Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard The History Wizard

Content warning for discussion of genocide and mention of suicide.
Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 6 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 5 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we’re going to, finally, be stepping outside of the Western sphere of influence and migrating over towards Jin Dynasty China to learn about an event that is sometimes known as the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians. This refers to the genocide of many non-Han tribes from China that took place in the beginning of the 4th century CE.
As always, we will start with that most important of set dressings, context. The thing that, without, all of history would just be one shot DnD stories told around a table. But before even that, let’s talk about the word barbarian. Etymologically the word barbarian comes to us from the Greek word barbar, meaning a non-Greek person or someone who didn’t speak ancient Greek. Meaning that, technically, we are all barbarians. In a more modern context the word has a far more pejorative connotation. It’s used in the same contexts as words like savages or uncivilized. It becomes an inherently stigmatizing term. One designed to make the people being referred to by it inherently lesser than those using it.
The is one of our first instances of dehumanization being used in a historic genocide. The Romans didn’t see the Carthaginians as animals or subhuman, merely as a threat to the Roman way of life and to Roman hegemony over the Mediterranean. Pontus didn’t see the Romans as barbarians or savages, merely a threat to Pontus’s control over Asia Minor. But the Five Barbarian Tribes? They were inherently less. They were, to be sure, a threat to Jin dynastic control over China, but more than that, they weren’t Han Chinese, and so they were ethnically inferior.
The Jin Dynasty emerged from the chaos and turmoil of the Three Kingdoms Period. Following the end of the Han Dynasty the Three Kingdoms of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu dominated China from 220 to 280 CE. The Sima clan from the Cao Wei kingdom rose to prominence in 249 CE after staging a coup against the Cao clan. By 263 Sima Yi had conquered both the kingdom of Cao Wei and the Kingdom of Shu Han. Sima Yi would die in 265 CE, but his son Sima Yan would go on to conquer the kingdom of Eastern Wu in 280 CE, uniting China once again and declaring himself the first emperor of the Jin Dynasty. Sima Yan would die 10 years later, in 290 CE and would be called Emperor Wu, the Martial Emperor of Jin, posthumously.
The death of Emperor Wu would spark a succession war that would come to be known as the War of the Eight Princes, and it would be within the context of this war that the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians would occur. See, after Emperor Wu died he was succeeded by his son, Sima Zhong, also known as Emperor Hui. Hui was developmentally disabled. We don’t know the exact nature of his disability, but records show that, while he could read and write just fine, he was unable to make traditionally logical decisions on his own. So, despite ruling as emperor for 17 years, Emperor Hui never exercised any real authority on his own, instead coming under the control of 9 different regents over the course of his reign.
It was because of Emperor Hui’s disabilities and the relative ease with which he could be controlled by a regent that the War of the Eight Princes began in earnest. The War of the Eight Princes, which lasted from 290 until 306 CE is somewhat akin to the Hundred YEars War in that it was not an extended period of continuous fighting. It was stretches of relative peace, interspersed with massive amounts of lethal violence that saw shifts in power each time.
First, after Emperor Wu died he named his father in law Yang Jun, and the Prince of Ru

Content warning for discussion of genocide and child death
Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time
Day 5 will take a look into the historic event known as the Asiatic Vespers, one of the only genocide committed against Rome instead of by it.
Episode Notes Below:
Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 3 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 2 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. For this week’s episode we’re going to be talking about a genocide committed AGAINST the Romans. This is particularly unusual because usually the Romans are the ones committing genocides and war crimes. Historically speaking the event is called the Asiatic Vespers, which should explain the pun in the episode title. And if it doesn’t, I’m not going to be explaining it. Google is free.
Our timeline places us in the Roman Republic. The Punic Wars are over, Carthago cecidit and Rome had steadily been expanding its borders in all directions. By the time the Punic Wars were over Rome held all of Italy, most of Iberia, most of Greece, parts of northern Africa, including Carthage, and were on the cusp of moving into the Anatolia (what is today part of the nation of Turkey). You might think that Rome would be tired of wars after their decades of fighting against the Carthiginians, but their victories only made them hungry for more.
