The Rest Is History - 12 Days: Reconquest of Spain and the Old Queen of Hawaii

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

The conquest of the kingdom of Grenada by Christian forces reclaimed southern Spain from the Moors, and the forgotten monarchs of Hawaii. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History, 12 Days of Christmas special. And Dominic, today it's the 2nd of January. Yes. Did anything important happen on the 2nd of January? And if it did, is it perhaps Spanish themed? It is Spanish themed, yes.

So it's a huge event in world history, Tom. It's the reconquest of Granada. So you've been to Granada, I assume? I have, yeah. The Alhambra? Several times, yeah. It's a magnificent palace, for those people who don't know, on the rock overlooking the city.

This great sort of ornament of Islamic Spain. And so what's called the Reconquista has been going on for centuries, effectively, the Christian reconquest of Spain. And so what's called the Reconquista has been going on for centuries, effectively, the Christian reconquest of Spain. Now that in itself is quite a loaded term, and one I think that a lot of historians would be a little bit suspicious of now, don't you? Because, I mean, they would argue

that it's not a kind of reconquest so much as the creation of something that hadn't previously existed. I think it is a reconquest as well. Do you think it's a reconquest? It's a reconquest so much as the creation of something that hadn't previously existed. I think it is a reconquest as well. Do you think it's a reconquest? It's a reconquest by Christian rulers of lands that had previously been Christian. I don't really have a problem with calling it that.

You see, what I don't like about that is that that seems to imply that the Islamic sort of societies that have been there were intruders newcomers whereas they've been there for centuries i mean to use my example that i used in yesterday's podcast they have been there for far longer than the united states has existed yeah of course i'm not denying that but i'm but but i think that uh i mean the reconquista is obviously a spanish word coined by the spanish christians who themselves um and i think it adequately reflects what how they understood Conquista is obviously a Spanish word coined by the Spanish Christians themselves. And I think it adequately reflects how they understood the process.

It does. But you don't think it's loaded? You don't think it's very loaded? Well, I think there's a kind of desire on the part of people to see pre-Reconquista Spain as some multicultural paradise. And I think that that was really, really bred of the tensions in the first decade of the 21st century. There was a real desire to say, yeah, there was a time where Muslims and Christians and Jews all got on really well, and they all sat around eating oranges and talking about Aristotle,

bubbling fountains, all this kind of stuff. Philosophy. Yes. And so the word Reconquista seemed, well, problematic in that context. But I think that's a fantasy. Islamic rule was incredibly brutal. Christian rule was incredibly brutal.

The process was about war. The idea that there, of course, there were, there was Jews and Christians and Muslims did commune because they all lived cheek by jowl. There was kind of scholarly communication. But in Muslim lands, Christians and Jews were decisively subordinate. And in Christian lands, Jews and Muslims were decisively subordinate.

And I think the attempt to imagine that this was some kind of paradise is wholly bogus. Well, we can get into this. The language of conquest, I think, is important because it reflects the brute realities of what we're going on. OK, we can get into this in more detail in a future podcast. It's great to find a subject on which I can pretend to be more progressive. So that is splendid. Let's get back to the anniversary. So the 2nd of January, 1492, the final war really in rolling up the Islamic kingdoms of Southern Spain

has been launched the previous April. And that's the Granada War, the attack on the last Islamic emirate. And it's been launched, obviously, by Ferdinand and Isabella, the most Catholic monarchs, as they are known. So Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, who are going to unite to create Spain.

Granada is isolated. It is friendless. Its allies have been defeated or basically lost their nerve. So for what become the Spanish, it's actually a relatively easy job to kind of surround it and subdue it the um grenadans issue appeals to the ottomans to north africa and so on but basically everybody ignores them because they know it's a kind of complete lost cause um then there's a very strange kind of, it's almost like a Brexit deal process. So in November 1491, the attackers agree a kind of pre-truce truce with the defenders.

