July 4, 2016 • 35 mins
Portrayals of this piece of Scottish and English history are often simultaneously romanticized and oversimplified. It's a great deal more complicated than any one event, and is instead the result of many contributing factors.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tray Cbe Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Largely
thanks to the Outlander books and TV show, we have
gotten so many requests to talk about today's topic in
(00:24):
so many different forms. I'm not exaggerating. This goes all
the way back to when we very very first started
on the show. Bonnie Prince Charlie is number eleven on
our hundreds and hundreds of Suggestions long uh Listeners Suggestions document.
I'm not kidding when I say hundreds and hundreds. There
are at least six hundred things on there, but I
(00:45):
haven't updated in a while, so if I update from
what's in our email, it's probably closer to almost a thousand. Uh.
And then, in addition to Bonnie Prince Charlie being number eleven,
the Jacobite Rebellion and the Bad of Colloden are both
all on there as well, like within the top tent
of suggestions, ordered chronologically, and they just the hits just
(01:10):
keep coming. I had to laugh because last night Tracy
sent me the outline for this in an email, and
like seconds later an email came in asking for this
very topic. Yes, I've answered that this morning and said, coincidentally,
we're recording that today. I don't get to do that
very often. So portrayals of this piece of Scottish and
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English history are often simultaneously heavily romanticized and just phenomenally oversimplified.
I thought this episode was going to be a lot
easier than it was, frankly, before I really got into
it um and a lot of times these sort of
historical fictionisque depictions play out with Highland Scotts as these
(01:54):
sort of noble savages and they're fighting to put a
Scott back on the throne of the of of Great Britain.
And then while the Scottish Highlands were definitely home to
a unique culture and a unique social system, and the
House of Stuart did originate as a Scottish royal house,
as is so often the case, it is just way
(02:15):
more complicated than that. I found a little tired because
it has taken me two and a half weeks to
understand it. And you could mark the beginning of this
story at so many places in the history of the
British Isles. We're going to start with the Glorious Revolution
of six to sixteen eighty nine, more than fifty years
before the uprising itself. At that time, King James the
(02:39):
seventh of Scotland and second of England lost the throne
to William of Orange, stadholder of the Netherlands. William of
Orange was both James's nephew and his son in law
thanks to his marriage to marry the second James's daughter.
James was Catholic, and some of his pro Catholic policies,
along with policies that promoted tolerance of protest dissenters, had
(03:01):
really alienated a lot of England's Protestant population. The birth
of James's son, James Francis Edwards Stewart, on June tenth
meant that the Catholic king would have a Catholic heir,
and this was actually such a big deal that it
spawned a whole conspiracy theory. This conspiracy theory was that
the infant James, also known as the Old Pretender, was
(03:23):
really an impost baby who had been sneaked into his
mother's bed to ensure that there would be a Catholic
line of succession. I don't know why impost is the
best phrase like it's just witty. After the birth of
James Edward, several Protestant politicians went to William of Orange,
(03:44):
also a Protestant, inviting him to come to England, bring
an army and set things right. William was enemies with France,
and French power in Europe had been growing for decades.
He thought that if he was able to draw on
the resources of both Britain and the Netherlands, he'd be
better able to resist France's advances. After a series of
(04:06):
desertions within James's army and failed negotiations, the Stewarts eventually
fled to France, and with James gone, William of Orange
and his wife Mary took his place. A parliament was assembled,
which ultimately agreed to treat James's flight to France as
an abdication of the throne and to formally offer the
crown to William and Mary together. This, in a nutshell,
(04:28):
is the Glorious Revolution. During and after all of this,
the Jacobites were James's supporters, named after the Latin form
of his name, and there were lots of reasons people
joined the Jacobite cause. In Ireland, religion was a big
factor since Catholicism was the primary religion in most of Ireland,
and the Stewarts were Catholic. In England, which didn't have
(04:51):
a large Catholic population, many Jacobites were Anglican, but thought
this parliamentary interference in the line of royal succession was raw.
The Royal House of Stewart itself hailed from Scotland, while
the House of Orange was Dutch, so the idea of
restoring a Scottish house to the throne was one of
many roots of Jacobite support in Scotland. The Glorious Revolution
(05:14):
is often described as bloodless, but this was really only
true in England. Beginning almost immediately and continuing over the
next six decades, there were multiple violent attempts made, primarily
from Scotland and Ireland, to overthrow William and Mary and
their successors and to put James and his successors back
on the throne. The william Might War in Ireland, with
(05:37):
the Jacobites on one side and the william Mights on
the other, began in sixteen eighty nine and went on
for two years, including the July one Battle of the
Boy And which both William and James were present as
monarchs on opposite sides. Another organized rebellion, known as the
Jacobite Rebellion of seventeen fifteen. The fifteen Rebellion or Mars Rebellion,
(06:01):
also played out unsuccessfully, mainly in the Highlands of Scotland.
It followed the death of Queen Anne. Anne was Mary's
sister and apart from James Edwards Stewart, was the last
of the House of Stewart living at the time, yeah
the Stewart's yet to come in the story, had not
been born yet. There had actually been some discussion over
(06:23):
the years of restoring the House of Stewart to the
throne under the condition that they abandoned their Catholic religion,
and that of course had not flown so. Before Anne's death,
her successor had been established in the English Parliament's Act
of Settlement in seventeen o one, which also specified that
the monarch had to be Anglican. Per the terms of
(06:45):
that act, the new monarch would come from the German
Royal House of Hanover. That first Hanover monarch was George
the first So the Jacobite Rebellion of seventeen fifteen tried
and failed to put James Francis Edward on the throne
in spite of criteria outlined in the Act of Settlement.
The Williamite War and the fifteen Rebellion are just two examples.
(07:09):
When seventeen forty five rolled around, bringing with it the
most famous Jacobite rebellion, Unsuccessful attempts to bring back the
Stewarts had been going on for decades, especially in Scotland
and Ireland. Some of these had been backed by France,
and in their wake, exiled Jacobite leaders had established communities
of sympathetic supporters on the mainland of Europe. By the
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time the Jacobite Uprising of seventeen forty five occurred, the
Jacobite cause had advocated first for James the seventh and Second,
who died in seventeen oh one, and then for his
son James Edward, who was at this point still living.
A big player in the seventeen forty five uprising was
James Edwards son Charles Edwards Stewart, also known as Bonnie
(07:52):
Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender. We'll talk more about
Bonnie Prince Charlie and how the seventeen forty five rebellion
came about after a brief sposive break to get back
to the life of Bonnie. Prince Charlie. Charles Stewart was
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born on December thirty one, seventeen twenty, just before Charles
turned twenty. Holy Roman Emperor Charles the sixth died and
this destabilized parts of Europe as his daughter Maria Terraces
struggled to retain the throne and what became known as
the War of Austrian Succession. France saw this chaos as
(08:37):
an opportunity to once again support the Jacobite cause and
restore the Stewart line to the throne, although following the
failure of the fifteen rebellion that we discussed before the break,
France was reluctant to actually commit any troops to this endeavor.