During the final decade of the 2nd century BCE the Romans were engaged in 2 distinct wars. One in northwest Africa (the area that is today Algeria) against King Jurgatha of Numidia called the Jugurthine War and one fought around western Europe against various Celtic and Germanic tribes who had invaded from the Jutland Peninsula (modern day Denmark and parts of Northern Germany) called the Cimbrian Wars.
Both wars would end in Roman victories, and we will discuss them very briefly now as they are relevant to our later discussion, but not the main focus of this episode. The Jugurthan War took place two generations after the fall of Carthage. King Massinisa, an ally of Rome against Carthage died in 149. He was succeeded by his son Micipsa, who was succeeded by two sons and an illegitimate nephew. Adherbal (son), Hiempsal I (son), and Jugurtha (the nephew). Micipsa, fearing conflict amongst his three heirs bid them split the kingdom up into three parts. One to be ruled over by each of them. 
The Roman Senate has been given the authority, by Micsipa, to make sure his will was carried out, but being the corrupt piece of shit it was, the Senate allowed itself to be bribed by Jugurtha to overlook his crimes after he assassinated Hiempsal and forced Adherbal to flee to Rome for safety. Peace WAS declared, albeit briefly, between the two men, although in 113 BCE Jugurtha, once again, declared war on Adherbal.
Rome, fearing instability in the region, acquiesced to Adherbal’s request for aid and sent troops to the fight and ambassadors to Jugurtha to demand peace negotiations. Jugurtha was clever though, and knew how much the Romans loved to talk. So he kept them doing just that until Cirta, Adherbal’s capital ran out of food and had to surrender. Jugurtha immediately had Adherbal executed as well as all Romans who had aided him in the defense of Cirta.
Now, the Pax Romana didn’t exist just yet, but Rome still took a hard line against anyone who dared to harm her citizens. So in 112 BCE the Jugurthine War was declared. We’re not going to go into any great detail of the Jugurthine War, suffice it to say that Rome won, it lasted until 105 BCE, and that some historians see this war as the true beginning of the fall of the Roman Republic. Gaius Marius was the victorious general and consul of the Jugurthine War (and also the Cimbrian War we’re going to talk about next) and he would

Content warning for discussion of genocide
Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time
Day 4 will take a deep dive into the Punic Wars and the Sacking of Carthage. The Fall of Carthage is widely considered to be the first recorded genocide in history and we will be looking at the hows the why and the whos of it all.
Episode Notes below:
Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 4 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 3 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we’re going to be going all the way back to the purported origins of my field of study. This week we’re going to be discussing History’s first genocide… probably. Remember that genocide require intent to destroy a specific group of people, and the destruction of Carthage during the Third Punic war is the first time in history that was can demonstrate that intent, at least so far.
As always we are not going to be diving right into the event itself. All history exists within specific cultural, national, and ethnic contexts. Genocide moreso than any other type of event. No nation just wakes up one day and suddenly decides to go on a mass murder spree. So what caused Rome and Carthage, two states that had been allies and friends for hundreds of years to suddenly fight three wars against each other and ultimately, in the case of Rome, wipe Carthage off the map?
Following the Pyrrhic War and throughout the middle of the 3rd century BCE Rome and Carthage because the two preeminent powers of the Mediterranean. During this time Carthage would come to dominate southern Spain, much of the coastal regions of North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, and the western half of Sicily, in a military and commercial empire. Whereas Rome had subjugated almost the entirety of the Italian peninsula and finally driven the last Greek colonies off of the mainland.
In 265 BCE a group of Italian mercenaries called the Mamertines appealed to both Carthage and Rome for aid after they had seized the city of Messana on the island of Sicily (modern day Messina) from the Kingdom of Syracuse. Carthage immediately entered the war, but on the side of Hiero II the King of Syracuse. The Romans, as Romans are wont to do, debated for a while about this. They didn’t really want to go to war to support people who had stolen a city from its rightful owner, and as Carthage had already entered on Syracuse’s side, entering the war at the Mamertine’s request could lead to a war with Carthage. However,  Appius Claudius Caudex filled his fellow senator heads, as well as the heads of the general assembly, with thoughts of booty and plunder. Many of the senators were already arguing that there was a strategic and monetary advantage to gaining a foothold on Sicily.