And they sort of say, well, we'll pause while we discuss the details of the truce. And then the final deal is done in time for the 2nd of January. And that's the day that even now in Granada they celebrate it. They have marches and processions and they have sort of this great fiesta because this is the death knell of Muslim Spain and the moment that a kind of new Spain is born. So the guy who is in charge of Granada, he's about in his early 30s, he's about 32, and his actual name is Abu Abdallah Muhammad the 12th but he's known

to Spanish chroniclers as Boabdil sort of corruption of Abdallah and Boabdil rides out with about 80 of his men on the 2nd of January to the camp on the on the banks of the river which is sort of facing the fort the Alhamb, to Ferdinand of Aragon's camp. And there in this sort of, this great sort of set piece. Tableau, isn't it? Scene, absolutely. Clash of Civilizations tableau. By so many Spanish painters and so on,

he hands over the keys to the city, to Ferdinand, basically in surrenders. And the great thing about this tableau, Tom, is that one of the people who is there and watching is Christopher Columbus, is a young Italian who has been pestering Ferdinand and Isabella to pay for his plans to go into India. And of course, it's Christopher Columbus.

And later on, we have a letter that Christopher Columbus writes to Ferdinand and Isabella when he's sucking up to them. And he says, I remember seeing the royal banners of your highnesses planted by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra. So he's there watching this extraordinary landmark moment, which for a lot of people, I think you could say, is the end, you know, it's one of those, when do the Middle Ages end? Yeah. I mean, this is one of those moments, the end of Islamic Spain, the moment that the balance, you could argue, that the balance between the West and Islam, for want of a better expression,

begins to tip. Of course, you've got the high points of the Ottoman Empire to come. But, from this point onwards, Spain is unified and created, and Spain is going to,

of course, become the great superpower. So, there's one more moment, which is the moment. This is his mum. It is his mum. His mum. The moment everybody remembers.

So he, if you've ever been to Granada, it's surrounded by mountains. The Albujaras, I think they're called. We almost went on holiday up in the mountains. Very windy roads. Anyway,

so he's winding up into the, into the mountains, into Exarch. He's going to go to Morocco, to Fez fez and spend the rest of his days in fez and the story goes always told by spanish kind of folklorists that he stops at this kind of ridge and he looks back over at the alhambra the great pink stone walls in the dying sunlight the sound of these beautiful buildings in the world. Oh, tremendous. This vision of Paramount's ground is created to be a paradise.

And it is a paradise, isn't it? Absolutely. I mean, it is one of the most beautiful buildings. And he looks back and Boabdil and he weeps. He sobs. And his mother, his mum, says to him, I know. Now you weep like a woman over what you could not defend as a man.

If your mum said that to you, you'd never recover. Would you? I mean, that would scar you for life. So that's called, I mean, his sigh is called The Moor's Last Sigh. So as in the Salman Rushdie book? Salman Rushdie book. And the pass where he supposedly stops is called The Pass of The Moor's Sigh. That is very romantic.

It's a very romantic story. But actually what then happens is pretty unromantic. So you get the sort of the forcible conversion of a lot of the Moors, the Moriscos. Because actually the treaty is pretty generous. It is. So there's no forced conversion. And even Christians who've converted to Islam don't have to convert back.

But the Spanish soon renege on that. And they start, there starts to be this series of kind of force conversions, expulsions mariscos, exactly confiscation of property and so on a whole, I mean one of the biggest

I mean it goes on for ages so one of the biggest waves of expulsions comes at the beginning of the 17th century I mean you're talking about a massive movement of people, refugee kind of crisis. So tens of thousands of people going to North Africa. And it's not just Muslims, is it?

No. So there are three kind of seismic events that happen in this year. So the fall of Granada, Columbus's voyage across the Atlantic, and the expulsion of the Jews. Exactly. So actually the fall of Granada creates this momentum for a unified Christian Spain in which the Muslims and the Jews do not belong.

And so you get the expulsion of the Jews who, of course, tens of thousands of people who end up going to Italy, to Greece, to North Africa, and that's the origin of the kind of Sephardicic jewish branch and it's a massive diaspora yeah colossal huge into places like you know i don't know smyrna thessaloniki and so on um and the ottomans of course they you know can't believe that the spaniards are being so stupid exactly expelling all these you these incredibly able and wealthy people. But it's it's some. I mean, to us, it seems I mean, it's kind of the ultimate crime, isn't it?

It seems a crime against a multicultural, harmonious future. But it exists in the context of apocalyptic yearning, I think. I think Ferdinand seriously sees himself as a figure who may be destined to bring in the, you know, the second coming. He's very, very focused on the recapture of Jerusalem. And Columbus, likewise, is very, very motivated by this kind of idea that, you know, the end of the world is drawing near.

