The Missouri Compromise and the dangers of history

On 17 February 1819, the United States Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, an event which led to Civil War and the death of thousands. 

The issue, you see, was the expansion of slavery - each state was allowed to rule whether slavery should be legal or illegal in their territory, and at that moment, the number of slave states and the number of free states was exactly equal. However, there was a lot of unpopulated territory in the country which was perfect for growing cotton, and the anti-slavery Northerners were very worried about Southern plantation owners upping sticks to one of these incredibly fertile areas, growing cotton, using slave power to harvest it and then deciding that they would like to make the area into a state of the United States, with senators and congressmen who voted in favour of slavery. This would obviously upset the balance of slave and free states, leaving the North at a disadvantage. 

They proposed that slavery be made illegal in all new states joining the Union, but this would clearly lead to a massive imbalance against the South, which they felt would be very unfair. So naturally a compromise had to be reached, and it was.

It was decided that Missouri would be brought into the Union as a slave state, but at the same time so would the state of Maine, as a free state, thus maintaining the balance. They then drew a big line across a map of the United States, and said that any state entering the Union below this line was permitted to allow slavery, and all those above, weren't. (They weren't just waving a marker pen about; the line in question was the 36°30' line of latitude so it did have some significance geographically.)

However, though the compromise worked in the early part of the nineteenth century, by the middle it was proving a great hindrance and eventually ended up causing Civil War.

Of course, it didn't. The problem with history is that it's impossible to exactly pin down one cause for a great event - some could feasibly argue that the Missouri Compromise caused Civil War, others might say that it was working just fine until it was scrapped in the 1850s by Senator Douglass, who believed that each state should have the right to vote on whether a state was 'free' or not, and introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act to this effect (it was a nice idea, but led to all out war and violence in Kansas, with pro and anti slavery mobs rioting and sometimes killing each other).

Other causes of the Civil War might include, depending on your viewpoint: Abraham Lincoln's winning of the 1860 election on the Republican Party ticket; the huge chasm between Southern and Northern values; slavery itself; the fact that slavery was not outlawed in the whole country when the slave trade was; the Dred Scott court case and its ramifications or even, looking at the very short term, the fact that the Southern states seceded, formed the Confederate States of America and opened fire at Fort Sumter on Northern troops.

A good case could be made for all of those examples being the sole reason for war, but as usual in history, they acted together, and it was only a culmination of all the events which eventually caused war. It is possible, of course, to argue that a certain event was more significant that another event, but it is very, very rare that one person can categorically state that X and X alone was responsible for the American Civil War, or the Reformation, or the decision to give women the vote or whatever. 

This is why I love my subject. You can never be wrong (well, you could if you were to argue that Winston Churchill was the cause of the American Civil War, but very few people try to do this, oddly enough...), and you can argue (read: waffle) your way out of, or into any situation. But seriously, you do learn how to prioritize arguments; review the most important causes of any given event; and critically analyze primary and secondary sources as evidence for and against a particular line of thinking, all very important skills. Which is why the government's proposals for a shake up of the history curriculum are especially worrying; focusing as they do on just one form of history - the 'Britain and the Empire were excellent' one. Michael Gove should realize that just because he learnt it in should, doesn't make it true. If he was a proper student of history, he would know this already...      

25 Presidents in Rhyming Couplets

A Dreadful Poem Commemorating the Achievements of the First 25 Presidents of the United States

because today is Number 25's birthday. 

American presidents number forty four,

with George Washington the first to take the floor.

(Though he didn't live in the White House

because it hadn't been built yet).

John Adams is next, a bit of a bore,

his main achievement: an undeclared war.

(It was against France - the 'Quasi War'

and basically nothing happened in it.)

Next up was Tom Jefferson, who went down a storm,

always on tip-top intellectual form.

(He wrote the Declaration of Independence

and was a polymath - Greek for "bloody clever".)

James Madison, the Bill of Rights' author

comes in as President number four[ther..]

(Look, rhyming isn't my strong point, okay?

You try finding a rhyme for 'leader of the House of Representatives'...)

James Monroe wrote his own famous doctrine

instructing Europeans to "keep out, the swine!"

(Though as I wrote earlier, he didn't exactly have an army to back him up

so it was a miracle they did, really...)

John Adams' son, John Quincy, was five

well - they had to keep the family name alive!

(The Quincys were a political dynasty

which means they get cities in Massachusetts named after them, and stuff...)

Andrew Jackson's next - and what a meanie!

The things he did to the natives were quite unseemly.

(If you want to know more, check out this book

it's really good, but quite depressing, so ready your tissues...)

Martin Van Buren isn't really known for much,

though was the first President whose parents were Dutch.

(He also is thought to have popularized 'OK'

though when he used it, it was to describe where he came from - Old Kinderhook.)

President Harrison lasted but thirty two days,

dying of the flu, that terrible malaise.

(His death sparked a bit of a consitutional crisis because no one knew what to do

but obviously they sorted it out because the US is still running...)

Successor John Tyler was very unpopular when

he ignored his party's principles as President ten.

(They later excluded him from the party, and most of his cabinet resigned

but it was a bit late by then.)

