September 27, 2024 • 26 mins
Holly and Tracy discuss the use of the term Anglo-Saxon and its problems. Tracy discusses the way the perception of the word communism has shifted since the 19th century.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holy Fry.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm tray cy V Wilson. So we talked about
brunnen Burgh this week, which is full of mystery. Yep,
I have, I have, I have some thoughts, Okay. One
was an interesting thing that came up while I was
looking at the website for Rural Archaeology, which was a
quote that reads, the English Battlefield Register only has forty
(00:38):
seven battles that are recognized and whose locations are accepted.
Given the length of history of that place, where there
are hundreds of battles, that is a very tiny number.
And it just got me thinking about loss of information,
because there were a lot of things that I read
(00:59):
that were like, people forgot all about this battle, and
I'm like, well they didn't, because there are people today
that make their entire careers studying it. Yeah, it may
not have been as well known, but parts of it
certainly were lost. And it got me to thinking about
the way that in cultures where history has largely been
(01:19):
shared through oral traditions, there is always that thing of like,
of course we know where the Great Battle happened, it
was right over there, and then we'll tell the next generation,
and then they'll tell the next generation. But that eventually
breaks down. It doesn't take into account like the way
the world might change going forward, and so I just
find that super interesting. You know. It's not as though
(01:42):
I feel like in the US we have a different
vibe on the whole thing, because by the time the
US was founded, we had all of this European history
behind us, where we were like mark those battlefields people. Yeah,
so there has been kind of a quicker mood, yeah,
(02:03):
to put up historical markers in places like that, whereas
all over Europe there are places that a lot of
important stuff happened where it's.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Like I think this is the place, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
There's also an element to that that is like it's
one of those things that's culturally and socially constructed in
a way that people might not even think about because
like it seems obvious right that like we would mark
where the side of the battle was, but like the
idea that that's something that needs to be marked and commemorated,
(02:36):
like that comes from a specific culture and a specific mindset,
and not every culture necessarily works that way, sort of
like the idea that historic buildings should be preserved that
comes out of a specific cultural context. Not every culture
thinks that's what needs to happen, right. I also wanted
(02:58):
to talk a little bit about Michael Livingston because his
work is really interesting and a lot of people really
revere him and reading his books.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I was like, Oh, I see why. If you are at.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
All interested in any of this, I highly recommend checking
out his work. One of the things that came up
in several instances where I was reading kind of assessments
by English historians is like, well, you know, Michael Livingston
is from the US, but he still seems to know
what he's talking about, which is kind of funny in
(03:29):
and of itself. But the intro in particular for Never
Greater Slaughter that he wrote, which really dives into all
of this, had some really interesting things where he talks
about the ways that writing about and talking about history
have changed over the years, Like he just seems to
(03:51):
have a very broad minded understanding and grasp of the
way things have shifted.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
That I really like.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
He talks about how in some circles Anglo Saxon is
kind of perceived as not cool anymore as a term
because in a lot of cases it's been co opted
as people who are you know, weaponizing racial identity. Yeah,
it's been co opted by white supremacy things, right, And
(04:20):
he's like, but you know, in some cases, right, I
still want to use the term Anglo Saxon because in
a lot of cases it helps avoid confusion. Right, Yeah,
we are talking about the Anglo Saxon chronicle. There's not
really a way to rename it that, right, everyone's going
to get at the same time. And he talks about
a lot of things like that with that kind of thoughtfulness,
which I really liked. Yeah, the terminology of Anglo Saxon
(04:44):
was something that I was thinking about as I was
reading the outline after you sent it over, Like for
exactly that reason. There's an idea of like Anglo Saxon
as sort of a quint essentially white and also quint
essentially British identity that like a lot of then like
(05:05):
eighteenth and nineteenth century writers kind of glommed onto.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And it number one.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
As as we said in the episode, like the term
Anglo Saxon is kind of an umbrella term that encompass,
encompasses a lot of different mostly Germanic peoples, but also
these were Germanic peoples. They were immigrants to Britain. They
were not Britain's like native population. They came from somewhere else.
