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History's greatest cities podcast series
David Mendel offers fresh perspectives on the history and modern sites of the iconic Canadian city
In episode four of our series exploring the great historical cities of Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas, travel writer Paul Bloomfield is joined by David Mendel as they visit Québec City in Canada. Together they explore its pre-colonial origins, development as a French imperial capital and its incorporation into Britain's North American colonies. They also meet some of the figures who played pivotal roles in the city’s growth and discover monuments and sites to visit for insights into its heritage.
Women’s history podcasts: episodes not to miss
For Women's History Month, we’ve put together a list of HistoryExtra podcast episodes you can listen to featuring inspirational historical women and their achievements
Looking for a new podcast recommendation? In Women's History Month, learn more about remarkable women through history and their stories with these fascinating episodes from the HistoryExtra podcast... Madame Restell: the abortionist who shocked and fascinated 19th-century New York Jennifer Wright discusses the dramatic life of Madame Restell, a New York businesswoman who made millions – and horrified many – by selling abortions and birth control in the 19th century Sirens, succubi & sex symbols: a history of female monsters Sarah Clegg explores how and why historical myths have portrayed women as monstrous beings – from seductive, child-killing monsters to mermaids, sirens and vampires Medieval women: everything you wanted to know Eleanor Janega busts popular myths surrounding women in the Middle Ages, revealing how society was more open-minded than we might initially expect Female spies who forged the CIA Nathalia Holt discusses four women who undertook life-threatening missions and harnessed crucial intelligence in the early days of the Central Intelligence Agency Breastfeeding: a cultural history From ancient baby bottles to the perceived moral dangers of wetnursing, Joanna Wolfarth investigates what we can learn from changing attitudes to breastfeeding through history How six women programmed the world’s first modern computer During the Second World War, six talented mathematicians were brought together to make history. These women had one mission: to program the world’s first and only supercomputer. Speaking with Rachel Dinning, Kathy Kleiman explores the vital but overlooked role the “Eniac 6” played in the history of computing during and after the Second World War Njinga: queen, warrior, diplomat Luke Pepera tells Kev Lochun about the dramatic life and reign of Queen Njinga, the formidable 17th-century ruler of Ndongo and Matamba, in modern-day Angola Women who served in WW2 Tessa Dunlop explores the lives of the last surviving women who served in Britain’s armed forces during the Second World War Countryside campaigners: four women who fought for our green spaces Matthew Kelly explores the lives of four women who helped to protect the English countryside in the 19th and 20th centuries Warrior queens & quiet revolutionaries: forgotten women from history Author Kate Mosse shares inspirational stories of women from across global history – including the forgotten life of her great grandmother Lily Watson Want to know more about women's history? You can read our articles on the topic here.
Stephen Tuffnell delves into the Klondike gold rush, a two-year whirlwind that brought at least 30,000 prospectors to the remote Yukon in search of glory and gold
From grizzled gold miners to fresh-faced boys in search of adventure, 100,000 prospectors set out for the remote Yukon in search of gold. Stephen Tuffnell delves into the Klondike gold rush, which saw millions of dollars’ worth of gold pulled from the ground – and ended as abruptly as it began.
Canadian history: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Donald Wright answers listener questions on the history of Canada, from the country’s indigenous population to the world wars
In the latest episode in our series tackling big historical topics, historian Donald Wright answers listener questions on the history of Canada, from the country’s indigenous population and its contribution to the two world wars, to the story behind the maple leaf flag and the reasons why Canada didn’t join the American Revolution. Donald Wright is the author of Canada: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2020) Buy now on Waterstones Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Bookshop.org
What happened to the Franklin Expedition? The real mystery behind The Terror
In 1845, the Franklin Expedition sailed into the Canadian arctic and never returned. Andrew Lambert explores the real history that inspired the BBC drama The Terror
In 1845, two British navy ships sailed into the Canadian arctic and never returned. The fate of the Franklin Expedition has proven one of history’s most compelling mysteries, and most recently inspired the BBC drama The Terror. Here, Andrew Lambert explores the history behind the series and asks: what really happened to the expedition’s 129 crewmembers? Andrew Lambert is the author of Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation (Faber & Faber, 2010) Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones Buy now on Bookshop.org
The Franklin Expedition: what happened on the ill-fated Victorian voyage?
