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Bayeux Tapestry politics & natural disasters: history behind the headlines
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- [00:01]
Rana Mitter
Not all meals are created equal.
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Dave Musgrove
For instance, breakfast has the spicy egg.
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Rana Mitter
McMuffin for a limited time and lunch doesn't.
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Dave Musgrove
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Rana Mitter
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Dave Musgrove
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Rana Mitter
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Hannah Skoda
Hold Fight this together as a family.
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Rana Mitter
Johnny Now.
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Dave Musgrove
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Rana Mitter
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Rana Mitter
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Hannah Skoda
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Matt Elton
Hello and welcome to our monthly series History behind the Headlines. I'm Matt Elton. In each episode, an expert panel will be exploring the historical news stories that have caught their eye and the history that will help you make sense of what's going on in the world. Each month I'll be joined by our two regular panelists.
- [02:05]
Hannah Skoda
I'm Hannah Skoda. I'm fellow and Tutor in medieval history at St John's College in Oxford.
- [02:10]
Rana Mitter
I'm Rana Mitter. I'm St. Lee Chair in US Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, and I'm a specialist on modern Chinese history.
- [02:19]
Matt Elton
Hannah and Raana, thank you both so much, as always, for being here with us. We're going to start this month with the big news. Announced earlier in July that the Bayer Tapestry is set to return to the UK for the first time in more than nine and will go on display at the British Museum in London next year. To help us understand more about why this is such big news and a bit about the longer history, the politics of it at all, I'm delighted to say that we're joined by Dr. Dave Musgrove, who's Content Director of History Extra and the History Extra podcast and the co author with Michael Lewis of the Story of the Bayer Unravelling the Norman Conquest. Dave, to kick us off, why is this such exciting news?
- [02:54]
Dave Musgrove
Well, this is the biggest news in the history world, biggest news in my career, and particularly because I've written this book. It's very exciting. So let me recap where we are. So the Bear Tapestry is going to be loaned to the UK by France. As you said, the loan was first announced in 2018, and by my count that's seven years, five prime ministers and one pandemic ago. I was super excited about the initial loan News. In 2018, I leapt in and co wrote that book. And since then I have been waiting impatiently for something to happen. There's a press officer in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport who is probably very bored with me, regularly emailing her for progress. Nothing to report was the regular reply. But actually, here on History Extra, we did have an inkling that something was afoot because we had a few minutes with the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, in May this year at the time of the VE Day commemorations. And I asked for a sneaky question at the end, just wondering if he knew if there was any news on the tapestry loan. And he said, somewhat gnomically, that conversations between the UK and French governments were ongoing and that there may be some progress, which was very exciting. So when we heard of an Anglo French summit in July, I had a hunch there might be news, but I didn't really believe it would come to pass because there'd been radio silence for so long and because many experts in France had said that it was not possible for conservation reasons. It is a very fragile artifact. But now it is actually happening. And for my money, it is an entirely political story. And that reflects the tapestry's history generally, from inception, has been a political tool driving a particular narrative and also being used by others for their political ends. And the loan would not have happened without the active desire of both UK and French governments for it to come to pass today. Now, indeed, President Macron told an audience at the British Museum, which, as you said, will house the tapestry. On 9 July, during his state visits to the UK, he said, I have to confess, we did our best not to be put in this situation to make the loan of the Bayer Tapestry, and we found the best experts of the world to explain in perfect detail why it was impossible to make such a loan. And believe me, we found them. And believe me, we could have found them again. So he's indicating that there was quite a lot of reticence about the loan happening. So it was political will that made it happen, and apparently the personal passion for the project of King Charles III that got the deal going. So the deal as we understand it, the tapestry is going to be shown in September 2026 in the British Museum in London for a year. And in return, the Sutton Hoo treasures and the Lewis Chessmen are going to France from the BM's collections. And it should be said the museum in Bayeux, where the tapestry normally lives, is closing this September 2025 for redevelopment and will be reopening. September 20is, of course, the millennial anniversary of William the Conqueror's birth. So that will be a year of commemoration for Normandy and the museum will be part of that. So that's the story. It's a political story. Maybe that's what we're going to talk about.
- [05:42]
Matt Elton
Dave, thank you very much for that intro. It's all very exciting, as you say, and very much connected to politics and international relations. And to help us get a sense of the longer history of that, I thought we could go to Hannah first for some of her thoughts on this story and what it means.