The First Punic War officially began when the first Roman sandal made landfall in 264 BCE. By the way, in case you’re wondering why it’s called the Punic war, and not the Carthaginian War, Punicus was a term the Romans used to refer to the people of Carthage, hearkening back to their Phonecian origins. When the Romans landed Messana was under siege by the combined forces of the Carthaginians and the armies of Syracuse. Sources are unclear as to why, but first the Syracusans and then the Carthiginians withdrew from the siege. Rome’s armies, under the command of Caudex marched south and put Syracuse under siege, but having only brought two legions with them they did not have the forces or supplies for a protracted siege. 
Immediately this war was looking to be a bad idea for Rome, as Carthage had nearly overwhelming naval superiority at the beginning of the war. Indeed it is somewhat shocking, at face value, that Rome was able to win the First Punic War as the majority of the 23 ye

Trigger Warning for discussions of genocide, transphobia, and mention of suicide
Note: There are some audio sync issues on this episode between me and Jo. Apologies for that. I'm still learning how to edit audio smoothly. I'm going to leave the episode as is though (unless its just utterly unlistenable). It's a learning experience. 
Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time
Day 3 will dive deep into the historic context surrounding trans identities, look at the origins of the gender binary, look at famous trans individuals throughout history, and tackle the modern manifestations of transphobia and how it all adds up to a trans genocide. Day 3 features special guest Jo Dinozzi, actor, fight choreopgrapher, and Director of A Sketch of New York.
Episode notes to follow:
Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 3 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 2 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we’re going to be talking about the trans genocide that is currently ongoing in the United States, this is certainly an issue in other parts of the West, such as Canada and the UK, but I live in the US and that’s the location that I am most qualified and able to speak on. As with last week we’re not going to be starting with what’s happening right now in 2024. We’re going to dive deep into the historical context surrounding trans gender identities and their perpetual position as a marginalized community.
Before we get into that though! I have something special for you this episode! Today we are joined by a guest, my good friend, Jo Dinozzi. Hi Jo, thanks so much for joining me today.
So, I thought we’d start today off with an examination of the gender binary and where it all started. According to Suzzanah Weiss, a feminist writer and sexologist with a Masters of Professional Studies in Sexual Health from the University of Minnesota:
 “Arguably, modern notions of the gender binary originated during the Enlightenment,” they say. “That’s when scientists and physicians adopted what historians call a ‘two-sex model’ when describing people’s bodies.”
This model treated male and female bodies as opposites, and as the only two options.
“Up until that point, popular thinkers thought more along the lines of a one-sex model, where male and female bodies were homologous,” explains Weiss.
Case and point: female genitalia were viewed as male genitalia turned inward, and female orgasm was deemed necessary for reproduction since male orgasm was.
Indeed, the one-sex model had its own problems. Mainly, women were often viewed as incomplete men.
“But the two-sex model created new problems, such as the devaluing of female sexuality and the erasure of anyone outside the gender binary,” they say.
You can find more information on the one sex theory and the emergence of the two sex theory in Thomas Laqueur's book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud.
So far though we’ve just been looking at Western ideas of gender though, many cultures around the world have far more expansive views of gender, though many of these ideas of gender are still attached to biological features and characteristics.
Some examples of these include the Hijra from Hinduism, to further underline how bigoted Western systems of power can be, the British passed a law in 1871 categorizing all Hijra people as criminals.
The Bugis ethnic group of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, recognizes three genders beyond the binary. These are the Calalai, the Calabai, and the Bissu.Something interesting to note is while Bugis gender is often described as a spectrum, bissu are deemed to be above this classification: spiritual beings who are not halfway between male and female, but rather embody the power

Content warning for discussions of antisemitism and genocide.
Also, note that from 19:10 until 20:05 you can hear an electric saw in the background. Nothing I can do about that.
Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time
Day 2 will dive deeply into the historic context of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and the Gazan Genocide. Starting 3700 years ago this episode will hit the major beats of the story and attempt to make everything a little bit clearer, if not really easier to understand.
Episode transcript follows:
Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome to Day 2 of Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard. Thank you for everyone who tuned in for Day 1 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. Today we’re going to be discussing the Gazan Genocide, what is often called, in mainstream, Western, media the Israel-Palestine Conflict. However, we’re not going to be starting in 2023, we’re not even going to be starting in 1948. To the best of my abilities we are going to drill into the historic context of this genocide and the ongoing historic and ethnic tensions that exist in the region.