In 1845, a British expedition sailed into the harsh Canadian Arctic, seeking scientific knowledge and the fabled North-West Passage. Professor of naval history Andrew Lambert traces the ill-fated final voyage of Captain Sir John Franklin
In May 1845, two British warships carrying more than 130 men set off from London for the Canadian Arctic, where they entered the fabled North-West Passage. Neither ship returned; nor did any of the men. The fate of the expedition became the greatest maritime mystery of the 19th century, sparking many search-and-rescue missions and inspiring a library of theories about what had happened to the ships and their crews. A highly effective public-relations exercise preserved the heroic reputation of expedition leader Captain Sir John Franklin, modifying the stated purpose of the voyage: rather than cutting-edge scientific research, it was redefined as geographical curiosity. Yet Franklin was 59 and obese; he had been selected to lead the expedition as a navigator and a scientist, not an explorer. A veteran of Arctic navigation, geomagnetic research and colonial government, he was a celebrity: a Fellow of the Royal Society and a bestselling travel writer. Franklin’s ships, the 350-ton former bomb vessels HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were wooden sailing ships designed to carry mortars, reinforced to work in the ice, and equipped with second-hand steam engines driving screw propellers. Each carried a crew of nearly 70 men and food for three years; it was assumed that Franklin would complete his mission in that time. Once the ships left Greenland they passed from the human realm into a world of sea ice, white mountains, storms and darkness, where signs of life were limited to seals, whales and the occasional bear. Franklin’s route bypassed the game-rich areas where Inuit peoples hunted, and even in high summer the landscapes of Beechey Island and Victory Point were merely ice and rock – stark, glittering and grim. Who was Sir John Franklin? John Franklin (1786–1847) was born at Spilsby, Lincolnshire. He joined the Royal Navy in 1800 and served at the battle of Copenhagen the following year. In 1802 he joined his cousin Matthew Flinders on a circumnavigation of the southern continent that Flinders named Australia, and began his life’s work: mastering terrestrial magnetism for navigation. In 1805 Franklin fought at Trafalgar, where he was deafened by a gun blast, and later at New Orleans in 1815. To secure his promotion, in 1818 he travelled north to Svalbard on the first Arctic expeditions following the Napoleonic Wars, then commanded the famously punishing overland mission to the north coast of Canada (1819–22) – facing starvation, the crew resorted to eating lichen and even their own boots, with at least one accused of cannibalism. Franklin’s book about his experiences was a bestseller and, after completing a second expedition (1825–27), he was knighted in 1829 to become Captain Sir John Franklin, Fellow of the Royal Society, and a major celebrity. Franklin commanded a frigate in the Greek War of Independence (1821–32). In 1837 he took up the post of lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), where he worked to civilise the penal colony, bringing his scientific interests to the antipodes. The government wasn’t pleased with his tenure, and he may have accepted his final Arctic mission to restore his reputation. Franklin remains a hero of travel by land, sea and ice – a man who created paths for others to follow, in a life dedicated to science and the service of the state. Life in the high Arctic Conditions on board were also grim. Locked in multi-year ice, the ships drifted slowly south to a soundtrack of creaking and grinding of stressed hulls and moving ice, pierced by the occasional crack of broken timber. In the winter, three months of permanent darkness, the men built deep banks of snow around the ships for insulation, only venturing outside to conduct key scientific work or to recover stores cached ashore. Days and nights did not vary, and neither did the diet: tinned and salt meat, lemon juice, dried vegetables, rum and sugar. Even once the sun rose, the ships were so far away from any known settlement that there was little encouragement to explore. Reading, writing and the occasional amateur dramatic production helped pass the time. Men familiar with the routine were inured to the tedium; others learned to wait. Franklin’s leadership and experience were key to sustaining the crew’s morale. He had been here before, and survived. Dire straits: Ferdinand Magellan’s fatal voyage of discovery Over the preceding 30 years the Royal Navy had made a series of voyages into the Canadian Arctic, often described as attempts to navigate the North-West Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific. In reality, these costly expeditions had far more ambitious objectives than merely satisfying geographical curiosity, or establishing passages through a deadly, ice-choked labyrinth that would be of no commercial value. Initially, these missions sought an explanation for the catastrophic weather patterns of 1816–17, which we now know were the results of the volcanic explosion of Mount Tambora on Sumbawa (now part of Indonesia). Scientists were also tasked with recording terrestrial magnetic data, to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. In addition, their charts would set the Alaskan border with Russia as far west as possible, securing the fur-trade interests of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Those