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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1814 1815 Germany, ugh ; Talleyrand in History part 5
Jan 700:47:38Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Last episode we looked at France, Scandinavia and Italy. Italy was particularly fascinating, but we were bare able to scratch the surface. Now we look at Germany, contrasting Talleyrand's careful thought about France and Louis the 18th with Metternich and Hardenberg's lack of vision.Finally, Castlereagh gives up his efforts to get the slave trade abolished and settles for a compromise. This allows him to deploy his super power, cold hard cash, to essentially buy Alexander's agreement on the Saxon Question. Tempers cool, the allies will stay together.
Transcribe →1814, Is THIS What Peace Looks Like?
Dec 3100:37:05Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Last episode we described how in Paris there was a party like atmosphere, the dreamy, giddy glow of it, how it sucked in the later arrivals. The immense joy they all wallowed in. Part of the peace settlement allowed France to keep all the looted art they had taken from all over Europe. And I’ve mentioned this before, but the allied leaders saw the Louvre for the first time. And were suitably impressed. They all believed that this was the appropriate way to do public art. Many in the allied delegations went to the Louvre daily.But there were more difficult and thornier issues to settle in Vienna.There were massive issues in Germany, Poland, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and Latin America (would they stay independent, would they go back? could they go back?), the low countries and Switzerland and island colonies all over the world. And how were they going to decide these issues, There was a mix of brutal great power politics for many decisions and high-minded principles used for most analysis. The interplay between these modes of operation would prove fascinating to later generations.
Transcribe →1814 Allies take Paris; not quite Talleyrand in History Part 4
Dec 2400:37:38Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The core of this entire messy situation was the evening of March 31st when Talleyrand and Tsar Alexander meet. This moment that everyone could feel was decisive at the time, the Allies were all hyper aware of the importance of these few days, the core idea is that it did matter a great deal what the tsar thought and what he wanted. And there was one Frenchman he respected and trusted above all, and that was Talleyrand. Alexander’s life experience and spiritual journey was leading him to a place where he would turn over the one big decision to Talleyrand. And Talleyrand had actually thought this question out deeply and thoroughly.
Transcribe →The French Revolution Retold Through Fear
Dec 1700:29:05Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. But you already covered the French Revolution? Why bring up events from 25 years prior to the narrative?Well, Actually, I’ve covered the French revolution twice. Once in the France the Enemy arc, covering the situation before ethe Revolution, and then in the French Revolution arc a couple years later. You might recall I did the agricultural revolution that way. 3 times rather than one deep eight-episode arc. And one episode there was about mood. The one where the people pushed off the land by enclosures and other efficiencies, have to change their lives, even when they do not want to.And the modern farmer who gets $1 million in an eminent domain settlement, says I WAS a rich man yesterday.The French revolution needs this treatment too. We covered the Great Fear, in both of the other arcs and we must do it again, and expand it to the Great Panic. In this third look we will sink into emotion, and for a time deprive ourselves of the false force of Reason, because that’s what happens in life sometimes.Plus, much classical music and other music uses repetition in groups of three and I wrote a novel, Ghosts of the Multiverse, were all the most important things happened 3 times in some way and most happened twice.
Transcribe →34, Satan, Salvation and Atheism; Elizabethan Era Part VI
Dec 1300:28:09Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Elizabeth’s greatest domestic threat was the Puritans. Under Knox they quickly came to dominate Scotland. A Reindeer75 episode. Elizabeth was obviously favored by god and this gave her an enormous advantage in what was understood to be a religious argument. We look into Calvinist ideas of salvation, what does it mean to be Elect and what were some of the weird things that Jesus said. Harald puts forward a notion that Calvinists bring atheism within the grasp of the mediocre, though Reindeer75 disputes the notion. A few of the radical Puritans overplay their hands and they are defeated, for a time. The fact that they make good use of their time is suggested as a factor in their eventual triumph in the 17th century. Conversations with Camie looks into the religious ideas of free will vs predestination.
Transcribe →33 Grand Strategy; Elizabethan Era Part V; How many Spanish Armadas again?
Dec 1200:23:59Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Grand Strategy in Elizabeth’s war with Spain. The Hawkins strategy turns out to be a winner. Spain has two more Armadas to throw at England. Their most successful effort was Spain’s attack on Brittany, while France is still divided by Civil War. “Paris is worth a mass”, says Henry of Navarre, wrapping up a long series of brutal civil wars. Elizabeth successfully intervenes in Brittainy as Martin Frobisher forces the Spanish to surrender. We consider the strategic import of Brest and cover the Spanish raids on Cornwall. Then we take a look at the final Spanish Armada, the attack on Ireland and its failures. Both these Spanish efforts fail in large part because their navy cannot support their land forces whenever the English fleet shows up. We assert that the institutional leads the Spanish and French have over the British work out to be a long term disadvantage. This theme is developed in Conversations with Camie, with the risk of falling for a tautology acknowledged.
Transcribe →Talleyrand in History Part 3
Dec 1000:23:31Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The key at this point is Talleyrand is getting ready to leave Napoleon and enter into a form of opposition against him, because he sees Napoleon as a danger to France , as a danger to Europe, and as a man about to fall and fail, reach exceeds grasp. But political opponents of Napoleon either end up dead or locked up at a chateau in Vincennes. And Talleyrand tries to thread the needle to avoid those fates.From the year 1807, Talleyrand did all in his power to thwart Napoleon’s ambitions and to hasten his downfall. It is the turning point in the history of the Empire. He was convinced that for the good of France and for the good of Europe, the power of Napoleon had to be destroyed.
Transcribe →Talleyrand in History, Part 2
Dec 300:45:32Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Last episode Talleyrand barely escapes France ahead of a death sentence. Then the British decide he might be a spy, well he might have been an excellent spy, though we know he was not a spy.He went to America, George Washington refuses to see him, but Alexander Hamilton welcomes him.By the end Talleyrand has decided to play the dangerous game of going into opposition against Napoleon.This episode follows Talleyrand from his exile to his return and rise to power in the Directory. Talleyrand's role in Napoleon's rise to power is essential. In some ways Napoleon was Talleyrand's creation and Talleyrand became Napoleon's favorite mentor, when he was still Flexible enough to learn from others.We cover Talleyrand's thinking and writing through the events of the Consulship and the early days of the Empire. Then comes the Crisis after Tilsit. When Napoleon goes full nepotism, never go full nepotism, and plans to tke Denmark, Portugal and Spain. Talleyrand perceives that Napoleon is no longer aligned with France's interests. He goes into opposition and begins to play a truly dangerous game.
Transcribe →Talleyrand in History Part 1
Nov 2600:38:36Tap to summarizeYou can send a text, include contact info to get a response. It is somewhat preposterous for an origins of the industrial revolution podcast to feature so much a French diplomat. That would be true if Talleyrand were merely a French diplomat, rather than a bridge between the old world and the birth of the modern. A man who nearly embodies the shift from the sacral to the instrumental, a man who reveals the Reason, capital R reason in religion. Now you could argue that Hobbes was the man who shifted the sacral to the instrumental and Calvin supplanted faith with Reason. But anything important has to be repeated in human history, it just does.Duff Cooper, Guglielmo Ferrero, Roberto Calasso, Mikaberidze and Zamoyski are the main sources for these Talleyrand episodes.
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