It becomes a habit. With each confinement, I end up zapping, searching, going from one platform to another. And stumble upon a hidden treasure. This is how I just discovered “When History Makes Dates”. Initially produced by Arte in 2017, this documentary series, the three seasons of which are also available on Amazon Prime Video, stops at each episode, as its name suggests, on a major date in human history. February 11, 1990? The release of Nelson Mandela. June 13, 323 BC. AD? The death of Alexander the Great. June 20, 1789? The Oath of the Tennis Court. Each date is a pretext to put the event in perspective on the time scale in less than 30 minutes.
The success of this series is due a lot to its narrator Patrick Boucheron, teacher at the College de France, learned and enthusiastic. He tells with passion, even gluttony, this History which he popularizes wonderfully. The teacher that we would have liked to have and that we all dream of for our children.
“When History makes dates” is undoubtedly worth much more than a video course. Because this dive into the world before also tells the world of now. A last date? The year 1492. The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the beginning of the large-scale circulation of viruses and bacteria which still poison us: influenza, imported to the Indians by the conquistadors, and syphilis, brought back from across the Atlantic and which would devastate Europe. And Patrick Boucheron concludes: “The microbial unification of the world had begun”.
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