were the key agendas; the British government would not pay simply to locate a North-West Passage. Magnetic research Franklin’s task in 1845 was to reach magnetic north and conduct a nine-month series of observations of magnetic effects. The expedition was pushed by the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which brought political pressure to bear on the government. If Franklin traversed the North-West Passage in the process, so much the better – but it was not essential. Retracing Franklin’s journey is not easy. The written record stops in Baffin Bay, with the last official reports and private letters carried home by his supply ship, Barretto Junior. Thereafter all we have to work with is archaeology, a small scrap of paper and Inuit testimony. Having paused in Disko Bay on the west coast of Greenland to take on supplies, in July 1845 Franklin’s ships sailed across Baffin Bay – where two whaling ships made the last reported sighting – and west into Lancaster Sound. Between here and the Beaufort Sea remained 200 miles of unknown territory: possibly sea, possibly land, but certainly covered in ice. Amid that unknown lay magnetic north, first located in 1831. Franklin probed possible routes to the north before overwintering at Beechey Island, where three sailors died from an aggressive strain of tuberculosis. The remaining 126 men had also been exposed to the bacteria, as well as possible lead poisoning from faulty food cans. In the spring of 1846 Franklin headed south into Peel Sound. Here, on 12 September, his ships became stuck in dynamic multi-year ice floes west of King William Island. This much we know from a handwritten note found in 1859 by a later expedition. That note stated that Franklin died on 11 June 1847 – the cause remains unknown – along with several officers and men. With the ships locked in ice and slowly drifting south, by April 1848 food and lemon juice were running low and the crew were badly affected by scurvy (and probably tuberculosis). Second-in-command Francis Rawdon Crozier decided to abandon ship and march south to the nearest trading post – 1,200 miles away. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2016/12/Franklins-last-expedition-1-398730a.jpg" width="1024" height="683" alt="Rocky cliffs loom above the fjords of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Sir John Franklin's expedition faced harsh conditions in summer - and life-threatening cold and hunger in winter (Michael Nolan/robertharding Getty Images)" title="Rocky cliffs loom above the fjords of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Sir John Franklin's expedition faced harsh conditions in summer - and life-threatening cold and hunger in winter (Michael Nolan/robertharding Getty Images)" /> Crozier must have known it would be physically impossible to cover that distance with only the food they could pull on their sledges, and there is no game in the desolate heart of the Arctic. When food began to run out, sickly men were left behind at what became known as Erebus Bay and then Terror Bay; the skeletal record indicates large-scale cannibalism. The last survivors met an Inuit hunting party, who ended the parley when they observed that the white men were eating human flesh. There were no survivors. In 1854, after 13 search missions had failed to locate the expedition, news of the cannibalism reported by the Inuit reached Britain. Franklin’s widow refused to believe it, and sent her own ship to investigate. It found enough material to write a new narrative shorn of both cannibalism and magnetic science, focusing instead on heroic men who had laid down their lives to complete the North-West Passage. This version of the story, rendered in bronze and granite on the memorial to Franklin erected at Waterloo Place in London in 1866, became the official one. It is dishonest and demeaning to Franklin and his men: they sailed for a higher purpose than mere geographical curiosity. Historians of science have forgotten them, because the science they served proved to be a dead end: the Earth’s magnetic core moves irregularly, and cannot be used as a navigational tool. Far from being the bumbling old duffer of popular memory, John Franklin was a great scientist, navigator and naval officer. He reached places hitherto unseen by Europeans, and conducted cutting-edge research at the icy extremities of the Earth, part of the largest international science project of the age. He escaped the bounds of the known world, and the search for his expedition charted the Canadian Arctic. Finding HMS Terror For more than a century, the ultimate fate of Franklin’s expedition remained a mystery. Then, on 3 September 2016, the sunken remains of HMS Terror were located in Terror Bay off King William Island, two years after the Erebus was found a little to the south. The rediscovery of the Franklin ships is just the latest episode in the extraordinary story of these doomed voyagers. Andrew Lambert is Laughton professor of naval history at King’s College London, and author of Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation (Faber, 2010) This article was taken from issue 1 of BBC World Histories magazine
Lewis Dartnell discusses how Earth’s physical features have had a profound effect on human civilisations throughout history
Scientist and author Lewis Dartnell discusses his recent book Origins, which explores how Earth’s physical features have had a profound effect on human civilisations throughout history
Coronavirus: what might we learn from pandemics in the past?
