What’s her Name: A History of the World in 80 Lost Women
What’s Her Name: A History of the World in 80 Lost Women is exactly the book I would have expected from the creators of the popular What’sHerName podcast. Olivia Meikle and Katie Nelson not only tell the stories of forgotten women with their trademark combination of wit, enthusiasm and rock-solid research, they use those stories as a lens to re-examine world history as it is usually taught, and re-create it in the process
At first glance, the structure of the book will look familiar to anyone who took World History in an American high school: the stone age, first civilizations, ancient empires, the Middle Ages, etc etc etc., ending with the atomic age. The story told within those chapters takes that structure, spins it around, holds it upside down and shake it until things fall out of its pockets. The result is dizzying, and enlightening. Olivia and Katie re-examine familiar stories from a new perspective. (I’ll never look at the Venus of Willendorf the same way again. And I refuse to say more because —spoilers.) They introduce us to women who don’t make it into standard world history texts, despite playing important roles in the big picture.* (The Trung sisters of Vietnam, for instance.) They tell us the stories of women who made discoveries, who stood up in resistance, and who simply led their lives in ways that tell us more about their time and place. In the process, they question some of the truths about history that have seemed self-evident, and find slightly different answers. Bigger answers.
What’s Her Name is funny, subversive (in the best possible way), and very, very smart. To quote one of my favorite lines in the book, it is a history of the world with “Less patriarchy, more elephants.”
*Though they are beginning to make their way into books written for a popular audience, like my own Women Warriors—a fact that Olivia and Katie acknowledge with thanks on the first page of the book.
1824: A Year in Review
Once I learned this was also a leap year, it took only the briefest trip down the rabbit hole to learn that all the years ending in 24 are leap years. Because, math.
Empires expand and contract
Battle of Rangoon, May 1824
The First Anglo-Burmese War (known as the First British Invasion in Burmese accounts*) broke out in March, following the Burmese occupation of Assam and Manipur. The war lasted for two years, ending in a decisive, but expensive victory for the British. The British gained control over the northeastern section of the Indian subcontinent. In addition to territory, the Burmese signed a commercial treaty with the British East India Company.** It was the beginning of the end for the powerful Burmese Empire, but it would be 1885 before the British seized complete control of Burma after the Third Anglo-Burmese War.
The First Anglo-Ashanti War actually began in 1823, not 1824. (Bear with me.) The war began with a territorial dispute between the Ashanti Empire and the Fante, which was a client state of Great Britain. The British governor of the region rejected the Ashanti claims, which should come as a surprise to no one. He arrogantly chose to lead a small British force against an Ashante army that was four times its size. in which the forces of the Ashanti Empire crushed British forces in the Gold Coast. On January 22, 1824, the Ashanti defeated the British at the Battle of Nsamankow. Later that year, they again defeated the British and their African allies at the Battle of Efutu. The war ended in 1831, with a negotiated border. The British and the Ashanti fought four more wars between 1863 and 1900, which ended with the Ashanti empire incorporated into the British Gold Coast Colony. (Are you seeing a pattern here?)
Lord Byron. Courtesy of the British National Portrait Gallery
On April 29, the British poet lord Byron died of a fever at Missolonghi. He had arrived in Greece on Christmas Eve, 1923, to join the Greek fight for independence, which had begun in 1821. His arrival in Greece had little practical impact on the war, but his presence there, and especially his death, caught the imagination of philhellenes across Europe.
The Surrender at Ayacucho
On December 9, South American republican forces under the leadership of Antonio José de Sucre*** won a decisive victory over Spanish colonial forces at the Battle of Ayacucho in Peru. The battle was the last major confrontation in the Latin American wars of independence. The victory secured the independence of Peru, which had been declared in 1821, and was the tipping point in the Latin American revolutions as a whole .
In related news, border disputes are settled
Britain and the Netherlands signed the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, which resolved territorial disputes between the British Empire and the Netherlands that resulted from the British occupation of Dutch colonial territories in the Malay Peninsula and the Spice Islands during the Napoleonic Wars. (Though in fact the two colonial powers had been butting heads in Southeast Asia since the 17th century.)
