HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2024-10-16T08:36:17.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: North, south, east and west: how ancient civilisations found their bearings before the compass
items: Trade, religion and diversity: how Tudor London became a global city
items: A whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500
items: Why we should remember the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent
items: 15 minutes of fame | Jerry Brotton chooses Marie Tharp
items: 15 minutes of fame: Marie Tharp, ground-breaking cartographer
items: Benvenuto Cellini: how the 'bad boy' sculptor and goldsmith gives us a fresh perspective on the Renaissance
items: Cellini: the “supreme scoundrel of the Renaissance”
items: The Renaissance: everything you wanted to know
items: The battle of Lepanto: when Ottoman forces clashed with Christians

North, south, east and west: how ancient civilisations found their bearings before the compass
type: item
date: 2024-10-15T16:26:40.000Z
creator: Professor Jerry Brotton
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Why did the ancient Chinese associate north with power? What led early Muslims to pray to the south? And what role did winds have to play in our understanding of directions? Jerry Brotton takes us on a journey through the history of the four points of the compass
encoded: Writing in his philosophical work the New Organon in 1620, the English scientist and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon famously identified China’s three great inventions, “which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.” Much has been written about the historical impact of printing and gunpowder. But there’s been far less emphasis on the magnet, and how (using lodestones to magnetise iron needles) it enabled the ‘obscure’ invention of the magnetic compass during the Han dynasty in the third century BC. This technology enabled China and, subsequently, other societies to navigate and orientate themselves according to the four points of the compass: north, east, south and west. We tend to think about these directions and the art of navigation as a consequence of the invention of the compass, but this is not in fact the case. The ancient history of direction and its relationship to the magnetic compass is altogether more surprising. How ancient civilisations understood east and west Thousands of years before the discovery of the compass, early human societies observed the sun rising in the direction we now call ‘east’ and watched it setting in the direction now known as ‘west’. East to west was probably the earliest prime axis that people understood by simply watching the sun’s path across the sky. The worship of the sun, or heliolatry, characterised ancient Egyptian worship of solar gods: Horus (the rising sun), Ra (the noon sun) and Osiris (the dying or setting sun). Read more | Sun gods and goddesses: 16 solar deities from world history This initial east-west solar axis was gradually followed by the understanding of another axis. This one ran vertically from north to south, and could be identified by observing the sun and stars. At noon the sun is always due south in the northern hemisphere…

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Trade, religion and diversity: how Tudor London became a global city
type: item
date: 2023-05-26T08:10:14.000Z
creator: Professor Jerry Brotton
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Tudor life
description: During the reigns of the Tudor monarchs of the 16th century, London opened its doors to a diverse cast of newcomers, from Moroccan ambassadors to Native American chiefs. Jerry Brotton reveals what drove people to head to England, and how foreign visitors both shaped, and were shaped by, the Tudor capital
encoded: On 2 October 1586, a rather unusual baptism took place at St Katharine’s Church next to the Tower of London. The person being baptised, known as “Chinano the Turk”, was a 40-year-old native of the Mediterranean island of Euboea – and the first known male Muslim convert to Protestantism. The celebrant at the conversion of Chinano – probably a clumsy Anglicisation of the Turkish name Sinan – was Welsh minister Meredith Hanmer. Earlier that day, he had preached a sermon entitled “The Baptising of a Turke”, informing the congregation that Chinano had been taken captive as a galley slave by the Spanish, then shipped to Cartagena in what’s now Colombia. There he was “liberated” by Sir Francis Drake in 1586, along with another hundred Turks, and brought back to London. Hanmer announced that Chinano had “renounced Mahomet” and “desired he might be received as one of the faithful Christians, and be baptised”. What happened to Chinano and those other Turks is unknown, because they disappear from the historical record. The “other” Tudors The brief appearance of such people gives us an insight into the global world in which Tudor London played its part, and the sheer variety of people from outside England who ended up living, working, marrying, having children and dying in the city. Some were religious exiles, refugees or enslaved people, but there were also visiting diplomats, explorers, physicians and chieftains from all corners of the world: Italy and Portugal, Morocco and Russia, Turkey, central Asia and the “New World” – the Americas. Some were Muslims, others Jews; some converted from one religion to another; others believed in gods from Africa and the Americas that were unknown to the Tudors. Living alongside white, Christian Londoners, their DNA has long since dispersed, passed down through subsequent generations. Read more | The poet, the gardener and the witch: forgotten voices of Tudor England The reasons these people came to London were twofold: money and geography.…

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A whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500
type: item
date: 2022-11-10T09:44:13.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: General Early Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: To mark HistoryExtra’s 1500th episode, Jerry Brotton takes us on a whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500
encoded: To mark HistoryExtra’s 1500th episode, Jerry Brotton takes Ellie Cawthorne on a whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500, from the powerful dynasties of Eurasia and the rich culture of Ming dynasty China to the melting pot of Constantinople. They discuss the shifting balance of power in Africa at the start of the 16th century, explore the origins of European slavery and colonialism, and reveal how the Americas stood on the precipice of a great transformation.

