The debate over the Polanyi and Finley view of ancient economic organisation — or perhaps over the Marx and Weber and Polanyi and Finley views — does not seem to have been followed with much attention by libertarians and conservatives. It is worth following, even so. Beyond a very basic level, history is as much about the present as the past. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a masterpiece of pure history. But it is also an account of what he saw as the long night of reason — and its attendant nightmares — between the golden age of the Antonines and his own age, and an anxious search for reassurance that there would be no second sleep. Macaulay’s History of England is in part an attempt to legitimise the Victorian settlement as the culmination of historical processes that had their local origin in the 1680s. How readers can be brought to think about the past will insensibly affect how they see the present.
Now, if it could be shown that the Aztecs had no concept of market behaviour, and that they were motivated by considerations wholly different from our own, it would be of little consequence. Everything we know about Aztec civilisation raises doubts whether it was worth calling a civilisation. The Aztecs had no writing and were ignorant of metal working and wheeled transport. Their cultural values were expressed in ritual torture, mass human sacrifice and cannibalism. The Mayans and Toltecs and all the others of their sort seem to have been no better. We may deplore the brutality of the Spanish conquest, but still conclude that it was, on balance, a blessing for the peoples of South America.
But it is different with the empires of the ancient Near East — and very different with the Greeks and Romans. These latter races are our intellectual fathers. Everything we ourselves have achieved is built on the foundations they laid. They gave us the names of all our arts and sciences. Eighty per cent of the English vocabulary is derived from Greek or Latin. Knowledge of these languages may be less widely diffused than it was until a century ago. But the general prestige of the Greeks and Romans is barely less now than it was among the mediaeval pilgrims who gaped at the crumbling remains of the Colisseum and the Baths of Diocletian. If it can be shown that they were wholly unlike us in their economic motivations, that would surely place in doubt the notion that market behaviour is natural to us.
And if few people outside the relevant university departments have read Polanyi and Finley, their conclusions are transmitted through popular histories and newspaper articles and television documentaries, and through large numbers of students who, however superficially, are exposed to these conclusions.
Sean Gabb, “Market Behaviour in the Ancient World: An Overview of the Debate”, 2008-05.
February 28, 2020
QotD: Greek and Roman views of markets
February 25, 2020
“… and men like you will teach the kids. Not poems and rubbish; SCIENCE! So we can get everything working!”
Apparently “the Artilleryman” from Jeff Wayne’s musical interpretation of War of the Worlds has taken over some important post at Oxford:
The Classics Faculty at the University of Oxford is considering whether to remove from its undergraduate courses the compulsory study in their original languages of Homer and Vergil. The reasons given are that students from independent schools, where some classical teaching is kept up, tend at the moment to do better in examinations than students from state schools, and that men do better than women. I regard this as the most important news of the week. I do so partly because I make some of my living from these languages, and so have a financial interest in their survival. I do so mainly because I see the proposal as a further enemy advance in the Culture War through which we have been living for at least the past two generations.
I could make this essay into another attack on the cultural leftists. I will come to these, as they are among the villains. They are not, however, the main villains. These are people who sometimes regard themselves, and are generally regarded by others, as conservatives. They once looked to Margaret Thatcher as their political champion, and then to Tony Blair. They were some of the most committed advocates of our departure from the European Union. They now look to the Johnson Government for the final triumph of their agenda. For these people, a nation is barely more than a giant economic enterprise – Great Britain plc. For them, the main, or perhaps the sole, purpose of education is to provide sets of skills that have measurable value in a corporatised market.
These people have been around for a long time. They were satirised by Charles Dickens in Hard Times, where Thomas Gradgrind explains his philosophy of education:
Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which to bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!
[…]
I agree that state education had become a joke where almost nothing of any kind was taught. As continued by Tony Blair, the Thatcher reforms did eventually drive up standards of literacy and numeracy. But this has been at a terrible cost. Any modern school that wants to be thought desirable must focus on its place in the league tables. This involves working the children like slaves – stuffing them in class with facts that can be regurgitated in tests and therefore graded, then handing out reams of homework that leaves no time for personal development.
