Episode 1: Welcome to Becoming Historians!

Welcome to the The Coming Historians' podcast, where we focus on topics important people and events that will help anyone listening to enhance their knowledge of world history, through deep reading, thinking, and critical analysis. I'm your host, Dr. James Hudson, an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. This podcast serves as a required supplement for students enrolled in HST 1150, world civilization since 1500, and goes along with the chapters of our course textbook. The title "Becoming Historians" means that learning about history is a transformative and life-changing process that benefits everyone, so regardless of your major, if you're a UNCP student or just someone who enjoys listening to history podcasts, you have the opportunity in this course to try out being in the store in yourself. So for wherever you are in your car, on your phone, in your laptop at home, thank you for joining us. Okay, so in this segment, I'm going to talk a little bit about why history is important, and some of the skills that you'll have once you complete this class, or just good things to know if you are just generally interested in studying history. There's a popular essay by an historian named Peter Stern's called "Why Study History" that I'm going to kind of use as an outline to talk about these things, and if you want to take notes, that's fine, it's not required, and in Stern's essay, he talks about some of the skills that a student of history develops, and these are the fact that history helps us understand people and societies. It helps us understand change in how the society we live in came to be. It helps us understand the role of history in our own lives, studying history contributes to our own moral understanding of the world. It provides a sense of identity for who we are and for the kinds of communities we come from, and studying history is essential for being a good citizen, a good citizen and participating in our democracy, and so one, two, three, four, six, so I've kind of given you six things there, and I'll talk some more about each of these in depth. History helps us understand people and societies. It serves for the basis for how people historically have behaved from place to place in a society, in a state, in a country, in our course, we will learn about things like the European Enlightenment spawned, technological innovations, like the steam engine in the railroad, and how global revolutions in the Americas and Europe brought about the rise of popular sovereignty in the creation of nation states. We'll learn about a lot of different wars in this class, especially in the early 20th century World War I and World War II. How can we know about how to prevent war from happening if we have not studied past examples of it? For non-history majors, or for if you're a nursing major, a science major, of some kind of math major, it may be hard to kind of quantify the results of history, because it's something that can't be studied in a laboratory, in a way your brain is kind of a laboratory, because you're experimenting with new ideas, you're thinking about new things and concepts, and that's part of what being a college student is. Studying history can help you understand the role of the United States and global affairs today, and since the dawn of the 21st century, a time which many of you young people listening have grown up in, the second thing that Stern talks about is how history helps us understand change and how the society we live in came to be. If you take the history of the United States, for example, which is relatively short, coming up on 250 years now, students need to understand the global events that led to the found, the creation of our nation's founding, that we will learn more about in depth in this course. For example, the impact of the Protestant Reformation and the idea of religious freedom, the growth of knowledge and the creation of the individual during the European Enlightenment, the contact between European peoples and indigenous peoples in the Americas and colonialism, the enslavement in the Atlantic world and the middle passage and the rise of slave economies in the Americas, and something that I call revolution as national narrative, which led to the creation of our country, but also many other nation states in the Americas and in Europe, and there was a transition from European monarchies and the idea of absolute sovereignty or absolutism to the idea of popular sovereignty, which I've already said. Also the impact of the Industrial Revolution, the growth or free market and the emergence of capitalism. So these, all these things together, about six different things there, will help you understand how the United States came into existence. Stern also talks about the importance of history in our own lives. As you listen to this, can you think about a specific historical figure that you admire, a book you wrote about them, a TV show, or a movie you watched about them, or an important event that has meaning for you? As Stern says, these are all examples of history, how history well told can be beautiful. One movie that I've had students watch over the years that I've taught this class in person is a film called Master in Commander, the far side of the world that has Russell Crowe in it. It's about this English battleship at sea during the Napoleonic Wars. I think this movie really captures what it must have been like to live and work at sea during a specific moment in history, and I think it really helps transport students there. I also enjoy teaching students about a woman named Josephine Baker, who was one of the most important popular entertainers in Europe during the early 20th century during the jazz age of the 20s. Later on, she became a civil rights activist, and during World