It was a bit of a game of international will
they or won't they over the next five years, until finally,
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in late seventeen forty four, James Edward, who was now
in his fifties, sent his son Charles from Rome to
Scotland in secret with the hope of rallying support for
the Jacobite cause. Charles went by way of France with
the hope of securing direct French support, and he did
actually get it, but things did not go according to plan.
(09:22):
Charles's disappearance from Rome did not go unnoticed, and England
pretty quickly intuited that an invasion was imminent, so it
positioned a fleet of ships to defend itself from a
French attack. So this fleet was large enough that when
the French troop transports caught sight of it, they turned
back and went back to France, where unusually stormy weather
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destroyed or damaged most of them. This meant that once
Charles did actually get to England, he was basically on
his own, without the fifteen thousand French troops that he
had been promised. He did, however, get a bit of
a boost on April elartieth, seventeen forty five, when France
defeated British, Dutch, Austrian and Hanoverian forces at the Battle
(10:07):
of Fontinois, part of the ongoing War of Austrian Succession.
The English defeat boosted Jacobite morale and people began to
hope that they might see a similar victory on British soil.
Hoping that this victory would bolster his support in the
Highlands of Scotland, Charles made his way there. He had
(10:27):
a small entourage that sailed for the western coast of Scotland,
dodging English vessels the whole way, and he arrived there
on July seventeen forty five. At this point, the Highlands
of Scotland were home to tight knit clans which rolled family,
civic government, and economic ties all into one unit. The
clan system had been in place for centuries and it
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was a sort of semi feudal system that both drew
from an influenced family relationships communities, and the region's economy.
Members of each clan of together in communities that operated
like joint tenancy farms the clanses and was also quite militaristic,
with each clan maintaining a fighting force to both defend
(11:10):
itself from neighboring clans and to rate its neighbors for
goods and resources. So to rally a fighting force in
the Highlands of Scotland, Charles had to convince clan leaders
to join him, and where they went, their clans and
their clans fighting forces would also follow. And this at
first he really faced huge resistance. The clan leaders that
(11:32):
he met with were all unwilling to support him unless
he could provide actual troops to back him up. They
all remembered pretty well what had happened the last time
the Jacobites had tried to rebel, and he couldn't at
that point and offer them any actual troops support. He
also couldn't try to just go back to Rome, because
(11:53):
there were English warships at every route of escape keeping
him from doing that exact thing. So, with the odds
heavily stacked against him, he started trying to win the
support of Donald Cameron of Lochielle, chief of Clan Cameron.
Several other clans sympathetic to the Jacobite cause, had said
they would join if Lochiale did. Charles's argument was that
(12:15):
while he did not have the aid of foreign troops,
nearly the entire British military was occupied elsewhere due to
the War of Austrian Succession, so if the clans rallied
their forces at this point, they would have superior numbers,
and once France saw what the Jacobites could do with
those numbers, France would also send aid. Lachielle ultimately agreed,
(12:37):
and as they said they would, other clans began to
commit their troops. This is where I realized how much
of This had literally nothing to do with who was
on the throne of Great Britain. The whole lot of
it was like, well, we gotta, we gotta take advantage
of the War of Austrian succession. Like France had its
(12:58):
own motives, everybody, there were a whole lot going on
here that had other motivations besides the straight up question
of who was on the throne. Uh Because Bonnie Prince
Charlie knew that part of his appeal in Scotland was
the idea of restoring a Scottish house to the throne,
he started adopting traditional Highland dress, Saint Tartan and Kilts,
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and learning Scott's Gaelic. By mid August, more than twelve
hundred Highland Scotts had joined the cause, including two hundred
and eighty from the Stewards of Appen, three hundred from
the McDonald's of Clan Ronald or Clan Ranald, we were
not certain on pronunciation there, two hundred and fifty from
Clan Cameron, and four hundred from a combined force of
the McDonald's of glen Garry and the Grants of Glenn Morriston. Meanwhile,
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news of Charles's arrival and his muster of clan forces
in the highlands of scott Scotland reached Edinburgh and Sir
John Cope, Commander in chief of the regular Forces in Scotland,
started assembling a response. Although Bonnie Prince Charlie had found
support in the Highlands, the support was actually far from universal.
The leadership of Clan Campbell in particular was loyal to
(14:06):
George the Second, and consequently the clan supported the king
as well, whether it was out of loyalty to the
monarch or to the clan itself. There's also some argument
to be made that some of Clan Campbell's loyalties were
influenced by seeing this as an opportunity to get back
at other clans they had grievances with, including Clan Cameron.
(14:27):
So the support on the government side, which how we're
going to refer to that uh, that force that sometimes
was made up of, you know, not only people from
the lowlands of Scotland, which didn't have quite as much
emotional ties to what was going on UH and clan
forces that were supportive of the current reigning monarch. Through
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the summer and early fall, the Jacobite and governmental forces
followed one another around a huge swath of the Scottish Highland. First,
the Jacobite force fortified itself at cori Eric Pass with
the hope of meeting the Loyalist force there, but Cope,
having received intelligence of what Charles was planning, diverted his
forces to Inverness, hoping to meet the Jacobites on more
(15:15):
favorable ground. This plan might have given Cope the upper
hand if the Jacobite force had actually pursued him to
Inverness and Stead. Charles decided to take advantage of the
fact that the Scottish capital of Edinburgh was now virtually undefended,
and he decided to take over it, continuing to recruit
more troops and raised funds through taxation along the way.
(15:36):
That Jacobites also occupied the city of Perth as they
made their way to Edinburgh. As Cope realized his error
in leaving Edinburgh undefended, he retreated back to it by sea,
hoping that he would arrive before Charles did, and he
did not. Edinburgh was defended by the City Guard only
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uh and that meant only about six d troops, who
were commanded by an eighties seven year old man who
had to be carried on a stretcher, this is not
exactly a vital military force. After a couple of days
of negotiations with the city attempting to look much more
defended than it really was, a few hundred of the
Jacobite force basically forced their way in as a negotiator
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tried to return to the city on September seventeenth, so
the Jacobites took control of Scotland's capital, with the exception
of Edinburgh Castle, with almost no effort at all, although
the troops in the castle would pester the Jacobite force
for the whole time that they occupied the city. While
Charles's force was able to rally a little more support
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from Edinburgh, giving him about two thousand, four hundred men total,
he still wasn't armed very well. Although they basically walked
into an essentially undefended Edinburgh, the city of Edinburgh had
had the sense to store all of their weapons in
the castle, which the Jacobite force couldn't get into. So
when Charles heard that Cope headed towards the village of Preston,
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he decided to follow suit with an army that was
bigger than it had been before, but not necessarily better
armed than what the Loyalists or the governmental side had.
