Your Secret History

March 11, 2006 1:14 PM

I would like to learn about an interesting aspect of history which is new to me. This could be broad ('Ancient Greece') or very specific ('Anarchists in the Ukraine in the Russian Revolution'), thematic ('the Victorian underworld and crime') or about a location ('Venice') - but I'd like to also know why your suggestion interests you so much. If you can recommend some good books on your suggested topic, that would be just perfect.

This post about the Decembrists is a good example of what I'm after. Ideally, your suggested topic would be able to sustain interest and study over a reasonable period of time. Things that I have studied already, or which don't really grab me: anything too modern (post-1920s), English Tudor and Stuart history, Regency England or indeed English kings and queens in general, WW1, British Empire, Napoleonic naval history.

So tell me: what aspect of history fascinates you - and why?

posted by reynir to education (25 comments total)

Feudal Japan. I was inspired by James Clavell's Shogun to learn about this period of history, and became slightly obsessed. Particularly interesting to me are Samurai and the evolution of Japanese culture.
posted by matkline at 1:18 PM on March 11, 2006

Invention, mass production and spread of bicycles. The impact of bicycles on the women's suffrage movement, rational dress movement, and Good Roads movement. Transportation revolution. Bicycles subsequently invented motorcycles and the automobile.
posted by fixedgear at 1:20 PM on March 11, 2006

This is a ridiculously broad question so I'll extend his answer to the ridiculously broad and tell you to go to Borders and just sit in the historical nonfiction section and pick things until something interests you. Shogun is fiction, but a good starting point too, and a read that'll take you a good long time to finish.. the first, second, third, and fourth times.
posted by kcm at 1:21 PM on March 11, 2006

The subject that interests me is the Gulag labour camps in the Soviet Union.

So far I've not found that many books directly related to the subject: not in my small library anyway.

But I can recomend Gulag Archipelago + vols 2&3, One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch and Man is Wolf to Man as a start.

I've scanned some websites on the subject, but haven't found anything I'd go so far as to recomend yet.
posted by selton at 2:01 PM on March 11, 2006

Aztec

Druids
posted by Tennyson D'San at 2:15 PM on March 11, 2006

Out of all the edible foods that exist, why did humans pick the ones they did for agriculture, and why less than ten or so ones for industry ("Green Revolution").

Are there parallel patterns for energy sources that power the technological basis for a society? When these separated, how did they change?

I think Guns Germs and Steel would be a good place to start, as it offers some explanation, as well as some anecdotal and tabular data.
posted by eustatic at 2:46 PM on March 11, 2006

Thanks kcm, but the reason I have asked the question is that I am specifically interested in hearing people enthuse about what it is about their suggestions that interests them so much. I asked the non-fiction shelves in Borders but they just glowered back at me in sullen silence.

Posters - thank you all for your suggestions, keep them coming, but if you can please do talk about the why, as well as the what.
posted by reynir at 3:00 PM on March 11, 2006

The Peloponnesian Wars in general, and the personality and travails of the Athenian (then Spartan, then Athenian again, then Persian, then Athenian yet again) general Alcibiades in particular. That guy just fascinates me: Pericles' ward, Socrates' student; handsome, charismatic, brilliant, and rich; vain, haughty, lascivious, and glib. Hero of the failed Mantinean campaign against Sparta, he rallied the Athenians for an invasion of Sicily; framed for knocking the cocks off of Athen's sacred statues of Hermes (no, really) he was sentenced to death in absentia and recalled from the armada. He jumped ship, fled to his erstwhile enemy Sparta, and seduced both their military leaders and - whoops - their queen. So, he fled again, to Persian-occupied Turkey, where he reingratiated himself with the Athenian admirals at Samos, who made him a general again when they revolted after the coup of the Four Hundred and restored democracy to Athens. He was welcomed home as a hero, but just a year later after a military setback was run out on a rail, and ended up back in Asia Minor, where Spartan assassins finally cought up with him. Why is there no movie about this guy?
posted by nicwolff at 3:15 PM on March 11, 2006

^cought^caught
posted by nicwolff at 3:24 PM on March 11, 2006

I second the Tokugawa Shogunate, and specifically the book "Giving up the Gun". A unique (?) example of a society deliberately shunning a superior technology, and retrograde technological development.
posted by Meatbomb at 4:30 PM on March 11, 2006

I recently began a study of the history of computing, something that has interested me for a long time. George Dyson's Darwin among the Machines links the political, social structures of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan to the modern age of information and computing. Along the way , he describes the development of mathematical and philsophical structures to create the society we have today. While it does encompass post-1920s developments, computing's origins reach rather far back into past.

For a thematic approach, the relationship of history to technology is an interesting field. One author I can recommend are Thomas Hughes. His Human-Built World : How to Think about Technology and Culture is a great introduction to the field.

Mark Kurlansky has several excellent books about the influence of unusual commodities on world history, Salt: A World History and Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. It also looks like he has a new book about oysters.
posted by rabbitsnake at 4:55 PM on March 11, 2006

For me, most history pales into insignificance when set against ~60,000 years of tribal human occupation of the continent I call home, which in turn pales into insignificance when I go to my favourite swimming hole and stare at an exposed part of an underappreciated local rock formation - the Bruthen mudstone.