- [05:56]
Hannah Skoda
Yeah, fantastic. Thank you. It's an incredibly exciting story. Macron himself said either they were never made or they were lost. Those final scenes of the tapestry are missing. I see that as an even more powerful symbol in the great mural of Franco British history. The end has yet to be written, which is a really cool quote, I think. But I like it too, because it reminds us that there is such a long, centuries old history of Franco British relations, sometimes thought of in terms of the Entente Cordiale, sometimes thought of in terms of the ancient enemy. So there's this really interesting sort of tension between France as like the oldest enemy there is, and also a sense of kind of friendship and mutual endeavour. And in some ways I think the Bayer tapestry really encapsulates that, not least because it tells the story of the Norman Conquest, which is both the story of the intertwining of French history and the history of the British Isles. But it's also a story, of course, of conquest and of antagonism and hostility. And that really sort of helps us, I think, to get a sense of what Franco British relations look like all the way through the Middle Ages. That on the one hand, these are deeply entangled histories. I'm supposed to teach history of the British Isles, but very often it doesn't even make sense to do that because the history of the British Isles is so intertwined with that of France in the Middle Ages. But at the same time, it is, of course, a history of deep hostilities anyway. So if we sort of backtrack to the Norman Conquest, 1066, we then see a period of sort of entangling of the relations of the two countries. But at its high point, the English king basically has control of England, Ireland, Normandy, Gascony, Aquitaine, Anjou, Poitou, Maine, Touraine, Saintonge, Perigord, Limousin, Nantes, Kercy, and probably various other areas that I've forgotten as well. But it is an absolutely huge set of territories. And of course, it is also a history of great hostility and antagonism. And the sort of high point of that comes with the loss of Normandy by King John in 1204. I think it's quite striking that actually it seems to be the moments of apparent reconciliation that really crystallise a sort of difference between what it means to be English in this period and what it means to be French. That the periods of conflict are actually about entangling of all these different regions. But when they try to kind of make up, that's the moment in which they start coming up with a more sort of crystallised sense of what it means to be English or what it means to be French. So the Treaty of Paris in 1259 is a really crucial moment in this respect. And this is when the English king, Henry iii, and the French king, who's Louis IX at this stage, try to reach a deal. But in reaching a deal, they end up settling in much more concrete terms what it means to be part of one political entity, or what it means to be part of another political entity. The English king keeps lots of territories, but not as a king, as mostly a duke of these different areas. And the English king is actually required to come once a year and do homage to the French king as his vassal. Unsurprisingly, that doesn't really go well. So the tensions sort of continue to rise over the rest of the 13th century and in into the 14th century. And then, of course, 1337 sees the outbreak of the Hundred Years War, at which point the English are actually laying claim to the crown of France. And over the course of the Hundred Years War, in many ways, we see that sense of Frenchness and that sense of Englishness being articulated with more and more clarity. So that by the time we reach the 15th century, in the era of Joan of Arc, it's a period of, again, sort of intertwining of the fortunes of these two polities, but at the same time, a much clearer articulation of what it means to be English or what it means to be French. There's an amazing moment in Joan of Arc's trial when Joan is asked by her interrogators, did her voices, did these visions speak to her in English or in French? And Joan says, they spoke to me in French. Why would they speak in English when they're not on the English side? And it's sort of, in many ways, the first time that we find a really, really clear articulation of what it means to be English, that you speak the English language, that you show loyalty to the English king, that you associate that with, like, a particular territory. And equally, if you're French, that's about loyalty to a French king and speaking the French language and, you know, kind of embracing French culture. So it's a really critical moment in articulating that. I was looking at, again at this brilliant book by Malcolm Vale called the Ancient Enemy, which is all Anglo French relations in the Middle Ages. And he opens with a wonderful quotation from 1768 by a Swiss essayist, which kind of sums up the situation by the end of the 15th century in terms of how the English and the French think about each other. Anyway, this Swiss essayist wrote, as to the word French, the national English antipathy against their opposite neighbours is so great that to call a foreigner dog is not insulting enough. He must be called a French dog to convey the highest degree of detestation. So that's the sort of the, the kind of vision that we emerge with over the course of the 15th century. But I think it's really important to put alongside that a sense that the fortunes of these two areas do continue to be completely entangled. French continues to be a really important language used in the British Isles. French culture continues to be embraced. And the sort of commercial and the cultural connections, as well as the political connections between these areas don't just disappear. So it is a story of an ancient enemy, but it's also a story of really, really close relationships. Rana, how does that sort of characterise Anglo French relations in the period that you look at?
