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15 Minute History is a history podcast designed for historians, enthusiasts, and newbies alike. This is a joint project of Hemispheres, the international outreach consortium at the University of Texas at Austin, and Not Even Past, a website with articles on a wide variety of historical issues, produced by the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin.
This podcast series is devoted to short, accessible discussions of important topics in world history, United States history, and Texas history with the award winning faculty and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin, and distinguished visitors to our campus. They are meant to be a resource for both teachers and students, and can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in history.
For more information and to hear our complete back catalog of episodes, visit our website!
Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.
This podcast series is devoted to short, accessible discussions of important topics in world history, United States history, and Texas history with the award winning faculty and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin, and distinguished visitors to our campus. They are meant to be a resource for both teachers and students, and can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in history.
For more information and to hear our complete back catalog of episodes, visit our website!
Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.
156 Episodes
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1How the environment has been perceived, valued and manipulated by humans since prehistoric times. But in the last millennium, empires brought something new into the mix — the organization of local knowledge and practices into bureaucratic and military systems that centralized power — and indeed, funded it. We’re joined today by Sumit Guha, a UT professor of history focused on demography and agriculture. Professor Guha is the author of, Ecologies of Empire in South Asia, 1400–1900 , which looks at how the Mughal and British Empires transformed the landscape of the Indian subcontinent — and indeed, how they transformed environmental knowledge itself. It’s a fascinating journey over 500 years that raises plenty of questions for today as humans grapple with climate change, extreme weather and the loss of wilderness.
Horses and humans have gone hand in hand for centuries. Our guest today is CU
Boulder professor William Taylor, whose new book "Hoof Beats” takes us across thousands of
years and miles to explore how horses helped create the human world we live in today. In doing
so, Taylor challenges our understanding of prehistory and reflects on what our relationship with
horses means for the future of humanity and the world around us.
Beginning in the 15th century, European history took a dark turn with the rapid
expansion of the slave trade. We’re joined today by Emory professor David Eltis, the co-
editor of www.slavevoyages.org that draws on thousands of records — ship logs,
registers, letters and government records — to understand the mechanics of the trade.
His new book, Atlantic Cataclysm, utilizes these records to offer a new interpretation of
transatlantic slavery centered on the Iberian rather than French or British Americas.
Between 1807 and 1820, Haiti was led by it’s first and last king, Henri Christophe. A contemporary of Robespierre and Napoleon, Washington and Hamilton, his life was as colorful, controversial and as tragic as any from his age. He presided over a Haitian state that was opulent and cultured on one hand, brutal and repressive on the other. Today I’m joined by Yale professor Marlene Daut, whose new book, "The First and Last King of Haiti", charts the rise and fall of this revolutionary, enigmatic and largely forgotten figure who despite all his flaws pioneered a vision of black sovereignty amidst almost impossible circumstances.
In the late 1930s, War in Europe seemed inevitable. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a fierce debate was underway — if war comes to Europe, should America get involved or stay out?
On one side of the debate was President Franklin Roosevelt — who favored intervention — and on the other, Charles Lindbergh — the most famous aviator of his day, the son of a congressman and the de facto spokesperson for the “America First” committee. At the time, it was the latest round in a debate that has raged in America since the 18th century.
Our guest today is UT professor HW Brands whose new book is, America First Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War. We discuss how the interventionist/isolationist debate panned out in the ’30s and ’40s, why those are imperfect terms for the two sides, and how the interventionist consensus is more fragile today than at any point since Pearl Harbor.
Two years from now, America will enter its 250th year as a nation. For some, it will be a day to celebrate without question. But, for others it may be something of an anti-climax, or at least a chance to reflect upon the continuing gap between the promise and reality of the American project. Today, I’m joined by UT professor Jeremi Suri to discuss the lay of the land in 1876 — America’s 100th birthday. That year witnessed another incredibly tight and contentious election rife with accusations of voter fraud and corrupt bargains. Jeremi is the author of Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy and The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office.
During the 1970s, relations between the US and China were transformed. Previously the two nations were cold war enemies. But Kazushi Minami argues that the '70s saw Americans reimagine China as a country of opportunities, while Chinese reinterpreted the US as an agent of modernization, capable of enriching their country. Crucial to this process was "people's diplomacy" the title of Minami's book on US-China relations which focuses on how Americans and Chinese from all walks of life engaged in people-to-people exchanges across the realms of business, culture and sport. Minami teaches history at Osaka University in Japan.