In late September, both forces converged on the village of
Preston Penns. Cope's force found a defensible position near the
neighboring village of Trenent. At first, the Jacobite force took
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the high ground to the south and then realized a
marsh at the bottom of the hill would keep them
from actually reaching the governmental army. Cope, of course, had
not expected an attack from across a marsh and had
to redeploy his forces to face the ill placed Jacobite
army early in the morning of September one, Partially hidden
by very misty weather, The Jacobite army used a small
(17:48):
footpath that one of the locals had told them about
to reach Cope's force. The Highland force charged the Loyalist army,
which was basically hemmed in without enough room to really
maneuver maneuver. The governmental force was also pretty much taken
by surprise. They had been alerted to the fact that
something was going on by a barking dog, but that
really added more to the chaos than actually allowing them
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to plan a response. In less than ten minutes, Cope's
army was effectively routed. There were about thirty five deaths
and seventy five injuries among the Jacobite force, while Cope
sides saw about a hundred and fifty deaths and at
least one thousand taken Prisoner Bonnie. Prince Charlie also took
Cope's military chest, which contained between three thousand and four
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thousand pounds. This whole incident was recently on an episode
of Outlander. Jerry more or less pretty much what we
just described here actually, uh, and probably other things we're
going to talk about soon are going to be in
future episodes of Outlander that will have actually come out
by the time this episode comes out, So that's a
weird time travel for everyone. Anyway, Afterward, the Jacobite force
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was exuberant. Only had they outrun and outmaneuvered the British Army,
taken Perth and taken Edinburgh and then soundly defeated the
army on the battlefield, they also have the size of
the opposing force, and then they had come away with
much better funding thanks to the governmental war chest that
they made away with. But this, however, was not to last.
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So we're going to talk more about how things progressed
after we pause for a brief word from one of
our fantastic sponsors. Unsurprisingly, after the Battle of Preston Pans,
the Jacobites were a little bit overconfident. They had hoped
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that the victory would rally foreign support to their cause,
and the victory had been decisive. So for about six weeks,
the Jacobites continued to occupy Edinburgh and tried to get
Louis Fift to send real actual support from France. They
also tried to recruit more Scots to their army, which
they did, although most of this support came from outside,
(20:07):
not within Edinburgh. The population of Edinburgh was kind of like,
we'll let you be here because you have weapons that
we don't really care to join your cause. Eventually, France,
while still declining to send actual troops, did send some weapons. Meanwhile,
England got to work recovering from the defeat at Preston Pans,
(20:29):
including pressing people into service and recalling forces that had
been fighting elsewhere in Europe. Field Marshal George Wade, who
was actually responsible for the construction for most of the
military roads the armies were traveling on, was in command
of one Force. William Duke of Cumberland, George the second
third son, was recalled from Holland to command another Hearing
(20:53):
about these forces, Charles started pushing to move his army
and try to strike before the governmental forces too big
to be beaten. His advisers, though, kept cautioning him to wait.
They didn't think they were going to be successful at
that point, and he finally wound up dividing his force
into two columns to proceed toward Carlisle in England. Basically,
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the idea was they were going to keep pressing forward
until they actually got to London. Charles now had five
thousand infantry and five cavalry, and he was much better armed, rested,
and trained than before this several weeks stay in Edinburgh.
While this is often portrayed as Charles commanding an army
of Highland Scott's, by this point the army was really
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much broader than that. There were thirteen Highland clan regiments
plus five Lowland regiments. They also had thirteen pieces of artillery,
some sent from France and some recovered from the field
at Preston Pans, although they did have some desertions along
the way because at this point the army was getting
farther and farther away from home. Both prongs of the
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Jacobite fur did reach Carlisles successfully and convinced the mayor
to surrender both the town and the castle, this time
having learned from having not had the castle when they
were in Edinburgh the Jacobites. The Jacobites availed themselves in
the town supply of gunpowder, ammunition, and muskets, along with
a large number of broadswords that had been confiscated from
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Jacobite rebels during the fifteen rebellions. Those were still hanging
around from the last big Jacobite uprising, and this is
where things started to go a little arrive for the
Jacobite army. They couldn't stay in Carlisle. If they did,
the government force might pen them in, and Charles said
that he had intelligence of more Jacobite support at other
(22:42):
towns in the area. So they left Carlisle, intending to
gather that support as they went. Support didn't really come, though.
The towns they were passing through didn't really care, at
leastn't care enough to join them. It became clear that
there really wasn't a lot of Jacobite support to be
rallied in northern England, or at least not enough support
(23:05):
to justify the risks of staying in England. Eventually, Charles's
Council of War convinced him that retreating back to Scotland
was his only option, and that retreat began on December six,
and by this point the Jacobite army was starting to
show signs of strain. Quite a bit of equipment was
left behind in Derby, where the army had been billeted,
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and many of them hadn't been told they were going
to Scotland, and they were furious when they learned they
were not actually in pursuit of the Duke of Cumberland
and then pressing on to London. As their journey progressed
back northward, the towns they passed through went from being
unimpressed by their efforts to actively hostile more than once.
As the Jacobite forest moved north in early December, the
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towns they approached actually fired upon them. They wound up
reaching Scotland after a treacherous crossing of the River Esk
on December twentie. On January seventeenth, seventeen forty six, Jacobite
and governmental forces met at the Battle of Falkirk, an
overall chaotic and disorganized event in which both sides claimed
(24:12):
to be the victors. Neither built upon the supposed victory,
though the Jacobite force continued to retreat toward Inverness and
the Hanoverian force, heavily slowed down by their supply carts
and other equipment, decided to wait out the winter until
travel conditions were better. So the winter passed without a
lot of organized action on either side, but the winter
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itself was really hard. The Jacobite force lost a lot
of men through desertions, and after the winter their supplies
were critically low. That also run out of money, and
even if they had had money, the British Navy had
formed a blockade to keep them from eight being able
to re supply, so when it came to the final
battle on Colloden More, just a little ways away from
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Inverness in April of seventeen forty six, the Jacobite force
was down from a peak of about eight thousand men
to less than five thousand infantry and a hundred and
fifty cavalry. Cumberland's army, on the other hand, had more
than nine thousand, some of whom were Highlanders that were
loyal to the Hanoverian succession. Cumberland's force was better trained
(25:19):
and better armed than the Jacobites. It's artillery volleys are
more effective. While many of the Jacobite force were armed
with swords and shields and charged in for hand to
hand combat, Cumberland's force nearly all had muskets and were
able to shoot them down. One portion of the Jacobite
force actually got bogged down in marshy ground and never
even reached Cumberland's lines before being killed. The Battle of
(25:43):
Colloden was over in just forty minutes. About two thousand
Jacobites were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Cumberland, on the
other hand, had only about fifty dead and two hundred
and fifty wounded. Nearly all of the Jacobite deaths were
Highland Scots, as the Lowland read aments had been in
a second line to cover the retreat, while some of
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the Jacobite force were ready to press on and find
some way to recover from their defeat at Colloden, Bonnie
Prince Charlie issued his final order as quote, let every
man seek his own safety as best he can. He
ultimately fled, went into hiding and escaped Scotland disguised as
a maid servant to a woman named Flora McDonald. The
(26:26):
consequences of the Jacobite uprising of seventeen forty five on
the Highlands of Scotland were devastating. Cumberland moved through the
area for several weeks on a campaign of destruction and retribution.
