I’ve been enjoying BBC R4’s In Our Time podcasts, whilst convalescing. The latest one I listened to addresses the ‘War of 1812.’ Not Napoleon’s disastrous Franco-Russian one, but ‘the other one’; Britain vs The USA.
This post isn’t about what I think about that podcast. It’s just an image gallery on the subject. Something to whet the appetite for poss’ further exploration.
After that evocative gallery of colourful pictures, here are some black or white (or near monotone) images:
And next, some more overtly propagandist type stuff; mostly (but not all) satirical prints.
And of course there was a very large naval aspect to this conflict…
And then there are the many books on the subject:
For Britain and America it was, it would seem, a largely very pointless coda – changing very little – to the AWI. Perhaps just sealing some kind closure, re America’s cutting of the umbilical cord with Europe, in general, and Britain in particular?
Whereas, for the indigenous peoples of the continent, it was an unmitigated disaster.
Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, c. 1812Tecumseh’s death, Battle of the Thames, 1813.
It’s definitely a topic I’d like learn more about. Speaking of which, one might start here, with the NAM…
Wow! I love this. I stumbled upon it today. And I’ve watched three episodes in one sitting. I don’t know, for sure, but it appears that’s the whole lot?
In the first episode he marches along Happisburgh beach in Norfolk, discusses ancient footprints (the earliest archaeological evidence of humans in British records, to date) with a local expert, and sets out an overall timeline.
It’s a little evolutionary tale in miniature. The finding, recording and synthesis of such evidence – e.g. the transience of rapid erosion on soft sediments vs the likelihood of near ‘accidental’ stumblings upon that archaeological evidence – make for a fascinating subject in themselves.
In each episode he makes something. In episode one he knaps flint, making an almond-shaped axe-head. Describing, as he does so, how these things also signal not just a new ‘technology’, but the advent of art; the pursuit of aesthetic beauty as well pure functionality.
In the second episode Ray crafts a flint-tipped arrow, and we encounter the revolution that is farming. I want to make a bow like the one he’s using in the picture above.
One of the things that struck me most forcibly in this episode was his comment, whilst making the wooden shaft for his arrow, sat by a fire, about time. And how these elder days folk had a lot of it. For all our vaunted knowledge and tech, we – certainly personally speaking – never have enough time.
It’s ironic that the cumulative effect of all our technologies, at least as they manifest in such societies as ours, in contemporary England, rather than liberating us, seem to have made us more frantic. Such that nowadays almost nobody has time for anything meaningful, such as connecting with nature.
In episode three Mears covers sudden accelerations of technology, and corresponding increases in the complexity of society. Humanity in Britain has shifted from hunter gathering to the settled life of agriculture, and moved from the Stone to the Iron Age.
He observes that this shift, which enables more complex society and culture, wasn’t – from the point of view of the health of the individual – a step forward. But a step backwards. Early farmers had worse diets and suffered more disease and earlier deaths than their hunter-gatherer forbears.
He doesn’t examine that thread further, here. But it’s interesting to me, inasmuch as it shows that evolutionary development doesn’t necessarily equate with the idea of ‘progress’ as a path to perfection. Certainly not from the viewpoint of any given organism.
Whether we call it simply change, or the more freighted development, whilst evolutionary paths are necessarily constrained, they most definitely not developing according to human ideas of attaining perfection.
Fascinating stuff, in that old school BBC style, think Reith or Attenborough; intelligent, educational. Happy to take its time.
Ray, ever the ‘big boy scout’, crafts a sickle.
I’d love to learn more about foraging for wild food. For many reasons, including the infernal expense of food shopping! Here are some of the plants he talks about: Golden Saxifrage, the Poly Poly fern (Polystichum Polyblepharum), and the Linden or lime tree.
A great if rather scant series. Simple, modest, unpretentious. Not earth-shattering. But deeply fascinating. And conducive to promoting further fascination.
