Harald Hansen
227 episodes listed below
Napoleonic history through the machinery of power.
Hanging with History treats the Napoleonic era as a stress test for states, markets, navies, empires, and paperwork. It moves quickly from rockets in wartime to packet boats in the Baltic, then back to corruption reform and the machinery behind British power.
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Hanging with History is a history show built around an unusual wager: the dull administrative layer is often where the dramatic explanation lives. It starts from the Napoleonic era and keeps widening the frame. British intelligence before Copenhagen, packet boats crossing winter routes to Sweden, reform campaigns against corruption, wartime industry, naval architecture, rockets, dockyards, and accounting rules all become part of the same puzzle. The question underneath is why some states could mobilize money, people, information, and material so effectively when others stalled. The show is not slow. It races through names, dates, ports, ministers, books, campaigns, and institutional details, often pausing just long enough to explain why the apparently minor fact matters. One episode can move from soil carts on iron rails to rocket attacks, then turn the evidence into a claim about practical experimentation. Another can begin with Denmark and Napoleon, follow British packet traffic through Falmouth, Yarmouth, Harwich, and Gothenburg, and end with the communications systems that kept diplomacy moving. The series also has a wider imperial and global reach. India, China, Japan, Vietnam, Muscat, and the Canton system are treated as part of the Napoleonic world rather than distant background. The Ottoman episodes bring reform, Janissary power, Serbian revolt, and Balkan fragmentation into the same field of analysis. The Talleyrand sequence follows France after defeat, the settlement of Europe, Belgium's creation, and the longer consequences of diplomatic bargains. The show can be blunt. It is comfortable making pointed judgments about corruption, backward institutions, failed reforms, slave states, and political decay. Yet its main habit is not outrage. Its real method is accumulation: quote a source, attach context, compare cases, and press toward a conclusion. The humor is dry and brief. Boring administrative history is allowed to be boring, but only because the boredom keeps turning into leverage. Hanging with History works best for listeners who enjoy argument as much as narrative. It rewards attention to institutions, logistics, finance, trade routes, and the material conditions behind power.
Made for: For listeners who like dense, thesis-driven history with institutions, logistics, trade, finance, and state capacity at the center. It especially suits people who prefer argumentative lectures to reenacted scenes or personality-led banter.
What sets it apart: The show treats administrative history as the main event, connecting railways, rockets, packet boats, corruption reform, diplomacy, and global trade into one explanatory structure. Its strength is the way small institutional details become evidence for large historical claims.
The first season focuses on the origins of the Industrial Revolution or the Great Enrichment, we go deep into history to gain enough background knowledge to actually understand the various theories of the origins of the Great Enrichment. Eventually we learn that we also need to know how the miracle was consolidated, as the many other close approaches to the Industrial Revolution failed.A kwirky style, but intellectually ambitious with the goal of understanding history well enough to understand the miracle that happened that one time. It's gonna be a long series.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Hanging with History makes Napoleonic power legible through the administrative, commercial, technological, and diplomatic systems operating behind armies and rulers.
Hanging with History follows the Napoleonic era through the systems that made power possible. The host moves from British expansion in India and trade with China to Ottoman reform, Talleyrand's use of legitimacy, industrial organization, intelligence networks, and wartime…
A horse-drawn railway becomes your clue to Britain's edge; bring your appetite for administrative mysteries.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A brisk tour of carts, rockets, and the practical habits behind British power.
This episode takes a subject that could easily bog down and keeps it moving, jumping from horse-drawn rail carts to rocket batteries, then to failed naval theory and the practical habits that kept Britain near the top of the field.
A brisk study in how intelligence, packets, and paperwork shape war.
Hanging with History makes a deliberately unglamorous subject move fast. It tracks how states actually function: intelligence reports, packet ships, diplomatic lag, insurance costs, mutinies, and the machinery behind wartime decisions.
A brisk account of how war and trade linked Britain, India, China, and empire across Asia.
The episode follows the reach of the Napoleonic Wars across India, China, Japan, Vietnam, and Muscat, and it makes a persuasive case that the story never stays within Europe.
A brisk, candid tour of Ottoman reform, Janissary resistance, and Balkan fragmentation.
Selim III's Ottoman Empire comes across as a reform story unfolding inside a state under pressure. The episode follows the line from the French Revolution to Waterloo and, in outline, toward the Crimean War, while staying on Selim III's reforms, Janjanary resistance, and the…
Legitimacy is the quiet machinery under Napoleon's collapse.
This episode treats the winter of 1813-1814 as a moment when Napoleon's order starts to come apart in plain view. Germany and Italy are both in flux, but the sharper move is its reading of Talleyrand: legitimacy is not treated as an abstract principle so much as a matter of…
British history through power, women, and memory.
History as context, consequence, and conversation.
Berlin history, fast banter, sharp human detail.
Tudor legends tested against the record.
Hanging with History episode 209, “Boring Administrative History Part 3: Industry,” uses Charles Dupin’s 1816 comments on horse-drawn railways to argue that Britain’s transport network already tied coal, iron ore, limestone, and slate to low-cost movement.
This episode examines the end of corruption in 18th-century British government, focusing on mechanisms and cultural changes that reduced fraud and theft of public funds.
Hanging with History stays with the unglamorous machinery behind power.
The episode starts in India.
Hanging with History’s “Ottoman Empire; The Sick Man of Europe” follows Selim III’s reform project from 1789 through the collapse of the New Order and the rise of Mahmud II.
This episode explores early Belgian history and the Great Reform Act of 1832 through the lens of Talleyrand's predictions.
This episode examines Talleyrand's role and France's recovery after the Napoleonic Wars, focusing on the Second Restoration and the Treaty of Paris.
This episode examines Germany's role in the post-Napoleonic European settlement, contrasting it with Italy's situation.
Talleyrand argues that France needs Louis XVIII because legitimacy works in people's minds, not because a king is sacred by God.
This episode explores Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia and its potential to spark a revolution, analyzing the strategic and personal factors behind the campaign.
This episode details Wellington's defense of Portugal in 1810-1811 during the Napoleonic Wars, focusing on Napoleon's absence and the challenges of the campaign.
This episode covers Captain Thomas Cochrane's actions during the Napoleonic Wars, including the Battle of the Basque Roads and resistance to the French invasion of Catalonia.
This episode analyzes the military campaigns of 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars, focusing on Napoleon's overreach in Spain and Austria.
This episode analyzes the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, focusing on the geopolitical context of the League of Armed Neutrality and British naval dominance.
This episode explores how British empiricism and anti-revolutionary politics in 1803 prepared England for invasion, contextualizing the Industrial Revolution within the Second Hundred Years' War.
This episode explores Napoleon's plan for Louisiana and the events leading to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
This episode explores the Peace of Amiens as a pivotal pause between the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, examining how French and British Enlightenment philosophies shaped the conflict.
This episode explores the political transition in 1801 Britain as Pitt resigns and Napoleon rises, focusing on the Act of Union with Ireland and the challenges of wartime leadership.
This episode examines Napoleon's consolidation of power in 1800, focusing on the military campaigns at Marengo and Hohenlinden that led to the end of the Second Coalition, and the political challenges he faced in securing peace.