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Potential savings will vary hey, you're listening to the on the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Micah Oinger.
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This week we're sharing a segment from
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our friends at the New Yorker Radio Hour. Host and New Yorker editor David Remnick sat down with the hosts of the hit podcast the the Rest Is History. I'll let David take things from here
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if I can generalize a little bit for one moment. We Americans are not terribly modest about our place in the world. We think of the United States as not just the mightiest in the military sense or the wealthiest in the economic sense, but in some way the most important, the most central the city on the hill in the famous historical phrase, the nation that others look up to or should. America rejected monarchy and asserted the right to self rule during the revolution and that was the great shot heard round the world and everybody supposedly has been playing catch up ever since. That's the prevailing view in a nutshell, the historical cliche. Now my guests today have a very different view of the matter. Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland are are the historians who host the Rest is History, a terrific podcast from the UK and I wanted to see what America's 250th anniversary looks like from a few thousand miles to the east in Great Britain. So we're going to spend our program today with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook of the Rest is History. We are always happy to have you on, but we waited for this occasion because I knew you'd have something to say on the occasion of the signing of the Declaration of independence in 1776. And I think it's fair to say that after having listened to you for hours on this subject, that your take on it collectively, your take on the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence, after a four part series that I listened to, you had the temerity to suggest that it was not the most important event in the history of civilization.
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It's not even the most important event in the history of America.
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It's not even the most important revolution that happens in the late 18th century, to be honest.
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We'll get to that in the French and many more things. But tell me this, let's start with you Dominic. Why do you have a rather diminished view, I would say of the American Revolution and the Declaration?
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I don't think I do have a diminished view. I think. Well, first of all, an interesting thing that may be surprising to some American listeners in Britain. The American Revolution is never really taught, it's not discussed, it doesn't really feature in our collective historical imagination. And Americans often say ahaha, that's because you lost. That's not really the case because there's nothing the British like more than a kind of, than a tragic defeat actually it's because it's eclipsed by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars and we only have time, we only have space in our heads for one late 18th century thing and that is the French Revolution and Nelson and Wellington smiting Napoleon. It's not really taught as the American Revolution. So it's, it was always called the American War of Independence. So it didn't really feature in my historical imagination. Certainly growing up as a great revolutionary moment, I thought of the French Revolution of course, or the Russian Revolution, but the American Revolution just seemed to be, and this is somebody, you know, I, I'm not a specialist in 18th century history at all, but it seemed to be a parade of quite boring men talking very earnestly about liberty battles that involve 20 people in a field somewhere in the great vastness of North American continent. You know, it's not Waterloo, it's not Borodino or something. So, so when we came to it, and I think also Tom and I, we've been, you know, we've seen all the sort of Ken Burns style, the flag of liberty over Gobbler's Creek or whatever it might be and sort of, you know, a slight smirk perhaps playing on our lips in a true red coat manner as we see the Americans congratulate themselves as they go back to their slave inhabited plantations on the great victory of liberty and so on. So I must admit I very much enjoyed the great furore about the 1619 project because as a Brit watching that, it was entertaining to see Americans flagellating themselves and tearing themselves apart about whether they were the good guys after all. And of course the 1619 Project people said that British were the heroes in the end. So that was tremendous news for us.
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Well, the 1619 project is definitely something I do want to talk about. But before we get there, help us understand what was going on between the colonies and the British in the run up to the Revolution, or at least what we call the Revolution. Tom.
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I mean, just to broaden it out on why maybe it doesn't have the saliency in the British imagination that the French Revolution does. And it relates to your question. I think for, for people in Britain, the American War of Independence, the American Revolution, whatever you want to call it, is part of a broader continuum which is the English speaking Atlantic world. And there is a case for saying that, that the War of Independence is a British Civil War. It's another civil war in the line that descends from the civil wars that rent Great Britain and Ireland back in the 17th century. And a lot of the tensions and conflicts that gave rise to the war in the 17th century were exported to the New World. So whether it's the, the Puritans in Massachusetts or the Quakers in, in Philadelphia or the Catholics in Maryland, those religious tensions to us are very familiar and they seem certainly to me very, very, very religious. And just as in the 18th century in Britain, those religious tensions kind of blur and fade into what you might call kind of Enlightenment dynamics. The same thing seems to be happening in America. And that's why there are lots of people in Britain who are backing the American rebels. Just as obviously there are lots of people who are opposing them. And I think that the conflict makes best sense when seen in the Atlantic context, rather than being seen as something that is merely bred of American concerns, because those concerns exist in the broader kind of Anglosphere dimension, I think.