‘It’s so mysterious. I just wish we knew more,’ he says. Agreed!
Bragg’s guests are: Michael Rowe (Reader in European History at Kings College, London), Katherine Astbury (Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick) and Zack White (Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth).
They give a very good account of the events, from Napoleon’s near miraculous ‘flight of the Eagle’ (not that they refer to his return using that phrase) – his return from Elban exile – through to the four battles of the Waterloo campaign, and the aftermath.
HMS Bellerophon, aka Billy Ruffian.
It’s interesting to hear Katherine Astbury describe how Napoleon’s constitutional changes survive his downfall. And the discussion on the legacy of the Napoleonic Wars as a whole is, as ever, endlessly fascinating.
Interestingly, when asked who benefited most from the outcome of Waterloo, our three experts all give different answers. I like Michael Rowe’s best. He says just look in the gift shop at the Waterloo battlefield Visitor Centre, and on that basis: ‘I would choose Napoleon.’
Thomas Hardy’s The Dynasts.
[Pictured above: a very expensive edition of Hardy’s ‘unstageable play’. Asking $1,250! *
This echoes something Thomas Hardy put into the mouth of an unusual character (to us, the modern reader), in his epic poetic-play, The Dynasts:
SPIRIT SINISTER
Well; be it so.My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. So I back Bonaparte for the reason that he will give pleasure to posterity.
*I bought a small hardback edition on our most recent holiday.
An interesting little coda to this podcast is included, as a bonus, when the guests are asked; What did they not get time to mention?
Watched this again yesterday. We watched it as an afternoon matinee. Great old fashioned fun. They don’t make ‘em like they used to. And more’s the pity.
It’s just past midnight. I’m sitting upright-ish, in bed. Not able, currently, to sleep. I hate insomnia with the deep-seated hatred of bitter experience.
Sadly, a common cold, or a nights’ disrupted sleep, can be life-threatening for me these days. Why? Because I’ve been ground down by adversity and suffering – and no doubt being a right tit – for sooooooooooooooooo fucking long.
As I lie/sit here, awake. I wish only for oblivion. The cessation of suffering. Or just plain cessation. And such feelings hardly seem hysterical or unreasonable to me.
But I durs’nt act on them. Because that would be cowardly and selfish. Say The Living. To me it would be bold and decisive. A positive move, to bring about a state devoutly wished for.
Ho fucking hum… it’s cowardly selfishness and laziness, and brute in-built survival instincts, that keep me going. What a sorry carry on.
I’m currently listening to this (an In Our Time podcast on Voltaire’s Candide). Which lead me to start reading his Letters on England.
Many moons ago, a friend recommended Candide, so I bought the edition pictured below, and read it. Frankly? I hated it!
Hated this!
This was a major disappointment, as practically everything I’d heard about Voltaire up till that point had predisposed me to loving both him and his writings.
If one is at all literary or culturally minded, in a European context, Voltaire’s going to figure. I’d encountered references to him countless times. But it wasn’t until we watched an episode of Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation, in which he featured prominently, that I decided to take a keener interest.
K Clarke’s fab’ sledgehammer.
I think I’ll have to revisit Candide, at some point. Maybe it needs a contemporary rewrite? Perhaps even a graphic novel treatment? I’m usually horrified by the mere idea of such ‘re-boots’. But, as written – at least in the translation I read – Candide was an unenjoyable unfunny slog.
At this point I returned to the podcast. About midway through. One of the pundits is saying ‘The narrative structure is an attack on Leibniz.’ By which he means two things (as the fuller context makes clear): one is the attack on the Optimism, of the subtitle, and two is chaos vs order.
The narrative of Candide feels like utter chaos. A constant series of unrelated episodes. Leibniz, by contrast, suggests that all is actually ordered to a Divine plan. It may look shitty to us. But from a Gods’ eye view all is exactly as it ought to be. It’s ordered and good.