War II, she fed secrets to the French resistance against the German occupation, taking advantage of her social connections. We will learn about her as well. My particular background is an historian, is in Chinese history in Asia, so I've spent a lot of time in China living and working there, studying the language, and I always enjoy teaching students about Chinese history and culture, and so that's part of the personal connection that I have to history, how it's important in my own life. Sterns also talks about how studying history contributes to our own moral understanding of people. Currently, the great people of history, men and women who have worked through and triumphed through great moral dilemmas, but also of ordinary people who have overcome difficulty we can learn lessons, encourage diligence, or study examples of constructive protest. Studying about the experiences of these kinds of people and events can serve as sources of inspiration, courage, sacrifice and determination. Sterns also talks about how history provides identity, a sense of identity. Historical data provides information about your family, your group, your clan, your institution, where whole and how whole countries were formed. The University of North Carolina at Pembroke has a rich history and connection to the Lumbi tribe who was founded in 1887, and so as students at this university, everyone has a sort of special connection to that heritage as well. As students, you have the opportunity to learn more about the history and the experiences of Lumbi people and the heritage of native people in Robison County and throughout this region in North Carolina. Sterns further talks about how studying history is essential for good citizenship. If you're a community leader of some kind or an active leader in your campus community or have aspirations to serve in politics someday, studying history can make you a better informed voter, a more informed activist or petitioner rather than just a simple observer. Any current event that you learn about through reading the news online or through social media has a history. This is also important why it's important to check where one gets their information from. This also mentions how the study of history is useful in the world of work. People who study history can become good business people, professionals, political leaders. If you want to work in law, public administration, the analytical skills you developed can work toward helping you start a career in those areas. Thinking about the historical experiences of different cultures can help you understand people in your workplace or chosen profession who come from a different cultural background or tradition from yours. Sterns also talks about what kind of raw skills can a student develop from studying history. Some of those are the ability to assess and evidence and conflicting interpretations. An example of this would be how the United States was founded by these legendary leaders like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington but who also own slaves. How do we grapple with these types of questions, this kind of contradiction? It's complicated. What about the historical debates surrounding the American Civil War? Is it a war about states rights? Do we want to explore the deeper origins of the war, origins of the war to the condition of enslavement of Africans in the existence of slavery and slave states? How does studying something like the American Civil War, what is it that could teach us about civil conflicts in other parts of the world? For example, prior to the World War II, China became an intensive civil conflict that resulted in the losing faction and its government fleeing to the island of Taiwan in 1949 and the impact of that is still being felt today and how China views Taiwan and how the United States views that relationship. This nowadays are usually big fans of police procedurals like CSI, criminal minds and law and order and I think why many people, not just students, find these shows so popular and appealing is because people enjoy learning about the process of investigation to solve a puzzle, a mystery or a question. The characters in these shows often compile evidence to build a case and make an argument to solve the case which in the real world requires intensive reading, study and contemplation. Studying history can help you assess past examples of change. How can change in the past help us understand the potential for change in the presence in the present? An example of this would be the increased rights of people to participate in our democracy in this country that was at first denied to women and enslaved people and indigenous people but then later on those white rights were granted. So for your essay responses, the first part of the course you need to be able to talk about the difference between primary and secondary sources. When studying these types of documents and we will be looking at some different primary sources for this course, you should also apply four key things. What we call sourcing contextualization, corroboration and close reading. Sourcing an historical document involves knowing the details of the documents origin. Where did the document come from? What produced it? Who wrote it? How can we place the context of the document you're reading into the larger series of historical events from which it came? In the segment for this first episode you learned from Dr. Jamie Martinez about her own historical research about the history of slavery and how slaves were put to work doing various infrastructural projects and part of what Dr. Martinez and other historians do when they study documents related to the history of slavery and other things is they have to put it in the context of the broader history of things like the Civil War and other historical