From this evening - TCD Lectures on the history of religious conflict

robindch

Last week, the School of Histories and Humanities in Trinity started a nine-week series of lectures on wars of religion through history. The course webpage is here:

http://www.histories-humanities.tcd.ie/warsofreligion.php

and PDF which gives details on each talk is here:

http://www.histories-humanities.tcd.ie/pdf/ifgod%20is%20for%20us.pdf

This evening's talk is titled "The first crusade, the role of religion in its instigation, duration and completion", while next week's one is "‘Kill them all, God will recognise his own’: The Albigensian Crusade" (which topic has, I think, turned up occasionally over in The Other Forum).

Tim Robbins

robindch wrote: »

Last week, the School of Histories and Humanities in Trinity started a nine-week series of lectures on wars of religion through history. The course webpage is here:

http://www.histories-humanities.tcd.ie/warsofreligion.php

and PDF which gives details on each talk is here:

http://www.histories-humanities.tcd.ie/pdf/ifgod%20is%20for%20us.pdf

This evening's talk is titled "The first crusade, the role of religion in its instigation, duration and completion", while next week's one is "‘Kill them all, God will recognise his own’: The Albigensian Crusade" (which topic has, I think, turned up occasionally over in The Other Forum).

Sounds good. Although I think I think Nationalism has killed way more people and you can see some oddities when looking at the stats for people dieing.
1. More Americans died of the flu epidemic during World War 1 than died in combat.
2. More American's died in any one year in car accidents than total number of Americans that died in the entirity of the Vietnam War.
(Source: Martin Gilbert).

How did you find out about this course? Sounds very good value.

pH

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Sounds good. Although I think I think Nationalism has killed way more people.
How did you find out about this course? Sounds very good value.

Oh if we're going down this path again ...

I think it's often confusing to correlate the deaths caused by regimes and countries with anything like this (religion/nationalism/atheism), as in my opinion 2 far more important factors are in play - population and technology.

The earth's population grew slowly until the mid 18th century, when it started its exponential growth phase. Also military technology made a jump forward, which enabled any group to kill far more people than previously had been possible.

So looking at the raw numbers, things are skewed to the modern era mainly because there were so many more people around to be killed, more densely packed and also the technology to kill them.

How far Hitler would have got with a peasant population armed with swords, and what could the crusaders could have managed with jets and tanks?

But on the nationalism front, what examples would you give of deaths associated with it? WWI seems the best example as in it was fought by countries with very similar racial/religious/ideological make-ups, but WWII although nationalism played its part was probably more about political ideologies and control rather than plain nationalism.

Sapien

Did you enjoy tonight's talk Robin? It was given by a good friend of mine. I promise only to tell her if you have good things to say.

Tim Robbins

pH wrote: »

..but WWII although nationalism played its part was probably more about political ideologies and control rather than plain nationalism.

One could argue nationalism is itself a political ideology.
Hard to quantify and define these things objectively but nationalism or ethnocentrism has certainly killed way more than Religion IMO. In recent years, arguably Oil also.

robindch

Sapien wrote: »

Did you enjoy tonight's talk Robin? It was given by a good friend of mine. I promise only to tell her if you have good things to say.

Yes, it was good. The only thing I'd say is that she comes across much better (and much more passionate, not to say audible too) when she's talking without notes, instead of reading from them.

One interesting thing she mentioned, which I wasn't aware of, or had forgotten, was the trail of mini-crusades and mini-pogroms that spun off from the First Crusade. Most notably in Germany, but to a greater or lesser extent in much of the rest of Europe too. She also discussed the level of geographic, religious and political cluelessness that informed the various factions that made up the crusaders, to the extent that they seem to have had little genuine understanding of what on earth they were doing.

Next week's lecture is covering the Albigensian (Cathar) Crusade. Should be interesting.

Scofflaw

robindch wrote: »

Yes, it was good. The only thing I'd say is that she comes across much better (and much more passionate, not to say audible too) when she's talking without notes, instead of reading from them.

One interesting thing she mentioned, which I wasn't aware of, or had forgotten, was the trail of mini-crusades and mini-pogroms that spun off from the First Crusade. Most notably in Germany, but to a greater or lesser extent in much of the rest of Europe too. She also discussed the level of geographic, religious and political cluelessness that informed the various factions that made up the crusaders, to the extent that they seem to have had little genuine understanding of what on earth they were doing.

Next week's lecture is covering the Albigensian (Cathar) Crusade. Should be interesting.

I can strongly recommend The Northern Crusades by Eric Christiansen. Good in depth and readability - would pleasantly while away a long flight.


cordially,
Scofflaw