The United States and Russia sign a treaty settling their dispute about the boundary between the United States and Russian Alaska. Russia ceded all lands south of the parallel 54° 40’ north, known to Americans as the Oregon territory.
Other political stuff
There were four candidates in the presidential election of 1824: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford. When the vote was tallied, Jackson had a plurality of the popular vote, at 40.5%, but none of the candidates had enough electoral votes to win. Even so, Jackson had more electoral votes than the others—99 compared to Adams with 84, Crawford with 41 and Clay with 37. Acting under the Twelfth Amendment of the Constitution, the House of Representatives met to select the president from the top three candidates. Each state had one vote, determined by the majority of its congressional representatives. Clay having been eliminated from the race, most of his supporters switched their votes to Adams, giving John Quincy a one-vote majority and the presidency. Jackson was furious at losing the election to what he termed a “corrupt bargain” between Clay and Adams to overturn the will of the people. In other words, the electoral college has been an issue for debate for a long, long time.
Violent upheavals in the kingdoms of southern African in the early 19th century, a period known as the Difaqane, or “crushing”, resulted in smaller kingdoms being absorbed by larger, stronger kingdoms. In 1824, the leader of one of these strong kingdoms, Moshoeshoe I, occupied the mountain stronghold of Thaba-Bosiu. From this secure capital, he consolidated disparate groups into the powerful Sotho kingdom. Under his leadership, Sotho survived attacks by the Zulu, the Boers and the British for much of his reign.
The first constitution of Mexico was ratified on October 4, 1824, creating the First Mexican Republic. (It would not be the last.) The constitution was drafted after the demise of the short-lived rule of Emperor Agustin I. ****
New Ideas
Lithograph from William Buckland’s “Notice on the Magalosaurus or great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield"
British paleontologist and fossil hunter,William Buckland presented the first scientific description of a dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus. (The short accounts all say this is the first dinosaur to be validly named in scientific terms—I do not know what this means, though I suspect it takes me back to Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus, who has been tracking me down.) He made a number of paleontological discoveries, including a skeleton which he named “the Red Lady of Paviland after the location where it was found. The skeleton, now known to be male, has been dated to ca 30,000 BP, i.e. “Before Present” and is the oldest modern human found in Britain. He developed the study of fossil feces, which he dubbed coprolite, the term still used today. On the other hand, he is also known for his efforts to reconcile geological studies with the Bible. People are complicated.
Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony. Need I say more?
*A reminder that there is always another side of the battlefield.
**The British East India Company functioned as a semi-political entity in India until 1857, when the Company’s possessions became a Crown colony. (A brief pause here while I re-read several of my posts related to the British East India Company’s political power and try to decide whether to link to one. Let’s try this one: Poor Tipu )
***De Sucre was Simón Bolívar’s chcief lieutenant during the Latin American wars wars of independence. He later became the first constitutionally elected leader of Bolivia.
**** Agustin was an officer in the Spanish army who switched sides during the Mexican War of Independence to lead a rebel force. After Mexico won its independence in 1821, he was proclaimed first president and then emperor. (Am I the only one who sees Napoleonic echoes here?) Regardless of how Agustin became emperor, there was considerable discontent during his reign, which culminated in a revolt led by Santa Anna. (Who I had heard of, but know little about.) Agustin abdicated in March, 1823 and went into exile in Europe. When he returned to Mexico in July 1824—after the new constitution had been drafted but before it had been ratified—he was arrested and executed as a traitor. In 1838, his ashes were carried to Mexico City, where he was buried with honors as a hero of the revolution.
1724: A Year in Review
For those of you who care about such things. 1724 was a leap year, giving us an extra day in which stuff could happen—and happen they did.
Royal Heads
King Philip V, the first Bourbon of Spain,* abdicated in favor of his sixteen-year-old son, Louis I on January 14. I have read several reasons why he made this unusual decision. The most compelling is that he was showing signs of serious mental decline snd made the responsible choice to step aside. Whatever his reasons, fate overturned his decision. Louis died of smallpox on August 31. Six days later Philip reluctantly resumed the throne to avoid a regency for his second son, Ferdinand, who was only ten. His combined reign, which totaled 45 years and 16 days, was the longest in the history of the Spanish monarchy.
