Explaining History

In this second episode of our new Approaches to History series, we begin to explore how history was written in the Middle Ages and how that contrasted with the earlier, classical period. You can grab a copy of the text - History: A Very Short Introduction here I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here , subscribe to the channel to get yo...

In 1948, the British finally ended their mandate government over Palestine. As they withdrew a vicious civil war between Jewish and Arab communities began, followed by a full invasion by the Arab League when the state of Israel had been declared. The British had created the tensions through their handling of Jewish immigration. This episode reads from Kenneth O.Morgan's The People's Peace. I will...

In today's episode, as much of the world still pieces through the results of the election, we explore one of the many explanations for the rise of nativist populism and fascism across the world - the crisis of whiteness. You can read the featured thread from Professor Alan Lester here. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here , subscrib...

This is part six of the Explaining History study course based on the AQA A level history module Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-53. In this episode we explore Lenin's creation of a new regime after the October Revolution and the beginnings of revolutionary terror and the civil war that would devastate Russia. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th....

Why has Donald Trump won an enormous victory not just amongst the electoral college votes but the popular vote too? For decades both parties have pursued economic policies that were developed in the Nixon and Reagan eras, which have benefitted finance capital over American society. The Democrats have simply offered more of the same, whilst Trump has presented a racist, nativist solution. Here the...

In anticipation of today's vote, the Explaining History Podcast dissects the road to Trumpism, how four decades of neoliberal economics led to the current polarised, oligarchic political moment. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here , subscribe to the channel to get your reminder . Help the podcast to continue bringing you history ea...

In the late summer of 1914 a war began that was largely unexpected, unwanted and which lasted for four years, destroying the European civilisation that existed beforehand, along with large parts of the continent, the Middle East and Africa. It spawned two brutal regimes in the guise of Nazi Germany and the USSR, along with generations of physically and mentally traumatised men. This podcast, drawn...

In 1989 the Cold War came to an unanticipated and unexpectedly peaceful end, the wars that both sides imagined would happen between the USSR and the west did not occur and a new world order rapidly formed in American and European interests in the long 1990s, only collapsing between 2008 and 2016. This exploration of the late 1980s and 1990s is told through the excellent book Post Wall, Post Square...

What are we doing when we write or think about history? What is it that historians do and when did they start doing it? We're taking a new direction on the podcast here and exploring the origins of historical thinking, a type of writing that the Greeks thought to be the inferior cousin to philosophy. Each Saturday we'll explore the practices and theories of history, and approaches to understanding...

Between December 1937 and January 1938 on of the great crimes of Japan's war against China occurred at the Chinese capital of Nanjing. Determined to break Chiang Kai Shek's nationalist forces, the Japanese murdered tens of thousands of captured soldiers and proceeded to slaughter the civilian population. The Japanese army went of the rampage, killing children and raping the city's female populatio...

After February 1917 the Provisional Government had a weak grasp on power, a fact that was exploited by the Bolsheviks in order to seize power in October. This study podcast explores how the Bolsheviks were able to seize power from a position of relative weakness. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here , subscribe to the channel to get...

In the aftermath of the Second World War the New Deal came under a sustained assault by a newly resurgent Republican Party that used the threat of anti communism to shift politics towards the right. However, by the 1950s the New Deal was safe under a Republican Eisenhower presidency and the role of the state in the management of the economy continued to develop. Explore this paradox in today's Exp...

In the early 1950s there was an unprecedented level of political organisation in the Gulag system amongst prisoners who were able to find out about the events of the outside world and deal brutally with camp informants. In this episode we explore Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps to understand this transition that led to uprisings following the death of Stalin that became almos...

By early 1942 Nazi Germany was facing a moment of crisis when it came to the production of munitions and other equipment. The inherent chaos of the regime, Hitler's selection of favourites who knew how to tell him only what he wanted to hear, along with the soaring war production of the USA, UK and USSR led to the appointment of Albert Speer as Minister for Armaments. Help the podcast to continue...

Britain is about to experience another half decade of austerity as government budgets for social welfare are slashed. By the time the next general election is held the country will have experienced nineteen years of enforced cuts to the living standards of the poorest. This podcast explores interwar austerity and the long intellectual and ideological roots of our current malaise. Help the podcast...

Neville Chamberlain is chiefly remembered for his failed shuttle diplomacy with Hitler in 1938, but there is of course more to his time in office than just this. Chamberlain believed himself to be a social reformer, though the reality of life for the poor and those devastated by the Great Depression remained in many cases bleak. This podcast explores the state of housing, welfare, education and he...

By March 1917 a new system of dual power had established itself in the capital city Petrograd. The Provisional Government, a group comprised of the Tsar's former ministers who refused to disband, and the Petrograd Soviet, a meeting of delegates from the committees established in factories and army regiments, existed in an uneasy partnership with one another. This episode of our AQA Revolution and...

What happened when news of the Russian Revolution reached the empire's rural areas? How did the largely non literate peasantry interact with this change? How did the Russian Orthodox Church carry the message of the revolution? What did the empire's non Russian and non Christian peoples make of it? This episode explores the chaotic and fragmented way in which Russian society encountered revolutiona...

In the aftermath of the First World War, the delegates of the victorious powers at the Paris Peace Conference attempted to shape a post war world order. Woodrow Wilson, pioneer of the mandate system that saw former German and Ottoman imperial possessions administered through the new League of Nations, found that the British and French were hungry for new colonial acquisitions and saw the Mandate s...

Mohammad Tarbush's extraordinary life story, from growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp and hitchhiking to Europe to becoming head of Deutsche Bank is captured in his memoirs, My Palestine. This week we explore his recollections as part of the wider context of the current war against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If you enjoy the Exp...

An entire radical history of Los Angeles in the 1960s that rarely gets mentioned can be found in Mike Davis and Jon Wiener's brilliant book Set The Night on Fire: LA in the Sixties . This episode explores in brief the emergence of an independent radical press in the city in the guise of the LA Free Press or 'Freep', and explores reactions of the Freep and the reactionary LA Times to the Watts Riot...

Subscribe for weekly updates In the 1930s a generation of intellectuals were attracted to the Soviet Union, though most were never members of any communist party and balked at the idea of revolution occurring in their own country. We begin to explore this convoluted and contradictory mindset through examining David Caute's seminal work The Fellow Travellers . Help the podcast to continue bringing...

This episode is for all students of A Level Russian history, and it follows the AQA syllabus. In this episode we will explore the events of the February Revolution and the Tsar's catastrophic mishandling of the protests that began in Petrograd. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to hel...

How did people outside Petrograd hear about the events of February 1917? News spread quickly to cities like Kazan and Nizhni Novgorod due to the telegraph and train but more slowly in the towns and villages. The revolution was not experienced by all Russians, at all times in the same way. Instead the fragmented nature of Russia, its geography and sparse population presented the new Provisional Gov...

The Conservative Party is one of British history's great survivors, it morphs and mutates when it needs to into new incarnations that help to preserve it and its mission to protect the interests of Britain's elites, institutions against the threat of change from below. This was always true until now. The party that many British people see as the natural party of government is changing into a fring...