(05:34):
And so when I'm working on like, for example, Unearthed
episodes and we talk about some kind of find, a
lot of times I will just say Early English instead
of Anglo Saxon. But in that context, Early English still
makes sense to people in a context where the key
source that we're talking about is the Anglo Saxon chronicle
(05:56):
that has like a slightly different right. I mean, if
you were to time travel back to nine thirty seven
and be like, hey, are you the Anglo Saxons, they'd
be like, we don't know what you're talking about. Yeah,
Like it's a term that came after all of this. Yes,
there were Saxons in Britain and there were also Saxons
in what's now Germany, and the term Anglo Saxon was
(06:20):
initially kind of to differentiate between those two different groups,
but then it also expanded to incorporate all of these
other Germanic peoples who were not Saxons but were part
of what became this like cultural group of early England.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The other funny thing that I wanted to note in
Livingston's writing is the way that he talks about dates,
because he mentions that, you know, the Anno Dominie BCAD
thing is inherently religious, and so a lot of historians
don't do that. We don't on our show, for example.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Although he feels like.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It actually doesn't really remove the religious axis for what
he says, it just kind of hides it. So he
tends to go in BC and AD. But he has
this great quote about it that tickled me so much
last night as I was putting like the finishes on
this that I started laughing, just cackling to myself and
I hope the neighbors didn't hear. And he writes, quote,
if this offense, I am sorry, but I also offer
(07:24):
up the solace that the Christian monks who devised the
system so completely botched their calculations that it isn't at
all accurate to what they were trying to achieve. And
I was like, I think, I love you. If that
kind of historian sounds fun to you, highly recommend his books.
I really really enjoyed them as this research was going
(07:45):
on Yeah, it's been a super long time since we've
like talked specifically about using BCE and CE on our show.
Like I think the last time we specifically said something
about that was in a Listener Male episode from like
a decade ago. But like, it is an imperfect system,
(08:06):
it's still based on the same ideas that BC and
AD are based on in terms of like when the
calendar shifts. But I don't know, it's just we have
the imperfect systems to work within.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Uh, and it seems like a slightly more inclusive choice
within our imperfect choices.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Oh, agreed, Agreed. I mean, I don't.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Here's the thing, it is one of those things that
still gets kind of bickered about, as he pointed out,
and I don't. I My take is kind of that
I don't slight any way a historian wants to do
it as long as they are doing it thoughtfully. Like
in his case, he's like, I'm doing this because it
is easier for readers to understand, and I'm like, I
(08:50):
get that, and he understands the context of why other
people don't. And then he he's like, in my head,
it's all kind of meaningless because they screwed the whole
problem up anyway, which I kind of love, so, like,
you know, whichever works anyway. I quite enjoyed his work
a lot. It made me think about all of the
(09:11):
things that happen every day that we aren't annotating. But
there's really no way to annotate everything.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Although this was a.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Huge, huge, I think that's part of it too. It
was such a huge battle at the time, there was
so much bloodshed. It was considered the biggest battle that
had ever been fought. Everyone's like, no, one's gonna forget
this ever, We'll know all the details forever because look,
it's huge, which isn't the way the world works. We
forget all the stuff. We're still trying to figure out
(09:40):
stuff about, you know, ancient Egypt, and it's a mystery.
So although we do know a lot more than we
used to, but still there's so many evidences of like
how everyone goes. Of course, everyone's going to know about
this forever, no, which I find an odd sort of
solace in.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
But yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
One of our episodes this week was on Ettian Cabet
and his effort to build a communist utopia. I meant
to say this in the episode and forgot just because
I think the term communist has some specific connotations in
like today's world.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yes, some of which is going to come up on
an upcoming episode.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, bitch, this was very early in the history of communism,
like the idea of having an equal distribution of wealth
and everyone cooperating. That is an old idea that's been
around for a long time. Yes, this is the root
the root word commune, right, not necessarily what all of
(10:51):
the imagery we have in our heads about what it is,
having grown up in the twentieth century. So his writing
about these ideas predated things like Karl Marx predated the
communist Manifesto, well, predated the first establishment of like the
socialist republics that eventually became the USSR, like well before
(11:15):
all of that, but based on so, you know, similar
ideas to not having completely unequal wealth distribution, everyone contributing,
you know, each to their own abilities and getting things
according to their own needs, that kind of stuff. I
described this in very brief passing in the Narcisse Montreal
(11:40):
episode as a failed utopian experiment. What they try to
do in Texas absolutely a failure.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
That went poorly. Yes, that went very badly.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I'm less I am less apt to describe the entire
rest of the project as a failure. They did have
a lot of siss really, a lot of it was
the same schism over and over again. But they did
manage to keep one community going for forty six years,
which is a long time.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It is.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And there have of course been uh you know, utopian
or communal living efforts by religious orders that have lasted much, much,
much longer than that, But in terms of ones that
like did not have that religious element, this is the
longest lasting.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
One that we know of.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So. Yeah, one of the things that I sent a
message to you about when I was working on this
was how complicated the history of France is. Specifically during
the time that Ettiankabe was living in France. There is
just so much Oh yeah, it's busy, so much revolution
and counter revolution and like many many things going on
(12:59):
in a not very long span of time. And every
time I got to another one, I was like, and
then there was another revolution that we need to explain
at least briefly. Right, Yeah, it's you know, French history is.