In 1937, American politics was gripped by President Roosevelt's court packing plan. Frustrated with what he perceived to be an aging, obstructionist Supreme Court, Roosevelt pressed congress to expand the court from 9 to 15 members. Stepping into the ensuing maelstrom was Texas congressman Hatton Sumners, chair of the House judiciary committee, ally of Roosevelt and an opponent of the plan. We're joined today by Josiah Daniel. Now a full time legal historian, Daniel was a partner in the intl. law firm Vinson & Elkins. He received his JD in Law and MA in History from UT Austin.
The historian Henry Adams once wrote that, “the American boy of 1854 stood nearer the year 1 than to the year 1900.” Changes during that period were indeed profound in Adam’s home town of Boston. And yet, for the majority of the city’s black men and women, life and work in 1900 were not that different from the 1850s — despite Boston’s proud progressive history. We're joined today by Professor Jackie Jones, whose new Pulitzer Prize-winning book “No Right to An Honest Living” traces the Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era. Professor Jones’ book not only reconstructs black life — and indeed white hypocrisy — in compelling detail, it also shows the incredible value that labor history furnishes us with for understanding the past.
Over the course of the academic year, student protests have roiled college campuses like at no other time in recent memory. Going further back though, historians see plenty of parallels — as well as some key differences — with student protest movements focused on Vietnam (1960s/70s) and South Africa (1980s/90s.) Today we're joined today by Jeremi Suri, a professor in UT Austin’s Department of History and LBJ School of Public Affairs. Jeremi is the author and editor of eleven books on politics and foreign policy, most recently: Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy, and also Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente.
Political partisanship is not only a hallmark of US democracy today. There is also a long history of dysfunction and division as old as America. H.W. Brands's new book, Founding Partisans is a revelatory history of the Revolutionary era's stormy politics, which includes a look at the nation's earliest political parties — those of Hamilton and Jefferson — the federalists and the anti-federalists. It's an ugly story for the most part, but one that can hold its head high for establishing another hallmark of democracy — the peaceful transfer of power.
Climate change and population growth is creating a new appreciation — and anxiety — around water infrastructure, both in the western United States and around the world. We're joined today by Professor Erika Bsumek, whose new book, The Foundations of Glen Canyon, focuses on America’s second highest concrete-arch dam. Not simply a massive piece of physical infrastructure it is also what Professor Bsumek calls an infrastructure of dispossession whose history shows us how cultural structures, power relations and indigenous knowledge and labor interacted in the 19th and 20th centuries — and gives us a window into how the might interact moving forward as the fight for western water intensifies in an age of climate change.
The Hapsburg Empire was founded in 1282 (or 1526, depending on who you ask) and lasted until 1918. Despite its increasingly antiquated and illiberal tendencies, it survived the reformation, the thirty years war, the enlightenment, the age of Revolution, the revolutions of 1848, and the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 — but not World War I. We're joined today by Jonathan Parker who walks us through why. Jonathan is a historian of nationalism and national identity, especially within the Austro-Hungarian lands in the decades before and after the First World War. His current project examines the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918 and the transfer of popular allegiances from the Empire to the nation-state.
In the wake of the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era emerged as a time of radical change in the 19th century United States. Dr. Peniel Joseph brings this conversation into the 20th and 21st centuries as we discuss his most recent book, The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century.
Ridley Scott's new film, Napoleon, is a monumental historical epic that has endured mixed reviews since its release last month, due to historical inaccuracies and narrative jumps. But do such criticisms miss the point? Today 15 Minute History is joined by Professor Judith Coffin, who studies and teaches French history at UT Austin, including the French Revolution and Napoleonic era.
"How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world's most exemplary democracy?" asks Professor Ned Blackhawk (Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone), author of The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. Today, Dr. Blackhawk discusses what it would look like to build a new theory of American history that can fully grapple with the intertwined histories of the United States and Native America.
Traditionally, we think about European power being built with ships and swords. However, new scholarship uncovers a more nuanced and complex picture. Today, 15 Minute history is joined by Mélanie Lamotte, a historian of the French Empire whose work demonstrates the role that sex, race and labor played in the global expansion of French power during the 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1967, the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre traveled to Egypt and Israel on a quest to understand the region and its conflicts. The trip would challenge and change him — and lead to accusations of betrayal. Today, 15 Minute History is joined by Yoav Di Capua, author of “No Exit Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization.”
Afro-Indigenous histories are central to the history of the United States, tribal sovereignty, and civil rights. Today, Dr. Kyle Mays (Saginaw Chippewa) author of An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States and Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America, discusses the intersections of Black and Indigenous history through the lens of individuals whose lives existed at those intersections.
While the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War are important aspects of the United States and Cuba's shared history, they are not the only elements the two share. According to today's guest and author of Cuba: An American History, Professor Ada Ferrer, there are the centuries of interconnected history between Cuba and the US.
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the host said that stalin signed the molotov ribbentrop pact to "buy some time". nice revisionist history there.