Tsar Peter the Great crowned his wife Catherine I** as his co-ruler on February 8. When Peter died the following year without naming a successor, a coalition of the “new men”*** and regiments of the imperial guards proclaimed her the ruler. (Can you call it a coup if there is no one on the throne to overthrow?) Catherine ruled until her death two years later.
The Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI**** appointed his unmarried sister, the Archduchess Maria Elisabeth of Austria, as governor of the Austrian Netherlands (modern Luxembourg and Brussels). She held the position until her death in 1741. It was not an unusual choice. The Hapsburgs regularly placed unmarried women of their royal house as regents over provinces in their widespread empire. The Netherlands in particular were ruled by an almost unbroken succession of ruling duchesses for almost sixty years—each the niece of her predecessor. Maria Elizabeth seems to have been trained for the position. She enjoyed an above average education at the hands of professors from the university in Vienna and was competent in five languages.
Yeongjo became the 21st ruler of the Joseon dynasty of Korea.**** He ruled for almost fifty-two years. His reign appears to have been a period of political, economic, and social reform, inspired by a deep adherence to Confucian morals. (Can anyone recommend the equivalent of The Joseon Dynasty for Dummies? Or perhaps Korean History for Dummies? This is a huge hole in my historical knowledge.)
Ideas, and Reactions to Ideas
In Qing China, the Yonghzheng Emperor banned the teaching of Christianity—sort of. Catholic missionaries had been active in China since 1602, when Matteo Ricci arrived in Beijing and in fact Jesuit priests had long proved useful as advisors to the court on astronomy and scientific matters. But missionaries working in the provinces were seen as threatening to a Confucian society. The ban reflected that division: foreign priests were allowed to remain in the capital but missionaries working outside Beijing were required to move to the Portuguese enclave at Macau. Qing subjects were prohibited from practicing Christianity—which may or may not have worked. It is hard to enforce belief.
Glassblower Gabriel Fahrenheit developed the Fahrenheit temperature scale. He had previously invented the first precision thermometer, using mercury instead of alcohol. (And because it was the obvious question to ask: Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius developed his competing temperature scale in 1742.)
Jonathan Swift, published seven satirical pamphlets under the pseudonym M.B. Drapier in which he sought to rouse public opinion in Ireland against a patent that allowed a private contractor in England to minted copper coins to be distributed in Ireland. Swift, and others, objected to the coinage because there were no safeguards to insure the purity of metal used, they believed bribery had been involved in issuing the patent, and widespread resentment about Britain’s colonial control of Ireland’s economy, including control over minting its currency. “Mr. Drapier” became a central figure in the controversy and was treated as a folk hero by the Irish after the British government withdrew the patent.
Johann Sebastian Bach led the first performance of his St John Passion in Leipzig on Good Friday. He was a new director of music at the St. Thomas church, and was the congregation’s second choice for the position. As such, he was determined to prove himself with the production of a new work with which to break the Lenten music fast. And prove himself he did.(It was a busy year for Bach. He also wrote his second cantata cycle, totaling 53 new works He also began what would be a twenty-year collaboration with librettist Picander (Christian Friedrich Henrici.)
* Just in case you’re interested, Philip was born into the French royal family. But his grandmother was the half-sister of the last Hapsburg ruler of Spain, Charles V, who died childless. (His great-grandmother was also a Spanish Hapsburg.) Philip’s accession to the throne led to the War of Spanish Succession because other European powers were worried that uniting France and Spain under a single Bourbon monarch would upset the balance of power. The end result was two Bourbon kings who ruled over two important states.
** NOT to be confused with Catherine II, commonly known as Catherine the Great, who seized the throne from her husband Peter III in 1762 and reigned as empress for 34 years, 4 months, and 8 days—but who’s counting?
***Commoners whom Peter had placed in positions of power based on their competence. They stood opposed to traditional aristocrats. Or more likely, traditional aristocrats opposed them.
****It’s hard to avoid the Hapsburgs.LINK
****I hadn’t heard of him either. Which is one reason to include him here. One of the purposes of these posts is to look briefly at a broad range of historical incidents. (If any of you think these year in review posts are a quick and dirty way to create new posts in the rush of the holiday season, you would be wrong. Each one of them takes somewhere between several and many hours to produce. Just saying.)