about Jacob (or Jakob) Fugger, whose life and business dealings touched all the issues of that time period. .
Steinmetz makes the case for him being the first real capitalist. Most of his money and influence was acquired by loaning people money. He financed armies, bribed popes, paid for royal weddings, and bought the election of the Holy Roman Emperor. If not for him, as one example, the Habsburgs might never have become powerful.
@mindysan33, you may know all this already. I don’t know how academically rigorous the book is. The book is definitely pop history and the writing is workmanlike at best, but I found Fugger a fascinating character.
At Zebra, all the conference rooms on our floor were named for inventors. Yes, I did book the Tesla conference room as often as possible. But there were no women with rooms named after them. Now who wouldn’t want to book the Hedy Lamar room? And her work was way more directly relevant to our company than many of the other inventors’. But that’s the kind of thing men never see, how it feels to be a woman and every room is named for a famous man.
I am highly pissed off that no one told me about Cecilia Payne. And with all the science floating around in the household in which I grew up! That alone is proof to me that society is definitely broken.
Yeah, it sucks how much women who made ground breaking scientific discoveries were ignored until relatively recently. It’s good to see people giving them more attention today.
Hi @mindysan33 , with this thread bumped back to the top- could you let us know who or what you went with as your lecture subjects for the “Whole of world history to 1500” course?
The whole thing always sounded like a huge task, and I was left wondering how you made the tough calls of what to put in and leave out.
Sure! I’m going to reconfigure for the spring, as I have this again:
Otzi
Enheduanna and Ahkenaten
Cyrus the Great and Herodotus
Shang Yang and Ashoka
Queen Boudica and Hypatia
Leif Erikson
St. Patrick and Hildegard of Bingen
Judah Halevi and Rabbenu Gershom Ben Yehuda
Sundiata Keita
Iba Sina
Robert the Bruce and Prince Lazar
Zheng He
For the spring, I need to cut out ever 4th week, as I’ve been giving them a week off from lectures and reading responses and replacing it with a quiz instead. I think I’m gonna cut out Cyrus the Great and Herodotus, but am not sure who else?
I’d suggest either dropping Leif Erikson or giving a shorter intro alongside Zheng He.
I’d consider moving Hypatia alongside Ibn Sina as scholars, Queen Boudica alongside Robert the Bruce as anti-colonial rebels, and then Prince Lazar alongside Sundiata Keita.
