A bigger boat

A "true story" from 1799, though I can't find it mentioned earlier than this Times article in 1835. Lieutenant Whylie of the "Sparrow" suspects a supposedly neutral ship, the "Nancy" of smuggling but his case doesn't look very strong and the "Nancy"'s captain brings a counter-claim. While waiting for the case to come up, Whylie visits a colleague, Commander Fitton of the "Ferret". Unexpectedly, Fitton is able to contribute vital evidence, having found the "Nancy"' s incriminating papers in the stomach of a shark that he had caught that morning. Another version of events is here.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

World population history stats

Added sporadic world population history figures, using data from Population Reference Bureau. I'll leave off interpolating as it would require more numerous and complex assumptions than I can justify.

The picture, by the way, shows Eaton's Santa Claus Parade, Toronto, 1926.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

Three timers

Have been charting the exploits of the resilient Athenian tyrant Peisistratus.

Three times he got Athens to suspend its famous democracy. The first time was in 560, when several factions had been vying for control of Athens. Peisistratus turned up in the market place, claimed he'd been victimised by his opponents, and was granted a bodyguard which he used to establish his HQ on the Acropolis (pre-Parthenon of course) and gain absolute power. Then around 555 a rival coalition managed to kick him out, but its head man, Megacles, couldn't maintain support and invited Peisistratus back to marry his daughter. When Peisistratus did return, he brought with him a young lady dressed as Athene, and everybody believed he had the goddess' support and let him begin a second period of power. This ended when Megacles accused Peisistratus of failing in his marital duties towards his daughter (he'd had no children by her, though he may have done with other women) and raised enough support to eject him again. This time he had to raise military support in Thebes and Naxos and defeat the Athenian army in open battle to regain power, which he held from around 535 until his death in 528/7.

It serves to remind you that Athenian politics (Roman politics too) was often more like The Godfather than The West Wing. It also got me thinking about other political three-timers. Like:

Dick Whittington
Famously thrice Mayor of London - the first two times run into each other, but the first term was appointed by Richard II and the second was elected. He gained the first term by buying the cash-strapped city's freedom out of his own pocket.

Peter Mandelson
Resigned from the cabinet firstly over a mortgage, secondly over a passport. Gordon Brown brought him back for a third stint by giving him a seat in the House of Lords. Although sitting in the Lords, the government took the usual step of also allowing him to speak in the Commons, to answer questions on his department. Last time that sort of thing happened we had a civil war. Fortunately this time, only a general election was required.

Winston Churchill
Only Prime Minister twice of course, but before the wilderness years of 1945-50 he'd already experienced another fallow period. Following his role in the Gallipoli landings of 1915 his glittering career took a deep dive, even including a spell in the Liberal party.

St John Chrysostom
Popular bishop of Constantinople, exiled in 403 (following a politically motivated trial that had only been made possible after John had dissed the empress's fashion sense) he was soon brought back only to be re-exiled by another synod in 404. Brought back in triumph in 438, though by this time he'd been dead for 31 years (yes, cheating a bit there).

W E Gladsone
An honourable mention, for he was Prime Minister 4 times. Twice alternating with Disraeli from 1868-1885; once briefly in 1886, only to see his party split over Ireland and have to hand over power to the Tories; finally, in his eighties, at the head of a minority government relying on Irish Nationalists.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

Two vales and an ave

Farewell Sebastian Horsley, who held out in Soho for the bohemian dream with the isolated determination of a Japanese WWII soldier holed up in late 60s Borneo. Most famous for having had himself crucified in the Philippines to inspire some paintings, and falling off the cross. He is survived by a one-man play based on his life at the Soho Theatre, a short kerb-crawl from his Meard Street flat.

His grandfather Alec, the founder of the Horsley fortune, was much more interesting. A Hull-based Quaker who started up a condensed milk factory that is now Northern Foods PLC, he turned his hand to prison reform and social causes. He was a founder member of CND and played tennis for Nigeria. If he was right and his grandson was wrong about the afterlife, there'll be some stern words at the pearly gates right now.

Also a shock to have lost the man behind Frank Sidebottom. He'll be missed by anyone who stopped in the North West over the past two and a half decades. Yes he will. He really really will.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

Poetic Offa Licence

(the titletaken perversely but irresistibly from Poetic Off Licence, a collection by Hovis Presley)

So congratulations to Geoffrey Hill for getting the Oxford Professor of Poetry job, ahead of my friend Michael Horovitz. Hill is the certainly the better poet, though Michael would have been the better professor. Hill is famously obscure in his references: but within the Oxbridge poetry establishment, where L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E still has a lot of sway, he is comparatively straightforward in his surface meaning. I am rather tempted by Peter Porter's dictum: "All poetry is LANGUAGE poetry: but not all LANGUAGE poetry is poetry".

If you fancy catching up with Hill, get yourself a copy of his "New & Collected Poems 1952-1992". This isn't straightforward: my copy is ex-library from a US naval college. But if you can, head for Mercian Hymns, his most accessible entire collection. It's about Offa of Mercia (of Dyke fame), the first man to call himself (on charters around 774) "King of the Angles". But here Offa is a modern dark age monarch who gets phone calls and plays with model aeroplanes, as elements of him are drawn from Hill's own Midlands childhood.

If you persist with Hill, you will find yourself in the company of Osip Mandelstam, Charles Peguy and Asmodeus: what's not to like?