This is a huge slab of sedimentary rock whose original sedimentation layers are tilted at very nearly 90 degrees to the horizontal, and it stretches from the coast to roughly 90 kilometres inland.

I like to sit quietly and look at the cliff above the water and try to grasp the amount of time required to deposit a 90 kilometre thick layer of sediment, then tilt a vast chunk of that sideways, then wear that down until the result is only a few hundreds of metres thick.

Alexander the Great doesn't really seem all that great after one of these sessions :)
posted by flabdablet at 6:05 PM on March 11, 2006

With two degrees in the history of science, I'm still a sucker for one-word-title books that try to explain all of history around a single commodity, concept, or invention; Salt and Cod mentioned above, Mauve, Blue, Brick, American Plastic (I highly recommend this one, even if it's mostly more modern than you're interested in), Spice, Gunpowder, Greek Fire, Coal, Lawn, etc.
posted by nonane at 7:05 PM on March 11, 2006

I just learned about the 1741 slave conspiracy trials of New York after hearing an interesting radio interview with the author of this book. An utterly fascinating story that I had somehow missed during my studies.
posted by Biblio at 7:09 PM on March 11, 2006

Shanghaiing.
The Kowloon Walled City.
Voodoo.
Automata.
posted by brundlefly at 8:58 PM on March 11, 2006

I have an interest in the recent history of the United States. I noticed you said that you arent interested inmodern history so much but Ill give some examples anyways, they may suprise you.

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On October 16th, 1975 Indonesia invaded a bordering country named East Timor. "Indonesian rule in East Timor was marked by extreme violence and brutality. It has been claimed that during the invasion and 27-year occupation, 100,000 to 250,000 people were killed in an initial population of about 600,000 at the time of the invasion".

During the 1970s, the US Government sold arms to Indonesia. After the invasion, the US government continued to support Indonesia with the sales of arms to Indonesia. In fact, the US Governemnt decided to sale more arms to Indonesia after the invasion took place. Furthermore, "US officials were aware of the invasion plans nearly a year in advance. They adopted a "policy of silence" and even sought to suppress news and discussions on East Timor, including credible reports of Indonesia's massacres of Timorese civilians". In a private meeting on the subject of East Timor, Henry Kissinger asked, "I'm assuming you're really going to keep your mouth shut on this subject" (the genocide being carried out by Indonesia at the time).. The violence continued in the Clinton years. In fact during the Clinton years (with Clinton's knowledge) the US trained Indonesian death squads.

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another example:

In 2000, Bechtel signed a contract with Hugo Banzer, the former dictator of Bolivia, to privatize the water supply in Bolivia's 3rd-largest city, Cochabamba. The contract was officially awarded to a Bechtel subsidiary named Aguas del Tunari, which had been formed specifically for that purpose. Shortly thereafter, the company tripled the water rates in that city, an action which resulted in protests and rioting among those who could no longer afford clean water. Many people had to withdraw their children from school and stop using doctors because of abnormally high costs for water. Martial law was declared, and Bolivian police killed at least 6 people and injured over 170 protesters. Amidst Bolivia's nationwide economic collapse and growing national unrest over the state of the economy, the Bolivian government was forced to withdraw the water contract. In 2001, Bechtel filed suit the Bolivian government for $25 million in lost profits. The continuing legal battle has attracted attention from anti-globalization and anti-capitalist groups. This topic is explored in the 2003 documentary film The Corporation. In January 2006, Bechtel settled its lawsuit against the Bolivian government for a reported $00.30 (thirty cents) after intense protests and lobbying.
(quoted from wikipedia)
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If you are familiar with the Iran Contra scandal and other similiar scandals, you will know that the CIA helped to sell billions (Im nearly positive it is billions) of dollars worth of Cocaine and crack in America, to American citizens.

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You said you werent interested in modern history, so this stuff may not be up your alley. But if it interests you at all, feel more than free to contact me at jokingclown (at) gmail (dot) com. Im more than willing to provide you with sources for what I wrote, further reading material online, and book lists on any of those subjects.
posted by JokingClown at 2:49 AM on March 12, 2006

JokingClown reminds me that the paranoid style in American politics and conspiracy theories are always fascinating. How do people actually come to seriously believe that the CIA sold billions of dollars of cocaine in America?

Another one of his anecdotes also reminds me that there are other social sciences that permit passion beyond history. Books on economics and public policy can be extraordinary, both for the stories they tell, and for the counterintuitive lessons they give, such as why Bolivia is now worse off because they cancelled the Bechtel contract. "The Undercover Economist," or Tyler Cowen on development economics, or "Free to Choose," are all persuasive, accessible books; "Freakonomics" is flawed, but a quick and popular and entertaining read. Heck, one can just scroll through Tyler Cowen's blog and find plenty of other ideas.