And people's motives exist in a context that to us seems very very hard to get a grasp on i think i think that's absolutely right i mean i read a book a year ago by a guy called fernando cervantes um i don't think he's related to these cervantes he's a mexican historian and it's a book called conquistadoresadores. And it's a book about what happens in the same year. So basically the arrival of the Spanish in the New World. And obviously a lot of the people who arrive in the New World have been in these campaigns. So they have been fighting against the Moors.

And they are absolutely – one of the things that Cervantes really brings out in this book is he says, you know, we traditionally see the Spanish arrival in the new world as motivated purely by plunder and greed and cynicism and all of these kinds of things. And the Christianity is merely a fig leaf for all that. And this obviously would appeal to you, Tom. He says, no,

that's not right. They absolutely, the Christianity is not a fig leaf at all. They, it motivates everything and you cannot understand them. If you think of them as just as butchers and plunderers and robber barons absolutely see themselves as app so when they talk about you know for example when they talk about converting the muslims in southern spain or where they talk about converting the indians in mexico and in central america this isn't just sort of cruel repression

they genuinely believe that they just they're saving these guys' souls. Absolutely. Just as in the Islamic period, the Muslim conquerors impose on Christians and Jews templates of subordination that have been established in the Quran. The cycles of conquest and dominance and exploitation on both the Muslim and the Christian side are absolutely fueled, of course, by, I mean, everybody wants to be on the top. But it is also massively fueled by very, very culturally determined ways of understanding how that dominance should be expressed. rest and i think that that with the conquistadores um you know we did that wonderful episode with

camilla townsend um talking about the the aztecs and mexica how they see how they saw the world and how the effort to understand how they understood it things transforms your understanding of the process of the conquest but i think exactly the same is true of the the conquistadores and that's why i thought that book was so wonderful as well i thought it's kind of wonderful companion piece to camilla townsend's fifth son it is actually well what it does i think tom is that there's a there's a kind of slightly bad habit i think an um an automatic kind of scholarly habit in the last 50 years or so to say people believed this but this was actually merely a yeah exactly you know this was the the sort of um a pretext or

what they really cared about generally it's a kind of what they really cared about was money yeah um and and that's true with almost everything so people you know with culture wars people i think i mean i think they're not really cold people don't really care about culture i mean that is a kind of lingering aftershock of marxism isn't it it is exactly that everything is to be determined you know explained ultimately in material terms but i think it's also um it's a kind of a laying claim to a kind of sophistication but yeah you know i've studied history so long that i've now penetrated to uh the dark motives that fuel how people have behaved um there's i mean there's a very petty example of this in the last few years in britain which is when people talk about brexit and they, well, people who voted for Brexit didn't really do it because they didn't want to leave the EU.

They really did it because of racism, anti-austerity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, this sort of I've penetrated to the deeper motives that these people themselves don't even realise they have. Yeah, well, also, you know, nobody voted for Brexit to make themselves poorer. Well, I think actually quite a lot of people did. Well, anyway. You know, there were things that were more important than that. Who knew the conversation about the conquest of the Alhambra could lead us to just a rambling conversation about Brexit?

But, you know, you will know that this has been the great theme. That's the great theme of Dominion, is that actually it's not just about material self-interest. No, no, no. You're absolutely right. I agree with you completely. That this stuff really, really matters. Now, if you think you may have heard

some of this from us before, you will be relieved because in the second half, we are talking about somebody we've never mentioned on the podcast and a part of the world I think we've never mentioned. We will be delving into the murky world

of the Hawaiian monarchy. See you after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. See you after the break. Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. I promised you the Hawaiian monarchy, and that's what you're going to get. Tom, this is not a subject I was expecting us to ever talk about on this podcast. Enlighten me. No. Well, I'm going to put my hands up and say that this is not a subject that I really know anything about at all. Well, that's a good start. Have you researched it closely?

Well, but it's a subject that I became interested in because of a drama series that I watched last year called White Lotus. Did you see it? Brilliant series. Absolutely brilliant. last year called white lotus did you see it brilliant series absolutely i thought brilliant i mean i thought it was it was the best satire yeah the way the west is at the moment that i've seen for a long time it was it was what was nice about but you're you're i think you're almost underselling it because you can that makes it sound quite political and actually one of the great things about it was that the politics was constantly being kind of undercut. Well, that's why it's a great satire.