As Covid-19 dominates the news, read our interview with Laura Spinney (author of Pale Rider, an account of the 1918 influenza pandemic known as Spanish flu) from the HistoryExtra podcast. In the interview, Spinney draws historical parallels with other pandemics in history and asks what we might learn from disease outbreaks in the past
Note: this is an unedited transcript of our recent podcast Coronavirus – a historical perspective Matt Elton, editor of BBC World Histories Magazine: Obviously, Coronavirus is something that’s hitting a lot of headlines at the moment. Why does it strike such a chord, why are we so afraid of pandemics? Laura Spinney: Well, I think it’s something very primitive in us really. I mean, we’ve had to deal with epidemics of infectious disease, plagues if you like, to use a more kind of ancient and Biblical term, since we settled down in kind of semi-permanent settlements, since we started farming, that is, about 10, 12,000 years ago. And, you know, these diseases that kind of adapted to big groups of densely-living people, we call them the crowd diseases, and they kind of evolved in parallel with us as we adopted those new, more sedentary lifestyles. So it’s been a kind of arms race for a very long time, they know us very well and unfortunately because they’re small and they reproduce much faster, they tend to be a step ahead. They can just mutate and adapt and, you know, they’re just wherever we don’t want them to be before we can do anything about it and we’re seeing that again now. In some ways, there are many aspects, I think, of a pandemic which don’t change over time. There are many that do but there are many that don’t and those are the ones that speak to our, obviously speak to our most ancient fears. ME: And, of course, it’s natural for humans to look back at past examples of a similar thing to see if there’s any parallels or any lessons that could be drawn. Do you think there are particular pandemics from history that are most useful to look at in terms of parallels or is it just not a useful exercise generally? LS: No, I do think it’s a useful exercise, I just don’t know why we immediately rush to pick the worst possible example. Given that the Spanish Flu, or the not Spanish Flu, we should really call it the 1918 Flu, was pretty much forgotten for most of the last century, even though it killed a staggering 50 to 100 million people, the fact that we’re now, everybody’s talking about it, that’s the only parallel we can draw is somewhat ironic. I mean, if you just think about flu pandemics because obviously we’ve had pandemics of other diseases, although flu does tend to be considered the disease that lends itself most easily to pandemics, we have had three flu pandemics since 1918 and none of them killed more than about four million people. The last one we had was sometimes considered rather anti-climactic, if that’s not a politically-incorrect thing to say, given that lots of people died nevertheless. But 600,000 people died in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic which is considerably less than in any other pandemic. So there are other kinds, other leagues of pandemics that we could be comparing it with and that we’re not. Why was the 1918-19 pandemic known as Spanish Flu? Portraits of a plague: the 19th-century pandemic that killed 12 million people ME: So is there a more useful historical parallel to draw? LS: Well, that’s the killer question, isn’t it? The thing is, there’s so much we don’t know about this bug yet. We don’t know, for example, exactly how lethal it is. And the other problem is that we don’t really know how lethal, for example, the Spanish Flu was, for different reasons. We don’t know how lethal this current one is because we don’t have very much data yet. So you might have seen a figure floating around of a case fatality rate of 3.4%, which refers to the proportion of people who catch the Covid-19 infection who go on to die of it. The number that’s often quoted for the Spanish Flu, for example, case fatality rate is 2.5% but it’s a very, very, very controversial figure because the numbers are so vague. I mean, we think that probably 50 million people died but there was no form of reliable test at the time so we can’t be sure about that and that just throws all the numbers out. So it’s really difficult to make the historical comparisons, even if you have accurate data now, which we don’t. So on both sides of the equation, if you like, it’s a moving target. ME: The other side of this, of course, is although we may not be able to draw historical parallels with a specific pandemic, there is something perhaps to be gained from how people dealt with them or how they reacted to them at the time. Are there useful parallels in terms of that? LS: Yes, there are. So we would obviously love to have a vaccine against Covid-19 now but we don’t and we may have to wait a year to 18 months for that. They had no vaccine at all in 1918. Or rather, they did make vaccines but they were useless, pretty much, because they were essentially vaccines against bacteria in the respiratory tract whereas, as we know, flu is a viral disease. So in terms of that, we are much advanced compared to 1918. But we don’t have that vaccine yet. We so have anti-viral drugs for treating the sick and we do have antibiotics which will be useful for treating the bacterial complications that may cause pneumonia in some cases, as they did also in 1918, interestingly. But the only thing that actually stops people falling sick is the vaccine and we won’t have that for a while. So what do we have? We have strategies of containment, strategies that are collectively known as social distancing. And those are surprisingly unchanged since 1918, or even since much, much before that. I mean, they’re basically things like quarantine, isolation, wearing masks, although masks have always been debateable. It depends on the pathogen but once again, it’s looking like they may not be as effective as we hoped they would be. And hand washing is another thing. Basically, any kind of barrier technique that keeps the sick and the healthy apart and therefore reduces disease transmission. Because it’s looking pretty much now, at this stage, with the WHO having declared the pandemic, that it was a pandemic yesterday, as if containment is not going to work very well, if at all. And so what the governments are moving to now is more a sort of delay tactic, which will push off the peak of the epidemic, hopefully, until later in the year, towards the summer. And what everyone’s