I love it, but I find I have to take
it in bites to parse it out. Like it's so
hard to look at the totality of French history and
(13:21):
be like, wait, what, there's no single through line for
a big chunk of it. There are like a lot
of things going on at the same time. Yeah, which
is it makes it very interesting, but it also makes
it sometimes hard to like hone in on one part
of it without having to like connect all the disparate
threads that are simultaneously going on. I think we've talked
(13:44):
about this before. I'm obsessed with the concept of utopian communities.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Oh sure, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I mean I can trace it back to the moment
I first heard that they were a thing, which was
when I was in high school and my English teacher,
mister Holly shout out to mister Holly had mentioned that
he thought I would find the brook Farm community really interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, and he was right.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
And we've talked about it here on the show because
I'm so interested in it. But I really it's like I, I,
like many of us, have that idea of like, oh,
wouldn't it be great to go and form like a
little commune with my friends, But I know realistically it
would never work.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, We've talked about several of them. A lot of
the ones that get brought up in the same context
as Akari because a lot of them were all happening
in the nineteenth century in the United States, Like there
are several and a lot of them we've done episodes
on because we've done Brook Farm, We've done why is
(14:52):
suddenly the name escaping me of New Harmony? There was
New Harmony which was you know, we had that recently
as the Saturd Classic before this fruit Lands, which is
the one that the Alcots were involved with, And a
lot of them have a pretty similar story in terms
of like people who have a really idealistic sense of
(15:12):
what they want to accomplish coming together to try to
do something, not necessarily being prepared for the work that
is going to be involved, to really sustain themselves. And
then a lot of times there's just a lot of
people getting sick and dying and moving away. And there
was some of that, especially in Texas. Texas went very
badly for the Okarians, but like later on, there was
(15:36):
a lot more of like really hard work trying to
make things go, Ideological schisms being seeming to be more
of an issue than illnesses and unpreparedness, which is the
case in some of the others. Yeah, yeah, it makes
me I mean I get very quickly into the bigger
(15:58):
question of like, is it really realistic for anything like
this to ever work?
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah? I don't think maybe it is.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I mean, just the right the basic concept, even if
it's a small number of people, Over time, people are
gonna want different things, even if you're all on the
same page when the whole thing starts, people change and
grow and evolve, and what they wanted when they all
agreed to it may not be what they want five
(16:28):
years down the road or longer, and the people that
they trusted to be put in charge may also change
and shift and no longer represent you know, what they
thought they were signing on to you, Like, I just
I don't know how they ever work. They're no is
there a story of any of these ever really working
(16:48):
long term? Like long long term, Well that's been lasted
for forty six years. Long long term, long long term,
at least from my knowledge. The longest term gets into
communities that have a religious underpinning, right, Like they're Quaker
communities that you know, have gone on the long time.
(17:09):
There are still two surviving Shakers as of right like
a week ago, and I've thread I don't remember which
publication this was in, maybe the New York Times. Just
read a really fascinating article that was like a long
form look at the last two surviving Shakers and how
(17:30):
they are still upholding the ideals that brought them into
becoming Shakers. But they also have a support of people
who are more like community supporters and friends. Right, who
are you know, keeping this this community of two basically
still functioning that It's like there are some I would
(17:53):
say monastic orders that have been around for centuries, but
then that gets into having a little bit of big
yeah and having the wider support of a religious community
that's not taking monastic valve. I laugh only because I immediately
thought of chartreuse and the musks that make chartreuse sure,
(18:15):
and I'm like, they're very important. We need to keep
them going forever because chartreuse is one of my favorite liqueurs.
There are two things that are very silly pop culture
things that this story in particular makes me think of.
(18:37):
One was when we were discussing the idea of you know,
because everybody's doing the work, the work is easy and
it doesn't take much time, and I was like, well,
that's the Jetsons, but that's because machines were doing it.
But I just always remember laughing at the Jetsons when
George was.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Like, Oh, this three hour day is killing me.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And the other thing is that as we were talking
about Navoo, I was like, did George Lucas get the
name of Naboo from this, because that's kind of an idealistic,
art driven culture. Yeah, I have no idea, but I
had the same question in my head. Two things kind
of connected to that. Some of the articles that were
(19:22):
part of the research talked about businesses that still exist
today that were established by Akarians, generally like after the
community had dissolved or after they had left the community.