His force destroyed buildings, including Catholic and Episcopalian churches, as
well as homes and public buildings. He drove off cattle
(26:48):
and destroyed plows belonging to known or suspected Jacobite leaders.
The Highland Scots were ordered to surrender their arms, and
fugitives fleeing from Cumberland's force headed farther into the Highlands,
where many of them died of starvation. There were also
wanton and random shootings, as well as rapes. Jacobite leaders,
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sympathizers and suspected sympathizers were hanged, and several peers known
to have Jacobite leanings were beheaded. The people who were
tried were sentenced to death, but their sentences were commuted
to lifetime indentured labor and being transported elsewhere and many
of the elements of Highland life that had made the
region's culture so distinctive were outlawed, including the wearing of
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tartan and traditional Highland dress. The Highland Clearances followed, in
which whole extended families were systematically evicted over the course
of a century. The clan system couldn't survive in the
face of all of this destruction and displacement, and it
was effectively wiped out. Yeah, while the clans themselves as
families and family names and and you know, family trees
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still exist, that system of government and economics doesn't exist
anymore and was wiped out basically immediately. This is one
of the reasons why the whole, the whole Uprising uh
In in modern retellings is often treated in such a
romanticized way because of this idea that there was a
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unique local culture that was effectively wiped out in retaliation. Afterward, Bonnie,
Prince Charlie went into exile on September set six, and
he never returned to Scotland. He died in Sight, having
become quite bitter and having developed problems with alcohol. And
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although he had a brother, that brother died without an heir,
and that put an end to the House of Stuart.
That's kind of a down ending, but everybody wanted it. Ever,
so many people want it, and if you watch Outlander,
this episode is coming out like towards the end of
this season of Outlander, and the season of Outlanders really
(28:59):
got a lot of this part of history as kind
of a backdrop and definitely has the the running theme
of the Highland culture is going to be destroyed if
the Battle of Collodon doesn't go our way like that's
that's said and almost those exact words more than one time. Um.
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The there is some arguments that we made the at
least some people in the Highlands of Scotland who were
in favor of a Stewart restoration to the throne. We're
hoping to preserve the clan system of life, not so
much just clans as families and relationships, but like the
clan system um as a social and economic system. They
(29:43):
were hoping that a Stewart restoration would preserve that for
a little while because at this point the Lowlands of
Scotland had become much more urban and much more similar
to how things operated socially and economically in England um
and and a lot of the clans were really reluctant
to see that sort of change starting to already happen
(30:06):
in the Highlands before the Jacobite rebellions Begans. They were
sort of hoping to stave off that change a little longer, uh,
none of which was unfortunately successful. And now, with our
many listener requests for the Jacobites satisfied, do you want
to move on to listener mail? I have a quick
(30:27):
correction before we get into our actual listener mail. It's
more of a clarification than a correction, and it is
from Ivan. Uh and I haven't written after our Harriet
Subban episode about how we referred to Harriet Tubbans grandmother
as being part of the Ashanti tribe. And Ivan says, uh,
it's kind it's obviously outside the scope of the episode,
(30:48):
but part of the Ashanti tribe and leaving it at
that kind of came off to me as eracing the
fact that the Ashanti were a giant, metropolitan empire and
not like a bunch of people living in the jungle somewhere.
Um And yes, kingdom or empire would have been a
lot more uh evocative as a word for who the
Ashanti were. Um. Ivan suggests that we do a an
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episode about that empire, and we actually have. We talked
about the uh the Yah a santoa Um war for
independence in an earlier episode that's in our archive. We
also have a couple of other episodes in our more
recent shows on African history that are about how, um,
(31:32):
how African nations, particularly in Western Africa, were part of
the slave trade, and that all ties into what we
talked about pretty much any time we talk about any
episode about slavery in uh the America's um. But we
can't re explain all of that and all of the
(31:55):
anytime we talked about slavery. So if you have not
heard those past episodes, there's more nation there. Uh. And
then in terms of our listener, male, I have something
from Tricia and Tricius Tricious and is. I'm a huge,
albeit recent fan of the podcast. A friend of mine
told me about Stephie miss and history class a few
months back, and I've spent the last several months rapidly
(32:18):
making my way through the podcast back catalog. I studied
art history and history. UH, So listening to you all
wax about all kinds of history and notable people hits
my happy spot and I look forward to every new episode.
I heard the mention of quilts and African American quilters
and D's Bend, and I felt compelled to write, write
you all and suggest a few books about the subject
(32:40):
that I have collected. I'm a quilt maker slash fiber
artist as my main gig, and a book junkie. Uh.
There as follows always there. The African American Presence in
American Quilts by Questa Benbury. This discusses quilt making amongst
African American women, whose work and presence and quilt making
was largely ignored word and downplayed in lieu of quilts
(33:02):
made concurrently by white women in the same periods. The
next Signs and Symbols African Images and African American Quilts
by Maud Southwell Walman. This one tries to find parallels
between improvisational African American quilts and the structure of handcrafted
textiles in some parts of Africa, positing there's some connection
(33:22):
to folk ways taken over to the New World when
the ancestors of African slaves arrived in North America. Her
theory is a bit controversial, but it's an interesting idea. Uh,
and then she talks about some other stuff, and I
basically wanted to share that information who were for folks
who are more interested in learning about UM African American
(33:43):
American quilt making, because, as we said on the show,
that the academic interest on that has been a lot
more recent than a lot of other quilt history. If
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(34:05):
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(34:26):
dot com, and you will find show notes for this episode.
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(34:50):
thousands of other topics because it how stuff works dot com.
M
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tray Cbe Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Largely
thanks to the Outlander books and TV show, we have
gotten so many requests to talk about today's topic in
(00:24):
so many different forms. I'm not exaggerating. This goes all
the way back to when we very very first started
on the show. Bonnie Prince Charlie is number eleven on
our hundreds and hundreds of Suggestions long uh Listeners Suggestions document.
I'm not kidding when I say hundreds and hundreds. There
are at least six hundred things on there, but I
(00:45):
haven't updated in a while, so if I update from
what's in our email, it's probably closer to almost a thousand. Uh.