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But Tom, what was the nature of the rebels? Some of our listeners will be surprised to hear that in fact, in New York in particular, this was a stronghold of pro British sentiment, but there were rebels in the, in the colonies. What was the nature of the early sense of rebellion? Or was it just a kind of tax dispute?
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Is something it varies from, from colony to colony. And the, the difference in character between, say, Massachusetts and New York and Pennsylvania and Virginia is very, very salient. And it is something that threatens to derail the whole project of, say, issuing a Declaration of Independence. And the great achievement of the rebels in the war is not just to defeat the British, but to forge a genuine sense that these are United States,
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just to jump in. So, David, you were talking about the wider context. So as I would see it, the wider context is this. The Seven Years War is the moment that kind of changes everything. What you call the French and Indian War. So the British have acquired huge, they've conquered huge swathes of North America from the French. That does a couple of things. First of all, it removes the threat of the French. So from this point onwards, the colonists don't need the protection of the British army as much as they once did. It also left Britain with a crippling debt to pay. So the British budget, you know, British borrowing ballooned during the course of the war, and by the end of the seven years War, Britain is paying about half of its national budget on interest payments alone. So as the British authorities see it, this is the moment when basically they need to sort out that the empire, as it were, has expanded beyond all imagination. The system for, for regulating it is very ramshackle and rackety. And actually, you could argue that the British projects are sorting that out is an Enlightenment project, that it's a modernizing project. The parliament sits there and it says, okay, we've basically got these 17th century colonies. It's all a bit of a mess. We're going to sort it out. It's mad that they're not paying the same taxes that people pay in Britain, the stamp tax on documents and so on. We should extend. You know, the British gentry have paid for the cost of this war. They are very heavily taxed by historic standards. We will make the Americans pay the colonists. We'll ask the colonists to pay a little bit towards their own defense. And I think that's perfectly reasonable. And no one could really disagree with that. And so there's that element to it. As Tom, I think absolutely rightly says, there is a element of it being a successor to the religious conflicts of the 17th century. So conflicts about, you know, the church, parliament, king and so on that we associate with Charles I, Oliver Cromwell. There's also, of course, the element that the British basically don't really want the colonists to keep expanding westwards. So in 1763 they said, hold on, you know, this far and no further, because they don't want to provoke expensive conflict with the kind of native tribes and a lot of the colonists. George Washington is a brilliant example of this. They've got a lot of investment in land speculation and stuff, and they want to keep expanding westwards and they're annoyed.
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Dominic, what you're suggesting is that the great imperialists in this picture.
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Yeah.
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Are not the Brits, but George Washington.
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Well, I think that would be pushing it too far because Britain at this time is also seizing much of India. So there is no question the British are imperially. Minded. Right.
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But the Americans are not anti imperial freedom fighters. I mean, they want to take the whole continent for themselves.
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I mean, George Washington is the classic example of this. He is hard up, he's looking to make land deals further west. And as he sees it, kind of the British are saying no to this. So I mean, Washington in the American context is much more of an expansionist, colonialist figure than George iii, for instance,
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Dominic, in your series, you quoted the New Yorker's very own Adam Gopnik, who asked the question if the American Revolution was in fact a mistake.
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Right, yeah.
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And, yeah, and you get into that. I'd love to hear you on that subject.
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So here is the question that I think would, would puzzle me if I were American. And it puzzles me that Americans don't discuss this. It is this Canada exists. Right. And Canada is not a terrible place by any means. Also, Australia exists or New Zealand. So when Americans look to Canada, I'm curious about what they think about this country that, you know, is still subject to the Crown, remained as it were, loyal in the verticommas to Britain.
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Well, we know what Donald Trump thinks.
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Yes, we do know what Donald Trump thinks. But Americans more broadly, I'm curious whether they think that Canada, how that fits into the, the, you know, the language of liberty, the, the discourse that this was a tremendous triumph of freedom against oppression. Because if that is the case. Right. Then presumably Canada is not truly free and people in Canada are leading the lives of helots subject to the yoke
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of the British crown.
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The yoke of the British crown. And obviously no sane person thinks that. Right. So there is an alternative reality. So my, my question would be, is it possible that events in the late 18th century could have played out different, differently, and the United States might have not have ever existed and British North America might now be united under the overlordship of Mark Carney.
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I can absolutely imagine a world in which. America and Britain, their common political language remains something that unites rather than separates. And one of the ways that this goes off piste in what becomes the war is the fact that the rebel colonists are weaponizing a very specific English language, an English vocabulary of liberty. So when the, the rebels in, say, Massachusetts are opposing the colonial government, they're doing it in the context of what they call English liberties. They're looking to England as the source for the ideology that they are then using to turn against British rule.
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John Locke.
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And that is John Locke and the. Well, yes, so, so, and it obviously it expresses itself in various ways with the kind of, the key figures, the, in the, the American Revolution. So if you look at Thomas Jefferson, he becomes, I think, pretty Anglophobic. I would say that he is very hos. I mean, as, as hostile and then as dangerous an enemy as the British Empire has ever faced.
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Thomas Jefferson, yes.
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And yet he is passionately devoted to ideals of liberty that he traces back ultimately to the Saxons when they lived in Germany in the Roman period before they kind of crossed to Britain. And he wanted to have on the, on the, the United States seal. He wanted to have Hengist and Hausa, the primordial ancestors of the Angles and the Saxons, when they settle in Britain. And he sees these kind of ancient ideals of liberty as being portrayed by the Hanoverian regime as he would frame it in the 18th century. And that's kind of one way in which that mutates. But another figure who I think kind of represents a possible way in which Britain and America could have stayed together is Benjamin Franklin, who is at least as British a figure as he is American and who right up to the Boston Tea Party is kind of saying, this is a terrible mistake. Can we not have a form of accommodation?
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I'm speaking with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, hosts of the podcast the Rest is History. We'll continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, is it possible that the American Revolution wasn't really all that it seemed
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to be a parade of quite boring men talking very earnestly about liberty battles that involved 20 people in a field somewhere in the great vastness of North American continent?
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I'm joined by the host of the podcast the Rest Is History on the New Yorker Radio Hour from wnyc. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm speaking today with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, who together host the Rest Is History, one of my favorite podcasts and one of the most popular things in the world, at least in English. Sandbrook was on the history faculty at Oxford University and he's written a number of books on modern British and American history. Holland wrote about the classical world and he's translated works from the Latin and ancient Greek. But on the Rest Is History, they cover just about anything. A Roman emperor one week, the Rolling Stones the next, a series on Hitler and then the Samurai period in Japan. That's the way it goes on their podcast. But the relevant thing for our conversation today, our subject is a four part series that they produced on the American Revolution. So I'll continue my conversation now with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Well, let's take on a very big subject in this, and that's the element of slavery. There were many slaveholders who considered themselves, or would be considered in the rearview mirror as revolutionary. How to grapple with this? How do you grapple with that?
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Well, I think. I mean, one of the differences between, say, the Irish War of Independence and the American War of Independence is that in the Irish War of Independence, they are. The rebels are looking to draw on ideas and myths and slogans that come from specifically Irish history rather than British history. Whereas in the American War of Independence, all the slogans are coming from British language, British vocabulary, ironically. Ironically. And in. In that mythology, in that vocabulary, the words like liberty and freedom are fundamental. And, you know, it is English liberties that are being defended against the redcoats in Massachusetts when the war kind of goes hot. And this. The British also have massive slave holdings in the Caribbean. And it is a growing problem, I think, that for the slaveholders, that this is rubbing up against all kinds of ideological concerns and anxieties within the metropolis, within Britain, and the notion that there is no, There can be no slavery in Britain, that a slave who steps foot on British soil as a result of that becomes free is starting to bed down. And you have those historically salient ideals of political liberty blurring with religious concerns about it, which are deriving from Quakers, from evangelicals. So you have a political and you have a religious project that is starting to look at the institution of slavery and to question it very, very radically. And this is happening in exactly the decades where the. The revolution is brewing in the United States. And I think that that sets up a kind of massive, massive accusation of hypocrisy that enemies of the revolution can aim at the revolutionaries in America, British critics of whom, again, Samuel Johnson is the most famous.
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And he has.
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What is it that. How is it that it is the drivers of Negro from whom we hear the loudest yelps for liberty?
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Right. And there was a piece in the New Yorker not long ago by the historian Gilles Lepore in which he was describing the. Drafting, the group editing process of the Declaration of Independence. And if you've ever written a piece or a book, you know that editing by group is always ends in sadness. And Jefferson himself was struggling in various drafts with the inclusion or not of the slavery question.
