Friday, September 11, 2009

War in winter: diplomacy - Historyzine

Historyzine's recounting of the War of Spanish Succession, brings us in the latest issue of the podcast to the winter of 1705. The main protagonist in Jim Mowatt's version of this history is the Duke of Marlbourough. Until the winter of 1705 he has had a successful campaign and now the war takes a break and preparations begin for the next round, after the winter in 1706.

These preparations consist of diplomacy. Marlbourough travels around the courts of his allies to assure their continued support in the next part of the war. Mowatt makes this lull in the fighting an extra interesting part of the history. He describes how Marlbourough has to use all his talents in order to placate the various allies in the east. Once having done that, he makes his last stop in The Hague, where the closest allies, the Dutch are and only on the last day of the year he returns to England.

The importance of this round of diplomacy is made clear especially by the example of Prussia. Marlbourough, in Mowatt's history, closes a fateful deal with Prussia, that keeps this rising power from allying with the Swedes and paving the way to the consistent growth of the small kingdom, to the eventual power that would unite the German Reich.

More Historyzine:
The lines of Brabant,
Historyzine at its best,
The battle of Blenheim,
Reliving the War of Spanish Succession,
The year 1703.

The podcast reviewers

When I started reviewing podcasts, two and a half years ago, I think I was the only one. There may have been an abandoned blog that contained an insignificant number of reviews, but that was all. By now there are many more, maybe even more than I actually know of. So here is a list of where you can go.

Blogs:
The Podcast Place. A blog that started in December 2008 and tries to review a couple of podcasts per week from all genres.
Daily Podcast Reviews. Is not exactly a daily blog, but every now and then there is a new podcast review. Among the reviewed podcasts are quite a number of the Quick and Dirty series, best known from the podcast Grammar Girl.
DIY Scholar. My favorite among these blogs and a recurring source of inspiration is the Do It Yourself Scholar. She reviews many educational podcasts as well as videos, blogs and other free academic content.
Baxter Wood. The re-education of Baxter Wood is the blog of a 62 year old truck driver who takes on academic podcast series and reports about them without links. But he is quite exact in how to google the content.
Marje's favorite history podcasts. A near complete source for history podcast reviews compiled in a bookmarking tool. Marje helped me discover new history podcasts, but it seems, I have helped Marje as well.
Open Culture. The free culture blog by Dan Colman, associate dean of Stanford, which used to bring more podcast reviews than it does today. These days there are more general culture links and many, many videos.

Podcasts:
Edgy Reviews (feed). A weekly podcast that rates a wide variety of podcasts in sets of three.
Podwatch (feed). An Australian podcast review show that has recently been revived.
Historyzine (feed). A history podcast that also reviews history podcasts.
Forgotten Classics (feed). A literature podcast that opens every episode with one or several podcast reviews in various genres.

Veertien Achttien in transit

Voor de trouwe luisteraars van Veertien Achttien wacht er vanochtend wellicht een kleine teleurstelling. Wie in afwachting zit te kijken tot de nieuwste aflevering uit de feed komt rollen, moet tot de ontdekking komen dat die feed niet meer werkt. Wat daar aan de hand is, is dat de provider van deze feed, podplaza, over de kop is gegaan en daardoor is Veertien Achttien nu in een transit terechtgekomen.

Er moet dus een nieuwe feed komen en de maker van de podcast, Tom Tacken, laat me weten dat een nieuwe formule voor de podcast in de maak is. Tot nader order zullen de nieuwe afleveringen handmatig op de website gedownload kunnen worden. Voor de aflevering die men vandaag verwacht, heeft het dus zin om op de betreffende blog post te kijken; zie: Wilhelm Wassmuss.

Nu dat er download links op het blog staan, betekent het echter dat de rss 2.0 feed ook als podcast feed kan worden gebruikt. Wie zich in de podcatcher (ook iTunes) abonneert op de feed van Veertien Achttien, kan in ieder geval alle in rechtstreekse download aangeboden afleveringen automatisch ophalen. Het valt te betwijfelen of deze situatie nog lang voort zal duren, maar tot nader order is dit een goede tussenoplossing en ik zal jullie op de hoogte houden hoe het verder gaat.

Meer Veertien Achttien:
Pegoud, Grimm - Veertien Achttien,
Emmeline Pankhurst,
Lord Kitchener,
Walther Rathenau,
Komitas Vardapet.