Hanging with History

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Only 24% of French priests are willing to take the constitutional oath putting their allegiance to the state above that to Jesus and the Pope.  The Vendee is extra religious because of their relatively recent conversion from Calvinism.  We have the the flight to Varrenes, Louis XVI’s failed escape attempt, which leads to the Champ De Mar...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Only 24% of French priests are willing to take the constitutional oath putting their allegiance to the state above that to Jesus and the Pope.  The Vendee is extra religious because of their relatively recent conversion from Calvinism.  We have the the flight to Varrenes, Louis XVI’s failed escape attempt, which leads to the Champ De Mar...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The first year of the French Revolution the way it is conventionally dated from the fall of the Bastille.  We have had bloody violence and sensible reforms, the loss of privileges for the first and 2nd estates were a really good idea.  The establishment of the departments, also sensible, a reform that has lasted to the present day.  But...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Regency Crisis shines a light British Resiliency during the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.  We end up in a situation where a spiritual testing of the king occurs in the most public way possible.  And the vast majority of the British public responds with joy, also in a very public way.  Everyone knows that everyone knows....

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Nootka Sound Crisis of 1790 has a confrontation of 4 powers in the Pacific Northwest; Britain, Spain, Russia and America.  This is profoundly affected by the French Revolution, both in the diplomatic part of the crisis and its resolution in Britain’s favor.  Later the Revolutionary Wars distract Britain from exploiting its victory he...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Dutch Crisis of 1787, was said by Napoleon to have caused the Revolution of 1789.  We cover Dutch history through the 1780’s and its effects on the infant United States and three great powers; the United Kingdom, France and Prussia.  This crisis and the Nootka Sound Crisis are examples of how Europe functioned at the great power leve...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Spycraft was one of Britain’s advantages during the 2nd hundred years war. What were the other advantages Britain took into the end of the 2nd hundred years war?  Pitt hired a number of reformers who drove through unpopular reforms in communications, shipyard construction and efficiency.   There were a number of reforms that also founder...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. William Pitt goes toe to toe against a large coalition led by Charles Fox and Lord North.  George 3 is on firmly on his side, all the power of the crown is bent to his support.  And yet this is not enough until public opinion finds a clear expression.  We cover the background to the rise of William Pitt, what was going in France at the t...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. A summary of the 1793-1815 period is provided along with brief descriptions of the themes we will be following. Intensity:WW1 level financial and human commitment There are many wars inside these wars Modernizing in both administration and communications Repression vs Freedom Continuities in the 2nd hundred years war Economic Warfare Sma...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Newtonian philosophy, and John Locke, along with Francis Bacon has an exciting empirical philosophical package that took Europe by storm in the 1740s, with the able assistance of Voltaire.  Locke offered an epistemology interesting to philosophers, but people like Montesquieu were more taken by his description of the interaction between...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The last universal genius.  There are minutes spent just lightly covering Leibniz’s contributions to science and his place in history, they are so extensive.  He is put forward as the father of  modern computing and patron saint of cybernetics.  What you may not realize is that in philosophy he was also a detective and a spy.  Then we co...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Spinoza’s conflicts with contemporary scientists like Boyle and Huygens center on Spinoza’s insistence on the primacy of philosophical reason over empirical experimentation and empirical reasoning.  Spinoza’s argument against Boyle’s experiments are presented. Jonathon Israel highlights the influence of Spinoza by showing that much of th...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Spinoza’s philosophical framework laid out, along with several points of disagreement with the moderate Enlightenment Newtonians and Leibnizians.  We get to some of Spinoza’s specific arguments with other scientists.  With Steno, he had a non rational disagreement, with Huygens, he was accused of focusing too much on reason rather then e...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We look at the tragedies of Spinoza's life.  The clique that forms around him.  The tragi comic end of his friend and mentor Van Den Enden. Primarily we cover Spinoza's views, and here we introduce the idea that we live in a fully mechanistic, fully determined world, where there is no room for free will or God's providence...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The first of a six episode arc on the Early Enlightenment.  We emphasize the clash of ideas, then the content of ideas, then biography. This episode lays out the 3 way battle for the dominant philosophy between the  Aristotelian Scholastics, the dominate group in 1600, the moderate Enlightenment (which itself consisted of 3 battling elem...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Fiscal Military State concept is a valid tool for analyzing the role of government in this era, not to imply it's an ideal form of analysis.  British central government employees, well, 90% had a taxing or fund raising function.  And 90% of funds raised were spent on war and to pay debts from previous wars. And of course we summ...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We finish up the crime issues, the bloody codes, private prosecution of crime, transportation to Australia, that we began last episode.  Then we move into the consequences of the Glorious Revolution, legitimacy and the changing role of Parliament, and Parliament as a meta institution.   We get a flavor of Joel Mokyr's coverage of in...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We take a close look at local government during the 1700-1850 period.  What work happened at the parish level?   The Poor Laws, a unique British institution, are examined for their possible contribution to the Industrial Revolution.  Also, the private provision of public goods. We also look at whether a more agentic population, free to a...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. 80% of criminal prosecutions are brought privately by the victims, with over 450 associations established to support criminal prosecutions. There is a lack of specie and small notes to settle accounts between tradesmen and entrepreneurs.  Therefore, there are a lot of small amounts owed back and forth. There aren't enough geniuses w...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Paradox abounds when we look at entrepreneurs.  Expected returns are negative, but this doesn't really matter and we explain why.  Bankruptcies are common, but they only take your assets, they can't take what's between your ears and in your heart.  We look at some bankrupts and note that these are not failures at life.   W...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Alternative Title: Families, Firms and Factories.  Half the episode is a deep dive into the trio of Samuel Bentham, Marc Brunel, and Henry Maudsley and how they worked together to magnify British advantages over Napoleon and the French in the first fully automated steam powered factory.   We look at the changes brought about by the creat...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. A novel theory of the distribution of consumption during the end of the 2nd hundred years war is developed. We explain the problems of relying on changing productivity numbers, but we still tend to accept them because the rest of our context suggests that they were truly increasing. In an episode focused on economic statistics and financ...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Finance and medicine may seem like a mismatched pair. They wrap up our coverage of the Service Sectors in the Industrial Revolution. We cover the rise of the country banks, the history of the Bank of England, the 3 insurance sectors (yes, there were only 3)  and  the growth in skills of the securities industry.  Medicine is sometimes bru...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Service sectors were a key part of the British economy, even in the 18th century..  This shows that the Industrial Revolution was more than merely improvements in textiles, steam and metals.  Transportation improvements, pre railroad, reveal Britain's organization flexibility in a wide variety of crucial arenas. Some key facts, in 1...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We finish integrating the story of Britain's 3.5X rise in population from 1700-1850 by explaining how they all got fed.  In complete contradiction to Malthusian theory, the British diet got richer and more varied as the population exploded.  And it all happened despite the fact that the climate continued to be fairly terrible during...