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Rana Mitter
Well, I have to say, and it suggests to me that everything changes and nothing changes, which is sometimes the case with these very long standing trends in history. I mean, the day that we're recording this actually is the day that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron are meeting. They're going to be talking, obviously about certain political things. Including migration. But they're also going to be talking in, I think, a bigger sense about the way in which that Anglo French relationship is being reset, particularly in the area of defence. But what it reminds me, me, at any rate, as a historian of, is how much we've been here before. So you use that phrase entente cordiales, you know, the kind of friendly relationship, friendly engagement. And it's way back in 1904, you know, 10 years before the outbreak of World War I and well over a century ago, that you see that particular term being brought out and used as a way of talking about what ultimately would become a very strong Anglo French cooperation, but one not without a whole variety of obstacles and problems in the decades that followed. We have to remind ourselves of why it was that we needed cordiale in 1904, indeed, at that point at all. I mean, in an act of gross historical irresponsibility, I'm going to fast forward from where you left us in the. In the late medieval period, Hannah, and bring us up us all the way up the 19th century, when in a sense, the greatest, at least in the sense of most cataclysmic confrontation between England and France takes place, which is Napoleonic Wars. It's worth remembering that at that point there's an argument that essentially the British Isles are a relatively limited bulwark that fights back against a Europe that, at least for a couple of decades, is dominated by this extraordinary figure, Napoleon Bonaparte. And certainly at the height of his powers in the late 18th, early 19th centuries, despite his sort of back and forth coming, being pushed back and then coming back again, it looks certainly as if Napoleon's ambitions may be realized. Now we know that history doesn't work out that way. In the end, 1815 is the point at which a combination of European forces, of which England and Britain and the Duke of Wellington, of course, in the middle of that, plays a crucial role. But to give you a quote that's been heard quite often from Wellington at that point, but worth remembering that it was a damn close run thing. In other words, the prospect of France being the great imperial power across Europe was a very real one at that point. And even though things changed with the exile of Napoleon and the emergence, instead of a broadly peaceful European continent, there's no doubt that Britain and France through the 19th century emerged into a new sort of competition. But you might call it a competition in which they're side by side rather than at each other's throats, because that's the competition for empire. This is the Time at which industrialization is really taking off. Of course it emerges first, particularly in England, half a century to a century before. But the post Napoleonic war settlement, post 1815, is the moment at which the European empires really take off. But Britain and France are at the forefront of creating that huge empire in each case, that moves into Asia, moves into Africa, moves in other words, into what we come to think of as the high point of the control of European empires and much of the rest of the globe. And that's the place where the French and the British in many cases both cooperate in certain ways, but also confront each other as well. And that's the context in which the entente cordiale appears again. We know that it appears just a few years before Europe is plunged into the most cataclysmic war of all, the First World War, the Great War. But that wasn't evident at the time. And certainly it seemed that the emergence of a new Anglo French corporation was going to be a thread, a theme that ran through much of the 20th century, which indeed, of course, it did turn out to be. So let me just take a moment to mention a couple of the ways in which I think that that corporation emerged in the 20th century that sometimes just get forgotten. If you go back 85 years to 1940, again, you know, Britain finest hour, the Battle of Britain and all of that, it's sometimes forgotten that there was a particularly indicative poignant turning point for history on 15 June 1940, because that's when Winston Churchill, knowing that France was in the gravest of danger and that the then Prime Minister of France, Paul Reynaud, was essentially facing the onward march of German troops into France. At that point, Churchill put forward a proposal that there should be a Franco British union. In other words, the two countries would come together as one political entity. Shared citizenship, shared military, shared economy. And in fact, the phrase that was used was France and Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco British union. I mean, wow, obviously it didn't happen. One of the reasons was that forces in the French cabinet at the time, I think General Vigon and others made it clear that they had no interest in pursuing this path. Churchill put it forward partly because he thought that it might essentially encourage Raynor and the kind of more pro resistance figures in the French cabinet to fight back. But it didn't really work out and it didn't go any further. But at that point, the idea that essentially the way to deal with the moment of supreme crisis was for Britain, France to become one country that's quite a moment. Even if ultimately, of course, as we know it doesn't politically work out in quite that it wasn't the last time exactly that that happened or the next time after that was I think even more of a flash in the pan 1956 in the context of the aftermath of the Suez crisis when France, Britain, Israel had essentially pushed back against. Fought back against Egypt over the seizure of the Suez Canal. And then the Americans and Eisenhower essentially put a stop to all of that. But Guy Molle, the then French Prime Minister, these sort of of put it out there to Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister, that maybe this was the moment for some kind of closer Anglo French relationship. The Brits said no. I've got one other quick thought, perhaps a slightly lighter one, if I may, of all these wars and attacks and sewers and so forth going on. That's worth noting too, which is for instance, in the post war era, the interaction, the conversation, the engagement, the entente cordial between many aspects of British and French society and life. So I think it's well known again that one of the big figures in terms of shaping European fashion after World War II was Christian Dior, whose name still lives on, of course, fashion house and perfume and the new look, one of the ways in which the House of Dior recreated European fashion after the austerity and indeed the occupation that had marked wartime Europe. But I think it's fair to say that on the one hand the great British designers that time I think would not have gone in the direction they would have done without learning from the French. I think that's quite well known, but it's sometimes forgotten how much actually France in that era, the swinging 60s, learnt back from the UK and from. From Britain. So the interaction has often been friendly, sometimes not so cordial, but always a little bit of rivalry along with the friendship.
- [19:37]
Matt Elton
Thank you, Rana and Hannah. That's amazing. Dave, if I can just come back to you for your thoughts on what we just talked about there.