Polk increased the land mass by twenty percent

but only secured one term as President.

(He won most of what is today California, Arizona and New Mexico

in the peace treaty at the end of the Mexican-American War.)

President twelve, Zach Taylor, was the last Whig

but ate poisoned cherries, thus ending his gig.

(Which was quite unlucky really,

he escaped death as a soldier in many wars, and then...that?!)

The VP took over - Mr. Millard Fillmore

who opposed allowing slavery in territories gained in war.

(Which made him very unpopular in the South

where rumblings of the Civil War were already starting.)

Franklin Pierce, number fourteen, was loved at first,

then became considered one of the worst.

(Though most contemporary historians agree that he was just out of his depth

with the US descending further and further into war and chaos.)

James Buchanan did not have a wife

and his Presidency was marred by strife.

(Not that, you know, I'm suggesting those facts are related

I just couldn't find a rhyme for Buchanan...)

Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation 

which some say caused his assassination.

(Everyone talks about his being the most loved leader of the US

which is clearly a posthumous accolade because he was so loved at the time that someone shot him...)

 Andrew Johnson led the country through post-war reconstruction

but ultimately, this led to his own destruction.

(He'd been a military man during the war and wasn't really cut out for politics,

ending up the first President to be impeached.)

President Grant had been a military hero

but when he left office, his popularity was zero.

(This was mainly due to lots of scandals when he was leader

and severe economic depressions, which always tend to be a bit of a bummer.)

Nineteenth on the list is Rutherford Hayes,

a President known for his liberal ways.

(He spent one term encouraging and laying the groundwork for meritocratic government

then stepped down and spent his life promoting educational reform. Nice chap.)

James Garfield's Presidency was also cut short,

and his killer was dealt with by the Supreme Court. 

(He wasn't killed by the bullet of his assassin, but the infection that developed afterwards.

He was moved to the sea, in the hope it would aid his recovery, where locals laid a train track for him to get there in a matter of hours!)

The VP, Chester Arthur, took over, as was the norm

soon becoming "the Father of Civil Service reform".

(Which, you know, I'm sure was a very good thing,

but it isn't really very exciting, is it?)

Grover Cleveland became President Twenty-Two

the only one to serve non-consecutively, too.

(Bugger, this means I have to come up with more rhymes

which is a challenge, when he didn't really do much. What rhymes with 'boring'?)

The Twenty-Third President was Benjamin Harrison

who admitted six states into the Union.

(North & South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming

if you were interested.)

Now we're back to President Grover Cleveland

Whose second term wasn't really all that grand

(It was full of economic panics and depressions,

which ruined the Democratic Party and led to Republican landslides.)

The final President for us to see

was the last of the nineteenth century - William McKinley

(about whom I know two facts:

today was his birthday, and the high school in Glee is named after him.)

  

15 Reasons Why Wars Are Utterly Stupid & Daft:

15 Reasons Why Wars Are Utterly Stupid & Daft:

A list which came about because I am in the middle of revising for my final exam on the history of warfare, a topic I loathe, and the only interesting facts I manage to find about the battles are ones that are far to trivial to write about in an essay

and

because I like lists a lot. 

1) Shoes are important:

The Battle of Gettysburg, in 1863, remains the largest battle ever to have been fought on American soil. Ever. And do you know why it came about? Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army had no shoes, and when they found themselves outside the small Pennsylvanian town of Gettysburg, they thought to themselves, 'Oh hey guys, these Northerners have lots of shoes! Let's go raid the town for them!'. So they did. Where they happened to bump into the massive Union army, and realized that they'd better start fighting. The Confederates lost the battle, sadly, so I don't think they got any shoes at the end of it all. Sadface.

2) No really, they are: 

My friend Phil told me this story: during the Crimean War, the British were hopelessly disorganised, and decided to send all the left boots down to the Crimea on one ship, and all the right ones on another. And one of the ships sank. You couldn't make it up...

3) Actually, the whole of the Crimean War was a bit of a farce: 

I feel a bit bad making fun of the Charge of the Light Brigade, because so many people died, which is obviously a horrible thing, and would've been devastating for their families and everything, but the whole thing was completely preventable. British cavalry were given the order to charge up the 'Valley of Death', waving their swords about, whilst the Russians blasted them to pieces with cannons on all sides, thinking the British must be drunk.

4) To be honest, most nineteenth century wars were totally ridiculous:

Take the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, for example. It's a fairly insignificant one, in the grand scheme of things, but one thing it is famous for is the fact that the French had the bright idea to utilize the new railways to get their troops to the battlefield fresh and ready to fight, whereas the Austrians went on a two week march to get there. Anyway, the Austrians eventually cottoned on to this train business, and sent their reserve force to the next battle this way. Except they got off at the wrong station and completely missed the battle. Really.

5) And if they weren't missing battles, they were being inadequately prepared:

So a few years later, in 1870, the French were fighting the Prussians, and they had this amazing new weapon, called the matrielleuse. It was a forerunner to the machine gun, so if you were into slaughtering innocent soldiers, it should totally have been your weapon of choice. The Prussians should have been completely wiped out, but they weren't, because the French soldiers hadn't been trained in how to use their new gun, so it was effectively completely pointless.