The universities continue this conveyor belt approach. Around half of school leavers are pressured into “higher” education. Those who go into the “STEM” subjects – Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics – follow a narrow and specialised curriculum that leaves them ignorant of nearly everything outside their own subject. The rest sign up for largely worthless subjects – anything with the words “business” or “studies” in the name. There, they are kept busy with three-hour lectures. I know the value of these, as I used to give them. I fell asleep in one of them, and the students were happy when my voice finally trailed off. Progress in these subjects is measured by coursework that is increasingly plagiarised or ghost-written, or through examinations where the grades are fiddled. At the end of this, graduates – and everyone does graduate – are qualified for nothing better than employment in one of those bureaucracies of management or control that fasten on the actually productive like mistletoe on a tree. The universities look at rising numbers and the fact that graduates do find paid employment, and call this a great success. No one thinks it a disgrace if students never take up a book not on their worthless reading list, or that, having graduated, they never open another book.
Or school leavers at the bottom end are herded into courses in plumbing or hairdressing. I was once invited to teach a module in a Parking Studies degree – this for the certification of traffic wardens. I suppose people are needed to keep the roads clear, and I suppose they should be given some idea of their legal rights and duties. I am not at all sure if they need to have degrees. I am sure that skilled trades of undoubted value are best taught, as they always used to be, through private apprenticeships or informally on the job.
February 23, 2020
The British Will Walk 500 Miles, and They Will Walk 500 more – WW2 – 078 – February 22, 1941
World War Two
Published 22 Feb 2020As the British make spectacular advances in East-Africa, with even more spectacular advances on the horizon, South-Eastern Europe is getting increasingly tense.
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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
– Daniel Weiss
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
– Olga Shirnina, a.k.a. Klimbim – https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com/Sources:
– Bundesarchiv
– Library of Congress
– IWM: E 6661
– National Library of Australia
– National Portrait Gallery
– Letter by Mochammad Kafi, post icon by Bonegolemfrom, from the Noun Project
– Photot of Goethe Medal by Mondfreund from Wikimedia Commons
– Eirik Sundvor, The Municipal Archives of TrondheimArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
February 19, 2020
Classics Summarized: Dante’s Inferno
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 21 Mar 2015I’m back, baby!
For this week’s venture into literature, we take a broad look at The Inferno. Hold onto your butts.
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February 8, 2020
300 | Based on a True Story
The Cynical Historian
Published 29 Jul 2015Here is another episode of “Based on a True Story”. This time it is 300 and how it is based on the battle of Thermopylae. It is a great film with a great many historically innacurate plot points.
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references:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.p…http://www.historyvshollywood.com/ree…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(fi…
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Wiki:
300 is a 2006 American epic fantasy war film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley. Both are fictionalized retellings of the Battle of Thermopylae within the Persian Wars. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant. It was filmed mostly with a super-imposition chroma key technique, to help replicate the imagery of the original comic book.The plot revolves around King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), who leads 300 Spartans into battle against the Persian “god-King” Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his invading army of more than 300,000 soldiers. As the battle rages, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) attempts to rally support in Sparta for her husband. The story is framed by a voice-over narrative by the Spartan soldier Dilios (David Wenham). Through this narrative technique, various fantastical creatures are introduced, placing 300 within the genre of historical fantasy. The events are revealed to be a story told by Delios, the only one of the 300 Spartans to survive the battle.
300 was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters in the United States on March 9, 2007, and on DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and HD DVD on July 31, 2007. The film received mixed reviews, receiving acclaim for its original visuals and style, but criticism for favoring visuals over characterization and its depiction of the ancient Persians in Iran, a characterization which some had deemed racist; however, the film was a box office success, grossing over $450 million, with the film’s opening being the 24th largest in box office history at the time. A sequel, entitled Rise of an Empire, which is based on Miller’s unpublished graphic novel prequel Xerxes, was released on March 7, 2014.
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Hashtags: #history #300 #Thermopylae #review #BasedOnATrueStory #Sparta #ThisIsSparta
February 4, 2020
The Macedonian Phalanx
HistoryMatters
Published 30 Jan 2016A short introduction to the Macedonian phalanx, from conception to demise.