This is interesting. For numerous reasons. On the level of pure reading, the near total lack of narrative structure reduces Candide to a bewildering – and seemingly pointless – maelstrom of apparently random stuff.
Er…
For a contemporary analogue, imagine the most self-indulgent of late 1960s film (see above), or – for an even more lobotomised equivalent – something like Kentucky Fried Movie. I’m not equating these films with Voltaire’s ideas or intent, but the rather the viewer/reader experience. How they feel.
What strikes me, as I listen to the podcast, is how philosophy, or what I’ll call intellectualism, seems to result, very often, in rather gloomy results. Perhaps deep thinking can and is often overdone? Does that mean Voltaire is saying thought/philosophy is (worse than) useless? That’s certainly a view one could take from a passage near the end of the novel:
“Let us work,” said Martin, “without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable.”
Were these guys lovers who fell out?
Buddhism is another cultural efflorescence of such a ‘mindful’ or thoughtful/philosophical approach, and, rather as with the 17th C. Encyclopaedist Bayle (mentioned here as an antecedent to Voltaire’s ideas), the conclusions often reached are… that life is suffering. Buddhism goes even further; it’s all suffering, and it’s all illusory anyway!
These are, on the face of things, extremely bleak outlooks or philosophies.
Going back to Voltaire. I find the way folk discuss him, his writings, life and ideas, is what – thus far – I find most compelling. Not Voltaire’s writing itself. This reminds me of hearing critics discuss Christopher Nolan films. The talk sounds interesting. But the films are, I find, unwatchable.
The Lisbon Earthquake.
Back to the podcast, and Candide. Bragg presciently observes that, in many ways, the book seems both chaotic and dashed off, as if in response to recent calamities (like the Lisbon earthquake, of 1775). Are there any underlying generalised messages?
One is the already alluded to attack on Liebniz-ian optimism. And the response to that seems to be despair at our impotence. The second, and the only sliver of hope – fannily emuff it’s exactly the conclusion I’ve already come to in my own ‘real’ life – is that one might, perhaps (if one is fortunate enough) carve out a little personal shangri-la somewhere, and there shelter from the madness of the world.
In truth, then, for all that I find Candide a very unenjoyable headache-inducing mess, in essence I agree with the author’s intent. I just don’t much like the execution.
Napoleon gardening, on St Helena.
Regarding the latter, perhaps rather like me – albeit I do so to virtually no audience (and the wrong ones at that) – Voltaire’s totally hung up on constantly displaying his wit and erudition.
Anyway… I finally finished the In Our Time podcast. And it’s interesting that the novel ends with what can and often is taken to be a Voltaire-ian admonition; ‘We must cultivate our garden.’
Once again I find myself in broad (if not total?) agreement with Voltaire, if this is indeed his own view, and not just another layer of ironic lampoon.
S’funny, how things work out. Some pretty awful shit has happened in my life, particularly in the last couple of years.
But, viewed from the right perspective, even the bad stuff can (possibly?) be ‘made good’. Not in and of itself. But dint of the overall picture.
I’d been wanting to stop teaching for years. And now I have. The way my teaching career ended was most emphatically not the way I wanted it to. But the overall outcome, in part at least, was.
On a whole other lesser level, yet equally fundamental – pardon the pun – the recent breaking of our toilet, by a pal/regular guest… (further poor punning alert), well… that didn’t pan out as we’d wanted it to, either. But in the end; we’d long needed a new toilet. Now we have one.
I mention these two things, one that very nearly destroyed my whole life, and another that, whilst much more mundane, was still of great importance, to bring in a third topic.
Work and health, right now.
When we took our recent break, a short while back, I could often be heard saying – to anyone who’d listen – that whilst one week was very nice, what I really needed was at least six months time out.
Well, once again, I’m being forced to do what I both want and need to do, not out of choice, but circumstance. On returning from our hols I couldn’t work. My driving license had expired. That lead to the one week off expanding to three weeks.
