Avsnitt
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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.
We explore the madness of George III, his recovery and the nation’s reactions. There are anecdotes followed by an analysis of 3 quantitative measures that tell us, that the British public was more concerned with and joyful of, the outcome of this illness, than of any other public event in a generation.
And the timing of it was almost too perfect. The spring of 1789 in Britain, just before the July 14 storming of the Bastille.
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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 here, to the great benefit of the infant United States.
This features the two largest empires in the world, in geographic extent, Russia and Spain, tussling at the extreme limits of their influence, in a region still dominated by Native Americans, largely untouched by the Eurasian disease pool. We get a lot of Pacific Northwest history as background, including California history, but the is primarily a European diplomatic crisis settled by the seeming nullity of French power. It' s France’s inability to support her Bourbon ally Spain, that forces Spain to submit to a British ultimatum in October 1790.
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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 level when France was in too much disarray to be effectively involved.
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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 foundered, such as trying to remove the dockyard workers’ right of CHIPS.
We also cover the career of the naval captain/intelligence agent Phillippe D’Auvergne, who, despite his name, was a major intelligence asset for Britain.
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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 time to weaken the French government, and Charles Fox and his gigantic overreach trying to take control of India.
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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
Small country vs large country
Global impact is epically world changing
France vs Britain is at the core, but often at crucial times, the great powers are distracted.
The emergence of the naval hegemon
The evangelical Christian origins of the movement to end the African slave trade.
The story arcs of the Royal Navy and army and the French army and navy.
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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 political players, early public choice theory. The excitement came from the Baconian program, backed by the vivid reality of real discoveries and solutions by Boyle and Newton.
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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 cover his biography from the time he is a young man in Paris, the employment at the court in Hanover, and the point in his life where he changed from being an amazing student of the knowledge of his time, into becoming the creator of a philosophy designed to combat Spinoza. Leibniz believed in relative space and time, but he set out to defend absolute morality.
Building from the toy ideas Voltaire includes in Candide we go into what the Theodicy really is about.
There are great similarities between Leibniz and Spinoza in terms of method and philosophical assumptions, that are quite different from Newton’s. We introduce Voltaire’s role as a propagandist for Newtonianism (including Locke), but that will be developed more thoroughly next episode.
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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 the Boyle’s later work, on reconciling science with religion, is a reaction to Spinoza. And Harald makes the argument that the mutual toleration of science and religion in Britain specifically, and the extension of the idea of flexibility out of the realm of technology and the economy and into philosophy may be a serious contender for a cause of the miracle.
Then we cover Spinoza’s unusual view of virtue and his politics through section 4 of Ethics and the Tracticus Politicus. Harald paints this as the origin story for totalitarianism and mass murder in the 20th century style.
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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 experiment which inevitably leads to error, much to Spinoza’s personal chagrin.
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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. -
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 elements, Cartesians, Newtonians and Leibnizians) and the Radical Enlightenment whose chief philosophical source was Spinoza.
We lay out key beliefs of the traditional Aristotelians, their method and then the beliefs of the Cartesians.
3 episodes on Spinoza will follow and one each on Leibniz and Newton to finish. -
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 summarize the context we gained in all 3 parts. -
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 intellectual property rights, with views expressed in favor of the patent system by Goethe, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, and valid complaints made by Charles Dickens and Charles Babbage.
As usual with British institutions, we contrast them favorably with continental institutions, no matter how shambolic, the British institutions are so often better. -
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 act, because unlike on the continent, they don't need permission for everything, contributes to the miracle as well. -
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 with both great business skills and technical skills.
Social norms and Trust help to smooth over the difficulties caused by a difficult to use legal system, a shortage of coin and currency and the need for partnerships within firms. -
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.
We look at Entrepreneurs and their social class origin, their religions (7% of the population -Dissenters, produced 50% of the entrepreneurs. We look at the, surprisingly, totally true myth of the self-made man. We look at whether they come from inside or outside their industries. -
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 creation of factories. From its effects on families, the separation of distinct spheres of consumption vs production (home vs workplace), to the externalities and the regulations that resulted. We look at the standard intuitive explanations for why factories arose at all and find them 90% persuasive. The AI theory is the last 10%. -
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 financial theory, Harald, perhaps betrays difficulties with emotional stability by berating the audience.
You can learn about income growth, the industrious revolution, though there probably should have been more mention of the spiritual anxieties of puritans, the role of social stability in England (relative stability), the vital role of reputation in successful business, and labor mobility. -
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 brutal and barbaric during the long 18th century. We do not shy away from that fact, but there are still improvements against scurvy, mother's mortality, anemia, and crucially smallpox. Still, why did the Enlightenment make so little improvement in medicine before the discovery of germ theory, when so many other fields based on incorrect premises, fell to empirical thinking? We have an answer. - Visa fler