Hanging with History

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...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This is social history in some depth.  We look at the role of preasance a mong  and within social classes.  Presance is identified as a major force limiting collective action that could have allowed for more reform before the Revolution.  Status issues are always complex, and important, but in the ancien regime it goes to 11. There is al...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We cover the social continuities and the changes in France's  ancien regime that happened under the Louis XIV through Louis XVI before the French Revolution.

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The 2nd Hundred Years War arc continues. Louis XIV's Geo Strategy and and an exploration of the French government's financial system.  A strange combination of topics?  But no, the one explains necessary features and failures of the other. France is remarkably backward in financial matters compared to the Netherlands and Great...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. An intro to France during the reign of Louis XIV.   The focus this episode is the peasantry and the nobility of the sword.  For the peasants, life may not be Mordor, but it is far harder and more exploited than we might assume.  The effort here is to shake the mindset of France as an idyllic setting for the 75% who are peasants.  Materia...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We cover the campaign to take Gibraltar and hold it 1704-5, including the great sea battle of Malaga.  We cover the war in North America, the breaking of Spanish power and the confused picture in Nova Scotia, where after the peace none of the participants understand the consequences of the peace the same way.   And the introduction of pa...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The war continues with continued victories for Marlborough, but coalition politics and politics in London spell bad news for John Churchill.    A discussion of the strategic realities of seapower leads us to cover Rooke's first expedition in 1702 that ends with the utter destruction of French and Spanish fleets in Vigo Bay. With Cam...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Marlborough's earliest campaigns covered in great detail. There is an analysis of why Marlborough's armies were able to defeat what were previously the greatest armies in the world.  This is a highly controversial topic. With Camie we cover the famous anecdotes, the women dressed as men serving as soldiers, the British tendency...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We discuss many of the political and financial  issues around the Spanish Succession war.    We introduce the idea of the fiscal military state, and how that relates to the miracle story.   We cover how Isaac Newton helped King William execute his wartime strategy to fund the wars against Louis XIV.   The Duke of Marlborough gets introdu...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. So many names for one war.   We focus on the war at sea and in North America.  The peace of exhaustion and provide an introduction to the War of the Spanish Succession.  The great strategic outcomes of the is war are covered as well.  The financial revolutions that financed these wars is introduced.   Nine Years War, War of the Grand All...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We take a look at the big themes we will be discussing.  This include Naval Mastery, the Balance of Power, continuity between the wars, the sudden growth of the British empire, the birth of modern politics, and invasion scares. There is also a good deal of review of the mindset ideas from Anglo-Saxon/Viking times through the Middle Ages...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. "It takes but one foe to breed a war," says Faramir in the Lord of the Rings. 1672 was the Disaster Year for the United Provinces, and a life changing trauma for William of Orange.   We cover the cannibalistic crowning event, the Bombing Bishop and the Wild Hunt.  Appeasement as a concept when Louis XIV is in your neighborhood....