pinning their hopes on is that this bug will be a sort of seasonal bug, a bit like flu, and will kind of recede when the warm weather comes. At the very least, they want to push off that peak while the health systems are already coping with many other winter respiratory conditions and so try and lessen the burden on them. But basically, whether you delay or whether you contain, as long as you’re before the sort of mitigate stage, which is where Italy and South Korea and Iran are, you know, they’ve got widespread community transmission and they’re just trying to treat everybody and, you know, reduce morbidity and mortality as much as they can. We’re the step before. But essentially the techniques for delaying that peak of the pandemic are pretty much the same as containment and they all involve social distancing. So that’s where we are, and that’s a long-winded way of saying that historical parallels are useful there because the techniques for containment were the same in, for example, 1918 or 1957 when we had another flu pandemic, or 1968 or 2009 and today, they’re all the same. ME: To what extent does today’s transmission of the panic or of the media coverage of this epidemic compare to that of 1918, say? LS: Well, I think it is different. I mean, fake news is not a new phenomenon, fake news is as old the hills. But, you know, with the advent of the internet, the speed and the volume of both information and fake information that we can transmit have just, you know, been amplified to an extraordinary level. So we’re dealing with the disadvantages and the advantages of that. In 1918, you know, most people read the newspapers, that’s how they got their news, so it was a slower medium. And then, on top of that, there was a war on, at least for the first part of the pandemic and so you had things like wartime censorship interfering with things. And many countries, at least at the beginning of the pandemic tried to suppress the information that they had this illness spreading in their populations because they didn’t want to supposedly lower morale of their populations while everybody was concentrated on the war effort. And of course, that slowed down, you know, even if they had had techniques for dealing with this disease, it would have slowed down any response beyond any hopeful stage. Because one of the key things you need to do with an epidemic is to stop it or to contain it as early as you can. Because you get this kind of exponential growth in cases at the beginning because everybody is susceptible to this bug. ME: I’m really interested in the other social forces that might have changed since earlier pandemics. Organised religion, for instance, seemed to have played a big role in the past but doesn’t so much today, is that right? LS: Yeah, I think so. And I think that also has a positive negative aspect to it. So for example, to start with the positive, in 1918, doctors were pretty useless in the sense that they had nothing in their medicine cabinets really to offer, apart from aspirin. In fact, the people on the sort of conventional medicine side who were the most useful were nurses. They’re the only ones who can make any difference between life and death by keeping patients warm and hydrated and so on. But because doctors really had nothing to offer and because they were nevertheless, in many cases, very brave and, you know, in the front line and falling sick in droves themselves and often dying, others had to step into the breach and perform that kind of, if not doctor, then nursing role. And very often you saw it was priests and nurses and, you know, other people from the main faiths, or even the lesser faiths. So on the positive side there was that. "Far too little, too late": what happened when Spanish Flu hit Britain a century ago? Could flu really kill thousands again? On the negative side, because I think organised religion was much more powerful, they could have a nefarious effect on the messaging occasionally. I mean, you would always hope that the powerful leaders and the powerful influencers will, you know, coincide with the message that reinforces the public health message. But that didn’t always happen. So I can give you the example of Zamora, which is a town in north-western Spain, which was and in fact still is, very pious Catholic city. And there was a very charismatic, very influential bishop there at the time who basically just defied the provincial authorities. And at the height of the pandemic, in the autumn of 1918, ordered his flock into the churches to pray for forgiveness for their sins, which he insisted was the cause of this terrible punishment, divine punishment. And so everybody crowded into the churches and made their prayers to St Roch, who is the patron saint of pestilence and plagues. And that meant lining up to kiss his relics, everybody kissing the same relic. And Zamora went on to record one of the highest death rates from that flu in the whole of Spain, if not in the whole of Europe. So, you know, very kind of clear effect there. And I think today, you know, you do see the effect of religion but it’s very kind of marginal. So there are reports of people in the Iranian shrine city of Qom licking the shrine defiantly. And we hear that some of the early clusters in South Korea came from churches. But, generally speaking, there has been much less of an effect of organised religion, I think. ME: Is that the mechanism by which people in the past would have found out about pandemics or would they have learnt about it from another source? LS: I mean, I think that if your community leader was also your religious leader, that was quite often the way you found out about it, was probably also the source you looked to for guidance and how to live through this terrible thing and how to mitigate it, if possible. Of course, there were much higher levels of illiteracy in the world at that time, even in the supposedly advanced countries. And so that was much more of a feature, literate people obviously read newspapers but that wasn’t necessarily the most common means of information moving around, no. ME: Another way in which the world is different today is that it’s much more globalised and much more interconnected. Do you think that makes it much harder or even impossible to contain or stop such pandemics as this? LS: Well, it looks like it, doesn’t it? I mean, as soon as the WHO declared, because the WHO declared a pandemic yesterday but it had already declared a global health emergency on the 30th of January. And, you know, that was the step