Today, I started reading How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr. I will admit that I'm a bit raw because my sister is in the hospital, but JFC, this is brutal!
Between what we weren't told as kids and details on things that we were sort of told, it's incredibly informative and interesting, but I can't stop crying about things in it.
Like, I never knew the Philippines had been an American territory.
"Expanded teachings of Asian American and Pacific Islander history may be coming to Sacramento K-12 classrooms. The state’s Instructional Quality Commission, which is responsible for developing and recommending curriculum for schools throughout California, will consider adding content highlighting Asian American, Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian communities in its next revision of the statewide history-social science curriculum."
OPINION: Reconstruction Failed in the United States. What If It Had Succeeded?
As a white public historian who has spent years trying to understand what makes people hate, there is one thing I always go back to: what if Reconstruction succeeded in the United States?
How did the losers end up writing the #history of the #CivilWar and spreading the popular lie of a heroic #Confederacy in a war about states' rights instead of slavery?
"Oddly, the explanation reaches back to the pro-Confederate Dunning School of Reconstruction history at #ColumbiaUniversity... installed a white-supremacist curriculum at Columbia and dispatched doctoral students to set up pro-Confederate #USHistory departments at Southern universities." #GiftArticle https://wapo.st/3NBV7vA
Today is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Stop rolling your eyes, this isn't a patriotic post! You know me better than that.
This is about spilling the tea... about the British East India Company's spilled tea, and what that had to do with Bengal, textile workers, and famine.
See, BEIC was using its private armies to open markets around the world to their trading policies, and to install local rulers who would keep the goods and money flowing. They did this in Bengal, one of the world's biggest producers of textiles in the mid-1700s.
Then, in 1768, drought hit Bengal and crops failed. People began to go hungry, but the BEIC's puppet rulers just continued to collect taxes--and, in some cases, to profiteer off the sale of food. Over the next two years, these practices exacerbated the food shortages, leading to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770, in which 7 - 10 million people are estimated to have starved to death. That's at least 25% of the entire Bengali population of the time.
This put a big dent in the profits of the BEIC (oopsie, who knew famine profiteering could have negative economic impacts?), leading to a financial crisis in England. This is also why BEIC was unloading tea for cheap in the American colonies, to get some of those revenues back.
So yeah, "no taxation without representation" was the rallying cry, but isn't it interesting that we (USians, I mean) were never taught that the REASON colonists were worried about this is because they felt they had something in common with starving Bengalis: namely, the vulnerability to a multinational corporation which clearly demonstrated its depraved indifference to human suffering in pursuit of profit.
a. I'b frai Sohla's Ancient Recipes videos are back. I can't follow History Channel's YT account because 99% of their stuff is "Ancient Aliens" type crap
b. I love the new format with an interview with an expert on the peoples/times whose recipes are being recreated.
c. I really want to try this cornbread recipe.
I love the Cynical Historian (Cypher) channel. This shortish video on the Wild West Myth which he wrote his dissertation on the topic is so fascinating. It is amazing how much in situ mythologizing, marketing, and post-hoc rationalization of the era and the retconning that into our national identity in the following century we have to unwind. I will say that I'd love to read his dissertation on the topic. I'll also say that with me being unable to finish in a timely manner even Asimov's I, Robot because.."Squirrel!"...that probably won't happen... #history#USHistory#CynicalHistorian Understanding the Wild West Myth: American Exceptionalism through Violence and Indian Wars
The canning industry was one of the most important in #USNorthwest & Alaska before #WorldWarII & Chinese workers were majority of workforce while enduring harsh conditions & #discrimination.
For thousands of years, the Klamath River has been a cornerstone of #Yurok culture, providing its people with a bounty of #chinook salmon, #coho salmon & #steelhead trout.
The cutting-edge work of Native American aerospace engineer Mary Golda Ross
As Native American Heritage Month comes to a close, for our “Hidden Histories” series, we look at the life and legacy of Mary Golda Ross, the first Native American woman to become an engineer and a pioneering figure of the space age.
On the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, revisit this 1973 BBC interview with JFK's mother, Rose, who talks about the family's pride and sorrow.
"The 761st Tank Battalion was an independent tank battalion of the US Army during World War II. Its ranks primarily consisted of African American soldiers, who by War Department policy were not permitted to serve in the same units as White troops; the US Armed Forces did not officially desegregate until after World War II. The 761st were known as the Black Panthers after their distinctive unit insignia, which featured a black panther's head" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/761st_Tank_Battalion_(United_States)
— #USHistory
"[H]ow much do we know about the #Osage, their history, and their life experiences? And how typical was this particularly gruesome set of murders on tribes in the US and in particular in #Oklahoma. On Today’s show, we will explore the history of the Osage. We will get to know their story in greater detail and ask, what did the film get right and what did it miss?"
#CfP#histodons
The US #Military and the #Holocaust
International Research #Workshop, Center for Advanced #HolocaustStudies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (#USHMM), July 15–26, 2024
Co-Convenors: Kaete O’Connell (Yale University) and Adam Seipp (Texas A&M University)
Application deadline: February 2, 2024
"A cache of documents related to the Tuskegee syphilis study — a 40-year experiment that tracked infected Black men without treating them — has now been digitized for public use, the National Library of Medicine announced...The newly digitized collection includes over 3,000 documents, from the study’s inception in the 1930s to the work of the panel that investigated its conduct in the 1970s."
On this day in 1868: John W. Menard becomes the first African American to be elected to Congress.
Menard, (1838 - 1893), an American publisher and politician who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1868, the first African American to win election to the U.S. Congress, defeating a white candidate, 5,107 to 2,833 in an election in Louisiana's Second Congressional District. However, he was denied his seat by the House.
"Some rich countries have all public insurance, some use private coverage, but they have a few things in common: They insure pretty much everybody, their systems cost less money, and whether you have health care has nothing to do with whether you’re employed...In the United States, however, 57 percent of Americans under 65 get insurance through their jobs, and attempts to reform that system have all failed."
"Between 1890 and 1950, public school systems in the deep South were racially segregated by law. Disenfranchisement of Black voters enabled White-dominated state and local governments to funnel substantially fewer resources to schools for Black students than to those for Whites. One consequence was a large pay gap between Black teachers, who worked in schools attended by Black students, and White teachers, who taught only in schools for Whites" https://www.nber.org/digest/20231/impact-naacp-lawsuits-racial-gaps-teachers-pay
— #economics#ushistory
"While revealing new details about one of the most famed CIA operations of all times—the spiriting out of six American diplomats who escaped the 1979 US Embassy seizure in Iran—the CIA for the first time has acknowledged something else as well.
"the CIA’s hand in the coup [in Iran in 1953]...led the CIA into a series of further coups in other countries, including Guatemala, where American clandestine action in 1954 installed a military dictator and sparked a 40-year civil war that likely killed some 245,000 people."
— #Guatemala#CIA#ushistory