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24.01.2022 On this day in 1794, a couple of months before his own death at the hands of the revolution that he now, for all intents and purposes led, Robespierre oversaw the legislation that made the Cult of the Supreme Being the new religion for France, attempting to replace over 1500 years of Catholicism. There are so many angles you could explore in this little chapter of the revolution, so bear with me while I follow a few little lines of thought. While food shortages, state debt, a...Continue reading

23.01.2022 April 15. What a day. Normally I like to do a deep dive (well as deep as a short Facebook post allows anyway) into one topic for these posts and try to make some connections between the past and the present, but on a day with as many rich pickings as this, maybe I’ll just reel off a few of the many significant things that happened....on this day. Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language is published in 1755. Known for his dry wit and for feeding oysters to his ca...Continue reading

19.01.2022 I’m not sure what I think about school closures.... but if your school is closing and you need some help with senior History, or English for that matter, drop me a line. First session free to get a feel for it.

18.01.2022 On this day in 1789 the French Revolution was really heating up. The French economy had burned through several finance ministers in an effort to right a sinking ship. Enormous debt from foreign wars (7 Years War & the American Revolutionary War) and a tax system that ignored the guys with the actual money saw France sliding head first into bankruptcy. The solution? Call an Estates General - essentially a broadly representative body that could consult on a way out of the crisi...Continue reading

17.01.2022 15 September 1835 On this day in 1835 the HMS Beagle arrived at the Galapagos Islands. On board was 26 year old naturalist, biologist and occasional taxidermist, Charles Darwin. The Beagle’s voyage would last a total of 5 years, during which time Darwin spent a little over 3 years on land observing, investigating and collecting specimens. The thing about the Galápagos Islands is that geologically speaking, they are relatively young. They straddle the equator and are at a poin...Continue reading

15.01.2022 Today, 27 April, is Freedom Day in South Africa, a public holiday. It was 26 years ago today that the 1994 Sth African General Election took place. It was the first election in that country with universal adult suffrage, which was the culmination of a process that ultimately led to an end of apartheid, a policy which had dominated Sth African life for around 50 years and had subjected the majority black population to the oppression of the minority’s white population in the m...ost brutal manner. There had been resistance to the policy throughout this time, and in 1962 a lawyer by the name of Nelson Mandela was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of sedition and conspiring to overthrow the state. He served 27 years in prison. Responding to increasing international pressure as well as growing civil unrest, president de Klerk released him in 1990 and with Mandela, began negotiations to end apartheid and pave the way for elections. Around half the country (20 million) turned out to vote and a coalition government of national unity was formed. Their first act was to elect Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa. I offer tutoring to students of History and English in the VCE and IB. If you know anyone in need of some support, please share my details. Cheers.

11.01.2022 On this day, 26th March 1814, Dr. Joseph Guillotin died at the age of 75 in Paris. If I say French Revolution, what do you think of? The guillotine? Gruesome beheadings in front of a crowd? The man for whom this machine was named was horrified and embarrassed that the guillotine was used so excessively through this period. He had aimed to end capital punishment and saw the guillotine as a step in that direction. Dr. Guillotin had been a deputy to the ill-fated Estates Gener...al in France in 1789, and after the very revolutionary actions of that year which created a legislative body in the country, he was a member of the National Assembly. His work focused mainly on medical reform, but while discussing capital punishment (which he opposed, as did Robespierre at this point, which is almost laughable, if it wasn’t so fricken tragic) he recommended the use of a machine which would painlessly decapitate people in the twinkle of an eye. This was seen as an enlightened step forward out of the dark old days of the Ancien Regime where beheading was reserved for nobles while commoners were hanged to death. Yes, the guillotine was a symbol of the enlightened minds of the revolution where people were equal in life and death. Dr. Guillotin nearly got a very personal encounter with his own machine (he didn’t in fact invent the thing, just recommended it’s use) when he fell foul of the powers that be during the Reign of Terror. He was imprisoned and charged with withholding information.... the only penalty was death at this point in the revolution. Luckily for him the Reign of Terror was about to reach its climatic conclusion and in the Thermidorian aftermath, he was pardoned. In the years after this stage of the revolution, it became fashionable for the young folk to wear red scarves around their necks, reminiscent of decapitation. I wonder what we’ll all be wearing after Corona. Fashionable face masks perhaps? For help with senior History or English in VCE or the IB drop me a line.

08.01.2022 Bastille Day couldn’t slip by without a post, so.... on this day, 14th July 1789, a bunch of angry people laid siege to an enduring symbol of oppression and ultimately tore it down. To solve the financial crisis that France had found itself in after its involvement in the American Revolutionary War which was compounded by many systemic financial issues, Louis XVI hired young gun, hot shot Swiss banker Jaques Necker to find a solution. His initial solution in 1781 had been to ...Continue reading

07.01.2022 - March 2 - On this day in 1962 General Ne Win of Burma seized power in a coup ending Burma’s short experience of democracy after gaining its independence from Britain in 1948. Burma’s independence had been hard won and its major player was a young man by the name of Aung San. His assassination on the eve of independence sent the country down a tricky path trying to negotiate with various interest groups in the early days of a struggling democracy. Ne Win led the military, a...Continue reading

06.01.2022 What a time to be starting an online tutoring service! If you need some help with your senior History or English, drop me a line.