 

6) Still, at least the French actually had an army:

After Charles II was restored to the throne, Parliament wanted to control his actions as they were afraid he'd do what his father had done, and plunge the country into Civil War again. Their solution, therefore, was to pay for and control the Navy, whilst allowing Charles an army only if he promised to pay for it himself. (Which, y'know, doesn't seem like the brightest move ever - 'Of course you can have an army! Just as long as you're in total control of it, not us! That'll ensure you won't try to attack us or anything...') In the end, Charles didn't attack the MPs (he was too busy partying and being a closet Catholic, two things which totally go together...) but for many years, the English army wasn't officially recognised as such, and the country at least technically had no army. 

7) However rubbish and unofficial the English army was, at least it wasn't full of sheep:

So the Civil Wars themselves were very complex, and their origins even more so, but one of the reasons they occurred was because Charles I needed money from Parliament for a war he was fighting in Scotland - the Bishops' War. In this war, England and Scotland were fighting over Bibles (as you do...), but the English army was much larger than the Scottish one, so the Scottish generals found themselves in a bit of a quandary. They decided that if they could trick the English into thinking their army was much larger than it was, they might be unwilling to fight them - and this plan turned out to be a good one. They did indeed manage to trick the English, by padding out their ranks with sheep, whom the English thought were...particularly woolly soldiers? God knows how this one worked...

8) Mind you, at least they weren't being paid in wool:
During the 100 Years' War, coinage was in short supply, so the English soldiers were paid in sacks of wool. Because all a fighting bloke really wants to do is learn to knit...

9) And about that '100' Years' War business:
Yeah, it actually lasted 116 years. But looking on the bright side, standards in numeracy had improved immeasurably by the time the Seven Years' War rolled round, and that ended bang on time, in 1763.

10) Also, at least numeric names make sense:
100 Years' War, 30 Years' War, Seven Years' War - they're all fairly logical, no? War of 1812 - that's another fairly self-explanatory one. The War of Jenkins' Ear...yeah, perhaps not. Though thinking about it, it started because Captain Jenkins had his Ear cut off by Spanish coast guards, so the name isn't that daft, even if the war itself was...

11) If you thought the names of wars were daft, wait until you hear what's going on on the battlefield:
So there's a very famous miscommunication about the First World War, where some field commander or another sent a message via telegram saying, "We're going to war, send reinforcements" but this got mistranslated and ended up as "We're going to a ball, send three and fourpence", and I can kind of see how this happened but honestly, didn't anyone think to check if this was the right message, coming from, y'know, a battlefield. War does this to people...  

12) Sometimes, people switch sides in the middle of conflicts:
Have you ever watched a children's cartoon and seen one of those montages where the good guys chase the monster through a door, then you see them turning around with the monster chasing them, then next thing you know, they're chasing the monster again, and no one knows what's going on? You have? Good. Visualize that happening in real life, 'cause it did: in 1460, the Earl of Warwick invaded (I'm assuming from some far distant land, and not, y'know, the well known island of Warwickshire...) captured Henry VI and installed Edward IV on the throne. Ten years later, in 1470, Warwick invaded again (oh who knows, maybe the Midlands were suffering from a lot of flooding around that time...), this time reinstalling Henry VI. You couldn't make it up...


13) We didn't get much better in World War Two either:
So Dunkirk was this terribly disorganised thing, where a load of British soldiers were trapped on a beach in Normandy with German soldiers advancing towards them and readying their planes to fly over and drop bombs on them, so the government requisitioned every ship on the south coast, even little two or three man fisher-boats to go out and rescue them, and they managed it, securing the rescue of the soldiers trapped on the beaches. In fact, everyone was so elated by the events that Winston Churchill had to make a special radio broadcast reminding the country that this wasn't actually a victory - in fact, it was a pretty awful defeat.


14)Anyway, sometimes you don't even need to fight, you can just employ a terrible euphemism plonk your warship in someone else's harbour:
As the British did when the Portuguese threatened to renege on their promise to grant independence to Brazil. No shots were fired and no fighting happened, but a stern warning was issued, and the best ship in the Navy set sail for Lisbon just to reinforce the point.

15) And sometimes, you just need to sound convincing:
In 1823, President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine to the rest of the world, which basically said "Hey you guys? Yeah, don't attack us, 'cause we'll so get you back worse". Well, I'm not sure he said it quite like that, but that was definitely the general gist of things. Anyway, Spain and Portugal, who had both been planning to continue or restart old wars, backed down completely upon hearing this. Even though, at the time, the US had no navy and a very poxy little army. So really, all you need to do is sound threatening enough!

Oh my God. Am I condoning bullying?! Oh dear...         

Everybody's Gone Serfin'

A few months ago, I wrote about the crisis (of sorts) that led up to the Battle of Hastings, with various people thinking that they were the rightful heir to the English throne after Edward the Confessor's death, which happened today, in 1066. I was going to give you 10 Interesting Facts About Edward the Confessor, seeing as it was him who died today, but I...um...couldn't find that many facts. And they weren't actually that interesting. So instead, I present to you 10 Interesting Facts About William the Conqueror, in the hope that you might find some of these more interesting.