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He wanted it gone, didn't he? Yeah, I mean, he wanted slavery gone. He absolutely was passionately committed to it. And he was furious when those passages then got written out. But, you know, when he dies, he does not even do what Washington did and try and free most of his slaves.
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Yeah, it's a complicated picture. So Washington's a good example. You know, Washington has slaves. Washington at Valley Forge, when he's holed up there with his army, it's at that point when Rhode island, struggling to fulfill its recruitment quota, becomes the first state or colony to buy the freedom of African Americans in order to recruit them and to meet its total and to send them to the Continental Army. And Washington, even though he's a slave owner, even though that, you know, cuts against the kind of the philosophy of slavery, he accepts it. And it's interesting that in 1778, it's, it's after, you know, black men have joined the Continental army in large numbers that he writes to his steward back at Mount Vernon. He says we should stop selling slaves against their consent. And there's a note in a letter to his steward where he mentions the enslaved people at Mount Vernon in passing. And he says, I wish we could kind of get clear of this whole business.
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One point we should clarify is that. And something that you make clear is the 13 colonies that rebelled were not actually the British Empire's prized possession.
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No, no, no. I mean, that's so that amazes people when we say that.
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Well, just for clarity, what was the prized possession?
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The Caribbean.
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The Caribbean, because that's where the wealth was coming from.
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I mean, sugar. Yeah.
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So that's why the French entry into the war is such a game changing moment. Because when the French joined the war in a big way, when French ships appear and there's the first 4,000 Frenchmen come ashore, that is a game changer. Precisely because for the British, the priorities have completely changed. So from this point onwards, for the British, it's like, right, let's protect, we need to protect those colonists in the Caribbean because the health of our economy, the strength of the country depends on the sugar islands of the Caribbean. We can lose, lose Rhode island or Delaware, I mean, who cares about them? But keeping Jamaica is all important. And so that from London, that is the perspective. And so, funnily enough, when you get to 1783, the Treaty of Paris for the British, sure, they're annoyed that They've lost the 13 colonies of the, you know, the, the North American seaboard, but they think to themselves, you know what, it could have been a lot worse. We could have lost India, we could have lost the Caribbean. We'll take it.
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Let me ask you this. There Was a big history war hubbub in the United States not so long ago when the New York Times published its 1619 project, which began in, I think it was 2019, and it focused on slavery as integral to American history. In the period that we're discussing. What is your sense, Tom, of what the 1619 Project got right? What was important about it, and maybe where it fell short?
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I mean, I think that it is right that the project of establishing a viable colonial project in North America and in the Caribbean for the British was dependent on forced labor. There was no way in which it could really be viable without that. And the British came up with, you know, it's initially the English, but then in due course the British, they are always looking around for sources of labor. So to begin with, it's. It's usually transported people from Britain. So lots. In the civil wars of the mid 17th century, Scots are transported there, Irish are transported there. But because there has been a massive infrastructure of exporting slaves from Africa to the Spanish New World, largely being done by the Portuguese, that exists. That is a framework of exploitation that is ready to be used. And the English have begun trying to muscle in on this very early on. So the. Some of the earliest voyages that Francis Drake, the great kind of maritime hero of the reign of Elizabeth I that he does is he goes on a slaving expedition. I think that. So by the. By the early 18th century, the fact that not just America, not North America, but the. The Caribbean as well, is dependent on slavery is becoming a vast moral and economic crisis for people across that British Atlantic world. And the kind of the opposition to it is being bred by the kind of the scale of horror that the growing industrialization of the British empire in the 18th century is generating. I think one of the things that people now might get wrong is the idea that the British Empire is dependent on slavery. I think it's the other way around. I think it is the fact that Britain is industrializing that makes the exploitation of slavery brutal and unspeakable to a degree that had not previously been witnessed. It is hideous. So I always. There's a passage in the Marquis de Sade. I think it's Juliet, where he is writing with immense approval of all the horrors and tortures and violence that ancient empires had inflicted. And he says that none of our modern states can compare with the Persians or the Romans for their cruelties. The only exception I will make are the English colonists in the Caribbean and the Atlantic seaboard of North America.
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Amazing.
