Daniel Houle has narrated 62 audiobooks on Listento.it by 9 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 17 ratings. The most-rated is Celle qui ne pleurait jamais.
Celle qui ne pleurait jamais
Summary
Séverin semble bien avoir raté sa vie : un divorce, une fille qui se passerait volontiers de son père, un boulot de flic sans intérêt et des troubles de la personnalité qui ont achevé de faire le vide autour de lui. Lorsqu'il se rend sur la première scène de crime de sa carrière, son seul désir est de se débarrasser de l'affaire au plus vite. Mais il va très vite comprendre que ce meurtre le concerne bien plus qu'il ne s'y attendait.
Une trace génétique est trouvée sur les lieux du crime et l'assassin est tout désigné. Mais pour Séverin, il est hors de question d'accepter l'évidence. Déterminé à retrouver le véritable tueur, il décide de suivre son propre instinct. Jusqu'à la plus effrayante des vérités.
©2017 Les Nouveaux Auteurs (P)2019 Audible Studios
What If Carthage Won the Punic Wars?
Summary
Rome and Carthage rarely could maintain peace after the end of the fourth century BCE. As the two most powerful civilizations in the western Mediterranean region, they were destined to clash, curse or not. Roman historians placed the foundation of Carthage at approximately 814 BCE, several decades before Rome. The settlers of Carthage were of Phoenician descent, tracing their ancestry back to the great city of Tyre on the southern coast of Lebanon, but Carthage soon transformed from a minor Phoenician colony into the capital of its own growing civilization. The city itself was well positioned for shipping, and it soon dominated maritime trade. Along with that, the Carthaginians built a powerful and well-trained navy, whose protection, combined with its strategic location, made the city of Carthage a formidable prospect to attack. At its height, Carthage housed several hundred thousand inhabitants, living under a republican governmental system operated by the Carthaginian Senate. As Carthage grew, it began to expand, conquering by sea and establishing new colonies to improve trade networks. One of the Carthaginians’ key objectives was Sicily. Certain foreign policy decisions led to continuing enmity between Carthage and the burgeoning power of Rome, and what followed was a series of wars which turned from a battle for Mediterranean hegemony into an all-out struggle for survival. Although the Romans gained the upper hand in the wake of the First Punic War, Hannibal brought the Romans to their knees for over a decade during the Second Punic War. While military historians are still amazed that he was able to maintain his army in Italy near Rome for nearly 15 years, scholars are still puzzled over some of his decisions, including why he never attempted to march on Rome in the first place. After the serious threat Hannibal posed during the Second Punic War, the Romans didn’t wait much longer to take the fight to the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War, which ended with Roman legions smashing Carthage to rubble. As legend has it, the Romans literally salted the ground upon which Carthage stood to ensure its destruction, once and for all. Despite having a major influence on the Mediterranean for nearly five centuries, little evidence of Carthage’s past might survives. The city itself was reduced to nothing by the Romans, who sought to erase all physical evidence of its existence, and though its ruins have been excavated, they have not provided anywhere near the wealth of archaeological items or evidence as ancient locations like Rome, Athens, Syracuse, or even Troy. Today, Carthage is a largely unremarkable suburb of the city of Tunis, and though there are some impressive ancient monuments there for tourists to explore, the large majority of these are the result of later Roman settlement. The Punic Wars spanned more than a century, brought the loss of approximately 400,000 lives, and eventually led to the utter defeat and destruction of Carthage, but it was no easy victory for Rome, and on several occasions, the young Roman Republic was close to annihilation. Given what happened in the wake of the Punic Wars, historians have long been left to ponder what might have happened had the Carthaginians won, especially given how close Hannibal came to accomplishing such a victory against Rome during the Second Punic War. What If Carthage Won the Punic Wars?: An Alternative History of the Conflict Between Rome and Carthage profiles the conflict and examines how events may have gone quite differently for Europe if Rome had been defeated.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Denisovans
Summary
The study of paleoanthropology is the branch of anthropology that examines the development of humans and pre-humans - often called collectively hominins - through history. Although paleoanthropology is directly concerned with human history, it diverges from traditional historical studies in that historians use historical records as their primary sources to reconstruct history, while paleoanthropologists work with bones and other artifacts hominins left as their records. Historians deal with the last 5,000 years of human history, while paleoanthropologists go back more than four million years to when the first proto-humans walked the Earth. Although the subject of paleoanthropology covers a much longer chronology than historical studies, the study itself is actually fairly new. As soon as man discovered writing, he began engaging in historiography (historical writing and philosophy), but paleoanthropology only really began in the late 1800s. As archaeologists began finding bones in European caves of a human race that was very different than any race in the modern world, the study of paleoanthropology was born. The race of those early humans who were found in the European caves were later termed Neanderthals, and for quite some time, they were believed to have been the race from which many modern humans were directly descended. Over time, the remains of more hominin races were discovered, leading many scholars to postulate a definite evolutionary line from proto-humans to modern humans, but at the same time, it seemed more questions were raised. Many anthropologists began questioning if the Neanderthals were direct ancestors of modern humans, and now, most believe that they were not, although scholars grant that they were closely related, and many modern humans do indeed carry some Neanderthal genetics. This debate was unsettled until recently, when new scientific knowledge and methods were utilized to answer some of the most important questions pertaining to early human and pre-human development. Advances in genetic testing have allowed the field of paleoanthropology to make great leaps, one of the greatest was when the remains of five individuals discovered in a Siberian cave had their DNA sequenced in 2010. However, the results of the DNA testing dramatically changed the course of paleoanthropology once more when it was revealed that although the hominins from what is known as the Denisova Cave were closely related to Neanderthals, much more so than modern humans are related to Neanderthals, they represented a distinct species of humans. Scholars began examining this new hominin race - which became known as “Denisovans”, “Denisovan Man”, or Homo denisovan - for connections to the Neanderthals and modern humans. Although it has been less than 10 years since the Denisovans were truly discovered, much has been learned about them, particularly about their interactions with the Neanderthals and modern humans, their range, and their culture. It has been revealed that although the Denisovans were very similar to the Neanderthals in terms of genetics, phenotype, and material culture, the Denisovans possibly had a much wider range and left a bigger genetic imprint on modern human populations. The Denisovans: The History of the Extinct Archaic Humans Who Spread Across Asia During the Paleolithic Era looks at the evolution of these mysterious humans and examines the theories regarding their history.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
Why Intelligence Fails
Summary
The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that have resulted from intelligence failures. In Why Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the mistaken belief that the regime of the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the claim that Iraq had active WMD programs in 2002. The Iran case is based on a recently declassified report Jervis was commissioned to undertake by the CIA thirty years ago and includes memoranda written by CIA officials in response to Jervis's findings. The Iraq case, also grounded in a review of the intelligence community's performance, is based on close readings of both classified and declassified documents, though Jervis's conclusions are entirely supported by evidence that has been declassified. In both cases, Jervis finds not only that intelligence was badly flawed but also that later explanations - analysts were bowing to political pressure and telling the White House what it wanted to hear or were willfully blind - were also incorrect. Proponents of these explanations claimed that initial errors were compounded by groupthink, lack of coordination within the government, and failure to share information. Policy prescriptions, including the recent establishment of a Director of National Intelligence, were supposed to remedy the situation. In Jervis's estimation, neither the explanations nor the prescriptions are adequate. The inferences that intelligence drew were actually quite plausible given the information available. Errors arose, he concludes, from insufficient attention to the ways in which information should be gathered and interpreted, a lack of self-awareness about the factors that led to the judgments, and an organizational culture that failed to probe for weaknesses and explore alternatives. Evaluating the inherent tensions between the methods and aims of intelligence personnel and policymakers from a unique insider's perspective, Jervis forcefully criticizes recent proposals for improving the performance of the intelligence community and discusses ways in which future analysis can be improved. The book is published by Cornell University Press.
