History Resources: Videos

Outside the boundaries of America’s collective folk imagination and underlying the sweeping narrative of U.S. history lies the lived experience of the nation’s westward pioneers. Without exaggeration or embellishment, this captivating documentary focuses on the lives of the common people who headed West between the early 1860s and the turn of the 20th century. Accounts of personal challenges and hardships, interwoven with larger stories of progress and warfare, create a vivid narrative that presents the expansion of America through the eyes of those who won the West at the expense of the land’s indigenous peoples. By demythologizing America’s Manifest Destiny, Out West will doubtlessly alter many previously unquestioned beliefs. (57 minutes)

To William, the Duke of Normandy, England was “Angleterre” or the Old French equivalent—and in 1066 the country became as French as William could make it. This program describes the Norman invasion that ended Anglo-Saxon rule, summarizes William the Conqueror’s transformative reign, and profiles the six rulers who followed him. How Henry I wrested the crown from his brothers and solidified royal authority, how Stephen of Blois succeeded instead of Henry’s own son, how Richard Coeur de Lion fulfilled chivalric ideals but as a king fared no better than his hapless brother John—these and other accounts compose a lively proto-history of England’s “foreign” royalty. (47 minutes)

In the 1840s, civil war and famine in southern China drove thousands of young men to seek their fortune in the California Gold Rush. This program traces the Chinese experience in America, from their welcome in San Francisco as “celestial men of commerce,” through the Gold Rush and building of the Transcontinental Railroad, to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act banning their entry into this country. This program rediscovers the often-overlooked role of the Chinese and tells their stories through the lives of individuals using photos, artifacts, and interviews with descendants and historians. (89 minutes)

At a time when revolutionary France was assailed from all sides, there emerged a young military officer whose genius and ambition assured him of great fame—and notoriety. In this program, Dr. David Chandler—world-renowned authority on the Emperor Napoleon and author of The Campaigns of Napoleon—provides full commentary on the strategies and tactics of the Napoleonic Wars. Large-scale reenactments bring to life the military campaigns that so strongly influenced a century of European history. Maps, hundreds of images and paintings, and analyses of the weapons used by the opposing armies also contribute to this thorough examination of the Napoleonic era. (31 minutes)