European History | A Moment in Time

Mujeres Libres I

March 29, 2021PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITEuropean History, Feminism, Spanish History

Lead: The Spanish Civil War provided a window of opportunity for the reformation of society. Among the most aggressive groups seeking fundamental change was a feminist organization emerging from Spanish anarchism, Mujeres Libres, free women of Spain.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Political parties in the United States traditionally have been big tent consensus parties. While extremism left and right has certainly been a part of the American political spectrum, the nature of politics here pushes this sentiment to the margin. Extremists have influence, but must become a part of one of the major parties to exercise power. In Europe the development of democracy allowed a much more brilliant display of political variety, particularly up to the middle of the twentieth century. Political parties proliferated and often reflected narrow, extreme opinion.

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Dutch East India Company – Part II

March 27, 2021PermalinkGabe OffenbackToday's AMITEuropean History, Exploration History

Lead: In 1602 the government of the Netherlands chartered the Dutch East India Company to expand trading opportunities in eastern Asia. For decades little Holland dominated the European spice trade with in the East Indies.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Although the Portuguese were the first Europeans to grab the supremacy in spice with the Far East, the Dutch harbored ambitions in the same area. They were eager to expand trade into Asia, and the States-General of the Netherlands developed a corporate strategy to accomplish it. A quazi-governmental joint stock corporation, the Dutch East India Company was granted a trade monopoly between the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa eastward to the Straight of Magellan at the tip of South America. Read more →

Dutch East India Company – I

March 26, 2021PermalinkGabe OffenbackToday's AMITEuropean History, Exploration History

Lead: Beginning in the early 1600s, the lure of profits from spices attracted European trading companies to the exotic lands of the East Indies.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: The drive to acquire the spices from these islands and other riches from the Orient, had gripped the European imagination since Medieval times and had motivated such navigators and explorers as Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan. Spices such as cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon were highly valued for food preservation, medicinal purposes, and, of course, as ways of enhancing the flavor of food and drink. East India Companies were trading companies formed in Western Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to promote trade, primarily in spices. They became the vanguard of the colonial enterprise. Their destination: the 13,000 islands of the eastern Indonesian archipelago (commonly called the Spice Islands), situated near the Equator. Today they are known as the Moluccas.

Savonarola II

March 23, 2021PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITEuropean History, Italian History, Religious History

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Savonarola I

March 22, 2021PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITEuropean History, Italian History, Religious History

Lead: In the Renaissance capital of Florence, Italy, the terrible and powerful voice of Fra Girolimo Savonarola was raised against corruption in both church and state. He also raised powerful enemies.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Having helped create and nurture European civilization in the long centuries since the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Church of Rome by 1500 was the single unifying institution on the continent. Millions, high and low, saw in the Church the path to eternal salvation, worshipped in her precincts, contributed to her their treasure, and sought solace from a life that Thomas Hobbes would later describe as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Despite the devotion of countless numbers, there was trouble in Zion. With clear justification, many considered the Church to be set at rot, absorbed by worldly obsessions, ensnared by political and military ambitions, hopelessly and morally bankrupt.

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Creation of the United Nations II

February 8, 2021PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITAmerican History, European History, International Affairs

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Creation of the United Nations I

February 7, 2021PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITAmerican History, European History, International Affairs

Lead: In October 1945, the victorious World War II Allies met in San Francisco to establish the United Nations. It was the 20th century’s second multi-purpose world-wide international organization and emerged from the failures of the first.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: When the charter members met in spring 1945, they were determined to steer clear of the fatal weaknesses that proved so damaging to the U.N.’s predecessor, the League of Nations. In many ways the failures of the League insured the success of the United Nations. The League came to grief in part because one of its great champions, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, despite a prodigious public relations campaign that probably undermined his health, failed to convince the Senate, led by conservative Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, to ratify the Versailles Treaty (1919) a section of which established the League. That meant the up-and-coming international power during the 1920s and 1930s would not be a full player in League debates or diplomatic efforts. The League also lacked an independent enforcement mechanism, and when Germany, Italy and Japan began their pattern of aggression that ultimately led to World War II, and the major Allies refused to act, the League was powerless and therefore discredited.