Yeah. I mean, but it was also great character studies. So essentially, the plot is it's set in a hotel, a luxury hotel. Appalling rich visitors arrive. There's the staff who are exploited. And of course, the dynamic is that the rich, the white outsiders are exploitative, but it becomes more complicated than that. And it's a brilliant, brilliant series.

And lurking, kind of thread running through it is the way in which native Hawaiian culture has been commodified, has been dissipated. That's right. Essentially kind of exists to make money from rich tourists. It's a tourist attraction, basically. Yeah. And I kind of watched it.

And there's kind of an incredibly moving sequence where there are Hawaiian, native Hawaiians, who are in a long boat and they're practicing. And one of the most miserable American characters in the series ends up becoming transfixed by this. And it's almost kind of redemptive in its quality. It's one of the few kind of it's a visual kind of statement of hope, almost of the sublime. And I watched it and realized I knew nothing at all about Hawaii, apart from the fact that Captain Cook died there.

And that was basically the limit of my knowledge um so so i i kind of just basically skim read um a book on history on on hawaii and um i suppose because i'm british i i did find the the british thread in hawaiian history interesting because of course the flag of hawaii has a union jack on it i think it's the only oh yeah of course it's it's the only state flag in the united states that has a union jack um and that reflects that you know cook who who um was uh the first european to discover them although maybe the spanish got there first not for sure uh polynesian adventurers had got there in 10th 11th 12th centuries um cook arrives um it's predictably it all turns horrible um the introduction of european arms um the introduction of european

diseases has its customary devastating effects uh all the chiefs of the various islands start fighting one another uh there's a great kind of series of battles and clashes. And in 1795, all the various islands of the Hawaiian archipelago get united under a king. And I'm going to apologies to any Hawaiian listeners if there are any out there. I know I'm going to mispronounce this, but he's called Kamehameha. Okay. I'll take a word for it. Kamehameha the Great.

And he establishes a line of kings, all of whom take the name Kamehameha. So Kamehameha, the first, the second, the third, the fourth. And what happens over the ninth century is that Hawaii becomes increasingly part, kind of Anglo-Americanized. So there's both British and American influences. And the intersection point of that is Protestant missionaries. So Hawaii becomes Protestantized very, very quickly.

In 1840, it becomes officially a christian uh monarchy um and uh protestant missionaries kind of end up becoming key players in the in the politics of this hawaiian kingdom so they kind of marry into the local aristocracy they have children they become advisors and so on and this integrates the hawaiian monarchy into the kind aristocracy they have children they become advisors and so on and this integrates the hawaiian monarchy into the kind of the broader world of european and american geopolitics yeah so you have this king called um kamahamaha the fourth i knew he'd bar. So he's a very, very, very traveled man. When he's very young, before he becomes king, he's crown prince. He travels to France.

He meets Louis Napoleon. He goes to England and he meets, he doesn't meet Queen Victoria because she's, I think, pregnant at the time and is retired. But meets Prince Albert, meets Lord Palmerston and then goes to america meets the president taylor yeah and then he's going back on the train across america and he goes into his private compartment because of course he's a king so he has a wonderful compartment and the conductor seeing that he's not white assumes that he's a servant who's strayed in there he shouldn't be there and upbraids him and tries to throw him off the train. And Kamehameha is obviously furious at this. And this is, I think, a sentiment calculated to make every Englishman proud. This is the first time I have ever received

such treatment, not in England or France or anywhere else. In England, an African can pay his fare and sit alongside Queen Victoria. Oh, that's very heartwarming. And you know the other heartwarming thing about Kamehameha? Who's a Wolves fan? No, he's a big cricket fan. He's a huge cricket fan. So there's a kind of fascinating

glimpse there of what Hawaii might have been. A cricketing... A cricket playing part of the United Kingdom. Like Guernsey. Like guernsey like guernsey exactly anyway so what so what does this have to do with the 2nd of january well it has to do with the birth of the 2nd of january is the birth of um king kamahamaha the fourth's wife queen emma his wife is born on there yeah okay so she's born on january the 2nd 1836 um and her lineage is incredibly complicated involving incredibly hawaiian names that i do not really feel

so her full name is emma kalani kaumaka amano kalaleleonalaniinea Rook. Oh, your Hawaiian is beautiful. And the Rook is her stepfather. So she's born to very distinguished Hawaiian aristocracy. Then apparently it's the custom of the Hawaiian aristocracy that the children get adopted by step-parents and she gets adopted by an aunt of hers who doesn't have a child who's a chieftain in Hawaii and is married to somebody, a missionary called Dr. Thomas C.B. Rook. And Dr. Thomas C.B. Rook is English. He came from Hertfordshire, studied at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

And ends up marrying into the Hawaiian royal family. And he builds what every visitor to Hawaii says is the most English house outside England. Wow. It's the most English looking house. I'm going to Google his house right now. What's his name? Thomas Rook. Thomas Rook with an E.