©2010 Cornell University (P)2013 Redwood Audiobooks
The Start of the Russo-Turkish Wars
Summary
In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century. Naturally, the Ottoman Empire would also use Constantinople as the capital of its empire after their conquest effectively ended the Byzantine Empire, and thanks to its strategic location, it has been a trading center for years and remains one today under the Turkish name of Istanbul. The end of the Byzantine Empire had a profound effect not only on the Middle East but Europe as well. Constantinople had played a crucial part in the Crusades, and the fall of the Byzantines meant that the Ottomans now shared a border with Europe. The Islamic empire was viewed as a threat by the predominantly Christian continent to their west, and it took little time for different European nations to start clashing with the powerful Turks. In fact, the Ottomans would clash with Russians, Austrians, Venetians, Polish, and more before collapsing as a result of World War I, when they were part of the Central powers. In the wake of taking Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire would spend the next few centuries expanding its size, power, and influence, bumping up against Eastern Europe and becoming one of the world’s most important geopolitical players. It was a rise that would not truly start to wane until the 19th century, and in the centuries before the decline of the “sick man of Europe”, the Ottomans frequently tried to push further into Europe. Some of those forays were memorably countered by Western Europeans and the Holy League, but the Ottomans’ most frequent foe was the Russian Empire, which opposed them for both geopolitical and religious reasons. From negotiations to battles, the two sides jockeyed for position over the course of hundreds of years, and the start of the fighting may have represented the Ottomans’ best chance to conquer Moscow and change the course of history. For anyone trying to understand the origins of modern Russia and the start of the Russo-Turkish Wars, the search should begin with Tsar Peter I (1672-1725), who titled himself Peter the Great during his lifetime. The moniker is fitting, considering the manner in which Peter brought Russia out of the Middle Ages and into the 18th century. Through a series of campaigns, Peter turned Russia into a formidable empire that would subsequently become a major force on the European continent, while also emulating Western Europe and turning Russia into an international state that interacted with the other continental powers. By revolutionizing and modernizing Russian arms, including the creation of Russia’s first naval force, Peter was able to pursue an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy that set the stage for the way the European map would be redrawn again and again over the coming centuries. The Start of the Russo-Turkish Wars: The History of the Initial Conflicts Between the Russian Empire and Ottoman Empire looks at the various origins of the belligerence, how the first battles went, and how they influenced the course of both empires’ histories. You will learn about the the start of the Russo-Turkish Wars like never before.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Holodomor
Summary
“What are the causes of the famine? The main reason for the catastrophe in Russian agriculture is the Soviet policy of collectivization. The prophecy of Paul Scheffer in 1920-30 that collectivization of agriculture would be the nemesis of Communism has come absolutely true.” (Gareth Jones) Famine - one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the Book of Revelation - continues to be one of the most crippling and destructive scourges of humanity. This inexorable affliction, traumatically fatal in the worst-case scenarios, has terrorized every single continent at some point throughout history, some more so than others. Perhaps the most famous was the notorious Irish Potato Famine of 1845, during which a noxious, fungus-like microorganism known as the “Phytophthora infestans” destroyed half of Ireland's potatoes and three-fourths of the crop in the following seven years, resulting in the deaths of 1.5 million and the forced migration of some two million citizens. The catastrophic Bengal Famine of 1943, which was precipitated by a dreadful cyclone and tidal waves the previous year, led to the deaths of an estimated seven million Bengalis. Among some of history’s famines, the Holodomor’s death toll is considerably lower than others, such as the the Chalisa and South India Famines between 1782 to 1784, which killed roughly 11 million people altogether, or the Chinese Famine of 1907, which claimed up to 25 million lives in northern China. The Holodomor, however, which ravaged Ukraine between 1932 and 1933, was not a natural occurrence, but a ghastly man-made famine brought about by Stalinist policies. When Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union, communist ideology was enforced on every part of society, religion was effectively prohibited, and dissenters were sent to the Gulag prison camps. The church was an early target for the communists, as many buildings and religious icons were vandalized and believers were mocked. As awful as that all was, Stalin’s economic plans were especially disastrous for Ukrainians. This Holomodor, calculatedly inflicted to serve the dictator's agenda, as well as to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and stamp out those who dared resist the regime, consequently resulted in the avoidable deaths of anywhere between 3.9 million and 10 million Ukrainian civilians. It was equivalent to roughly 25 percent of the population, a third of them children, and the victims all died in less than two years. One historian of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum, charted these events in her book Red Famine, concluding that the “Soviet Union’s disastrous decision to force peasants to give up their land and join collective farms; the eviction of ‘kulaks,’ the wealthier peasants, from their homes; the chaos that followed’ - these policies were ‘all ultimately the responsibility of Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.’” While Ukrainians marked this tragedy as the Holodomor (a composite of the Ukrainian words hunger (holod) and extermination (mor)), and the modern Ukrainian state recognized the period as a genocide in 2006, the Holomodor was deliberately swept under the rug for several decades. As a result, it remains widely unacknowledged to this day, and the nature of the famine - particularly whether it should be considered a genocide - is still debated by scholars. The Holodomor: The History and Legacy of the Ukrainian Famine Engineered by the Soviet Union examines the events that brought about the famine and its terrible toll.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
Krishna: The History and Legacy of the Popular Hindu Deity
Summary