that unlocked its maximum resources and powers for dealing with this disaster. The word pandemic, it depends who you ask, did it matter that declaration yesterday? I think the WHO made it because it was worried that people were being too complacent and not acting in time, and previously they were trying to avoid panic, which is also counterproductive. But they declared a global health emergency on 30 January and, at the same time as they did that, they basically put out the advice not to close borders because we know it doesn’t work, we’ve learnt it over and over again through previous pandemics. And many countries promptly did exactly that. And now what they’re finding is that the virus is inside their countries and they are less than prepared for it. So not only did it not help, I think, it also meant that they were more on the back foot when it came to actually beginning testing and detecting and all the rest of it that goes into good containment which, you know, maybe it’s too late for that anyway. So are we globalised, of course we are. There was no commercial, there were no commercial air flights in 1918 and so the fastest people got around was by steam ship or train. And now, you know, a person and the germ they’re carrying, can travel round the world in days, if not hours. And, you know, we’ve seen the lightning speed with which this germ has got around the world. And so I think, I don't know, you know, perhaps we could have slowed it down but we also know that screening at entry and exit points is less than completely effective. Not only because there’s a question over whether people may be infected and asymptomatic but mainly because there’s an incubation period, which is on average three to five days, can be up to 14. So that means people can be infected but they’re not yet showing the symptoms and if they’re travelling across a border in those three to five days, then fever screening, temperature screening won’t pick them up. Spanish Flu: the virus that changed the world 10 facts about the Black Death ME: You mentioned national borders there, and alluded earlier to the idea that Spanish Flu got that name, and perhaps we shouldn’t call it that. What does that name tell us about this part of the story? LS: So it’s called the Spanish Flu because when it first manifested itself in the Northern Hemisphere spring of 1918, the world was still at war and the belligerent nations, which already had flu within their boundaries and they included the US, Britain and France, kept that information out of their newspapers, they were censoring them. Again, as I mentioned earlier, the stated goal, or the later stated goal being to protect the morale of their populations. And so even their populations weren’t necessarily aware that there was flu in their midst. Spain, on the other hand, was neutral in the war and so didn’t censor its press and so when they had the first cases there, in the spring of 1918, they reported them. And so it seemed to the whole world, including the Spanish, including people in the other countries that were already infected, that this disease was rolling out from Madrid. And the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII, was among those early cases, he went onto recover, but his case sort of lent it a great deal of visibility. Of course, it’s unhelpful. One of the few certainties we have about that pandemic is that it didn’t start in Spain, we actually don’t know where it did start but we know it didn’t start in Spain. And the Spanish felt, and to a very great degree were, stigmatised by it. In 2015, the WHO put out guidelines for how to name a disease and I think the motivation for that was mainly to avoid this kind of stigmatisation, this kind of kneejerk naming of a disease after the place it appears to first manifest itself, or the sector of the population or the animal it first appears in. because remember, 2009, H1N1 flu was initially called swine flu. You could think about AIDS which was initially called gay-related immune deficiency and stigmatised the homosexual community, unhelpfully for everybody, including heterosexuals, who nobody thought about how it might be being transmitted in that community. Meanwhile homosexuals were getting stigmatised for being the ones who transmitted it, so it was unhelpful to everybody. The swine flu name was unhelpful in many ways, for example, the Egyptian government ordered the slaughter of the country’s swine herd, which was mainly the property of the minority of Coptic Christians in that country, so their local economy was wiped out in one stroke. And in fact, by the time it was in humans, it was a disease that was being transmitted from human to human so it made no difference either. And in fact, to go back a little bit further in history, that swine flu was given to pigs by humans in 1918. So it came back from pigs to humans in 2009, you know, ironic historical reprisal. So naming doesn’t help. And this time, I think, it’s really interesting and one of the small things we can applaud ourselves for is that we have not given this outbreak a stigmatising name. It’s not the Chinese Flu, it’s not the Pangolin Flu, it’s Covid-19, which may sound mundane but it’ll do the job. ME: Do you think the responses to this particular pandemic in various parts of the world tell us about historical situations in those countries or historical pandemics in those countries? LS: So one of the things that public health experts are absolutely clear about is that the best way to impose a public health, a set of public health measures is not to impose them in the authoritarian way that the Chinese did. But if you can possibly manage it, to have people complying with you voluntarily, because you’re much more likely to be able to contain that disease that way. People don’t like to be told what to do. But if you want people to comply with you voluntarily two things are needed. The first is they have to be properly informed about the threat they face, so that they understand why you’re asking them to do these things and to restrict their normal lives in certain ways. And the second thing is they have to trust the authorities, they have to trust that those authorities are acting in their collective interest. And the thing is, that if that trust isn’t there when the pandemic breaks out, then it’s too late to build it. So I think you could look, for example, at the case of South Africa in 1918, where as in many other countries, when the epidemic arrived, doctors and scientists scrambled to produce a vaccine. Again, as I