One is Baxter Winery in Navu, and that was established
after the Navu community was disbanded. The Akarians really had
(19:43):
a big influence on wine making and vineyards in that
part of the United States. Baxter Winery is the oldest
winery in Illinois. The other one, though I don't think,
was actually connected directly to the Akarians, but kind of
comes up in articles, and that is Dayton and Son's
(20:05):
b Supplies, which was founded by the Daydent family, and
that connection to the Akarians is kind of tenuous. Like
Charles Dayton did immigrate to the United States from France
in eighteen sixty three, settled south of Navu on the
Mississippi River, probably had some connections to the community because
communities are interconnected. His son later married somebody whose family
(20:30):
had been part of the Akarian community at Navu, but
their marriage was like, well after the community disbanded, so it's.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Like they're only kind of yeah, only kind of.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
And I found one thing that had been written by
Camille that was saying, like, Hey, I keep seeing this
idea that my father was one of the Akarians, and
I think you all are just confused because I married
a former Karian, like my dad did not really have
much to do with that. So I took that out
of the outline because I was like, this seems a little, uh,
(21:07):
a little more tenuous than it really makes sense to
have the other is I just I kind of wanted
to acknowledge that we've gotten some requests over the years
to do some kind of an episode about the founding
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
So I just want to say broadly that like I
don't think it's in our lane to do episodes about
the establishment of a religion that people practice today.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Right, Like, there's there, this is.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
A perfect example of how it comes up in it,
and you kind of got a touch on it. But
right it starts to feel like we're representing people that
we are not connected to and don't have context for
in a deeper sense, right, And I think people specifically,
there are two varieties of email of people who are
asking for an episode on the establishment of the church,
(21:58):
and one is people who are members of the church
and like want that perspective on it, and the other
is people who want us to do an episode debunking it.
And like, neither of those requests would likely be satisfied
with any of any episode that we could do on
the subject. But I also like there is a lot
(22:22):
involved in religion and in people's sincerely held religious beliefs
that is not easily encapsulated in a history podcast where
we are trying to take a thoughtful, multiple considered from
multiple directions to get things. And so we have plenty
(22:43):
of episodes that are about either spiritual movements or religious
movements that don't really exist in that way anymore. I
just I find it weird for our show, in particular,
to try to do an episode discussing the creation of
a religion that people are observing and being members of today,
(23:04):
Like that just is weird.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah, Well, the thing is, there's almost no way.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
For it to land in a way that isn't perceived
as us commenting on it in a positive or negative right, which,
like is one of the reasons we don't generally talk
about people that are still alive accepting kind of specific circumstances, right,
nobody needs our take on their existence or their belief system. Like,
(23:33):
we're just trying to present the information as best we can,
obviously acknowledging that there's inherently going to be biased no
matter what.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
You know, based on a number of factors. But yeah,
it just it.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Then becomes a thing of like, I don't want anybody
to think I am criticizing their way of life if
it's you know, benign and not hurting anybody. I don't
want anybody also to think that I'm endorsing anybody's way
of life that I'm not a part of in any
way and don't have that information. It's just it's too
it's too tricky. Yeah, yeah, so I could just I
(24:09):
could imagine the flood of emails following the couple of mentions.
And while there are times that we have, you know,
talked about an event in history that is connected to
a particular group, like, that's a little bit of a
different thing from do an episode about the foundation of
this group, Right, we can do that with the Koreans
(24:30):
because they're not around anymore. And also it was explicitly
not a religious commutery, right. Anyway, did you have anything
else that you were itching to talk about with this episode?
I know you said that you had lots of thoughts,
you know, I just I want I want a commune
of nerdery where we play video games and watch Star
(24:51):
Wars stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
That's all us. Yeah, yeah, great.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
When I was in my early twenties, I was like,
are there secular monastic community? I I'll tell you what
always hangs me up and makes me know that I
could not be part of any community like this. I
want stuff. Oh, I am a stuff aholic. I would
(25:14):
not be cool with No. You can't have your own thing,
you don't have individual property like I am such a
stuff aholic that even recently when I finally got around
to watching Dune. I was like, do these people have toys?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Do they have?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
What are they? It's not germane to the story at all,
but that's what my brain thinks.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Of, so sure, sure. So anyway, where's where's their expressover? She?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
I think had I done such a thing, this would
have it would have been much earlier in my life,
before I acquired so much stuff and so many habits. Anyway,
if you'd like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast, we're at History Podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com, and you can find us on various social
(26:04):
media at missing History. Whatever's happening on your weekend, you know,
I hope it's great. If you're going to take a
little trip out to a communal, a former communal or
even current communal living situation that's now some kind of
a museum or whatever, I hope that's great. If you
are in such a thing yourself, I hope that's great. Basically,
I hope everything's great. We'll be back with a Saturday
(26:26):
classic tomorrow and something brand new on Monday. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holy Fry.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm tray cy V Wilson. So we talked about
brunnen Burgh this week, which is full of mystery. Yep,
I have, I have, I have some thoughts, Okay. One
was an interesting thing that came up while I was
looking at the website for Rural Archaeology, which was a
quote that reads, the English Battlefield Register only has forty
(00:38):
seven battles that are recognized and whose locations are accepted.