1) "Harold, your Kingliness? Um, I know you've just fought that massive battle at Stamford Bridge and all - and well done for winning, especially as you were fighting your brother, it can't've been easy, but I think you ought to head back down to the south coast, because another fleet of invaders have just landed..."

"Bugger. Who are they?"

"Oh, just some Normans, led by William the Conqueror..."

"William the Conqueror?!"

"Don't worry, it's just a nickname..."

This wasn't how it happened at all. Mostly because William's nickname was bestowed upon him posthumously - during his lifetime he was known as Bill the Bastard (but not to his face), due to the fact that he had indeed been born out of wedlock - his father was the Duke of Normandy before him; his mother, a maid. And also possibly because he did things like nailing people's tongues to planks of wood when they disagreed with him...

2) When Wills arrived on the south coast, he immediately tripped and fell over onto the beach. In a time where people were obsessed with omens, this could have gone down very badly, but according to numerous (Norman) biographies, he turned smiling to his men, and declared "You see - I already have the soil of England within my grasp!". Which is a lovely story and everything, but it's also a quite well told one, too. When Julius Caesar landed in England in 54BC, he was supposed to have done the exact same thing.

Now, this implies that either the man writing William's biography (and it would have been a man  - only monks were taught how to write) was very old, and getting his invaders mixed up, or that he heard the story and thought it would sound very nice in his book, as well obviously showing just how much God was on the side of the Normans, so bunged it in anyway, illustrating beautifully how History is always written by the winners.

(Of course, it could be that William had heard the story, and tripped and fell anyway, but managed to 'recover' from it by remembering what Caesar had said and repeating it to his troops. That could indeed have happened...)


3) As any fool knows, when History is not being written by the winners, it's being stitched by the winners - the classic example of this being the Bayeux Tapestry. The Tapestry, which is over 70 metres long, was commissioned by William's half-brother, Bishop Odo, and an incredibly detailed account of the events in it can be found here. It is an incredibly detailed and incredibly biased account of the lead up to the battle and the battle itself, sewn a few years after it had taken place. Today, it is on display in a museum in Bayeux, but there is a replica copy in the Museum of Reading, made during the Victorian times. It is identical to the original, except for one small scene on the original, which contains a naked man (no one's quite sure why). When the Victorians were restitching the new copy, they gave him a pair of blue shorts.

4) William liked to build things. One of the first things he built was an abbey - or rather, he instructed an abbey to be built on the site where Harold had been killed, which wasn't at Hastings at all. Instead, it was at a place called Senlac, which is a yoghurt for women with bowel problems the Saxon name for a place the Norman's rechristened Battle (displaying stunning creativity). I guess we always call it the Battle of Hastings because the Battle of Battle sounds rather daft...

5) He also built lots of castles. LOTS of castles. The most famous one is probably the Tower of London, though this took a few years to complete. In contrast, the first, at Pevensey was completed within eight days of the Norman conquest - though William probably had a couple of mates helping him with this one. The Motte and Bailey castles served as far more imposing structures than the previous Saxon ones had been, and were the Medieval status symbols, reminding the serfs who their new overlords were.

6) Speaking of the Serfs, it is worth noting that William had a far greater effect on their lives than people initially think. So their lord changed - what was it to them? They still didn't get paid for their labour regardless of whether they were being ruled by a Frenchman or an Englishman, so how could the invasion have had any impact on them? 

The Normans bought in new rules about the ownership of serfs. Whilst it was made illegal for them to be bought and sold at a market, the Anglo-Saxon system of a serf wandering around the country until he found a place he could work was abolished and they were legally tied to the land they worked on, which proved a bit of a bugger if a disaster struck there - sudden flooding for example - as they were forced to remain there and basically starve. 

New rules were also put in place, however, which allowed the serf to complain about any grievances he might have to the local lord. But as the grievances were almost always about the local lord, I can't imagine that this happened too often.

7) Something else which William brought with him as a special gift for the serfs was the class system - well, sort of. The peasants who worked the field spoke Anglo-Saxon English; the Norman knights and barons and churchmen (at least, the higher up ones) spoke French. Obviously these days we all speak English, but a lot of our class system is still influenced by the French language.

For example, pig, cow and deer are all English words, but pork, beef and venison are derived from French - whilst the animal is still rolling around in its own muck, it's English, but as soon as it's served as a meal, it's French. It may not surprise you to learn that our swear words all have Anglo-Saxon derivatives, rather than French...

8) William did a lot of things at Christmas. On Christmas Day 1066, he was crowned King in Westminster Abbey and on Christmas Day 1085, he came up with the really wild and exciting and Christmassy idea of performing a giant tax assessment on the country. 

9) This tax assessment deserves an entry of it's own, as it was of course the Domesday Book. A scribe in each village wrote down every single thing that was in the village and his list was sent down to Winchester for one monk to copy into one enormous book. Whilst the monk did manage omit his own village, he did stick the whole thing online so it's swings and roundabouts, really. The books are actually two separate books - or they were originally - Greater Domesday and Little Domesday. Little Domesday was (obviously...) the bigger of the two, and contained only the information they had collated about East Anglia. Once they saw how much detail they had gone into for this one area of England, the scribes realised there was no way they could finish in time for the deadline unless they cut a few corners through the rest of the country, which is why the other entries go something like: "Cornwall - tin. And fudge." or "Lake District - lake. Lake. Small pond. Bit bigger pond. Lake"...