In the West, Hinduism is a religion that everyone has heard of but one that few non-practitioners truly understand. Today it is widely regarded as one of the world’s great religions and considered the indigenous religion of India, with practices and beliefs stretching back thousands of years. Hinduism as a religion spans more than 3,000 years, and now it includes nearly one billion people. At the same time, it is not a specific term, since there are clear sectarian boundaries, the same way there are differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, and even differences between the various Protestant sects and the various Catholic sects, Hinduism may be broken down into many major sub-groupings that may or may not have much in common at all. Additionally, in the same way Christianity contains many smaller, spirituality heterodox groups like Gnostic Christianity (which are sometimes called cults), Hinduism also contains many groups that have beliefs that do not fit easily within the common corpus of Hindu belief systems. All of these divisions came well after the time of the Aryans, and Hinduism likely began to divide around the 1st century CE, about 1,000 years after the arrival of the Aryans into the Indian subcontinent. Sri Krishna, believed to be the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, is without question one of the most popular and instantly recognizable deities within the Hindu pantheon, which encompasses hundreds of Puranic divine beings, coupled with approximately 33 Vedic gods and goddesses or “devas,” and a sea of other lower-ranking demigods and legendary figures. The likeness of the blue-skinned, flute-toting god, blessed with an unspeakably beautiful face and midnight-black curls, has been replicated in countless sculptures, often clad in colorful clothes and adorned with gold and silver jewelry, relief carvings, paintings, and other artistic mediums, otherwise known as “murti.” Hindus and subscribers of the Bhagavad Gita, as well as practitioners of bhakti yoga, ashtanga yoga, jñana yoga, and karma yoga are intimately familiar with this god of unconditional love, compassion, and tenderness, who has also been crowned “Yogesvara,” the master of yogis and all things mystical. While Hinduism has always seemed complicated to outsiders, even those not terribly familiar with the faith and those unpracticed in the art of yoga know of Krishna, or at the very least they have heard his name in the course of conversation. It is particularly difficult, if not impossible to escape the deity's omnipresence in India. In all likelihood, tourists privileged enough to experience the enchanting republic firsthand have visited (or marveled at in passing) one of the innumerable temples dedicated to Krishna peppered throughout India, and this is excluding the shrines erected in his honor in other parts of the world. Perhaps it was the Radha Parthasarathi in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh that caught their eye: a vibrant temple built in the shape of a chariot and painted entirely in the dainty shade of watermelon-pink, complete with wheels and a quartet of colossal stallions that towered over its visitors. Or perhaps it was the Sri Sri Radha Parthasarathi Mandir in New Delhi that stopped them in their tracks: a stunning and sprawling complex dominated by lace-white pointed oval domes and embellished with wooden, marble, and stone lattice carvings, which houses the 1,764-pound Astounding Bhagavad Gita, the “largest principle sacred text ever to be printed.” The Vrindavan Chandrodaya Mandir, currently under construction, is slated to be the tallest religious monument ever built."
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Haitian Revolution
Summary
“I was born a slave, but nature gave me a soul of a free man....” (Toussaint L'Ouverture) The island of Hispaniola is the second largest island in the Antilles chain behind Cuba, and host to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti, covering the western third of the island, is a French-speaking territory while the Dominican Republic, which occupies the other two thirds, is a Spanish-speaking territory. The Dominican Republic, although classified as a developing nation, has never been struck to the same degree by the malaise of poverty, corruption of its neighbor, languishing in the lower 10 percent of nations ahead only of some of the most conspicuous failed states in Africa. Many historians and analysts have posed the question of why, and the answer seems to lie in Haiti’s uniquely tortured history. Hispaniola entered the European record in 1492 when Christopher Columbus made landfall on its southern shore during his first trans-Atlantic voyage, and he named his discovery in honor of the Spanish Crown that had funded and sponsored the voyage. Leaving the crew of the wrecked Santa Maria on the island, he returned to Europe, leaving his men to establish the foundations of the settlement of La Navidad and the first beachhead of the European seizure of the Caribbean and the New World. Columbus would revisit the island three times, leading a vanguard of pioneer colonists to commence the exploitation of the New World. The indigenous people of Hispaniola, the Tainos and Arawak, initially greeted the landing with ambivalence, but as more and more of them were enslaved, and as their country was occupied, they entered a period of precipitous decline. Through a combination of disease, the violence associated with enslavement and general assimilation, they had virtually disappeared from the landscape within a century. Meanwhile, as the Spanish colonists looked around them, searching for a means to exploit this great discovery, and as the occupation spread to the mainland and the interior of South America, the early search for minerals yielded to the establishment of a plantation economy, with an emphasis initially on sugar, and later cotton, coffee, indigo and other crops. Thus, even by the 16th century, slaves were being imported to Hispaniola, and over the next few centuries, the population of African slaves came to represent a sizable majority of the population there. This would set the stage for one of history’s most unique revolutions. The Haitian Revolution: The History and Legacy of the Slave Uprising that Led to Haiti’s Independence chronicles how the only successful slave uprising came about, and why it ended French control of the island. You will learn about the revolution like never before.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
Cat and Mouse on the Niger
Summary
"They have soldiers. We only have arguments." (French Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé) Near the end of the 19th century, Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event, known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa. The conference established two fundamental rules for European seizure of Africa. The first of these was that no recognition of annexation would be granted without evidence of a practical occupation and the second, that a practical occupation would be deemed unlawful without a formal appeal for protection made on behalf of a territory by its leader - a plea that must be committed to paper in the form of a legal treaty. This began a rush, spearheaded mainly by European commercial interests in the form of chartered companies, to penetrate the African interior and woo its leadership with guns, trinkets, and alcohol, and having thus obtained their marks or seals upon spurious treaties, begin establishing boundaries of future European African colonies. The ease with which this was achieved was due to the fact that, at that point, traditional African leadership was disunited, and the people had just staggered back from centuries of concussion inflicted by the slave trade. Thus, to usurp authority, intimidate an already broken society, and play one leader against the other was a diplomatic task so childishly simple, the matter was wrapped up, for the most part, in less than a decade. Even at that stage, however, the countries would keep jostling for position in Africa against each other, attempting to snap up more land and consolidate it. As such, the scramble kept going at a fevered pitch until the outbreak of World War I. When they entered the negotiations in Berlin in 1884, the French were established in their flagship African territory of Senegal, situated at the westernmost point of continental Africa, which tended to give them an option over the vast reaches of the western continent so far unclaimed by any territory. The history of French engagement in Senegal can be traced back to 1677, with the French acquisition of a slave port on the island of Gorée, today a cantonment of the Senegalese capital of Dakar. From there, the French were apt to gaze across the vast expanse of unclaimed territory to their minor enclave of French Somaliland, founded between 1883 and 1887, and which would, in the post-independence era, become the state of Djibouti. The French imperial vision, therefore, became the establishment of French sovereignty over everything in between these two points, including, if possible, Egypt. That obviously clashed with British objectives. As the British were working to establish a route from Cape Town in South Africa to Cairo in Egypt, the French were seeking to connect Dakar to Djibouti. If lines were drawn on the map to connect those places, the lines would intersect around the Sudanese river port of Kodok, which, during the imperial era, was known as Fashoda. The sequence of events across Africa would lead to a dramatic confrontation between a French expedition and British soldiers at Fashoda in 1898, and what happened there would help determine the boundaries of colonial Africa for the next several decades. Cat and Mouse on the Niger: The History of the Competition Between the British and French for Control of the Niger River chronicles the competition between both nations as they sought to make inroads on the African continent.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Surveyor Program
