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[ { "body": "The 12th Amendment linked the two offices on the ballot. A presidential candidate could choose, and a party could nominate a VP of a different party and, if so elected and ratified, take office as a split ticket. The primary process being as drawn out and somewhat more publicly significant makes it hard to pull off something like that. No party wants to cede that power and prestige to the other side. Understandably, if you operate from the notion that your philosophy is the best one for the country. Works a bit different for many state executive offices, where governor and lieutenant governor can be elected separately. That's a lot easier to make a party split.\n\nOther than that, it would take an electoral college tie. House would choose the President, Senate would choose the Vice President. If they're of different parties, you could end up with that. \n\nIt was more possible to have a split in the formative and transitional stages of US history as parties were young, changing, and still moving from a parliamentary coalition-building model. The current parties have cemented monetary, identity, and operational holds within the process that would preclude the idea for now. Party hierarchy put the kibosh on McCain selecting Lieberman, for example, and that was probably the closest we've gotten to that possibility in quite a while (to my/public knowledge, perhaps I'm ignorant of other ones or they didn't see much light of day).", "created_utc": 1626342281, "distinguished": null, "id": "h599yoo", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/okfj24/when_i_was_learning_about_the_american_civil_war/h599yoo/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "In hindsight, we can now say that it was the Dredd Scott decision by the Supreme Court in 1857 that made the war inevitable. That ruling essentially erased any distinction between slave and free states, decreed slavery could be anywhere. That was going to be impossible for the North to tolerate.\n\nHowever, the question as to when people of the time knew war was going to happen is much harder to guess. There had been many decades of compromises and deals worked out within Congress to avoid a confrontation. Throughout the 1850's, the South had gotten accustomed to having its way most of the time. Its representatives in Congress were used to intimidating and threatening their Abolitionist opponents, even challenging them to duels, and many of them assumed that the North would bend to their demands even as they began to secede. And there were plenty of voices in the North, including President James Buchanan, who had no interest in starting a war, would have been happy to come up with some sort of compromise that gave the South much of what it wanted. It would not be until the Southern forces began to fire on Ft Sumter that a conflict seemed inevitable. But even then, the South's strategy during the War was not to defeat the North but to fight it enough to get it to settle for terms agreeable to the South. Lincoln would therefore have plenty of Democrats calling for a negotiated settlement throughout the war, and Southerners calling for a peaceful end to the conflict- if they could keep their sovereignty and their slaves. It would have been possible for many US citizens to assume that, even after it started, the war would quickly stop.", "created_utc": 1629764045, "distinguished": null, "id": "ha3mc2u", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/p9jqe7/question_on_the_timing_of_the_american_civil_war/ha3mc2u/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "There were enough surviving soldiers with upper limb amputations to inspire the creation of specialized cutlery for one-handed use. This article discusses the issuance by the U.S Government to one-handed veterans of the Detmold knife, a knife/fork combination tool invented by an Army surgeon from New York.\n\nhttps://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/181/4/395/4158518\n\nPossession and use of folding pocket knives was near-universal in the era, but traditional designs were difficult or impossible for one handed individuals to open. This led to the creation of the “one arm Barlow” type folding pocket knife. These had a notch cut into the blade tip which was hooked on the edge of a pocket to open, which could easily be done with one hand. Re-creations of this style are still available today\n\nhttps://www.bladehq.com/item--Bear-and-Son-One-Arm-Bandit-Barlow--39176", "created_utc": 1611697760, "distinguished": null, "id": "gkvh9k9", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/l5gqwd/the_american_civil_war_led_to_a_large_number_of/gkvh9k9/", "score": 50 }, { "body": "While mandatory access for the disabled is pretty a recent concept, the Pension Office is a notable early attempt. The massive Union Army of the Civil War resulted in a massive number of veterans, some of them disabled, who qualified for pensions- and, their widows and sometimes their children as well. Processing those claims required a lot of staff, and an office had to be built to house that staff. The job of designing that building was given to Brig. General Montgomery Meigs, in 1881.\n\nMeigs is mostly famous now for his decision to set a Union soldiers' cemetery on the estate of Robert E Lee in Arlington , but he was a very innovative and capable architect. He assumed that the Pension Office would have disabled veterans on the staff. Elevators were as yet novelties, so he designed the stairs of the building to have low risers , and deep slightly-tilted treads, that made them easier for the disabled to manage. Mindful of the miserable summers in Washington DC, he also went to great lengths to ventilate the building, creating a large open courtyard, with a clerestory that would allow hot air to rise up to and out of the roof. That also created a draft through the staff offices, which had ingenious gaps in the brickwork under the windows to allow in air.\n\nUnfortunately, Meigs' ingenuity was not appreciated. Most people thought the place was just a big Italianate brick barn, and so it did not spawn a host of equally-accessible imitations. But Meigs' himself was never bothered by criticism: like a number of famous architects, he seemed to have had very few doubts about his projects generally, and this was his last. In time it became home to other bureaus: the General Accounting Office was the last tenant and just filled up the bottom of the great hall with offices. When the GAO moved, the place became empty, was almost torn down. Eventually , however, it was recognized as being as innovative as it was, and is now the National Building Museum: where ( when it's open) among many other things you can learn more about the history of disabled access in architecture.\n\n[http://www.streetsofwashington.com/2014/01/the-pension-building-montgomery-meigs.html](http://www.streetsofwashington.com/2014/01/the-pension-building-montgomery-meigs.html)", "created_utc": 1611757100, "distinguished": null, "id": "gky6otd", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/l5gqwd/the_american_civil_war_led_to_a_large_number_of/gky6otd/", "score": 11 } ]

[ { "body": "In addition to the excellent answer /u/jschooltiger linked to, you may also be interested in a few answers of my own:\n\n* My answer to the question [\"What was the common man from the south fighting for in the American Civil war?\"](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hpblkd/what_was_the_common_man_from_the_south_fighting/fxu1egd/) appears to answer your question head on. There were many different arguments made on behalf of slavery — among them, the threat of a race war if slavery were ended, the effect it would have on the agriculture-based economy of the South, the effect it would have on white Southerners' representation in Congress if black Southerners gained the right to vote, the effect it would have on future Southern generations if the South became a mixed-race society, and so on. \n\n* My lengthy answer to several related questions including [\"What was the U.S civil war really about?\" and \" Why did slavery matter as much as it did?\"](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/han8vn/what_was_the_us_civil_war_really_about/fv63bvc/) may also be of interest, as it gives some background on the politics of slavery at the time. This context may make it more clear what motivated Southern soldiers to fight, and why the various appeals on behalf of slavery worked. \n\n* My answer to the question [\"What did pro-slavery people in pre-civil-war USA say in response to slavery abolitionists?\"](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/h01pv9/what_did_proslavery_people_in_precivilwar_usa_say/ftk5tpy/) gives background to some of the arguments that justified slavery before war was imminent. While \"property rights\" were important, this was only one of many arguments made in favor of slavery in the decades before the war was fought.\n\n* My answer to the question [\"Did the Confederacy afford its states more rights than their Union counterparts?\"](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hodueg/did_the_confederacy_afford_its_states_more_rights/fxmy0nz/) gives a brief-ish history of the major \"states' rights\" issues before the Civil War, and how they were quickly abandoned once the Civil War started, if they hadn't been abandoned already — all except for slavery. There is no truth to the Lost Cause-promoted alternate history that the war was about (or that Confederate soldiers were fighting on behalf of) \"states' rights\" that doesn't involve \"the states' rights to preserve and protect slavery\". Slavery was the one and only state right that Confederates were consistent on in the lead-up to, and during the fighting of, the Civil War.\n\nSuffice it to say, there were no shortage of arguments made on behalf of slavery that were designed to appeal to non-slaveholding Southerners. Many of these arguments were very effective, because common soldiers would often repeat them in their surviving letters. Millions of white Southerners bought into these arguments, were invested in them, and were willing to fight and die for them when the political class in the South began advocating for secession. \"Liberty\" was also commonly cited, but as detailed in those previous posts, there was no freedom that the South ever cited that was being threatened by remaining loyal to the United States, except for the freedom to preserve and protect slavery.\n\nIn regards to non-slaveholders' partisanship on the issue, slavery wasn't much different from many other issues in the U.S.'s political history, though it certainly had a more violent resolution than any other. You can list off many of the most divisive political issues in American life over the past fifty years, and discover that people regularly take sides when the issue often doesn't directly impact them, or even their family, personally — abortion, immigration, LGBTQ rights, urban crime, drug addiction/policy. The list goes on. Slavery was no different. But being such a cornerstone of Southern culture and society, the partisanship and reaction to the *proposal* of a change in the law was more extreme.", "created_utc": 1639688463, "distinguished": null, "id": "hotv7ss", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/rhyia9/if_the_american_civil_war_was_about_slavery_how/hotv7ss/", "score": 15 }, { "body": "While more can always be said on this subject, [this older answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67fvaf/was_the_average_confederate_soldier_a_strong/dgq8tn2/) about Confederate soldiers' motivations by /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov may be of some interest to you.", "created_utc": 1639684343, "distinguished": null, "id": "hotko32", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/rhyia9/if_the_american_civil_war_was_about_slavery_how/hotko32/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "This question was actually asked - and at least partly answered - by an amateur historian named Elias Hillard in 1864. \n\nHe found [at least 6 men who had fought in the Revolution and were alive during the Civil War](https://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2013/11/the-last-men-of-the-revolution/). He photographed and interviewed them, and published it all in a book called [*The Last Men of the Revolution*](https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=LCCN&searchArg=05034062&searchType=1&permalink=y).\n\nAll 6 men were over 100, and you can read what Hillard wrote about each [here](http://www.americanrevolution.org/lastmen.php). It's fairly dense prose, in a mid-19th century style, but fundamentally each is an interview in much the same fashion as you might find today. \n\nThis obviously isn't a full census, but I think it does answer the interview part of your question?", "created_utc": 1504368756, "distinguished": null, "id": "dmgzmtq", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6xlupv/the_us_constitution_was_signed_in_1787_and_the/dmgzmtq/", "score": 1781 }, { "body": "To answer your question, I downloaded microdata from the 1% sample of the 1860 and 1870 censuses from IPUMS (a website run by the University of Minnesota). I then dropped everyone who was born outside of the U.S. Since it was a 1% sample, I then multiplied everything by 100 to get an estimate for how many people were in the general population.\n\nIn 1860, there were about 230,000 U.S. born residents who were alive in 1787. By 1870, that number is only 68,000.\n\nSo what about those who were alive during the signing of the declaration of independence? Those are about 40,000 in 1860 and 7500 in 1870. \n\nHow many people would have remembered the signing of the declaration of independence and the end of the Civil War? Well about 1000 were age 10 during the declaration of independence and lived to see 1870. ", "created_utc": 1504366933, "distinguished": null, "id": "dmgy870", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6xlupv/the_us_constitution_was_signed_in_1787_and_the/dmgy870/", "score": 1198 }, { "body": "If you are looking for interviews of people who witnessed both events you can consider the book [The Last Men Of The Revolution](http://www.americanrevolution.org/lastmen.php) was published in 1864, and contains photographs and interviews of 7 men claiming to be veterans of the Revolutionary war. \n\n[This](http://www.burrcook.com/history/lemuel.htm) page contains the interview from the book of Lemuel Cook who was the last surviving pensioner of the revolutionary war (he passed away in 1866), when asked about the civil war he stated \"It is terrible, but terrible as it is the rebellion must be put down\"", "created_utc": 1504368400, "distinguished": null, "id": "dmgzcup", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6xlupv/the_us_constitution_was_signed_in_1787_and_the/dmgzcup/", "score": 247 } ]

[ { "body": "The Civil War always held a very enduring place in American memory, and I'll be interpreting your question *slightly* broadly to allow touching on the late '30s as that provides a very rich body of sources due to the 75th anniversary of the war. In the decades following the war, the popular memory of the war was shaped into one of national creation, unity, and reconciliation, which worked to slowly incorporate the Confederate veterans and their (mythical self-image) cause to commemoration of the conflict by all. Or at least that was how the *public* came to view it, but not always the men who had themselves fought. There was still a decided domination by the North which rubbed 'Johnny Reb' the wrong way, and many (but by no means all) a soldier on both sides long maintained enmity for their opponents. Thus, it was by no means a smooth process; one Union veteran was quite offended \"with all the gush over the blue and the gray\" that he saw at the 25th anniversary of Gettysburg in 1888, and accounts of the 1913 50th aniversary often comment on the awkwardness of North-South interactions, as many an aged Confederate veteran was less than pleased with how the Northern organizers apparently wanted it to “not to be a gathering of Northerners or of Southerners, but of American citizens, with one flag, one nation, and one history”. The Union veterans insisted the Confederate's flags must not be unfurled when marching, and a Union flag be held beside. So while thousands showed up from both sides, it certainly seems that the Union men had a better time revisiting, now in their 70s, their old haunts. (A side note. these anniversaries invited all veterans, not just those of Gettysburg. That location represented its primacy of place in the memory of the war).\n\nBy the 1930s, the small number of living veterans were \"near-celebrities\", given pride of place in Memorial day parades in small towns throughout the country, and in 1938, there was the last great anniversary celebration at Gettysburg, attended by nearly 2000 soldiers (although 3:1 in favor of the Union), many pushing 100 years old. Although the film records of the event certainly fit with the image I spoke of above - [unity and reconciliation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce5WpM-JMYg) - the reality was that there still remained some bitterness between both sides. The organizers of the reunion were quite conscious of this in their planning, and as such were sure to have the Confederate and Union encampments kept apart. Still though, the public face of the reunion managed to hide that, and with a live national radio broadcasting the ceremony, the Veterans joined President Roosevelt in dedicating the Eternal Light Peace Memorial on the battlefield grounds.\n\nThat would be the end, essentially, of national commemoration of the war with the veterans themselves participating. Numbers dwindled quickly, and the Grand Army of the Republic, the main Union Veterans organization, would have only a half dozen attendees at its final meeting a decade latter, held in Indianapolis in 1949. 100,000 people turned out for the parade through the city. The Confederate veterans likewise would have their final meeting in 1950. By the end of the '50s, none would be left.\n\nBut of course, memory of the war is more than just recognition of the men who fought it. To return to what I spoke of at the beginning - national creation, unity, and reconciliation - while the veterans themselves were not always accommodating, to it, that was certainly the narrative for the public, eager to \"[embrace] the deeply laid mythology of the Civil War that had captured the popular imagination by the early twentieth century\". In his address at the 1913 Reunion - billed as a \"Peace Jubilee\" - [Woodrow Wilson's address](http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=65370) noted:\n\n>What have [those 50 years] meant? They have meant peace and union and vigor, and the maturity and might of a great nation. How wholesome and healing the peace has been! We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that we shall not forget the splendid valor, the manly devotion of the men then arrayed against one another, now grasping hands and smiling into each other's eyes. How complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how unquestioned, how benign and majestic, as State after State has been added to this our great family of free men! How handsome the vigor, the maturity, the might of the great Nation we love with undivided hearts; how full of large and confident promise that a life will be wrought out that will crown its strength with gracious justice and with a happy welfare that will touch all alike with deep contentment! We are debtors to those fifty crowded years; they have made us heirs to a mighty heritage.\n\nAnd newspaper accounts of the 1938 reunion gush with words about \"a nation united in peace\", and [Roosevelt noted in his dedication](http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15669):\n\n>Men who wore the blue and men who wore the gray are here together, a fragment spared by time. They are brought here by the memories of old divided loyalties, but they meet here in united loyalty to a united cause which the unfolding years have made it easier to see.\n\nThe war had clearly come to be a national symbol, and not in more than a few ways, quite separated from its actual history. And of course as more Union veterans died off, there were less to push back against this repurposing. The drive for a narrative of national unity, as briefly touched on, also meant circumscription of much of the actual nature of the war. It meant accepting the Confederate's narrative - the \"Lost Cause\" - on much of its face. The unity narrative meant whitewashing much of the underlying divisions that had led the US on its march to war the better part of a century past. When \"Gone with the Wind\" was released in 1939, it was a surprise to no one that it would be a smash success in the South, were the image of Southern life comported so closely to 'Lost Cause' imagery, but its success in Northern theaters helped to highlight that this place of the Civil War in popular memory was \"a vision of a reconciled nation premised on forgetting slavery\". Not, of course, to imply that *no one* was conscious of this false face, but it would not be for several decades more that the \"Lost Cause\" and the dominant place of the Dunning school in Civil War Historiography would be impeached by the new crop of historians making their mark in the late '60s and beyond. Simply put, by the 1930s, \"this mythic, racially pure narrative of common bravery and sacrifice that yielded a strong, unified nation was as unmovable as the granite and bronze [monument] that had come to define the battlefield’s landscape.\"\n\n*At this point this answer can stand on its merits, but there is more to be said about specifically how the memory of the Civil War worked with the outbreak of World War II. I have a brunch reservation in ~20 minutes, so hopefully can come and get on that, but I welcome someone else to weigh in if they have something to say on that!*\n\n* The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900 by Nina Silber\n* Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War\" by Brian Matthew Jordan\n* Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation by Caroline E. Janney\n* \"Field of Mighty Memory: Gettysburg and the Americanization of the Civil War\" by Kenneth Nivison, in Battlefield and Beyond: Essays on the American Civil War ed. by Clayton Jewett\n* Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David W. Blight", "created_utc": 1495978442, "distinguished": null, "id": "di5ac7h", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6dpwtb/did_americans_in_the_1940s_recognize_the_american/di5ac7h/", "score": 360 }, { "body": "I would say the short answer is no, it's hard to make an equivalence between how the Civil War was memorialized in the early 20th century and how World War Ii is memorialized in the 21st. For the following reasons:\n\n1.) The end of major combat operations in 1865 was followed by a period of nation building in the former Confederacy that involved major insurgencies and campaigns of terrorism that ultimately resulted in the withdrawal of US troops and the establishment of \"Home Rule\" (Democratic white supremacist governments in many cases representing a minority of the population). I use modern Iraq War language somewhat tongue in cheek here, but I think it's more helpful to think in these terms about 1865-1877 than thinking in \"postwar \" terms like post World War II. Anyways, this period was incredibly controversial, and how historians have interpreted it has also been controversial. The \"Dunning School \" of thought in the early 20th century largely considered attempts at providing full equality between the races as unrealistic at best, and a form of unnatural, corrupt dictatorship at worst. While WEB DeBois contested this history at the time, the Dunning School was largely the dominant narrative, and found reflection in such popular works as \"Birth of a Nation\" (endorsed by President Woodrow Wilson), and \"Gone with the Wind. \" This historic narrative wouldn't really change until the 1960s and new histories by authors like Eric Foner.\n\n2.) All sides in the US civil war were Americans, and therefore had a stake in how and what was memorialized. How it shook out was that there was a lot of emphasis on reconciliation, at least among Northern and Southern whites. It also meant finding political accommodation for both of those sides, again usually at the expense of African American interests. This makes a huge difference with World War II, in that the losing side was pardoned and integrated into American public life. So you got less \"The Good War\" narrative like with World War II, and more \"A Tragic War Between Brothers\" memorialization.\n\nWith that said, the war and its veterans figured prominently for decades. The Grand Army of the Republic was the union veterans organization, and was a major fixture in US public life until its last members died and the organization was dissolved in the 1950s. The similar is true for confederate veterans. Battlefield reunions for veterans such as at Gettysburg were held at least until the 1930s, if not later. And Memorial Day, aka Decoration Day, was for this period specifically a day to remember Civil War dead, so much so that former Confederate states held Confederate Memorial Days on other days as rival holidays.\n\nThe two big works to consult on the subject are David Blight's Race and Reunion and Drew Faust's This Republic of Suffering.", "created_utc": 1495978769, "distinguished": null, "id": "di5aigk", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6dpwtb/did_americans_in_the_1940s_recognize_the_american/di5aigk/", "score": 19 }, { "body": "Can you be more specific as to what you're asking? I don't really understand the question.", "created_utc": 1495936276, "distinguished": null, "id": "di4snof", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6dpwtb/did_americans_in_the_1940s_recognize_the_american/di4snof/", "score": 202 } ]

