Making Of A Historian

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 esta

Anthropocene 108: The Scale of the Modern World by Making of a Historian

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 ask whether the Industrial Revolution was good for workers.

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.

Anthropocene 102: Pigs, Potatoes, Starch and Slavery by Making of a Historian

Anthropocene 101: What On Earth Is The Anthropocene? by Making of a Historian

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/a2ipq6n6zn0bn91pyye5fo66