Podcast
Hanging with History
Hosted by Harald Hansen · EN
The first season focuses on the origins of the Industrial Revolution or the Great Enrichment, we go deep into history to gain enough background knowledge to actually understand the various theories of the origins of the Great Enrichment. Eventually we learn that we also need to know how the miracle was consolidated, as the many other close approaches to the Industrial Revolution failed.A kwirky style, but intellectually ambitious with the goal of understanding history well enough to understand the miracle that happened that one time. It's gonna be a long series.
29episodes
Episodes
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210 Boring Administrative History; Finance and Taxation
Apr 1500:36:57Tap to summarizeYou 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 debtThis was unprecedented, nobody knew how deep capital markets were or potentially were. No clue, they had never been tested like this before. Would people continue to be able to buy our debt? What if we also taxed them very high, higher than they had ever been taxed before?These were real live questions people in Westminster and the City were asking.What people didn’t really understand is that while Napoleon commanded the people and farms of most of Europe, Britain actually commanded most of its money, present and future, I’ll explain how that worked this episode.
Transcribe →209 Boring Administrative History; Industry
Apr 800:46:17Tap to summarizeYou 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 have been conveyed such distances and nevertheless at a very trifling cost.”We spend most of our time on the defense industries. What is revealed is that across a large number of domains the British are world leaders or nearly so. So much so, that one would not expect this to be possible. There must be an unknown variable explaining the phenomena of British superiority.
Transcribe →The Ending of Corruption; Boring Administrative History
Apr 100:47:39Tap to summarizeYou 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 with the worst of them.We’ve been covering the end of corruption in numerous episodes from Shelburne to Pitt, with Burke, with Middleton’s efforts in the dockyards in the Chips Anyone? episode and then Jervis’s crazy attitudes in the naval episodes.Now we’ll look at some of the specific mechanisms with which these forms of corruption are tackled. There are crazy figures, for example the total value of unaudited accounts in 1807 is equal to the value of the entire national debt.I identify three kinds of corruption. First there is the kind that can’t ever go away, though controls and sunlight can reduce it greatly. This I will name Fraud, where contracts are violated and/or payments are made without contracts at all, and where government funds are used for private purposes. Then there is traditional corruption, of the sort when clerks accept tips to perform tasks outside their usual work. 3rd is official corruption, sinecures and emoluments wielded by government to secure votes, but also for other purposes.
Transcribe →Boring Administrative History; Intelligence and Communication
Mar 2500:25:29Tap to summarizeYou 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 was remarkably accurate, were able to act. The question of whether it was the wisest action is a separate question.While focusing on intelligence around the French Navy, the episode covers the Post Office packet system and the King's Messengers, the problems Napoleon had with subordinates lying to him, or telling him what he wanted to hear and the problems of intelligence in faraway waters.There are a couple insights you might not otherwise hear. 1) That British intelligence within Napoleon's realm was so successful that it was also confused by the lies generated within the Napoleonic system.2) The failed Pichegru plot could be said to have worked for Britain, by kicking off the War of the 3rd Coalition and Napoleon's Glory Years, the threat of invasion was lifted for Britain at the price of French dominance over Central Europe.
Transcribe →India, China, Japan, Vietnam and Muscat in the Napoleonic Wars
Mar 1101:00:32Tap to summarizeYou 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 during the revolutionary wars and the Napoleonic wars that British control and domination greatly expanded, from early footholds in Bengal and Madras.The China trade was responsible of one six of British state revenue during this period so it was of vital importance. Also, tea had an interesting property, the people who drank it did not need to dedicate so much grain to small beer production, allowing tea to change the supply and demand equation for grain, during a critical period.There is also the argument that the Chinese authorities contributed to the opium trade by not allowing any legal trade. The drain of silver into the immensity of China is a problem that was going to be solved, whenever the right product was found.The Tokugawa were prompted to make serious reforms by embarrassments caused by young Pellew and the Russian under Rezanhov.The Vietnam story of Gia Long and Bishop Pigneau is probably the most interesting.Oman and Muscat reinforce the idea of the struggle between imperialism and the pursuit of profits for the East India company. imperialism is expensive. The company lost money, and doubled its debt during one of the periods we are discussing.