Given the length of history of that place, where there
are hundreds of battles, that is a very tiny number.
And it just got me thinking about loss of information,
because there were a lot of things that I read
(00:59):
that were like, people forgot all about this battle, and
I'm like, well they didn't, because there are people today
that make their entire careers studying it. Yeah, it may
not have been as well known, but parts of it
certainly were lost. And it got me to thinking about
the way that in cultures where history has largely been
(01:19):
shared through oral traditions, there is always that thing of like,
of course we know where the Great Battle happened, it
was right over there, and then we'll tell the next generation,
and then they'll tell the next generation. But that eventually
breaks down. It doesn't take into account like the way
the world might change going forward, and so I just
find that super interesting. You know. It's not as though
(01:42):
I feel like in the US we have a different
vibe on the whole thing, because by the time the
US was founded, we had all of this European history
behind us, where we were like mark those battlefields people. Yeah,
so there has been kind of a quicker mood, yeah,
(02:03):
to put up historical markers in places like that, whereas
all over Europe there are places that a lot of
important stuff happened where it's.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Like I think this is the place, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
There's also an element to that that is like it's
one of those things that's culturally and socially constructed in
a way that people might not even think about because
like it seems obvious right that like we would mark
where the side of the battle was, but like the
idea that that's something that needs to be marked and commemorated,
(02:36):
like that comes from a specific culture and a specific mindset,
and not every culture necessarily works that way, sort of
like the idea that historic buildings should be preserved that
comes out of a specific cultural context. Not every culture
thinks that's what needs to happen, right. I also wanted
(02:58):
to talk a little bit about Michael Livingston because his
work is really interesting and a lot of people really
revere him and reading his books.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I was like, Oh, I see why. If you are at.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
All interested in any of this, I highly recommend checking
out his work. One of the things that came up
in several instances where I was reading kind of assessments
by English historians is like, well, you know, Michael Livingston
is from the US, but he still seems to know
what he's talking about, which is kind of funny in
(03:29):
and of itself. But the intro in particular for Never
Greater Slaughter that he wrote, which really dives into all
of this, had some really interesting things where he talks
about the ways that writing about and talking about history
have changed over the years, Like he just seems to
(03:51):
have a very broad minded understanding and grasp of the
way things have shifted.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
That I really like.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
He talks about how in some circles Anglo Saxon is
kind of perceived as not cool anymore as a term
because in a lot of cases it's been co opted
as people who are you know, weaponizing racial identity. Yeah,
it's been co opted by white supremacy things, right, And
(04:20):
he's like, but you know, in some cases, right, I
still want to use the term Anglo Saxon because in
a lot of cases it helps avoid confusion. Right, Yeah,
we are talking about the Anglo Saxon chronicle. There's not
really a way to rename it that, right, everyone's going
to get at the same time. And he talks about
a lot of things like that with that kind of thoughtfulness,
which I really liked. Yeah, the terminology of Anglo Saxon
(04:44):
was something that I was thinking about as I was
reading the outline after you sent it over, Like for
exactly that reason. There's an idea of like Anglo Saxon
as sort of a quint essentially white and also quint
essentially British identity that like a lot of then like
(05:05):
eighteenth and nineteenth century writers kind of glommed onto.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And it number one.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
As as we said in the episode, like the term
Anglo Saxon is kind of an umbrella term that encompass,
encompasses a lot of different mostly Germanic peoples, but also
these were Germanic peoples. They were immigrants to Britain. They
were not Britain's like native population. They came from somewhere else.