10) Perhaps the best has been saved until last, though. William died in the summer of 1087 - as was his wont, he had been burning down a town in Normandy when his horse trod on a hot ember, recoiled and threw him off. William died of internal injuries soon after. Whilst he was being buried, a man burst in, demanding monetary compensation for the land that William had supposedly stolen off his father. As there were a number of rather angry looking locals supporting this man, Henry, William's son, hurriedly paid him off and the final acts of the service got underway.

This involved lowering William into his custom built sarcophagus. He was too fat. His body burst open, internal organs spilling everywhere, and the stench of rotting flesh filled the church.

On that note, I bid you farewell. 

War of Dried Fruit...oh wait

I am not the best person in the world at spelling, and rely heavily on computerized spellcheckers to ensure that my work is not riddled with errors. So when I read that on 4 January, 1903, Topsy the elephant was killed in the War of Currents, I immediately envisaged a couple of sultanas bravely facing an onslaught by a handful of raisins. In my defense, I should like to point out that the idea of AC and DC currents going to war with each other is just as nonsensical as dried fruit fighting (though in the interests of balance, fairness and embarrassing myself, I should point out that it was only after reading that Topsy was killed by Thomas Edison, via electrocution that it dawned on me that this particular war may have more to do with currents than currants...).

So let's dive right in to battle, shall we? The war of currents (sometimes known as the 'war of the currents', because Historians are crazy and wild like that), began in the late 1880s, when alternating current (AC) was invented and decided to go to war with direct current (DC).

When Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, he used the electricity created by DC to make it work. DC works by having a constant current flowing through a wire in a similar manner to the way water flows through a pipe - how much water you have in your bucket (lightbulb) at the end depends on how fast the water flows through the pipe and how long it's been flowing for. In terms of electricity, this worked really well if you had a light switch on the wall and a lamp a few metres away that you wished to light. You could even share your electricity source with your neighbours, and they could have light too! It was all rather jolly.

There were, however, some significant problems with the system. If you wished to transfer power from its source at the power station to your home, you would need metallic cables which conducted electricity to do so. However, it took a lot of volts to light a bulb, and do the other things electricity was used for, and DC cannot be altered - if you need a high voltage at the end, you have to have a high voltage at the start, and keep that voltage high whilst the electricity travels to its end point. This proved slightly problematic, as if the current had to flow for distances greater than a mile, the wires would get so hot (due to the wasted heat energy being produced) that they would often melt and stop working. 

Edison's solution was to install lots of wires which ran over shorter distances (leading one observer to point out that this left the city of New York looking like a spider's web) but this proved dangerous, as during high winds or severe snowstorms, common in autumn and winter months, the wires would fall, electrocuting the people stood below them. In a particularly severe three day storm in March 1888, around four hundred people were killed this way. It was clear that the system couldn't continue for much longer.

Luckily, a very clever scientist named Nickola Tesla invented Alternating Current (by methods that, if I attempted to explain them, would result in my brain leaking out of my ears, so please just take my word on this one). AC, as the name suggests, alternates - sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's negative. For example, if an alternating current of 50 volts were to be measured using a oscilloscope (a fancy voltmeter), it would produce a sine wave that started at 0 volts, went up to 50, came back down to 0, went even further down to -50, came back up to 0, then further up to 50 again, and so on. 

Whilst this was very interesting to scientists, the main benefit that AC has to us all is that this enables it to be transformed - which basically means it starts off at a very high voltage at the power station, before immediately going through a transformer, which uses magic physics to lower the voltage significantly, but not the power produced from it, which means that the cables no longer heated up and melted, and power could be sent over huge distances. It was clear to everyone that this was a Jolly Good Thing Indeed, and preparations were made to switch over to AC, so that hundreds of lives could be saved, as well as many, many miles of copper cables.

Edison, however, had other ideas. He had patented the DC system, as was busy making huge amounts of money off it. He knew, though, that Tesla's invention was much better, and would soon make his old system obsolete, and therefore did everything in his power to discredit it. He claimed that it was a terribly dangerous thing - "a torrent rushing violently over a precipice" - and electrocuted animals with it to demonstrate its great danger, which is where the story of Topsy the elephant comes in.

(This is actually a really sorry tale - it made me weep, but then, anything to do with animals dying will do that... Topsy was an elephant who was kept in a zoo to perform for people, but by 1903 she had killed three men - one of whom had tried to force a lit cigarette down her throat. For this reason, she was deemed too dangerous to live, and was electrocuted using 6,600 volts of AC  by Edison, in an effort to demonstrate its dangers. He even filmed the event, and the footage is available on Wikipedia if you want to view it, but please don't - it's quite distressing...)

