Members Only 89 – The Ancient British Sex Trade
Author: Jamie
255 – Londonwic to London
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London is a world unto itself, and it has been for most of its very, very long history. One of the weirdest things about the city is that it contains its own separate city – distinct from the rest of London. It has its own laws, its own government, its own walls. The City of London is a city within a city.
And it gets a lot of attention, not to mention money. Currently it houses the financial district which houses the most powerful banking institutions of not only the UK, but the entire world.
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254 – Worcester
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If you read of old Britain… even if you read of modern Britain… you’d be forgiven if you thought it was all London. And London does soak up a ton of the spotlight. It’s like the Stonehenge of the non-neolithic period. You can’t avoid it. And we won’t here, either. London will be covered regularly, because it has to be. But today, lets talk about a different town. Because while London is important, it’s not the only urban center on the island, and while we’ve been talking about the development of the economic landscape of the Anglo Saxon territories during the Viking Age… we haven’t yet talked about how these town specifically functioned and developed.
So today, let’s use Worcester as a non-London Anglo Saxon case study.
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253 – Anglo Saxon Market Towns in the Viking Age
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Cultures change all the time – yours is changing right now, in ways you may or may not realize. It’s a completely normal, everyday fact that has been with humanity since we began. Probably before we began. And yet, telling the story of how a culture changed is extremely challenging. Cultural shifts are messy, they’re chaotic, and they come with a boat load of caveats and exceptions. The entire theme of the BHP, right from the start, has been that people can’t be pigeon holed. They’re complicated, unique, and they never perfectly fit into a category.
And yet, even as we acknowledge that, we must recognize trends and norms and traditions – if for no other reason than they do actually change over time.
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252 – The Coming of the Anglo-Scandinavians
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At the start of 867, there were four major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain. By 874, three of the four – Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia – had lost their independence. That’s a timespan of only 7 years, and in that 7 years the political landscape of Britain had changed dramatically and permanently.
That’s insane. For scale, that’s just barely longer than Lost. Imagine being a free kingdom back when you thought something interesting was going on with Walt, and then being fully under the control of a foreign government by the time that you realized that everyone was just hanging out in a church with Hurley… for some reason.
And as an aside, what the hell was Lindelhoff thinking when he wrote that? It’s been over a decade and I’m still annoyed.
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Members Only 88 – The Making of King Edward the Elder
251 – Chapter Seven: England
250 – The Year 900
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It’s the year 900. We’ve closed out another century, and the 900’s are looking as tumultuous as the 800’s. But before we move forward in our story of our Island – still in many ways at the end of the world – the BHP is going to take a moment to look at what is happening with the rest of human civilization around the globe around the year 900. History, like society, only makes sense with context. A lot was going on for everybody and it all has important implications for how we became the people we are today. This is just a brief snapshot – a way to get our bearings for where Britain sits among the rest of the world’s civilizations. It’s going to be a whirlwind tour – and there are unfortunately still some significant gaps. I’ll point those out as we come to them.
But here we go – the world of 900 CE.
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249 – Kenneth MacAlpin and the Birth of Scotland
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We’ve reached the end of an era. It was late 899, and Alfred (who has been our central figure for dozens of episodes) was at last at rest. But with his death, there was a sudden opening at the top levels of West Saxon politics and Alfred’s son, Edward, was a top contender for that position.
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248 – The Death of Alfred the Great
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By 897, everything Alfred had known…. changed. He was barely in his 20s when he took the throne and he hadn’t had a chance to stop for a breath for the decades that followed.
He had been king for over half of his life, and in those years he’d proven himself to be an energetic and inventive king. Wessex under his rule had been transformed. Defensive structures, public infrastructure, educational reforms, legal reforms, military reforms, and even the creation of a written history. He had even changed the concept of Kingship within the Anglo Saxon territories. Under Alfred, the entire Realm from the very top (and the concepts of what makes a noble, with everything from their powers to their obligations to scholarship) all the way to the bottom (with the duties of the peasants and the organization of their lives)… all of it had been molded to fit his vision. And even though it had been a difficult task, even though he had even lost his kingdom for a time (quite likely due to a coup)… in the end, he got what he wanted.
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