And then, in addition to Bonnie Prince Charlie being number eleven,
the Jacobite Rebellion and the Bad of Colloden are both
all on there as well, like within the top tent
of suggestions, ordered chronologically, and they just the hits just
(01:10):
keep coming. I had to laugh because last night Tracy
sent me the outline for this in an email, and
like seconds later an email came in asking for this
very topic. Yes, I've answered that this morning and said, coincidentally,
we're recording that today. I don't get to do that
very often. So portrayals of this piece of Scottish and
(01:31):
English history are often simultaneously heavily romanticized and just phenomenally oversimplified.
I thought this episode was going to be a lot
easier than it was, frankly, before I really got into
it um and a lot of times these sort of
historical fictionisque depictions play out with Highland Scotts as these
(01:54):
sort of noble savages and they're fighting to put a
Scott back on the throne of the of of Great Britain.
And then while the Scottish Highlands were definitely home to
a unique culture and a unique social system, and the
House of Stuart did originate as a Scottish royal house,
as is so often the case, it is just way
(02:15):
more complicated than that. I found a little tired because
it has taken me two and a half weeks to
understand it. And you could mark the beginning of this
story at so many places in the history of the
British Isles. We're going to start with the Glorious Revolution
of six to sixteen eighty nine, more than fifty years
before the uprising itself. At that time, King James the
(02:39):
seventh of Scotland and second of England lost the throne
to William of Orange, stadholder of the Netherlands. William of
Orange was both James's nephew and his son in law
thanks to his marriage to marry the second James's daughter.
James was Catholic, and some of his pro Catholic policies,
along with policies that promoted tolerance of protest dissenters, had
(03:01):
really alienated a lot of England's Protestant population. The birth
of James's son, James Francis Edwards Stewart, on June tenth
meant that the Catholic king would have a Catholic heir,
and this was actually such a big deal that it
spawned a whole conspiracy theory. This conspiracy theory was that
the infant James, also known as the Old Pretender, was
(03:23):
really an impost baby who had been sneaked into his
mother's bed to ensure that there would be a Catholic
line of succession. I don't know why impost is the
best phrase like it's just witty. After the birth of
James Edward, several Protestant politicians went to William of Orange,
(03:44):
also a Protestant, inviting him to come to England, bring
an army and set things right. William was enemies with France,
and French power in Europe had been growing for decades.
He thought that if he was able to draw on
the resources of both Britain and the Netherlands, he'd be
better able to resist France's advances. After a series of
(04:06):
desertions within James's army and failed negotiations, the Stewarts eventually
fled to France, and with James gone, William of Orange
and his wife Mary took his place. A parliament was assembled,
which ultimately agreed to treat James's flight to France as
an abdication of the throne and to formally offer the
crown to William and Mary together. This, in a nutshell,
(04:28):
is the Glorious Revolution. During and after all of this,
the Jacobites were James's supporters, named after the Latin form
of his name, and there were lots of reasons people
joined the Jacobite cause. In Ireland, religion was a big
factor since Catholicism was the primary religion in most of Ireland,
and the Stewarts were Catholic. In England, which didn't have
(04:51):
a large Catholic population, many Jacobites were Anglican, but thought
this parliamentary interference in the line of royal succession was raw.
The Royal House of Stewart itself hailed from Scotland, while
the House of Orange was Dutch, so the idea of
restoring a Scottish house to the throne was one of
many roots of Jacobite support in Scotland. The Glorious Revolution
(05:14):
is often described as bloodless, but this was really only
true in England. Beginning almost immediately and continuing over the
next six decades, there were multiple violent attempts made, primarily
from Scotland and Ireland, to overthrow William and Mary and
their successors and to put James and his successors back
on the throne. The william Might War in Ireland, with
(05:37):
the Jacobites on one side and the william Mights on
the other, began in sixteen eighty nine and went on
for two years, including the July one Battle of the
Boy And which both William and James were present as
monarchs on opposite sides. Another organized rebellion, known as the
Jacobite Rebellion of seventeen fifteen. The fifteen Rebellion or Mars Rebellion,
(06:01):
also played out unsuccessfully, mainly in the Highlands of Scotland.
It followed the death of Queen Anne. Anne was Mary's
sister and apart from James Edwards Stewart, was the last
of the House of Stewart living at the time, yeah
the Stewart's yet to come in the story, had not
been born yet. There had actually been some discussion over
(06:23):
the years of restoring the House of Stewart to the
throne under the condition that they abandoned their Catholic religion,
and that of course had not flown so. Before Anne's death,
her successor had been established in the English Parliament's Act
of Settlement in seventeen o one, which also specified that
the monarch had to be Anglican. Per the terms of
(06:45):
that act, the new monarch would come from the German
Royal House of Hanover. That first Hanover monarch was George
the first So the Jacobite Rebellion of seventeen fifteen tried
and failed to put James Francis Edward on the throne
in spite of criteria outlined in the Act of Settlement.
The Williamite War and the fifteen Rebellion are just two examples.
(07:09):
When seventeen forty five rolled around, bringing with it the
most famous Jacobite rebellion, Unsuccessful attempts to bring back the
Stewarts had been going on for decades, especially in Scotland
and Ireland. Some of these had been backed by France,
and in their wake, exiled Jacobite leaders had established communities
of sympathetic supporters on the mainland of Europe. By the
(07:30):
time the Jacobite Uprising of seventeen forty five occurred, the
Jacobite cause had advocated first for James the seventh and Second,
who died in seventeen oh one, and then for his
son James Edward, who was at this point still living.
A big player in the seventeen forty five uprising was
James Edwards son Charles Edwards Stewart, also known as Bonnie
(07:52):
Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender. We'll talk more about
Bonnie Prince Charlie and how the seventeen forty five rebellion
came about after a brief sposive break to get back
to the life of Bonnie. Prince Charlie. Charles Stewart was
(08:15):
born on December thirty one, seventeen twenty, just before Charles
turned twenty. Holy Roman Emperor Charles the sixth died and
this destabilized parts of Europe as his daughter Maria Terraces
struggled to retain the throne and what became known as
the War of Austrian Succession. France saw this chaos as
(08:37):
an opportunity to once again support the Jacobite cause and
restore the Stewart line to the throne, although following the
failure of the fifteen rebellion that we discussed before the break,
France was reluctant to actually commit any troops to this endeavor.
It was a bit of a game of international will
they or won't they over the next five years, until finally,
(08:59):
in late seventeen forty four, James Edward, who was now
in his fifties, sent his son Charles from Rome to
Scotland in secret with the hope of rallying support for
the Jacobite cause. Charles went by way of France with
the hope of securing direct French support, and he did
actually get it, but things did not go according to plan.
