World War Two
Published 1 Jul 2021During the occupation of South-East Asia, Japan builds a large system of institutionalised rape to “keep their soldiers happy”. Meanwhile, Allied refugees from Burma find a safe haven in India, but for some, hardship continues.
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July 2, 2021
Japan’s Institutionalization of Rape – WAH 037 – June 1942, Pt. 2
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Britain’s “agricultural revolution”
In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes wonders about the almost-forgotten revolution that pre-dated the much better known Industrial Revolution:
Illustration of a seed drill from Horse-hoeing husbandry, 4th edition by Jethro Tull, 1762 (original work 1731).
Wikimedia Commons.
Whatever happened to “the Agricultural Revolution” of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Britain? In recent years I’ve hardly seen the term used at all, and the last major book on the subject was seemingly published twenty-five years ago. It has become almost totally eclipsed by its more famous sibling “the Industrial Revolution”, with its vivid associations of cotton, coal, and exponential hockey-stick graphs.
Yet for all that popularity, nearly every book investigating the causes of modern economic growth complains about the use of The Industrial Revolution. Even one of the pioneers of economic history, T. S. Ashton, who actually wrote the book The Industrial Revolution, complained on the very second page about the term’s inaccuracy. Much like “Holy Roman Empire”, there’s an error in every word. It involved too many series of changes to really be a The, was about so much more than just industry, and was too gradual a process to properly call a revolution. Yet Ashton had to concede that the term had “become so firmly embedded in common speech that it would be pedantic to offer a substitute.” And this was in 1948. In the intervening three quarters of a century, the term has become all the more difficult to dislodge.
I am, like everyone else, guilty of perpetuating the term Industrial Revolution. It’s a useful shorthand for people to at least get a rough idea of what I’m talking about, for me to then refine. Best to start with what people know, or at least what they think they know, and go from there. You may think of the Industrial Revolution as being about cotton, coal, and steam, but the period also saw major developments in every other industry, from agriculture to watch-making, and everything in-between. And so on. My preferred terms, like “acceleration of innovation”, always require at least a paragraph or two of explanation first.
With the term Agricultural Revolution, however, there’s just no need to reference it. Nobody really talks about it, or has anything more than a very vague conception of what it may mean. At best, people recall a few things from decades-old textbooks: names like “Turnip” Townshend or Jethro Tull, and perhaps a smattering of jargon like selective breeding, crop rotation, or enclosures. Even these are widely misunderstood. See last week’s post, for patrons, on how we get almost everything about the enclosure movement wrong. As for the Agricultural Revolution’s timing, who knows? When, over the course of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and maybe even nineteenth centuries is it supposed to have occurred? With the Industrial Revolution, there’s at least a “classic” period of 1760-1830, with a few decades of leeway. That is of course up for debate, and I’m especially keen on pushing it back much earlier, but it’s at least a half-decent starting point. With the Agricultural Revolution, there’s just no baseline at all. The experts themselves can’t agree.
For all that the term Agricultural Revolution has lost its salience, however, early modern changes to the productivity of agriculture were perhaps the most important of all. The ability to support a much larger population is itself a major economic achievement. For all that we obsess over historical measures of GDP per person, we often forget the much earlier and extraordinary increase in just the sheer number of people. In the early seventeenth century England’s population not only recovered to its pre-Black Death peak of about 5 million, but then from 1700 onwards it began to exceed it. By 1800, after just another century, the population of Britain had doubled to 10 million. And this in a period throughout which the country was a net exporter of grain.
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How to Edge Joint Two Boards by Hand | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published 19 Mar 2021Simple things are often hidden in the age of mass information. I put this simple explanation and demonstration together to show you how our fears and doubts are all too often unfounded.
With a little understanding of what’s really happening beneath the plane sole, we can restore methods of working into our daily lives working wood and the result will be new levels of confidence.
——————-Want to learn more about woodworking?
Go to Woodworking Masterclasses for weekly project episodes: http://bit.ly/2JeH3a9
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QotD: Quebec’s legendary sensitivity to criticism
We have a generally pro-Quebec stance; however, these annual meltdowns because Some Anglo Said Something Mean About Quebec are getting really tiresome. Somehow this province has managed to prove itself to be even more thin-skinned than Alberta — yes, we said it. Quebec is more reactive than the province that last week suffered a fit over an unflattering children’s cartoon.
And for some reason, the rest of Canada continues to treat these tantrums as if they are very weighty and serious matters meriting news coverage and discussion by very weighty and serious people. Canada’s indulgence of Quebec’s inability to tolerate pointed criticism is probably why the province gets away with passing racist legislation like Bill 21. And no one — least of all politicians — dare say boo because they’re all too eager to win seats in a populous province perpetually in play.
Attaran’s tweets wouldn’t even be worth our lowly mention, except that they prompted response from Justin Trudeau himself, who responded by saying: “Enough of the Quebec bashing.” That’s right, what we have here is Prime Minister Brownface condemning the tweets of an Iranian-Canadian professor who called Quebec racist by declaring such comments “Quebec bashing.” People, we are down the rabbit hole.
Earlier in this dispatch, we called Attaran a bit of a dumbass, and maybe some of you found that assessment a bit harsh. Others, perhaps not. We leave ourselves open to be capably judged by you, our dear readers. But we must ask this: What kind of dumbass do you have to be to make a figure like Amir Attaran into a national hero on free speech grounds? Good lord.
“Dispatch from The Front Line: Doing the Code Dance”, The Line, 2021-03-26.
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