POLL: Pick the Next Extra History Series! "Filling Out the Map"
Added 2021-05-05 21:35:33 +0000 UTCIt's time again to pick the next Extra History topic! There were tons of great suggestions for this poll & it was incredibly difficult to narrow it down to just 4. Well, 3 & then Grant. While Grant might not have fit the theme so much, he's been a reoccurring figure in the suggestions and the polls so we figured we'd give him another shot.
Also of note, this series will be written by a guest writer! Rob will be away on paternity leave but will be leaving EH in the hands of Robert Whitaker, writer on the Cleopatra series!
Ulysses S. Grant: Winning and then Losing the Civil War
Winning the war is often less important than winning the peace that comes after. In 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant was a national hero, having destroyed the Confederacy and embarrassing his opponent, Robert E Lee, in the process. Yet a decade later, President Ulysses S. Grant presided over a corrupt and inept administration that eventually consigned the United States to another century of the Confederacy in all but name. How do we reconcile Grant the General and Grant the President? And to what extent have both Grants been distorted by history?
Conquest of India
It's one of history's great questions: how did the entire Indian subcontinent, made up of many millions of people, come to be dominated and controlled by a tiny number of British administrators and soldiers for nearly two hundred years? Usually the answer to this question involves talking about the technological and military strength of the British Empire, but this response ignores how the subcontinent's own history and politics played a role in Britain's success. To understand colonial conquest, it's often more important to understand the perspectives of the colonized than the colonizers...
Industrial Revolution
Prior to the late 18th century, most people around the world lived and died in the same region where their ancestors lived and died. They generally did the same things as their ancestors: working the land, trying to make enough food to survive. But then, in the late 18th century, something changed. This change, known as the Industrial Revolution, is usually associated with manufacturing in Europe and America, but in reality, the influence of the Industrial Revolution goes much farther and much deeper, forever altering humanity's perception of labor, land, money, government, culture, climate, and time itself...
Jacobite Rebellion
We often say history is written by the victors, and there are few better examples of this idea than the history of Britain's "Glorious" Revolution, an event whose very name includes a historical argument ("How was this revolution? It was GLORIOUS!"). But the title for this revolution assumes widespread celebration and acceptance, something which most definitely did not exist in the deposed House of Stuart or among its followers, the Jacobites. The story of the Jacobite Rebellion is the story of history's "losers" attempting desperately to crawl out of the footnotes and back on to the front page of the past.
What series would you like us to air on Extra History? Cast your vote(s) below and let us know!
Friendly reminder: 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. The poll will end at 11:59 PM PT on Wednesday, May 12th.
Current Schedule: Thirty Years War --> Vlad the Impaler --> Rasputin --> Your Vote!
Comments
In the case of India, history literally did begin "when the white man [in this case the Indo-Aryans] came to conquer it". (Yes, I get it's more complicated than that -- but the opening was just too much...)
Brian Rose
2021-05-15 05:12:36 +0000 UTCI hope for Conquest of India you include a prelude about India's history up to that point. The history of an area should begin "when the white man came to conquer it". What I really enjoy about EH is when they cover topics not often addressed in US schools.
Jason Youngberg
2021-05-14 21:07:32 +0000 UTCMe too ~ speaking as a European I'm disappointed American history topics that are unknown over here always seem to lose out.
Martin Verran
2021-05-09 11:10:02 +0000 UTCThis at a time when the Scottish National Party holds a majority in the Scottish Parliament...
Martin Verran
2021-05-09 11:05:20 +0000 UTCHistorians have credited the same man for laying the groundwork for the defeat of the Jacobites and the industrial revolution. And I'm sure someone will argue that the British conquest of India was also due to Walpole.
Sagitta
2021-05-09 00:16:38 +0000 UTCLet's go Jacobite Rebellion! Scottish history is really interesting.