(09:22):
Charles's disappearance from Rome did not go unnoticed, and England
pretty quickly intuited that an invasion was imminent, so it
positioned a fleet of ships to defend itself from a
French attack. So this fleet was large enough that when
the French troop transports caught sight of it, they turned
back and went back to France, where unusually stormy weather
(09:45):
destroyed or damaged most of them. This meant that once
Charles did actually get to England, he was basically on
his own, without the fifteen thousand French troops that he
had been promised. He did, however, get a bit of
a boost on April elartieth, seventeen forty five, when France
defeated British, Dutch, Austrian and Hanoverian forces at the Battle
(10:07):
of Fontinois, part of the ongoing War of Austrian Succession.
The English defeat boosted Jacobite morale and people began to
hope that they might see a similar victory on British soil.
Hoping that this victory would bolster his support in the
Highlands of Scotland, Charles made his way there. He had
(10:27):
a small entourage that sailed for the western coast of Scotland,
dodging English vessels the whole way, and he arrived there
on July seventeen forty five. At this point, the Highlands
of Scotland were home to tight knit clans which rolled family,
civic government, and economic ties all into one unit. The
clan system had been in place for centuries and it
(10:50):
was a sort of semi feudal system that both drew
from an influenced family relationships communities, and the region's economy.
Members of each clan of together in communities that operated
like joint tenancy farms the clanses and was also quite militaristic,
with each clan maintaining a fighting force to both defend
(11:10):
itself from neighboring clans and to rate its neighbors for
goods and resources. So to rally a fighting force in
the Highlands of Scotland, Charles had to convince clan leaders
to join him, and where they went, their clans and
their clans fighting forces would also follow. And this at
first he really faced huge resistance. The clan leaders that
(11:32):
he met with were all unwilling to support him unless
he could provide actual troops to back him up. They
all remembered pretty well what had happened the last time
the Jacobites had tried to rebel, and he couldn't at
that point and offer them any actual troops support. He
also couldn't try to just go back to Rome, because
(11:53):
there were English warships at every route of escape keeping
him from doing that exact thing. So, with the odds
heavily stacked against him, he started trying to win the
support of Donald Cameron of Lochielle, chief of Clan Cameron.
Several other clans sympathetic to the Jacobite cause, had said
they would join if Lochiale did. Charles's argument was that
(12:15):
while he did not have the aid of foreign troops,
nearly the entire British military was occupied elsewhere due to
the War of Austrian Succession, so if the clans rallied
their forces at this point, they would have superior numbers,
and once France saw what the Jacobites could do with
those numbers, France would also send aid. Lachielle ultimately agreed,
(12:37):
and as they said they would, other clans began to
commit their troops. This is where I realized how much
of This had literally nothing to do with who was
on the throne of Great Britain. The whole lot of
it was like, well, we gotta, we gotta take advantage
of the War of Austrian succession. Like France had its
(12:58):
own motives, everybody, there were a whole lot going on
here that had other motivations besides the straight up question
of who was on the throne. Uh Because Bonnie Prince
Charlie knew that part of his appeal in Scotland was
the idea of restoring a Scottish house to the throne,
he started adopting traditional Highland dress, Saint Tartan and Kilts,
(13:20):
and learning Scott's Gaelic. By mid August, more than twelve
hundred Highland Scotts had joined the cause, including two hundred
and eighty from the Stewards of Appen, three hundred from
the McDonald's of Clan Ronald or Clan Ranald, we were
not certain on pronunciation there, two hundred and fifty from
Clan Cameron, and four hundred from a combined force of
the McDonald's of glen Garry and the Grants of Glenn Morriston. Meanwhile,
(13:44):
news of Charles's arrival and his muster of clan forces
in the highlands of scott Scotland reached Edinburgh and Sir
John Cope, Commander in chief of the regular Forces in Scotland,
started assembling a response. Although Bonnie Prince Charlie had found
support in the Highlands, the support was actually far from universal.
The leadership of Clan Campbell in particular was loyal to
(14:06):
George the Second, and consequently the clan supported the king
as well, whether it was out of loyalty to the
monarch or to the clan itself. There's also some argument
to be made that some of Clan Campbell's loyalties were
influenced by seeing this as an opportunity to get back
at other clans they had grievances with, including Clan Cameron.
(14:27):
So the support on the government side, which how we're
going to refer to that uh, that force that sometimes
was made up of, you know, not only people from
the lowlands of Scotland, which didn't have quite as much
emotional ties to what was going on UH and clan
forces that were supportive of the current reigning monarch. Through
(14:52):
the summer and early fall, the Jacobite and governmental forces
followed one another around a huge swath of the Scottish Highland. First,
the Jacobite force fortified itself at cori Eric Pass with
the hope of meeting the Loyalist force there, but Cope,
having received intelligence of what Charles was planning, diverted his
forces to Inverness, hoping to meet the Jacobites on more
(15:15):
favorable ground. This plan might have given Cope the upper
hand if the Jacobite force had actually pursued him to
Inverness and Stead. Charles decided to take advantage of the
fact that the Scottish capital of Edinburgh was now virtually undefended,
and he decided to take over it, continuing to recruit
more troops and raised funds through taxation along the way.
(15:36):
That Jacobites also occupied the city of Perth as they
made their way to Edinburgh. As Cope realized his error
in leaving Edinburgh undefended, he retreated back to it by sea,
hoping that he would arrive before Charles did, and he
did not. Edinburgh was defended by the City Guard only
(15:58):
uh and that meant only about six d troops, who
were commanded by an eighties seven year old man who
had to be carried on a stretcher, this is not
exactly a vital military force. After a couple of days
of negotiations with the city attempting to look much more
defended than it really was, a few hundred of the
Jacobite force basically forced their way in as a negotiator
(16:20):
tried to return to the city on September seventeenth, so
the Jacobites took control of Scotland's capital, with the exception
of Edinburgh Castle, with almost no effort at all, although
the troops in the castle would pester the Jacobite force
for the whole time that they occupied the city. While
Charles's force was able to rally a little more support
(16:40):
from Edinburgh, giving him about two thousand, four hundred men total,
he still wasn't armed very well. Although they basically walked
into an essentially undefended Edinburgh, the city of Edinburgh had
had the sense to store all of their weapons in
the castle, which the Jacobite force couldn't get into. So
when Charles heard that Cope headed towards the village of Preston,
(17:02):
he decided to follow suit with an army that was
bigger than it had been before, but not necessarily better
armed than what the Loyalists or the governmental side had.