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

Mildew

My bathroom ceiling has got a touch of the mildew, so naturally I'll be turning to the Book of Leviticus. A small number of Christians and a large number of atheists would have you believe the Book of Leviticus is about homosexuality, but really it is hardly concerned with that at all, and mainly concerned with the proper treatment of mildew. Mildew was a serious business. The Hebrew original uses the word tzaraas, whose semantic field includes leprosy, amongst other types of infectious disfigurement. English translations (at least up to and including KJV) carried on talking about leprosy in buildings, leather and linen until they realised their syllogistic slip and brought in "mildew". That's far too nice a word for it. OED's first citation is the Old English mele-deawe: mele as in honey, deawe as in dew.

But this has got me to think about how to deal with biblical events in the history spreadsheet. Once the Israelites have established themselves in Israel, many of the historical events like changes of ruler and battles can be tallied against the records of the Assyria, Egypt and the like, although they sometimes veer out of line by a king or two. I don't see much of a problem putting things in the Middle East geographical column when they can be plausibly dated, especially as they are often more geopolitical than they are religious. There's a similar situation for the Gospels with respect to the Roman world.

As for events that are somewhat less historically convincing (Daniel in the lion's den? Elisha and the two bears?), I'd like to include them somewhere: for colour, and so that they bear comparison with what ever else was going on in the world when they are supposed to have happened. But it will be under a "religion" column, and people can be free to pick and choose which bits of that column they want to believe, or just use the "hide column" function.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

Acharnians

The first production date of Aristophanes' Acharnians was about to go in the spreadsheet, but I can't decide whether it was 426 or 425. I think the dispute is just over the date of the Lenaean festival in that year (December 426 or January 425), rather than which Lenaea it was, so it might not matter much. Anyway, I decided to reread the play instead. If you've got a spare hour, you can read the play and enough of introductions and footnotes to flesh it out.

It's Aristophanes at his earliest and roughest, but it's as self-aware as Tristram Shandy and bashes at the fourth wall like Brecht. Produced 6 years into the Peloponnesian War, its Rizla-thin plot follows a disaffected charcoal-burner named Dicaeopolis as he fails to persuade Athens to sue for peace with Sparta, so makes his own private peace treaty instead. We see the austerity of a fragile Athenian democracy trying to hang onto its freedoms. In the people of Megara we get a glimpse of deprived and depraved life in a battered, paranoid frontier town. It would be funnier if it wasn't happening right now in southern Kyrgyzstan, but of course it's not supposed to be.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

The Atlantic via Belgrave Square

During my saunter across town yesterday I had to stop and wait while a group of teenage tourists took a photograph. Not at all unusual in London, except that the thing being photographed was an unremarkable sketch on the tiled wall of Hyde Park Corner underpass, depicting Wellington's peninsular campaign. They proudly told me they were Portuguese and had come to visit their "Old Friend" England (Portugal being England's oldest ally, since 1373, as I happily told them but they already knew). It is always a pleasure to have my faith in the next generation restored.

I was on my way to Belgrave Square, where coincidentally the Portuguese embassy is located, as well as a newish statue of their countryman Ferdinand Magellan, and of another transatlantic voyager, Christopher Columbus. Belgrave Square is obviously trying to compensate for its role in a less successful transatlantic crossing, because it was at number 24 that Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star line, dropped by for dinner with Lord Pirrie, chairman of shipbuilders Harland and Wolff, one evening in 1907 and commissioned the Titanic.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

The Corn Law Rhymer

After hearing some 1980s style open mic ranty poetry earlier this week, and then spreadsheeting a few early c19th Prime Ministers, I wondered whether the reform movement of that time had its own People's Poet. Indeed it did and his name was Ebenezer Elliott. It's actually his real name, although enough time has passed for a modern day open-mic poet to adopt it again.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

World population

I've added a new column for estimated world population figures, and filled it in from 1950 to 2009 using United States Census Bureau data. I'll top it up with estimates for earlier years when I've decided whose data to use.

It turns out that something I knew about world population - that most of the humans who have ever lived are alive today, or to put it another way, that more people haven't died than have - is not true. It's not even close to true. It isn't even close to believable once you've thought about it for any length of time. An estimate of the number of people who have ever lived by the Population Reference Bureau in 2002 plumped for 106 billion, so the percentage of those who are lucky enough to be still with us is about 6%.
That also happens to be the percentage of people alive today who are on Facebook. That means only 0.36% of people who have ever lived are on Facebook, so I think I can hold out for a while longer.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet

Out of sorts

Logging the first production dates of the Oresteia and a couple of Aristophanes plays yesterday, the spreadsheet looked alarmingly out of order. George I was following on from Elizabeth II. Turns out it had been somehow reorganized in alphabetical order of English monarchs.

Now I would usually champion any historiographical model that gets us away from the "Whig view", the temptation to read history as a progressive narrative from the didn't-know-any-better past to the morally superior present, but that was a bit extreme for me.

Whig history: the highlights.

It wasn't easy to reorder, because Google Spreadsheet's reorder button isn't enough of a mind-reader to put BC dates in descending order at the top, then AD in ascending order underneath.

So I've replaced the BC years with -ve numbers. It looks a bit odd, but it does have the advantage of sidestepping the "AD/BC" v "CE/BCE" debate. (For the record, AD/BC is obviously preferable.)


History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet