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Because it's summer and I have nothing better to do, I've been fixing some of the gaping hole in my knowledge of history. Admittedly, the way I'm going about it involves reading the first book at the library with an interesting title, but it's better than nothing.
I just finished "The Holy Roman Empire" by Friedrich Heer, who, as might be evident, is German. Nazis come up every five pages or so, possibly because the book is as much about Now as it is about Then. I think one of the things he's trying to do is understand why Nazis happened.
One thing it made me realize is how I learned history. Partly because of the classes I decided to take, I know a lot about early (late Roman to Renaissance)French history, and what I know about other countries is mainly from the influence they had on French policies. For example, there is nothing going on in the Balkans except getting killed during the Fourth Crusade because they blocked the path to Byzantium. Russia doesn't exist until about 1906.
Imagine my surprise when I read about the twelfth century kings of Hungary, or that Prague (or Praha, to be pretentious) was a prize coveted by both Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire!
The other conceptual problem was that I imagined events on different timelines almost as if they were in different worlds. European history happened before American history - and the discovery of America came very late on a global scale. In reality, the treatment of the native peoples of the Americas was an issue in 15-something. (Which I still think of as 'late,' but that's just because I'm more medieval in outlook.)
The key feeling I have is isolation of histories - political, religious, social, not to mention the histories of different countries. Isolation could not be farther from the truth, if such a word can be used, of the matter. Everything is related - the Holy Roman Empire is bound up in the fate of France, which brings it into contact and alliance with England; that same empire communicates with Russia, and fights Hungary and other Slavic peoples - who themselves enter the greater European conflict.
Of course, it is impossible to teach all of history, that great interwoven tapestry, and I don't know how to fix the way I learned. It's just frustrating that my conception of History is so disjointed.
PS.
Maria Teresa is my new hero.
I just finished "The Holy Roman Empire" by Friedrich Heer, who, as might be evident, is German. Nazis come up every five pages or so, possibly because the book is as much about Now as it is about Then. I think one of the things he's trying to do is understand why Nazis happened.
One thing it made me realize is how I learned history. Partly because of the classes I decided to take, I know a lot about early (late Roman to Renaissance)French history, and what I know about other countries is mainly from the influence they had on French policies. For example, there is nothing going on in the Balkans except getting killed during the Fourth Crusade because they blocked the path to Byzantium. Russia doesn't exist until about 1906.
Imagine my surprise when I read about the twelfth century kings of Hungary, or that Prague (or Praha, to be pretentious) was a prize coveted by both Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire!
The other conceptual problem was that I imagined events on different timelines almost as if they were in different worlds. European history happened before American history - and the discovery of America came very late on a global scale. In reality, the treatment of the native peoples of the Americas was an issue in 15-something. (Which I still think of as 'late,' but that's just because I'm more medieval in outlook.)
The key feeling I have is isolation of histories - political, religious, social, not to mention the histories of different countries. Isolation could not be farther from the truth, if such a word can be used, of the matter. Everything is related - the Holy Roman Empire is bound up in the fate of France, which brings it into contact and alliance with England; that same empire communicates with Russia, and fights Hungary and other Slavic peoples - who themselves enter the greater European conflict.
Of course, it is impossible to teach all of history, that great interwoven tapestry, and I don't know how to fix the way I learned. It's just frustrating that my conception of History is so disjointed.
PS.
Maria Teresa is my new hero.