events. Corroboration, how is what you're studying or reading compare to what other sources or historians say and how can you compare those assessments and then make your own judgment and then close reading. What critical questions can you walk away with that will help you move ahead in your analysis? So I hope these things have proved helpful for you as some examples of practical ways that history benefits people and also ways to approach history and how historians use historical tools. Thank you. Hi, everyone. My name is Brian Ramirez-Jackson. I'm a history major here at UNCP. I wanted to take a few minutes to share a little bit about my experience with the world history. We got me into studying it and a book that's really inspired me along the way. Taking world civilization since 1500 with Dr. Hudson was definitely one of the highlights of my semester last year. One of the topics I really caught my interest was the Northern Expedition in China, learning about the military campaigns, political dynamics and how I connected to the larger Chinese revolution. Really pulled me in. It showed how fragile power can be in moments of national transformation and how ideas like nationalism and reform can take shape under pressure. I also really enjoyed the Chinese history book that we used in class. It covered a wide span of Chinese history from the Ming Dynasty through the rise of the Qing empire, all the ways to the early stages of the Chinese revolution in Qing Kai-shek. The visual storytelling helped break down complex events and a way that made them easier to grasp and more engaging. It reminded me that history doesn't always have to be dense or dry. There are creative ways to bring it to life. What drew me to history in the first place is the way it helps us make sense of the world. I grew up curious about why things are the way they are, why society is rising for, how people resist or adapt and how the past keeps shaping the present. That curiosity really came alive during my summer research with the REACH program. As part of REACH, I spent a month working with materials from the Library of Congress, especially the Farm Security Administration, the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Writers Project. My focus was on songs, ballads and rhymes collected in southwestern Virginia. Over the course of the program, I scanned more than 1,000 unique songs. Most of them tucked away in handwritten or typewritten archives. Many of these documents hadn't been touched since 1938, so it felt like uncovering pieces of history that had been quietly city for nearly a century. Then during our last week, we had the chance to actually travel to Washington, DC, where we continued our research at the Library of Congress in person. Right now, I'm working on analyzing those songs from a literary perspective while also comparing them to Negro lore collected in the same area. My goal is to explore how different communities express their experiences through music and storytelling, and how those cultural pieces can help us understand life during the depression era in a more personal and nuanced way. If I had to recommend a history-related book that left an impact on me, it would definitely be the grapes that were wrapped by John Steinbeck. While it's a novel, it reads like a historical record. Steinbeck captures the desperation, strength, and humanity of people trying to survive the Great Depression. His descriptions are so vivid and the story really helped me feel the emotional side of history, not just understand the facts. Lastly, for me, studying history isn't just about the past, it's about seeing the bigger picture. My finding forgotten voices and learning how people have tried to make sense of the world, whether through Chinese political movements, American folk songs, or literary works like Steinbeck's, history always has something powerful to teach us. Thanks for listening, and I hope your own journey through history leads you to something that just is meaningful. Well, thank you, Dr. Martinez for joining me for the podcast, Becoming Historians. Just wanted to sit down and talk to you about history as a professional discipline, about what got you interested in history as a young person and as a college student. I always liked to read, and we had friends of my family, friends of my parents, who one of them was a high school history teacher, and he had all these books in his house that had been his as a child, that were sort of historic fiction, featuring kids and pre-teens, and he would let me read them when we were over at their house doing things. He let me take them. His children were not interested in them, so he was very happy that I was, and I would take them home and then bring them back, and so I think I read those, and then I started reading biographies of historic figures that kind of focused as well on their childhood years initially, things that were in the school library. I also was raised by an elementary school teacher and so we would go to historic sites and museums and things like that on vacations or just as things to do in the summer, and so I think I was exposed to history not necessarily by historians at an early age, but by people who at least understood its value, and so I came to enjoy those things and associate them with fun, which maybe not all kids have that experience early on. Yeah. I would have to say the same for me. I'm also the son of a teacher. My mother was a junior high history teacher, and she was always reading something and that kind of passed on to my brother, and I, like you said, you know, not just history, but other subjects as well, fiction, unfiction, and I think my mom had high ambitions for me, you know, to be well read. She gave me a big thick book about the Kennedy assassination, you know, when I was like in a fifth