Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 46

[cahn]

Background: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.

Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*

Comments

Re: Stuarts and Scotland

[mildred_of_midgard]

There was also the Whig Junto in the 1690s and first decade of the 1700s, which comes up a lot if you read about the War of the Spanish Succession, which I have.

Wikipedia also tells me about another Junto:

In North America, the Whig Junto was the inspiration for Benjamin Franklin's Junto in 1727 Philadelphia upon his return from London.

It concludes:

The term "Junto" is derived from "Junta", a Hispano-Portuguese term for a civil deliberative or administrative council, which in 18th-century English had not yet gained its present association with the governments of a military dictatorship.

Which is why when Selena wrote "the English Junto (yes, Junto, not Junta, and yes, they were called that)" it took me a minute to figure out why that would be noteworthy at all. I'm just too used to seeing Juntos in this period, it's my primary association. ;)

Not my first time and won't be my last of being more familiar with the 18th century than the modern day; I still remember arguing with a modern map about the German/Polish border as a teenager, only to belatedly realize that my mental map owed a lot to Fritz. :'D

Re: Stuarts and Scotland

[mildred_of_midgard]

My wife tells me that in Portuguese, "junta" still just means sth like committee or board, nothing to do with dictatorships.