Synopsis
Are you travelling for Thanksgiving? Believe it or not, “travel” as a thing is not a modern creation. In the middle ages, people visited many remote and far-flung places and brought back notes (and delicious noodles). Join Em and Jesse for travel talk, including Lord Elgin, Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, Zheng He, Margery Kemp, and more.
Notes
0/ The actual postcard:
I found it in a copy of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks. I was definitely not reading that when the postcard arrived, so…I don’t know how it was saved.
1/ Anyway, in the UK a “subway” means a pedestrian tunnel under a street. (cough)
2/ Lord Elgin: Boo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bruce,_7th_Earl_of_Elgin
It’s actually weird that this one, with more complaining about the British Museum, is coming directly after our episode about the British Museum. We didn’t plan that. We just slag off the British Museum from time to time. [We do!–Jesse]
There is apparently some debate about the legality of Lord Elgin’s firman (a royal mandate allowing him to do the things he did).
He did all this in the early 1800s, and he had considerable trouble getting his booty back to the UK. Some pieces took upward of ten years to arrive. Also, Byron was horrified and wrote the following lines:
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch’d thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!
No one better than Byron for a slam poem. [Much, much applause!–Jesse]
The marbles were purchased by the British gov’t in 1816 for 35,000 GBP. (Elgin had estimated their value at 75k, which is actually what he spent to bring them back to the UK, so he took a bath on the whole deal.) This would be approximately £2,795,511.37 (about 3.5 million USD) in today’s money, which is a lot but not an astronomical sum. [Welp, I’m glad he roasted!–Jesse]
4/ What the heck, let’s link to James Acaster again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73PkUvArJY
5/ Also, quick shout out to the QI bit about the Parthenon, why not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdvD4Fhc_K8
6/ Netscape guy James Clark repatriates stuff: https://news.artnet.com/news/netscape-founder-returns-looted-cambodian-antiquities-2059851
For more on museums, see episode 72.
7/ Famous travelers include:
Ibn Battuta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta
Marco Polo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo
Zheng He https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He
Margery Kemp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Kempe
8/ Travel in the Roman empire: https://orbis.stanford.edu/
9/ The episode on graffiti was episode 69 (the part about the Vikings was right at the end—see note 20).
10/ The Rus’ come up a bit in Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road. I think there was a substantial Jewish population there at one point. But maybe I made that up.
11/ Venice lion
Not to be confused with the Thomas Pynchon book of the same name.
13/ The Azores and mitochondrial mouse DNA!
14/ The Azores on medieval maps:
Medici or or Laurentian Atlas (Genoese cartographer)
Catalan Atlas (Majorcan Jewish Cartographer, Abraham Cresques)
Guillem Soler (Majorcan Cartographer)
15/ The Derbyshire man illumination in the Domesday book
16/ The Ipswich man
17/ Henry VIII’s warship’s crew
19/ John Hawkwood (1323–1394) was in episode 63 note 7 and episode 64 note 10.
20/ Xi Jing (1091–1153), a Chinese traveler who visited Korea in 1123. Here’s a translated edition of his account of his travels from University of Hawaii Press.
21/ Adam de la Halle
The May Day episode was episode 31.
Here is a whole site from Berkeley devoted to Ibn Battuta’s travels.
22/ Em ranted about Barthes’s essay (from Mythologies) in episode 3 note 3.
23/ The Anne Boleyn series with Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn
Bridgerton (series)
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