Hanging with History

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This covers most of the colonial wars with the French and Dutch during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.   You get a cumulative effect of seemingly slow British progress, that in the end removes all French influence overseas by 1811.  Then, problems with the Americans predominate. There is a good deal of discussion about Elphinstone...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The 1797 mutinies went hand in hand with financial crisis.  This was the most dangerous period for Britain and the miracle during the French Revolutionary Wars. The Royal Navy spent most of 1797 convulsed and unable to sail.  Fortunately, the French were in no shape to come out after the events we covered in the last few episodes.   The...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The new French and Spanish alliance is ascendant in the Mediterranean.   The strategic move the Spanish make is more dictated by the royal revenue requirements and political strategy rather than naval strategy.    The outcome is the Battle of Cape St Vincent, where Nelson makes an enduring reputation.  We then cover the remarkable career...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We cover some of the heroic events that increased pride and self confidence of the Royal Navy:  Pellew's defeat of a 74 with 2 frigates and Cornwallis' Retreat.   We also have Richery's expedition which demonstrates the capabilities of the French.  They were not always incompetent. The 1795 Great Winter Campaign, the Battl...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This looks at the Glorious First of June campaign, covering all the engagements with extra attention to the 1st of June   Was it a French strategic victory or was the Royal Navy the winner in this series of battles? We also do some comparing and contrasting the of the Marine National and the Royal Navy. It's all so very nautical.

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. 1793 is a year of opportunities thrown away.  The allies dominate the poorly disciplined French army, but waste the summer in pointless sieges, even after the road to France is wide open.  All the allies are narrowly focused on selfish interests rather than interested in setting France to rights.  The siege of Dunkirk reveals the British...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This covers the first year of the War of the First Coalition, which ends with the "homicidal philanthropy of France." Brunswick's invasion, the battle of Valmy, the battle of Jemappes, Dumoriez's conquest of Belgium.  The creation of the Army of Italy, operations in the Rhineland and what life was like for those occup...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Priestly Riots, also known as the Birmingham Riots, were part of the Church and King riots, that were part of the disgust reaction against French inspired radicals in Britain. The four wars: The Russo Swedish War, the Theatre War, the Russo Turkish War and the Austro Turkish War, were all consequences of France dropping out of the co...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The French Revolution was the most exciting thing to ever happen for some radical intellectuals.  But gradually the murderyness, the chaos, mob rule and savage cruelty began to turn people away from the Revolution. Church and King societies swept across Britain, and Church and King riots as well.  Thomas Paine was burned in effigy thousa...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We close the French Revolution at the Thermidorean Reaction and the execution of Robespierre.  We treat the conspiracy to overthrow Robespierre as a self fulfilling prophecy.  Once you know Robespierre is against you, he will kill you, so you begin a conspiracy against him. But first we go into some of the cultural changes driven by the...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Only 24% of French priests are willing to take the constitutional oath putting their allegiance to the state above that to Jesus and the Pope.  The Vendee is extra religious because of their relatively recent conversion from Calvinism.  We have the the flight to Varrenes, Louis XVI’s failed escape attempt, which leads to the Champ De Mar...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Only 24% of French priests are willing to take the constitutional oath putting their allegiance to the state above that to Jesus and the Pope.  The Vendee is extra religious because of their relatively recent conversion from Calvinism.  We have the the flight to Varrenes, Louis XVI’s failed escape attempt, which leads to the Champ De Mar...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The first year of the French Revolution the way it is conventionally dated from the fall of the Bastille.  We have had bloody violence and sensible reforms, the loss of privileges for the first and 2nd estates were a really good idea.  The establishment of the departments, also sensible, a reform that has lasted to the present day.  But...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Regency Crisis shines a light British Resiliency during the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.  We end up in a situation where a spiritual testing of the king occurs in the most public way possible.  And the vast majority of the British public responds with joy, also in a very public way.  Everyone knows that everyone knows....

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Nootka Sound Crisis of 1790 has a confrontation of 4 powers in the Pacific Northwest; Britain, Spain, Russia and America.  This is profoundly affected by the French Revolution, both in the diplomatic part of the crisis and its resolution in Britain’s favor.  Later the Revolutionary Wars distract Britain from exploiting its victory he...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Dutch Crisis of 1787, was said by Napoleon to have caused the Revolution of 1789.  We cover Dutch history through the 1780’s and its effects on the infant United States and three great powers; the United Kingdom, France and Prussia.  This crisis and the Nootka Sound Crisis are examples of how Europe functioned at the great power leve...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Spycraft was one of Britain’s advantages during the 2nd hundred years war. What were the other advantages Britain took into the end of the 2nd hundred years war?  Pitt hired a number of reformers who drove through unpopular reforms in communications, shipyard construction and efficiency.   There were a number of reforms that also founder...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. William Pitt goes toe to toe against a large coalition led by Charles Fox and Lord North.  George 3 is on firmly on his side, all the power of the crown is bent to his support.  And yet this is not enough until public opinion finds a clear expression.  We cover the background to the rise of William Pitt, what was going in France at the t...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. A summary of the 1793-1815 period is provided along with brief descriptions of the themes we will be following. Intensity:WW1 level financial and human commitment There are many wars inside these wars Modernizing in both administration and communications Repression vs Freedom Continuities in the 2nd hundred years war Economic Warfare Sma...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Newtonian philosophy, and John Locke, along with Francis Bacon has an exciting empirical philosophical package that took Europe by storm in the 1740s, with the able assistance of Voltaire.  Locke offered an epistemology interesting to philosophers, but people like Montesquieu were more taken by his description of the interaction between...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The last universal genius.  There are minutes spent just lightly covering Leibniz’s contributions to science and his place in history, they are so extensive.  He is put forward as the father of  modern computing and patron saint of cybernetics.  What you may not realize is that in philosophy he was also a detective and a spy.  Then we co...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Spinoza’s conflicts with contemporary scientists like Boyle and Huygens center on Spinoza’s insistence on the primacy of philosophical reason over empirical experimentation and empirical reasoning.  Spinoza’s argument against Boyle’s experiments are presented. Jonathon Israel highlights the influence of Spinoza by showing that much of th...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Spinoza’s philosophical framework laid out, along with several points of disagreement with the moderate Enlightenment Newtonians and Leibnizians.  We get to some of Spinoza’s specific arguments with other scientists.  With Steno, he had a non rational disagreement, with Huygens, he was accused of focusing too much on reason rather then e...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We look at the tragedies of Spinoza's life.  The clique that forms around him.  The tragi comic end of his friend and mentor Van Den Enden. Primarily we cover Spinoza's views, and here we introduce the idea that we live in a fully mechanistic, fully determined world, where there is no room for free will or God's providence...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The first of a six episode arc on the Early Enlightenment.  We emphasize the clash of ideas, then the content of ideas, then biography. This episode lays out the 3 way battle for the dominant philosophy between the  Aristotelian Scholastics, the dominate group in 1600, the moderate Enlightenment (which itself consisted of 3 battling elem...