On Monday 17th March, Wellington’s own version of TED talks was back, this time involving a full four talks on History as members of the History department battled it out to argue that their year was the most important year in History.
4Mr Macpherson first argued that 1643 was the critical year in British and global democracy in his ‘Jihadi John: The father of world democracy’ while Dr Gardner took a somewhat liberal approach to the brief by arguing that ‘around 1440 (precise year unknown)’ and the invention of the printing press was the most critical year of the modern age, heralding democracy and the dissemination of knowledge in ‘Goose meat, metal mirrors and the machine that made us’.
In ‘The year the world was created’, Mr Macleod meanwhile fought valiantly to demonstrate that Charlemagne, first Holy Roman Emperor, and the year 800 when he reached the height of his power, transformed the geographical and cultural boundaries of the world. Finally, Mr Lewsley took the stage to propose not only that ‘Russians are revolting’ but that 1917 surely takes the crown as the year that changed the world because if Lenin hadn’t pushed for the October Revolution, there would not have been the divide between East and West and eventually the Cold War.