Smithsonian Journeys Cruise on Regent Voyager

Andy will be giving a series of Smithsonian Journeys lectures on the “Pacific Rim and Captivating East” cruise of Regent Seven Seas Voyager.  The cruise starts in Bangkok (Laem Chabang) and ends twenty-four days later in Abu Dhabi.

His talks will include:

1. Singapore in Peace and War

The stunning failure of the defenses of “Fortress Singapore” during the first months of World War II in the Pacific signaled the collapse of the allied position in Indochina and on the Malay Peninsula.  It also seemingly locked into place Tokyo’s “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere,” a resource-rich empire spanning East Asia and the vast spaces of the Western Pacific that resembled an eastern, maritime counterpart to Berlin’s ambitions in Europe. The mid-20^thcentury history of Singapore’s, fall, occupation, and relief is a fascinating part of the story behind this city-state’s remarkable role in Asia today.

2. Empires in Collision: the Russo-Japanese War, the Neglected First Great War of the 20th Century

Japan’s destruction in 1904-05 of Tsar Nicholas II’s army and navy in the Pacific  and the ensuing peace treaty negotiated by President Teddy Roosevelt at Portsmouth signaled great changes in the balance of power in Asia: the impending collapse of the Russian Empire in the Great War, and the sudden rise of Japan to forty years of great power status. This shattering first defeat of Europeans by Asians also encouraged colonial independence movements everywhere, further shaping the history of the coming century.

3. Embassy to the Eastern Courts: America’s Secret First Pivot Toward Asia, 1832-1837

President Andrew Jackson sent the U.S. Navy’s newest squadron around the world via Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, carrying diplomats on a years’ long, 98,000 mile mission to the courts of Southeast Asia and Arabia. Their purpose was to negotiate agreements to open exotic markets to New England’s manufacturers and merchants. Contemporary documents reveal colorful details of these first contacts between Eastern potentates and Yankee traders and diplomats.

4. Rudyard Kipling, the Bard of Empire and Nobel Laureate

Now remembered chiefly as the author behind Hollywood’s “Kim” and of several beloved “Jungle Book” animations, between 1886 and his death in 1936 Bombay-born Kipling was the author of dozens of popular poems, short stories, and books, many of which glorified the British Empire and its long-suffering soldiers deployed to the colonies to bear “the White Man’s burden.”  His work (for which he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907) provides a picturesque insight into the British Empire at its vigorous peak.

5. European Exploration and Mapping Southeast Asia

With traditional overland routes between Asia and European commanded by the Ottoman Turks, the appetite for trade, wealth, and power drove Spaniards and Portuguese, and later Britons and the Dutch, over water toward the fabulous markets and precious goods of the Orient. Europeans’ progress was paced by and reflected in their development of maps and charts, some of great beauty, during the Age of Exploration that illustrated growing knowledge of how to sail there and back home.

6. Disease in History

Until the age of modern medicine, lethal epidemics and fatal disease shaped human history as much—arguably more—than did the acts of great men (and women), and the events of politics and wars.  Learn how plague, influenza, yellow fever, and small pox (as well as the “great pox,” syphilis), and especially cholera out of the Bay of Bengal, powerfully changed the direction of the march of time.

7. The Ocean Cruises of Admiral Zheng He and China’s Navy Today

Zheng He’s astonishing seven cruises between 1405 and 1433 at the head of enormous Chinese treasure and tribute fleets to East Africa, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf during the early years of the Ming Dynasty are a brilliant, little-known highlight of the maritime history of Asia. The admiral’s huge fleets were not rivaled either in ship numbers, size, or crew strength until the modern era. Modern China’s recent turn toward the sea and the dynamic growth of its maritime claims and navy is a distant echo of Zheng’s superb and fascinating expeditions.

8. Why We Fought: Propaganda and World War II: Part I
9. Why We Fought: Propaganda and World War II: Part II

These two talks skim the history of the World War II in both oceans, focusing on the Pacific, through the fascinating documentary and animated movies Frank Capra and the Disney Studios released during wartime to explain to Americans and their allies the great stakes in the conflict.

10. Maritime Choke Points and Strategic Waters

Beginning with the Age of Sail, the geography of the oceans, as well as their winds and currents, became important to governments and their navies. The Strait of Hormuz and the Malacca Strait are today the best known of these choke points, but other such places have been flash points throughout history.

11. Amelia Earhart

The search for the missing aviatrix, lost somewhere in the islands of the South Pacific while piloting her Lockheed “Electra” aircraft around the world, continues apace today. The quest for the site of her disaster and disappearance, and the solution to the mystery about what happened to the bold and beautiful woman and her hard-drinking navigator Fred Noonan on July 3, 1937, still attract a level of interest seen before only in the search for Sir John Franklin’s Royal Navy expedition, lost with all hands in the Canadian Arctic in 1848.

12. Bligh and the HMS Bounty

The mutiny on board His Majesty’s transport Bounty in April 1789 ended with Captain Bligh and 18 loyal crewmen adrift in the ship’s launch with five days rations. Their 48 day 3,600 mile voyage across open water is history’s greatest warm water survival story.

13. Major Themes in History

A brief introduction to history’s drivers, an illustrated inventory of some factors that have broadly shaped the story of humankind for the past several millennia, and one answer to the question, “what’s knowledge of history good for in the digital age?”