Tesla took the admirable stance of not saying anything derogatory about his rival and using just his own invention to prove how it was the best one to be used to provide electricity for the country. In 1897, the organizer of the Chicago World Fair asked Edison to supply the electrics for the event, and Edison agreed, requesting $1,000,000 to cover the costs of cables. Tesla approached the organizer, saying he could do it for half the price, and managed this feat. Edison was so annoyed that he banned Tesla and his sponsors from buying lightbulbs which he had patented. 

The damage to Edison's invention had been done, however. Once people saw that Tesla's alternating current was much cheaper and safer than using direct current, the switch was made, and within 10 years of the Chicago World Fair, 80% of American electricity was produced using AC. 

Which is all terribly interesting, but I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of dried fruit pummeling each other...         

The Port Wine Treaty

You know how you sometimes come across utterly, utterly ridiculous events in History? I think I may have just found one. Another one... Basically, I've just been reading about a treaty to end a war, which seems to be mostly about wine. WINE.

Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with wine at all. But to sign a treaty promising an alliance based on the sale of wine...did no one stop to think that this would go down in History as something future generations might find slightly strange and somewhat amusing? No one at all?
 

The treaty in question was the Methuen Treaty, and it was signed on 27 December, 1703 by the countries of Portugal and England, and it wasn't totally about wine. At the time, there was a big war going on (the War of Spanish Succession) and all the big European powers were fighting it out to see who would become 'top dog'. The country of Portugal, whilst obviously a source of great importance and national pride to those who lived there, wasn't a big European power, and so consequently wasn't considered that important to the other countries. However, they did have a few good exports (namely wine), so they weren't going to be completely ignored by the other countries.

When the War of Spanish Succession broke out, in 1702, the Portuguese allied with the French, which basically meant that the French promised to protect them from attacks by the British navy (the French navy, whilst better than the Portuguese - which from some reports, seems to have consisted of two rowing boats and a dinghy - was not as good as the British, which was truly a force to be reckoned with, so Portugal's request for protection seems fairly understandable). 

However, the British kept sailing really close to Lisbon on their way to and from Cadiz, and the Portuguese were understandably upset when the French did nothing to stop them. Believing that they were untrustworthy, Portugal soon entered into negotiations with Great Britain to switch sides. (Because obviously, the way to counter untrustworthiness is to be even more untrustworthy!) This was very appealing to the British, as they believed that the war could be won much more cheaply and easily if they were able to use Portugal's deep-water naval ports to attack the French ports at Toulon, so the MP John Methuen was sent as an ambassador extraordinary to Portugal where he negotiated the treaty.

The treaty had three main parts. Firstly, it established the Alliance's war aims. Despite the fact that, at the time of the treaty, the war had been going on for a year or so, no one had thought to write down - or even officially state - why they were fighting, so the treaty duly noted that the purpose of the war was to secure the Spanish Empire for the Austrian claimant, the Archduke Charles, with whom Britain had already made an alliance, which was A Good Thing because it reminded everyone in the Alliance whose side they were on this time. 

The second part of the treaty was to do with the actual military part of the war - it established that Spain would become the main theater of war, and established things like the number of troops each country would provide - which again, is a very important thing in a war, and something you'd've thought they would have thought about earlier on in the conflict.

Finally, it 'regulated the establishment of trade relations between Britain and Portugal', or, in layman's terms, ensured that the British could keep drinking. Before the war, France had been supplying Britain with wine, which a lot of people found very agreeable. However, when they went to war, the French stopped trading with the British, and so no one had anything to drink, which many people felt was a Very Bad Thing. Now, the Portuguese realised that, as they had a wine industry, they would be able to fill this gap in British lives, but they were also scared that, when the war was over, the British would just revert to trading with the French and they would be stuffed. An agreement was come to, which stated that all trading between Portugal and Britain would be tax free, so the wine which was being imported would be able to be bought much more cheaply than any the French tried to sell. (Though technically, they were selling Port, rather than straight wine, which lead to a massive market for the drink in Britain, a fact which my Grandmother remains eternally grateful.) 

This makes sound economic sense and everything...it's just a shame that the treaty became known as the Port Wine Treaty, and no one in the country remembered anything about the parts which actually related to the war...

Mother Theresa (not that one)

Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Holy Roman Empress and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia died today in 1780. She was, to say the least, an interesting character. She ascended the throne in 1740, aged only 23, and ruled for another 40 years - the only female Empress in 650 years of the Hapsburg Dynasty. During her time on the throne, she brought about many reforms in the countries she ruled, from the structure of the army to providing adequate working conditions for the serfs. As well as this, she gave birth to no fewer than 16 children - her fifteenth child was Marie Antoinette. Some historians call her the savior of the Hapsburg Dynasty, and one of the earliest feminists. Others are more concerned with her religious intolerance and her absolute monarchy, claiming that this almost tyrannical regime means it is impossible to accept her as a true feminist, fighting for equality for all. A somewhat controversial figure, then.

The House of Hapsburg, of which Maria Theresa was a member, is almost impossible to sum up in one sentence. Very briefly speaking, they were the rulers of Austria (and the Austrian Empire, which covered much of the lands which today surround the country) from 1278-1780. After 1780, when Maria Theresa died, the dynasty became known as the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, which ruled the country until it's dissolution in 1918. Between 1440 and 1806, they were also the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, and in that time, Maria Theresa was the only female Empress - and indeed, queen (who ruled in her own right) of Hungary and Bohemia.

