Hanging with History

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Great context on English society and the Poor Law mechanism. “According to the 16th century stereotype, the undeserving pauper was typically rootless, masterless and homeless.  A Vagrant.  His behavior was disorderly and criminal, that of a rogue.” In the 16th century, the poor laws and other laws make the vagrant criminal.  But, like ot...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Europe wide, there were Humanist driven policy responses to poverty in the 16th century, which we have covered in some detail.  These were essentially all failures. There was one successful poverty program which, despite many flaws, solved the problem of famine among the poor.  Just one?  How could this possibly be?  If we brutally summa...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. During the 16th century, this whole social controversy over the treatment of the poor ranged across and intersected with the Reformation.  You also have the social changes happening where the power of the central court is growing and that of the knights is weakening.  The economy is becoming more dependent on cash and trade and division...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We left last episode with the policy response of Venice, Ypres, Rouen and Grenoble to first the 1527-1531 famine and later structural response.  Today, we’ll look at Lyons, Valladolid and England.   It’s not easy, it never is when demons are involved.           Anyway, we will have looked at France, the low countries, England, Spain and...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We are summarizing the problem circa 1525, before we get into the pan-European, well, Western European, solutions to the problem, driven by the Humanists. We have a simultaneous admiration and horror towards poverty.  The warmth stems from the role of poverty in elite society.  They are objects of charity, and without charity how do we g...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Last episode we had the emotional episode about the sufferings of paupers in 16th century Italy.  So we are now done.. with autophagy, cannibalism, dung eating, baker murdering, and all that. We are now moving on to a European wide response to poverty at the policy level.  Bronislaw Geremek’s Poverty A History is a primary source.  Then...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Quoting Dante: “The disease of the starving, I mean hunger, is a pitiable affliction.  Of human calamities hunger is certainly supreme.  It brings about the cruelest end of all deaths. Hunger is a disease that torments with slowness, a pain that endures, a sickness that lasts, and is hidden in the bowels.  Since it consumes the natural h...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We are trying to take a look at the life of a knight.  A look at the life in full, stripped of idealizations and self righteous outrage on behalf of oppressed peasants.  Last episode we were looking at medieval life.  There were knights and clerics as relatively free parts of society.  We know that west of the Hajnal line, the catastroph...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We are going to start with trivialities, then get into some serious differences between now and the medieval psyche.  Around gross stuff, aggression and killing and finally torture,  and torture’s enjoyment.  This is absolutely not an episode for children.    If you hate me by the end I will understand.  This is going to explain that wes...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. It was probably while the brutal siege in Vienna went on, and the little boys and girls of the region were being sold into slavery, after being raped a few times if more modern examples teach us anything.  That Erasmus wrote a book l  On Civility for Boys .  This was a publishing blockbuster, full of useful advice, like- try not to fart...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. There are two stories here, their opposition is part of a theme.   Erasmus, the great Erasmus , Erasmus of Rotterdam was even more a product of the Devotio Moderna than was Luther.  Most of his young education was by the Brethren of the Common Life or their imitators. I am Groote. Last episode I called him a Satirist.  Of course he was m...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. A miner’s son, decided one day, to nail 95 thesis to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg in the year of our lord 1517.  It seems unlikely he intended to split his church, the Catholic, universal church, into a bewildering multiplicity of new religions and sects. And yet, trained in the Devotio Moderna’s way of taking action and r...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We explore the roots of Humanism and the Reformation.  Taking a long look at the Devotio Moderna, the Brethren of the Common Life.  These were key influences on both Erasmus and Martin Luther.  But more than that, the Devotio Moderna were a vital element in the invention of the printing press.  We look at Gerhard Groote the founder of th...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This episode is just a little introduction to the theories of the causes of the industrial revolution as of right now.  We look at the Sheilagh Ogilvie classification of 5 general theories of the Causes of the Industrial Revolution and Michael Magoon's list of causes. Of course, Harald has a few pet theories of his own by now.  His...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Consider the British Empire in 1792, the year of Macartney’s expedition to China and the year young Emperor Francis began to look askance at the French Revolution and all the ruling factions within it started to wish for a war.   Well at that time the empire was rather modest, a few spice islands, Canada, Gibraltar, New South Wales had s...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. More focus on Mexico and California than is ideal, but there is a general overview of Spanish America. Spanish America, more than  anywhere else, shows us the global ramifications of the Napoleonic Wars.  “The crisis and collapse of Spain’s empire was the direct result of political turmoil in Europe.  During the Napoleonic wars this vast...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The challenges to recruiting enough men for service in the Royal Navy and the Army and Militia were formidable.   It is revealed that the War of 1812 was really one war too many for Britain.   The necessity to supply seamen for the new North American Lake service meant that the Royal Navy did not have enough men to staff the newly produc...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The trade war between Britain and Napoleon reached a new level in 1807.   British merchants were desperate for new markets.  The French were finding trouble, customs dues fell 80% despite the new Rhine river trade.  We've already talked a great deal about how the Russian economy was pushed to the brink. Smuggling was the response. ...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The wars from 1793 to 1815 included expenditure of 830 million pounds for Army Navy and Ordinance, mainly the Navy. Another 65 million pounds was spent on subsidies to allies.  Looking at a total of 895 million, probably with secret funds we are over 900 million pounds.  To do all this spending 578 million was added to the national debt...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. “The removal of soil, earth or rubbish, the conveyance of stones, sand or lime, everything is done by little four wheel carts drawn by a single horse on iron railways.. the advantage they represent is immense.  England owes to them part of her wealth.  Never without THEM could coal, iron ore, lime stone, slate and other raw materials hav...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We have a real example of a cultural change brought about by the pressures of war.   The great weapon of war against corruption is accounting and auditing.  But first attitudes must change.  We see various forms of corruption becoming less and less tolerated, as by an unconscious process every form of corruption is tainted by association...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Before the 1807 attack on Denmark, Napoleon gave an ultimatum to Denmark, to Talleyrand’s horror btw.  The ultimatum was for Denmark to turn over their fleet.  But before the deadline for the French ultimatum passed the British invaded, which obviously required months of preparation beforehand.   The British, warned by intelligence, that...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. You probably know that by the middle of the 19th century, the  British dominated India.  The British introduced railroads and electricity, public health and infrastructure, and a population boom began.  By the end  Victoria became the Empress.   But before the French Revolution the British footprint in India was relatively small.  It was...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. For the Ottoman empire the French Revolution to Waterloo have a definte arc, and it isn’t pretty, and there is some coverage up to the Crimean War. The start of the Revolution coincides with the Rule of Selim 3rd in 1789.  And he was a reformer as was his father, he was raised to appreciate the West.  The end of this period will see the...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. A scientific expedition, led by Jean Bruguière and Guillaume Olivier.  Now they truly were scientists, but they were also diplomats secretly working for France.  Jean was an expert on molluscs, snails, shellfish and barnacles. He is credited with the discovery of 34 species of the same including a chiton named after Spinoza.  Olivier, by...