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Hanging with History
Hanging with History
Author: Harald Hansen
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© 2025 Hanging with History
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The first season focuses on the origins of the Industrial Revolution or the Great Enrichment, we go deep into history to gain enough background knowledge to actually understand the various theories of the origins of the Great Enrichment. Eventually we learn that we also need to know how the miracle was consolidated, as the many other close approaches to the Industrial Revolution failed.A kwirky style, but intellectually ambitious with the goal of understanding history well enough to understand the miracle that happened that one time. It's gonna be a long series.
191 Episodes
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You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Convention of Plesswitz ends and war begins again August 11. The focus is on driving Napoleon out of Germany and then the action turns to Scandinavia, to include Danosh Holstein, with most of the focus on Norway. Napoleon's desperate attempts to defend Saxony end at the biggest battle in European history to that time. Allied war aims are becoming public, but there seems a disconnect between stated objectives and the real...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Of the large political entities in Europe in 1813 the Austrian empire was one of the oddest, from a modern perspective and possibly the most vulnerable. It was really the personal realm of the house of Habsburg. I’ve talked a lot about it in the past assuming a great deal of background knowledge on the part of the listener, so let’s fill in some of that while we discuss how this legitimate power, gave into fear and threw in ...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Trying to recover from defeat in 1812, Napoleon had enormous obstacles to overcome. But these were NOT obvious at the time, surprisingly to us, most of the great and the good expected Napoleon to win in 1813. Tsar Alexander had some very unusual motivations for a major head of state in the Europe of the time. These motivations, including the mysticisms of the day, are still fascinating. Swedenborg, Lavater, and S...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We examine the question: "Who won the bloody war anyway?" The Canadians won, the Native Americans lost, the British won, the Americans lost and most of all, far more importantly, the Americans won the war overwhelmingly. The apparent contradiction here is resolved. The great clashed happen in the land war. The elite British line infantry met newly, well-trained American regulars, and... the British were not better.&nbs...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The war starts with America terribly unprepared. British efforts to make peace suffer from a lack of focus; Casltereagh is just not applying much brainpower and effort to the American sitution. Almost no navy. A tiny regular army like 11,000 men, terribly officered. No real tax funding for the government to speak of. Deliberately, they have avoided preparing for war, preferring to pay off the national debt,...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The first episode of a mini arc on the War of 1812. This covers origins and how the British got unto a war they had no interest in. The Americans had a variety of motives. The surface reasons usually discussed in popular history and podcasts seem a little crazy, not fitting in with te reality of the early 19th century very well. But there is a deeper reason, fighting a second war of Independence to avoid a ...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. 1812 in Iberia was heavily conditioned by the Napoleon's invasion of Russia. 1812 was a major transition year for the war in Iberia. Wellington defeated Marmont's Army of Portugal in the course of an afternoon and drove King Jospeh out of Madrid. The French were able to recover thanks to superior manpower. However, in order to concentrate the men that would drive Wellington back to the border fortresses the Frenc...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The world turns on this 1812 campaign and its outcome. We explore more issues, and turning points from the previous episode, some new and some expanding of previous issues.
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Napoleon never intended to invade as far as Moscow. It was just supposed to be the 2nd Polish campaign. But Napoleon's hammer blows kept missing. Napoleon's blend of insightful planning and terrible planning for the invasion led to the temptation to do what the Empereur knew was wrong. Just go a little deeper. There were at least 3 inflection points that historians point to that could have led to more success and...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The 1810 and 1811 campaigns in Iberia were defined by an absence- Napoleon’s absence. Napoleon had won the battle of Wagram in July of 1809. This was at once a decisive defeat of the Austrian army, and the biggest land battle in European history up to that point. Obviously, the flow of men was out of Spain, into Germany during 1809. But after the Peace of Schönbrunn is signed in October, the flow can begin in the...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We cover resistance to the French invasion of Catalonia in 1808. What can a lone frigate do? And then the battle of the Basque Roads (in Western France near Roquefort) where very unorthodox fireship tactics were used, French loses were high, but it could have been an annihilation victory except for…well, are we looking at the very worst traits of the Royal Navy? Captain Thomas Cochrane has the perfect set of adventures...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Austrian pro war party is emboldened by the French defeat at Bailen. By April 1809 Archduke Charles is leading the newly reformed Austrian army into Bavaria. Napoleon has made a brilliant response, quite unexpectedly. Davout's 3rd Corps and his German allies show they can still defeat the Austrians. But during the course of this year the French suffer a major defeat while Napoleon is in command. Europe has it...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Talleyrand represents a strand of the ancient regime, the old nobility that thrives and leads, right through the monstrosity and glory of Empire and the Reaction that follows. Goethe is the literary Talleyrand, the carefully controlled spark of Romanticism, that could be said to spring into flame when Germany is born. Talleyrand's career spans the Ancien Regime, Revolution and the Empire and the Restoration and the July Mona...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We cover Napoleon's sneaky invasion of Spain, its preamble and Napoleon's motivations. This is followed by a look at Wellington's invasion of Portugal and the battles of Rolica and Vimeiro, which lead to the French surrender of Portugal via the Convention of Cintra. The Spanish royal family is an arguement against traditional monarchy. Napoleon despises them and Manuel Godoy, the sausage making, Prince of the Peace.&nb...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This covers the 1807 Campaign in Poland and the eventual Treaty of Tilsit. This is the true apex of Napoleon's glory and possibly the happiest time of his life. Also covers Junot's 1807 Campaign in Portugal. This is notable for many reasons including the fact that Portugal did not resist, such was the power of Napoleon's reputation in 1807.
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. After Austerlitz Napoleon keeps the Grand Armee together in Central Germany. This allows him to rip up the map of Germany and redraw it to suit himself. But this attitude towards Germany leads to a number of steps including dangling Hanover in front of Charles Fox and the Johan Palm incident, which drive the Prussians to declare war, despite totally inadequate preparation. Meanwhile the Guerilla war in Calabria breaks out, b...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. 1805, Ulm and Austerlitz and the events that lead up to the War of the 3rd Coalition. These are events that reveal genius in action. This means the Pichegru and Moreau plot. The subsequent murder, or sorry, completely legal execution of the young prince of the house of Bourbon-Conde. "It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder." This all hastens the inevitable - the crowning of Napoleon as Emperor. It is as ...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Wellington, Jarlsberg, battle of the Wooden Shoes, Norge. Such excitement. The Danish Navy is simply too large in the world of 1807 to simply sit there, stored up in ordinary in København's harbor. And the Danish merchant fleet, providing a carry trade to the world, cannot be left outside of Napoleon's economic warfare with Britain. Therefore, since the current situation is untenable, either France or Britain will hav...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The 2nd of the 3 episodes on Copenhagen. This covers Nelson's attack on Copenhagen and the Danish defense. The controversies about the battle are all explored in depth, the death of Tsar Paul, who was involved and who knew what when. The signaling fiasco between Admiral Parker and Nelson, and Nelson's decision to reach a cease fire rather than continue with his annihilation victory. There is a good deal o...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. First episode of a 3-episode arc on the British attacks on Copenhagen. This covers Danish history and Copenhagen history through the long 18th century. Conflict with Sweden, intervention and peace making by Britain. the long neutrality, Denmark as a Russian client state. "The League of Armed Neutrality will save us!" The Palmy Days and how Denmark octupled its trade, rose to the 2nd largest merchant fleet in t...