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They. They know the horrors and he lists the horrors in kind of great detail and I think that, that you can see. So there's a kind of representative figure who is a Quaker from Essex in England called Benjamin Lay, who goes to the Caribbean and witnesses the horrors there and is so appalled that he has a kind of religious conversion. And he then goes to America, to Philadelphia, because he's hoping that, you know, this is the great city of the Quakers, it's city of brotherly love, surely there'll be no slaves there. And he discovers slavery and is appalled by it. And he becomes the first kind of activist, really. He does all these stunts where he, you know, he goes to the Quaker meeting house and he pulls out a Bible and he's put purple juice in it and he stabs it with a sword and all this purple juice comes out looking like blood. And he retires to a cave and leads this incredibly effective campaign against slavery, which ends up shaming the Quakers into effectively becoming abolitionists. And this in turn is an influence on Benjamin Franklin. And I think it's one of the most admirable things about Franklin and about the American Revolution is that lots of the Founding Fathers are prepared to wrestle with these issues. It's not like we have just discovered them ourselves. They do wrestle with them and they come to different solutions. Perhaps. But Franklin is an example of someone who, by the end of his life, the final months of his life, he is devoted to opposing slavery. This man who had thought to run an advert in the British press requesting the return of a slave. And he presents a petition to Congress saying, please get rid of this, it's terrible. And in his final piece of published writing, he pretends to be a Muslim advisor in the Barbary States. And he says, it would be ridiculous for us to free these Christian slaves. These Christian slaves would be helpless without their servitude. You know, they wouldn't possibly survive. And he's parodying the language that he himself had earlier used to justify slavery. So I think that the degree of self flagellation about the founding of America, the sense that slavery is the original sin, that slavery had accompanied the making of America, I think that is true. I don't think without that it would have been possible to generate the colonies and give it the prosperity that it did. At the same time, the horrors that are consequent on this do generate the process of abolitionism that today has come to be taken for granted across the world. I think it is important to try and think yourselves back into the shoes of people for whom the notion that slavery was an institutional wrong would have been unthinkable. It's bred out of this world, this notion, and it's come to seem so obvious to most of us today, I mean, to almost all of us, that we cannot imagine not thinking it. And yet it was more than possible. People completely took it for granted.
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Tom Holland, the co host of the Rest Is History, along with Dominic Sandbrook. When we come back, we'll discuss the fate of the British monarchy and the American president that these guys call colossally consequential. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.
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Are you hungry for some great investigative journalism that sounds like music, then Radiolab might be the show for you. Radiolab began over 20 years ago as an exploration of science, philosophy and ethics. The show has since expanded to become a platform for some of the best long form journalism and storytelling you'll hear today. Join Jad, Lulu Miller and myself, Latif Nasser, as we investigate stories that provoke delight and ask you to completely change the way you view the world. You can find Radiolab wherever you get podcasts.
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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and as we get ready for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I've been speaking with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the British historians who co host the podcast the Rest is History. We'll continue our conversation. Now, let me ask you about the way you in Britain, or you too, as British historians and podcasters and thinkers, are looking at the United States now. And as we're celebrating this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Recently on one of your broadcasts, you called Donald Trump colossally consequential. Yeah, colossally consequential. Someone who defines his age as opposed to many other presidents of contemporary times. Right. Explain what you mean.
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So if you look back at recent presidents, let's say Barack Obama, good example, maybe Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr. And so on, you have a number of presidents who perhaps over time, Barack Obama, different, of course, because he's the first African American president. But in the long run, will they leap out of the history books in a way that Benjamin Harrison or Grover Cleveland or Calvin Coolidge do not? And I don't think they will. I think in the year, you know, in the 22nd century, I don't think people will be terribly excited. I mean, they might be excited about the more colorful aspects of Bill Clinton's personal life, but I think as a president, as a political operator, they won't be terribly Interested. Donald Trump seems to me much more interesting for various reasons. First of all, it's such an American life. I mean, imagine being the person who writes the definitive biography of Donald Trump in 10 or 20 or 30 years time. What an extraordinary Robert Caro esque book that will be. Cause it takes in all so many different things. Trump, I think, is so fascinating because there are aspects of the American character and American history that have reached fulfillment in Trump. In other words, I don't necessarily, I don't think Trump is exceptional. I think all the, the, the newspaper coverage after the, the business and the storming the Capitol and stuff, you know, this is not America. This is very un American. I think that was wrong. I think Trump is profoundly American. Trump is not all there is of America, but I think there are nativist, there are ultra patriotic, nationalistic, whatever, whatever impulses that reach fruition in Trump. But I also think, you know, Trump has changed history. Trump's tariffs, Trump's attitude to China, Trump's war in Iran, Trump's attitude towards the war in Ukraine, you know, and to NATO. Yeah, and to NATO. By the end of Trump's tenure as president, he will have changed the course of human events, world affairs, in a way that Barack Obama never did.
