Historiansplaining Podcast

We read poems dealing with the religious and intellectual history of New England & grappling with the legacies of Puritanism, the Great Awakening, and Transcendentalism: Robert Lowell's "Mr. Edwards and the Spider" and "Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts," about the colonial minister, philosopher, and fire-and-brimstone preacher, Jonathan Edwards; and Anne Sexton's "Kind Sir: These Woods," addressed to Henry David Thoreau.

A colony built on cod: We follow how the massive seasonal fishing industry of the 1500s, with its intense competition among Spanish, English, French, Basque, & Portuguese mariners in the frigid North Atlantic waters off of Newfoundland, eventually went ashore and began to construct year-round “plantations” around coves on the rugged shoreline, usually without state involvement or approval. We observe how planters, migratory fishermen, and aristocratic proprietors vied for control of the makeshift colonies in Newfoundland, leading to the emergence of a free-wheeling and hard-drinking colonial society, and ultimtately, to a cataclysmic war between France and England for control of the world’s richest fishing grounds.Our previous lecture on “The Elizabethan Dream: How England Became a Sea Power” -- https://historiansplaining.com/episodes/the-elizabethan-dream-how-england-became-a-sea-power/Image: Scene of a Newfoundland cove with fishing ship & “stage,” from a French woodcut, via Heritage Newfoundland & Labrador, “The French Newfoundland Fishery in the 17th Century”Sources: Pope, “Fish Into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century”

The most exhaustive survey that you will find of the “Bog Bodies” – the highly preserved human remains, often of ancient Iron-Age people whose lives were ended violently, that have been discovered in wetlands all across northern Europe, from Estonia to Ireland, over the past 250 years. We consider how, when, and why these often shockingly intact bodies have been found, what facts can be gleaned about who they were, and finally, when and where the practice of killing people and placing them into bogs originated (hint: it’s in the title).In the next installment, we will discuss the competing theories as to why these Iron Age people died violently, incuding murder, execution, and sacrifice.Image: The right hand of Old Croghan Man, 300s-200s B.C., discovered in Ireland, 2003SOURCES:Books:Miranda Aldhouse-Green, “Bog Bodies Uncovered: Solving Europe’s Ancient Mystery”;Ross & Dobins, “The Life and Death of a Druid Prince: The Story of Lindow Man, an Archaeological Sensation”;Karin Sanders, “Bodies in the Bog and the Archaeological Imagination”;Stead, Bourke, & Brothwell, eds., “Lindow Man: the Body in the Bog”;Melanie Giles, “Bog Bodies: Face to Face with the Past”;Peter Glob, “The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved”Dick Kirby, “Missing, Presumed Murdered: The McKay Case and Other Convictions without a Corpse”MA Thesis:Solen Ruffy, “The Violent Deaths of Kings and Priests in Ireland and Britain: Case Study of the Iron Age Bog Mummies,” etc., 2023, <https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-04560083v1/file/Memoire-2023-LCCC-RUFFY_Solen.pdf>Articles:Van Beek, et al, “Bogs, bones and bodies: the deposition of human remains in northern European mires,” Antiquity, Jan. 2023;R.C. Connolly, “Lindow Man: Britain’s Prehistoric Bog Body,” Anthropology Today, Oct. 1985;Dalya Alberge, “Lindow Man ‘was a simple murder victim,” The Times, March 22, 2004;Ronald Hutton, “What Did Happen to Lindow Man?”, Worthing Archaeological Society Journal, spring 2004Lecture:Ronald Hutton, “Gods of Prehistoric Britain,” 2022, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjC0lGr4h04>Podcast Series:“The Discovery Series: The Bog Bodies,” <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-discovery-series-the-bog-bodies/id1852306442>

We examine how French Canada and its indigenous allies weathered the apocalyptic disasters of the mid-1600s, giving shape in the process to a new, ditinctly Canadian form of mystical and penitential piety. We trace how in the 1660s, the new absolutist regime under the young Louis XIV and Colbert took the colony under direct royal rule, investing immense resources into the colonizing venture, pacifying the enemies of the French, and enabling ambitious imperial officials like Jean Talon to enlarge Canada into a full-fledged province, comprising extensive agricultural lands along the Saint Lawrence, a complex tiered social structure, an autonomous church, and a sprawling network of outposts, forts, and missions stretching as far as the Mississippi and modern-day Manitoba. Finally, we see how English expansion both in the south and in the north ended the interval of peace, reigniting war along new frontiers, and ultimately pulling Canada into a vortex of inter-imperial war from which it would never fully escape.Image: Reliquary with relics of three of the Canadian Martyrs (Chabanel, Jogues, & Daniel), held by the archives of the Jesuit Province of QuebecSuggested Further Reading: Riendeau, “A Brief History of Canada”; Moogk, “La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada”; Linteau, “The History of Montreal”; Greg Koabel, “The Nations of Canada” podcast, <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nations-of-canada/id1531471267>

No other American colony projected such extensive power with so few people. We recount how the French explored the vast northern region they called “Canada” for decades in pursuit of furs and the Northwest Passage, but repeatedly failed to plant a lasting colony in the harsh and forbidding land—until they found in Samuel de Champlain a leader with the shrewdness and grit to overcome the severe cold, the vast distances, and the treacherous politics of the Saint Lawrence basin. We trace the growth of Quebec from little more than a warehouse in the frozen wilderness to a thriving town, controlling the most critical gateway into the continent and serving as the hub of a lucrative trading network, a vast constellation of mission towns and outposts (including the Christianizing experiment known as Montreal), and most importantly, a formidable indigenous alliance system that dominated the continent from the Atlantic to Lake Superior. Finally, we consider the disasters of the mid-1600s, including deadly epidemics and warfare with the Five Nations, that brought Canada’s most important allies to their knees and threatened to wipe the colony off the map.Previous lecture discussing the history of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (aka the Iroquois Confederacy or Five Nations): https://historiansplaining.com/individual-episodes/the-hiawatha-belt/Previous lecture, discussing the dynamics and importance of the fur trade: “History of the United States in 100 Objects, no. 24 – Beaver-Fur Stovepipe Hat” -- https://historiansplaining.com/individual-episodes/beaver-fur-stovepipe-hat/Previous lecture on the first French colony on the North American mainland, Acadia: https://historiansplaining.com/individual-episodes/acadia-first-foothold-in-the-north/Image: Engraving depicting the battle of Lake Champlain, July, 1609, published in Samuel de Champlain’s “Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain,” 1613, based on a drawing by Champlain himselfSuggested Further Reading: Riendeau, “A Brief History of Canada”; David Hackett Fischer, “Champlain’s Dream: The European Founding of North America”; Moogk, “La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada”; Linteau, “The History of Montreal”; Greg Koabel, “The Nations of Canada” podcast, <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nations-of-canada/id1531471267>