Back to the history, I've found late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century American politics tremendously interesting. Astouding historical personalities, complete with human flaws, engaging in an unprecedented adventure and improvising from scratch, and creating a nation that's still going strong. It's also useful perspective to see what politics were like in the 1790s when people complain about things being too partisan and negative now. Or take someone like John Adams, who was a Revolutionary hero, helped develop the Constitution, was both a President and the father of a President, and was lovingly married to perhaps the leading female intellectual of his generation--and still went to his deathbed tortured by the (correct) thought that he'd be found wanting in history compared to his contemporary Thomas Jefferson. Plenty of modern biographies and books on the subject, or one can pick up some Richard Hofstadter and go from there.

I second the recommendation over the Peloponnesian wars. I don't have a good recommendation for the first book on the subject, but the second should be Victor Davis Hanson's recent work, "A War Like No Other."
posted by commander_cool at 7:32 AM on March 12, 2006

Well the nice thing about getting interested in the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars is that you can read Herodotus' and Thucydides' histories in translation - these are the first critical documentary historians, who name and evaluate their sources. But Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War does a great job of putting Thucydides work itself in context - it's a distillation of his colossal four-volume scholarly series, and you can sense the depth of his background knowlege on just about each page.
posted by nicwolff at 8:49 AM on March 12, 2006

I dont want to turn this interesting thread into a big arguement, but the CIA being closely involved with selling drugs is no conspiracy theory.

The National Security Archive has some interesting documents on the subject.
posted by JokingClown at 9:29 AM on March 12, 2006

Thanks all for your answers so far, there's some great stuff here. JokingClown, some fascinating topics there, which hopefully might inspire someone else to pick up on them - I'm looking for a diversion from the C20th because things like the invasion of East Timor, and the complicity of the West in mass murder get depressing in too great a quantity - the news now is bad enough. But thanks for taking the time to outline them in depth, iut's something I might come back to.

Nicwolff, and commander cool, cheers - exactly the sort of thing that I was after. But everyone, thanks, lots to explore.
posted by reynir at 10:17 AM on March 12, 2006

Back to the history, I've found late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century American politics tremendously interesting.

Me too, and I highly recommend the work of Fred Anderson (the historian, not the Chicago tenor player, though he's great too); his Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 is what got me interested in a period that had never grabbed me (it's covered more compactly in his recent The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War), and I'm currently reading his and Andrew Cayton's The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000, which carries his extremely readable approach to history, mixing in biography and the economic/political context, right up to the Gulf War.
posted by languagehat at 11:57 AM on March 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

I don't want to turn this interesting thread into a big argument, either, but that A gave money to X and B gave $100,000 to X doesn't mean that A was supporting B, much less that A was using B to support X. Recall that the allegation was the CIA "sold billions of dollars of cocaine and crack," and that just isn't so.
posted by commander_cool at 8:47 PM on March 12, 2006

reynir, there are (of course) endless topics to study.

I've studied and am interested in a wide array of history, but one of the most interesting to me is the time between the Old and New Testaments, the Helenization of the Jewish world, the dominance of the Romans, the wars and skirmishes that ensued, the rise of the first century Christian church, up through the destruction of the Temple of Herod in the early fall of 70 AD and a little ways beyond. Basically from 432 BC - 100 AD, or thereabouts. I first got into it as a tangent from some Bible studies -- and it all has enormous theological consequences -- but it turned out to be an incredibly fascinating historical study. Because of the attention paid to that era by people in so many disciplines for so many reasons, there is a wealth of documents, artifacts, histories, etc. that are available. Josephus is good stuff, as is Tacitus. I just started re-reading Before Jerusalem Fell by Ken Gentry. Great stuff. Last year's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, by Anne Rice is a historical novel of Jesus as a boy. While I think she puts Jesus' birth a little early, it's a fascinating picture of the time (her author's notes are compelling).

More interesting history: the Mafia, the US Civil War, the life and speaches of Winston Churchill, the Reformation, the life and writings of Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine), the Roman Empire, the history of codes and cryptography, the life and work of Thomas Edison, ditto Nikola Tesla and Blaise Pascal, the history and art of the katana, the history of the Japanese Language.
posted by mumeishi at 8:54 PM on March 12, 2006

For a twist from the traditional, you could ready anything by James Burke. Most history is presented in a linear, non-associated format: WWII occurred in the 40's, the Cold War started when that finished. But, of course, that's not how history works.

One event precipitates another and the two (or more) are hopelessly joined. So, rather than telling the story of one time or one place, Burke relates how one obscure technological development lead to the next, and follows the successive, and sometimes recursive, trail until arriving at something taken for granted today.

How you view history will change. Textbooks will never be sufficient again. It will change how you think.

Especially recommended: Connections by James Burke
posted by kc0dxh at 9:51 AM on March 13, 2006

Late to the party, but two excellent history books outside of my normal stomping grounds that left me drooling for more and that taught me to care about stuff I'd never cared about before are Alexandria Ritchie's _Faust's Metropolis_ on Berlin (and all of Central Europe, really) and John Julius Norwich's 3 volume _History of the Byzantine Empire_ (he also did a one volume redaction, which was so good, I stopped reading, and ordered the 3 volume set from the library). Both balance detail and context beautifully, are seldom boring and are frequently entertaining as can be.
posted by QIbHom at 2:26 PM on March 18, 2006 [1 favorite]