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Why we should remember the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent
type: item
date: 2022-09-22T04:50:19.000Z
creator: Professor Jerry Brotton
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Why we should remember
description: Sultan Suleiman I was not just a military campaigner, expanding the empire to its greatest ever reach. He was also a talented linguist and patron of the arts, says Jerry Brotton
encoded: Who was Suleiman the Magnificent? Five hundred years ago, Sultan Suleiman I (reigned 1520–66) ascended to the throne. Although he was the longest-reigning and arguably greatest of all Ottoman sultans, his time on the throne began under the long shadow cast by his father, Selim ‘the Grim’. On 30 September 1520, the 26-year-old Suleiman landed at Üsküdar on the Asian side of the Bosporus, having learned of the sudden death of his father just eight days earlier. Selim’s death was kept secret as the Janissaries, his elite infantry and household troops, were notoriously volatile when it came to political succession. The next day Suleiman crossed the strait and headed to the Topkapı palace, where he met the political and religious leaders of the imperial divan (or council) who swore their allegiance to him. He then followed his father’s funeral cortege through the streets of Istanbul, before returning to the Topkapı to complete his accession as the 10th Ottoman sultan. How did Suleiman become sultan? The Ottoman tradition of coronation was very different to its western counterparts. Its equivalent was cülus (from the Arabic ‘to sit on the throne’), which involved largely private ceremonies within the Topkapı palace followed by a public march through the city. For Suleiman, this involved measuring himself against the brief but devastating legacy of his father’s rule. In defeating the Safavids and Mamluks and controlling the holy cities of Mecca, Cairo and Jerusalem, Selim left his son as ‘Inheritor of the Great Caliphate’. Read more | The Ottoman empire: everything you wanted to know How did he gain the title of Suleiman the Magnificent? It seemed like an impossible legacy to emulate. Yet, during Suleiman I's 46-year reign, he extended the empire to its greatest ever reach, stretching from the gates of Vienna to the Persian Gulf – gaining him the European sobriquet ‘the Magnificent’ – while codifying and standardising legal processes across the empire, which is why Turks k…

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15 minutes of fame | Jerry Brotton chooses Marie Tharp
type: item
date: 2022-07-18T17:04:55.000Z
creator: Professor Jerry Brotton
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: 15 minutes of fame
subject: Historical people
description: As part of our series exploring lost or lesser-known figures from history who deserve their 15 minutes of fame, Dave Musgrove interviews Jerry Brotton about the life of Marie Tharp
encoded: Who was Marie Tharp? Born in Michigan in 1920, Marie Tharp was an influential mapmaker and geologist. According to historian Jerry Brotton, Tharp is probably the most important woman in the mapmaking industry in the 20th century. She was effectively responsible for the discovery of tectonic plate shift and development of the theory of continental drift – a seemingly heretical theory at the time, which we now accept as absolute truth. Marie Tharp’s life Working in a traditionally male-dominated field, Tharp made a name for herself following the Second World War, when she began working at Columbia University, at the famous Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Alongside her colleague, Bruce Heezen, Tharp crunched the data from sonar readings from US military ships in the Atlantic. Due to the misogynistic nature of society at the time, Brotton explains, Tharp was not allowed on the boats herself, but Heezen fed her the data from his explorations, and from this, Tharp proposed the idea that the continents and ocean floor were ceaselessly moving. Her argument was rejected by most in the field at the time, including Heezen. When she began to map plate shifts in the Atlantic, Heezen allegedly erased all her work. Read more | 7 maps that changed history Despite this setback, Tharp continued mapping her data and developing her theories, proving irrefutably that tectonic plate shift existed. By the late 1950s, Tharp had persuaded Heezen that her theory was correct, and together, they developed precise scientific maps of the ocean floors – called physiographic maps – which were published under Heezen’s name only. In the 1960s, Tharp was finally allowed out on boats herself, where she could be in the thick of data collection alongside her male counterparts. However, her name did not start appearing on her maps until the early 1970s. A key moment in Tharp’s career was the creation of the World Ocean Floor Map in 1977, Jerry explains. Still working out of Columbia University, Tharp h…

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15 minutes of fame: Marie Tharp, ground-breaking cartographer
type: item
date: 2022-06-27T14:55:31.000Z
creator: Professor Jerry Brotton
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: 15 minutes of fame
description: Jerry Brotton considers the life and legacy of geologist and cartographer Marie Tharp, uncovering her major role in mapping the ocean’s floor
encoded: It’s the HistoryExtra podcast’s 15th birthday! To celebrate, we’ve asked 15 historians to nominate a figure from history they think deserves their ‘15 minutes of fame’. In this episode, Professor Jerry Brotton nominates Marie Tharp. Speaking with Dave Musgrove, he dives into the life of the pioneering geologist and ocean cartographer, and explores her remarkable legacy. Browse more episodes about figures from history who deserve 15 minutes of fame