grade, that still would be difficult for me to read even now. What about if you could pick like a particular history book that, or source that you have read before research that you think made a big impact on you? Has it a young person, or like before I went to college, or during college? During college? Yeah. Well, I always liked the Civil War. It was a topic I was interested in, but American history in general, I tended to find interesting. And definitely my first year of college I was able to take an honors seminar focused on the Civil War, where we were reading a lot of primary source material. So we were reading memoirs and sets of people's letters and these collections and things where you really got to see firsthand the experiences and all the different perspectives of all the different people who were involved. And so reading, after having read a thing like Gone with the Wind in High School and finding it a little melodramatic and silly, to then read the actual diaries of Southern women who lived during the Civil War and get a sense of what their experiences were in a way that was not intended to be overly romantic or overly dramatic. And just like this is what happened, I think was really compelling to me and a lot of fun. So I think the chance to really dig into kind of long form primary sources where you got to see someone's story develop over time was really important to me when I started learning history in an academic sense. Great. And that actually, I'm glad you brought that up, primary sources because in the first part of this course, that's what students are learning about, the difference between primary and secondary sources. And one of your essay responses for that you'll need to answer, what are primary sources? Can you name some examples? And Dr. Martinez just provided some. I guess for me, when I was in college, I took these courses with this guy, Pepperdine Tom Riley, and he assigned these basic books about Chinese history, early in modern Patricia Ebre's Cambridge history and then Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China. And these are basic intro books, but they like exposed me to a whole world that I never knew existed or know anything about. I mean, before I read those books and took my classes with him, I didn't know anything about China, but I had an interest in history and intellectual curiosity. And those books really just opened a whole new world for me and they had, you know, accompanied readings of primary sources like you said that you read. And it was people like him that inspired me to study China and to eventually be a teacher myself. So in this podcast, you know, where students are learning about world history and what, how history is a professional discipline. And one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is like, what is the work that actual historians like the ones that we work with in the department here and our colleagues at other universities and other people that were right, popular history that you can buy like at the bookstore or maybe read about online, what it is that we actually do. And so you, you are a published author. You've published a book, you know, for that book, remind me again, the title of your-- The title is Confederate Slave Impressment in the Upper South. It's a very academic sort of book title, not necessarily something. People might pick up for fun, unfortunately. And so for the reading, the research you did for this book consisted obviously of a lot of primary source material. Where did you go to do that? So a lot of the primary sources I used for that book were at the National Archives, the US National Archives in Washington, D.C., and particularly the one right in D.C. itself but also in Maryland, state archives in Virginia and North Carolina. Some different county records and things like that. But a lot of it, interestingly, was places that a lot of historians have used. The US Civil War is a big field, a lot of people study it, they've been studying it. For the last 160 years, I imagine they're going to continue for a long time. And so we end up looking at the same sources over and over again. But I was looking, perhaps, for different things. I had started reading one of the key things that historians do since you asked is we read. We read what other historians have said about a topic we're interested in so we can find what's been kind of done, what questions have been asked and answered well, what questions have been asked that maybe we're not so convinced by the answers, what questions have people not even thought to ask yet. And so I was reading about the ways that people talked about buying and selling slaves during the Civil War, and they kept talking about how the government was getting involved in the market for slaves, right? And the government was taking away people's slaves to do work for the Army. And I hadn't really read about that in a lot of the books I'd read about the Confederate government and the Virginia government or things like that. And when I did see it mentioned, people said, well, the Confederacy tried to take slaves for labor, but it didn't work because the slaveholders wouldn't give them up. And I thought, well, if the slaveholders aren't giving them up and this policy isn't working, then why is it affecting the market, right? If it's not working, it wouldn't be affecting the market. It's clearly working well enough that it's affecting whether or not people can get laborers for the work they need done. So that was the starting point. It was like I had these two sources that didn't line up what the secondary sources, what the scholars were saying, didn't match what I was seeing in the primary sources. And that gave me a starting point for a research project. And that's often where historians find their research project is where the thing