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Well, let me ask you this as an observer, sitting where you are, and I don't necessarily disagree with you. How much of this is an expression of him and constituency represents and the fact that he prevailed in a couple of elections and how much of do you think that will be post Trump? How much of this will persist after Trump is gone, presumably in 2028?
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C
Why would it go away? Why would it just vanish overnight?
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I'm not saying the phenomenon itself will disappear. I'm not saying that nativism will disappear or the corruption or any of these other aspects you've right. Pointed to.
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I think, I think that certain aspects will not go away because Trump has been successful, because he understood, I would guess, kind of instinctively, he has a kind of feral intelligence. I mean, he's not an intellectual. He senses it in the way that a stoat might kind of sense a wounded bird and goes for it. His mastery of social media, his ability to control narratives, which is obviously kind of evident in, you know, the kind of the pre history before the Internet. You know, his fascination with wrestling, which is, you know, kind of scripted, but pretending not to be scripted. His fascination with reality TV and TV generally. I mean, he kind of, it was in his bones. He was the person who was perfectly equipped by his upbringing, by his instincts to go for the jugular with the opportunity that social media presented. And what he has done with that is a lesson that will be. People will be kind of drawing on for decades and decades to come, because it's obviously not going to go away. I also think that his character, his unbelievable rudeness, his. The violent quality of his statements, the. The everyday language that he uses to frame that, that also has established a template for how to succeed in American politics. That, again, is simply not going to go away. But I also just think he is better at it than Farage or Orban or Le Pen or anyone else that you would want to compare it to.
- [35:24]
C
Well, Trumpism is not new. And actually, even within the international context, sure. Think somebody like Silvio Berlusconi in Italy in the 1990s, again, a kind of precursor of Trump. So what does it mean for the United States? I think the Trumpist style of politics, as Tom I think says, is not going to go away. That's partly because of the changes in the media ecosystem. They reward kind of Trumpist politics. I think they're also kind of. There are other structural causes. There are a lot of people who feel disenfranchised by de. Industrialization. There are a lot of people who feel. Feel alienated from the culture of the big cities, for example, people who feel left behind or whatever, people who feel angry about immigration, for example. Again, those things are not going to change. So where does it leave the United States? I mean, arguably, you might say it leaves the United States where it's always been, for two reasons. Number one, I think populist politics has always been a distinguishing feature of American political life, far more so than in Europe. I mean, there is populist politics in Europe, of course, but the sort of populist rhetoric of the common man against the corrupt elite that is hardwired into American political culture. I mean, Richard Hofstadter pointed that out more than half a century ago. So I think that's one aspect. The other aspect that I think is so interesting, a historian called Felipe Fernandez Ernesto wrote a few years ago a book in which he said maybe it would be interesting to look at the United States instead of looking at, always in isolation from the other successor states to the American colonial empires. Why don't we look at it as one of them? Is it so different from Mexico, from Argentina? Is its political culture so completely different? Of course, there are distinctive elements because it comes from. Because of the influence of English political culture. But the fondness for a strong man, the fondness for an authoritarian populist the kind of Cadillo politics. I wonder whether you could easily see the United States moving in a direction where that becomes more and more pronounced.
- [37:26]
B
I get the anxiety, but Trump is Trump, and his popularity ratings are now in the 30s and there's an election coming and he's about to suffer, one believes and maybe hopes, a defeat in the midterms and an expiration date in 2028. So the argument is, well, maybe this is, if not a one off, it certainly represents tendencies in American politics, just as racism and antisemitism represent persistent tendenc, not only in the United States, but elsewhere, that those are not going to go away. But it's possible that through electoral politics they become submerged.
- [38:06]
A
I think one of the ways in which you can measure the consequential character of an actor in world history is if they have an ism named after them and people talk about it seriously. So there haven't been that many. I mean, there's Caesarism, Napoleonism, and it's interesting that all of them kind of involve a strong man emerging from a Republican system.
- [38:27]
B
But there's also something called liberalism. And do you think.
- [38:31]
A
Absolutely is.
- [38:31]
B
Do you think that's been eradicated from American political culture?
- [38:34]
A
No, I don't. So I am relatively sanguine about the prospects for American liberty because I think it's had a very long innings and has done incredibly well for itself. And I think that there is, within the character and the myths of the American republic, there is an inherent anxiety that the republic will turn to autocracy. And that's because it was founded as a simulacrum of the early Roman republic. And the lesson of Roman history is that at some point a republic will become an autocracy. And so people have been dreading the emergence of a Caesar since the Constitutional Convention. And when Franklin, Benjamin Franklin came out and people said, what is it to be? He said, a republic, if you can keep it.