This came about because of a rule, known in Europe as the Salic Law, which prohibited a woman from inheriting her father's lands. When it became clear that Maria's father, Charles VI was not going to produce a son, leaving Maria as his sole heir, he had to pass a hurried law known as the Pragmatic Sanction which guaranteed her the right to the throne - but at a price, for both Maria and the Austrian Empire.

For Maria, the main problem was that, though he named her as his successor, Charles assumed that Maria's husband, Frances Stephen of Lorraine, would take control and therefore didn't bother to teach his daughter how government and state affairs worked. Maria was determined that this was not to be the case, and that she would rule her country herself. However, due to various ill-conceived wars, the Austrian army was weak, and very poor. When Fredrick II of Prussia invaded in 1740, just weeks after she had assumed the throne, he was very easily able to take Silesia (what was historically Poland) for Prussia, thus starting the (rather boringly named) War of Austrian Succession, which lasted until 1748.

Things were not looking good for Maria - she could not afford to take back the land she had lost, and to make matters worse, France and Bavaria had joined in with the conflict and invaded her country from the west. Determined not to lose any more land, she initiated various army reforms, such as doubling the number of troops and creating a centralized tax office which collected money to fund the army. Though she lost Silesia, when the war ended the rest of her empire was still in tact, and the leaders of the other European countries finally recognized her as queen in her own right.

There were a few years of peace, until Maria Theresa decided in 1756 that Austria was capable of taking Silesia back, if they formed an alliance with France and Russia. Fredrick however, decided that Prussia would not stand for this, formed an alliance with Great Britain and invaded Saxony, one of Austria's allies, starting the Seven Years' War, which ended bang on time in 1763. (So maybe I skipped over the events of this war, but again, it's something that's almost impossible to sum up in a few sentences. One of the first global wars, it involved the American colonies as well as most of Europe, and resulted in over 1 million deaths). The Austrian Empire survived the war mostly unscathed as a territory (though they lost many men in the bloodshed), although when she signed the treaty that ended that war, Maria signed away the rights to the area of Silesia, which now officially belonged to the Prussians (one wonders what the Silesians thought about all of this).

Two years after this, tragedy struck when Maria's husband, Frances, died unexpectedly. Unlike most diplomatic marriages of the eighteenth century and before, Maria and Frances had actually been very deeply in love (their sixteen children - a large number even by the standards of the day - could be seen as proof of this...) and therefore, from the day of his death until she herself died, on 29 November 1780, Maria Theresa chose to dress in the clothes of mourning, as well as becoming much more withdrawn.

She changed her foreign policy, so that it was much more focused on maintaining peace in her lands, rather than trying to win back Silesia and became very concerned with serf reform, passing rules which made working conditions easier and fairer for peasants throughout her lands. She passed also brought about several religious reforms, though these were mixed in terms of their liberalism. Although she granted equal status to Greek Catholics and Jesuits - an unusual practice for most Roman Catholic rulers - she was radical in her persecution and suppression of Jews and Protestants, believing them to be enemies of the state.

As well as this, she secured the marriage of her daughter Marie Antoinette to the heir to the throne of France, as well as several less high profile diplomatic marriages for her other children. The rest of her reign passed peaceably, though she did engage in frequent arguments with her son and heir Joseph, as his plans for the empire were radically different from hers. For that reason, she decided not to abdicate, as many of the government officials thought she should, and Joseph had to wait until her death before assuming the throne. 

Though Maria Theresa was not a feminist in the true sense of the word (passing a rule which prevented courtiers from coming to watch her give birth, which they had commonly been able to do - almost like a spectator sport - was more for her own benefit to save herself embarrassment and indignity, rather than it being part of her great feminist principles), she was interested in reform for her country and actively pursued reforms for the poorest people in the empire, which was very unusual for the time. Her religious persecution, though harsh and unfair, was extremely typical of other rulers at the time, and was mostly a result of her very Catholic upbringing. Though she was not perfect, it would be fair to say that, in general, her support for the poorest in the country was radical, and her economic and military reforms helped to save the empire which, when she ascended the throne, had been on the brink of disaster. 

She also did all of this without any formal education in state affairs or how to most effectively rule an extremely large empire, which either goes to show that she was a very intelligent and shrewd woman, or that being Emperor (or Empress) was not nearly as hard as some historians would have you believe...    

1066 And All That

Everyone knows that on 14th October, 1066 William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings by slaying Harold Godwinson whilst he rode his horse shooting an arrow in Harold's eye defeating the English troops, and most people know how it happened (if in doubt, just witter on about hills and 'the advantage' and superiority . . . actually, this will make you seem knowledgeable about almost all battles that have ever occurred). But fewer people know the ins and outs of why it actually happened, preferring to see William as the evil Frenchman who came in and stole the crown from the rightful heir. As usual, if only it were that simple . . .