And now, having only just resumed work, I’ve come down with a cold, flu, or something. Today, Sunday, if I manage to summon the energy to read for half an hour, it knocks me out completely, such that I then sleep an hour or so!
I certainly won’t make my minimum £300 a week, in this, my first week back at work. Indeed, I’ll be lucky if I make £200. But I’m being forced to take time off work just to survive.
It’s as if mind, body, even the goddamn indifferent universe, are conspiring to force my hand.
I’m not quite there yet – or mayhap I am? – with Voltaire’s Pangloss: ‘all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the best end.’ But I guess I’m fishing in the same lake?
What is Optimism?” asked Cacambo ‘Alas!’ said Candide, ‘it is the mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well.’ And he wept…
I guess I’m trying pull something from the fire? I’ve been to Hell, in gasoline pants (thanks, Tom), and I’m not dead yet.
I’ve mused upon my possible ‘allergy to life’ before. My psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis are, to my mind, potential manifestations of this idea.
The skin component came on in my early to mid teens. The bone part started about a decade later.
I’ve also had some form of perennial rhinitis since childhood, prior to the onset of the psoriatic conditions.
So my body’s baseline is, it seems, to be at war either with itself, or ‘nature’ at large, or both. Not an ideal starting point.
Depression also began during early teen years. And as time passed, grew ever stronger. Aided in growth by the physical aspects of ill health, and psychological issues, arising from family and relationship stuff.
The ‘nuclear family’ blew up in my late teens. And the fallout has been lifelong. And, as Robert Crumb has it, ‘my troubles with women’ have cast an equally long and doleful shadow.
And here I am. 52 years old. Struggling with both physical and mental health issues. Will things ever get any better? Or will they actually get worse?
I’m on a ‘biologic’ treatment for the psoriatic stuff. And have been for what must be about a decade now. And that has improved things massively on the skin and bones front. So there’s certainly some grounds for optimism.
But sometimes – like now – it can seem that there’s nowt to look forward to but yet more slings and arrows. I only just got back to work, after three weeks not earning. And I seem to have picked up a cold or infection.
In my fragile state, all and any setbacks can be magnified out of all proportion.
Ka-boom!
LATER THE SAME DAY…
Well, I rang 111. They had someone – allegedly a doctor – call me back. He reckoned I prob’ had an infection. And that antibiotics might be a good idea.
He also set up an urgent – as in within the hour – ‘out of hours’ appointment for me, at Doddington Hospital.
The lady I saw there seemed to think I was fine!!! And when I mentioned the Doc’s comments, re infection and antibiotics, she ridiculed the suggestion (actually saying the person I spoke to obviously didn’t know their business!).
I went home. Very pissed off. What a total waste of my time and near non-existent energies. I may take this up, with 111, or whoever is appropriate.
[pic/vid?]
Anyway, once home, I was offered a shift. So I did it. Just as that shift ended, I was offered another. So I did that as well. I didn’t really want to work at all today. But our economic situation requires I do all that I can.
And now I’m home, in bed, feeling utterly appalling. My nose feels as if someone’s poured concrete into it. It’s totally blocked (inflamed?). And my throat feels like I’ve been deep breathing in a combination coalmine/woodwork-shop.
So… what am I to do? I’m using Vicks Vapor Rub on my chest, and as a steam inhalation. I’m taking Lemsip, and throat lozenges. And lots of liquids, inc’ hot lemon n’ honey, etc.
But I feel like absolute shit! And in addition to all the usual crap, plus this cold or allergy or whatever the fuck it is, I have super-itchy toes. Athlete’s Foot, perhaps?
We just watched the rather duff Curse of The Crimson Altar. And now I really ought to sleep. But I have to sit upright, on account of my breathing/congestion. My feet – esp’ the right one – are driving me nuts. Gaaah!!!
It’s 10pm. I’ve been abed since about 7.30-8’ish. I’ve got a calming YouTube video playing. I’ll try reading. I just hope I get a good nights sleep…