[ { "body": "Although is is somewhat narrow in its scope, [this older answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ch62u7/the_song_john_browns_body_and_its_influence_on/euqmxm2/) should be of interest, tracing the intertwined histories of the popular army song \"John Brown's Body\" and rising abolitionist sentiment within the Federal forced.", "created_utc": 1627646387, "distinguished": null, "id": "h72na0s", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/oue84s/did_the_majority_of_union_soldiers_in_the/h72na0s/", "score": 12 } ]

[ { "body": "A couple things come into play with this question, I think: visual representations of battle in the American Civil War, and the nature of large-scale 19th century combat. \n\nStarting with historical examples of 19th century combat, specifically American Civil War battles, the answer is no: most battles did not occur on wide open plains or soft rolling hills with an absence of obstacles. There may have been parts of the battlefield like that, but armies of 20,000, 30,000, or even 50,000+ men meeting bodies of a similar size on an open plain that could fit all of them was exceedingly rare throughout the conflict (and I'd dare say, throughout the course of human history). In any large scale battle, there was likely several different minor theaters of action, and many of those dealt with different terrain and obstacle challenges. \n\nLet's look at some examples to illustrate. Antietam is often examined as three smaller battles over the course of one day and area, with separate fights along the sunken road (\"bloody lane\"), the cornfield, and the \"Burnside's Bridge\" over Antietam Creek. All of these locations had some degree of \"openness\" though what is remembered about each within the context of examining the flow and ebb of battle revolves around the obstructions and obstacles. Gettysburg is notable for Pickett's Charge on the 3rd day, which did span a wide-open plain with just one snake rail fence obstacle (and a low stone wall in front of Union lines), but much of that battle took place on wooded hills, rocky outcrops, and even an orchard. Likewise, although the Battle of Fredericksburg is often remembered for the bloody assaults on Marye's Heights, which was indeed a mostly open space without obstacles, most of the other portions of that battle occurred in wooded areas or across a river. \n\nIn fact, most commanders did whatever they could to avoid open field fighting, preferring instead to steal a march on their opponent (getting between their base of operations or supply lines) or force them to attack from an exposed position (much like an open field). Although it did happen on occasion on a grand scale (the Battle of Franklin) it usually spelled disaster. \n\nSo yeah, there were open field battles with little or no obstacles, but that was the exception not the norm. It was not good tactics, and unless one had an overwhelming advantage in numbers, such a proposition was doomed to fail for the attacker. Now, as to why Civil War combat is sometimes portrayed in this way, the simple answer is that such a visual spectacle is far easier to process for an observer. This wood carving from the period https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b45350/ can be found at the Library of Congress. The top left panel shows an image from Gettysburg with the wide open plains in the foreground (with hills far away in the distance). This doesn't conform to any real written account of the battle in any place (Pickett's charge didn't really look like this), yet it is a striking image that conveys the scale and scope of the engagement in a way that \"reads\" easily to anyone, literate or not. \n\nWhat we now might understand as a stereotypical Civil War battle in terms of visuals conveying a wide-open plain with clearly defined lines and formations is more of a cinematic development. You might say that 19th century wood carvings and lithographs were more accurate in their portrayal of Civil War action than we are today with movies (this one seems entirely appropriate, as do many others: https://www.loc.gov/item/00652060/). Many pieces of art from this period do represent obstacles like wooded thickets, streams, hills, etc. A lot of Civil War movies feature the bigger, open set-pieces, however, because again, the visual conveys more in a shorter amount of time. If a filmmaker is going to film a battle, they aren't going to obscure the screen with smoke and debris and obstacles unless they have to (or unless the point of the scene is to present this to the audience). \n\nFor example, in the film Gettysburg, the Battle of Little Round Top does take place in a wooded area and up a hillside like the actual battle, but the grand set-piece where most of the budget went was Pickett's Charge. In Gods and Generals (2003), the biggest set pieces were Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and while neither were exclusively open, that's what gets the most screen-time because it is admittedly easy to process visually (clear lines, easy demarcation between sides, etc). Cold Mountain (2003) is another example of a very complicated, messy battle (Battle of the Crater) without an open field as OP mentioned, but visually, somewhat clean lines between sides for the first portion (until the scene very accurately descends into abject carnage and chaos). \n\nTD;LR - No, the majority of Civil War battles were not fought exclusively on open fields with clear sight lines. Some art from the period did depict it this way, though not all. The modern portrayal of this phenomenon is due to the strictures of filmmaking and visual communication with audiences.", "created_utc": 1629996025, "distinguished": null, "id": "hafyvy4", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/pbhhhg/were_stereotypical_openfield_battles_common_in/hafyvy4/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "Right off the bat I'm going to say my answer comes from James McPherson's *Battle Cry of Freedom*, because it is a great one-volume history of the Civil War era, and because I was just re-reading the part about conscription a few days ago. \n\nAs far as conscription in the Union went - the draft was first authorized by Congress on March 3, 1863 under the Enrollment Act. It authorized the War Department to set up a Provost Marshals Bureau, which would dispatch marshals to each Congressional district in order to enroll every male citizen and immigrant who had filed for citizenship between the age of 20 and 45. This enrollment list was the basis for each district's quota in call-ups authorized by the President (four call-ups would occur, one in July 1863 and three in 1864). As a side-note, the reason conscription was authorized (after long debates and heavy Democratic opposition in the 1862 mid-term elections) was because the all-volunteer army was hitting a number if serious expiration deadlines in 1863: 38 two-year regiments raised in 1861 were having their terms of service expire, as were 92 nine-month militia regiments raised in 1862.\n\nAnyhow: in the 1863 draft, provost marshalls called up 20 percent of enrollees, chosen by lottery. In the 1864 call ups, the districts were assigned a pro rata share of total draftees requested by the President, with adjustments made for those had already enlisted from the district. A district had 50 days to meet the required share with volunteers, and if that target wasn't reached, a lottery draft was held to meet the quota.\n\nIf you were a man of age and your name was drawn in a conscription lottery, McPherson notes that the *least likely* outcome was that you'd join the army. Of 776,000 men called up by lottery in the four drafts, a fifth (161,000) \"failed to report\". They just didn't show up. This could involve skipping town, hiding in the woods, or heading West or to Canada. For those who did report to the provost marshals, an eighth were immediately sent home because district quotas had been filled. \n\nOf the remaining 522,000 called up for service, a whopping three-fifths \"were exempted for physical or mental disability, or by convincing the marshal that they were the sole means of supporting a widow, an orphan sibling, a motherless child, or an indigent parent. Unlike the Confederate Congress, Union lawmakers allowed no occupational exemptions.\" \n\nSo basically the most common way of getting out of the Union draft was to claim family circumstances, that you had dependents relying on you for their living. This was not only the most common way of getting out of the draft, but basically the most common *experience* period for anyone called up. \n\nIf you really couldn't convince a Provost Marshal about your fitness or family situation, there were still two last methods to avoid being inducted: you could pay a commutation fee of $300 (which was not an insubstantial amount of money at the time and only commuted your service for the current draft you were called up for, not necessarily future ones), or you could hire a substitute (which exempted you from this and any future draft). Interestingly, the commutation fee was introduced as a means of putting a cap on the potential price of hiring substitutes and keeping it within the reach of lower-income men, while maintaining what was considered an acceptable tradition of substitutes. Commutation was repealed in July 1864. Up to that time, often the fees were covered by local governments or political machines (like New York's Tammany Hall) paying the fees out of property taxes or donations, or from joining draft insurance societies. \n\nThe actual implementation of the above varied wildly depending on the provost marshals involved. Many itinerants were simply missed from enrollment. Some districts had padded enrollment lists with fictitious names (the marshals involved basically decided to just draw a paycheck without doing the actual work required). Other marshals were pretty bluntly intimidated into not gathering names in areas that tended to be pro-Democratic and hostile to the war and its aims - these included many of the southern parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, coal-mining areas of Pennsylvania, and parts of New York City. Governors and Congressmen would also fight over enrollment lists, and on more than one occasion district enrollment needed to be scrapped and redone. \n\nEven with enrollment completed, for those called up, there were all sorts of holes in the system with room for fraud, like bribing a surgeon to claim a physical disability (and remember this is before there was a licensed medical profession), filing false affidavits about dependents, faking a physical or mental disability, claiming to not be a citizen, or self-mutilation. And this is all assuming you couldn't straight-up bribe the marshal to be excused.\n\nOf the 207,000 men who reported and were not excused, 87,000 paid the commutation fee and 74,000 hired substitutes (which mostly were 18 or 19 year olds or immigrants who had not filed for citizenship, ie military age men who were not in the draft enrollment lists). Only 46,000 out of 776,000 actually personally joined the Army after being drafted.\n\nAs McPherson notes, this wildly inept, clumsy and sometimes fraudulent conscription was ultimately a means to stimulate volunteering and re-enlistment. Compared to 46,000 drafted and 74,000 hired substitutes, some 800,000 volunteered or re-enlisted during the two years the Union draft was in effect. Much of this was encouraged by bounties, originally paid by soldiers' aid societies, then local governments, and finally in October 1863 by the federal government, offering a $300 bounty for volunteers and re-enlistments. Something like half a billion dollars were spent in bounties, and the savvy volunteer could honestly work the system (as localities and districts got into bounty bidding wars to fill their quotas) to get up to $1,000, or could dishonestly volunteer, collect a bounty, desert, volunteer *again* under a different name or in a different location, etc. You could even hire a \"bounty broker\" to help you find the best enlistment bounty option available (for a fee, of course)!. Similarly there were \"substitute brokers\" for the market in substitutes for draftees.", "created_utc": 1629747074, "distinguished": null, "id": "ha2iugu", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/pa411l/what_was_the_soldier_screening_process_like_for/ha2iugu/", "score": 11 } ]