- [19:42]
Dave Musgrove
Well, there's lots of ways that the Bayer tapestry intersects with all this actually. So one of the interesting things is we don't know anything about it until 1476. That's the first documentary reference we have to its existence and that's in an inventory in Bayer Cathedral. But Hannah, you were just talking about the situation in the 15th century. We assume, academics generally assume that it was probably made in England shortly after the Norman Conquest, but we don't know where it went after that. There theory. Quite an interesting idea that it was in the possession of the Dukes of Burgundy, who are kind of the third party in the story of Joan of Arc that you were just talking about. So it's possible that actually it was living in Burgundy somewhere in the 15th century and then it found its way to Bayeux and then picking up on Run. I mean, you talked about Napoleon. I mentioned in my intro that it's been a political football all through history. Napoleon had the Bayer tattery moved to Paris at the start of the 19th century with a view to promoting his proposed invasion of Britain, which never happened. So he was going to use that because it was this powerful tool showing that the French, as he saw it, had invaded before. And then you talked about the Second World War again. It was used then in the Second World War the Nazis were very, very interested in the Bayer tapestry. They sent a crack team of scientists to investigate it in Bayer, had it moved to Paris as well. They were going to send it to Germany if the war hadn't gone against them. And they wanted it to sort of demonstrate their theory of racial German superiority and give that sense that in the medieval period there was this Germanic race of people and the Normans were basically essentially Vikings and that kind of back to what they were saying. So they were super keen on it as well. So it's always had this sense of being a political tool. And going back to the start, there is an interesting theory and we're talking about the rapprochement between the English and the French right now there is a theory that the tapestry speaks to a very specific moment in history. That brief window of time after 1066 and before the harrowing of the north in 1069, when William really started to get very heavy handed in his treatment of the defeated English, that it kind of just speaks, speaks to that moment when there was an idea that they could bring these people together. And then the tapestry, because it's very enigmatic and hard to understand, but is also surprisingly positive towards the defeated English, is perhaps providing this opportunity to bring the two together. So there's lots of themes. As I said, it's got political power written all over it.
- [22:02]
Rana Mitter
Could I ask a quick question off the back of that, Dave, that's fascinating. In terms of the modern history of the tapestry, one figure I didn't mention in my discussion about, well, War ii, but could bring in now, perhaps, how could we not, was Charles de Gaulle, who perhaps, you know, kind of stands as the archetypal French leader of the 20th century. And his relationship with the British was famously a one of alliance, but a very, very tetchy alliance. Famously, Winston Churchill said, the greatest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine, meaning Charles de Gaulle. But the post war era shows a number of attempts by the British to try and borrow the tapestry and they get turned down by a variety of French leaders. Maybe not, not all of them Charles de Gaulle. But I wonder, here's the question. Would Shell de Gaulle have ever even thought of lending the tapestry to the English? Would that have been on the agenda at all?
- [22:50]
Dave Musgrove
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Dave Musgrove
See mintmobile.com I mean I would be surprised to be as I said, it's always been this very political thing. So the moments when it's when there was a potential loan was 1931, 1953 on the Queen's Coronation in 1966 for the anniversary of the Norman Conquest. So those were the three occasions when there was an active bid asked. They were all rebuffed for various reasons, but you know, conservation reasons, but also financial and monetary and kind of who was going to take responsibility for this important document. So I think, you know, right now there is this. The loan is happening because there is this need for both parties to come together.
- [24:55]
Rana Mitter
And 1966 would have been, of course, when Charles de Gaulle was President of France. And I can imagine at that particular a moment he's just pulled France out of the NATO high command. Les Anglos Saxons are probably not his favorite people at that stage. Harold Wilson is desperately, I think, along with various others, hinting that it would be quite nice to get into Europe. And famously, Charles de Gaulle is Monsieur Non on this sort of question. He doesn't want the Brits in Europe. So maybe that's not the most tactful moment to be coming along in 1966. I mean, we haven't even mentioned the World cup, of course, but, you know, it's not the most tactful moment to be coming along to Monsieur le President at that time and saying, can we borrow of your most precious artifacts? Whereas the present moment, with a very different Anglo French relationship and a different relationship around Europe, that's being reconstructed quite fast in real time, the tapestries moment, I guess, has finally come.
- [25:46]
Hannah Skoda
It's also very striking just to think about the logistics of it as well, isn't it? I mean, a tapestry that is 70 meters long, moving it around is not a straightforward thing. And you mentioned the conservation aspects as well, Dave, but I was imagining Napoleon, you know, moving this to Paris, and whatever kind of logistical effort did that require to move this absolutely humongous artefact? I think I read you somewhere writing as well about the relationship between the tapestry and stories of migrants, which I was very struck by, because, of course, one of the discussions between Macron and Keir Starmer at the moment has been with this question of migration, hasn't it? And this possible deal of one in, one out. Could you tell us a little bit more about that, Dave, about the connection between the tapestry and stories of migration?
- [26:32]
Dave Musgrove
Yeah, I mean, one of the most striking sort of scenes in the tapestry in my mind is there's very few women in the tapestry, as I'm sure you know, Hannah. But one of the women that's shown is basically a woman who is fleeing a burning house. It's during the period when William's forces are kind of laying waste to the southeast of England where they've landed. And you see this woman moving away from a burning property, holding a child's hand. So that feels like that's likely to be a refugee, someone becoming a refugee from war. It's a very striking and strong image I find very affecting when I look at it. What's interesting is the aftermath of the tapestry story. So as I said earlier, after a few years of Anglo Norman sort of sense of trying to bring people together, William becomes very heavy handed and the remaining Anglo Saxon earls and military men in England see that the writing's on the wall and there is this story of loads of people leaving in the 1070s and they flee. They basically get on their ships and they go and they go to Constantinople. In the end they end up in the personal guard of the Byzantine Empire, then end up sort of creating a settlement on the shores of the Black Sea. So you kind of. We've got this story here which is not told in the tapestry, but it's the immediate aftermath of it, of people fleeing in boats across the Channel. And that does in a way intersect with this story. The reason why this is happening, why the loan is on, is because there's a need to address the issue of people coming to Britain in boats on the Channel. So the two stories do allide there.