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Benvenuto Cellini: how the 'bad boy' sculptor and goldsmith gives us a fresh perspective on the Renaissance
type: item
date: 2021-04-07T06:01:25.000Z
creator: Professor Jerry Brotton
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Renaissance
subject: Historical people
description: Jerry Brotton tells the sensational story of Benvenuto Cellini, a master goldsmith and sculptor who revelled in violence, sodomy and murder
encoded: Goldsmith, sculptor, poet, soldier, musician, murderer, necromancer, priest and lover – of men and women. The incredible life and times of Benvenuto Cellini, one of the Italian Renaissance’s most extraordinary but now neglected figures, provides a unique perspective on the period. Yet what his surviving art and writings reveal is less an idyllic “golden age” of harmony and beauty, and more a period defined by political turbulence, religious conflict and vicious artistic rivalries. Although Cellini is now largely overlooked as an artist in favour of his immediate predecessors Leonardo da Vinci (whose position he inherited in France) and Michelangelo (whom he revered), he left behind one of the first – and certainly most dramatic and intimate – autobiographies ever written by an artist. My Life (simply entitled Vita in the original Italian) is a grandiose, scandalous and boastful account of 16th-century art and society. It is largely based on life in Cellini’s native Florence, but it also spans his career spent living and working in the Italian cities of Rome, Venice, Mantua, Ferrara and Siena, as well as Paris and Fontainebleau in France. The book is a compelling historical document and offers fascinating insights into the period. But no historian takes an autobiography at face value – and rightly so, in this case. By comparing Cellini’s My Life to the surviving historical records, it seems that his autobiography contains a lot of fact, but also quite a bit of fiction – seemingly to adhere to traditions in writing at the time. Cellini’s autobiography vividly records his fights with his rivals – he killed at least three – while he was also creating some of the greatest sculptures and designs in gold and silver of his day. He survived warfare, imprisonment, poisoning, syphilis and the loss of many of his family to the plague, which was an everyday threat. He befriended kings, popes and the Medici rulers of Florence, who all forgave him his sins to ensure he made art fo…

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Cellini: the “supreme scoundrel of the Renaissance”
type: item
date: 2021-03-19T12:09:38.000Z
creator: Professor Jerry Brotton
subject: Membership
subject: Renaissance
subject: Period
description: Jerry Brotton describes the astonishing life and career of the Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini – a story of murder, plague, imprisonment and even necromancy
encoded: Professor Jerry Brotton describes the astonishing life and career of the 16th-century Italian artist Benvenuto Cellini, whose biography shines a light on the dark heart of the Renaissance and features murder, plague, imprisonment and even necromancy.

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The Renaissance: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2021-01-10T15:00:02.000Z
creator: Professor Jerry Brotton
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Renaissance
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Professor Jerry Brotton responds to listener questions and popular internet search queries about the Renaissance era
encoded: Jerry Brotton, professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London, responds to listener questions and popular internet search queries about the Renaissance. He tackles everyday life in the era and explains why it saw such an explosion of ground-breaking art and culture.

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The battle of Lepanto: when Ottoman forces clashed with Christians
type: item
date: 2020-02-05T15:33:39.000Z
creator: Professor Jerry Brotton
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
description: On 7 October 1571, Ottoman forces clashed with the Holy League's fleet in a huge naval battle in the Mediterranean. Writing for BBC World Histories in 2017, Jerry Brotton looks at both sides of an encounter that shifted the balance of sea power in the region
encoded: The battle of Lepanto was one of the greatest conflicts in pre-modern history, pitting Ottoman naval forces against the ships of the Christian Holy League in the Gulf of Patras off western Greece. The clash, involving an estimated 500 ships and 100,000 combatants, was the largest such battle since ancient times and the last great naval conflict dominated by armed rowing vessels. The background to the battle was a region becoming increasingly dominated by the Ottomans. That empire was engaged in a relentless programme of expansion across the Mediterranean, in stark contrast to the disunity that characterised their papal, Spanish and Venetian adversaries. With the accession of Sultan Selim II in 1566, Ottoman designs on north Africa and Christian strongholds such as Malta and Cyprus threatened to transform the Mediterranean basin into one vast Turkish naval port. When in the summer of 1570 the Ottomans declared war on Venice and invaded Cyprus, Pope Pius V, Philip II of Spain and the Venetians agreed to put aside their differences and combine forces in the form of a Holy League. They hastily assembled a vast Christian armada of more than 200 ships, 40,000 sailors and 20,000 troops led by Philip II’s half-brother Don John of Austria. In the summer of 1571, the fleet set sail to lift the siege of Cyprus. When Don John learned of the fall of Famagusta on that island he headed for Lepanto, where the Ottoman fleet of 300 ships lay at anchor. Savage combat On the morning of 7 October the two sides engaged each other in an epic battle that quickly descended into savage hand-to-hand combat as both sides boarded each other’s galleys. Around 4pm, as the smoke of war began to lift, it became clear that the Ottomans had been outgunned and defeated, losing by some estimates nearly 200 of their ships, along with 15,000 soldiers and sailors. For a brief moment, Christendom forgot its divisions and united in celebration of its victory over the seemingly invincible Turks. Across Europ…

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