Ahir Shah
speaker
80 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Ahir Shah’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Normally on this show, the default answer is the British Empire. That's normally what happens, about 80%. Weirdly, on this one, it's America. Yeah, the United States. Which I was not expecting. The Americans show up in the 1850s, and it's a guy by the name of Commodore Matthew Perry, not the beloved actor from Friends. 1853, tell me the story, Satana.
Okay, Ahir, we've got a picture actually we can show you. This is by an unknown artist. It's one of Matthew Perry's ships. Would you like to describe it for us?
It's a black ship.
This is a depiction of a suspicious foreign power, Satana. Wow. That's the perception at the time. And once the Americans are sort of through the door, Britain are like, well, could we come in? You've done a deal with them and we're good at empires too. So the British, who else, Satana?
Ahir, if you were the government of the Shogunate of Japan, how would you respond to this influx of Western powers waving treaties in your face?
Satana, the really interesting thing is that the shogunate at this stage consults the emperor, who for 250 years has been sort of, you know, over there somewhere in Kyoto. But suddenly the shogun consults the emperor for his advice.
Oh, good name for a movement. Yeah, it is, isn't it? Two different policies in one movement. I like that.
And so we've got all these domestic issues now in the 1860s. So we've got famines, angry peasants in the countryside, angry people in the cities, a bunch of foreign countries parking their warships on Japan's front lawn. Ahir, how would you solve this in the Ahir shogunate? I'm going to keep using that. Sorry, I'm very happy with it.
You'd say, well, just sort of farewell. Thanks very much. You have a go.
Okay, good. I mean, Satana, we're coming towards the Meiji Restoration. So do you want to talk us through the lead up to that?
Five was too young, but maybe 12 is just right.
Do they choose the 12-year-old then? Is that the decision?
So things are going really wrong because we're back to the political violence that we started our story with, really.
Okay, so the shogun steps down, the emperor steps up.
It's the endo of the edo. We're out. It's done. Mission accomplished. 265 years. Edo period. Completed it, mate.
Okay, well, that's been a fascinating chat. It's time now for the nuance window. This is the part of the show where Ahio and I set down our samurai swords and we sit quietly with our rice bowl for two minutes while Dr. Satana takes centre stage to tell us something we need to know about Edo, Japan. Without much further ado...
Thank you, Satana, for that wonderful lesson. Thank you. Really enjoyable. Listener, after today's episode, you want more from our here. We've got our episodes on the rise of Julius Kaiser and the Indus civilization. And for a different East Asian story, try our episode on Tang Dynasty China. That's a medieval story, which I enjoyed very much.
But it's time to just say thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the sensational Dr. Satana Suzuki from SOAS. Thank you, Satana. Thank you so much. I had a great fun. Yeah, it was real fun. And in Comedy Corner, we had the always amazing Ahir Shah. Thank you, Ahir. Thank you. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we restore another topic to its rightful place in history.
But for now, I'm off to go and stage a revival of Shogun the Musical, because every Shogun needs show tunes. Bye!
I felt like I could be seen and affect people.
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