Adil N
2021-05-07 17:42:30 +0000 UTC"The thing about world history is ... there's a lot of it. We've been covering history from all corners of the world but there are still places that we haven't covered yet! So please throw us suggestions from places that we haven't had a series on yet!" That's from when they asked for suggestions. No mention of applying more depth to areas already covered.
General Luigi
2021-05-06 23:47:53 +0000 UTCPlease go back to hiding the graph results before you make a choice! That said, go India!!!
Joshua Millet
2021-05-06 21:11:24 +0000 UTCI already read Ron Chernow's 1000-page behemoth on Grant, so I'm disinclined to vote for any series about him. It was a great book, though.
Robert Bevill
2021-05-06 15:27:21 +0000 UTCBecause they're setting out to dig deeper and add nuances to the topics they're covering, I suppose.
Øyvind Wallentinsen
2021-05-06 11:45:48 +0000 UTCI voted Grant and India. Both seem to plan to go more in-depth about topics we know little about.
Øyvind Wallentinsen
2021-05-06 11:44:58 +0000 UTCOk, and what will the Sheep get out of these series? [other than eaten, that is?]
Martin Verran
2021-05-06 08:49:58 +0000 UTCI'm good with any of these, but I really want Jacobite to win, because it will just mean more references to Walpole, probrably, and the fact we talked about it all the way in the south sea bubble. Plus the Glorious Revolution needs more videos on it, because it effectively changed England forever, and may have also led to them being more on the whole world conquest thing.
BlueFanfictionInc
2021-05-06 07:22:49 +0000 UTCI wish we could do all of these. At this point, I'm just inflating the vote count, lol.
Sientir
2021-05-06 05:55:59 +0000 UTCI am honestly really surprised that the Mexican Revolution was not selected. Of these options, I believe the Jacobite Rebellion is the best option. I really feel like there has been too much American history on the channel already, and there has already been a video about the American civil war.
Adil N
2021-05-06 05:28:06 +0000 UTCConsidering that this week saw the 100 year anniversary of the partition of Ireland, I feel like the Jacobite Rebellion is calling to me.
Janvier Palmer
2021-05-06 00:05:51 +0000 UTCI honestly think that Grant's presidency might be the better topic right now, especially with how the mythology of the lost cause has grown out of it. I've read enough biographies of him to know how good of a series that would be. Man was fundamentally decent, single minded, and completely insane in his younger years. But... I want India. I'm from the U.S. and i have access to lots of stuff in the civil war. I also think south Asia is still criminally understudied here in the U.S. and the depth and breadth of the cultures of the Indian subcontinent need more detail. The series would make an excellent jumping off point for further study by those who watch. Also, India's situation is really dire right now. by the time this comes out, it might be worse. raising awareness by any means can't hurt.
Gabe Rosenthal
2021-05-05 23:55:24 +0000 UTCThe story of the half century following Grant’s presidency had many rays of hope -- of James Garfield’s Campaign for the Presidency in 1880, which put Civil Rights for the Freedmen as a central part of his platform; of Benjamin Harrison, Henry Cabot Lodge, and others, and their efforts to defend the right to vote guaranteed by the 15th Amendment in 1890; of Booker T Washington, born a slave and rising to become one of the most recognized educators, business leaders, authors, and orators in the country; of W.E.B. DuBois, whose scholarship and activism not only challenged the rising tide of white supremacy, but laid some of the key foundations for modern sociology; and of many others. But, of course, the story did not end with these efforts being successful in their own time. Because it was also the story of Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina; of the Supreme Court abdicating its responsibilities in finding the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional or creating the doctrine of “separate but equal”; and of the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, and a fair deal of white supremacist violence not so different from it.* It is also the story of how stories are told -- it was during this period (mostly in the first 20 years of the 20th Century) that most of the Confederate War Memorials causing controversy today were built and that the Dunning School interpretation of Reconstruction became the “mainstream” understanding of history. And it all cumulated in the 1910’s, with Woodrow Wilson segregating the federal government and with the beginning of the Great Migration — though of course, it does not “end” so much as enter a new chapter, and bring us into modern history, where we struggle with the legacy of this period to this day. *It is also, for what it’s worth, the period of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Wounded Knee Massacre, the rise of American Imperialism, and the notorious Eugenics Movement, depending on how broadly you want to look at this.
