Pick the Next Extra History Series! "Revolutionaries"

It's time for our Extra History poll! Where you get to vote on what our next Extra History Series is about!

These four topics were selected from our "Revolutionaries" Patreon Suggestions and are listed in no particular order below.

Karl Marx

It’s perhaps a tribute to Marx’s influence that, nearly a century and a half after his death, he remains a boogeyman. Yet the story of Marx’s life is surprisingly, almost refreshingly, free of the bloody revolutions often laid at his feet. A university-trained philosopher, economist, and historian rather than a rebel, Marx’s life was still by no means free from drama. A rich kid student radical who at one point fought a duel with a student from an aristocratic military corps, his writing got him banned from both his native Prussia and France by the time he was 30. Yet it was not until his partnership with fellow writer Friedrich Engels on the pamphlet The Communist Manifesto that Marx came to true international prominence. Despite largely sitting out the Revolutions of 1848, Marx and Engels would spend the next decade and a half advocating for revolution, only to not see it happen. And it was in the latter half of Marx’s career, where he turned to historical and economic writing to understand why there had been no great revolution and what conditions could create one, that he gradually penned his far more influential work Das Kapital. Quite an impressive feat, given that he spent much of the decades writing it being harassed by police, feuding with anarchist leftists, living in poverty and working as a journalist on topics such as the American Civil War and abolition of slavery. We’ll also discuss his less-remembered twilight years, where Marx often dismissed and ridiculed people who called themselves Marxists, but who he claimed didn’t understand his ideas. While this series will deal with Marx’s writing, it will largely focus on the life of the man himself, as well as his complicated legacy, the way history has often misremembered him and why he had such a deep impact on Russia.

Sitting Bull

Born in 1831 in what the United States called the Dakota Territory, there was little sign at first that the boy who was named “Slow” due to his careful nature would become a great leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota. Becoming a warrior at 14 after counting coup on a Crow enemy—a feat so impressive he earned his more famous name of “Buffalo Who Sits Down,” or Sitting Bull—the young leader would spend his formative years learning to fight and lead. Battling the US Army in the Dakota War (a frontier conflict during the American Civil War) and Red Cloud’s War, Sitting Bull emerged as one of the most prominent and respected leaders of Native resistance. Never formally surrendering or consenting to live on a reservation, he became the central figure of the Great Sioux War of 1876, when his spiritual vision of a great American defeat triggered the destruction of Custer’s 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn. However, the federal response to his victory was so swift and terrible he had to flee to Canada, before eventually returning to shape American perceptions of native people by appearing in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Yet even then, the government feared his influence. During the Ghost Dance movement, the mere fear that Sitting Bull would join a general insurrection was so great that reservation police tried to arrest him just in case—leading to a last skirmish where the leader was finally killed. One of the only people to have fought against the US Army and still wind up on a postage stamp, Sitting Bull remains a potent symbol of native pride, resistance and resilience.

Emiliano Zapata

If you’ve ever been near the southern border of the United States, you know Emiliano Zapata. You’ve seen him on murals and T-shirts, staring out with his wide brim hat, silver buttons, boots and sash. The greatest hero of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, and its greatest martyr. The son of a horse trainer and likely of mixed Spanish-native heritage, Zapata was one of the few representatives of the rural farmers who were on the top-tier of revolutionary leadership. While others mostly spoke of political reform, Zapata championed a complete change in Mexico’s land system, wherein lands seized by former dictators be returned and large holdings nationalized to distribute to peasants. But for Zapata’s dream to become a reality, he would have to fight—first against the government, then after it fell, against his fellow revolutionaries. Zapata is a fascinating figure for both his idealism and his doggedness, as well as several mysteries (it’s been claimed he was bisexual) and his life’s story is only only an incredible series of military engagements and guerilla warfare, but a study in how class functioned in early 20th century Mexico. From leading an army of peasants, to palling around with Pancho Villa, to his final ambush and murder at the age of 39, we’ll look at how Zapata’s legend grew to eclipse even his life, so that in death part of his dream would be fulfilled.

Vladimir Lenin

It was Vladimir’s older brother Alexander that was the firebrand—he’d fallen in with liberals at university, and had been building bombs in order to kill the Tsar. That’s why he was hung, and what set young Vladimir permanently on the road toward destroying and reshaping Russia’s political order. That path took him through strange twists and turns, from a family that worried about his radicalization, to secret meetings, to smuggled literature, prison, exile, and a marriage to his wife Nadya (who was every bit the socialist revolutionary her husband was). Over a decade and a half of exile followed, with much of Lenin’s time taken up by railing against the First World War, the incomplete 1905 Russian Revolution, and internecine feuds between his own Bolshevik party and the rival Mensheviks. But it was in 1917 that a German-backed plan to get Lenin back into Russia bore fruit, and ultimately put Vladimir Lenin at the reigns of a government that both offered him more power, and danger, than he’d ever believed possible. This series may not cover all of Lenin’s life—he was a complicated person, with a very difficult legacy—but we will at least reach his ascent to power during the October Revolution and hint at things to come.

Our Current Schedule is:

Henry Ford: Antisemitism and Assembly Lines - Starting 9/16 --> The Little Ice Age --> Empress Wu Zetian: Hated By Gods and Men --> Your Vote!

***Friendly reminder: The poll will end at 5:00 PM PT on Monday the 11th. You can vote for as many choices as you want! This style of voting helps us see what people are most interested in without having to make tough decisions between a couple of close favorites. ***