In late September, both forces converged on the village of
Preston Penns. Cope's force found a defensible position near the
neighboring village of Trenent. At first, the Jacobite force took
(17:25):
the high ground to the south and then realized a
marsh at the bottom of the hill would keep them
from actually reaching the governmental army. Cope, of course, had
not expected an attack from across a marsh and had
to redeploy his forces to face the ill placed Jacobite
army early in the morning of September one, Partially hidden
by very misty weather, The Jacobite army used a small
(17:48):
footpath that one of the locals had told them about
to reach Cope's force. The Highland force charged the Loyalist army,
which was basically hemmed in without enough room to really
maneuver maneuver. The governmental force was also pretty much taken
by surprise. They had been alerted to the fact that
something was going on by a barking dog, but that
really added more to the chaos than actually allowing them
(18:11):
to plan a response. In less than ten minutes, Cope's
army was effectively routed. There were about thirty five deaths
and seventy five injuries among the Jacobite force, while Cope
sides saw about a hundred and fifty deaths and at
least one thousand taken Prisoner Bonnie. Prince Charlie also took
Cope's military chest, which contained between three thousand and four
(18:33):
thousand pounds. This whole incident was recently on an episode
of Outlander. Jerry more or less pretty much what we
just described here actually, uh, and probably other things we're
going to talk about soon are going to be in
future episodes of Outlander that will have actually come out
by the time this episode comes out, So that's a
weird time travel for everyone. Anyway, Afterward, the Jacobite force
(18:58):
was exuberant. Only had they outrun and outmaneuvered the British Army,
taken Perth and taken Edinburgh and then soundly defeated the
army on the battlefield, they also have the size of
the opposing force, and then they had come away with
much better funding thanks to the governmental war chest that
they made away with. But this, however, was not to last.
(19:20):
So we're going to talk more about how things progressed
after we pause for a brief word from one of
our fantastic sponsors. Unsurprisingly, after the Battle of Preston Pans,
the Jacobites were a little bit overconfident. They had hoped
(19:44):
that the victory would rally foreign support to their cause,
and the victory had been decisive. So for about six weeks,
the Jacobites continued to occupy Edinburgh and tried to get
Louis Fift to send real actual support from France. They
also tried to recruit more Scots to their army, which
they did, although most of this support came from outside,
(20:07):
not within Edinburgh. The population of Edinburgh was kind of like,
we'll let you be here because you have weapons that
we don't really care to join your cause. Eventually, France,
while still declining to send actual troops, did send some weapons. Meanwhile,
England got to work recovering from the defeat at Preston Pans,
(20:29):
including pressing people into service and recalling forces that had
been fighting elsewhere in Europe. Field Marshal George Wade, who
was actually responsible for the construction for most of the
military roads the armies were traveling on, was in command
of one Force. William Duke of Cumberland, George the second
third son, was recalled from Holland to command another Hearing
(20:53):
about these forces, Charles started pushing to move his army
and try to strike before the governmental forces too big
to be beaten. His advisers, though, kept cautioning him to wait.
They didn't think they were going to be successful at
that point, and he finally wound up dividing his force
into two columns to proceed toward Carlisle in England. Basically,
(21:15):
the idea was they were going to keep pressing forward
until they actually got to London. Charles now had five
thousand infantry and five cavalry, and he was much better armed, rested,
and trained than before this several weeks stay in Edinburgh.
While this is often portrayed as Charles commanding an army
of Highland Scott's, by this point the army was really
(21:37):
much broader than that. There were thirteen Highland clan regiments
plus five Lowland regiments. They also had thirteen pieces of artillery,
some sent from France and some recovered from the field
at Preston Pans, although they did have some desertions along
the way because at this point the army was getting
farther and farther away from home. Both prongs of the
(21:59):
Jacobite fur did reach Carlisles successfully and convinced the mayor
to surrender both the town and the castle, this time
having learned from having not had the castle when they
were in Edinburgh the Jacobites. The Jacobites availed themselves in
the town supply of gunpowder, ammunition, and muskets, along with
a large number of broadswords that had been confiscated from
(22:21):
Jacobite rebels during the fifteen rebellions. Those were still hanging
around from the last big Jacobite uprising, and this is
where things started to go a little arrive for the
Jacobite army. They couldn't stay in Carlisle. If they did,
the government force might pen them in, and Charles said
that he had intelligence of more Jacobite support at other
(22:42):
towns in the area. So they left Carlisle, intending to
gather that support as they went. Support didn't really come, though.
The towns they were passing through didn't really care, at
leastn't care enough to join them. It became clear that
there really wasn't a lot of Jacobite support to be
rallied in northern England, or at least not enough support
(23:05):
to justify the risks of staying in England. Eventually, Charles's
Council of War convinced him that retreating back to Scotland
was his only option, and that retreat began on December six,
and by this point the Jacobite army was starting to
show signs of strain. Quite a bit of equipment was
left behind in Derby, where the army had been billeted,
(23:28):
and many of them hadn't been told they were going
to Scotland, and they were furious when they learned they
were not actually in pursuit of the Duke of Cumberland
and then pressing on to London. As their journey progressed
back northward, the towns they passed through went from being
unimpressed by their efforts to actively hostile more than once.
As the Jacobite forest moved north in early December, the
(23:51):
towns they approached actually fired upon them. They wound up
reaching Scotland after a treacherous crossing of the River Esk
on December twentie. On January seventeenth, seventeen forty six, Jacobite
and governmental forces met at the Battle of Falkirk, an
overall chaotic and disorganized event in which both sides claimed
(24:12):
to be the victors. Neither built upon the supposed victory,
though the Jacobite force continued to retreat toward Inverness and
the Hanoverian force, heavily slowed down by their supply carts
and other equipment, decided to wait out the winter until
travel conditions were better. So the winter passed without a
lot of organized action on either side, but the winter
(24:35):
itself was really hard. The Jacobite force lost a lot
of men through desertions, and after the winter their supplies
were critically low. That also run out of money, and
even if they had had money, the British Navy had
formed a blockade to keep them from eight being able
to re supply, so when it came to the final
battle on Colloden More, just a little ways away from
(24:58):
Inverness in April of seventeen forty six, the Jacobite force
was down from a peak of about eight thousand men
to less than five thousand infantry and a hundred and
fifty cavalry. Cumberland's army, on the other hand, had more
than nine thousand, some of whom were Highlanders that were
loyal to the Hanoverian succession. Cumberland's force was better trained
(25:19):
and better armed than the Jacobites. It's artillery volleys are
more effective. While many of the Jacobite force were armed
with swords and shields and charged in for hand to
hand combat, Cumberland's force nearly all had muskets and were
able to shoot them down. One portion of the Jacobite
force actually got bogged down in marshy ground and never
even reached Cumberland's lines before being killed. The Battle of
(25:43):
Colloden was over in just forty minutes. About two thousand
Jacobites were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Cumberland, on the
other hand, had only about fifty dead and two hundred
and fifty wounded. Nearly all of the Jacobite deaths were
Highland Scots, as the Lowland read aments had been in
a second line to cover the retreat, while some of
(26:05):
the Jacobite force were ready to press on and find
some way to recover from their defeat at Colloden, Bonnie
Prince Charlie issued his final order as quote, let every
man seek his own safety as best he can. He
ultimately fled, went into hiding and escaped Scotland disguised as
a maid servant to a woman named Flora McDonald. The
(26:26):
consequences of the Jacobite uprising of seventeen forty five on
the Highlands of Scotland were devastating. Cumberland moved through the
area for several weeks on a campaign of destruction and retribution.
