Hanging with History

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. To what extent does foreign trade contribute to the Industrial Revolution. There is certainly some entanglement and a weak case can be be built for the idea that it was important.  A strong case that foreign trade was vital to the Industrial Revolution or causal in some sense, can not be made. There is also a explanation of the effects o...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Balloons and lighting rods.  Platinum, not gold.  Ceramics and Lighting.  Chlorine bleach. We take a look at often neglected technological advances. The social consequences create the modern world.  Is that a materialistic approach to history???

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. To what degree does technological change depend on science in the Industrial Revolution.  We look at the paradigmatic cases of Steam Power and textiles. And we look at howe we know what we know.  And finally, this brings up something I've threatened to discuss many times, the flaws in using time series when there is a technological...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This is one of the less intuitive ideas about the origins of the Industrial Revolution.  An historically unique concentration of skilled workmen were available in pre miracle England to translate the ideas of early modern science and technology into real industrial products and processes that worked. The apprenticeship system with weak g...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We explore a couple 100 year cycles to move from Enlightenment ideas to practical products cheap and reliable enough for a large market to use. We explore first sewing machines and then electricity, leading to the telegraph.    I discuss how I had to change my mind about the way scientists and inventors moved easily between the Enlighten...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The British Enlightenment was slightly different in character from the French Enlightenment.  Britain had already accomplished many of the goals the French Enlightenment was seeking. We start off with academic economic ideas of institutions and access costs.  Moving on to how the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution interpenetrate...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. During the enlightenment there are profound differences of opinion.  But there is a sense that human progress and social progress for the vast majority was both possible and desirable. There is the Baconian program with many scientists working in its name.  There is the Lockean idea that wealth is the product of human creativity and that...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We look at the destructive forces that hold back all societies from achieving the miracle - modern economic growth. There are two negative feedback loops that end in violent destruction or evil, but pathetic parasitism.  And a third binding constraint, inadequate knowledge.  We review the history of Britain to show that in our reference...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We take a closer look at Britain in 1700.  Both for the purpose of setting the stage for the rest of the Enlightenment arc,  but also to examine McCloskey's framing of the Big Question, Little Problem of the Industrial Revolution. Big Question boils down to Why was western Europe able to accomplish an economic lift off in the 19th c...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We move into the analysis of how the Enlightenment affected the Industrial Revolution.    The Primary text for this arc will be Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy. Science, philosophy and the sharing of information links the Enlightenment in Britain to the Industrial Revolution.  But...really?

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We take a look at the advent of steam power and its deep historical origins. The first steam engines in China were imported from Britain, so we are finally up to a technology not invented in China! The first steam engines we know about are described by Heron (or Heron) of Alexandria in his book Pneumatica from the first century.  And tho...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The first major advances in ironmaking were the byproducts of industrial espionage and whiskey. We get into a more detailed look at the early days of Iron before and during the miracle.  Along with telling the story of Dud Dudley and Abraham Darby, we go into the economists thought experiment, could the Industrial Revolution have happene...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This episode focuses on cotton industry advances in the 18th century.  It covers the unique situation of a demand fueled series of inventions that were an answer to both imbalances in the putting out system and imbalances created by early success. We take a look at some other imbalances to, primarily in finance.  We show how and why work...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The date is 1760.  The Industrial Revolution is about to get underway.  Abraham Darby has already broken the Dutch monopoly of brass.  He has already developed the coke fueled blast furnace.  John Kay has already invented the Flying Shuttle.  There are several jennies out there.   Things are out of balance and are going to have to change...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We use The Unbound Prometheus by David Landes to cover the economic history facet of the Industrial Revolution.  This episode introduces us to some big issues, the role of religious dissidents and the "invention of invention."

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We explore one reason for the remarkable industrial peace experienced by Britain during the Industrial Revolution.   Peterloo, Luddites and Chartists, saw bodies, but in such small amounts that it was nothing compared to the French Revolution, 1848 and other episodes of repression. Anglican latitudinarianism resulted in a somewhat boring...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Now we get to know the answer to the question:  Does the Lower Class have anything to offer besides their labor? We answer the question, how did the lower class achieve literacy?  And why did they make the effort? This episode focuses in on the ways the 350 lower class writers analyzed by Emma Griffin in Liberty's Dawn, achieve lite...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. No joke.  We use Emma Griffin's analysis of Lower Class autobiographies in her book, Liberty's Dawn.   The love lives of the lower class reveal a great deal about life at this time.  The amount of freedom which exists for lower class people to spend time alone with the opposite sex is surprising and unusual for the world.  Anal...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We take a look at the grimmest part of the Industrial Revolution and that is Child Labor.   Fundamentally, the intersection between lower class culture and the Industrial Revolution was a disaster for children, until it became miraculously better.  I try not to be too sentimental and mawkish about it, but it is a tough subject. The episo...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. As the Industrial Revolution reaches more and more of England the working lives of men experience change.  We are looking exclusively at the lives of the lower class via Emma Griffin's Liberty's Dawn. This episode builds on Episode 100.

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. So just what was that miracle that happened that one time? A difficult question to answer, we'll take the approach of looking at it through many different facets.  We are using the analogy of a multi faceted gemstone. We start with the lives of the lowest classes, a strange choice?  Well, Gregory Clark says these were the main benef...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This continues the British centric focus on the approach to the American Revolution.  We cover the many distractions of the British government and get into some of the many ways government policy and grip on reality was just lacking in so many ways. John Wilkes and his saga is a major distraction and a fascinating story.  But there is al...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The lead up to the American Revolution from the British perspective.   We revisit how divided Britain was over the American issue.  The episode takes a close look at the dual failures of the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act.  We discuss how the Irish example prevented there from being any resolution to the "taxation without representatio...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The 7 Years war in Western Germany and the defeat of France's ambitions to invade the British Isles in 1759.   France invades Hannover 6 times, 5 times very unsuccessfully despite always having a substantial numerical advantage,   We spend considerable time looking at the battle of Minden in 1759.   We take a look at Spain's at...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This one covers : European grand strategy with a focus on the opening of the naval war and the execution of Admiral Byng.   The Prussian part of the war in significant detail with focus on Frederick's two miracles. The War in India, including the Battle of Plessey and the attempted attack on Bengal by the VOC.  The Black Hole of Cal...