- [28:01]
Matt Elton
So we've already touched on a whole load of really interesting aspects there. Are there any other dimensions of the story that you'd like to get into that we've not so far. Hannah, do you want to go first on this?
- [28:12]
Hannah Skoda
I'm so excited about going to visit this tapestry next year. It's going to be absolutely wonderful. And of course it's not a tapestry in the usual sense of the word tapestry, is it? It's essentially kind of embroidered onto the backing cloth. I wondered, Dave, could you tell us a little bit about how it was produced? Because I don't. How much do we know about who's actually producing it? And I'm interested in how that sort of question ties into the symbolic value of, of this piece in terms of thinking about Anglo French relations.
- [28:40]
Dave Musgrove
Yeah, it is a really, really interesting question, actually, and one which might be considered and addressed in the sort of the progress of the loan. So yeah, you're right, it's an embroidery. So you've got woven elements on a linen backing. The wool has been dyed, so there's various different colours that are used. So you could make the argument that it should be called the Canterbury embroidery rather than the Bayer Tapestry, because it was probably made in Canterbury. That's what most people would think. And it's an embroidery, not a tapest. That's just not quite as snazzy, is it? You're not going to get people queuing around the block at the British Museum to go and see that. We know a lot about the way it would have been produced because people have had a chance to study it. We know that there were different panels that were stitched together and you can see actually that they must have been made separately because there were mistakes in the way that the panels are aligned. So the kind of little bits which don't stack up. So people, we assume were probably working in separate teams. It was probably women who were doing it, Anglo Saxon seamstresses who were probably doing it. There was a rich tradition of Anglo Saxon seamstresses working here, so we assume it was probably then. But what's really interesting is that if people get a chance to look at the tapestry once it's been moved or in the process of its moving, and they can have a look at the back of it, which is the really interesting bit, and it's been quite hard to get to the back of it because there's various different layers that have been added onto it in the intervening century. So it's quite hard to actually get there. Then we will probably find out lots of really interesting things about the way it was produced. And if we can do any sort of scientific analysis, and I can't imagine for one moment there will be an opportunity to do anything which is in any way destructive to it, but if we can do any scientific analysis to kind of see where these woollen threads came from, where the sheep came from that produced it, where the dyes were from, where the flax for the linen was grown, then that will really sort of help to give us a clue to if that idea that it was made in England is actually true. And then I do wonder about AI and how that might help us, because there's so many bits of it that you can analyse. If you can feed it into a computer and get it to sort of correlate and work out similarities between bits, then we might learn an awful lot of things. But we haven't had the chance because it's been, you know, rightly in a climate controlled case and you can't get to it. So this is a real opportunity to learn some stuff about it.
- [30:53]
Hannah Skoda
Yeah, it's hugely exciting. I think it's really interesting to compare it with later medieval embroidery techniques as well. Partly because with later medieval embroidery, we know that the dyes that they're using for the threads are coming from an incredibly sophisticated global network. So even I don't know Opus Anglicanum, which was the embroidery done in England in the 14th century, particularly. Particularly is part of this very, very far reaching global network, particularly in terms of the colours that they're, that they're using. The other really striking thing is that by the later Middle Ages, embroidery is being done in professionalised workshops. And it doesn't seem to be a specifically gendered activity. So there are a few hints here and there that, you know, women might be expected to do some embroidery. But these really specialised workshops are peopled by both men and women. So it might be quite interesting that there seems to be a sort of trajectory from embroidery is like women's activity in the 11th century through to the later Middle Ages where it's men and women, and then through to kind of Jane Austen's drawing rooms where it once again becomes this very female activity. But it's very, very striking, isn't it, in the period of the Bayer Tapestry, to imagine all these women sitting, embroidering these incredibly sophisticated but very enigmatic scenes. And how exciting that we might have an opportunity to delve into some of these enigmas.
- [32:11]
Dave Musgrove
Yeah. And if we could answer some of those questions, that'd be really interesting. And one, as I said earlier, there's hardly any women in it. So that is a. Interesting thing in itself. That probably made by women, but demonstrating a very manly martial story.
- [32:24]
Matt Elton
And Rainer, did you have any thoughts or questions? I suppose as we end this section.
- [32:29]
Rana Mitter
Just, just one final thought which comes really from the way in which you describe the story as it's told. Dave, My sense is that although this is clearly the story at one level of an invasion and the defeat of an enemy, it doesn't seem to me that the way that the tapestry portrays Harold, the defeated king, is as an unworthy person in some ways. He seems to be sort of regarded as an enemy of an enemy who's sort of worth defeating and has standing in his own right. Is it fair to say that there's a certain sort of level of respect for the defeated enemy that one sees in the way in which the story's told?