mentioned earlier, the candidates, the vaccines they developed were fairly, uniformly, useless because they were against bacteria and not the virus. But they launched a national, a nation-wide vaccination campaign and white South Africans dutifully lined up to get the vaccine and black South Africans basically boycotted it. Because white, the predominantly white doctors had never shown much interest in their health before and they couldn’t understand why they were doing so now. And there were rumours that circulated in the black population that the doctors were trying to kill them with their long needles. So, you know, that’s a very clear and graphic illustration, I think, of how if the trust is not there, if you don’t believe that the authorities and the doctors coming towards you in their white coats are acting in your interest, then you will not do what they want you to do, certainly not voluntarily. ME: The Spanish Flu destabilised social and political orders for decades, do you think that that is possible in this case? LS: Well, yeah, it’s certainly possible. You can already see the economic damage it’s doing and people have a tendency to look at their governments after some terrible disaster and to hold them responsible for what happened. So, you know political consequences are also possible. And then when you’ve got the two things together in concert, if the economy suffers then the politicians are likely to be blamed for that as well. Of course, the politicians are doing their best to shift the blame. I mean, you saw Mr Trump’s announcement yesterday that he was restricting travel to the United States from Europe with the heavy suggestion that Europe had somehow mismanaged the disaster in the same way, or just as badly as the Chinese had, to, you know, reproduce his narrative. Whereas the plain fact of the matter is that the disease is already in the United States, there have been reports that they haven’t been testing for it properly. So the problem is very much theirs as much as it is Europe’s. But Mr Trump has decided to play a political game with it and I’m sure that’s not unconnected to the fact that there is a presidential election coming up this year. Listen | Catharine Arnold explores the story of the Spanish Flu outbreak that caused devastation across the globe a century ago ME: Finally, what lessons do you wish that we would learn from the past, but don’t, and why do you think we don’t learn from them? LS: Well, I think the lessons we should learn in a very general sense are to try and, because we go through this cycle of panic and complacency. So we panic when it happens, when we should think calmly and rationally and just do, you know, what the experts tell us to do. And then when it’s passed, we immediately forget about it and become complacent again and don’t do any of the long-term things that the experts ask us to do. So for example, when the WHO declared its global health emergency on 30 January, it even took that opportunity to repeat a message that it’s been saying for a long time, which is we need to invest in the long-term in better health infrastructure in the poorer parts of the world, because when a pandemic strikes, we are only as safe as our least-safe place. So, you know, we should be doing things like that, when the pandemic passes, which of course it will, eventually. Will we remember to do that? I very much hope so. I think this pandemic is throwing up other things which are really interesting which we should take on board and discuss when it’s passed, how to fix to so they’re not weaknesses again. I can mention two. I mean, I think the first is how we get our news out. The fake news problem. A lot of young people have said to me the problem is that good information is behind paywalls where as fake news is free. The assumption there is that they shouldn’t have to pay for the information and I think older generations were used to paying for their news but that’s not the expectation with the internet anymore. So we desperately need a new business model, we’ve been talking about that for a while in news circles but I think this pandemic has really thrown it into relief how important it is that we have ways to get quality information out there and that people know which is which. So that’s one thing. And my list is not exhaustive, by the way. Another thing that I think is really interesting is that it’s showing up the weaknesses in our various health systems, national health systems. So the problem in the United States has been that lots of people have been excluded from testing and from care, and not just for this pandemic but this pandemic is really highlighting that. A lot of people were not getting access to Covid-19 testing when they needed it. And of course, you can’t control an outbreak of disease if you don't know who’s got it and who they’ve been in contact with. On our side, in Europe, where we have more socialised medical healthcare systems, which by the way, were the kind of fruit of the 1918 pandemic, when they realised how important this was. Our systems tend to be paid for indirectly by taxes or insurance, national insurance schemes and we get our healthcare free at the point of delivery. So that means that, in theory, anyone can get tested for Covid-19, assuming the tests are available. There have been some reports that they haven’t been but that’s another problem. But the problem is that our health systems are completely overloaded. They are arguably no longer fit for purpose. They were built for much smaller and much younger populations and they’re struggling to support older and bigger populations and not doing very well. So we may have to have a rethink on our side about how we fund our health systems and how we adapt them, going forward, for a different kind of population. So those are just two things that I think that we could be thinking about in the long term, once this pandemic passes. Listen to the full podcast interview with Laura Spinney here Matt Elton is the editor of BBC World Histories Magazine Laura Spinney is a British science journalist, novelist, and non-fiction writer
As COVID-19 dominates the news, Laura Spinney asks what we might learn from pandemics in the past
As COVID-19 dominates the news, Laura Spinney draws historical parallels with other pandemics in history and asks what we might learn from disease outbreaks in the past Read our transcript of the podcast interview here Why was the 1918-19 pandemic known as Spanish Flu?
Royalists, beards and cowardice: are these the strangest taxes in history?
