Irish markets for centuries, but have become the flashpoint of political fury and even of violence in the twenty-first century. Please support this podcast and hear the recent lecture on the Founding Fathers! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested Further Reading: Katherine Quarmby, "No Place to Call Home"; Becky Taylor, "Britain's Gypsy Travellers: A People on the Outside," https://www.historytoday.com/archive/britains-gypsy-travellers-peopl

Who are the Roma -- also colloquially called "Gypsies"? Where did they come from, and how did they end up all over Europe? How have they endured through persecution, expulsions, and political upheaval, without a state or country of their own? We trace the path of this remarkable and resilient people from their mysterious origins in India to their arrival in Constantinople and medieval Europe and through the wave of persecution and ethnic cleansing in the 1600s. Image: Gypsies telling fortunes, in Cosmographie Universelle, Munster, 1552. Suggested further reading: Angus Fraser, "The Gypsies"; Isabel Fonseca, "Bury Me Standing." Please support this podcast and hear the recent lecture on the Founding Fathers! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Why was the excavation depicted in "The Dig" the most important archaeological discovery ever made in Britain, or arguably in all of Europe? How did some artifacts found in a mound near an English widow's garden in Suffolk on the eve of World War II revolutionize our understanding of the Dark Age? Why would they come to serve as symbols of the ancient roots of the English nation, and how did Sutton Hoo vindicate the new science of archaeology? The story that Netflix did not tell you. Image: the Sutton Hoo purse lid. Please support this podcast and hear the recent lecture on the Founding Fathers! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

How did Freemasonry expand in the 1700s from a small, secretive fraternity in Lowland Scotland to a massive global network, with lodges from the Caribbean to Russia to India? Who became Freemasons in the 1700s, and what sort of opposition and persecution did they face? What was their relationship to radical groups like the Illuminati? We examine to the growth, expansion, and divides in Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, all of which laid the groundwork for the Craft to influence the course of the age of revolutions. Please support this podcast and hear the recent lecture on the Founding Fathers! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Previous lecture on the core myths and rituals of Freemasonry: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/the-freemasonry-its-origins-its-myths-and-its-rituals Image: Depiction of procession of the Grand Lodge of England, London, 1742 Suggested Further Reading: David Stevenson, "Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century"; Margaret Jacob, "Living the Enlightenment"; Jessic

Since the Covid-19 pandemic has killed over half a million Americans, is it historically sound to say that the disaster is "bigger" than World War II? What do such comparisons mean, and are they illuminating? Such questions are truly a new dilemma, since from ancient and biblical times through the First World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic, people have usually understood war and pestilence as going hand in hand. Here, I present a recording of my recent interview with a journalist about putting pandemic and war into historical perspective, followed by an excerpt from my recent patron-only lecture on "Myth of the Month 16: The Founding Fathers." Image: "Death on a Pale Horse," by Gustave Dore, 1865. Music: Fandango, by Soler or Scarlatti, early 1700s, arranged for Midi file by El Gran Mago Paco Quito. Please become a supporter to hear all Myths of the Month: www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

The messy exit of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from the royal family marks the third great crisis of the British monarchy in the past hundred years – following the abdication of Edward VIII to marry an American divorcee in 1936 and the breakup of Charles and Diana’s marriage in the 1990s. Michael and I discuss the ramifications for the monarchy, Britain, the empire, and the world, situating the disaster in the context of the crown’s central role in the long-running struggle to redefine Britain as it loses its imperial status. Since the reign of Victoria, the monarchy has lost its political “hard” power but has correspondingly gained in the “soft” power of social influence and celebrity, rising to become the primary symbol representing the British nation to itself, and forcing the monarch to navigate the tension between Britain’s place at the head of the multi-racial Commonwealth and its connection to Europe. The appearance and quick departure of a bi-racial American woman in the royal family serves as a

The Voynich Manuscript -- often called the "world's most mysterious book" -- consists of 116 leaves of parchment covered in outlandish botanical and astrological drawings and thousands of lines of undeciphered text in an unknown language. A century after images of the codex were first published, still not one line has been decoded. What could it say? And more importantly from the historical perspective, who created it and why? This is the most balanced and impartial consideration of the evidence that you will find. Hear the first part of our investigation of the Voynich manuscript here: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/the-voynich-manuscript-the-worlds-most-mysterious-book-a-historians-view-pt-1 In this second part, we examine the mysterious text, and evidence as to its provenance and chain of ownership. Please become a patron to hear all the Myths of the Month – www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

A small cloth sack, containing nails, beads, glass, and a cowrie shell, found under the floorboards of the garret of the oldest house in Newport, Rhode Island, points toward the continuation and adaptation of African practices in New England and throughout the complex "African Atlantic." We discuss with Michael J. Simpson, Phd student at Brown University, who is researching slavery and the slave trade in Rhode Island. Thank you to the Newport Historical Society for their help on this installment. Image: Components of the spirit bundle in a museum display -- 2005.12, Collection of the Newport Historical Society. Suggested further reading: Jason R. Young, "Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery"; Judith Carney, "Black Rice"; Wyatt MacGaffey, "The Personhood of Ritual Objects," Etnofoor, 1990; Woodruff, Sawyer, and Perry, "How Archaeology Exposes the Nature of African Captivity and Freedom in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut," in Connecticu

I discuss, with Michael of "Xai, how are you?", the life and times of Sabbatai Zvi, the purported messiah of the 1660s, and the massive messianic awakening that he sparked and that swept across the entire Jewish diaspora in 1666, drawing in men and women, wealthy and poor, clergy and laity, Sephardic and Ashkenazi, and even Jews and gentiles. We consider the development of messianic theology and kabbalah that paved the way for the Sabbatian movement, as well as the lasting imprint that it left on Judaism in the modern era. Please become a patron to hear all the Myths of the Month – www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632