Transcribe →Ottoman Empire; The Sick Man of Europe
Feb 2500:41:32Tap to summarizeYou 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 2nd Serbian Revolution, which will end with limited autonomy for Serbia, and the subsequent political fragmentation of the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman empire is not a state like any other in Europe. It’s not merely that it is ruled by Moslems. It is also has a traditional culture. Traditional in this case can be heard as code for backward. And it is true the Ottoman Empire was far from the Technological frontier. And the institutional frontier. It surprising because like many traditional societies it had been at or near the frontier in the past.
Transcribe →Qajari Persia; the Origins of the Great Game
Feb 1100:41:32Tap to summarizeYou 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 contrast, was a brilliant spy and diplomat, credited with toppling several middle eastern governments. No, he was rather an expert on beetles, also a discoverer of new species, and a discoverer of new species of lizards as well.So, of course, you would expect great interest from a warrior from the central Asian steppes, this warrior would be following the progress of invertebrate science very closely. Well, no, but what did the people of the middle east and the subcontinent and the far east know about Europe and the wider world? They were not travelers. They lived in almost impossible to understand (for us) ignorance about the wider world and their place in it. For this 3 episode arc about the wider world in the Napoleonic Wars, the general fact of illiteracy and innumeracy, and lack of knowledge about the wider world will be an issue we run into again and again.
Transcribe →Belgium is born; Talleyrand in History concluded
Jan 2801:00:37Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. In a great triumph for France, and Talleyrand personally, Belgium is born. This is one of history's true ironies because of how the existence of Belgium weakens France in the 20th century.The episode ends with Talleyrand's last treaty, his treaty with Rome, over his own soul.But the birth of Belgium requires a revolution which nearly becomes a general European war. The story of how that is avoided with Palmerston and Earl Grey is told.Also, the activities of the Lieven's and the Barbarianization of Greece (almost) which leads to Greek independence.Talleyrand's contrarian take on the Great Reform Act of 1832 and his entirely correct predictions of its consequneces are covered.
Transcribe →Talleyrand in History Part 7; 1815-1830
Jan 2100:43:32Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. “Talleyrand was in a black mood. All that he had achieved over the past eighteen months had been destroyed: the bloodless and amiable return of the Bourbons in 1814 was being travestied by the vindictive and mean minded 2nd Restoration. The favorable conditions obtained for France by the Treaty of Paris in 1814 were to be revised and the equal status he had worked so hard to attain for her in Vienna was no more.”That was Zamoyski on Talleyrand, not Duff Cooper. There is another reality, when you add the dimension of time. Over 3 years the terms against France lightened considerably. France’s financial infrastructure finally, finally, finally 3 times finally caught up the to greatness of the country., to its weight in the world. And after those 3 years, yeah France was a great power.And once the Bourbon was overthrown in 1830, Soult began the process of creating a new overseas empire. And Europe finally got rid of that hive of scum and villainy, the slave taking corsairs of the Barbary Coast. It wasn’t just the triumph of civilization, however temporary over ancient horror slave states like the north African statelets. It was finally blocking the Russians from expanding in that area, which they were constantly proposing to do under the Christian duty to fight slavery and the other horrors of north Africa.
Transcribe →1815 The Hundred Days; Talleyrand in History Part 6
Jan 1400:47:59Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. There is a commonplace, dismissive, reductive argument you will hear all the time. That napoleon stood no chance. Even if he had triumphed on the field at Waterloo, as in some ways he really could have. The forces arrayed against him were so massive he had really no hope. A huge Austrian and German army was coming in from the Rhine, in addition to the British army with its line of communications through Brussels and the Prussians with their line of communications further east. And a truly massive Russian force was gathering at Wurzberg.Napoleon was strategically outnumbered 5:1. He could triumph for a day, for a battle, for a campaign perhaps. But the advantages of the French army, high quality leadership, the elan of its men, were just not so marked as they had been in the past. His own genius and energy was more fitful now that he was older. There was really no hope of French military triumph.So that’s the common historical analysis you will see everywhere, in everything 21st century, and it is not wrong. But step in a little closer and there are a number of fascinating elements. Like, who is really the Legitimate ruler in France?
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