[ { "body": "In addition to the answer already provided, you may also be interested in [this previous answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/h01pv9/comment/ftk5tpy) of mine to a similar question. That answer summarizes the, er, summary of the most common pro-slavery arguments given in the antebellum period, taken from the book *Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840* by Larry E. Tise, with some additional information pulled from *The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830-1860* by Drew Gilpin Faust.\n\nAt the end of that answer, /u/barkevious2 adds some additional substance in a separate reply, pointing to the books *The Civil War as a Theological Crisis* by Mark A. Noll, and *Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South* by Paul Finkelman as sources. (The latter is an expanded update of the McKitrick book, published in the last couple decades, with many more examples of the rhetoric than McKitrick had presented in his original edition forty years earlier.)\n\nSuffice it to say that pro-slavery advocates used an array of different arguments in defense of slavery over the decades leading up to the Civil War: economic, religious, moral, classist, racist, and more. More details at the link above.", "created_utc": 1611695723, "distinguished": null, "id": "gkvcaca", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/l5kvah/in_the_decades_preceding_the_american_civil_war/gkvcaca/", "score": 10 }, { "body": "There are some good books on the subject, an old one that is enlightening is “slavery defended” by Eric McMitrick. It’s really just a compilation of writings from Southern “intellectuals”, businessmen and bureaucrats before the Civil War, attempting to defend slavery. \n\nThe arguments tended to go as such. There would be a spurious argument that slavery was necessary for crop production. Most would try to present an idealized version of plantation life and slavery, some would even admit to some of the inhuman aspects of it, but always being careful to weigh the “economic necessity” higher than the human suffering. This would always be followed by other hallow justifications stemming from Christianity and Racism. \n\nBut if you pay attention you see that every justification really centers around one thing. The protection of the Southern large land owning ruling class, and their source of wealth.\n\nAt the time, the general population in the US, would have likely agreed with at least some of these arguments. But “general population” is a hard group to assign one over arching ideology to. I won’t try to say what every slave holder, small farmer, factory worker, or abolitionist felt about concepts like slavery as an economic necessity, or the Religious or racial justifications of slavery. Sorry went on a little tangent there, but it’s a big subject, and even then it was a big country with a lot of different view points. \n\nYou can bet that the general population of the United States leading up to the Civil War, was pretty racist by modern standards. But the Confederacy was determined to set that racism in stone as a founding concept of its government. This was not done to protect whites from blacks, or for Christianity, or for economic necessity. It was done to protect the power structure that existed, to keep the same group of wealthy powerful whites, wealthy and powerful. Everything else is propaganda.\n\nEdit: let me be clear, white supremacy is an insidious and integral part of the American experiment. I don’t mean to downplay its part in chattel slavery by describing it in a mostly economic sense.", "created_utc": 1611692281, "distinguished": null, "id": "gkv3mfe", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/l5kvah/in_the_decades_preceding_the_american_civil_war/gkv3mfe/", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Race. They justified it with race. With some racism-infused pseudoscience and religion thrown in. As far as how this may or may not be related to other considerations such as economics and states’ rights, that is an issue about which countless pages have been published and multiple interpretations have been put forth both in good faith and as part of ideological agendas. Mostly after the Civil War. I know your question is not about interpretations after-the-fact, but the fact that you thought to ask exemplifies how post-war interpretations that focused on things other than racism have become prevalent in general knowledge, even overshadowing what the primary sources tell us.\n\nThe common idea was that black people were inherently lesser humans and that servitude was their “natural state.” That they were inferior and needed the “superior, sophisticated white man” to order them and guide them. White people considered themselves the height of human culture and sophistication. In addition to outdated anthropological views and pseudoscience, they often used lose interpretations of the Bible (misinterpretations, really) to support their views. Such major examples would be the attribution of black skin to the “Curse of Ham” and “Mark of Cain” to provide a pseudo-biblical justification for the enslavement of black people. \n\nHistory itself was interpreted through a lens of progression from “lower” to “higher” societies and the progression of western society was set as the standard. Of course, this is in opposition to the modern view that nothing in societies are inevitable or objectively superior developments, but rather societies adapt to their needs. \n\nThe older paradigm is still somewhat pervasive. For example, for the past 100-200 years, many in Western society have viewed and still view the invention of the wheel as being a fundamental pillar of any sophisticated society. It’s commonly portrayed in pop culture as a Stone Age invention that marked the move from cavemen to civilization. Of course, that’s not the case as the wheel was only ever invented once or twice in Mesopotamia and/or Central Asia in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. Now, most sub-Saharan African societies didn’t make or use wheels for transportation of goods, which in this view would make African societies “less advanced.” However, the lack of wheels can be generally explained by the fact that much of the African terrain made wheeled carts less effective than pack animals, which also happened to be preferred in many parts of pre-industrial Europe. And so while a number of African societies did have the wheel, it was used more for children’s toys and baubles than transportation depending on surrounding terrain. But to those who view the wheel as a fundamental invention the way it works in a Sid Meier game, the lack of wheels is a sign that African societies were/are “inferior” and attribute that to the people being “inferior.” I bring this point up with this example because as a history sub, it is important to be aware of how historical paradigms have contributed and still contribute to racial bias/racism.\n\nWhich brings us to another part of your question: the role of economics in slavery and the American Civil War. I’m not accusing you of anything, by the way, I know you’re just trying to get information. But you touched on a really interesting topic that is still hotly debated. That is, the historiography of the Civil War, whence springs the notions that slavery and the war had economic or states’ rights bases.\n\nBack around the time of the Civil War, there was not much question that the War was fought over the issues of slavery and racism. That much is apparent in numerous the Articles of Secession. The Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens said in his famous Cornerstone Speech that \"Our new government['s] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.\"\n\nHowever some time after the war we start to see new narratives being proposed to rewrite the history. In the study of history there are two concepts we must be aware of: historical revisionism, and historical negationism. Historical revisionism is the legitimate practice of applying new evidence and ideas to get a new perspective on history. Negationism is it’s illegitimate twin that ignores, misinterprets, or fabricates evidence thus acting more selectively to present history in a way that wrongfully substantiates an ideological viewpoint. \n\nFor example, if hypothetically historians found a diary in which Alexander Stephens wrote that neither he nor his compatriots actually believed in racial superiority but just used that narrative to support their own economic interests in slavery, then changing the history books to reflect that would be historical revisionism. However, the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” narrative reinterprets the causes of the war as being about states’ rights and portray slavery as either “not that bad” or even good, saying among other things that the slaves were content, the South was prosperous, and slavery would have ended on its own anyway. This view was pushed especially hard by an organization called the Daughters of the Confederacy and is pervasive to this day. I grew up in a northern state and I still had teachers repeat some Lost Cause ideas in grade school through high school.\n\nIn America we still hear arguments in this vein. Just recently, the Trump administration released what it called the 1776 Commission report, denounced by the academic community as a rag of historical negationism and political propaganda that pushed, among other things, the view that America’s founders set it up for slavery to disappear on its own, nevermind the financial interests that many of them had in slavery or the legal protections they gave it.\n\nAs an academic field history is made up of individuals doing research and proposing a thesis. It is oftentimes less “this happened” and more “this is how I interpret what happened.” The fact is that most of historical study is on a scale from historical orthodoxy to revisionism to negationism. Where any individual work lies depends mainly on the professionalism of the historian. But even good history is influenced by the views of the historian and the limits of their knowledge. Now, new ideas are not inherently a bad thing. Nor is a historical argument bad just because there are blind spots. After all, you can’t expect even a professional to have a working knowledge of *every* source of information on a topic. Historical debate is part of the field, and that includes historians going back and forth bringing up different pieces of evidence, ascribing different values to them, and arguing one theory against another.\n\nWhich brings us back to the relationship between economic theory and slavery. Sorry I keep straying from it, I’m just trying to lay the basis for my point. Just as the Lost Cause narrative took hold in the decades following the Civil War, so too did other historical interpretations. Economics enters the field in what I would divide into two main categories: justifications and explanations. \n\nJustifications may not go so far as to say that slavery was in any way good, but they do attempt to protect the Southerners and Confederates from negative judgment. To absolve them of the claim of racism which is deemed a societal evil. To say that they were so dependent on slavery that they couldn’t end it.\n\nExplanations, on the other hand, have no interest in rehabilitating the reputation of the Southerners, rather the historians subscribe to some view in which economics is the driving force of history. The more reductionist versions of this are examples of economic determinism. One example would be a Marxist view of history. Marxist or Marx-inspired theories of history interpret history through the lens of class struggle, usually economic class struggle. And so within many Marxist inspired interpretations, racism was merely a result of the real source of contention, which is the slave-owning class wanting to retain their economic power through the continuation of slavery. The application of economic determinism to the Civil War is not exclusive to Marxist theories, but they are perhaps the most dogmatic about it.\n\nThere are also interpretations that state the inverse, that racism was the root cause and economics is and was merely an excuse. Some go so far as to say that race struggles are a driving force of history, with economics being the afterthought. This view is usually expressed in the form of explanatory interpretations. But there are also proponents of racial struggle, believing that people naturally fit into their own racial “tribes” and it is natural and right for members of the different races to struggle for a higher place in the racial hierarchy. Those proponents are, of course, racists and racial fascists (almost exclusively white fascists) who are proponents of race struggle but pretend to be merely proposing explanatory theories. They love talking about the Confederacy.\n\nAnd there are other views that interpret the history as a more complicated relationship between racism and economics rather than more reductionist one-underlies the other interpretations. Including more psychologically-oriented view that economics and racism have a complex interplay with each other and feelings of personal benefits, self-worth, and societal-worth that are more deeply rooted in an individual.\n\nYou can read an article about different historical interpretations of the role of economics in slavery, racism and the Civil War [here](https://s-usih.org/2013/12/a-strife-of-tongues-civil-war-historiography-and-american-intellectual-history/).", "created_utc": 1611702553, "distinguished": null, "id": "gkvs249", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/l5kvah/in_the_decades_preceding_the_american_civil_war/gkvs249/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "More can always be said, but [this older thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67fvaf/was_the_average_confederate_soldier_a_strong/dgq8tn2/) of mine should be of interest, as well as [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9onlp3/was_the_south_racist_in_the_civil_war/e7vccui/) and [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/glfrq6/its_late_1864_and_im_a_confederate_soldier_who/fqyokob/) which I think flesh out some of the fringe context.", "created_utc": 1628726537, "distinguished": null, "id": "h8lm9my", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/p2p77h/american_civil_war_why_did_johnny_reb_fight/h8lm9my/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "What you call \"historical records\" are actually very diverse sources. Any campaign or battle would generate many orders and reports, and a significant number of those were later ordered saved by Gen. Henry Halleck and printed as the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. It's online now, and you can [browse it](https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/official-records/032/0020). But as well as the Official Records, there were many memoirs written- sometimes sooner, sometimes later. Not only from soldiers, officers, but civilians. And some would be asked to write about their experiences- *The Century* magazine solicited first person accounts of the War from participants on both sides- especially those the editors knew might have an axe to grind or a complaint.\n\nThere were often quite a lot of details preserved- this was a war, after all. A soldier at Shiloh would likely recall a lot of his two eventful days in it, and if Gen. David Hunter burned your fine house in the Shenandoah Valley, you generally remembered it in detail. But the fact that it was a war also means that written records are not complete. For example, for the defense of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, Col. Joseph Chamberlain became very famous ( and later a central character in Michael Shaara's *The Killer Angels*) in part because he lived to write and tell his story: other Union commanders there ( Strong Vincent, Paddy O'Rourke , Stephen Weed and Charles E.Hazlett) were killed, and couldn't.", "created_utc": 1633817002, "distinguished": null, "id": "hg15vae", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/q476n8/is_the_level_of_detail_in_historic_records_of/hg15vae/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I've written about 'internationalism' and the Civil War in several regards, linked [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/georgy_k_zhukov#wiki_internationalism). I'll specifically repost what I've written about the Civil War and Latin America, as I think it is pretty damn interesting, and also less frequently comes up than, say, the Russian fleet visit in 1863.\n\n-------------\n\nIn the years leading up to the Civil War, the American policy towards her southern neighbors was not particularly friendly, and in consequence, not all that well received. The naked land grab of the Mexican-American War, the various expeditions of filibusters, and just a general lack of concern for close ties with countries who represented to the US little in commercial value either for import or export was all cause for a decided ill-will emanating northwards. When the war came, Lincoln's government was suddenly a decided need to affect an about-face, and to ensure that the Confederacy didn't succeed in overtures herself (although in reality the CSA did no such thing, only trying in vain to court Mexico).\n\nEnvoys were sent out to the various Latin American nations, all with the pointed intent to try and repair relations, and to ensure that these countries would be sure to see that there was value in *Union* victory for them. The most immediate goal, which was met with relative success, was simply to ensure that they would do, well... nothing. With the exception of Brazil, which made an explicit declaration of neutrality - a move that while minor, nevertheless offered the South more recognition than the United States would like - the countries all chose to refrain from recognizing the conflict as anything more than a domestic matter, a better result than with many Europeans, such as France and the UK, both of whom did chose to declare neutrality.\n\nAll in all, it wasn't that hard a sell though. Slavery had been abolished in all but Brazil by then, and pro-Union sentiment was easily stirred up in anti-Slavery groups. Not all being the most stable of nations themselves, a nearby example of successful revolution appealed little to the Latin American leaders, but more importantly, the Union representatives were mostly able to paint much of the 'sins' of the past decade specifically on the South - not entirely an inaccurate picture - and that Southern victory would mean the resumption of filibustering with a vengeance as the slavocracy sought to expand itself southwards. Relatedly, and borne out when France did just that a year later, the possible demise or weakening of the Monroe Doctrine was also a selling point, not that the various countries whole-heartedly liked to think of themselves as America's backyard, but they did nevertheless appreciate that it kept out European intervention to a better degree than they could on their own.\n\nAgain though, Brazil was less disposed, with much stronger reasons to appreciate the Confederacy - one of its few remaining fellows in slaveholding. Later in the war, Dom Pedro II's remarks that \"the successes of the American Union force us to think about the future of slavery in Brazil\" helps to demonstrate the sentiments, and concerns, that pressed Brazil but none of her neighbors, and to be sure, it would be less than a decade later that the Rio Branco Law would begin to dismantle slavery in Brazil.\n\nIn any case though, in late 1861, the CSS *Sumter*, a blockade-runner, was behind a small international incident when she found shelter and replenishment in the Brazilian port of Maranhão. Diplomatic communications saw the incident blow eventually over, with the governor dismissed *officially* for other reasons to the satisfaction of the American Minister J. Watson Webb (Side note, he is described wonderfully by Ferris as \"*whose chief characteristics were the seriousness with which he took himself and his ability to write voluminous notes in what he believed to be the best legalistic style.\"*), but nothing was actually resolved, and Confederate ships would continue to find safe harbor in Brazilian ports, diplomatic letter writing again erupting in 1863 after the CSS *Alabama* sheltered in Fernando do Noronha and captured several Union merchantmen that were in Brazilian waters at the time. Once again, a governor was dismissed, and although the *Alabama* was kept out of Brazilian ports for the time, it was again all temporary, and the Confederate raiders - or pirates are the Union would prefer they be called - continued to prowl off the coast.\n\nThe US finally struck back at all of this on October 7, 1864, with a daring nighttime raid by Napoleon Collins and his crew from the USS *Wachusett*, who captured the CSS *Florida* while it was anchored in the harbor of Bahia, towing it away as a prize while most of her crew was ashore. In the morning, a crowd attacked the Consulate building there, but the consul himself had, wisely, left aboard the *Wachusett*. Once he heard of the incident, Gen. Webb hurried to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry to state that Cdr. Collins had acted without authority (In the letter perhaps, but Webb had in fact been the one to write Collins about where the *Florida* was), and then to raise a stink about the damage to American diplomatic property. To placate Brazil, Collins would eventually be courtmartialed - with no impact in his being lauded a hero, and by agreement of Brazil, he was soon restored to rank with little delay to his career - and a 21 gun salute was belatedly rendered to the Brazilian flag in 1866 by the USS *Niepsie*, but all in all, it was quite worth it to the US.\n\nBrazil - and her less amenable approach to the United States' needs in the war - also were of concern to her neighbors, giving further reason, of course, to root for the 'Stars and Stripes'. The French invasion of Mexico in 1862 was part of a larger \"Grand Design for the Americas\", a vision by Napoleon III for an empire to span the South and Central American lands, allied with the Empire of Brazil - even if Brazil never came into open action for it - and with the Confederacy to weaken and buffer any interference by the United States. Less substantiated rumors also placed Dom Pedro II as planning to help several members of the deposed Italian nobility escape to South America to reestablish monarchies over the various republics. \n\nNor was France the only country interested in flexing muscle. Spain too was interested in clawing back a bit of her lost land. The Dominican Republic was invaded in 1861 after a rigged plebescite, and both Chile and Peru had ports blockaded and some outlying islands seized. The entire venture was an unmitigated disaster, with guerrilla operations in the Dominican Republic taxing the invaders and forcing an eventual abandonment of the venture, while the Chileans and Peruvians welcomed the US' diplomatic intervention in 1866 to help Spain salvage some slight bit of honor while running from their with their tail between their legs. In the territories they still managed to hold on to, Republican and anti-Slavery sentiments further weakened control, inspiring an eventual ten year long slave revolt in Cuba in 1868. In the end, the collective efforts were such an embarrassment to the country, that it would bring down the monarchy, inspiring General Juan Prim's first unsuccessful coup in 1866, followed by his more successful overthrow of the Bourbons in 1868. \n\nAlthough it all, obviously, ended in quite the terrible debacle for Spain, as it all first rolled out, it only added further evidence for the reasons to support the Union. In the case of the Dominican Republic, while leaders had quickly appealed to Lincoln for help and abiding by the Monroe Doctrine, the United States had little choice but to stay uninvolved, not only distracted, but also unable to risk alienating Spain into the arms of the Confederacy. As President Castilla of Peru noted, it was looking to soon be the \"war of the crowns against the Liberty Caps\" as the European powers greedily eyed the Americas, and whatever the disagreements with the US, a quick and decisive end to her own conflict was the surest way to deter further meddling. On November 14, 1864 the Congress of Panama was reconvened, resulting in several new treaties between the Latin American nations, including agreements to stand as one against 'foreign intervention'. Although not attending or officially party, the United States was sure to indicate its support.", "created_utc": 1546709717, "distinguished": null, "id": "edba1r9", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/acv93a/was_the_american_civil_war_a_big_deal_to_the_rest/edba1r9/", "score": 273 }, { "body": "To an extent. Disclaimer: This was written on my phone and only briefly skimmed for mistakes. Apologies for the poor structure, redundancy, and any typos. I focus nearly entirely on Britain, because I am *far* less knowledgeable outside of this niche. \n \n\nFor one, the ideas behind American democracy were still new and untested. The Civil War was passively observed as a study of American democracy. As the war dragged on (there was an expectation that it would be over almost immediately in favor of the Union) Europeans began to further question American democracy, and the nature of the situation became an important point in British foreign policy. The latter is explained later. With Antietam in 1862, Lincoln issued the *preliminary* Emancipation Proclamation, his promise to make the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. This would free slaves *specifically in Confederate states*, which is important, because states could reenter the union or simply not secede if they wanted to keep slaves. Without even having to issue the Emancipation Proclamation for 100 more days, this brilliant piece statement took advantage of the enormous anti-slavery sentiment. To support the South would be to support slavery, and to support slavery would be to threaten a country’s salaried labor force.\n\n\nSecond, just before the war, much of the world textile industry was dependent on the South’s cotton, and much of the world’s textile industry was held by the British. The British labor force was largely anti-slavery and therefore tended to side with the North, especially after the Emancipation Proclamation. That said, because cheap southern cotton had fed the textile industry to such a large extent, that the South believed that a shortage of cotton exports could earn support from Europeans, and in particular, Britain. \n\n\nTake this 1858 quote from James Hammond, who was then a senator from South Carolina:\n\n> But if there were no other reason why we should never have war, would any sane nation make war on cotton? Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us we could bring the whole world to our feet. The South is perfectly competent to go on, one, two, or three years without planting a seed of cotton. I believe that if she was to plant but half her cotton, for three years to come, it would be an immense advantage to her. I am not so sure but that after three years’ entire abstinence she would come out stronger than ever she was before, and better prepared to enter afresh upon her great career of enterprise. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king.\n\n\nThe idea that cotton would be king, and would be enough to win the South support from England was far less realistic after 1858, yet those favoring secession and/or war continued to tout cotton diplomacy. Cotton would soon being to be sourced in large quantities from other regions, [and a global economic slowdown would lead to a textile slump.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine) The costs of supporting the South were too great. \n\n\n\nCitizens were highly affected by the slump, of course, but was risking a war with the North worth it? Despite tariffs, the British still sold many goods to Americans, and still had enormous land holdings in Canada at risk. Furthermore, most British citizens, while not particularly fond of the United States after the Revolution, the War of 1812, Oregon Dispute, tariffs, etc., still opposed slavery. It was much easier to just source cotton from elsewhere. The British population was largely in favor of neutrality (it’s not as though the Civil War was the only thing happening in the world--Prussia was expanding and the January Uprising was taking place, for example) but notable British politicians like William Gladstone pushed for intervention. This is apocryphal, but supposedly, Lord Palmerston (important figure in British foreign policy) was close to supporting intervention as well, and reached the decision not to only after reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This was during the Trent Affair, in which the Union’s navy seized Confederate diplomats to Britain, John Slidell and James Mason, from a British ship. This led to a diplomatic crisis. Some feared war, including Lincoln, who resolved the conflict by releasing Mason and Slidell.\n\n\nThe British still [made ships for](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Alabama) the Confederates and which [was a source of political tension between the two nations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Claims), but this was largely due to private, not government interests, and was addressed.\n\n\nIn regards to the rest of the world, I am far less informed, so I will refrain from comment.", "created_utc": 1546711683, "distinguished": null, "id": "edbd5j2", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/acv93a/was_the_american_civil_war_a_big_deal_to_the_rest/edbd5j2/", "score": 42 } ]

[ { "body": "/u/EdHistory101 (under a previous alias) has previously answered [Was there any literature for slaveowners in the American South in the pre-Civil War 1800s that would tell them how to best own a slave or run a slave plantation? A \"Slavery Daily\" or somesuch?](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/blie3k/was_there_any_literature_for_slaveowners_in_the/emqgmxa/)\n\n/u/chalantcop has previously answered [How did minstrel shows, and the use of blackface, develop in American theater?](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/73p0oa/how_did_minstrel_shows_and_the_use_of_blackface/)\n\nThere are many other answers to this question waiting to be written.\n\nEDIT: There were also [tropes associated with slave narratives for an abolitionist audience](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42j28f/comment/czb5a11/) described by a user who does not want to be pinged anymore. [Another answer about the testimony of Wesley Norris](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4g76bk/comment/d2gf3kb/)", "created_utc": 1631464569, "distinguished": null, "id": "hckvled", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmsycp/in_the_south_prior_to_the_american_civil_war_what/hckvled/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "A few things to help you answer this question.\n\nFirst, [this paper](https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php) by Samuel Williamson & Louis Cain cites data from [the 5,000-page \"Historical Statistics of the United States: earliest times to the present\"](https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Statistics-United-States/dp/0521817919) on changes in the historical price of slaves.\n\nI've been unable to find the original data (which would be fascinating), but [a chart](https://www.measuringworth.com/images/slavery/figure2.jpg) appears to show slave prices through 1863. If I'm not reading the chart incorrectly, the average price of a slave in nominal dollars peaked at $800 in 1861, and then fell slightly more than $50 until 1863, when the data ends. ([In 2011 dollars](https://www.measuringworth.com/images/slavery/figure52.jpg), $800 is more than $20,000.)\n\nCaveats:\n\n* This is the average price; [actual prices varied based on the age and gender of the slave, and the region where he or she was being sold](https://www.measuringworth.com/images/slavery/figure1.jpg), as well as personal characteristics of the slave in question (special skills, unusual physical characteristics, etc.).\n* Since the chart isn't labeled exactly it's hard to be certain on the years. \n* It's also unclear whether data after 1861 includes sales in the rebellious southern states, or only in states like Maryland that remained in the Union but still had slavery. \n\nLess sweepingly, there are some anecdotes from contemporary newspaper accounts about slave prices during the war — and more specifically, about falling prices.\n\nIn January 1863, a major Maryland slaveholder's estate was sold, and the New York Times [reported](http://www.nytimes.com/1863/02/24/news/the-slave-property-of-the-late-charles-carroll.html):\n\n> The appraisers of the slave property of the late CHARLES CARROLL, of this State, one of the largest slaveowners in Maryland, have made their returns to the Orphans' Court, assessing the value of 130 slaves at an average of only $5 each. This, they say, was the highest rate they could name, after consulting with numerous slaveowners and dealers. One slavedealer told the Appraisers he would not give $500 for the whole lot. This is considered a striking illustration of the depreciation of slave property by the rebellion, and will have a powerful influence in this State.\n\n[Before the war, a single male slave in his prime could routinely fetch more than $1,000](https://cwemancipation.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/signs-of-the-times/). This was in Maryland, which was not subject to the Emancipation Proclamation, but slave prices reflected sentiments that slavery was not likely to survive long — no one wanted to sink much money into \"property\" that might be forcibly liberated in a few years.\n\nAt the same time in the Confederacy, slaves were still being sold for prices similar to their pre-war levels. [One receipt for a March 1863 sale shows a 26-year-old woman being sold for $1,600](https://cwemancipation.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/not-dead-yet/). That's a nominal price in Confederate dollars; [by early 1863 it took three Confederate dollars to buy one gold dollar](https://inflationdata.com/articles/confederate-inflation/), so the real price is probably closer to $530. That's not too far off the 1850 prices; [this table](https://www.measuringworth.com/images/slavery/figure1.jpg) suggests a 26-year-old woman in the New South would have fetched around 75 percent of a male of the same age — implying that as a man, she'd have been worth around $800, or the average slave price. \n\nA few months later, [the New York Times analyzed slave prices in different parts of the country](http://www.nytimes.com/1863/08/22/news/market-price-of-slaves.html), and found they varied wildly: \n\n* \"Slaves command a higher price in Kentucky, taking gold as the standard of value, than in any other of the Southern States.\"\n* \"In Missouri they are sold at from ($40) to ($400), according to age, quality, and especially according to place.\"\n* \"In Tennessee they cannot be said to be sold at all.\"\n* \"In Maryland the negroes upon an estate were lately sold, and fetched an average price of $18 a head.\"\n\nThe Times continues: \n\n> In the farther States of the Southern Confederacy we frequently see reports of negro sales, and we occasionally see boasts from rebel newspapers as to the high prices the slaves bring, notwithstanding the war and the collapse of Southern industry. We notice in the Savannah Republican of the 5th, a report of a negro sale in that city, at which, we are told, high prices prevailed, and at which two girls of 18 years of age were sold for about $2,500 apiece, two matured boys for about the same price, a man of 45 for $1,850, and at woman of 23, with her child of 5, for $3,950.\n\nThe Times them summarizes and adds an extremely important caveat:\n\n> Twenty-five hundred dollars, then, may be taken as the standard price of first-class slaves in the Confederacy; but **when it is remembered that this is in Confederate money, which is worth less than one-twelfth its face in gold, it will be seen that the real price, by this standard, is only about $200**. In Kentucky, on the other hand, though there is but little buying or selling of slave stock going on, we understand that negroes are still held at from seven to twelve hundred dollars apiece.\n\nSo to answer your question: Yes, slave prices did vary wildly, and the changing political and military situations did play an important role in determining how much a slave would fetch. In some areas (Maryland) prices plummeted; in others (Kentucky) they stayed steady, but sales became much rarer. The rebellious areas of the country saw continued slave activity; prices had fallen considerably from their peak but remained above rock-bottom when you adjust for the value of Confederate currency.\n\n(It's also worth remembering that in the event of a Union victory, both slaves AND Confederate dollars were likely to become worthless.)\n\nI hope that helped answer your question.\n\n*Edit: Formatting, fixing an unfortunate mistake*", "created_utc": 1493243656, "distinguished": null, "id": "dgsm3cz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/67nr8t/did_the_price_of_slaves_fluctuate_wildly_during/dgsm3cz/", "score": 198 }, { "body": "Follow up question: Was there a trackable market for slavery as a commodity? I know that the stock index wasn't really in widespread use until 1893, but was there a trackable market price for, lack of a better term, the slave commodity. Were there futures contracts based upon the trade? (As abhorrent a concept such as slavery can be, the economy is intriguing.)", "created_utc": 1493232322, "distinguished": null, "id": "dgsc13z", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/67nr8t/did_the_price_of_slaves_fluctuate_wildly_during/dgsc13z/", "score": 184 }, { "body": "I don't have an answer, but I have follow-up questions that are tied with this. How informed were the plantation owners, the regular people of the war? Could the slave prices fluctuate if communication between traders was much slower than now?\n\nI'm sure that not everybody knew what was happening on the front and if they were actually winning or losing because of not wanting to release war secrets and possibly propaganda.\n\nI'm European so I'm fairly uneducated about US history, sorry if my assumption is wrong.", "created_utc": 1493237903, "distinguished": null, "id": "dgsgwqu", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/67nr8t/did_the_price_of_slaves_fluctuate_wildly_during/dgsgwqu/", "score": 18 } ]