February 3, 2020
Classics Summarized: The Odyssey
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 3 Feb 2015Funny story. Exporting this monster was almost as difficult as getting back to Ithaca was for our intrepid hero, who — as viewers of The Iliad may note — has inexplicably lost his Solid Snake voice in this production.
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February 2, 2020
Africa, the Axis’ Achilles Heel – The Allied African Campaigns – WW2 – 075 – February 1, 1941
World War Two
Published 1 Feb 2020Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas dies this week as Italy is still uncomfortably wrapped up in the Albanian Mountains. Italy also finds itself in a pickle on other fronts, as Allied troops in Africa move into Italian territory with three offensives this week.
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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/Sources:
IWM (IND 883); (IND 2405); (E 3661); (E6661)
Vatican by Made by Made from the Noun Project
king crown by ProSymbols from the Noun Project
tick by akash k from the Noun Project
Artillery by Creative Mania from the Noun ProjectSoundtrack from the Epidemic Sound:
Christian Andersen – “Disciples of Sun Tzu”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”
Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
Bonnie Grace – “Imperious”
Johannes Bornlof – “Last Man Standing 3”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
February 1, 2020
The Greco-Turkish War & The Turkish War Of Independence I THE GREAT WAR 1920
The Great War
Published 31 Jan 2020Sign up for Curiosity Stream and Nebula: https://curiositystream.com/thegreatwar
The Ottoman Empire was among the losing powers of World War 1 and left a power vacuum after the armistice of Mudros. The Great Powers had already made plans for the territory beforehand and now Greece had ambitions to take over the parts of Turkey where Greeks lived.
» SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
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Merchandise: https://shop.spreadshirt.de/thegreatwar/» SOURCES
Criss, Nur Bilge: “Occupation during and after the War (Ottoman Empire)”, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2015-08-05 https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online…Leonhard, Jörn. Der überforderte Frieden. Versailles und die Welt 1918-1923 (CH Beck, 2018).
Macmillan, Margaret. The Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World (London: John Murray, 2001).
Karsh, Efraim and Inari Karsh. Empires of the Sand (London: Harvard UP, 1999).
Llewllyn Smith, Michael. Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor (London: Hurst, 2016 (1973))
Gerwarth, Robert. The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 (Penguin, 2017).
Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace (New York: Avon, 1989)
McMeekin, Sean. The Ottoman Endgame (Penguin, 2015)
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History Summarized: Byzantine Empire — The Golden Age
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 31 Jan 2020What do you do when life takes away half of your empire? Well, if you’re the Medieval Byzantines, you make comprehensive structural reforms to better manage a changing geopolitical landscape — And then you make an absolute crapload of mosaics.
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
This video was edited in part by Sophia Ricciardi, AKA “Indigo”.
FURTHER SOURCES: A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich.
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January 28, 2020
Classics Summarized: The Iliad
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 23 Jan 2015I’m baaaaaaaack!
This one took me a while. The reason why should be pretty obvious. Enjoy your adorable murderfest.
Troy may be a good movie (though I have my doubts) but it sure as hell isn’t the Iliad.
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January 25, 2020
Miscellaneous Myths: Tantalus
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 24 Jan 2020Tantalus! The number one dude known for his eternal punishment in Hades, perhaps second only to Sisyphus
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
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Refuting the pessimism of Malthus
In the latest edition of Anton Howes’ Age of Invention newsletter, he looks at the predictions of that old gloomy Gus, Thomas Malthus:
The Malthusian trap. For Malthus, as population increases exponentially and food production only linearly, a point where food supply is inadequate will inevitably be reached.
Graph by Kravietz via Wikimedia Commons.
For economies before the Industrial Revolution, population growth was an important and ever-present brake on prosperity — an observation most famously articulated by the Reverend Thomas Malthus. Writing at the end of the eighteenth century, he warned against the promises of improvement. Whereas the optimists looked at the acceleration of innovation around them and claimed infinite horizons for increasing living standards, Malthus pessimistically argued that population would always catch up. Although a new agricultural technology might briefly increase the amount of available food, the inexorability of population growth meant that it would soon be eaten up by extra mouths to feed. The population would end up larger than it was before the new technology, but with that population eventually no richer than it had been to begin with. Economic historians call this the Malthusian regime, or the Malthusian Trap.
