A Short Walk through Our Long History

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...

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...

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 peopl...

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 Ore...

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...

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...

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 longe...

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 t...

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 str...

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...

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, Boliva...

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 in...

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 ac...

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 idiot...

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...

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. Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.com email:  shortwalkthroughhistory@gmail.com

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...

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 n...

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 revolutio...

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...

Well, you probably guessed from the title of the episode what this one is about.  It’s about the US constitution, which starts with the amazing line, ‘we, the people.’  And though the US constitution is being ignored and circumvented at many levels in our world today, it is still the very best design of a government that was ever created.   Before I get into the constitution itself and how it came...

Well, the colonists have gone and done it.  They have declared themselves independent of Great Britain, who has basically laughed off the Declaration of Independence, and is now ramping up their military to go whip those darn colonists back into line.   And like I said a couple of episodes ago, Great Britain was the world super-power in 1776.  The colonies had only a few small militias, made up of...

Ok, last episode, I talked about how the Declaration of Independence came to be drafted, and I decided that it was really such an important document that I needed to take an extra episode to explain some of the important ideas within the document, and how they shaped our modern world.   I should start by warning you that this episode is a good bit longer than most in this podcast.  The Declaration...

Well, it’s 1776.  Things are about to happen.  We just had the Boston tea party, Patrick Henry’s speech, and the battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Battle of Bunker Hill.   The British have shelled and burned several colonial towns, including Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia.  These are their own colonies, and they have burned the towns.   The colonies are in open revolt agains...

At the end of the last episode, we left colonial Boston chafing under British military rule.  Now Boston was a big port, a very important commercial center of New England, but it wasn’t all of New England, and it wasn’t even a very big city.  In fact, Boston, at the time, was entirely on one small peninsula of land, in the middle of Boston Harbor.  It was connected to the mainland by one small ist...