Brian Rose
2021-05-05 22:45:14 +0000 UTCWhen looking at the record of the United States in terms of upholding the civil rights promised to the freed slaves following the Civil War (i.e. the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and supporting legislation), the telling of this story often ends in 1877, with the end of Military Reconstruction, and lumps the following 77 years together as the Era of Segregation, renewed White Supremacy, and Jim Crow. But this (I think, at least) ignores that the chipping away of the Civil Rights accomplishments and legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction was a gradual and very much contested process, and that furthermore (again, in my humble opinion) the eventual victory of the Redeemers pretty much across the South was a far from predetermined affair, and that the moral imperatives of Emancipation were not destined to decay and necessitate being fought for anew in the mid 20th Century (at least not to the extent they were in Our Timeline’s History).
Brian Rose
2021-05-05 22:43:43 +0000 UTCI find it strange that the UK and US, both areas that have already gotten some attention, were included among the candidates for a "filling out the map" series.
General Luigi
2021-05-05 22:38:43 +0000 UTCOh man, I know people are going to look at the Grant topic and think "Psshhh, the American Civil War is so overdone, no thank you", but Grant's legacy is one of the most deliberately obfuscated subjects in history, by the perpetrators of the Lost Cause myth, and I really hope people will give that topic a little extra consideration before making their final decision.
Ladies Making Comics
2021-05-05 22:27:29 +0000 UTCTo my below (posted as a new comment) reading of the story of Jim Crow -- I'd also add that Grant was the first US President to seriously seek out a third term in office, and he actually came fairly close to doing so. I could talk about other aspects of his presidency (such as putting the Coin Act of 1873 or the subsequent Panic of 1873 in their proper global politco-economic context), but I think that might risk getting a little into the weeds and off topic.
Brian Rose
2021-05-05 22:21:01 +0000 UTCI am of the opinion that there is not enough US history on here, so my vote is for Grant. Reconstruction (and Grant’s role in it) is one of the most misunderstood topics in American history that absolutely deserves a series.
Mitchell Brannon
2021-05-05 22:18:27 +0000 UTCTo a lesser extent, I'd also dispute the characterization of Jim Crow as "the Confederacy in all but name" -- the Confederates wanted the preservation of Chattel Slavery as an institution, full stop; unsettling as it may be to think about, their subsequent attacks upon the civil rights and persons of their former "property" were ultimately a pale consolation prize for what they truly hungered for. That said, I understand that this is a far more tricky take to talk about, especially for a (mostly) white team. It's worth keeping in mind for every freed man who was seized by the police for "vagrancy" and forced to labor for a contractor's profit, there were towns worth of colored people who were moving about the country finding and creating families, forging and sustaining new communities, and building the social capital that would, over the course of generations, lead to the growth a black middle class (which would in turn, generations later, be subject to violent suppression, continuing the struggle further, but that's another story... or rather, it's the continuation.)
Brian Rose
2021-05-05 22:17:10 +0000 UTCSo this might be a contentious point, but -- I would actually dispute the characterization of Grant's Presidency as a failure, especially as it pertains to the Civil Rights of the Freedmen. And while I'm happy to talk about why I think so (see below), I do hope that, in the event it is chosen, that EC considers this at least possible reading of history when putting together the episodes.
Brian Rose
2021-05-05 22:10:01 +0000 UTCIt seems Grant, and Reconstruction as a whole, would be good for the Black history efforts the channel has made recently. We've really just rebranded slavery in our prison system, and it's disturbing that we don't talk about it.
Clare McDermet
2021-05-05 21:54:47 +0000 UTC