There is an old English king who's name you have to be very careful how you spell - Cnut (no, really). You might have heard of him as the King who tried to stop the tides and he's generally portrayed as a bit of a div, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Cnut was Danish, a Viking who took control of England as well as the Scandinavian countries and he was very clever. The tide story has been manipulated over the years - he was actually trying to prove that no one, not even the King, could control the weather - and he pretty much let the British get on with ruling the country themselves, accepting that the laws already in place were good ones, and he wasn't going to be the one to rock the boat. "Letting Britain get on with ruling itself" meant that the top lords were in charge, controlling everything, sometimes acting fairly, sometimes not but deferring to Cnut where he required it. One of these Lords was Earl Godwine, who was a bit of a suck-up - he married a Danish aristocrat and gave his children Viking names - Harold and Tostig.

Anyway, Cnut snuffed it in 1035 and his two sons Harold and Harthacnut had to battle it out as to who became King. But Harthacnut (I love writing that . . .) wasn't really that interested in England, preferring to rule Scandinavia so Harold got the throne - only not for long. He died a very gorey death, almost certainly on Earl Godwine's orders. You see, Mr. Godwine senior had a plan - a descendant of the House of Wessex (the line of English kings who had been in charge before the Vikings came over), called Edward, had been sent over to Normandy to be raised in safety over there. Edward was now an adult - and in full position to be crowned King of England. Godwine reckoned that he could sponsor Edward, help him to regain the throne and support him, and in return Edward could marry his daughter, Edith and the Godwines would therefore have a direct line to the throne when Edward died (which, knowing the Earl's ways, might have happened sooner than expected).

So, Edward was crowned King in 1041 with help from Godwine, and married Edith. But he wasn't actually that keen on the Earl and didn't trust him, so instead spent his time trying to build up and utilise his cross-channel connections with his friends back in Normandy. Through this, he must have started to hear of "William the Bastard" - the Duke of Normandy's illegitimate son by one of the palace maids - who was starting to build up a brutal reputation (the Normans' decendancy from a Viking tribe may have had something to do with this).

The final straw for Edward regarding the Godwines, though, came when the Earl attacked some Norman knights whom Edward had invited over, upon their arrival. Edward removed them of their property and sent the Earl and his sons packing. He and two of his sons went to join a third son, Tostig, in Flanders, and his fourth son, Harold escaped to Ireland. Edith was shut up in a convent. Now, Edward chose not to remarry and it was becoming increasingly clear that he was to produce no heirs. Some people believe that this is because he was gay but I personally don't believe that to be true. There have definitely been gay monarchs in the past - Edward II is the classic example - and there is much evidence to show who their lovers were. But with Edward (who was later to become known as 'the Confessor'), there's no evidence to suggest he had any lovers - male or female - so I think that he was possibly just asexual.

Anyway, there were no kids, so he had to look elsewhere for a heir - and here comes the bit that all the Norman accounts swear are definitive proof that William was the chosen one. In 1051, Edward chose a new Archbishop of Canterbury, and sent him to Rome to have the appointment approved by the Pope. But before he got there, the Archbishop was instructed to stop off in Normandy and inform William that Edward had chosen him as his successor. William's claim to the throne was tenuous at best - they were barely related, mere second cousins once removed - but Edward did not want to see the crown fall back into the hands of the Vikings, or worse, the Godwines. 

However, Edward had underestimated both the Godwines' popularity and the Normans' unpopularity. On hearing of his plans to make William his successor, Edward came under a lot of pressure from the other chief lords and earls who were friends of the Godwines and in 1052 had to perform an embarrassing climbdown, reinstating the Earl and apologising to him. This would have been mortifying for Edward - Earl Godwine was now in charge in all but name - Edward had authority but very little power. 

Then, in 1053, the Earl died. His son Harold rose up to fill his shoes - and then some. Everyone loved him - he was tall, handsome, and, when he defeated a Welsh army and took control of a large part of the country, nobles and commoners across the land (though presumably not in Wales) believed he could do no wrong. He was indispensable, keeping the ruffians off the borders of England, the King's right hand man. It seemed inevitable that he would have dreams of becoming king. Then, for some reason no one's quite sure about, Harold ended up in William's court in 1064. This is where the Bayeux Tapestry begins. At first, the two acted like comrades - William looking after Harold; the two of them offering up sisters for marriage here there and everywhere - but it soon became clear that they were not equal comrades. William made Harold one of his knights, and Harold swore an Oath.

In medieval Europe, Oaths were taken incredibly seriously. Unless you wanted the wrath of all that was holy coming down upon your head, you did not take one in vain. Anyway, as usual, there is contention as to exactly what the Oath said - Harold's supporters say he just promised to be William's man in England, but not to help defend his right to the throne; William's that he promised to help him become crowned king. He returned to England, to await Edward's death. The King obliged in 1066 - without having officially named a successor.

This didn't actually matter too much - the witan (council of lords who were in charge, a very non-democratic forerunner to Parliament) had to approve the previous King's choice before he could be crowned, or name a successor if the previous King hadn't. To nobody's surprise, Harold Godwineson was chosen and he quickly became King Harold.

Of course, this quickly led to other troubles - a Viking claim to the throne led by Harald Hardrada with aid from t'other Harold's estranged brother Tostig and of course William himself invading and conquering, but I'll stop here. I hope you enjoyed this monster of a post :)