- [39:20]
B
Nancy Pelosi always reminded us.
- [39:22]
A
Yes, so right from the very, very beginning, this has been an anxiety, and yet people were anxious about it with relation to Jackson or to Lincoln or to Roosevelt.
- [39:36]
B
But hang on, is it not an anxiety in Britain as well? You have a current of populism that's running very strong now. You have a very relatively wealthy London, and it's said that the rest of the economy in Britain more resembles Alabama than New York. These resentments, these changes in the media, again, it's not on the same scale as the United States and sheer population and military power. But do you not have the same anxieties about, call it Trumpism, of course, if you will, or Faragism or what?
- [40:05]
C
I would say no, I would say I don't agree with Tom about this at all. I think because the political culture, I think political culture in Britain is completely different. That's not to say that populism isn't a feature, of course, but political culture in Britain is quite different from the United States, I think, for two reasons. It's much less moralistic. So threats are not usually cast as a danger to the integrity of the republic. You know, you have changes of governments and there's a little bit of overheated rhetoric. The newspapers get excited, but by and large we rub along pretty well. The other big thing I think in Britain and the difference that the United States has actually with Europe in general is the United States has only two parties. There are us, there's, there's the good people and there are the other people who are evil. And in, now, in Britain, by definition we've always had a. Even at the point of the, where the two parties, the Consortium labor at their strongest, there were still other parties, there were still a few Liberal MPs. And of course now in Britain we have effectively a multi party system. So it's very hard to cast your opponents as a terrifying danger to the threat and survival of the nation state itself when there are so many shades of gray, as it were, and there's so many shades of nuance. So in that sense, I think Britain is much closer to European in democracies than it is to the United States.
- [41:25]
B
Gentlemen, I can't be sitting here with two British historians and not ask about the state of, well, the monarchy. Is it just about done or are you just having a low period in the history of the monarchy in many ways, and it will revive itself.
- [41:44]
C
Why do you assume it's a low period? I'm intrigued why you think it's a low period.
- [41:47]
A
I think the monarchy is doing fine. I.
- [41:50]
C
You do?
- [41:51]
B
I didn't ask about constitutional monarchy as systemic, but the royal family seems in a state of struggle.
- [41:58]
A
I mean, I think because to the degree that I disagree with Dominic, I think that Britain and America do still remain shaped by that common legacy from the 18th and 17th centuries. And both our histories are marked by the tension between what, of course, you know, in the Civil wars were, were parliamentarians who ended up chopping the head of the king and then also decided that actually we'll have the monarchy back. And so the sense that you can have a degree of monarchy and have a very thriving democratic system as it emerges, I think is something that is shared by both America and Britain in its own way. The America, I think demonstrates that it's perfectly possible to have a monarchy and a republican system. And in a way Britain does as well. And it's often said that America is a monarchy pretending to be a republic and Britain is a republic pretending to be a monarchy. And I think that there is an element of truth about that. And I think that the legacy of the centuries that have preceded this current moment, I think should give us an element of reassurance and perhaps also should make us ponder are we not being very arrogant in assuming that we uniquely live at the. The end point, the end of days? The. There's a kind of fulfillment in feeling that we are witnessing the end of a great and ancient story. I don't think we are. And maybe I'm being Pollyanna ish about it it, but I think that, you know, was it Adam Smith said there is a lot of ruin in a nation and I don't think we, neither of us are remotely near that.
- [43:47]
C
David, I'm puzzled by your question. The implication is that the monarchy is in an unprecedented state of or a low point. But I mean republicanism in Britain is very much a minority pursuit. It's a, it's an enthusiasm for kind of political hobbyists by definition are not representative of the great mass of people. Of course, there's the scandal about the former Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, for example.
- [44:10]
B
Right.
- [44:11]
C
But I mean, the one thing that has always been a feature of the British monarchy has been terrible sex scandals, you know, sort of soap opera style shenanigans, terrible secrets, skeletons in closets and so on. I mean, this is absolutely standard. This is not a bug, this is a feature.
- [44:28]
B
Oh, I agree, but it doesn't have the contemporary media accelerative aspects that you have now.
- [44:35]
C
No, it doesn't. But in a world in which the contemporary media is accelerating every story, this is just one story among many.