[ { "body": "There’s a fantastic book called [The Better Angels of our Nature](https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Freemasonry/dp/0817316957/ref=nodl_) that has some cool stories and debunks some famous myths about freemasonry during the civil war. Long story short, both sides had a significant Masonic presence, and the treatment of Masons during the conflict was respected by most, even if their officer or fellow soldiers were not members of the fraternity. \n\nAs a Mason myself it’s fascinating to see these questions, but you should also definitely look at books written on Masonry by Albert Pike, a confederate general who’s library and writings were some of the most important resources in preserving the Scottish Rite in the US following the war. While not the nicest man, he is an instrumental part of Masonic civil war history.", "created_utc": 1614659267, "distinguished": null, "id": "gpdqybs", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lk99ju/it_is_a_well_known_fact_that_many_of_the_american/gpdqybs/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "It would largely depend on the extent of the injury, the response of the enslaved, and the inclination of the enslaver. This question relates to how enslavers dealt with enslaved women and men that had become too old or infirm to work efficiently. Provided the disability allowed for \\*some\\* form of labor, the enslaver might choose try to retain their human capital. In the event the disabled individual was unable to work at all or could only work at an inefficient rate, the enslaver might still keep them and allow them to live out their days in order to try to cast themselves as paternalists. Advocates for southern slavery, particularly in the antebellum period, actually boasted that they did not simply dispense with their slaves once they could no longer work in the way that northerners did with their wage laborers. Of course, they did so specifically to undercut abolitionist and anti-slavery arguments, and in reality, many enslavers sought to sell slaves no longer able to labor.\n\nEnslavers and slave traders regularly sought to mask any infirmities or disabilities of an enslaved person at market. An sick slave might be given food or clothing that might mask their illness, and traders regularly lied about an enslaved person's ability and age. This would have extended to any disabilities as well, and enslavers simply would have tried to hide an enslaved person's disability to complete the sale.\n\nThe agency of the enslaved individual being sold also came into play, as slaves regularly manipulated the market in their favor when they could do so. Slaves often undercut their enslavers that put them up for sale, announcing their true age or any injuries they might have in order to remain on their enslaver's plantation (due to familial ties, communal ties, or a host of other reasons). On the other hand, they might seek to hide their disability, age, or sickness and cooperate in order to escape their current situation or to simply avoid punishment. \n\nThese would have generally been the two immediate options; keeping on the enslaved person until their death or sale, but there were other even more horrific avenues available to enslavers. By the antebellum period, states had in place laws preventing enslavers from executing their human property, but enslavers were nothing if not grotesquely creative. Certain jobs were higher risk than others, and an enslaver could have easily placed a disabled slave in situations likely to result in their eventual death, either by assigning dangerous jobs or simply overworking them. Still, I don't know of much scholarship on this last subject, and sources would almost certainly prove difficult to come by.\n\nHope this answers your question. I've cited my sources below, but I'd definitely recommend you check out Daina Ramey Berry's book in particular, if you're interested in this topic!\n\nWalter Johnson, \\*Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market\\*\n\nRichard Follett, \\*The Sugar Masters: Platers and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820-1860\\*\n\nDaina Ramey Berry, \\*The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation\\*", "created_utc": 1612218763, "distinguished": null, "id": "glnqy74", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/la6psf/before_the_american_civil_war_what_happened_to/glnqy74/", "score": 14 }, { "body": "u/Axellus151 did not mention that, along with laws against executing slaves, in the early US there were laws against freeing slaves unless they were provided with some means of support, or would be supported by the original owner. Otherwise, owners would be tempted to work them to the point of disability, tell them they were free, and turn them out. After the great cotton boom, however, the Southern states began to make any kind of manumission very difficult.", "created_utc": 1612219873, "distinguished": null, "id": "glntlzn", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/la6psf/before_the_american_civil_war_what_happened_to/glntlzn/", "score": 11 } ]

[ { "body": "Some vital context when considering the relationship between the US and Canada during the American Civil War: it ran through London. Canada was of course still a colonial possession of Great Britain at this time, so foreign relations were formally and practically handled out of London. I can't speak to the plots specifically, but there is an interesting diplomatic history between the South and the European powers, with the South continually looking to gain foreign recognition for its cause. Anything organized with tacit support from the colonial Canadian government or from the British crown would certainly have been looked at as hostility against the US at this time.\n\nThe Federal government made it known early on that any attempt to recognize the Confederate government as a sovereign power would be an act of war upon the United States and in such a war, Britain would have much to lose. William H. Seward, the US Secretary of State, made no secret of the fact that he believed the Southern crisis (as it was known in the beginning) would be a perfect opportunity to initiate the US conquest of Canada, saying that a foreign war was “the best means of establishing internal peace.” Indeed, the British War Office planned for the inevitable loss of Canada in any war with the US, while their offensive strategy relied on a blockade of the North to gradually force the Federals to capitulate. \n\nThe South's major carrot in their negotiations with the British included the fact that at the start of the war, 80 percent of Britain’s cotton supplies came from the South. And the Federals instituted a blockade of all shipping to and from the South, cutting off cotton exports. Britain was at the time the world's largest producer of textiles, so this was a big deal to them. Undoubtedly cotton supplies were less important to Canada, but it was British MPs who were making the decision about whether Canada should aid/recognize the South, not Canadian ones!\n\nCotton shortages caused significant labor strife in Britain during the early years of the war and Britain and France considered a joint effort to mediate the conflict on the basis of Southern separation and recognition after the Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. However, Antietam put an end to that talk. Then after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued there was no further real support for intervention on behalf of the South in either Britain or (I would presume) Canada. Abolition was immensely popular in both countries, so the constituency mitigating in favor or Southern recognition lost all favor after Lincoln framed the war in moral terms.\n\n\"King Cotton Diplomacy\" is of course the seminal work in this field, and there's also:\nBrian Jenkins. Britain & the war for the Union: Volume 1 (McGill-Queen's UP, 1974) and\n D.P. Crook The North, the South and the Powers. (John Wiley & Sons, New York: 1974)\n\nedit: corrected to \"Second Bull Run\"", "created_utc": 1489689040, "distinguished": null, "id": "df0lufw", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5zqhdd/according_to_a_book_im_reading_the_south_during/df0lufw/", "score": 567 }, { "body": "It wasn't New York, but a couple dozen Confederate agents did come into St. Albans, a small town in northern Vermont, from Canada in 1864. They robbed three banks, claimed to have conquered the town, stole some horses, and rode back towards Canada. However, the townspeople telegrammed the Canadian border after the Confederates left, and most of them were captured when they got back to Canada. and yet, the Canadians had trouble deciding whether this was a crime deserving punishment, or an act of war in which a neutral country like Canada/the UK should not interfere. After arresting, freeing, re-arresting, re-freeing, and re-re-arresting them, the Canadians eventually freed the people but gave the money back to the banks (though some of the money, along with some of the men, were never captured and presumably got back to the Confederacy).\n\nThis was a somewhat wiley move because the war was going poorly for the Confederacy at this point, and they were in need of money and morale boosts, not to mention demoralizing/confusing the Union. They were getting desperate and willing to try more creative approaches to furthering their cause. The biggest effect was to sow fear among the northerners. \n\nFor more, see [this episode](https://www.futilitycloset.com/2016/03/21/podcast-episode-98-st-albans-raid/) of the Futility Closet podcast, and the books, newspaper articles, and other things the podcast cites.", "created_utc": 1489730647, "distinguished": null, "id": "df1i9wa", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5zqhdd/according_to_a_book_im_reading_the_south_during/df1i9wa/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "This should not be taken as a definitive answer, and by and large I'm not specifically going to answer the part of the question about what drove European immigration to the US in the 1860s - I will leave that to a more knowledgeable commenter. \n\nBut specificially around some of the assumptions in the question, I can speak a bit to these.\n\nFirstly, the fighting and violence of the Civil War was almost completely restricted to the American South, and even there it was heavily concentrated in a few regions only, most notably Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia. Much of the conflict even in other areas of the Confederacy was relatively short (for instance, the largest city in the Confederacy, New Orleans, was captured after essentially a brisk two week campaign), and whole swathes of the Confederacy for all practical purposes never even saw armies marching across it. \n\nOutside of the South, the war really had little if any direct impact on daily life, being more like a foreign conflict that a domestic one. California and the Pacific Coast were far, far removed from the fighting, and only with the brand-new in 1861 transcontinental telegraph could even receive same day news about the conflict. \n\nWith that said, there *were* significant numbers of refugees from the war - or, more correctly they would be what we would call in modern parlance \"Internally Displaced Persons\", as refugees are technically international. Namely, this would include the so-called \"Contrabands\", ie slaves who individually or in groups escaped and found their way to Union lines and camps. Overall perhaps something like 500,000 out of four million slaves became Contrabands.\n\nA few further points around the war and immigrants - overall, the Union was not terribly interested in directly recruiting immigrants, especially Catholic ones from cities, in part specifically because authorities didn't want the bad press this could cause among potential future immigrants in Europe. Immigrants *did* serve in the Union (and Confederate) armies, of course, but they were disproportionately underrepresented. On top of this, despite the notoriety of the draft, it was a fractionally small percentage of the Union army (something like 2% of the total being conscripts), and overwhelmingly a volunteer force. Therefore, from the perspective of an immigrant to the US, and here it's worth noting that immigrants overwhelmingly went to Northeastern cities or to the Midwest, the Civil War was mostly in a distant region of the country, and fighting in it was a mostly voluntary affair. More specifically on Irish immigrants and Civil War service [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/93dts1/in_gangs_of_new_york_theres_a_scene_where_irish/e3crh86/).\n\n*With that said*, immigration to the US *did* decrease during the Civil War, hitting a nadir of about 95,000 arrivals in 1862 (the lowest in about 20 years). It's worth noting, however, that this was a continuation of a trend starting in 1857, when a severe economic downturn in the US made immigration a less attractive option for many. The arrivals figures quickly rose with the end of the conflict, however.", "created_utc": 1594764912, "distinguished": null, "id": "fy30t8p", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/hr0koo/how_did_the_usa_remain_a_popular_destination_for/fy30t8p/", "score": 11 } ]

[ { "body": "This is wrong. While I cannot find a study that gives an overall number throughout the slaveholding states at a particular point in time, there are a couple studies that have examined the issue in parts of the slaveholding states.\n\nIn *Slavery in the American Mountain South* by Wilma A. Dunaway, the author writes: \"About 5 percent of the [Mountain South's] farm operators were farm managers who managed the holdings of absentee slaveholders.\"\n\nIn fact, this is overestimating the percentage in the region who could possibly have been absentee slaveholders living in the North. Dunaway, oddly, is citing a study she did herself in another book, *The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860*, in which she states that about 5% of farm managers in the Mountain South managed farms of *any* kind that had an absentee owner. Not all of those farm owners actually owned farms that operated with enslaved laborers. Some of them owned tenant farms. Further, that 5% of absentee farm owners weren't all living in the North, or elsewhere outside of the South. Quite a number of them were \"absent\" because they owned multiple plantations, but were only resident at one. Dunaway gives the example of John Norton, who lived in Fauquier, Virginia, and owned three different plantations (originally a single plantation subdivided to be inherited by his three young sons). Since he could only be resident at one of the three plantations, the other two had an \"absentee slaveholder\" despite the slaveholder living on an adjacent property. Being wealthy enough, he employed overseers at each of the three plantations.\n\nAllan Kulikoff makes a relevant estimate in the book *Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800*. Studying the Tidewater region of Virginia, the author concludes that by the 1770s, \"about a third and half of the slaves...lived on plantations with overseers by the 1770s\".\n\nThis comes with a couple of caveats. First, that means the other 1/2 to 2/3 of enslaved people lived on plantations where the only overseer at all was the slaveholder himself. But second, this is an estimate of where the enslaved people lived, not the number of slaveholders. Since a relatively small number of slaveholders owned a relatively larger percentage of the enslaved people, and enslaved people weren't divided up evenly among slaveholders, it can be extrapolated that much less than 1/3 to 1/2 of actual slaveholders had a hired overseer. And it was probably much less. According to a study cited by John Michael Vlach in his book *Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery*, about 80 percent of all slaveholders held five people or fewer in slavery. As profitable as slavery was, few of these slaveholders were in a financial position to hire an overseer in their absence. These slaveholders typically held 40-250 acres of land, and oversaw the work themselves, if they lived in the countryside at all. Quite a lot of these slaveholders were urbanites who had one or two people held as domestic workers. If they left their home to go North, they took their enslaved people with them if/when it was legally possible. When it was not possible, then the visit was only temporary, and not really relevant anyway, because the slaveholder would have to leave *some* family members behind to make sure the captured people didn't \"steal\" themselves to freedom in their absence. \n\nWhile I cannot verify this number at the moment, I have seen the number of known plantations in 1860 as being 46,200. The number of slaveholders listed in the U.S. Census is verifiable, and in 1860 was 393,975. If the number of plantations is true, and that translates to 46,200 slaveholders who owned plantations (and in actuality would be fewer, since, as mentioned, some slaveholders owned more than one plantation), then roughly 12% of slaveholders were really in anything remotely near the financial position that they could afford to be an absentee slaveholder, living outside their plantation in the North, or for that matter, in a foreign country. That doesn't contradict the statistics cited by Vlach. Regardless, the number of even *possible* slaveholding estates in the South owned by absentee slaveholders is much, much lower than the majority of slaveholders. With those statistics, the maximum would be 12% of slaveholders. Using Vlach's study, the maximum would be 20% of slaveholders. In either case, the actual number was much, much lower than the maximum. Almost certainly in the single digits, almost certainly in the low single digits.\n\nThe most direct statement I could find that says it's not true comes from Peter Kolchin in his article \"Reevaluating the Antebellum Slave Community: A Comparative Perspective\" published in *The Journal of American History*. Comparing slavery in the British West Indies (Caribbean) and Russia where absentee slaveholding *was* common (the author states 90% of enslaved people in Jamaica were owned by absentee lords, mostly living in Great Britain), the author writes about the U.S. South and Brazil:\n\n> \"In the southern United States--and to a lesser extent in northeastern Brazil--the situation was far different. Slaveowners generally resided on their farms and plantations, and they took a personal hand in managing their slaves. Of course, there were exceptions; a small number of absentee proprietors, whose holdings were concentrated among the coastal rice lands of South Carolina and Georgia and the large cotton and sugarcane plantations along the lower Mississippi River, left their estates in the hands of hired overseers and slave drivers. Most southern slaveowners, however, large as well as small, lived on their holdings. Equally important was their resident mentality. If Russian and West Indian lords longed for the cosmopolitan life provided by St. Petersburg and London, most southern planters felt torn from their roots when forced to be\naway from home...\n>\n> \"As a result of their resident character, southern slaveowners impinged far more than most others on the daily lives of their slaves and showed what some historians have described as \"paternalistic\" tendencies. The slaveowners' paternalism--a complex and controversial concept--was based, not on some romantic notion of a benign slavery, but on their resident mentality. The small size of southern holdings enabled masters to know their slaves personally, and, unlike slaveowners elsewhere, they routinely intervened in their slaves' lives on a daily basis.\"\n\nShirley M. Jackson's dissertation \"Black Slave Drivers in the Southern United States\" agrees with the assessment that it was only a \"small number\" of slaveholders who held enslaved people in absentee. There, the author states that the common form of absenteeism if it were lengthy at all was for slaveholders to go North during the sweltering summer months to a summer home they owned or rented. For the rest of the year, the slaveholder would be resident on their plantation.\n\nMaybe someone else can find more direct statistics, but there really isn't any chance that this is true.\n\n**SOURCES**:\n\nDunaway, Wilma A. *The First American Frontier Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860* (1996). University of North Carolina Press, p.94.\n\nDunaway, Wilma A. *Slavery in the American Mountain South* (2003). Cambridge University Press, p.144.\n\nJackson, Shirley M. \"Black Slave Drivers in the Southern United States\" (Aug 1977), Graduate College of Bowling Green State University, p.31.\n\nKolchin , Peter. \"Reevaluating the Antebellum Slave Community: A Comparative Perspective\", *The Journal of American History*, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Dec., 1983), pp. 585-587. \n\nKulikoff, Allan. *Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800* (1986). University of North Carolina Press, pp.409-413.\n\nVlach, John Michael. *Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery* (1993). University of North Carolina Press, p.8-12.", "created_utc": 1587414193, "distinguished": null, "id": "fo0jdlf", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4tako/i_was_having_an_arguement_about_the_american/fo0jdlf/", "score": 92 }, { "body": "There's no particularly useful sense in which that's true. Even if we defined enslavers as including Northern bankers who hold loans with enslaved people as collateral, there are not remotely near enough bankers to beat the numbers that white Southerners can put out. It is worthwhile to consider how all white Americans are part of the de facto enslaving class sometimes, but that's clearly not what is being claimed. So let's set that aside and get to how most people will reasonably parse the claim: an enslaver is a person who enslaves an enslaved person, by definition. They own that person, in the eyes of the law, roughly like they would own a horse or a tract of land.\n\nSo looking at the census of 1860, when American enslaving is at its zenith, a grand total of 61 enslaved people reside in the free states and free-ish territories. There were two in Kansas Territory, 15 in Nebraska Territory, 18 in New Jersey, and 26 in Utah. I don't have the microdata accessible to me to tell you how many enslavers that represents, but this is such a ludicrous claim that we can spot it basically every possible point in its favor and still come up dry for any evidence. Assuming the maximum possible enslavers, that's one enslaver per enslaved person. (We could make it slightly worse by assuming enslaving households and counting members, but I don't have the average household size data available.) Bending over backwards this way, we have sixty-one enslavers outside the South...and that is including some territories you can argue about. Utah legalized enslaving in the late 1850s, for example.\n\nThe white South, per the same census, enslaves 3,952,696 black Americans at the time. The lowest enslaved population in the South, Delaware, still clocks in at 1,798 people. This is, of course, staggeringly more than the 61 in the North. Delaware is a pretty strange outlier for the enslaving states, which boast two who have the majority of their population -not their black population, their *entire population*- enslaved. Those are South Carolina and Mississippi, with Louisiana getting quite close at almost 47% and Florida, Georgia, and Alabama all clustered in the mid-forties. \n\nYou needn't take this from me: The 1860 census is available, with data down to the county level, [online](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1864/dec/1860a.html). A few counties are missing because the census was being taken and compiled through the summer and fall of 1860, when performing regular civil service tasks in large part of the country experienced certain unusual difficulties.", "created_utc": 1587407883, "distinguished": null, "id": "fo08eoa", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4tako/i_was_having_an_arguement_about_the_american/fo08eoa/", "score": 96 } ]