Summary
Today the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 “winning” the Race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that affected everything from military technology to successfully launching satellites that could land on Mars or orbit other planets in the Solar System. Moreover, the notion that America “won” the Space Race at the end of the 1960s overlooks just how competitive the Space Race actually was in launching people into orbit, as well as the major contributions the Space Race influenced in leading to today’s International Space Station and continued space exploration. The Apollo space program is the most famous and celebrated in American history, but the first successful landing of men on the Moon during Apollo 11 had complicated roots dating back over a decade, and it also involved one of NASA’s most infamous tragedies. Landing on the Moon presented an ideal goal all on its own, but the government’s urgency in designing the Apollo program was actually brought about by the Soviet Union, which spent much of the 1950s leaving the United States in its dust (and rocket fuel). In 1957, at a time when people were concerned about communism and nuclear war, many Americans were dismayed by news that the Soviet Union was successfully launching satellites into orbit. Among those concerned was President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose space program was clearly lagging a few years behind the Soviets’ space program. From 1959-1963, the United States worked toward putting satellites and humans into orbit via the Mercury program, but Eisenhower’s administration was already designing plans for the Apollo program by 1960, a year before the first Russian orbited the Earth and two years before John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress and asked the nation to “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” Given America’s inability to even put a man in orbit yet, this seemed like an overly ambitious goal, and it isn’t even clear that Kennedy himself believed it possible; after all, he was reluctant to meet NASA Administrator James E. Webb’s initial funding requests. As Apollo 11’s name suggests, there were actually a number of Apollo missions that came before, many of which included testing the rockets and different orbital and lunar modules in orbit. In fact, it wasn’t until Apollo 8 that a manned vehicle was sent towards the Moon and back, and before that mission, the most famous Apollo mission was Apollo 1, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Throughout the 1960s, NASA would spend tens of billions on missions to the Moon, the most expensive peacetime program in American history to that point, and Apollo was only made possible by the tests conducted through the Surveyor Program. Between May 1966 and January 1968, the Surveyor Program launched seven unmanned spacecraft to the lunar surface to gather data and test the feasibility of landing a manned vehicle on the Moon. Although largely forgotten now, without these missions the later series of manned Moon landings would not have been possible. The Surveyor Program: The History and Legacy of NASA’s First Successful Moon Landing Missions examines the origins behind the missions, the space probes involved, and the historic results.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Gutians
Summary
Includes excerpts of ancient accounts Includes a bibliography for further listening Includes a table of contents “Naram-Sin destroyed the people of Babylon, so twice Marduk summoned the forces of Gutium against him. Marduk gave his kingship to the Gutian force. The Gutians were unhappy people unaware how to revere the gods, ignorant of the right cultic practices. Utu-hengal, the fisherman, caught a fish at the edge of the sea for an offering. That fish should not be offered to another god until it had been offered to Marduk, but the Gutians took the boiled fish from his hand before it was offered, so by his august command, Marduk removed the Gutian force from the rule of his land and gave it to Utu-hengal.” (The Weidner Chronicle, 6th century BCE) World history is replete with many examples of nomadic barbarian hordes that swept into the kingdoms and countries of sedentary peoples, often leaving just as quickly as they had come. Sometimes, the hordes stayed in the territories they conquered and adopted the cultural attributes of the more sophisticated sedentary groups. It is important to know that barbarian invasions throughout history were usually not led by individuals or groups that hated or wanted to see the larger, often more powerful sedentary kingdoms or empires destroyed. Instead, they want a “taste” of it, and in many examples, they wanted to rule with the same style and ideology as the kingdom they had replaced. Many Sea Peoples bands of the eastern Mediterranean in the 13th century BCE entered the region as invaders and pirates, but many stayed and either assimilated into the sedentary kingdoms after their raids or even formed their own kingdoms, such as the Philistines, who were heavily influenced by the older kingdoms. The Turkic nomads, Mongols, and other nomads of the steppe in the Middle Ages are another example of this phenomenon. These groups entered Europe and the Near East as classic hordes in every sense of the word, but after hundreds of years, they became part of the Christian and Islamic states in the region. Perhaps the best examples of this process is are the Germanic tribes who entered Europe, helping to bring down the Roman Empire while adopting countless aspects of Roman culture in the process, including elements of language, government, and religion. The ancient Gutians are probably not one of the groups that come to most people’s minds when they think of barbarian hordes, but they were among the most important in the Bronze Age Near East. Little is known about the Gutians before they entered the historical record around 2200 BCE. in Mesopotamia, and even after that point, the contemporary records are open to interpretation because they are obviously biased against the outsiders. Since the Gutians had no written language, most of what modern scholars know about them has come from the works written by various groups in Mesopotamia, but they viewed the Gutians as uncivilized invaders, and with a healthy amount of fear and revulsion. Given their foreign status and the fact that they forcibly conquered parts of Mesopotamia when they entered the historical record, the memory of the Gutians survived in Mesopotamia long after their short-lived dynasty had been overthrown. They continued to live on as a literary trope of what could happen if societies ignored their ancient cultural practices, particularly the worship of the gods and the proper maintenance of their cults. With this in mind, it is important to approach any proper study of the Gutians with the realization that nearly everything historians know about them comes from people who viewed them with absolute contempt, but along with that and available archaeological evidence, it is possible to get an idea of what the Gutians’ history was truly like.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Battle of Kosovo