- [44:40]
B
So it does, so it doesn't stick. You're saying no.
- [44:42]
C
And for the, for the monarchy to change, for the change to the system, just think about how this would work. I mean, people always talk about this very airily, oh, there could be a change. They could get rid of the monarchy. People aren't interested anymore. What it would require would be for an elected government to decide that it wanted to spend its five year mandate on an extremely controversial referendum and an
- [45:04]
B
unpopular one that would.
- [45:06]
C
An unpopular one that all the indicators show that they would lose in changing to a republic. I mean, there's absolutely, I don't think there's ever been a majority in the history of opinion polling for change into republic. So that would have to be a Labor government. In doing so, even if they won, they would immediately shed a large proportion of their own heartland constituency, that is to say, working class, small C, Conservative, patriotic, monarchist, labor supporters. Would any labor government take that risk? It's unthinkable, I would say, I mean,
- [45:41]
A
I would say the only perhaps one possibility is that the United Kingdom breaks up. There is a kind of greater strain of republicanism, I would say, in Scotland or in Wales, I mean, let alone in Northern Ireland. So that is one possibility. I mean, think, I, I, I don't think that's going to happen either because I think the appeal of the status quo in times of trouble is always immense.
- [46:06]
B
It kicks in.
- [46:07]
A
And I think that, that the very, you know, the, the, the kind of, the very predatory nature of contemporary media culture actually can work in the monarchy's favor. So of course, Prince Andrew, you know, being arrested, absolutely shocking. Use lots and lots of articles saying this is the end of the monarchy. And then I think within literally a month, King Charles was visiting Washington and delivering a speech and everyone say, oh, why can't we have the king, the king back? He's tremendous. He's much better than Donald Trump. And Prince Andrew was forgotten.
- [46:38]
B
That is true.
- [46:39]
A
So, that is true.
- [46:40]
B
So I, I, except in the Daily
- [46:42]
A
Mail, maybe, I think, I think the, the lack of, you know, the short attention span can work in favor of the monarchy as well as against it.
- [46:49]
B
Let me ask you a kind of business cultural question. There was recently an article about the decline of dad books. Dad books, in American parlance, are usually tomes about modern history, biographies of Mountbatten, as it were, or King so and so, or President so and so. And it seems that you are among the guilty that one of the things that's cutting into the reading time of dads everywhere is podcasts, as sublime as they may be, like the rest is history.
- [47:24]
A
I would say not guilty. My sense is, from what friends who write dad books tell me, is that if we mention a dad book on the rest is history, the sales of that dad book go up. So I hope that we are helping people to go into bookshops and buy these, you know, huge volumes on, to take an example, the Early Roman Empire. I mean, that would be wonderful if that was happening.
- [47:56]
C
Well, I think I, I don't agree with Tom on this. I, I think I think we're clearly responsible. And I think the reason for that is there is a move generally away from a literary culture. So you see the sales of books generally in decline, reading in decline. And the reason for that is so many people say, well, actually, you know, I wanted to find out about the Spanish Civil War, but you know what? I'm gonna spend an evening watching YouTube clips about it. I'm listening to a podcast when once I would have picked up a book by Hugh Thomas or Paul Preston. And I think it would be mad for us to deny that's happening. I mean, there is a move towards a much more visual digital culture.
- [48:30]
A
Frankly, I would deny that.
- [48:32]
B
You. You would disagree, Tom?
- [48:34]
A
Again, I haven't looked at the stats on this, so obviously there are people who are sitting down and watching us on YouTube, but I think the vast majority of people are listening to podcasts while they're driving or they're on the walk or they're going to work or whatever. So it's something that is in addition to the time that you might have to read a book.
- [48:49]
B
I hope you're right. I hope you're right, because I think there's a lot of room in the world to listen to the Rest is History, which I take great pleasure in, as well as reading, reading, reading. Gentlemen, thank you.
- [48:59]
C
Thank you so much for having us.
- [49:00]
B
And happy Independence Day, sort of.
- [49:04]
C
Thank you. And to you, David, all the very best.
- [49:06]
A
Thank you.
- [49:07]
C
Thank you.
- [49:11]
B
Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland of the Rest is History. I'm David Remnick.
- [49:17]
A
Thanks for listening to the OTM midweek podcast. Check us out on Reddit at r onthemedia, where you can connect with other listeners or suggest topics that you think we should cover. The big show drops on Friday. I'm Michael Olinger.