First up, you can find us now on Stitcher, iTunes, and RSS. Rate & review us on iTunes if you feel like it :)
Thanks for sticking with us for Episode 002. We are very much in experimentation mode here, and will be trying out a number of different episode formats and seeing what works. This week was me rambling on about my area of expertise. Rather than answering any question in particular, I told a story I thought the audience would find interesting. Feel free to hit me up with follow-up questions about the episode topic. Other flaired users can also answer if they like.
Onto the supporting material!
I mention the phrase penal colony when talking about Port Arthur and Sarah Island, when I meant penal settlement. Port Arthur was a settlement within the colony of Van Diemen’s Land. It was not a separate colony itself. This has been bugging me ever since I recorded it.
I might have over-egged the pudding by stating that the convict who murdered another convict on Sarah Island to get the death penalty might have only had a few years left on his sentence. I don’t know for sure, but it’s far more likely that he was facing over a decade or practically a life sentence in the penal settlements.
The use of chain-gangs was extremely common, especially for the convicts who had no skills. If you were a carpenter or leatherworker or something, you probably worked alongside free tradesmen in very similar circumstances, just you know, not really getting paid. If you had no skills, you probably spent most of your time in a chain gang making roads or clearing forests. Unless you were a female convict, in which case you were almost certainly working in one of the appropriately named female factories or as some sort of domestic servant.
Here is a contemporary image of Sarah Island. Here are a couple of wilderness photos showing the sort of terrain that Pearce and his fellows would have had to cross on foot sans food. These pics are from my brother, and you should check out the rest of his South West Tasmania flickr album.
Here is a link to Google maps of Tasmania. As you can see, the South West of the state is still more or less completely undeveloped. I’ll be addressing the environmental struggle over the development of the South West of the state in a later cast, especially as it pertains to the creation of the first Green political party in the world.
Here is a copy of For the Term of His Natural Life. IMDB link to The Hunter.
Here is a link to the Tasmanian Government Heritage & History tourism site if you feel like seeing all this stuff in person. Please do, the Tasmanian economy needs the help.
As always, comments and criticism about the podcast format (aside from the content) are welcome. Do you have any issues with my accent? Do I need to slow down? Do you like this format, or prefer the more question & answer interview? How’s my tone? Was the episode interesting? Let us know.
Coming up next week: /u/TasfromTAS and /u/idjet read a series of questions and answers by /u/snickeringshadow on the role of human sacrifice in Mesoamerican culture.
13 Answers 2014-02-13
One of the commonly given reasons behind the amazing rapidity and scale of the Islamic expansion is the constant wars between the Byzantine and Sassanid empires. They they depleted the resources, bother material and human, of both empires. But I find that idea unsatisfying for several reasons. However I haven't done truly in depth research on this so I'm welcome to have my thoughts challenged.
First, the Byzantines were recent victors of a hard fought war under Heraclius. To even defeat the Persians, they must have been fairly strong militarily. For example, take the US on the day it defeated Nazi Germany. It had been in a total war, taken tremendous losses, but it was also highly mobilized and probably at one of the strongest points militarily in its history. I recognize that they're different situations, but it's just to illustrate my point. Or Caesar, for example. His troops had been fighting in Gaul for years, but they weren't exhausted, they were hardened veterans and likely one of the most effective fighting forces in Roman history. Sure, war kills men and officers, but it also leads to more effective tactics, weeds out poor leaders and bad soldiers, and gives men valuable combat experience.
Secondly, I find the argument of their exhaustion questionable because of their response after the conquest. Let's consider Egypt and North Africa as roughly equally productive areas compared to Constantinople and the surrounding regions (Syria being basically a devastated warzone at this point). They had just lost 2/3rds of their empire, but in the ensuing years they fought back strongly, especially navally. Of course it all came to nothing but a delayed holding action, but it was a damn good fight against one of the greatest military powers to emerge in the medieval period.
2 Answers 2014-02-13
I mean we can still "speak" Latin, right?
2 Answers 2014-02-13
1 Answers 2014-02-13
1 Answers 2014-02-13
I recently came across the answers to this question by 10 historians and for some reason, I felt dissatisfied. Most blamed the usual suspects - Serbia, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany, France and Britain, or the alliance system, Prussian bellicosity etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26048324
Why is it, that WW 1 is not seen as the inevitable culmination of a system of international politics where might was right, and the nation with the right kind of military and economic power could take over the wealth and the land of another! Once the European countries 'ran out' of weak nations they could subdue and conquer (virtually all the lucrative territories in Asia and Africa were conquered by 1900s), it was inevitable that conflict broke out among the European powers themselves, this time for each others resources!