Summary
The Balkan area has historically been one of the world’s most combustible regions. Home to several national groups and at a crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the Balkans have exerted an outsized role on world affairs. Infamously, the 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, was the final straw that led to World War I. The Balkans, however, had been flammable long before Princip’s bullets murdered the Austrian monarch-in-waiting. A number of countries had attempted to expand their borders within the Balkan region, and many of these had been supported by larger continental powers, such as Russia, Britain, France, Austria, Germany, and Italy. The main cause of this instability was the decline of empire in the Balkans, where the Ottoman Empire had held sway over the southeast section of the Balkans since the 15th century and the Austrian Habsburgs were dominant in the northwest of the region. The wake of World War I would produce Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic nation made up of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Montenegrins. In addition to the nationalities that would be part of Yugoslavia, the Balkans was home to a number of other identities, ethnicities, and traditions, including the Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Albanians, and Turks. Yugoslavia eventually fractured as a result of the different ethnic groups, all harboring their own sense of nationality and culture, and one of the most dominant groups at the center of the infighting was the Serbs. Notions of a Serb-nation focused on the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, on the Field of Blackbirds, where the Ottomans had defeated a Serb army but, nevertheless, gave Serbia a sense of identity in a hostile region. Kosovo also became an integral part of any notion of a Serb state, and as a predominantly Christian Orthodox people, Serbia also gained fraternal support from coreligionists, most notably Russia. The jostling between the Russians, Austrians, and Serbians in the wake of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination would bring about what was then history’s deadliest conflict. Given how tightly the Serbs have historically been clinging to the Battle of Kosovo, which was fought on June 28, 1389, on the Kosovo plain in southern Serbia against the fledgling Ottoman Empire, it’s somewhat surprising what actually happened there. There can be no doubt that it is regarded as an important and, indeed, iconic battle in European history, but at first glance, it is difficult to see why. Though neither side fielded more than 40,000 men, it was a bloody battle that all but spelled the end of the Serbian nation. Records of the actual battle itself are scarce, so historians have attempted to reconstruct a likely chain of events, thanks to written-down strategies, numbers, and information from other similar battles. The Serbian and Turkish sources often contradict each other, and what modern history books relay about the events are based on the general assumption and what most likely is true. Of course, the lack of actual documentation is the very reason the battle has become so easy to mythologize, and while Kosovo did not have any decisive effect on the course of Ottoman history or that of its other neighbors, the Serbs still regard it as a momentous conflict that resonates to the present day. The Battle of Kosovo: The History and Legacy of the Battle Between the Serbs and Ottomans That Forged Serbia’s National Identity chronicles the Balkans in the 14th century, the circumstances that brought the Serbs and Ottomans to the Kosovo plain, and the subsequent events that gave rise to the potent cultural phenomenon now known as the Kosovo Myth.
©2019 Charles River Editors (P)2019 Charles River Editors
Mexico and the World Wars
Summary
Otto von Bismarck, the leading German statesman of the 19th century, once joked, “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the US of America”. He said this not because the Americans were a great concern for him - his main interest in the US was trade -, but as the architect of the first unified German state, he was setting the tone for what two generations of German nationals would feel about America’s apparent invulnerability. It would always be better, thus, to keep America away from Germany's business. Nonetheless, during the two major wars of the 20th century, America and Germany did indeed clash against each other, and in both cases, American entry into the war was a decisive factor in the defeat of the Germans. Germany had a good reason for desiring the non-interference of the American colossus: with a declining British Empire, and the rest of Europe mired in a diplomatic labyrinth, America seemed to be the only nation with the capacity to tip the scales in a major war. Germany respected and feared American power as much as the US marveled at Germany's impetus and its ability to mobilize an entire nation. Indeed, in both wars, the US waited until it believed it had no choice but to declare war and engage in a conflict that was taking place on the other side of the world. In World War I, it was the discovery of a German plan to attack the US through Mexico that overturned public opinion against neutrality, and in World War II, it wasn't until Pearl Harbor. Of course, this is not to say that America was not active in the war efforts before its official entry. Germany always tried to stay a step ahead and weaken the US where it least expected it: its own neighborhood. Thus, Germany placed great emphasis on luring Mexico into its sphere of influence. Operating in Canada was out of the question, not only because of the difficult access from the North Atlantic, but also because greater historical and cultural ties united the two neighbors. This was not the case with Mexico, and by taking advantage of the historical hostility and longstanding resentment of the Mexicans, Germany organized a secret operation against the US, a conspiracy of colossal proportions, a move so risky that, had it succeeded, it would have changed the face of Western hemisphere forever. On both occasions, Germany hoped to wage a proxy war against an undeclared enemy. In World War I, Germany planned an invasion from Mexico not once but on several occasions, one of them with a formal invitation to the president of Mexico to lead it. This would have been a German-Mexican coalition that, if successful, would have rewarded Mexico with part of the territories lost in 1847, namely Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. To be sure, the Kaiser knew that Mexico had no chance of winning that war, even with German aid, nor of regaining its lost territory, but the German Empire did not really care about Mexico, nor was expecting a Mexican victory. Germany only needed to buy more time, enough to defeat America’s European allies so that when the US succeeded in subduing the Mexicans, it would have to negotiate with a victorious Germany. Though these efforts remain mostly unknown except for brief mentions of the Zimmermann Telegram, Germany did not hesitate to make use of the weak, unprepared Mexico, and operate against the US in order to fulfill its own objectives. In fact, "sacrificing" Mexico was seen as inevitable collateral damage. For the Kaiser in the First World War and the Führer in the Second World War, utilizing Mexico as a strategic base to importune and hold back the US was a priority in the Americas.
