Hanging with History

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...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We start off the & Years war with a look at some of the major leaders, William Pitt the elder, Choiseul, Frederick the Great and Maria Teresa and the Diplomatic Revolution.  Then we turn to North America, where this war was known as the French and Indian War and take the war from the small forces with obscure commanders like George W...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Say goodbye to peace. We cover the War of Jenkins Ear.  The excitement of the capture of Portobello, Rule Brittania is written in celebration. This little war merges into the War of the Austrian Succession.  We see the rise of Prussia and the beginning of the Frederick the Great legend in his struggle against the hero Queen Maria Theresa...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Reverend Thomas Malthus reveals that we live in a universe run by a trickster god.  As soon as the basic principles are figured out and explained: that human economies operate basically the same as animal economies, it ceases to be true.   We cover the basic operation of Malthusian economies.  And move into the demographic changes that b...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. How did Britain cope with the massive changes of the 18th century?  Walpole skills in this regard are under appreciated. Our emphasis is in the fast and slow changes.  The slow changes were the evolving changes in property rights, where the owners of property did not have to contend with others over their plans to nearly the extent in th...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Was Walpole in power for the purpose of holding on to power or was he holding on to power to enact his preferred policies?  Was he self consciously developing a stable example of parliamentary monarchy?  What were his policies? There is yet another difference between Britain and the continent in the relatively decentralized British admin...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Mississippi Bubble was possibly the most consequential financial bubble in all of history.  How was a murdering, jail breaking Scotsman given the keys to the French economy?   John Law was a flawed genius, like Alexander Hamilton in many ways.   A lot of the episode is about him, and his unique understanding of the 3 foundations of m...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Church is in Danger!  Her Holy Communion rent and divided by factious and schismatical impostors.  Her primitive worship profaned and abused, her sacraments prostituted ! Sacheverell, arguably the first modern type celebrity, illustrates the risks to political and social stability still faced by England. The nowadays obscure Robert W...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Chicken War is covered as part of the War of the Quadruple Alliance as well as the more consequential Armada of 1719. Cardinal Alberoni is chucked out of Madrid when the Duke of Berwick invades at the head of a French army. The true important consequence of the War of the Quadruple Alliance is to drive the early Georges away from the...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Peace treaties do not always work out the way they are intended, especially if they are complex and take time to implement.  The many treaties comprising the peace of Utrecht are like this. Spain is the main loser after the War of the Spanish Succession, and an Italian Cardinal seeks to remedy the situation by going to war with the 3 gre...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We look at the factors that drove France to join the American Revolution despite the obvious ideological problems with a divine right monarchy supporting a revolution.   For France this was an opportunistic war, with the seemingly perfect chance to humiliate the ancestral enemy.  And as Louis XIV put it, the wars were all about who could...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We cover the repressive powers of the royal government and some of the reactions to it. Some of the issues are common to all autocracies, such as oppression that backfires and concessions that just lead to further concessions. But some are quite unique to France.  The justice retenue, the tax related quartering of troops, the censorship...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This episode measures France against the 5 standard theories for the origins of the Industrial Revolution. 1. Special unique culture that accorded dignity and freedom of action to the middle classes.   This is McCloskey and Paul Slack among others.  Clear fail. 2. The production function idea that high wages drives investment in labor sa...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Cabinet Noir is the most interesting part of this show.  This mail reading, code breaking part of the regime was part of their effort to deal with the fact that public opinion was just very difficult to discern.   Tocqueville's analysis of the causes of Revolution suggests that the easing of oppression is a major cause of the Re...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We continue our social history with a look at the Psychology of Peasants and Nobles, with Jon Elster as our guide. For nobles we track some of the thornier problems of noble identity, the cult of ancestry, its implications for personal behavior and its sometimes self destructive nature.   We also have a lighter look at the obsession over...