(05:34):
And so when I'm working on like, for example, Unearthed
episodes and we talk about some kind of find, a
lot of times I will just say Early English instead
of Anglo Saxon. But in that context, Early English still
makes sense to people in a context where the key
source that we're talking about is the Anglo Saxon chronicle
(05:56):
that has like a slightly different right. I mean, if
you were to time travel back to nine thirty seven
and be like, hey, are you the Anglo Saxons, they'd
be like, we don't know what you're talking about. Yeah,
Like it's a term that came after all of this. Yes,
there were Saxons in Britain and there were also Saxons
in what's now Germany, and the term Anglo Saxon was
(06:20):
initially kind of to differentiate between those two different groups,
but then it also expanded to incorporate all of these
other Germanic peoples who were not Saxons but were part
of what became this like cultural group of early England.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The other funny thing that I wanted to note in
Livingston's writing is the way that he talks about dates,
because he mentions that, you know, the Anno Dominie BCAD
thing is inherently religious, and so a lot of historians
don't do that. We don't on our show, for example.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Although he feels like.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It actually doesn't really remove the religious axis for what
he says, it just kind of hides it. So he
tends to go in BC and AD. But he has
this great quote about it that tickled me so much
last night as I was putting like the finishes on
this that I started laughing, just cackling to myself and
I hope the neighbors didn't hear. And he writes, quote,
if this offense, I am sorry, but I also offer
(07:24):
up the solace that the Christian monks who devised the
system so completely botched their calculations that it isn't at
all accurate to what they were trying to achieve. And
I was like, I think, I love you. If that
kind of historian sounds fun to you, highly recommend his books.
I really really enjoyed them as this research was going
(07:45):
on Yeah, it's been a super long time since we've
like talked specifically about using BCE and CE on our show.
Like I think the last time we specifically said something
about that was in a Listener Male episode from like
a decade ago. But like, it is an imperfect system,
(08:06):
it's still based on the same ideas that BC and
AD are based on in terms of like when the
calendar shifts. But I don't know, it's just we have
the imperfect systems to work within.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Uh, and it seems like a slightly more inclusive choice
within our imperfect choices.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Oh, agreed, Agreed. I mean, I don't.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Here's the thing, it is one of those things that
still gets kind of bickered about, as he pointed out,
and I don't. I My take is kind of that
I don't slight any way a historian wants to do
it as long as they are doing it thoughtfully. Like
in his case, he's like, I'm doing this because it
is easier for readers to understand, and I'm like, I
(08:50):
get that, and he understands the context of why other
people don't. And then he he's like, in my head,
it's all kind of meaningless because they screwed the whole
problem up anyway, which I kind of love, so, like,
you know, whichever works anyway. I quite enjoyed his work
a lot. It made me think about all of the
(09:11):
things that happen every day that we aren't annotating. But
there's really no way to annotate everything.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Although this was a.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Huge, huge, I think that's part of it too. It
was such a huge battle at the time, there was
so much bloodshed. It was considered the biggest battle that
had ever been fought. Everyone's like, no, one's gonna forget
this ever, We'll know all the details forever because look,
it's huge, which isn't the way the world works. We
forget all the stuff. We're still trying to figure out
(09:40):
stuff about, you know, ancient Egypt, and it's a mystery.
So although we do know a lot more than we
used to, but still there's so many evidences of like
how everyone goes. Of course, everyone's going to know about
this forever, no, which I find an odd sort of
solace in.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
But yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
One of our episodes this week was on Ettian Cabet
and his effort to build a communist utopia. I meant
to say this in the episode and forgot just because
I think the term communist has some specific connotations in
like today's world.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yes, some of which is going to come up on
an upcoming episode.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, bitch, this was very early in the history of communism,
like the idea of having an equal distribution of wealth
and everyone cooperating. That is an old idea that's been
around for a long time. Yes, this is the root
the root word commune, right, not necessarily what all of
(10:51):
the imagery we have in our heads about what it is,
having grown up in the twentieth century. So his writing
about these ideas predated things like Karl Marx predated the
communist Manifesto, well, predated the first establishment of like the
socialist republics that eventually became the USSR, like well before
(11:15):
all of that, but based on so, you know, similar
ideas to not having completely unequal wealth distribution, everyone contributing,
you know, each to their own abilities and getting things
according to their own needs, that kind of stuff. I
described this in very brief passing in the Narcisse Montreal
(11:40):
episode as a failed utopian experiment. What they try to
do in Texas absolutely a failure.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
That went poorly. Yes, that went very badly.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I'm less I am less apt to describe the entire
rest of the project as a failure. They did have
a lot of siss really, a lot of it was
the same schism over and over again. But they did
manage to keep one community going for forty six years,
which is a long time.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It is.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
And there have of course been uh you know, utopian
or communal living efforts by religious orders that have lasted much, much,
much longer than that, But in terms of ones that
like did not have that religious element, this is the
longest lasting.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
One that we know of.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So. Yeah, one of the things that I sent a
message to you about when I was working on this
was how complicated the history of France is. Specifically during
the time that Ettiankabe was living in France. There is
just so much Oh yeah, it's busy, so much revolution
and counter revolution and like many many things going on
(12:59):
in a not very long span of time. And every
time I got to another one, I was like, and
then there was another revolution that we need to explain
at least briefly. Right, Yeah, it's you know, French history is.