©2019 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Albigensian Crusade
Summary
“The Roman Church...[says] that the heretics they persecute are the church of wolves. But this is absurd, for the wolves have always pursued and killed the sheep, and today, it would have to be the other way around for the sheep to be so mad as to bite, pursue, and kill the wolves, and for the wolves to be so patient as to let the sheep devour them!” (Excerpt from the alleged writings of the Cathars) Christianity was not a state religion for its first three centuries, and it was only when Emperor Constantine the Great declared it so in the early fourth century that the Church was faced with the thorny problem of state-sanctioned violence. The first major Christian authority to justify the use of arms in defense of Church and State was Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who wrote in the fifth century, “They who have waged war in obedience to the divine command or in conformity with his laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’” After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, when Western Europe was governed by a Germanic warrior-caste, the theory of a just and virtuous war took root. The Roman Church enhanced its authority by sanctifying oaths taken for just military purposes, and Bishop Anselm of Lucca (d. 1086) was the first to suggest that military action for the cause of religion could remit sin. At the Council of Clermont in July 1095, Pope Urban II canonized religious war by urging Western Europe's nobility to take up arms in defense of the Byzantine Empire against the Muslims, thus launching the Crusades. Religious military orders such as the Knights of Saint John, the Templars, and the Hospitallers arose, ostensibly founded to protect the weak and the sick and also to extend the boundaries of Christianity and the power of the Church. In Europe, the knight, originally a mounted warrior, became a consecrated soldier of Christ, dedicated to the defense of the Church by solemn vows made before an altar. It was not long before the concept of the holy crusade was applied beyond the holy land. The conflict between the Christian states and the Muslim Moors in the Iberian Peninsula became a holy war, as did the forced settlement of Pagan Slav lands on Germany's eastern frontier. At the beginning of the 13th century, the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights of Livonia began the conquest of heathen Baltic lands, while Sweden invaded Finland. Naturally, the question remained concerning the use of arms against other Christians. Eastern Christians did not acknowledge the Pope's supremacy, and many held that it was lawful for him to declare a crusade to bring schismatics back to the obedience of Rome. German knights fighting the Orthodox Russians at the Battle on the Ice in 1242 believed this, as did the Hungarian prosecutors of the 1235 invasion of Bosnia, which was thinly disguised as a crusade. The Church even extended the object of crusade to believers in communion with Rome, who refused to obey lawful authority. After peasants revolted against the Prince-Archbishop of Bremen in 1204 over tithes and land rights, Pope Gregory IX was persuaded to declare them heretics and proclaim a crusade against them, and when the “heresy” of Catharism began to take root in southeastern France toward the end of the 12th century, both Church and State considered the use of force to extirpate it. The Albigensian Crusade: The History and Legacy of the Catholic Campaign Against the Cathars in France examines the origins of Catharism, the conflicts with Catholicism, and the fighting that led to Cathars being stamped out across France.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Battle of the Granicus River
Summary
At one point in antiquity, the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen, but aside from its role in the Greco-Persian Wars and its collapse at the hands of Alexander the Great, it has been mostly overlooked. When it has been studied, the historical sources have mostly been Greek, the very people the Persians sought to conquer. Needless to say, their versions were biased, and attitudes about the Persians were only exacerbated by Alexander the Great and his biographers, who maintained a fiery hatred toward Xerxes I of Persia due to his burning of Athens. Of course, far more is known about Alexander the Great and his military accomplishments, the most important of which was bringing about the demise of the Persian Empire. Ever since the famous Persian invasions that had been repelled by the Athenians at Marathon and then by the Spartans at Thermopylae and Plataea, Greece and Persia had been at odds. For the past few years they had enjoyed an uneasy peace, but that peace was shattered when, in 334 BCE, Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Persia. He brought with him an army of 50,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and a navy of over 100 ships, a mixed force of Macedonians, Greeks, Thracians and Illyrians, all chosen for their specific strengths (the Thessalians, for example, were famous cavalrymen). He was still just 22. Darius III, king of Persia at the time of Alexander’s invasion, was no tactical genius, but he was an intelligent and persistent enemy who had been handed the throne just before the arrival of the indomitable Alexander. His misfortune was to face an enemy at the forefront of military innovation and flexibility, a fighting force that he was not equipped to handle, and the unconquerable will of the Macedonian army, fueled by devotion to their daring and charismatic king. When Alexander crossed the Hellespont in 334 BCE, his first encounter with Persian forces took place along the Granicus River. The Persian commanders had met at the city of Zeleia along with Memnon of Rhodes, the leader of their Greek mercenary forces, and Memnon advised the Persians not to fight Alexander head on. Since the Persian forces were slightly outnumbered for the battle, Memnon advised that the Persians should scorch the nearby lands and make travel and supplying the army difficult for Alexander. Ultimately, however, the Persians did not trust the Greek commander and were unwilling to destroy their own lands. It’s quite likely they thought that the young inexperienced king at the head of a Greek army would not be too difficult to defeat, so they instead decided to draw Alexander into a defensive position of their own choosing. Against a lesser general, their strategy might have worked well, but at the Battle of the Granicus River, the Persians would learn that Alexander was no typical military leader. What happened there set the tone for the rest of Alexander’s campaign against the Persians, including at the legendary Battle of Issus, but over 2,000 years after the Battle of the Granicus River was fought, there are still a lot of lingering questions surrounding it. Though it’s frequently grouped with Alexander’s other three major military encounters (the Battle of Issus, the Battle of Gaugamela, and the Battle of Hydaspes), the ancient sources lack the detailed information about the battle dispositions and the actual activities of the battle that characterize their accounts of the other three. The Battle of the Granicus River: The History of Alexander the Great’s First Major Battle Against the Achaemenid Persian Empire looks at one of antiquity’s most important battle.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
The Battle of Gaugamela
Summary
“Then the Scythian cavalry rode along the line, and came into conflict with the front men of Alexander's array, but he nevertheless still continued to march towards the right, and almost entirely got beyond the ground which had been cleared and levelled by the Persians. Then Darius, fearing that his chariots would become useless, if the Macedonians advanced into the uneven ground, ordered the front ranks of his left wing to ride round the right wing of the Macedonians, where Alexander was commanding, to prevent him from marching his wing any further. This being done, Alexander ordered the cavalry of the Grecian mercenaries under the command of Menidas to attack them. But the Scythian cavalry and the Bactrians, who had been drawn up with them, sallied forth against them and being much more numerous they put the small body of Greeks to rout." (Arrian) At one point in antiquity, the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen, but aside from its role in the Greco-Persian Wars and its collapse at the hands of Alexander the Great, it has been mostly overlooked. When it has been studied, the historical sources have mostly been Greek, the very people the Persians sought to conquer. Needless to say, their versions were biased, and attitudes about the Persians were only exacerbated by Alexander the Great and his biographers, who maintained a fiery hatred toward Xerxes I of Persia due to his burning of Athens. The Macedonians targeted many of his building projects after their capture of Persepolis, and they pushed an even bleaker picture of the king, one of an idle, indolent, cowardly, and corrupt ruler. It was not until excavations in the region during the 20th century that many of the relics, reliefs, and clay tablets that offer so much information about Persian life could be studied for the first time. Through archaeological remains, ancient texts, and work by a new generation of historians, a picture can today be built of this remarkable civilization and their most famous leaders. Of course, far more is known about Alexander the Great and his military accomplishments, the most important of which was bringing about the demise of the Persian Empire. Over the last 2,000 years, ambitious men have dreamed of forging vast empires and attaining eternal glory in battle, but of all the conquerors who took steps toward such dreams, none were ever as successful as antiquity’s first great conqueror. Leaders of the 20th century hoped to rival Napoleon’s accomplishments, while Napoleon aimed to emulate the accomplishments of Julius Caesar. But Caesar himself found inspiration in Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), the Macedonian king who managed to stretch an empire from Greece to the Himalayas in Asia by the age of 30. It took less than 15 years for Alexander to conquer much of the known world. Darius III, king of Persia at the time of Alexander’s invasion, was no tactical genius, but he was an intelligent and persistent enemy who had been handed the throne just before the arrival of the indomitable Alexander. His misfortune was to face an enemy at the forefront of military innovation and flexibility, a fighting force that he was not equipped to handle, and the unconquerable will of the Macedonian army, fueled by devotion to their daring and charismatic king. He would personally face Alexander twice, once at the Battle of Issus and again at the Battle of Gaugamela, with the latter conflict deciding the fate of the Western world. The Battle of Gaugamela: The History of Alexander the Great’s Decisive Victory and the Destruction of the Achaemenid Persian Empire looks at one of antiquity’s most important conflicts, and the profound ramifications of Alexander’s campaign; you will learn about the battle like never before.