Before we start with that context I would like to state for the record that what is being done to the people of Gaza is, unequivocally, a genocide.
Now, to find the beginning of this we are going to have to go back about 3700 years to the Levantine region. The regions known as the Levant is comprised of the modern nations of Cyprus, parts of Turkey southwest of the Euphrates, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and of course Israel and Palestine. Both historical record and genetic testing of modern Jewish and Palestinian people show them both being descended from ancient Canaanite cultures. While Biblical narratives show the Israelites entering the region from Egypt and conquering the region under the command of Moses' successor Joshua. Modern archeology and the historical view has, however, discounted this. The Bible is not and should not ever be used as a valid historical source. Indeed, modern archeology and historical research shows that the Jewish ethnicity emerged naturally as an offshoot of the Canaanites in much the same way that the Palestinian ethnicity did.
It is also interesting to note that historically, Palestine appears to have been a name for a region and not a distinct nation or kingdom. Indeed, during the seventh century BC, no fewer than eight nations were settled in Palestine. These included the Arameans of the kingdom of Geshur; the Samaritans who replaced the Israelite kingdom in Samaria; the Phoenicians in the northern cities and parts of Galilee; the Philistines in the Philistine pentapolis; the three kingdoms of the Transjordan– Ammon, Moab and Edom; and the Judaeans of Kingdom of Judah. The first written record of the region being called Palestine, by the way, comes from 12th century BCE Egypt, which used the term Peleset for the area.
Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy, a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region. During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, experienced a period of economic, as well as population growth. Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon. This marks the first historic diaspora of Jewish people from their indigenous homeland.

Content warning for discussion of genocide.
Welcome to the first spisode of Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard. This episode will discuss the early days of the field of genocide, the process by which it became a crime undernational law, the life of Raphael Lemkin, in brief, and the first time a country was charged with this crime above all crimes
Intro and outro music linked here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time
Episode Transcript to Follow:
Hey, Hi, Hello. This is The History Wizard and thank you for joining me for the flagship episode of “Have a Day w/ The History Wizard”. As we embark on this journey together we’re going to be talking about History, Politics, Economics, Cartoons, Video Games, Comics, and the points at which all of these topics intersect.
Anyone who has been following me one Tiktok or Instagram, @thehistorywizard on Tiktok and @the_history_wizard on Instagram, for any length of time. Literally any length of time at all, will probably be familiar with some, if not all, of the information we’re going to learn today. However, I hope that you’ll bear with me as it is important to, before we dive into the meat of the matter, make sure we’ve got some bones to wrap it around… Yes, that is the metaphor I’m going to go with. I wrote it down in my script, read it, decided I liked it, and now you all have to listen to it. 
For our first episode we are going to be diving into one of my favorite parts of my field of expertise, meta knowledge concerning the field of genocide studies itself. Yes, that’s right. We’re going to start with the definition of genocide.
The United Nations established the legal definition of genocide in the Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, which was unanimously adopted by the 51 founding members of the UN in the third meeting of the General Assemble and came into full legal force in 1951 after the 20th nation ratified it. This, by the way, is why none of the Nazis in the Nuremberg Trial were charged with the crime of genocide. The crime didn’t exist when they were on trial. But, to return to the matter at hand, the definition of genocide can be found in Article 2 of the Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide and reads as follows:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
It is important to note that definition of genocide that the UN adopted is not exactly the same as the definition that Lemkin first proposed to the UN. His definition included economic classes, as well as political parties. There was, significant, pushback against the inclusion of those two categories from the US and the USSR as both nations feared that their many of their own actions could be considered genocide. Lemkin didn’t fight too hard for those categories to stay in the definition, he was more concerned with ethnicity, nationality, race, and religion for, what he called, their cultural carrying capacity.
Now, despite Lemkin’s concern over the destruction of cultures, there is no strict legal definition of cultural genocide. The inclusion of Article 2, subsection E: Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group, could be seen as a nod to this idea, but it’s not nearly enough. There was some effort to rectify this oversight in 2007 with the passage of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states that indigenous peoples have a right against forcible assimilation. But even that is b