- [33:07]
Dave Musgrove
I think that is the whole point, actually, your honor. I think in many ways the tapestry is the story of Harold. Certainly in the first half it's his biography. And you're right, he is shown as a good man in many respects. He goes on a campaign with William in Normandy and at one point he is demonstrably heroic. He rescues someone from the river Kunon from drowning in the river or in the quicksand around it. And he's actively shown as doing that. He's shown as being a good warrior, a strong warrior, but Then he's also someone who is kind of brought down by his own mistakes, by his own ill judgment. He makes the. This sacred oath in the sort of the centre point, the fulcrum of the tapestry. It doesn't say exactly what it is in the tapestry, but the oath is assumed, is in support of William's future conquest of England. So that's kind of what is the justification for William. So the whole point of the tapestry, it seems to me, is to position these two men as worthy adversaries. So Harold is someone that William should be, someone who is a worthy opponent of this great man, William. And there is, as with any historical story, it's the narrative that's being told that is the one that it's trying to get across, because there are lots of omissions here. It doesn't speak of anything of the other invasions of 1066, Harald Hardrada's invasion in the north, completely omitted. And also it completely omits the story of Edgar Atheling, the person who was probably the man who had the greatest blood right, or closest blood right to the line of the kings of Wessex before him. He was. Was there in England, and some people would say he was actually crowned in 1066 after the defeat of Harold. But he's not in the story because that doesn't really help the simplicity. Dualistic William versus Harold, William wins Harold, Harold dies. So it needs that simplicity.
- [34:51]
Rana Mitter
So one thing that obviously doesn't change over historical time is that spin doctors will do their spinning when it comes to political narrative.
- [34:58]
Dave Musgrove
Exactly. And particularly so with the bear tapestry, which has massive power because it is such an amazing document, because the artwork is so vivid and to us today, and it's spawned all these means and you still see it on the Internet, people making little biotapestry jokes about modern politics, don't you? It still works today because those images are so powerful. So the story it portrays is the one that kind of is the predominant image of the Norman Conquest.
- [35:25]
Matt Elton
Lots of fascinating stuff there. And you can read and listen to lots of Bayer Tapestry content on the historyextra.com website. Moving to the United States, there's been the tragic news recently that more than 100 people have died in flash floods that struck the state of Texas. Texas, early in July. And separately, flooding in New Mexico has killed three people and destroyed homes in that state. We're not going to talk today about either of those tragedies, but what we can do is talk about the longer history of natural disasters and I suppose how people coped with Them. Dave's going to stay around with us for this conversation as well. I thought I'd go to Hannah, first of all, to get your thoughts on some of the context or the longer history behind these sorts of stories.
- [36:05]
Hannah Skoda
Stories, yes. So the Middle Ages are full of tragic natural disasters about which we know quite a lot, partly because chroniclers, so medieval history writers, were really interested in documenting these things and perhaps surprisingly, in documenting them in really a very, or often a very humane way, with a real sense of the human tragedy that these represent. I was thinking particularly about a whole sequence of really appalling floods in the Netherlands. In Europe in the later Middle Ages, there are floods and earthquakes and droughts and famines across the world all the way through the period, obviously. But these floods in the Netherlands, I think, maybe might be particularly interesting for our purposes today, because they evoke the whole sort of range of medieval reactions to these things. So, most famously, there was a flood known as the first Saint Marcellus flood in 1219. The numbers here utterly eye watering. So it's about 36,000 dead. Of course, chronicles do tend to give us slightly exaggerated figures very often, so it's hard to ascertain these. But nevertheless, the mortality is absolutely huge. It's entire villages which are wiped out. St. Lucia's flood of 1287 is the next really kind of big cataclysmic event which. Which equally is primarily about the Netherlands, though actually it's right across the North Sea coast and villages in Suffolk equally get wiped out. This is probably the flood that kind of sounds the death knoll for the town of Dunwich, for example, and literally kind of changes the coastline. So this is 1287. The sea walls broke and here the numbers are just completely astonishing. 80,000 people, people dead. So this was brought about by a combination of a low pressure system and exceptionally high tides. We could then move on to the 1362 episode, which was known as the Great Drowning of Men, which was brought about by a kind of transatlantic cyclone event that affected Britain, the Netherlands, northern Germany, Denmark, and that produced 25,000 deaths. Anyway. I mean, that gives us a flavour, I think, of the sheer extent of the suffering and the terror brought about these things. Chronicles are really, really interesting in terms of what they tell us, partly in terms of the numbers and in terms of the wiping out our villages and so on, but partly in terms of the explanations they give. So we might expect medieval people to say this is all about the wrath of God and it's people being punished for all their wicked deeds, and there's certainly a very striking element of that in many of these accounts. But the cruelty of that kind of attitude actually doesn't quite characterise these medieval accounts. It certainly there. But they're also thinking in rather subtler terms. There's a very strong sense that these are forces beyond human control that natural disasters come from. They think maybe the alignment of particular planets or some kind of cosmic events, which obviously we know not to be true. But at the same time show that they don't find it quite enough just to say that people are being punished for their sins. They see that that's a really problematic set of explanations nations. So I think that sort of combination of, on the one hand, going for the, you know, everybody deserved it sort of thing, but also realising that's really problematic and looking for explanations way beyond human control. I think that's a very interesting dimension of what's going on