©2019 Charles River Editors (P)2019 Charles River Editors
The Battle of Issus
Summary
At one point in antiquity, the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen, but aside from its role in the Greco-Persian Wars and its collapse at the hands of Alexander the Great, it has been mostly overlooked. When it has been studied, the historical sources have mostly been Greek, the very people the Persians sought to conquer. Needless to say, their versions were biased, and attitudes about the Persians were only exacerbated by Alexander the Great and his biographers, who maintained a fiery hatred toward Xerxes I of Persia due to his burning of Athens. The Macedonians targeted many of his building projects after their capture of Persepolis, and they pushed an even bleaker picture of the king - one of an idle, indolent, cowardly, and corrupt ruler. It was not until excavations in the region during the 20th century that many of the relics, reliefs, and clay tablets that offer so much information about Persian life came to be studied for the first time. Through archaeological remains, ancient texts, and work by a new generation of historians, a picture can today be built of this remarkable civilization and their most famous leaders. Of course, far more is known about Alexander the Great and his military accomplishments, the most important of which was bringing about the demise of the Persian Empire. Over the last 2,000 years, ambitious men have dreamed of forging vast empires and attaining eternal glory in battle, but of all the conquerors who took steps toward such dreams, none were ever as successful as antiquity’s first great conqueror. Leaders of the 20th century hoped to rival Napoleon’s accomplishments, while Napoleon aimed to emulate the accomplishments of Julius Caesar. But Caesar himself found inspiration in Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), the Macedonian king who managed to stretch an empire from Greece to the Himalayas in Asia by the age of 30. It took less than 15 years for Alexander to conquer much of the known world. Ever since the famous Persian invasions that had been repelled by the Athenians at Marathon and then by the Spartans at Thermopylae and Plataea, Greece and Persia had been at odds. For the past few years, they had enjoyed an uneasy peace, but that peace was shattered when, in 334 BCE, Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Persia. He brought with him an army of 50,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry, and a navy of over 100 ships, a mixed force of Macedonians, Greeks, Thracians, and Illyrians, all chosen for their specific strengths (the Thessalians, for example, were famous cavalrymen). He was still just 22. Darius III, king of Persia at the time of Alexander’s invasion, was no tactical genius, but he was an intelligent and persistent enemy who had been handed the throne just before the arrival of the indomitable Alexander. His misfortune was to face an enemy at the forefront of military innovation and flexibility - a fighting force that he was not equipped to handle and the unconquerable will of the Macedonian army, fueled by devotion to their daring and charismatic king. He would personally face Alexander twice, once at the Battle of Issus and again at the Battle of Gaugamela, and the battles would decide the fate of his empire and the fate of the Western world. The Battle of Issus: The History of Alexander the Great’s Most Famous Victory Against the Achaemenid Persian Empire looks at one of antiquity’s most important battles, and the profound ramifications of Alexander’s campaign.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors
Leland Stanford
Summary
"The employee is regarded by the employer merely in the light of his value as an operative. His productive capacity alone is taken into account." (Stanford) For many people, the Gilded Age and the dawn of the 20th century continue to be remembered for monopolies, trusts, and economic giants in heavy industries like railroads, oil, and steel. Men like Andrew Carnegie built empires like Carnegie Steel, and financiers like J. P. Morgan merged and consolidated them. The era also made names like Astor, Cooke, and Vanderbilt instantly recognizable across the globe. Over time, the unfathomable wealth generated by the businesses made the individuals on top incredibly rich, and that in turn led to immense criticism and an infamous epithet used to rail against them: robber barons. The industrial might wielded by these executives in the late 19th century directly led to a public backlash and made President Teddy Roosevelt the "trust buster", and there has since been countless regulations to attempt to avoid the types of monopolies found over 100 years ago. However, many 20th century historians and writers pushed back against the allegations hurled at the "robber barons" and even took issue with the name. Libertarian writer John Stossel argued, "They weren't robbers, because they didn't steal from anyone, and they weren't barons - they were born poor...." Moreover, some of them set a precedent of sorts with their philanthropy. The rise of the robber barons is typically associated with the East Coast and New York City, and when it comes to famous figures in the West during this time, most of them were outlaws, cowboys, lawmen, mountain men, and other types who helped push across the frontier. Those who explored the forested regions of the major mountain ranges and rode the plains of the central continent have always been the subjects of mystique and nostalgia, but while the West was being "won" by enormous cross-sections of the Civil War population moving toward the Pacific in search of a new life, the great cities and their attending technologies expanded in kind. Supporting the explorers and cowboys was a fraternity of iconic industrialists living in the rarefied atmosphere of unbridled American wealth. Some of these tycoons funded expeditions and reaped rewards, while others sustained the cattle industry as the demand for beef in the North swelled in the wake of the Civil War. A few served as counterparts and middlemen to European and Asian enterprises, while some formed the backbone of expansion itself. In tandem with that, a new tide of powerful American industrialists had their way, to the benefit and consternation of the general public, and while decrying the avarice of steel and railroad giants, well-to-do politicians, and titans of the banking system back in the East, the West received civic blessings as well. These included the first rail connection across the bulk of the continent, flourishing local economies in the major cities, and the niceties of the East Coast that included previously unthinkable universities. One man among four major industrialists came to dominate the railroad extending from the West to Promontory, Utah, more than any other. Whether he was the most capable is open to debate, but he made the essential investment at the most crucial moment. For this, he was given the keys to the entire industry in the West and sat atop Nob Hill as the financial king of San Francisco. In the process, he would become California’s governor, and he would wind up lending his name to one of the country’s most prestigious universities. That man was none other than a native New Yorker named Leland Stanford. Leland Stanford: The Life and Legacy of the Railroad Executive Who Became California’s Governor and the West’s Most Famous Robber Baron chronicles the remarkable life of Stanford.
