Thanks to my favorite, Daveed Diggs

[cosmolinguist]

Andrew's listening to the History of Rome podcast, on his computer so I can hear it too.

He's on like the second episode, so the guy, Mike Duncan is talking about Romulus and how while it might seem weird to us to hear so much stuff attributed to this founder of the city, its not all that different from how Americans think about George Washington. He didn't single-handedly win the American Revolution, Duncan says. "In fact, most people don't even know how crucial French involvement was to its success."

"This was before Hamilton," I told Andrew in a theatrical aside. "People know now."

I know what Duncan says was true when he said it, but a few years can be such a long time in history.

Comments

[rmc28]

Everyone give it up for America's favourite fighting Frenchman!

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah I ended up with that earworm almost immediately so I wrote this entry partly to share it with others. :)

[chanter1944]

Cheers for the earworm, eeeeek! :)

[pseudomonas]

Huh, I wonder what the awareness of the content of Hamilton is in the US. I'd heard of Hamilton and knew it was a massive deal in theatre terms but didn't know that it specifically covered French involvement in the American Revolution — but then I'm not in the US and no doubt it's much less of a thing here than there. I would suspect that my parents quite probably haven't heard of it at all, because they're not in the relevant internet subculture.

[cosmolinguist]

Oh of course the majority of people won't have heard of this, as is the case with any cultural artefact. I was mostly teasing Andrew with this since he quickly reached a point of saturation/aversion to Hamilton because he got the impression everyone he knew liked it and everyone talked about it all the time, to the point where he can't even try listening to any of it even now. I don't really think knowledge of it is universal except for him, it was just funnier to act as if I did.

I don't even know if he knows the musical features the French involvement in the American Revolution, but considering he reads my blog's comments pretty religiously, he'll probably be here in a minute to tell us whether or not he does. :)

[po8crg]

It's really good, that podcast.

Appreciate that this is a long way down the track, but the Crisis of the Third Century section is brilliant.

Just checked and it starts about Episode 100.

[cosmolinguist]

That's about as far as I got into this podcast when I was listening to it a year or so ago.

[silveradept]

Some of the better textbooks and accounts I had in schooling did mention the help that the fledgling nation got from Prussians and the French, and the large amount of diplomacy done in France to get them on board, but I can certainly see how a more "patriotic" count might omit those parts entirely.