in terms of how these are written about and responded to in the later Middle Ages. The other thing, of course, that's really, really striking, particularly about the Netherlands region with these horrific floods, is the sheer level of resilience of human communities in the wake of these things. So they change the natural landscape very, very dramatically, as I say. In Suffolk, for example, famous example, is the town of Dunwich effectively disappearing. But in the Netherlands, the entire coastline changes very dramatically. And it's the St. Lucia's flood in 1287 which basically creates. Creates the Zuidersee in the Netherlands. So this huge saltwater region appears kind of overnight as a result of these huge storms and shifts the dynamic of how people are able to live there, how they're able to trade, which towns are kind of centers of trade. So the city of Amsterdam, which had previously been like a little village, then becomes the kind of central trading port because of the. The kind of emergence of this huge saltwater area which is attached to the North Sea. And these communities respond to these shifting landscapes and kind of make the most of them very, very rapidly. So they. They change their trading routes, they build, they rebuild very, very quickly in new locations with the rise of Amsterdam, to kind of make the most of the fact that the landscape has changed so dramatically, they construct. Construct new sea walls and new dikes very, very quickly, again to try and kind of profit from the way that the landscape has, has changed. And I think that sense of human resilience is hopefully a slightly more uplifting note in the. In the wake of all this tragedy, but a really, really striking element of medieval responses. People don't just say it's the punishment of God, and we must all accept it. They immediately look to see how they can respond to this, how they can adapt and how they can actually kind of profit from these changing coastlines. Rana, in the period that you look at, do you see equally this sense of sort of constructive response to appalling tragedies?
- [41:53]
Rana Mitter
Well, I think the answer is yes, actually, Hannah. I mean, let me give a couple of examples from modern Asia. I am going to start picking up from where you left off with some slightly bleak material. But I think it's worth noting, you know, quite how devastating this can be. But I think there are some actually quite positive things that emerged from this. So I would say the thing I'd concentrate on, and that's, you know, with recent tragedies in the US in mind, is the question of flooding and the control of water. I mean, that's been such a huge issue for human societies around the globe for such a long time. But China certainly sits at the heart of those questions. The Yellow river, you know, one of the two great rivers along with the Yangtze in China, obviously central to the creation of an agricultural floodplain. But the Yellow river also, over the centuries, has changed its path suddenly and violently on many occasions over the centur, so much so it's sometimes nicknamed China's sorrow because of the destruction it brings in its heavy, silty loess soil wake when it does that kind of change. Of course. And broadly speaking, the control of water has been an overwhelming element of the way in which many societies in Asia more broadly have tried to organize. It was a great, if now somewhat outdated, scholar of an early generation, Carl Witfer, who wrote about what he called hydraulic societies. And from that he put forward an idea that there was something called Oriental despotism, no less, which emerged partly because of the need to control huge numbers of indentured workers to keep water flowing in the right sort of direction. I think that's not a framework that any contemporary historian would use for a whole variety of reasons, but the bigger question behind it, the idea of what water does and how environmental history can help us to understand the way in which human beings respond on a day, day to day, more political or social basis. That is an important background, I think. And one very important example from China comes from attempts to try and deal with China's sorrow. The 19th century, particularly a very politically and economically difficult time for China, has also saw, as if that wasn't enough, a variety of very devastating floods. By the time you get to the 20th century, there are lots of Attempts both within China from scientific reformers and also from the outside world to try and deal with this. And this was put into particular perspective in 1931 when the Yangtze flooded massively. Statistics are not easy to obtain. And the number of figures of people who were killed, who were drowned ranges from six figure numbers still very considerable, to possibly many millions. We just simply don't know. But what we do know is that there was a huge reaction at the time, first within China's government. This was a period when China's National Nationalist government under its then leader Chiang Kai Shek, was attempting to try and create the idea of itself as a scientifically forward looking society. Despite China's heavily agrarian preponderance at that time. The idea that China's cities could provide a new kind of scientific middle class and research community was very powerful in terms of the idea that China wanted to portray itself as a modernizing state. And so control of something disastrous like a flood that drowns millions of people was seen as, as a very worthy challenge to try and solve. And of course in the 1930s China wasn't just on its own because that was the height of the League of Nations. One of the many things that the League did was to work on issues of flood control and prevention as a way of trying to create more resilient societies around the, around the world and certainly in Asia. And quite a few people were involved in the 1930s from both China and the west to try and, and deal with this particular problem. So it's quite an internationalized sort of, sort of enterprise. And by the time you get to 1935, just four years later, in fact, pretty much exactly 90 years ago, July of 1935, the Yangtze flooded again. Now it flooded still pretty disastrously in many ways. Many, many people were killed and it was horrific in many ways. But there was also evidence that some of the work that had been done on dams and on diversions and on scientific control, control of water since the 1931 flood had improved condition. The combination of a more technocratic element of Chinese government and the League of Nations had done something to try and create control. You know, the dream for a very long time of Chinese governments control of water. Of course, in some senses, at least in, in the short term, it all came