Celebrate A Woman Who Made a Difference (By 5/20)
(Normally I try to send out blog posts on Tuesdays and Fridays, but I’m pushing this one forward a bit because, as you’ll see below tempus fugit.)
At some point in the last two years I stumbled across the National Women’s History Project, an organization whose tagline reads “Writing Women Back into History.” (Insert fist-pump here.)
Founded in 1980, the organization led the charge for designating March as National Women’s History Month. Today, the NWHP focuses on teaching as many people as possible about women’s role in history. To which I say, Yes! Yes! And Yes! They provide women’s history resources for schools, train teachers, and coordinate programs for Women’s History Month.*
They also chose an annual theme for National Women’s History Month. The theme for 2018 is honoring women who fight all forms of discrimination against women.** Here’s how they describe it:
The 2018 theme recognizes the intersecting forms of discrimination women have faced, and continue to face, throughout American history and celebrates the diverse women who have fought, and continue to fight, discrimination at all levels and in all forms.
You still have time to nominate your favorite shin-kicker–current or historical. But hurry. Nominations are accepted through May 20. Here’s the link: http://www.nwhp.org/2018-theme-nominations/
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few women warriors nagging at me to get back to work.
*They also have registry of women’s history performers and speakers. Adding my name to that list has been on my to-do list for months now. Maybe I’ll head over as soon as I post this. Or at least set up the public speaking page on my website. (Feel free to nudge me, folks.)
**They announced the 2018 theme back in April, but it slipped past me in the daily email avalanche.
Napoleon in Egypt, Part 2
Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign was a military disaster,* but the Army of the Orient wasn’t the only army that Napoleon brought with him to Egypt.
Frontispiece to the Description of Egypt
A commission of some 160 savants–scientists, artists, engineers, and scholars–accompanied the invading army, bringing with them virtually every book on Egypt available, dozens of crates of scientific instruments and a printing press “borrowed” from the Vatican. Their job was to record and analyze every aspect of Egypt’s antiquities, culture, geography, and history. Unlike the military invasion, the scholarly invasion was a roaring success.
Napoleon’s scholars made topographical maps. They collected minerals, plants, animals and artifacts.** They made plaster casts of things that couldn’t be easily collected. They measured anything that could be measured. They recorded the sites of ancient Egypt in exquisite detail.
When the French army surrendered at Alexandria in September, 1801, the scholars were forced to turn over their collection of antiquities, but were able to keep their copies, drawings and notes. Back in France, they organized their materials for publication. The commission’s publications ranged from a popular travel account by artist Baron Vivant Denan to the official 23-volume Description of Egypt, published between 1809 and 1813.
In the short run, Napoleon’s army of scholars triggered a fashion for things made in the Egyptian style (loosely defined). In the long run, the meticulously recorded details of Egyptian antiquities provided the raw material for serious study.
*If you’re coming to the story late, you can find the details here.
**Most notably, the Rosetta Stone.
History in the Margins Turns Six, or Time Flies When You’re Having Fun
After several hours of surfing the web, I realized that it is impossible to improve on this picture from last year. Thus are traditions born.
Happy birthday to us!
Six years ago, I started writing History in the Margins with a blog post that asked the question “Why another history blog?” * It was a question I had struggled with for a good year before I decided to jump into the blogosphere. I didn’t have a time or place that I wanted to focus on. What I did have was a vague sense of the kind of stories I wanted to tell and the voice I wanted to tell them in. I felt strongly that as a society we need to hear the stories that don’t get told in high school history classes: the history of other parts of the world as well as history from the other side of the battlefield, the gender line, or the color bar.
Over the last six years, my basic idea about what History in the Margins should be hasn’t changed much. The only thing that has changed is the number of people who hang out here in the Margins. I am honored that you take the time to read my posts and thrilled that some of you write emails or leave comments in response.
It’s become a tradition that I give away books to celebrate the blog’s birthday. If you’re interested in throwing your hat into the medium-sized mixing bowl, comment here on blog or on Facebook or send me an email before midnight on May 28. Tell me which book you’re most interested in, what kind of stories you’d like to see more of here on the Margins, or what type of history you enjoy.
Here’s what I’m giving away:
Louis S. Warren. God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America
Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen. The Constitution: An Introduction
Nicola A. Phillips. The Profligate Son: A True Story of Family conflict, Fashionable Vice and Financial Ruin in Regency Britain
Hugh Kennedy. Caliphate: The History of an Idea
Keith Jeffrey. 1916: A History
David Lough. No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money
(*ahem*) Pamela Toler. Heroines of Mercy Street**
Let the party begin! Unlike Mr. Churchill, surely we have champagne somewhere around here. Or at least a couple of funny hats.
*My second post was titled “Sylvester II: Scientist, Pope, Wizard–Vampire?” That’s the kind of risk you can take when you are sure that only six people are reading and all of them love you dearly.
**I would be a bad bad author if I didn’t include my own book here, right?