04.01.2022 On this day, 22 April 1915, the Second Battle of Ypres began in western Belgium. One of the things that make this particular battle so noteworthy, was it was the scene of the first mass use of poisonous gas during World War I. The story behind this is even more fascinating and tragic than you might imagine. German Chemist Fritz Haber was quite a remarkable fellow. If I told you that approximately a third to a half of the world’s food supply is a direct result of his work, yo...Continue reading

03.01.2022 On this day, International Women’s Day, in 1917, thousands of women took to the streets in Petrograd/St Petersburg demanding better working conditions, more bread, an end to the war and held banners that read, Down with the Tsar! They were taking on the 300 year old Romanov regime head to head. The patriarchy. Within a week the Tsar had abdicated. They had won. The Bolshevik revolution which would follow some 7 months later has been labelled A People’s Tragedy (Orlando F...iges), and rightly so, and I am not about to become an apologist or advocate, however, in its early days there were some incredibly idealistic and forward thinking policies, particularly in regards to women. Led, largely by Alexandra Kollontai, the early soviets created the Zhenotdel, a ministry devoted entirely to Women’s Affairs - a world first. Through this they focused on women’s literacy, workplace rights, reproductive rights, the creation of state run crèches, and a campaign to educate women about their rights in marriage. Many of these policies had not been and would not be considered in the West until decades later, if at all. Of course, much of this was canned and reversed when Stalin came to power, but let’s, just for a minute, focus on the positives.

03.01.2022 On this day in 1871, Otto Von Bismarck becomes the first chancellor of the new German Empire. He will be instrumental in orchestrating the entrance of Germany into the European club of powerful nations. Imagine, with the unification of all these central European Germanic states, a seismic shift takes place in the European balance of power. Almost overnight, the new kid in the block, becomes the most powerful kid on the block. The Prussian army, now joined by the armies of t...he other Germanic states, is Europe’s strongest. The new German economy is as big as anyone’s. This sends shivers down the spines of the other European powers, yet Bismarck is able to appease, placate and create alliances with the other major powers to make it all happen (excluding France, he thought it best to isolate France after the Franco-Prussia war). And it was all going so well, until Kaiser Wilhelm sacked him, started pushing his weight around and demanded a place in the sun. On its own, perhaps not an unreasonable request, but the fall out and the lack of delicate statecraft in the absence of Bismarck would see the world hurtle, tragically, towards World War I. Bismarck is, like Churchill, almost endlessly quotable. Here are some of my favourites: Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied. When you want to fool the world, tell the truth. The main thing is to make history, not to write it. There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America. On the threat of the British military landing on the coast and attacking Germany.... I’ll have them arrested. And perhaps, most famously and presciently, on what might be the cause of the next Great War... Some dam foolish thing in the Balkans. Then, as Baldric from Blackadder put, a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry......and the rest is history. For help with your senior history studies, drop me a line.

03.01.2022 On this day... 24 Feb 1917. The British gave the Americans the Zimmerman telegram. The British had intercepted the German telegram which had been sent to Mexico to encourage them to attack the United States. Victory would mean the return of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to Mexico. The British weren’t sure whether to tell the yanks, because it would mean admitting that they were eavesdropping on all pan-Atlantic telegram traffic. They did. And America joined WW1.

01.01.2022 On this day in 1854 Commodore Matthew Perry signed the Convention of Kanagawa, effectively ending roughly 220 years of Japanese isolationism under the Tokugawa shogunate. It was essentially a treaty forced upon the Japanese to guarantee the safety of American sailors in the Pacific and to open Japan up to commerce and trade with America. This was to have far reaching effects. In the briefest, and to any serious history nut, no doubt completely unsatisfying of nutshells, expos...ure to the West showed the Japanese how far behind the world’s great powers they were. They saw how Europe had carved up their near neighbour in China and had no desire to be next on the colonial menu. They aspired to emulate the great powers and catch up fast. They looked to the military of Germany, the navy of Great Britain, the political, economic and educational systems of Europe and America and within 50 years had modernised dramatically, to the point where they had convincingly defeated China (1st Sino-Japanese War 1894) and Russia (Russo-Japanese War 1904) in wars and gained themselves prestige and territories as a result. The rest of the world started paying attention. Their colonial ambitions continued to grow throughout the first half of the twentieth century and this along with the military acting more or less independently from the government (Diet) and an emperor (Hirohito) who, while being seen as a God by his people, perhaps wasn’t the leader that was needed at the time, saw the country embroiled in the 2nd Sino-Japanese war in 1937. The horrific nature of this war appalled the west who applied sanctions to the Japanese cutting off the resources (mainly oil but other things too) they needed to continue the war. Japan looked to the Dutch East Indies (largely modern day Indonesia) which would provide them with the resources they needed. The problem as they saw it was that their main rivals in the Pacific (America) would object to this operation, not to mention the Netherlands whose territories they were looking to seize. The solution was to attack first. On December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy (Franklin D Roosevelt) Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. This would transform their war against China into the Pacific theatre of World War 2 and ultimately see the Empire of Japan destroyed to make way for modern Japan. From little things, big things grow eh. For help with senior History in either the VCE or the IB drop me a line. I also do English tutoring.