©2019 Charles River Editors (P)2019 Charles River Editors
America's Forgotten Slaves
Summary
“The carrying of Negroes among the Indians has all along been thought detrimental, as an intimacy ought to be avoided." (A passage from a 1751 South Carolina law) It has often been said that the greatest invention of all time was the sail, which facilitated the internationalization of the globe and thus, ushered in the modern era. Columbus’ contact with the New World, alongside European maritime contact with the Far East, transformed human history, and, in particular, the history of Africa. It was the sail that linked the continents of Africa and America, and thus it was also the sail that facilitated the greatest involuntary human migration of all time. The African slave trade is a complex and deeply divisive subject that has had a tendency to evolve according the political requirements of any given age and is often touchable only with the correct distribution of culpability. It has, for many years, therefore, been deemed singularly unpalatable to implicate Africans themselves in the perpetration of the institution, and only in recent years has the large-scale African involvement in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades come to be an accepted fact. There can, however, be no doubt that even though large numbers of indigenous Africans were liable, it was European ingenuity and greed that fundamentally drove the industrialization of the transatlantic slave trade in response to massive new market demands created by their equally ruthless exploitation of the Americas. What far less people are familiar with are the other forms of slavery in America, and the victims who were enslaved. Sizable numbers of Native Americans were enslaved, with some of them working alongside African slaves in the fields and others shipped off to the sugar islands. The total number of natives enslaved over the whole colonial period for both American continents is estimated at somewhere between 2.4 and 4.9 million, while estimates for North America north of Mexico are 141,000 to 340,000. These estimates do not seem to include slaves held by the native peoples themselves, nor do they include the serf-like status still a bit short of slavery that was imposed on millions of others. Prior to the European colonization of what is now the United States, native groups themselves took captives. Men were often killed, and children were incorporated into their captors’ tribe, but there were hundreds of tribal peoples and many variants on the fate of captives. In the Pacific Northwest, slaves were killed in rituals, including being ritually cannibalized. After the arrival of the Europeans, the number of captives increased, and their fates became intertwined with the colonists and their African slaves. In the Southwest, there was a slave trade in New Mexico and northern Mexico, involving captives for use as domestic servants and sales to the silver mines in Mexico. The formidable Comanches were just another nomadic group...until they were exposed to horses (probably from stock released during the Pueblo rebellion of 1680 in New Mexico). They formed a new culture and became an almost imperial force, which involved conducting raids for slaves. Afro-Tejano slaves in Spanish Texas had different social circumstances than slaves held in the later Texas Republic. In the Southeast, slave raiding and trading involved the colonies of the English, Spanish, and French. Moreover, several thousand free African Americans owned slaves, and slavery in the United States did not end with freeing slaves in the South in 1865. America’s Forgotten Slaves: The History of Native American Slavery in the New World and the United States examines the different systems of slavery practiced across America.
©2019 Charles River Editors (P)2019 Charles River Editors
The Hussite Wars
Summary
"Therefore, faithful Christian, seek the truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, tell the truth, learn the truth, defend the truth even to death." (Jan Hus) The 15th century was a pivotal era for Europe, during which it transitioned from a social and religious union under Christendom into a disparate collection of nation-states, and it was during this period that the Middle Ages came to an end and the Modern Period began. Less than a century earlier, in the mid-14th century, the Vatican called upon England and sought financial aid in the hopes of boosting papal defenses against French forces. It was then that John Wycliffe boldly stepped forth and appealed to the John of Gaunt, urging the Duke of Lancaster and Parliament to repudiate Rome's demands and citing what he believed to be the Church's abundance in wealth. According to Wycliffe, Christ's disciples, particularly clergymen, must aspire to live modestly and shun all material pleasures. Such was the word of the Lord. Wycliffe's relentless criticism of the Church only continued to escalate, and eventually he was summoned to London and charged with the unforgivable crime of heresy. To the dismay of his detractors, the hearing was anything but black and white, and heated verbal exchanges soon spiraled into physical altercations. This resulted in a temporary deadlock that was broken only three months later when Pope Gregory XI published five papal bulls that unequivocally banned all of Wycliffe's teachings and found the heretic, dubbed the "master of errors", guilty of 18 counts of heresy. The end, it appeared, was nigh, but Wycliffe remained unfazed, declaring, "I profess and claim to be by the grace of God a sound...Christian and while there is breath in my body, I will speak forth and defend the law of it." Wycliffe told the archbishop at Lambeth Palace, "I am ready to defend my convictions even unto death...I have followed the Sacred Scriptures and the holy doctors." Though branded a heretic, the renegade did not die in Christ's name, but Hus would not be so fortunate. Moreover, while Wycliffe's critics rejoiced at the news of his demise, they soon discovered that his influence was far more difficult to extinguish than they initially anticipated. In 1427, a whole 43 years after Wycliffe's passing, his corpse was exhumed by local authorities and cremated, and the ashes were dumped into the River Swift, but Wycliffe's indelible ideas had taken on a life of their own, and they would be championed by Hus. The 17th century historian Thomas Fuller poetically described the ripple effect: "Thus the brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; and they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine which now is dispersed the world over." If Wycliffe was the "Morning Star of the Reformation", Jan Hus was the Guiding Star of the movement. Hus started as a Czech priest, but he quickly became notorious for debating several Church doctrines such as the Eucharist, Church ecclesiology, and many more topics. Today, he is viewed as a predecessor of the Lutherans, but the Church viewed him as a threat, and the Catholics eventually engaged Hus’ followers (known as Hussites) in several battles in the early 15th century. Hus himself was burned at the stake in 1415, but his followers fought on in a series of battles known as the Hussite Wars, and Czechoslovakia’s inhabitants by and large remained Hussite afterward. About 100 years later, Martin Luther would spark the Reformation across the continents.
©2020 Charles River Editors (P)2020 Charles River Editors