[ { "body": "A lil addendum here...or were there other issues perceived by the south in regards to the geographical restriction of slavery. Like idk...soil depletion or land prices skyrocketing/ slave values dropping or maybe fears around the concentration of slaves...I just see that there was made every concession possible to the southerners regarding the protection of the institution where it stood, so secession was deemed necessary simply because the system could no longer expand. What made that lack of expansion appear as an existential threat to southern slave holders?", "created_utc": 1615141026, "distinguished": null, "id": "gq4bknz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lzw2xr/american_civil_war_causes/gq4bknz/", "score": 0 } ]

[ { "body": "It would depend a lot on where in the south you are. Anti Confederate sentiment tended to be concentrated in particular regions where slavery played a less important economic role than the south overall. The Appalachian counties of Virginia which seceded from the Confederacy are the most famous of these regions, but plenty of Confederate states had some region that was particularly pro union. People in these regions would probably join the union army when it was close enough to the places they lived for them to easily make the journey from.\n\nFor a lot of Virginians that was almost the entirety of the war, with around 22,000 whitenpeople from West Virginia and Virginia proper joining the union army over the course of the war. For many of them it was as simple as sneaking across an unguarded area on the border, and volunteering at the first recruitment office they could find. \n\nFor the states of the deeper south though it's a far dicier question, and in order to join the union army probably had to wait for when the union army actually reached somewhere close enough for them to safely reach them. It would probably be possible for them to make the whole treck north before then but it would be far riskier than laying low. Which doesn't necessarily mean they didn't fight against the Confederacy in other ways though. Unionists in Tennessee held three conventions during the civil war which established the opposition of eastern Tennessee to secession, and draft resistance was very common in loyalist regions of the south. \n\nThe reaction of your peers would also be highly dependent on their political sympathy. It was dangerous to be a unionist surrounded by Confederate sympathizers. The nature of fighting a civil war means that the state is going to be hostile to any forces which are sympathetic to the opposite side. There would almost certainly be threats to your safety if you're suspected of disloyalty. Whether they be legal or extrajudicial. In unionist regions of the south this would be mitigated by your opinion being shared by your peers. But there were clashes with the Confederate government and the unionists in their states.", "created_utc": 1585554496, "distinguished": null, "id": "flwkvri", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/frk0gb/im_a_southerner_living_in_the_south_at_the/flwkvri/", "score": 115 } ]

[ { "body": "Expanding slightly from a previous answer I wrote. It only looks as far west as Indian Territory b[ut I'll see if I can't expand more on involvement beyond there in another follow-up](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8lxnfm/how_did_native_americans_view_the_american_civil/dzk7m42/):\n\nAmerican Indians found themselves on both sides, and no sides, during the American Civil War. With numerous nations distributed not just in Indian Territory, but also Kansas, and a not negligible presence in Arkansas and Missouri as well, there proximity to the conflict made this nigh inevitable in of itself. \n\nTo start, the 'Five Civilized Tribes', who had been pushed westward by the ceaseless expansion of the United States', had in many ways adopted some aspects of the (newer) American way of life, but theirs' was a precarious and often hard existence. Forcibly removed from their ancestral lands by the white interlopers and smashed together into foreign land, much smaller than before, and crowded with numerous other alien cultures. Within and across the cultural groups, squabbles about assimilation of American ways versus maintenance of traditional lifestyles was often a major rift. Especially for the wealthiest members, their lifestyle in many ways reflected the plantation system of the American South, down to the land being tilled by enslaved black workers, but many others rejected such abandonment of their identities as Cherokee or Creek. Slavery especially could be a major point of contention, with some tribes embracing it, and others cautious or outright hostile.\n\nNevertheless, when war broke out, the 'Five Civilized Tribes' nominally threw their lot in with the Confederacy, although not all with the same degree of relish. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, who had taken the most to Southern style slavery, jumped at the opportunity to sever ties with the Union, while the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminoles, who had stronger abolitionist views, or at least ambivalence, less so, although in the end they too felt that cultural and economic connections with the South couldn't be overcome. Fighting units were raised, and Indian Territory prepared for war. \n\nDecisions were hardly uniform though. Especially within the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminoles, major rifts appeared, and internal factions refused to go along, prefering to side with the Union. And of course, the 'Big Five's' decision was for many smaller groups essentially forcing the issue for those within Indian Territory, either taking the side of the Confederacy, or risking destruction. Those who did not wish to side with the South were mostly forced to flee north into Kansas, where the Union in turn took advantage of the rift to raise their own units of American Indian soldiers, a path which, as seen below, could often be a bloody one to follow.\n\nThere were several key \"cleavage points\" which on which we can see affiliation breakdown. One of the most interesting to note is the racial underpinnings, with \"full-blooded Indians\" more likely aligning themselves with the Union, and those of \"mixed-blood\" (by which we mean of *white* and Indian ancestry) with the Confederacy. This division, long-simmering before the war, was starkly represented by the Keetoowah, a Cherokee organization intended to protect their traditional way of life (although somewhat Christianized), and which saw many fight in Union Blue or with the paramilitary Jayhawkers, and the \"Knights of the Golden Circle\", a Masonic-esque group with several Native chapters, which appealed especially to those of mixed-race, and intermarried with whites. The \"Knights\" were closely associated with Stand Watie, who would gain fame as a Confederate general, and the last to surrender. Both, in their own way, promoted racialist views, with the Keetoowah concerned about outside impact on traditions, and the \"Knights\" promoting a pro-slavery, anti-black platform not dissimilar from the racial and class views found in the white South. During the war, Black soldiers, who were used to a good degree by the Union in campaigns there, were often given no quarter and massacred by the Confederate Indian units when offering surrender. In any case, this overall view sets the picture of Union and Confederate loyalty, with traditionalists feeling more to gain with the Union, and those of a more assimilationist bent siding with the Confederacy.\n\nViews on race were also starkly apparent specifically within the Seminoles, who has the largest integration of African-Americans into the tribal group. As noted above, they had stronger abolitionist views, in large part due to historical intermarriage with black persons in the tribal history. African-Americans were decidedly looked down upon though by those of mixed heritage, which should be understood as White and Native, not Native and anything else, so those of mixed native and African ancestry would have likely felt more affinity with the \"full-blooded\" groups than the alternative. As a result the Seminoles were more strongly (although by no means entirely), leaning towards the Union in comparison to other groups, but due to tribal politics, they too were officially allied with the Confederacy.\n\nAs we'll return to shortly, Opothleyahola's desperate march north was a group of Creek and Seminoles who wanted no part of the Confederacy, and included former/escaped slaves within their ranks. They weren't the only ones either, but the most official treaty, insofar as we can say there was one, of Seminole allegiance, was negotiated with Albert Pike on behalf of the Confederacy by the Principal Chief John Jumper, but despite his title, it can hardly be said he represented his nation uniformly. The biggest cleavage within the Seminole nation was by confessional lines. Those who had converted to Baptist persuasion, led by Jumper, were of a more assimilationist bent and leaned towards the South, while Presbyterian Seminoles had stronger currents of abolitionist thought, and would follow Assistant Principal Chief John Chupco towards the Union. According to Warde, roughly half the Seminole nation followed Jumper to the Confederacy. Of the rest, it was a mix of Union-leaning, and many who would prefer to simply remain neutral and abide by the treaty requirements with the US government, although that wasn't always possible.\n\nAll in all, only the Choctaws and Chickasaws, of the \"Five Civilized Tribes\", saw no subfactions side with the Union, the other three fighting for both North and South. The smaller Quapaws and Senecas were the only significant nations who made no noticeable contribution to the South.\n\nFor the conflict itself, although the early clashes between Union and Confederate formations of American Indians were fought in their own, traditional styles of warfare, this was short lived on the whole. The 1861 campaign, pitting Creek and Seminole's under Opothleyahola, and loyal to the Union, against a Confederate force of mostly Cherokee and Choctaw, with support from two regiments of Texans, was in many ways more like guerilla warfare than the set-piece battles we think of for the Civil War. Both sides made ample use of ambushes, skirmish lines, flanking, and deception, and the overall tactical milieu resembled a hunting party writ-large. For Opothleyahola's forces, they included a large train with many of the warriors families in tow - fully 2/3 of the group were non-combatants - as their overall intent was to reach Kansas, and safety. The campaign essentially ended with the Battle of Chustenahlah, which saw the Union-loyal traditionalists mostly routed when their ammunition started to run out. Not just the men, but many women and children were killed by the Confederates as they were run down. The survivors reached Kansas, but Opothleyahola's group had taken grievous losses, and now had to survive the winter as well, while ill-supplied to do so. These refugee camps saw a 10 percent death rate that winter.\n", "created_utc": 1527246986, "distinguished": null, "id": "dzjw9nt", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/8lxnfm/how_did_native_americans_view_the_american_civil/dzjw9nt/", "score": 190 }, { "body": "This question comes up frequently\n\nHere are two excellent answers from the FAQ\n\nThis one by /u/Reedstilt \nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/201dtq/how_aware_were_native_american_populations_of_the/cfyxfen/\n\nand this one by /u/The_Alaskan\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39nup4/how_did_american_indians_react_to_the_american/cs4zzez/?context=3", "created_utc": 1527218624, "distinguished": null, "id": "dzjgac5", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/8lxnfm/how_did_native_americans_view_the_american_civil/dzjgac5/", "score": 119 }, { "body": "I’m a Texas History historian, and I think I can present to you some information relevant to this discussion. \n\nAt the time of the Civil War, the western portions of Texas (specifically the areas between the Rio Grande and the Colorado River) were still very active with Comanches and Apaches. During the 1850s, a line of forts had been established by the Federal government that essentially ran down the entire length of the state. \n\nWhen Texas joined the Confederacy, the southern government seized control of these fortifications with the intention to keep them garrisoned. But, by 1862, the Confederacy realized that holding the western forts was pretty much going to be a hopeless endeavor. \n\nAround the same time, 1862, the Comanches also realized that the Confederacy was too weak to hold the western portions of Texas. Seeing an opportunity to regain the areas that they had previously held, the Comanches started launching massive raids against the isolated settlements of the region. \n\nThe settlers were in uproar. Each raid was becoming increasingly more destructive, and the Confederacy was doing nothing to protect them. \n\nTo try and assist their people, the Texas government established Frontier Battalions and began using Texas State Troops to man and patrol the western regions. However, these units were poorly manned and had no supplies. Most of the men were even using their own weapons and wearing their own clothes. \n\nFor a time, the Frontier Battalions were doing an okay job in patrolling the western regions of Texas. But, in early 1863, the Union launched a two prong invasion of both the Rio Grande and the Texas coastline. Because of these campaigns, the Frontier Battalions were re-deployed to the Rio Grande to face the Federals...once again leaving the western settlements opened to Comanche attack. \n\nThe raids on the settlements started again, and were now even more successful than previously. By 1864, the vast majority of the western settlers had relocated to the east bank of the Colorado River, essentially surrendering their farms and ranches to the Comanches. \n\nSince 1862, more specifically since the failure of the Sibley New Mexico Campaign, the Federals had occupied everything west of the Pecos River. By 1864, the Comanches had become emboldened by their successes against the Texas settlers, and they decided to try their luck against the Union forces in the west. \n\nA few raids were launched against the Federal forces in New Mexico, but the attacks met with little success. In an attempt to counterattack the Native Americans, Colonel Kit Carson was dispatched on an expedition that eventually penetrated the Texas Panhandle. His forces met with great success against the Comanches at the First Battle of Adobe Walls in the November of 1864. \n\nAt the end of 1864, the Comanches had essentially regained control of the western portions of Texas that lay between the Pecos and Colorado Rivers. The settlers, by this time, were wholly disheartened with both the Confederacy and Texas governments. Both entities had failed to protect them, and even worse, had done nothing to try and recapture the western frontiers. \n\nIn early winter of 1864, a small force of Texas State Troops discovered indications of a massive number of Native Americans moving southward in the present vicinity of Abilene. Although it appeared that the trail was leading in a southwesterly direction, venturing away from the settlements along the Colorado, the Texas State Troops sent word to the settlers to be wary of a possible attack. \n\nThe report from the State Troops spread like a wildfire through the scattered settlements along the east shoreline of the Colorado River. Suddenly, the citizens were assembling militia units and volunteers to prepare for a movement against this large force of Native Americans...whom they presumed to be Comanche. \n\nAs the Texas State Troops continued to track the column of Native Americans, it became increasingly evident that the Indians seemed to be heading towards Mexico. It also started to be seen, that the force consisted of families who were also armed with military grade muskets. \n\nThe Texans continued to assume that the natives would eventually turn towards the Colorado and launch a major offensive into the settlements. Shortly before Christmas, 1864, the militias and volunteer units were called upon for assistance by the State Troops. \n\nThe volunteer units from the settlements assembled shortly after December 25, and started their march to a designated rendezvous point in present day Tom Green County. In early January, 1865, the volunteers and Texas State Troops met at Spring Creek in the western portions of Tom Green County. \n\nOn January 8th, without proper guidance or intel, the combined Texas forces (numbering about 200) launched a poorly planned attack on the Native encampment near present day Dove Creek (in Irion County). \n\nUnbeknown to the Texans, the Indians were actually Kickapoo that had been allowed to leave a reservation in Kansas to live with their relatives along the Rio Grande. Also, unbeknown to the Texans, the Kickapoos numbered almost 200 more than the Southerners, and had been given confiscated Enfield muskets for protection against the Comanches. \n\nThe Battle of Dove Creek was a disastrous defeat for the Texan forces. Not only were the Southerners routed, completely, but one of the heaviest snowfalls in West Texas history dropped over five foot of snow on the evening of the battle. \n\nCausality numbers for the Kickapoos have never been correctly identified. But, it is estimated that only about 10 Native Americans were killed or wounded during the fight. The Texans, however, lost around 30 men and one of the two commanding officers. \n\nThe Battle of Dove Creek was one of the largest Native American battles in Texas History. It also provoked the Kickapoo people to retaliate against the settlers, and Federal Army, in the years directly following the Civil War. \n\nSo, I guess in a summary of this very lengthy response, the Native Americans in Texas (primarily the Comanches) during the Civil War, saw the conflict as an opportunity to regain their lost territories in the western frontier of the state. The raids against the Texas settlers, during the war, fueled the flames that would eventually spark into the Indian Wars of Texas in the late 1860s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s. \n\nHope this adds to your research. \n\n\n\n\n\n", "created_utc": 1527266378, "distinguished": null, "id": "dzkehcd", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/8lxnfm/how_did_native_americans_view_the_american_civil/dzkehcd/", "score": 17 } ]

[ { "body": "More can always be said, but [this older answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67fvaf/was_the_average_confederate_soldier_a_strong/dgq8tn2/) should be of interest for you.", "created_utc": 1614200299, "distinguished": null, "id": "gomn2bp", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lri2v1/did_the_rank_and_file_confederate_soldiers_have_a/gomn2bp/", "score": 5 }, { "body": "​\n\n1. State Loyalty was much higher at the time and people generally viewed themselves as citizens of a state rather than the United States. So, the primary loyalty could easily be the state.\n2. There was a high degree of societal belief in the Slave States that emancipation would lead to a servile war. The belief was that enslaved peoples were only partially civilized because they were enslaved and that freed, they would revert to their natural barbaric tendencies. These were reinforced with exceedingly lurid tales of what happened in various slave revolts. So, a lot of people in the south felt the Federal government was undermining the basic security of the people (read, white) in slave-holding states.\n3. As an additional point to the above point, even basic voting rights would overturn the social order in many areas as the enslaved population outnumbered the white population in those areas.\n4. It is a mistake - and not an inconsiderable one - to view the situation from a rich vs poor dynamic. Take a Slave holding state like Delaware, where there was a total of 1798 enslaved people in 1860, and consider how little the state supported secession as the enslaved peoples really did only help the wealthiest and had no bearing on the overall economy... Contrast that with areas with a much higher proportion of enslaved peoples. There is a direct and verifiable statistical correlation between the number of enslaved peoples and support for secession irrespective of how many people in those areas actually were active slavers. Slavery underpinned the entire society in vast regions of the United States. Even if someone did not enslave someone themselves, they could hire enslaved peoples from their enslavers to perform manual labor. The currency that held up the local economy was mainly from the cash crops and manufactured goods sold for a profit - all of which was based on the labor of enslaved peoples.\n5. The strict racial hierarchy was embedded in all aspects of the society. A poor white person was never at the bottom of the social ladder. They were always a mile ahead of even the richest free black person in the south in terms of legal rights, social obligations, etc. These perks of being white were reinforced every day in large ways and small ways, so a white person would always feel that they were benefiting from that society.\n6. Then, there was the adventure side to being a soldier in a war. For a lot of young men, this was their best chance for distinction and fame.\n7. There was universal conscription and the penalties for avoiding the draft included property confiscation and death. This was where the whole myth of the southern soldiers loyalty to the cause starts to break down. The initial reasons why a southern man might volunteer might have convinced a lot of men to volunteer, but the number of volunteers in the initial wave was nowhere near what was needed. The initial wave of volunteers was very heavily tilted towards the ones who benefitted the most from the southern societal structure. There are many instances of recruiters having trouble filling out the second wave of volunteers in the south. There was plenty of manpower, but no wave of volunteers after the first rush. For example, the exemption granted to anyone who held more than 20 enslaved peoples caused a great deal of resentment because that was a very explicit example of a rich vs poor favoritism.\n\nIn general, there were a lot of reasons why an individual might join the army. However good the original enticement might have sounded, this was not enough to sustain the armies throughout the war. Desertion was high and ramped up over the course of the war. Draft avoidance became an artform.", "created_utc": 1614196921, "distinguished": null, "id": "gomen5n", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lri2v1/did_the_rank_and_file_confederate_soldiers_have_a/gomen5n/", "score": 8 } ]