to grief because two years after that, in 1937, Japan invaded China and many of the dams and riverine works that had been done were destroyed as part of the wartime devastation. And actually worse than that, at one point the Chinese government opened up one of the Dikes in Henan Province at Huayuan Kou, deliberately to flood parts of central China to stop the Japanese from advancing. That said, just a more positive note perhaps, to put at the end of that, because that does all sound a bit bleak in the end. China has done a lot of work, some of it environmentally also damaging in its own right. But dams now control not all, but a great deal of the flooding in a way that wasn't really visible just a century ago. And there's one example relevant again to headlines from Asia, coming from South Asia, about how water control can sometimes overcome political differences. And that was on the 19th of November 1960, when you have the signing of the Indus Waters Agreement, which was basically agreement between India and Pakistan, which I think people will know not always been the most friendly of countries to each other, that they would divide the usage of six rivers that sit in the division between India and Pakistan, three of them essentially largely controlled by Pakistan, three of them largely controlled by India. And even through the wars and conflicts, and there have been many between India and Pakistan through the 60s, 70s, 90s, the Indus waters Agreement has continued to be respected and observed. It has, perhaps rather worryingly, just in the last few months, after the recent short conflict between Pakistan and India in spring 2025, looked as if at least the Indian side may be looking to suspend the agreement, although that's still in flux in some ways. But nonetheless, the fact that over that period of whatever it is now, 65 years, there has been that continuity of that water usage and control agreement shows that when people get down to it, politicians are capable sometimes of harnessing those often very dangerous natural and environmental elements, such as rivers and the damage they have can do and try and produce something positive from it.
- [48:33]
Hannah Skoda
It's a nice uplifting kind of note. I find it very striking that environmental histories are so often political histories too, that we. We think about environmental histories as histories of kind of great exogenous forces, things that happen to people. But of course, there are also histories of the ways in which people and politicians respond to them. I also think it's really interesting the ways in which the explanations which people seek can be at once, explanations of which look to the spiritual or the supernatural or what we might think of as very irrational, alongside much more kind of quote unquote rational or scientific explanations. So people sort of hold both these things in tension, I think. And I think we do that now as well. When we. When we respond to natural disasters, we think about it in spiritual terms, we think about it in very emotional terms, and we respond to the sense of tragedy, but we also think about the ways in which these things happen can be explained and responded to scientifically.
- [49:33]
Matt Elton
Can I come to Dave at this point, because I think I'm right in saying, Dave, that You've got a PhD in medieval drainage and flood management, so you might be able to chip in about this aspect of things.
- [49:42]
Dave Musgrove
I do, Matt.
- [49:43]
Rana Mitter
Wow.
- [49:44]
Dave Musgrove
My PhD is in the medieval drainage of the, of the Somerset Levels. So, yeah, it brings us back to the uk. But Hannah, you're absolutely right. You know, it's really interesting to think about the agency of medieval people and the fact that they were really, really closely associated, associated with the water they saw around them. So I studied how the people who are occupying the Glastonbury estates, the estates of the monks of Glastonbury, and they were actively trying to drain the lands to improve it. And if you go down to the southwest of England, you can see that what they did, you can see their flood walls, you can see their drainage. So if you want to see evidence of medieval agency, go down to the Somerset Levels. It's a lovely place to visit anyway. But you can see what they did. I think, sort of going back a bit, I'm really interested in how people were really, really in tune with the water borne environment they saw around themselves and were much more aware of what the rivers did and how they operated. And you can see that in the place names, in all place names, there's loads of water related bits in it and they were clearly very, very interested in it. They took a keen awareness of how that water was going to operate. And when they were living in places where there was risk of flood and flash floods, they knew about it and they were probably quite active in thinking about how they might mitigate the risks. But they needed to be there because living in a place like that, they needed to be able to harness the resources of the river, either for power or whatever it was going to give to their community. So they needed to be really aware of it. And I do think that nowadays, obviously we're seeing much more risk of environmental damage and the horrible things that have happened in, in the States is the clear example. We probably need to take a much greater interest in what our rivers are likely to do and think much more closely about how the water is likely to act and particularly places where there is a risk of flashiness in the flood profile and think about whether we want to be in that sort of place and how we might react to what's going to happen. So I think that's a really interesting thing to sort of think about and quite a positive thing because those people in the past, they did have the agent, they thought about it, they took a keen interest in what the sort of water around them was going to do, and they acted accordingly.
- [51:53]
Matt Elton
And that has been a particularly packed episode. That is where we have to leave that for this month. Thank you all, Hannah, Rana, Dave, for being with us. We will be back again in August, but for now, goodbye.
- [52:15]
Hannah Skoda
This is History's Heroes.
- [52:17]
Dave Musgrove
People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering.
- [52:24]
Hannah Skoda
Surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of.
- [52:26]
Rana Mitter
Soldiers in the First World War.
- [52:28]
Hannah Skoda
You know, he would look at these.
- [52:29]
Dave Musgrove
Men and he would say, don't worry.
- [52:31]
Hannah Skoda
Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzel, gentlemen, for History's Heroes.
- [52:40]
Dave Musgrove
Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.