And so, so Emma grows up in this incredibly English house. And she marries, she marries a guy. It's quite English. It's only quite English. Well, that's his reputation.

Yeah. Don't spoil it for people. No, no, it's okay. It's very English. It's a very English house. It looks like a house from still on the world world exactly but i'll say that uh please you know

you know there are cricket nets for yeah for the king to practice his off breaks and you know it's absolutely brilliant um so um she married she so she marries the king of Hawaii. Yeah. And they have a son who they call Albert. Oh, very good. He was born in 1858. And do you know who Albert's godmother is? Queen Victoria. Yeah. Queen Victoria.

Yeah. She agreed to do it. Yeah, she did. Oh, good for Queen Victoria. That railroad conductor in the US wouldn't have agreed, but Queen Victoria agreed. queen victoria that that railroad conductor in the u.s wouldn't have agreed but queen victoria agreed and um so her unfortunately the son albert um dies in 1862 and her husband dies the following year yeah so she you know she doesn't have a kind of official state she kind of remains a queen but she's no longer regnant yeah um so she devotes her life to philanthropy so she founds a hospital to help

hawaiians fight smallpox uh she sponsors education she's a great enthusiast for opera so she sings in the chorus of a performance of la traviata golly that's very impressive she's also a very devout anglican yeah so she uh she gets the Church of England to set up the Church of Hawaii as a kind of branch of the Church of England. 1862, she gets baptised into the Anglican Church. And then 1865 to 6,

she follows in her dead husband's footsteps by going on a grand tour of America and Europe. And she gets to meet Victoria. Oh, this is a nice moment. Yeah. And they get on tremendously.

Well, Victoria is very, very fond of her. She meets Napoleon the third. She winters on the, on the French Riviera. And then she comes back to Hawaii and in 1874, there's an election for the King because there,

there's a kind of problem of, you know, there's not an obvious candidate. And Emma runs as one of the candidates, one of the two candidates and her right. So she's the an obvious candidate. And Emma runs as one of the candidates, one of the two candidates. And so she's the pro-British candidate and her rival is the pro-American candidate. Oh dear.

I don't like the way this is going, Tom. Okay. So Emma is the people's choice. Of course, people's princess. The people back Emma. They want her to be the queen. But the legislative assembly who've been bought by the yankee dollar back her rival this is a poor story so

so uh this this american rival whose name is kalakaua becomes king what an absolute villain he becomes king well he's not actually he's you know he's not a villain he's a decent man um and he leaves a seat for her at every royal occasion so it's it's left for her it's easy to be magnanimous though yeah you know she keeps her title she's known as the old queen she might not like that i mean that doesn't sound to me like he's a tremendous fellow at all he seems like an absolute shit no i think the old queen is a term of great affection and respect. And, you know, and then she dies. I think that's a kind of wonderful story. So if she had won that election, do you think Hawaii would be British?

Or would it be like the Falkland Islands or something? I think it would be a constitutional monarchy. Yeah, because what happened... And, you know know the cricket playing descendants of queen emma would be loyal members of the british commonwealth and it would all be tremendous you may not know the answer to this time but what happened to the hawaiian monarchy um basically um british and american business interests and chiefly american business interests um decided that the monarchy was getting in the way of uh what it wanted to do

of kind of um integrating it into uh the american economy and so they they toppled it oh that's very disappointing so basically toppled in the interest of capitalism yeah absolutely swept away by well i mean you know classic mar Very sad. Feudalism toppled. Hard-nosed capitalists move in. Okay. Well, that queues up very nicely tomorrow's choices. Because tomorrow,

I should be talking about a man who had a lot of time for monarchy and very little time for hard-nosed commercialism. And that man, Tom, is J.R.R. Tolkien. Brilliant. Very exciting. So, we shall see you tomorrow. Goodbye.R. Tolkien. Brilliant. Very exciting. So we shall see you tomorrow. Goodbye.

Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.