Without colonies to exploit economically, Germany could have had all the technological, scientific and cultural advances, but it would never be as rich as Britain. With Britain and France already controlling most of the world's wealth, how could Germany get rich without triggering a war? Therefore, it follows that German militarism and shortsighted leadership may have been the proximate cause of WW I, the root cause of WW I was the world political order of colonies and empires, and this European war was simply a culmination of violence unleashed by the European powers first on the Asians and Africans which culminated in war on the European continent.
Why is this view not more mainstream?
This is the first time I am posting in AskHistorians, so I am not sure if I am adhering to the rules and guidelines. Please accept my apologies if I have broken any rules.
3 Answers 2014-02-13
I understand that the Inuit and other northern aboriginal peoples are culturally, spiritually, and linguistically distinct from both the First Nations and the Metis of Canada, not to mention a separate migration from the Old World. However, it seems a similar distinction could certainly be made between, say, the Haida and the Onandaga (minus the migration). Were there specific pressures around the time of the drafting of the Constitution that led to the distinction being made? Were the three categories specified (Indian, Inuit, Metis) just the simplest ones to make?
2 Answers 2014-02-13
We're currently starting a unit on Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate and the practice of Bushido was only glossed over. I'd like to know more about it, as in, how it was practiced, what it entailed for samurai warriors, and when the practice seemed to end.
2 Answers 2014-02-13
I'm attending a social function were a toga is appropriate but don't want to look like an undergrad fraternity schmuck with a bed sheet. If I'm not mistaken, togas didn't need to be fastened to the body at all with anything other than wrapping them around. How was this achieved? Is there a non-frat party toga guide anywhere? What undergarments (if any) and accessories would be worn with a toga? Other than the toga candida, what color options were common, and what did they signify?
2 Answers 2014-02-13
I'm familiar with a few stories and depictions on the American side of US troops liberating the camps, usually to either great celebration or confusion and horror. I'm wondering how the other allies approached these camps, particularly the Soviets, but also the British/Canadian troops that I've recently learned liberated a fair amount. What were their reactions upon discovering them? How did the civilian population react? The government? What measures or aid were taken to deal with the survivors, whether it helped or hurt them?
1 Answers 2014-02-13
Were there many scientists who became aware of the research on nuclear fission being used for atomic bombs who abandoned their research?
1 Answers 2014-02-13
I am working on a project and I am hitting some roadblocks. I am trying to present the religious climate in Alabama pre WWII spanning from 1936 to America's involvement in 1942. Anyone here know of any good sources, and it can be any religion? Avid redditor, thanks for any help!
2 Answers 2014-02-13
Say there was a heavily armed gang of criminals holed up in a building somewhere in Victorian London. Sending a few guys with pistols, in such a situation, is deemed to be not nearly enough firepower. What would the London police have done instead? Would their solution just be "more men!"? Would they be armed with, say, rifles instead of pistols? Would they set up Maxim guns in a perimeter around the building? What was the police response to overwhelmingly well armed criminal gangs?
1 Answers 2014-02-13
Whenever I browse /r/PropagandaPosters I'm always somewhat surprised at how blatantly racist or nationalist (shocker) many old propaganda posters are, and I can't imagine how people could have taken them seriously at the time. For example, things like this would never a acceptable now, and it seems like I don't see anything even remotley similar now even though the U.S is at war with a variety of nations. When did propaganda stop being so thinly veiled as it was it WWII and before?
1 Answers 2014-02-13
(This might break the 20-year rule, but it will always break the 20-year rule.)
Has there ever been a society that has kept too many records that it became a monumental task just to organize it, much less go through it all?
3 Answers 2014-02-13
So my grandfather died when my mother was a little girl, and I never got to meet him. One of the few pictures we had was a newspaper clipping of him holding a painting on a train. We can't find that clipping and hadn't seen anything like it - until i saw the movie "Monuments Men".My grandfather's name was Joe Espinosa and he is on the far right in this picture, which shows up during the credits of the movie. Please help with any info you have on that train (train No. 40,044?) and that mission, especially any pictures you can find because we don't have very many of him.
5 Answers 2014-02-13