[ { "body": "There were two instances in which Great Britain came closest to intervening in the American Civil War. The first was the **Trent Affair** of 1861. The second was the **Laird Rams Affair** of 1863.\n\nThe Trent Affair took place [when the *USS San Jacinto* seized the *RMS Trent*, a British mail packet out of Havana](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/showdown-in-the-atlantic/). The *Trent* was carrying a handful of Confederate diplomats bound for Europe, where they were to represent Confederate interests. The diplomats were removed at gunpoint from the *Trent*, and they were imprisoned. The *Trent* was allowed to proceed on its journey.\n\nThis was a major diplomatic incident. The U.S. Navy had stopped and boarded a ship from a nation uninvolved in the war. It had violated international law by abducting men from that ship — remember, this very thing had been a significant factor in *America*'s belligerence during the War of 1812 — and at the time, British interests were favoring the Confederacy.\n\nIn the United States, the captain of the *San Jacinto* was hailed as a hero for sticking a finger in Britain's eye. In Britain, he was a villain, a pirate violating international law. The United States and Britain traded hot-tempered messages. Britain moved additional soldiers into Canada and readied its navy for warfare.\n\nThanks to diplomatic action by Lincoln and Prince Albert (shortly before his death), however, tempers were allowed to cool, and each side was permitted to escape with its honor intact. The Confederate diplomats went on to Europe, where they did very little of note.\n\n***\n\nThe Laird Rams affair took place in 1863 and was triggered by the radical success of the Confederate merchant raiders *Florida* and *Alabama.* In violation of the neutrality laws in place at the time, these ships were built in Britain and transferred to the Confederacy at sea. [The Confederacy proceeded to arm and crew the ships for war to great success](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/the-alabama-escapes/).\n\nI'm most familiar with their campaigns through the actions of the *Shenandoah,* which brought the war to Alaska in 1865 when it sailed around the world and virtually destroyed New England's whaling fleet in the North Pacific. The Shenandoah fired the last shots under the Confederate flag, ending its raiding in August 1865. \n\nBut that's getting off track ...\n\nIn 1863, with the track record of the *Alabama* and the *Florida* well established, the U.S. government was taking firmer and firmer steps to prevent additional raiders from leaving Britain. The Confederacy was aided by the extremely capable J.D. Bulloch, who supervised the ordering and initial construction of two iron rams, steam and sail-powered vessels that would have been able to fight many U.S. Navy ships one-on-one at something close to even odds.\n \nThose the U.S. government presented evidence again and again that the rams were bound for Confederate service, the British government stalled and vacillated on seizing the rams in the shipyard.\n\nWith their completion approaching in fall 1863, the U.S. government [took financial action](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/forbes-and-aspinwall-go-to-war/) and prepared to take military action against the rams. If those ships set sail, the U.S. Navy was planning to intercept and sink them before the Confederates armed them — even if they were flying the British flag.\n\nWith American determination obvious, and thanks to [some excellent diplomacy by U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams](http://knowledge.e.southern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&context=senior_research), the rams never entered British service.\n\n***\n\nNow, let me take a note to mention French involvement. If anything, Napoleon III was more eager than almost any element of the British government to enter the war on the side of the Confederacy.\n\n[France was heavily involved in Mexico during the American Civil War](https://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/french-intervention), and its government believed that a surviving Confederacy would deny the United States the ability to exercise the Monroe Doctrine to evict foreign influences from Mexico. \n\nNapoleon III wasn't willing to intervene unilaterally, however — he wanted British support before he took a step against the United States. That support did not come, and so Napoleon never acted against the United States. ", "created_utc": 1429508495, "distinguished": null, "id": "cqi8qwv", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/336rh7/did_the_united_kingdom_ever_consider_intervening/cqi8qwv/", "score": 666 }, { "body": "I'm not sure if this is against the rules as I have no actual credentials for history but I'm a current us history student but here it goes:\n\nThe United Kingdom was in support of an independent south as they would have a continuous supply of cotton for there textile industry without having to deal with Union tariffs. As to how the English actually tried to help the the south was they were going to make blockade runners to break the union blockade. This fell through, however, as it would be against the United Kingdom's interests to get tangled up in a full blown dress war with the United States. Eventually the south lost all hope of European intervention with the loss of Gettysburg and other battles because no one wants to help the losing side. I will add more later as I am on mobile at the moment. \n\nSource: My APUSH teacher and American Pageant 13th edition ", "created_utc": 1429504939, "distinguished": null, "id": "cqi7b4j", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/336rh7/did_the_united_kingdom_ever_consider_intervening/cqi7b4j/", "score": 56 }, { "body": "A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War, by Amanda Foreman is probably the best and most comprehensive book on this subject. It's a fascinating look at the Civil War because you never really see the war from an outside perspective. I'd recommend it.", "created_utc": 1429576230, "distinguished": null, "id": "cqj3x9q", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/336rh7/did_the_united_kingdom_ever_consider_intervening/cqj3x9q/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "For the Confederacy, [this should be of interest](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/glfrq6/its_late_1864_and_im_a_confederate_soldier_who/fqyokob/).", "created_utc": 1629764645, "distinguished": null, "id": "ha3nnew", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/pabrcc/how_common_was_desertion_in_the_american_civil_war/ha3nnew/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "I'm curious about how strongly what a sociologist today might call \"blackness\" influenced the lives of free people of African heritage during the last decades of slavery and any time before 1900. In movies such as \"12 Years a Slave,\" free blacks in the North seem to be depicted as behaving and living with identical habits to their white counterparts. Perhaps certain occupations were closed to non-whites, but I'm thinking of something else. Was there cultural markers that were associated with \"blackness\" in this era? Were there differences between rural and urban blacks, blacks in large mid-Atlantic cities, blacks in New England, and blacks in the West that were distinct from the differences between whites in those regions? What about free blacks in the South? Perhaps this question is too big, is there anyone doing research in this area whose work I could look at, perhaps?\n\nBringing my question to the Civil War specifically, I assume some people with recent African or slave heritage pass as white for purposes of entering the army. What would happen if such a person was \"outed\" as black? I believe \"one drop of blood\" rules didn't formally exist until the turn of the century, although slanders based on even somewhat remote ancestry were common. How black (or Native American, for that matter) did one have to be to be refused as a volunteer in a white company or as a volunteer in general before the emancipation proclamation?", "created_utc": 1436109264, "distinguished": null, "id": "cssv3va", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c73kh/panel_ama_the_american_civil_war_era_military/cssv3va/", "score": 22 }, { "body": "I have read on this sub that large American Civil War battles tactically resembled warped versions of napoleonic style warfare. What does this mean? Does this mean infantry fought in firing columns?\n\nIf so, why? The war was much closer in time to the Prussian wars in which soldiers advanced in small squads, similar to combat today.\n\nWere there any incidents of large scale melee combat? I know that the Confederate military trained some units of pikemen but ended up not deploying them. How did they envision an effective role for pikemen?\n\n[Also the question I'm even more interested in](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c73kh/panel_ama_the_american_civil_war_era_military/cssudku)", "created_utc": 1436107989, "distinguished": null, "id": "cssul65", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c73kh/panel_ama_the_american_civil_war_era_military/cssul65/", "score": 18 }, { "body": "I posted this a few hours ago but /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov made the excellent recommendation that I repost it here:\n\nHow exactly was Jefferson Davis elected President of the Confederacy? According to his Wikipedia page, he was selected by delegates at a constitutional convention, but how were those men appointed? Was there any form of popular vote involved?\n\nAnd as an aside, were Davis' powers and responsibilities relatively comparable to those of Lincoln, or was he limited by the looser structure of the Confederacy? The Civil War is one of my favorite areas of studies and yet I realized today I know almost nothing about the Confederacy's government -- how it was structured, its functions, etc.", "created_utc": 1436126375, "distinguished": null, "id": "cst36ll", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c73kh/panel_ama_the_american_civil_war_era_military/cst36ll/", "score": 16 } ]

[ { "body": "What exactly to do with enslaved people who reached Union lines was an issue that came up early in the war. The most famous episode occurred shortly after the outbreak of hostilities at Fortress Monroe in Virginia when enslaved people presented themselves to the Union army. Enslaved people figured out very early what a war between the slave states and free could mean for them. The fort's commander, Benjamin Butler, improvised the famous doctrine of declaring the slaves of Confederates \"contraband of war,\" and thus subject to forfeiture and seizure by the United States. Contraband camps of former slaves who left Confederate masters soon cropped up throughout areas under the jurisdiction of the US Army.\n\nWhat the army was supposed to do with these people soon became a legal and administrative problem for Congress. At the beginning of the Civil War, slavery remained legal in the Union states - Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri were all still slave states in the beginning - and fighting a war of emancipation in the North remained a controversial idea in the North. Adopting as a matter of law the doctrine expounded by Butler was a convenient option, and Congress passed two Confiscation Acts creating the legal procedures to put it into effect, formalizing the forfeiture in law. By the time of the surrender of Vicksburg in July 1863, Congress had already passed the Act of Prohibiting the Return of Slaves in 1862, and there evidently some cases of enslaved people being returned to their masters early in the war. By the middle of the war, the Union had adopted as policy the weaponizing of slaves' legal status as slavery against the Confederacy.\n\nIt is important to realize, though, that the life of freed \"contrabands\" was not exactly easy. Though antislavery sentiment in the North was widespread, there was little enthusiasm for full racial equality. Many formerly enslaved people wound up performing manual labor for the US Army, or doing various kinds of support work in and around military installations. It should be noted as well that conditions in contraband camps were not always particularly good, and they were not necessarily a priority for the Army or for Congress. By 1863, though, there are formerly enslaved people wearing Union uniforms in organized regiments, such as the South Carolina Volunteer Infantry regiments composed of former slaves. There were, in fact, black units being organized for the Union army prior to the formation of the famous 54th Massachusetts.\n\nIn the situation you describe, we can't really say exactly what would happen, since we don't know all of the details and variables involved. It would be very likely, though, that you would wind up doing some kind of manual labor for the Union Army, and possibly enrolled in one of the black regiments once Congress authorized them.\n\nReadings\n\nJames McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom\n\nJoseph Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers\n\nBruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie\n\nBruce Levine, Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War\n\nEric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction\n\nAmy Murrell Taylor, Journeys Through the Civil War's Slave Refugee Camps", "created_utc": 1618060807, "distinguished": null, "id": "gu1gj4w", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mnzjaf/what_happened_to_slaves_captured_by_union_forces/gu1gj4w/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "Yes. The American Civil War was used as a \"counter-model\" for proposed ideas of abolition in Brazil and a prime example of the evils of slavery. In 1867 Pedro II addresses the problem for the first time in his annual \"Throne Speech\": *\"The servile element in the Empire must not be left out of your consideration.\"*\n\nGradual abolition was the prevailing anti-slavery trend. In this regard, Congressman Silveria da Mota managed to approve a law forbidding the separation of families in 1869: \"*Had the Southern states followed this system of slow improvement of slavery, perhaps, gentlemen, we wouldn't be seeing the North American union in danger today, perhaps we wouldn't be seeing the United States under two flags.*\" \\[...\\] *\"We have the same institution of slavery, but it's softened here. We don't subscribe to the supposition that slaves have no souls as decreed by the congressmen of South Carolina.\"*\n\nA Brazilian journalist who witnessed the Civil War asks in 1866: *\"The gigantic bloodbath in the United States of North America, triggered in 1861, ended with the defeat of the South, and consequently with the abolition - Spain and Portugal discuss the subject regarding their colonies - Is it possible for Brazil to maintain its unity regarding this question for much longer?\"*\n\nThe Paraguayan War (1864-70), a gigantic bloodbath in its own right, also motivated the State Council to discuss the problem of slavery; that a large segment of the population simply couldn't be trusted in the event of a war. The Law of Free Birth (1871) was approved with universal opposition from landowners and criticism from abolitionists. But it fulfilled its purpose of beginning a gradual dismantling of the system by freeing slaves when they became 21 years old. The Haitian and Jamaican revolts also frightened many in the elites and the literati.\n\nJoaquim Nabuco, one of the leading Brazilian abolitionists, was closely connected with his British and American counterparts, but specially the former. He said in the 1860s: *\"Slavery shouldn't be suppressed in Brazil through a servile war, least of all through insurrections and local assaults. Neither should it be suppressed through a civil war, following the example of the United States.\"* Nabuco inquired Americans about the state of Southern agriculture after abolition. One of them was the former Confederate general and ambassador to Brazil Henry Hilliard, who actively supported abolitionism in that country. \n\nIn conclusion, the American Civil War was interpreted in Brazil primarily as a warning against the maintenance of a dangerous institution and that its abolition should follow a gradual course until its completion.", "created_utc": 1621204278, "distinguished": null, "id": "gydjtlh", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/n7qvi5/did_the_abolition_of_slavery_in_america_and_the/gydjtlh/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "I've never heard of this happening with cotton, but I can provide a answer to the principle behind the question, if not the specifics. Slave-free sugar was a product that was sold in America. \n\nSugar was one of the most important products created by slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was hugely profitable, and widely consumed. However, sugar plantations were widely considered to be hellish. Slaves and their owners knew that life on a Caribbean slave plantation was particularly bad. Americans didn't make the same attempts to rationalize or defend slavery in the Caribbean, and Americans who were pro-slavery often even tried to distinguish their \"benevolent\" system of slavery to the barbaric one to the south. While contemporary historians don't go as far as to claim that American slavery was benevolent in comparison, they admit that life on a sugar plantation was particularly awful for a number of reasons.\n\nAs a result, some Americans' conscience prevented them from eating this sugar, and they boycotted it altogether. Quakers in Philadelphia and England were known for doing this, especially. \n\nHowever, an alternative to Caribbean cane sugar existed in America - maple sugar. As a result, entrepreneurs in the American northeast cultivated and marketed this sugar as an alternative to Caribbean slave-grown sugar. William Cooper (the father of James Fenimore Cooper) tried this for a while, and gained some traction. Wealthy Philadelphia Quakers backed the plan. Additionally, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, among others, approved of the plan, believing it would also help to free America of its dependence on foreign importation. However, it ultimately wasn't profitable enough, and failed. (Alan Taylor, *William Cooper's Town* Chapter Five)", "created_utc": 1377662309, "distinguished": null, "id": "cbws36l", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l86z3/before_the_american_civil_war_did_anyone_sell/cbws36l/", "score": 1180 }, { "body": "There were many Free Produce Societies across America which promoted boycotts of slave-made goods and tried to source free-labor alternatives. This turned out to be very difficult and impractical and was not pursued by most abolitionists. One Free Produce advocate admitted frankly, \"Free sugar was not always as free from other taints as from that of slavery; and free calicoes could seldom be called handsome, even by the most enthusiastic; free umbrellas were hideous to look upon, and free candies, an abomination.\" \n\nThe Free Produce movement was mostly Quaker. George W. Taylor, a Philadelphia Quaker and proprietor of a Free Produce store, moved into manufacturing by opening a Free Produce cotton mill in 1854. It was [apparently a very rocky undertaking](http://www.mainlinetoday.com/core/pagetools.php?pageid=6534&url=%2FMain-Line-Today%2FMarch-2007%2FFRONTLINE-Retrospect%2F&mode=print) although it stayed afloat until the Civil War made it superfluous.", "created_utc": 1377662328, "distinguished": null, "id": "cbws3ez", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l86z3/before_the_american_civil_war_did_anyone_sell/cbws3ez/", "score": 140 }, { "body": "[Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass were a part of a community/association that created slave-free silk in Florence/Northampton, MA](http://www.historic-northampton.org/virtual_tours/Markers/Markerpanels/antislavery.html). I believe that the purpose of this was to provide a slavery-free alternative to some cotton products. Unfortunately, this link doesn't reference the cotton bit - so if anyone wants to back that up or refute it, that'd be great. I'm on my way to work and can keep digging up information once I get settled in. \n\nP.S. A more apt analogy would be [Fair Trade foods and products](http://equalexchange.coop/about/fair-trade/faqs/what-fair-trade), rather than organic, as many Fair Trade companies/organizations are working to provide access to food that is not harvested in modern day plantations/slave-like conditions... which is much more prevalent than you'd think. So this is an interesting question whose lesson can be taken and applied to our lives today. ", "created_utc": 1377691432, "distinguished": null, "id": "cbwxan7", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l86z3/before_the_american_civil_war_did_anyone_sell/cbwxan7/", "score": 29 } ]

[ { "body": "More can always be said, but [this older answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67fvaf/was_the_average_confederate_soldier_a_strong/dgq8tn2/) should be of interest for you.", "created_utc": 1614200299, "distinguished": null, "id": "gomn2bp", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lri2v1/did_the_rank_and_file_confederate_soldiers_have_a/gomn2bp/", "score": 4 }, { "body": "​\n\n1. State Loyalty was much higher at the time and people generally viewed themselves as citizens of a state rather than the United States. So, the primary loyalty could easily be the state.\n2. There was a high degree of societal belief in the Slave States that emancipation would lead to a servile war. The belief was that enslaved peoples were only partially civilized because they were enslaved and that freed, they would revert to their natural barbaric tendencies. These were reinforced with exceedingly lurid tales of what happened in various slave revolts. So, a lot of people in the south felt the Federal government was undermining the basic security of the people (read, white) in slave-holding states.\n3. As an additional point to the above point, even basic voting rights would overturn the social order in many areas as the enslaved population outnumbered the white population in those areas.\n4. It is a mistake - and not an inconsiderable one - to view the situation from a rich vs poor dynamic. Take a Slave holding state like Delaware, where there was a total of 1798 enslaved people in 1860, and consider how little the state supported secession as the enslaved peoples really did only help the wealthiest and had no bearing on the overall economy... Contrast that with areas with a much higher proportion of enslaved peoples. There is a direct and verifiable statistical correlation between the number of enslaved peoples and support for secession irrespective of how many people in those areas actually were active slavers. Slavery underpinned the entire society in vast regions of the United States. Even if someone did not enslave someone themselves, they could hire enslaved peoples from their enslavers to perform manual labor. The currency that held up the local economy was mainly from the cash crops and manufactured goods sold for a profit - all of which was based on the labor of enslaved peoples.\n5. The strict racial hierarchy was embedded in all aspects of the society. A poor white person was never at the bottom of the social ladder. They were always a mile ahead of even the richest free black person in the south in terms of legal rights, social obligations, etc. These perks of being white were reinforced every day in large ways and small ways, so a white person would always feel that they were benefiting from that society.\n6. Then, there was the adventure side to being a soldier in a war. For a lot of young men, this was their best chance for distinction and fame.\n7. There was universal conscription and the penalties for avoiding the draft included property confiscation and death. This was where the whole myth of the southern soldiers loyalty to the cause starts to break down. The initial reasons why a southern man might volunteer might have convinced a lot of men to volunteer, but the number of volunteers in the initial wave was nowhere near what was needed. The initial wave of volunteers was very heavily tilted towards the ones who benefitted the most from the southern societal structure. There are many instances of recruiters having trouble filling out the second wave of volunteers in the south. There was plenty of manpower, but no wave of volunteers after the first rush. For example, the exemption granted to anyone who held more than 20 enslaved peoples caused a great deal of resentment because that was a very explicit example of a rich vs poor favoritism.\n\nIn general, there were a lot of reasons why an individual might join the army. However good the original enticement might have sounded, this was not enough to sustain the armies throughout the war. Desertion was high and ramped up over the course of the war. Draft avoidance became an artform.", "created_utc": 1614196921, "distinguished": null, "id": "gomen5n", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lri2v1/did_the_rank_and_file_confederate_soldiers_have_a/gomen5n/", "score": 8 } ]

