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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.
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You 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 midd...
You 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...
You 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 ...
You 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 Bru...
You 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 ...
You 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.&nbs...
You 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...
You 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 ar...
You 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 put...
You 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 Frobi...
You 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...
You 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 h...
You 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 Hobb...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This is a deep dive into the problems of 1814 (being terror and bitterness) and the solution: Legitimacy, Huge, vast problems gripped Europe in 1814. Usurpations all over Italy, chaos and foreign occupation in Germany, Thrones without occupants, deserters roaming France. Solutions are needed, but can a continent dominated by fear find workable solutions. The history of the last 22 years was not encouraging....
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Convention of Plesswitz ends and war begins again August 11. The focus is on driving Napoleon out of Germany and then the action turns to Scandinavia, to include Danish Holstein, with most of the focus on Norway. Napoleon's desperate attempts to defend Saxony end at the biggest battle in European history to that time. Allied war aims are becoming public, but there seems a disconnect between stated objectives and the real...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Of the large political entities in Europe in 1813 the Austrian empire was one of the oddest, from a modern perspective and possibly the most vulnerable. It was really the personal realm of the house of Habsburg. I’ve talked a lot about it in the past assuming a great deal of background knowledge on the part of the listener, so let’s fill in some of that while we discuss how this legitimate power, gave into fear and threw in ...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Trying to recover from defeat in 1812, Napoleon had enormous obstacles to overcome. But these were NOT obvious at the time, surprisingly to us, most of the great and the good expected Napoleon to win in 1813. Tsar Alexander had some very unusual motivations for a major head of state in the Europe of the time. These motivations, including the mysticisms of the day, are still fascinating. Swedenborg, Lavater, and S...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We examine the question: "Who won the bloody war anyway?" The Canadians won, the Native Americans lost, the British won, the Americans lost and most of all, far more importantly, the Americans won the war overwhelmingly. The apparent contradiction here is resolved. The great clashed happen in the land war. The elite British line infantry met newly, well-trained American regulars, and... the British were not better.&nbs...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The war starts with America terribly unprepared. British efforts to make peace suffer from a lack of focus; Casltereagh is just not applying much brainpower and effort to the American sitution. Almost no navy. A tiny regular army like 11,000 men, terribly officered. No real tax funding for the government to speak of. Deliberately, they have avoided preparing for war, preferring to pay off the national debt,...
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The first episode of a mini arc on the War of 1812. This covers origins and how the British got unto a war they had no interest in. The Americans had a variety of motives. The surface reasons usually discussed in popular history and podcasts seem a little crazy, not fitting in with te reality of the early 19th century very well. But there is a deeper reason, fighting a second war of Independence to avoid a ...
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