that we've said for years as a profession doesn't line up with something you've found in the primary sources. So I went back to government records, primarily, things like the engineer department for the Confederacy, where the ones employing the slaves, putting them to work to build fortifications and dig trenches and build roads and put fences up and take fences down. All this sort of physical infrastructure work of protecting the army when it was in a place for a long period of time was being done by slave labor. And so I was looking at records of the engineer core and people had looked at those records over and over again to talk about the physical things they had built. But they had it looked at those records to figure out who did the building and what their experiences were and where they got those laborers. So for me, a lot of it was looking at sources that had been well used but asking new questions. And that's something that historians do a lot of the time because all of these topics we're talking about have been discussed. So we need to find a new angle and a new thing that maybe nobody thought of before. Yeah. I think it's interesting how your research, as you were saying, these enslaved people were they were involved in the building of infrastructure projects, like buildings and fences and roads and things like that. I think the popular understanding of enslaved people, especially in the American South, was they were exclusively involved in agriculture but they were involved in a wide variety of occupations. Sounds like. Yes. And what we see on a day-to-day basis in a lot of the plantation zones is that putting in the crop and harvesting the crop is kind of all hands on deck. Everyone is involved in that. There's also any work related to agriculture that involves kind of manipulating animals and machinery was often done by male slaves, but the day-to-day work of weeding and maintaining the crop in between planting and harvest was often women's work. And so then male slaves were available to do all sorts of other things, including often be like a county labor tax, right? So instead, you would pay your county tax by sending your slaves off to go work for the county and build a bridge or fix a road or something like that for a week. So the Confederate government was sort of doing something that had been happening for years, taking those slaves farther away for much longer periods of time and also actually paying the slaveholders for their work. And a lot of that happened through policy, through sort of military inf-- bureaucracy, right? There's a lot of bureaucratic work to be done as well. But ultimately, you can't win a war if you're not feeding your army and if you can't move your army around. And so that sort of infrastructure development is really crucial to the ability of the Confederate government to keep waging war for as long as it did. That's fascinating, very fascinating. And so there you have just one example of the amazing kind of scholarship and research that we do in our department here at UNC Pembroke, Department of History, in addition to teaching. And to kind of piggyback on what you were saying to talk about my own research for a second, I think the one thing that I share in common with you, just hearing you talk about where you visited in your archives, is that I've also worked at the National Archives, exclusively really at the Archives to location in College Park, Maryland, which is right next to the University of Maryland. And the interesting thing about the National Archives for our students and other people listening is that it contains the records of the historical records of all or three branches of government. And anybody can go there to do research. It's not something those places aren't exclusively for people that teach at universities or professional historians. They're open to the public, they're public archives. And a few years ago, I was there researching about the history of American consulates in China a century ago. And I found all this paper, this documentary evidence about regarding the history of the standard oil company in China and the kerosene trade. And that is the topic of a book that I'm currently working on, is that the kerosene trade in early 20th century China and how companies like Standard Oil, actually a subsidiary of Standard Oil called the Standard Oil Company in New York, worked closely with the American government to advance its interests in China at a very turbulent time in China's history. And a lot of those documents that I'm looking at, like the ones you looked at were available at the National Archives, open to the public. And my book is still in the process of being written. So it's not as fully developed as your amazing work was. But hopefully for our students listening, this gives you an idea of some of the kind of work that we do, we publish books, articles based on our research. And at least for me, I'm sure Dr. Martinez you can attest to this too. It helps me look at the bigger picture of history when I come back and teach in the classroom. And I can share what I've learned in my own research with my students and things like that. But, Jamie Marginas, thank you so much for joining us on Becoming Historians, thank you. Becoming Historians is produced by James Hudson, the Department of History, and the Department of Mass Communication at UNC Pembrokes. Special thanks to our guest this week, Dr. Jamie Martinez, and to Terrence Dullard, Enhanishment for Writing and Arranging Our Music. The content and any related opinions you've heard in this podcast are solely those of the host and its guests and are not meant to endorse any particular viewpoint, idea or cause and do not represent the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Thank you for joining us and see you next time. [Music]