[ { "body": "This is a great question, and so far as I know, not against the rules of this sub, so I'll have a go. \n\nSo a great primer for the conflict in terms of a good background on the politics, followed by a detailed but not overly-dense reading of the conflict on a macro level can be found in James McPherson's 'Battle Cry of Freedom'. It is well-regarded by historians and casual readers alike, and while a bit hefty, will give you a wonderful introduction to the conflict and the most important moments in all theaters of the war. \n\nFrom there, you might find that one area of interest or another got your attention, and you might want to branch off into a more focused history. I'm a big fan of historian Bruce Catton, and while his work dates from the 1950s and 60s, he's an indispensable part of the broader historiography (many authors still cite his work), and is very, very easy to read. His trilogy on the army of the Potomac is magnificent, and pairs well with his two-part history on US Grant, which will fill in portions of the western theater that his Potomac trilogy largely side-steps. \n\nJay Winik wrote a book, 'April, 1865' which is a very detailed and rich text that explores the final months of the war, especially Lincoln's assassination and the plot surrounding that. If you find yourself wanting more info on the waning days of the war, I'd check that out. Likewise, if you get an itch for something specific like Gettysburg, I'd check out Stephen W. Sears' book of the same name, which is a great history of that battle along with the before/after of it. \n\nIf you're looking for something with more of a political bent that examines the prosecution of the war at the higher levels, you can't go wrong with Doris Kearns Goodwin's 'Team of Rivals' about Lincoln's run for the presidency, and his struggles with his cabinet (and Lincoln's breathtaking political acumen). \n\nAll of these books and their authors pass the sniff test in terms of good historical research, cited evidence, and positive peer review. I might start with McPherson, and if you're digging that and want more reading recommendations on something specific, just check back in and ask.", "created_utc": 1605206978, "distinguished": null, "id": "gc2n564", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/jszp0w/how_to_get_started_learning_about_the_american/gc2n564/", "score": 4 }, { "body": "I bet you will be able to find a lot of amazing books about it under - [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/americas#wiki\\_united\\_states](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/americas#wiki_united_states) :)", "created_utc": 1605209781, "distinguished": null, "id": "gc2t3lb", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/jszp0w/how_to_get_started_learning_about_the_american/gc2t3lb/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "There are two key differences in these conflicts, the first is technological change driving an increase in firepower, the second is preparation.\n\nLet's start with technology. The U.S. Army officers (on both sides of the civil war) looked closely to Europe for military technology and tactics, in particular the French military. The French were (barely) the victors in the 1859 Battle of Solferino during the Franco-Austrian war and American Civil War officers largely attempted to imitate French tactics (close order infantry attacks vigorously pressed) and adopt French technology. State of the art for France in 1859 was rifled muskets with shortish combat effective range and slow rates of fire and 12lbs \"Napoleon\" smooth-bore gun-howitzers firing explosive shells (these were supplemented with rifled muzzle loading artillery rushed into action). The results of this technological era was an infantry focused tactical system. At Solferino, and during the Civil War, artillery and cavalry was a supporting arm to the infantry. Cavalry actions at Solferino were restricted by the numbers and firepower of infantry formations. Artillery was not accurate or long range enough to disrupt infantry or drive them off the field. Cavalry attacks in this era (including as far back as the Crimean war) were typically failures against infantry, and were not able to effectively turn retreats into routs or pursuits. However Cavalry had an important reconnaissance and screening role and often fought against other cavalry. In the Civil War there were several large cavalry engagements fought primarily to aid reconnaissance and cavalry and mounted infantry were important in many larger battles in the initial stages.\n\nBy 1870, 11 years after Solferino and 5 years after the American Civil War, Europe had experienced a revolution in Military arms. The Prussians had demonstrated the effectiveness of massed Breech loading infantry rifles in 1866 against Austria in the Austro-Prussian war, and by 1870 the Austrians and French (and Americans) had also adopted these arms. These weapons fired faster, at flat trajectories (400-600 yards) and could be fired prone. Although both use the word \"rifle\" a rifle-musket of the ACW / Solferino vintage was massively less effective. With this change infantry no longer needed close formations to stop cavalry attacks, the rifle-firepower alone could prevent charges from being pressed home. There is one interesting and much celebrated 1870 episode, \"Von Bredow's Death Ride\" in which the Germans managed to sneak a cavalry brigade charge into some French artillery and surprised infantry forces and buy some time while the German cavalry suffered 50-70% casualties. This was essentially a fluke in 1870 and very much against the tactical norm for the war. \"Von Bredow's Death Ride\" was the only really successful cavalry action in 1870 and the last successful one in western Europe. \n\nWhile cavalry waned in 1870, the other supporting arm, Artillery, made a huge comeback. Germans introduced a breech loading, accurate rifled gun with an explosive shell in 1870 that dramatically improved artillery firepower. Now artillery became able to make many infantry positions untenable and became a decisive element of successful infantry attacks. French rapid firing infantry caliber towed guns \"mitrailleuse\" played a minor role. For the next 50 years after 1870, European tactics would be dominated by the infantry-artillery combined arms team that the Prussians first fielded in 1870. Cavalry lingered but never did much except show up in paintings, and was used to provide mobility to mounted infantry or in colonial wars.\n\nThe other huge difference in the ACW vs the Franco-Prussian was preparation. America did not (shocker I'm sure) intend to tear itself to bits and fight a civil war, and there were no other serious opponents on it's borders. However, the French and Germans were quite aware that they would eventually fight each other or a similar Europeon state. Consequently the Prussians and French were ready to fight in 1870. In the ACW, they started the war April, and had an important battle in July (First Manassass) which only a tiny fraction of the country's military capacity was employed (35,000 men per side out of an eventual 800,000 peak strength). Then each side trickled in a little bit of men and material for the next 4 years until the South ran out in 1864-65. In contrast, 1870 had important engagements in three weeks time, and the war was decided at Sedan less than two months later. European generals built their armies before the war, then fought the war with those armies. In the ACW, the two sides tried to build armies and fight a war at the exact same time. The few professional officers (including Europeon imports like Franz Sigel) were drowned in a tide of green recruits, both officers and men alike. This improvisational character of the ACW would only appear in Europe when armies for one reason or another reached a stalemate, as they did in 1914.\n\nSources:\n\n*Nosworthy, Brent \"The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War\"*\n\n*Barry, Quintin, \"The Road to Koniggratz\"*\n\n*Barry, Quintin \"The Franco-Prussian War 1870-71\"*", "created_utc": 1562618256, "distinguished": null, "id": "etae8qr", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/camh2v/how_did_the_style_of_combat_differ_between_the/etae8qr/", "score": 181 } ]

[ { "body": "The idea that slavery would eventually \"die out,\" without any external intervention, enjoyed some currency among Colonial America and the Young Republic's slaveholding elite in the 18th century. At that point, leading thinkers would have told you that slavery was a \"necesarry evil,\" what it was necesarry for varied depending on whom you asked, that would, with time, die out on its own.\n\n​\n\nIndeed, in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War, the plantation South was in shambles. Thousands of enslaved workers had escaped during the way, seeking freedom, British and American forces had burned plenty of plantations. Not only that, but a new political language influenced by ideas of natural rights, and slavery as the ultimate political evil, enjoyed new currency among America's elites, North and South. Popular evangelical faiths like Baptism condemned slavery even as they found enthusiastic converts among the slaveholding elite. In places like Virginia, some legislators made abortive efforts to begin a process of gradual emancipation that they hoped would lead to slavery's slow, peaceful death over a few decades or generations.\n\nBut it was not to be. Though legislatures in the Northern states, one after the other, successfulyl enacted gradual emancipation programs (though its worth noting that some, like New Jersey's, were so protracted that there were small numbers of enslaved people in Northern \"free\" states in 1861!), the Southern states had traditionally depended upon slave labor for their economic prosperity, and their elites were always themselves large slaveholders. Instead of a gradual diminution in the South, slavery was revitalized and intensified, with the pace of slave ship imports of captive laborers going up greatly in the closing decades of the 18th century (before the United States ceased officially participating in the transatlantic slave trade in 1808).\n\nThe invention of the cotton gin (making cotton a textile that oculd be produced in large volumes), Indian Removal opening up millions of acres of the world's most fertile soil (in the Mississippi River Valley and the \"black belt\" regions) to white settlement, and the United States conquering inexorably Westward meant that, by the 1830s, American slavery was on a steady course of dramatic expansion. In 1821, the United States produced 354,000 bales of cotton, almost all of it grown and harvested by enslaved workers on plantations. In 1859, the United States produced more then 4 million bales.\n\nIn the 1850s, the United States practiced slavery on a larger and more profitable scale than it ever had before. And slaveholders had become radicalized by the proslavery ideology that developed in the United States in the 1830s. Forming a lockstep defense of their way of life in the face of a world that increasingly saw slavery as a political liability and moral evil, proslavery thinkers rejected the idea that slavery was a necesarry evil, and that ending it would be desirable. Instead, they insisted, slavery was the most benevolent and just system of labor relations that humanity could acheive, and it ought ot be preserved in perpetuity. Some of the really fanatical proslavery thinkers, like George Fitzhugh, even argued that slavery was so good for so many people that almost everyone one arth should be enslaved, regardless of skin color. By the 1850s, many proslavery thinkers felt they had been vindicated by the disastrous economic consequences of British emancipation in the Caribbean (it turns out that, when given a choice, most people don't want to grow sugar cane, so the British began importing indentured \"coolie\" laborers from places like India to work the plantations instead as profits cratered), and that slavery would be the backbone of the modern world.\n\nSome Northerners in this period hoped that market forces would destroy slavery. After all, thinkers like Frederick Law Olmsted wrote, how could a society that made its profits through violence and terror compete with a free labor industrial capitalist society, where people work in the hopes of bettering their lives? These sorts of arguments often ignored both how profitable slavery remained (in 1860, the richest state per capita was Mississippi), and the problems of exploitation in their own \"free labor\" system. Their evidence was that the North, in their eyes, was modern and enjoyed modern technology and living standards, while slavery had made the South impoverished and backward. When Olmsted visited the Slaveholding South, he expressed contempt for the \"backward\" tools and techniques employed by white Yoemen farmers (who were not slaveholders) and their minimal involvement in the larger national market, seeing a further vindication of the North's way of doing things. Surely any rational person would choose the more dynamic economic model that offered more opportunities for everyone, and surely market forces would eventually force them to make that choice!\n\nBut thinkers like that generally did not believe slavery *was* dying out, only that it *should* and *would* die out eventually. In the 1850s, Southern defenses of slavery became ever more radical and intransigent, with slaveholders refusing to accept any limits on the institution or its future expansion as they became ever more terrified that such limits would be imposed on them imminently by radical Northern antislavery forces. Ultimately \"slavery *is* dying out naturally\" was just not an argument you would have often heard on the eve of the Civil War.", "created_utc": 1607446859, "distinguished": null, "id": "gf2ie84", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/k7xurd/were_there_any_actual_signs_that_slavery_was/gf2ie84/", "score": 13 } ]

[ { "body": ">Considering the logistical disparities between the two sides, I don't \nunderstand how either of these strategies could have worked.\n\nKinda hitting the nail on the head there. There really wasn't a strategy that would have been effective without substantial outside help (i.e. allies), massive failure on the part of the Union, and/or extremely effective leadership and logistics from the Confederacy. Even on paper, the Union was gonna win, but that was assuming the Confederacy would actually be able to operate effectively as both a nation and maintaining a fighting force across 2000 miles of front. Supply quantity issues, \"States Rights\" problems affecting what soldiers got what stuff, lack or manufacturing/wrong places of manufacturing, ineffective leadership, internal factions and infighting, etc. all caused internal problems that by themselves would be sufficient to doom the Confederacy. \n\nBut let's say for sake of argument that none of that was a problem. The CSA can produce enough food, tents, blankets, shoes, weapons, horses, uniforms, medical supplies, etc. enough to keep each fighting man equipped and fed decently. The idea of forcing the Union to conquer space seems like it could be effective, a la American Revolution style. Make the enemy spend resources and men taking territory, and bleed them. The big difference from 1775 to 1861 is that the Union is not 3000 miles across the ocean. Their supply lines are just up the train track a few days. They have telegraphs to communicate in minutes. And they have vast resources to put into the fight, with a strong patriotic push from the nation. Tens of thousands of men volunteered to be a part of the Union war effort. It may have taken longer, but the Union would have conquered the land of the Confederacy either way. As Forts Henry and Donelson, Corinth, New Orleans, Columbus-Belmont, Vicksburg, and many more showed, the Confederates were incapable of successfully stopping the Union from taking their territory and transportation hubs. Plus, if the Union continues to seize territory, what is the incentive to give up? You are clearly winning. So that strategy, while slow, would not have worked.\n\nLee's strategy was more of a \"big gamble-big return\" type. In the short-term, this was likely the only possibility, however slight, for a Confederate win. But ONLY in the short term. Had Lee been able to take the fight into the north in September 1862, destroy another Union Army on his own chosen ground, and begin to wreak havoc in the North toward Washington, *maybe*, and I emphasize the minuscule possibility here, he could have convinced Congress to sue for a peaceful cessation of hostilities. But again, only in an extremely short time frame. Any longer than a few months, and he has an army in Maryland or Pennsylvania in winter time with no solid lines of supply. If it could have been effective, the time frame for everything to go as near perfectly as possible was razor thin. \n\nIn any case, Lee's strategy, as well as his tactics, though effective in terms of winning early battles, led to devastating losses that could not be sustained. He gambled big every time. And while sometimes betting it all on red will net you the win, eventually that strategy will bleed you dry. \n\nSo to your last question, we have to understand that at the beginning of the war, everything is solely on paper. On paper, the Confederates have a President who is a West-Point educated, combat veteran, with loads of political experience as well as having been the Secretary of War. Against the single-term Representative with no military experience. While the Union certainly has the numbers and resources, its not known whether they will be able to get men to fight, or be able to actually use their resources effectively. For the Confederates, they believe firmly, as so many of them stated repeatedly, that numbers wouldn't matter because Southerners were better fighters. They also recognize, just as the Federal generals do, that there are all kinds of ways to mitigate number disparities. In 1861 there is no way to 100% know what is going to happen. You rely on what you believe will be your advantages, and hope to minimize or mitigate your defaults. We, in the 21st century, can know what Lincoln thought, what Congress was going to say, how the nation would react, the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as how ineffective a leader Davis would be, and how poorly ran the Confederate supply chain would be. But in 1861, neither side can know that about their enemy. \n\nIn other words, every nation goes into every war based on assumptions. You assume you can win, so you put forward efforts to try to achieve that. You also assume its possible to lose, and take steps to avoid that.", "created_utc": 1623427035, "distinguished": null, "id": "h1ezcfm", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/nwrio4/how_did_the_leaders_of_the_confederacy_believe/h1ezcfm/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "More can be said, but you might find [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ch62u7/the_song_john_browns_body_and_its_influence_on/euqmxm2/) of interest, which traces abolitionist views in line with the popularity of the song \"John Brown's Body\".", "created_utc": 1618182237, "distinguished": null, "id": "gu7216p", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mp18zf/in_the_american_civil_war_if_you_were_to_ask_a/gu7216p/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Yeah, so this question indeed seems a puzzling one. Using the data of the 1860 census, you find out that only 5 to 8% of Southerners owned slaves. Using only the owner is not the adequate metric, since, for example, only the male patriarch would count as an owner despite the fact that all of his family would benefit from the slaves. Yet, even if we measure by how many families held slaves, the percentage seems still somewhat low - around 30% of families, going as high as almost 50% in Mississippi and South Carolina. Even among those families, many were poor yeomen who had to till the land alongside their slaves. Why the other 70% of the South would fight for such a privileged minority is not clear to many, but the answer is simple enough: the defense of a White Supremacist South. \n\nThere is no sugarcoating it. Southerners, simply put, fought for slavery and White Supremacy. You may wonder why they would do so, even when they did not own any slaves and the fall of the slavocracy would probably benefit them. One of the great failures of the Republicans before the Civil War and during its opening stages is that they too believed that poor Southerners without slaves would not fight for the Confederacy, but would instead uphold the Union. Indeed, people in both North and South believed that non-slaveholding whites were the key demographic through which slavery would be exterminated. “There is no denying that there is a large emancipating interest in Virginia and Kentucky and Maryland and Missouri\", declared the Fire Eater William L. Yancey. The idea that non-slaveholders were the victims of deceit by the slavocrats, and that they would soon return to their senses and rally round the Union persisted for many months, but soon enough Union military and civil leaders learned that the Confederacy actually enjoyed enormous popular support. \n\nIt's true that areas with fewer slaves and wealth tended to elect conditional unionists to the conventions that passed the ordinances of secession. But the key word is conditional. For many of them, the maintenance of the Union hinged on whether the incoming Lincoln administration would do any \"overt-act\" that justified secession. Though they were able to stave off secession in the Upper South in the immediate aftermath of the election, after Fort Sumter the great majority of conditional unionists rallied to the Confederate standard instead. The mountainous regions of Upper Alabama, Eastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina and West Virginia, where most of these unionists came, would remain centers of Wartime Unionism that bitterly resented the Confederacy and resisted its policies, such as the draft and taxation. But non-slaveholders of other areas did fight gallantly for the CSA. Again, why? \n\nAs Governor Brown of Georgia said, it was because poor yeomen believed that slavery \"is the poor man's best Government.\" Brown continued by declaring that \"Among us the poor white laborer . . . does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal. . . . He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men.\" Indeed, for White Southerners the destruction of slavery would not affect only slaveholders, but would inevitably result in dreaded equality for Negroes. In vain did Republicans insist that they would not interfere with slavery in the states, but just limit it so that it would disappear gradually and painlessly. By 1860, Southerners were convinced that the victory of any Republican, no matter how moderate, would result in immediate slave emancipation and the destruction of White Supremacy. Southern leaders unabashedly appealed to racism as a justification. \n\nFrom McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom:\n\n> The election of Lincoln, declared an Alabama newspaper, \"shows that the North [intends] to free the negroes and force amalgamation between them and the children of the poor men of the South.\" “Do you love your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter?\" a Georgia secessionist asked non-slaveholders. If Georgia remained in a Union \"ruled by Lincoln and his crew… in ten years or less our children will be the slaves of negroes.\" \"If you are tame enough to submit,\" declaimed South Carolina's Baptist clergyman James Furman, \"Abolition preachers will be at hand to consummate the marriage of your daughters to black husbands.\" No! No! came an answering shout from Alabama. \"Submit to have our wives and daughters choose between death and gratifying the hellish lust of the negro!! . . . Better ten thousand deaths than submission to Black Republicanism.”​\n\n> To defend their wives and daughters, presumably, yeoman whites therefore joined planters in \"rallying to the standard of Liberty and Equality for white men\" against \"our Abolition enemies who are pledged to prostrate the white freemen of the South down to equality with negroes.\" Most southern whites could agree that \"democratic liberty exists solely because we have black slaves\" whose presence \"promotes equality\namong the free. \" Hence \"freedom is not possible without slavery. \"\n\nSoutherners thus fought to keep slavery, even if they did not have any slaves themselves, because slavery secured White Supremacy, a system that benefitted White men and kept them as social superiors. Because no matter how miserable, how poor, how uneducated they were, White Southerners would always be better than the Negroes, always have someone they could down on. Even when they talked of defending their homes from Yankee invaders, or protecting States Rights against an overreaching Federal government, it was understood that the reason why they needed to defend their homes was because otherwise slave emancipation and Black equality would follow, and that the States Rights they defended were about slavery and the condition of Blacks in the South. \n\nI'm not exaggerating, nor being vitriolic. Southerners candidly admitted that Black liberty was a threat to their way of life, and that Black equality terrified them. Racist rhetoric played upon this fact, and Southern leaders called on their people to join the army to protect against the Black Republicans that sought to free the Negroes. They admitted to the fact that they fought for slavery. A Kentucky private, showing the fact that liberty was only for whites, declared that they were \"fighting for our liberty, against tyrants of the North . . . who are determined to destroy slavery.\" Others were shier, and used \"southern institutions\" as a code word for slavery. Others were bolder, and vowed \"to fight forever, rather than submit to freeing the Negroes among us . . . We are fighting for rights and property bequeathed to us by our ancestors.\" \n\nThese soldiers were slaveholders, but the rhetoric of the poor was similar. \"I never want to see the day when a negro is put on an equality with a white person\", said a Louisiana soldier, while a comrade from North Carolina said that he fought to show the Yankees \"that a white man is better than a nigger.\" When Confederate morale sagged and it seemed like a Peace candidate would win North Carolina's governorship, the war candidate rallied his supporters by telling them that \"Instead of getting your sons back to the plow and fireside, they would be drafted . . . to fight alongside of [Lincoln's] negro troops in exterminating the white men, women, and children of the South.\" An Arkansas man declared that he had to fight because otherwise his \"sister, wife, and mother are to be given up to the embraces of their present male servitors.\" A Georgia soldier summarized these fears and prejudices when he said that if the Union won \"we are irrevocably lost and not only will the negroes be free but . . . we will all be on a common level.\" \n\nIt is true that some Confederate were impelled by other motives. Some because they saw the Yankees as invaders who would take their lands, property and lives; others, out of loyalty to their states (Robert E. Lee, for example). Loyalty to a commander or to their bataillon was also common, and in the opening stages of the war many Dixie boys enlisted due to social pressure or because they wanted adventure and thought of war as short and glorious. But no Southerner ever doubted that he had to fight to prevent Negro equality, and that an independent Confederacy would be built on slavery for the benefit of White men. There was a lot of resentment over the idea that they were fighting for the benefit of rich men, and soldiers did not respond well to pro-slavery measures such as the fact that overseers were exempted from the draft. Sometimes, the abstract goal of White Supremacy was superseded by the concrete wish of returning home or escaping danger. As in other armies, there were deserters, draft dodgers, and men who skedaddled and never saw combat. But for those Confederates who fought till the bitter end, there was an understanding that they fought for an independent Confederacy, where slavery would be perpetuated and White Supremacy would be the law of the land. \n\n**Sources:**\n\nJames McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and For Cause and Comrades. The later is probably the best book if you want to know the reasons that motivated soldiers in the struggle. These are the two main sources, but Oakes' Freedom National, Foner's Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, and Porter, Impending Crisis, also form the basis of my knowledge.", "created_utc": 1582687172, "distinguished": null, "id": "fislf3x", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/f9j6hg/why_did_commoner_non_slave_owning_southern_whites/fislf3x/", "score": 45 }, { "body": "This older answer is one you might find of interest https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67fvaf/was_the_average_confederate_soldier_a_strong/dgq8tn2/", "created_utc": 1582686507, "distinguished": null, "id": "fiskcym", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/f9j6hg/why_did_commoner_non_slave_owning_southern_whites/fiskcym/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "For purely bullet-resisting purposes, most helmets do not provide a lot of protection. While they may be useful for ricochets hitting at a lower velocity as well as shrapnel, a bullet fired from a rifle will easily pierce the side of any helmet, even modern ones. In the Civil War, a new type of ammunition was introduced called the Minie Ball which was especially devastating. Using the same approximate caliber size as the musket ball rifles of prior wars, the new conical ammunition would shatter bones that would have broken with the lower velocity, round musket balls. \n\nSo because there was no real advantage to wearing a helmet and because metal was in short supply during the war effort, kepi hats were worn instead.", "created_utc": 1599572319, "distinguished": null, "id": "g4fug1s", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/iobw3g/why_did_soldiers_in_the_american_civil_war_wear/g4fug1s/", "score": 0 } ]