Rulers and governments of yore have enforced some pretty strange levies, taxing all manner of unlikely commodities and occurrences – as well as the payer's patience. Jonny Wilkes examines some of the oddest for BBC History Revealed
Royalists – England As Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, Oliver Cromwell brought in some pretty restrictive laws, but one of his most tactical was to tax his enemies. Arguing that it was the responsibility of Royalists to pay for the militia, Cromwell levied a 10 per cent income tariff – the ‘decimation tax’ –on known Royalist households. Not only did it bring in some much-needed funds, but was a convenient way to keep his enemies in check. Oliver Cromwell: the secret of his military genius Oliver Cromwell: Hero or Villain? Urine – Ancient Rome In Ancient Rome, human urine was a valuable commodity, used for tanning, laundering – the ammonia apparently made for whiter-than-white togas – and even teeth brushing. It wasn’t long before entrepreneurial types began collecting the waste matter, hoping to make profits from pee, but Emperors Nero and Vespasian noticed. They levied a tax on the acquisition of urine, which led to the popular Latin phrase pecunia non olet, or ‘money does not stink’, a nod to the idea that money is not worth more or less because of where it came from. Tales of the toilet: a historical A–Z How did knights in armour go to the toilet? Soap – England The fact that the English upper classes tended to think of the lower classes as smelly ingrates might have something to do with the 141-year tax on soap that came into force in 1712, and it out-priced poorer-paid folk. Indeed, it was such a heavy tax that soap makers began to make their product off the books for the black market, after which tax collectors took to locking the lids of the makers’ soap-boiling pans overnight. Class warfare: a day in the life of a Victorian schoolchild Victorian burlesque: cheap thrills for the chattering classes Beards – Russia and Tudor England In a bid to westernise Russian society, in 1698 Tsar Peter the Great slapped a tax on what he deemed to be an old-fashioned fashion choice: the beard. Men had a choice: shave or stump up. Those who opted to retain their face fuzz would be given a token as proof of payment, on one side of which was a rather eerie image of half a face and the words: “The beard is a superfluous burden”. King Henry VIII levied a similar tax on Tudor England, with the amount depending on the gent’s standing in society. Facial hair, therefore, quickly became a symbol of stature. 10 brilliant beards from history A brief history of beards Cowardice – England If you were a knight in medieval England, it was a great honour to be called up to war in service of the king, and it was your duty to oblige. But if you didn’t really fancy it, you could pay scutage, popularly known as cowardice tax. Having begun in 1100, the scaredy-cat scutage evolved into a general tax on knights’ land by the 13th century. It morphed then further still into a hefty fine paid in lieu of service before becoming redundant in the 14th century. Shot at dawn: the First World War soldiers executed for desertion and cowardice Medieval inspiration: what the fantasy genre owes to the 14th century Cooking oil – Ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt gave us one of the oldest-known taxes, but it’s a remarkably small-fry levy from the land of gold and jewels: cooking oil. Tax collectors, or scribes, would visit people’s houses to make sure they weren’t re-using their fat, or cooking with cheaper alternatives. The tax was paid to the Pharaoh, who had a vested interest: he also owned the oil itself. 10 things you (probably) didn't know about ancient Egypt Biscuit tins and pastry jiggers: the history of 6 baking tools Chinese immigrants to Canada – Canada For nearly 40 years from 1885-1923, Canada imposed a tax on all immigrants from China, introduced to discourage immigrants from the Far East. At a time when no other ethnic group paid anything, the ‘Chinese Head Tax’ required Chinese settlers to hand over $50 (but this rose to $500 by 1903). After settling, they may have earned as little as $1 a day. Six lives that shaped China Trading blows: Rana Mitter on the US-China Trade War Hats – England You may not be able to put a price on style but, in 1784, the English government tried via a tax on men’s hats. The charge levied was dependant the value of the headgear – a simple flat cap costing under four shillings warranted a threepence charge, while more expensive styles – such as early top hats valued at over 12 shillings – demanded a two-shilling duty. Stitching the fashions of the 19th century 15 things you didn’t know about fashion in the First World War Fireplaces – England For many, winters in 17th-century England were colder than they had to be. This was thanks to a tax on all fireplaces, introduced in 1662 to pay for Charles II’s household. Much like the window tax of 1696, people hastily bricked up their costly chimneys and shivered through the chilly nights to avoid paying. This sometimes led to tragedy: in 1684, an Oxfordshire baker caused a fire that destroyed 20 buildings and killed four people after knocking through a wall from her oven to avoid the hearth tax. Taxing the rich to feed the poor in the 17th century: the world's first welfare state 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the 1666 Great Fire of London Modesty – India For a short period in the 19th century, lower caste women in the Indian princely state of Travancore were required to pay to cover their breasts in public. This tax, mulakkaram, led to an extraordinary act of rebellion. A woman named Nangeli refused to comply, so cut off her own breasts and handed them to a tax collector on a plantain leaf. She died from her wounds, but the tax was abolished. Cricket, curry and cups of tea: India's influence on Victorian Britain “This was a corporation that could topple kings”: William Dalrymple on the East India Company Jonny Wilkes is a freelance writer specialising in history This content first appeared in the April 2016 issue of BBC History Revealed