I love it, but I find I have to take
it in bites to parse it out. Like it's so
hard to look at the totality of French history and
(13:21):
be like, wait, what, there's no single through line for
a big chunk of it. There are like a lot
of things going on at the same time. Yeah, which
is it makes it very interesting, but it also makes
it sometimes hard to like hone in on one part
of it without having to like connect all the disparate
threads that are simultaneously going on. I think we've talked
(13:44):
about this before. I'm obsessed with the concept of utopian communities.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Oh sure, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I mean I can trace it back to the moment
I first heard that they were a thing, which was
when I was in high school and my English teacher,
mister Holly shout out to mister Holly had mentioned that
he thought I would find the brook Farm community really interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, and he was right.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
And we've talked about it here on the show because
I'm so interested in it. But I really it's like I, I,
like many of us, have that idea of like, oh,
wouldn't it be great to go and form like a
little commune with my friends, But I know realistically it
would never work.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, We've talked about several of them. A lot of
the ones that get brought up in the same context
as Akari because a lot of them were all happening
in the nineteenth century in the United States, Like there
are several and a lot of them we've done episodes
on because we've done Brook Farm, We've done why is
(14:52):
suddenly the name escaping me of New Harmony? There was
New Harmony which was you know, we had that recently
as the Saturd Classic before this fruit Lands, which is
the one that the Alcots were involved with, And a
lot of them have a pretty similar story in terms
of like people who have a really idealistic sense of
(15:12):
what they want to accomplish coming together to try to
do something, not necessarily being prepared for the work that
is going to be involved, to really sustain themselves. And
then a lot of times there's just a lot of
people getting sick and dying and moving away. And there
was some of that, especially in Texas. Texas went very
badly for the Okarians, but like later on, there was
(15:36):
a lot more of like really hard work trying to
make things go, Ideological schisms being seeming to be more
of an issue than illnesses and unpreparedness, which is the
case in some of the others. Yeah, yeah, it makes
me I mean I get very quickly into the bigger
(15:58):
question of like, is it really realistic for anything like
this to ever work?
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah? I don't think maybe it is.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I mean, just the right the basic concept, even if
it's a small number of people, Over time, people are
gonna want different things, even if you're all on the
same page when the whole thing starts, people change and
grow and evolve, and what they wanted when they all
agreed to it may not be what they want five
(16:28):
years down the road or longer, and the people that
they trusted to be put in charge may also change
and shift and no longer represent you know, what they
thought they were signing on to you, Like, I just
I don't know how they ever work. They're no is
there a story of any of these ever really working
(16:48):
long term? Like long long term, Well that's been lasted
for forty six years. Long long term, long long term,
at least from my knowledge. The longest term gets into
communities that have a religious underpinning, right, Like they're Quaker
communities that you know, have gone on the long time.
(17:09):
There are still two surviving Shakers as of right like
a week ago, and I've thread I don't remember which
publication this was in, maybe the New York Times. Just
read a really fascinating article that was like a long
form look at the last two surviving Shakers and how
(17:30):
they are still upholding the ideals that brought them into
becoming Shakers. But they also have a support of people
who are more like community supporters and friends. Right, who
are you know, keeping this this community of two basically
still functioning that It's like there are some I would
(17:53):
say monastic orders that have been around for centuries, but
then that gets into having a little bit of big
yeah and having the wider support of a religious community
that's not taking monastic valve. I laugh only because I immediately
thought of chartreuse and the musks that make chartreuse sure,
(18:15):
and I'm like, they're very important. We need to keep
them going forever because chartreuse is one of my favorite liqueurs.
There are two things that are very silly pop culture
things that this story in particular makes me think of.
(18:37):
One was when we were discussing the idea of you know,
because everybody's doing the work, the work is easy and
it doesn't take much time, and I was like, well,
that's the Jetsons, but that's because machines were doing it.
But I just always remember laughing at the Jetsons when
George was.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Like, Oh, this three hour day is killing me.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And the other thing is that as we were talking
about Navoo, I was like, did George Lucas get the
name of Naboo from this, because that's kind of an idealistic,
art driven culture. Yeah, I have no idea, but I
had the same question in my head. Two things kind
of connected to that. Some of the articles that were
(19:22):
part of the research talked about businesses that still exist
today that were established by Akarians, generally like after the
community had dissolved or after they had left the community.