His force destroyed buildings, including Catholic and Episcopalian churches, as
well as homes and public buildings. He drove off cattle
(26:48):
and destroyed plows belonging to known or suspected Jacobite leaders.
The Highland Scots were ordered to surrender their arms, and
fugitives fleeing from Cumberland's force headed farther into the Highlands,
where many of them died of starvation. There were also
wanton and random shootings, as well as rapes. Jacobite leaders,
(27:09):
sympathizers and suspected sympathizers were hanged, and several peers known
to have Jacobite leanings were beheaded. The people who were
tried were sentenced to death, but their sentences were commuted
to lifetime indentured labor and being transported elsewhere and many
of the elements of Highland life that had made the
region's culture so distinctive were outlawed, including the wearing of
(27:33):
tartan and traditional Highland dress. The Highland Clearances followed, in
which whole extended families were systematically evicted over the course
of a century. The clan system couldn't survive in the
face of all of this destruction and displacement, and it
was effectively wiped out. Yeah, while the clans themselves as
families and family names and and you know, family trees
(27:57):
still exist, that system of government and economics doesn't exist
anymore and was wiped out basically immediately. This is one
of the reasons why the whole, the whole Uprising uh
In in modern retellings is often treated in such a
romanticized way because of this idea that there was a
(28:17):
unique local culture that was effectively wiped out in retaliation. Afterward, Bonnie,
Prince Charlie went into exile on September set six, and
he never returned to Scotland. He died in Sight, having
become quite bitter and having developed problems with alcohol. And
(28:37):
although he had a brother, that brother died without an heir,
and that put an end to the House of Stuart.
That's kind of a down ending, but everybody wanted it. Ever,
so many people want it, and if you watch Outlander,
this episode is coming out like towards the end of
this season of Outlander, and the season of Outlanders really
(28:59):
got a lot of this part of history as kind
of a backdrop and definitely has the the running theme
of the Highland culture is going to be destroyed if
the Battle of Collodon doesn't go our way like that's
that's said and almost those exact words more than one time. Um.
(29:21):
The there is some arguments that we made the at
least some people in the Highlands of Scotland who were
in favor of a Stewart restoration to the throne. We're
hoping to preserve the clan system of life, not so
much just clans as families and relationships, but like the
clan system um as a social and economic system. They
(29:43):
were hoping that a Stewart restoration would preserve that for
a little while because at this point the Lowlands of
Scotland had become much more urban and much more similar
to how things operated socially and economically in England um
and and a lot of the clans were really reluctant
to see that sort of change starting to already happen
(30:06):
in the Highlands before the Jacobite rebellions Begans. They were
sort of hoping to stave off that change a little longer, uh,
none of which was unfortunately successful. And now, with our
many listener requests for the Jacobites satisfied, do you want
to move on to listener mail? I have a quick
(30:27):
correction before we get into our actual listener mail. It's
more of a clarification than a correction, and it is
from Ivan. Uh and I haven't written after our Harriet
Subban episode about how we referred to Harriet Tubbans grandmother
as being part of the Ashanti tribe. And Ivan says, uh,
it's kind it's obviously outside the scope of the episode,
(30:48):
but part of the Ashanti tribe and leaving it at
that kind of came off to me as eracing the
fact that the Ashanti were a giant, metropolitan empire and
not like a bunch of people living in the jungle somewhere.
Um And yes, kingdom or empire would have been a
lot more uh evocative as a word for who the
Ashanti were. Um. Ivan suggests that we do a an
(31:11):
episode about that empire, and we actually have. We talked
about the uh the Yah a santoa Um war for
independence in an earlier episode that's in our archive. We
also have a couple of other episodes in our more
recent shows on African history that are about how, um,
(31:32):
how African nations, particularly in Western Africa, were part of
the slave trade, and that all ties into what we
talked about pretty much any time we talk about any
episode about slavery in uh the America's um. But we
can't re explain all of that and all of the
(31:55):
anytime we talked about slavery. So if you have not
heard those past episodes, there's more nation there. Uh. And
then in terms of our listener, male, I have something
from Tricia and Tricius Tricious and is. I'm a huge,
albeit recent fan of the podcast. A friend of mine
told me about Stephie miss and history class a few
months back, and I've spent the last several months rapidly
(32:18):
making my way through the podcast back catalog. I studied
art history and history. UH, So listening to you all
wax about all kinds of history and notable people hits
my happy spot and I look forward to every new episode.
I heard the mention of quilts and African American quilters
and D's Bend, and I felt compelled to write, write
you all and suggest a few books about the subject
(32:40):
that I have collected. I'm a quilt maker slash fiber
artist as my main gig, and a book junkie. Uh.
There as follows always there. The African American Presence in
American Quilts by Questa Benbury. This discusses quilt making amongst
African American women, whose work and presence and quilt making
was largely ignored word and downplayed in lieu of quilts
(33:02):
made concurrently by white women in the same periods. The
next Signs and Symbols African Images and African American Quilts
by Maud Southwell Walman. This one tries to find parallels
between improvisational African American quilts and the structure of handcrafted
textiles in some parts of Africa, positing there's some connection
(33:22):
to folk ways taken over to the New World when
the ancestors of African slaves arrived in North America. Her
theory is a bit controversial, but it's an interesting idea. Uh,
and then she talks about some other stuff, and I
basically wanted to share that information who were for folks
who are more interested in learning about UM African American
(33:43):
American quilt making, because, as we said on the show,
that the academic interest on that has been a lot
more recent than a lot of other quilt history. If
you would like to write to us where History podcasts
at how stuffworks dot com. We're also on Facebook at
Facebook dot com slash mysted in history and on Twitter
at missed in History. Are Tumbler is missed in History
dot tumbler dot com, and we're also on Pinterest at
(34:05):
pinterest dot com slash missed in History. We're on Instagram.
Our name on Instagram is missed in History. If you
would like to learn more about uh, anything we've talked
about today, come to our parent company's website, which is
how stuff Works dot com, and you will find information
on just about anything you can think of. You can
also come to our website, which is missed in History
(34:26):
dot com, and you will find show notes for this episode.
I will put the names of these books that were
in the listener mail in there. If you're interested, you
can find them you can also find an archive of
every episode that we have ever done lots of other
cool stuff, so you can do all that and a
whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or
missed in history dot com for more on this and
(34:50):
thousands of other topics because it how stuff works dot com.
M
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