Thomas Malthus.
Portrait by John Linnell, 1834, via Wikimedia CommonsFortunately, Malthus’s pessimism would prove unfounded. Economy after economy has managed to escape the trap. British output had already been outpacing its population for two centuries by the time he was writing — England’s agricultural output alone had increased 171% while its population had grown 113% (not even taking into account the fact that it also increasingly relied on imported food, paid for by its other industries). And in the decades and centuries that followed, England’s output continued to shoot ahead, widening the lead. Output per capita rose and rose, to the extent that Malthus’s worries about overpopulation are now usually applied to resources other than food.
But while Malthus is famous for the theory, he wasn’t its inventor. Well before Malthus, the people who actually lived in the trap seem to have recognised its effects. Concerns about overpopulation may have led to the Garland or Flower Wars of the Aztec Empire and its neighbours: after a series of famines in the 1450s, the local states reportedly began to engage in ritual battles, with the losers captured and sacrificed to the gods. Still earlier, in ancient Greece, the young men of a settlement might be formally conscripted to go forth and colonise other islands and coastlines. They were typically banned from returning home for several years, and in at least one case slingers were posted on the shore to kill any of the colonists who tried to make a break for home. In a whole host of pre-industrial societies, “surplus” infants were often simply exposed to the elements.
By the sixteenth century, with the rise of print culture, Malthusian rationales were being clearly articulated. Here’s Richard Hakluyt writing in 1584, over two hundred years before Malthus:
Through our long peace and seldom sickness (two singular blessings of Almighty God) we are grown more populous than ever heretofore; so that now there are of every art and science so many, that they can hardly live one by another, nay rather they are ready to eat up one another.
It’s a direct statement of the Malthusian regime in action, expressed by one of England’s most influential Elizabethan intellectuals, and written specifically for the attention of the queen. Hakluyt thanked god for the recent and unusual lack of mass death, but now worried about overpopulation leading to low wages and unemployment. And he went on to list many other effects. Hakluyt argued that the misery would lead to unrest, thievery, begging, and “other lewdness”. The prisons filled up, where the poor either “pitifully pine away, or else at length are miserably hanged.”
January 20, 2020
Pyrrhus of Epirus: Enemy of Rome
History Time
Published 2 Dec 2017A brief look at one of the first and greatest adversaries of the Romans.
Some of the maps used in this and other History Time videos were produced by the incredible Battles of the Ancients. Check out the awesome website below for your ancient history fix.
http://turningpointsoftheancientworld.com/Music:-
Two Steps From Hell – “Hearts of Courage”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYj8c…
BrunuhVille – “Song of the North” (Alt. Version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHAFr…
Adrian Von Ziegler – “Moonsong”
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January 12, 2020
Fighting Far Away From Home – Allied Advance in Africa – WW2 – 072 – January 11 1941
World War Two
Published 11 Jan 2020Action in Albania. Action in North-Africa. Action in East-Africa. Action in China and action on the Mediterranean. It looks like every belligerent party is amping up its efforts to get a foothold wherever they are. And if your enemy is gaining ground? You just throw more material and men at them.
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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/Sources:
IWM (A 4161), (E 872), (A 4162), (A 9793), (A 13509).
Division Coat of Arms by Noclador
oil barrel by BomSymbols from the Noun Project
can by Anniken & Andreas from the Noun ProjectSoundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Arriving in Ancient Rome” – Kikoru
– “Easy Target” – Rannar Sillard
– “Split Decision” – Rannar Sillard
– “Road To Tibet 5” – Rannar Sillard
– “Death And Glory 1” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar JohnsenArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
3 days ago (edited)
It looks like all fronts are heating up this week. And that the German reaction to the British offensive in North-Africa and the Greek progress in Albania is to move more German troops southward. This week already shows how that potentially threatens Britains position in the Mediterranean. Well, just like the British and Germans, we hope to increase our manpower in 1941. Do your part and expand our community of loyal supporters and history buffs by joining the TimeGhost Army on https://www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory and https://timeghost.tv. The war effort needs you!
Cheers, Joram