One is Baxter Winery in Navu, and that was established
after the Navu community was disbanded. The Akarians really had
(19:43):
a big influence on wine making and vineyards in that
part of the United States. Baxter Winery is the oldest
winery in Illinois. The other one, though I don't think,
was actually connected directly to the Akarians, but kind of
comes up in articles, and that is Dayton and Son's
(20:05):
b Supplies, which was founded by the Daydent family, and
that connection to the Akarians is kind of tenuous. Like
Charles Dayton did immigrate to the United States from France
in eighteen sixty three, settled south of Navu on the
Mississippi River, probably had some connections to the community because
communities are interconnected. His son later married somebody whose family
(20:30):
had been part of the Akarian community at Navu, but
their marriage was like, well after the community disbanded, so it's.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Like they're only kind of yeah, only kind of.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
And I found one thing that had been written by
Camille that was saying, like, Hey, I keep seeing this
idea that my father was one of the Akarians, and
I think you all are just confused because I married
a former Karian, like my dad did not really have
much to do with that. So I took that out
of the outline because I was like, this seems a little, uh,
(21:07):
a little more tenuous than it really makes sense to
have the other is I just I kind of wanted
to acknowledge that we've gotten some requests over the years
to do some kind of an episode about the founding
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
So I just want to say broadly that like I
don't think it's in our lane to do episodes about
the establishment of a religion that people practice today.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Right, Like, there's there, this is.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
A perfect example of how it comes up in it,
and you kind of got a touch on it. But
right it starts to feel like we're representing people that
we are not connected to and don't have context for
in a deeper sense, right, And I think people specifically,
there are two varieties of email of people who are
asking for an episode on the establishment of the church,
(21:58):
and one is people who are members of the church
and like want that perspective on it, and the other
is people who want us to do an episode debunking it.
And like, neither of those requests would likely be satisfied
with any of any episode that we could do on
the subject. But I also like there is a lot
(22:22):
involved in religion and in people's sincerely held religious beliefs
that is not easily encapsulated in a history podcast where
we are trying to take a thoughtful, multiple considered from
multiple directions to get things. And so we have plenty
(22:43):
of episodes that are about either spiritual movements or religious
movements that don't really exist in that way anymore. I
just I find it weird for our show, in particular,
to try to do an episode discussing the creation of
a religion that people are observing and being members of today,
(23:04):
Like that just is weird.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah, Well, the thing is, there's almost no way.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
For it to land in a way that isn't perceived
as us commenting on it in a positive or negative right, which,
like is one of the reasons we don't generally talk
about people that are still alive accepting kind of specific circumstances, right,
nobody needs our take on their existence or their belief system. Like,
(23:33):
we're just trying to present the information as best we can,
obviously acknowledging that there's inherently going to be biased no
matter what.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
You know, based on a number of factors. But yeah,
it just it.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Then becomes a thing of like, I don't want anybody
to think I am criticizing their way of life if
it's you know, benign and not hurting anybody. I don't
want anybody also to think that I'm endorsing anybody's way
of life that I'm not a part of in any
way and don't have that information. It's just it's too
it's too tricky. Yeah, yeah, so I could just I
(24:09):
could imagine the flood of emails following the couple of mentions.
And while there are times that we have, you know,
talked about an event in history that is connected to
a particular group, like, that's a little bit of a
different thing from do an episode about the foundation of
this group, Right, we can do that with the Koreans
(24:30):
because they're not around anymore. And also it was explicitly
not a religious commutery, right. Anyway, did you have anything
else that you were itching to talk about with this episode?
I know you said that you had lots of thoughts,
you know, I just I want I want a commune
of nerdery where we play video games and watch Star
(24:51):
Wars stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
That's all us. Yeah, yeah, great.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
When I was in my early twenties, I was like,
are there secular monastic community? I I'll tell you what
always hangs me up and makes me know that I
could not be part of any community like this. I
want stuff. Oh, I am a stuff aholic. I would
(25:14):
not be cool with No. You can't have your own thing,
you don't have individual property like I am such a
stuff aholic that even recently when I finally got around
to watching Dune. I was like, do these people have toys?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Do they have?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
What are they? It's not germane to the story at all,
but that's what my brain thinks.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Of, so sure, sure. So anyway, where's where's their expressover? She?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
I think had I done such a thing, this would
have it would have been much earlier in my life,
before I acquired so much stuff and so many habits. Anyway,
if you'd like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast, we're at History Podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com, and you can find us on various social
(26:04):
media at missing History. Whatever's happening on your weekend, you know,
I hope it's great. If you're going to take a
little trip out to a communal, a former communal or
even current communal living situation that's now some kind of
a museum or whatever, I hope that's great. If you
are in such a thing yourself, I hope that's great. Basically,
I hope everything's great. We'll be back with a Saturday
(26:26):
classic tomorrow and something brand new on Monday. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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