[ { "body": "In a word, yes. What you're referring to is sometimes called the \"Kenner mission,\" after Confederate Congressman and extraordinarily wealthy Louisiana planter Duncan Kenner, who championed the idea and was eventually dispatched to Europe to make the offer.\n\nConfederate president Jefferson Davis and Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin authorized Kenner's mission, which was supposed to be secret. Kenner was authorized to offer gradual emancipation in return for immediate diplomatic recognition - reflecting his, and Benjamin's, belief that the existence of slavery was *the* factor in Britain, France, and the other great powers declining to formally recognize the Confederacy. The British government was the key here - France, led by Napoleon III, was sympathetic to the Confederacy (seeing it as a counterweight to the Union and a possible source of aid to their beleaguered Mexican adventure), but Napoleon refused to make any major concessions unless Britain also went along first.\n\nThe Kenner mission is best understood in the wider political and military context of late 1864-early 1865. The Confederacy was in increasingly dire straits militarily and financially, with Richmond and Petersburg besieged, the Trans-Mississippi cut off, and Sherman moving more or less unchecked through Georgia and later South Carolina. Some Confederates had begun to advocate arming and even freeing enslaved men to fill the ranks. Davis had refused to entertain earlier advocates for this (Gen. Patrick Cleburne being one famous example) because the Confederate Constitution forbade interference with \"the right of property in negro slaves.\" By late 1864, conditions had worsened enough for Davis to change his tune and he and Lee supported proposals to create soldiers out of enslaved men. For the European powers, especially Britain, the appetite for intervention in the Civil War had mostly waned by 1864 (it peaked in the fall of 1862, when the British cabinet actively debated the matter). Union naval and military strength had grown so rapidly that the Admiralty and War Office expressed grave concern over how costly a war with the Union would be. This, combined with tensions in Europe, esp. in Poland and Denmark, turned Palmerston's attentions back to Europe - which he infinitely preferred.\n\nDavis also saw fit to bend his constitutionalism re: Kenner's proposal around this time. He authorized the mission, but concealed it from Congress and the public, although rumors swirled about the mission. Because of the Union blockade, Kenner did not reach Europe for many weeks. Confederate envoy James M. Mason presented a version of the proposal to British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston in March, 1865, and Palmerston firmly declined, on the basis that Confederate failure to win independence on the battlefield, not the presence of slavery, precluded British recognition. Napoleon did the same to Kenner and John Slidell, claiming (truthfully) that slavery had never been an obstacle.\n\nKenner maintained afterward that if the proposal had been made in 1863, before Gettysburg and Vicksburg, it might have succeeded. We have no way of knowing for sure, but it seems exceedingly unlikely that Davis would have authorized such a move at a time when battlefield victory seemed possible, even likely. \n\n​\n\nThe Kenner episode, for me, is notable for how it highlights the near-delusion of Davis, Benjamin, and other Confederate leaders about how recognition could be achieved and what, even if they did obtain it, benefits it would actually bring. We have a substantial body of scholarship on international law, belligerent rights, warfare, and recognition (see recent works by Laura Benton, Lisa Ford, Martti Koskaniemmi, Kenneth Moss, and others), and nothing in them suggests that recognition was owed to the Confederacy, or that it would come with anything beyond what they already had: belligerent rights. Recognition was (and is) better understood as acknowledgment of independence already gained rather than a device for gaining it. Confederates assumed that recognition would necessarily bring with it *intervention*, which was what they really wanted: the Royal Navy sweeping away the blockading fleet. By 1865 that ship, if you'll pardon my pun, had sailed.\n\n​\n\nReferences:\n\nHoward Jones, *Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations* (UNC Press, 2010). \n\nBruce Levine, *Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the American Civil War*, (Oxford, 2006).\n\nCraig A. Bauer, \"The Last Effort: The Secret Mission of the Confederate Diplomat, Duncan F. Kenner\" *Louisiana History* 22, no. 1 (1981)\n\nKenneth Bourne, *Britain and the Balance of Power in North America, 1815-1908* (Univ. of California Press, 1967). This is an older work but no one has written anything to surpass it in terms of depth or breadth.\n\nDavid Krein, *The Last Palmerston Government*, (Iowa State Univ. Press, 1978)", "created_utc": 1597898326, "distinguished": null, "id": "g26kped", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/id0d6j/the_wikipedia_article_for_the_american_civil_war/g26kped/", "score": 38 } ]

[ { "body": "Someone might have something new to say on this, but it is a common question , and so there are good answers to it posted on a FAQ page for it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/civilwar#wiki_causes)", "created_utc": 1618230404, "distinguished": null, "id": "gu8wjbd", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mp5e77/american_civil_war/gu8wjbd/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Dr. Foote, in my own studies I focus heavily on concepts of honor and their influence, but as far as the US goes, my readings are heavily towards the South, especially by the mid-century point. How, exactly, would a Northern soldier's understanding of 'honor' contrast with his southern counterpart? Were there similar racial and social/class stratifications, or would it have been quantified differently?", "created_utc": 1506354779, "distinguished": null, "id": "dnhl2ov", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/72cxz5/ama_honor_and_pows_in_the_american_civil_war/dnhl2ov/", "score": 30 }, { "body": "Dr. Foote, what an absolute pleasure to have you here: thank you! Since it is a hot-button topic right now (and that's putting it mildly = ), could you possibly take a moment to contextualize the appearance of the Confederate flag in American culture post-1865? There has been a great deal of discussion on this sub about when US citizens started to fly the Confederate flag as a form of cultural identity, and how that coincided with flare-ups in racial violence and conflict in the US. Has your research lent anything to this discussion of how the Confederate flag has been used as something of a lever to pry up Confederate nationalism (i.e., racial discrimination and civil rights opposition) at especially divisive or violent periods throughout US history, from Reconstruction onward? ", "created_utc": 1506357966, "distinguished": null, "id": "dnho4q0", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/72cxz5/ama_honor_and_pows_in_the_american_civil_war/dnho4q0/", "score": 16 }, { "body": "My great-great-great grandfather served in the 116th PA and died of wounds incurred at Fredericksburg. The 116th's role in the attack was described in [a comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5xf3an/what_was_the_role_of_the_116th_pennsylvania/dehqzrq/) by u/dandan_noodles mostly as getting slaughtered by Confederate fire. How did units maintain cohesion under such conditions, and how did it change as the Union moved from volunteers to conscripts? How were those who escaped such battlefields viewed and treated both formally and informally?", "created_utc": 1506365272, "distinguished": null, "id": "dnhvbmy", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/72cxz5/ama_honor_and_pows_in_the_american_civil_war/dnhvbmy/", "score": 15 } ]

[ { "body": "[This old answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/glfrq6/its_late_1864_and_im_a_confederate_soldier_who/fqyokob/) about desertion and draft evasion should be of interest for you.", "created_utc": 1610912469, "distinguished": null, "id": "gjn1wna", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/kz9wwg/antiwar_sentiment_in_the_csasouthern_states/gjn1wna/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": ">Was there a cost reason for this, or did individual soldiers use the telegraph as well?\n\nCost + access. When a telegraph message cost upwards of $1, and a private being paid $13/month (at the beginning of the war) to $16/month (end of the war), it's just not very feasible to spend that much on a message. A private in the Army today would make just under $1500/month (not counting the various bonuses for war time pay, housing, food, etc.). An equivalent cost in pure share of income would be a private spending $115 to send a letter, though that doesn't factor in the differences in the buying power of cash in 1860 compared to 2013. \n\nThere wasn't a great deal of telegraph line laid in the US at the time of the Civil War, and Grant made sure to have new lines laid to each camp site and battle so he could be in quick communication with Lincoln. Your average private isn't going to be able to walk into Grant's tent and ask him to divert valuable war resources to send a quick telegram home to Ma & Pa on the farm. \n\n[Here's](http://www.telegraph-history.org/map2.htm) an 1853 map showing existing telegraph lines. You can see that there aren't that many of them, and even though the telegraph would experience a pretty big boom over the next few decades the boom was mostly in connecting the larger cities with each other. \n\nAs an interesting side note, the first \"text speak\" wasn't developed with the use of cell phones. It actually started with telegraph operators. [Here's](http://sundaymagazine.org/2010/08/from-1890-the-first-text-messages) an interesting look at early text speak from telegraph operators. \n\n>\"In their conversations telegraphers use a system of abbreviations which enables them to say considerably more in a certain period of time then they otherwise could. Their morning greeting to a friend in a distant city is usually “g. m.,” and the farewell for the evening, “g. n.,” the letters of course standing for good morning and good night. The salutation may be accompanied by an inquiry by one as to the health of the other, which would be expressed thus: “Hw r u ts mng?” And the answer would be: “I’m pty wl; hw r u?” or “I’m nt flg vy wl; fraid I’ve gt t mlaria.”\"\n\nEdit: A good comparison might be the cost for sending something overnight from Afghanistan to Idaho (my home state). According to Fed Ex it'll cost $129.17 to overnight a letter from Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan (located in Helmand Province) to Idaho (my home state). \n", "created_utc": 1368733874, "distinguished": null, "id": "ca040vo", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1egi00/how_much_did_a_telegram_cost_during_the_american/ca040vo/", "score": 41 }, { "body": "In October 1864, the Nevada territory was forced to telegraph its entire constitution: someone in Congress lost the hard copy, and Nevada needed to become a state in time for the presidential election so it could cast its three electoral votes for Lincoln. The telegram - from Carson City to Washington, DC, was 16,543 words and cost $4,303.27. Comstock miners at the time earned $4 per day for underground work, so it would have taken over 4,000 of their days to pay for the telegram.", "created_utc": 1368746445, "distinguished": null, "id": "ca08nt7", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1egi00/how_much_did_a_telegram_cost_during_the_american/ca08nt7/", "score": 14 }, { "body": "I am not qualified to speak specifically on the correspondence of soldiers, but I can point out that this may be difficult to properly answer because of the practice of [price discrimination](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination) by the telegram companies at the time. [This paper](http://noeldjohnson.net/www.noeldjohnson.net/Economic_History_Workshop_files/Aaron%20Honsowetz%20March%202012.pdf) is a brief read on the subject, and has explained this practice.\n\nEssentially, the price depended on multiple variables, such as the route that the telegram company took with the telegram.", "created_utc": 1368728343, "distinguished": null, "id": "ca01xwu", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1egi00/how_much_did_a_telegram_cost_during_the_american/ca01xwu/", "score": 44 } ]

[ { "body": "See the first reply here;\n\nBy [Vonadler](/u/vonadler)\n\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39v67i/i_have_read_some_commentary_mostly_from_europeans/", "created_utc": 1560119771, "distinguished": null, "id": "eqkbpvm", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/bymfha/the_prussiandanish_war_of_1864_was_fought_at_the/eqkbpvm/", "score": 30 }, { "body": "Follow-up question: \n\nHow is the accuracy of the mini-series [1864](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1753353), particularly that the Danish were hopelessly outmatched against the Prussian artillery, and that Danish POW's were held in treatment (apparently for PTSD) in Prussia for months or years?", "created_utc": 1560184463, "distinguished": null, "id": "eqo5s8t", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/bymfha/the_prussiandanish_war_of_1864_was_fought_at_the/eqo5s8t/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "John Terraine, in his polemic work *The Smoke and the Fire* groups the ACW, and the two world wars together as comparators but because these were industrial wars requiring a total commitment from belligerents rather than similarities with regards to technology and tactics.\n\nIts a bit of a difficult question to address because of two factors:\n\n* Each of the belligerents in WWI had differing doctrines, while WWI itself saw such a rapid evolution in tactics and technology, and was fought in so many different theatres necessitating differing doctrines, that it is impossible to regard it as a single event from that point of view. \n\n* The claim that the ACW was in some ways a trial run for the Great War is itself somewhat suspect as the use of trenches in ancient and vastly predates both wars, and I am not aware of any actual chemical weapon deployments in the ACW, though I stand to be corrected on this. \n\nThe principle difference between the ACW and WWI was the quantum leap in the lethality of weaponry.\n\nConsider for example the evolution of the personal weapon from the ACW to WWI. In the ACW, the standard personal weapon was the muzzle-loading, black powder Minie rifle. By WWI, the personal weapon had developed several generations, from muzzle loading Minie rifles, to Chassepot cartridge riles, to single shot brass cartridge riles like the Martini Henry, and finally to the magazine fed rifle firing sub-bore spitzer rounds at high velocity using smokeless powder. \n\nArtillery had advanced almost beyond recognition, from muzzle loading black powder cannons to rapid fire recuperating breach loaders. A battery of French *Soizante Quinze* guns could saturate a 4000 square meter area with 17,000 shrapnel balls every minute. Direct fire, although still practised in 1914, was increasingly recognised as unsurvivable and being replaced by indirect fire, especially as a result of experiences in the Russo-Japanese war. \n\nAlthough Gatlings were used in the ACW, these were arguably not true machine guns, and like the *mitrailluse* were more properly artillery pieces than tactical infantry support weapons. By WWI, we not only see the proliferation of Maxim guns and their derivatives, but also true squad automatic weapons like the Lewis gun. \n\nFinally, while some cavalry arms had barely developed, some, notably the British, had evolved a model of cavalry being able to fight dismounted with the same proficiency as infantry, but also able to carry out traditional ‘cold steel’ shock charges.\n\nThe overall effect of this increase in lethality was that the line tactics that dominated warfare for centuries was simply no longer viable. \n\nInfantry had to manoeuvre in dispersed skirmishing formations, artillery had to fire “off the map”, and cavalry, the only means of pursuit and exploitation was effectively neutralised by the proliferation of barbed wire. \n\nThis meant that troops had to act with greater independence and less rigid command, while the battlefield would expand from relatively small area to vast tracts of countryside, quite outside of the ability of one General to personally survey and direct. Waterloo was fought on a frontage of about 3 miles, while the First Day of the Somme saw action across 22 miles of frontage. \n\nThe problems of command, control and coordination were never really solved during the war – that would have to wait for the advent of portable radios. \n\nSource\n\n* John Terraine – The Smoke and The Fire\n\n* Strong & Marble – Artillery in the Great War\n\n* Todman, Sheffield et al. – Command and Control on the Western Front\n\n* [Kenyon – PhD Thesis]( https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1826/3032/D%20Kenyon%20Thesis%20corrected.pdf;jsessionid=5815E8B10EE0934C9CB412F53559BE66?sequence=1)\n\n\n\n\n", "created_utc": 1534775774, "distinguished": null, "id": "e4iodwo", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/98smlo/the_american_civil_war_is_often_described_as_a/e4iodwo/", "score": 35 }, { "body": "I believe that there are several previous ~~debates~~ answers that could be turned up if we wanted to attack the premise that the ACW is a trial run for WWI. Let's put that aside and look at Europe itself between 1865-1914.\n\nThe main driver of military change in Europe between 1866-1914 was because of the Prussian (as they became the Germans) general staff welding the technological innovations of the mid 19th century into a coherent strategic, operational and tactical doctrine. This forced France and other European powers into rapidly evolving their military doctrine. \n\nPrussia moved from a third class military power in 1865 into a dominant first class power in 1871 by winning two wars, the Austrio-Prussian war and the 1870 Franco-Prussian war. Moltke gets a lot of the credit for this, but many Prussian officers and governmental figures deserve notice. In any case, it was the Prussians and their rivalry with France that sparked a technological arms race and a rapid and incontrovertible increase in firepower. The Prussian general staff crafted the mobilization and reserve schemes that made it possible for armies of hundreds of thousands and then millions to be formed within weeks or months. The Prussian and German general staff created operational schemes of maneuver that utilized railroad pre-planing in meticulous detail. Furthermore they realized that armies of hundreds of thousands of men could not all march or be supplied on 2-3 roads but would have to spread out across military frontiers in order to maintain mobility. \n\nThis idea of dispersion is probably the biggest change to operational strategy that accompanied the period. A late ACW battle like The Wilderness in 1864 or a European battle like the 1859 Battle of Solferino took up only a few dozen square miles. Hundreds of thousands would be concentrated onto relatively small battlefields that were controlled by a single general with a few mounted messengers for communication. By 1870, the Franco-Prussian war would see armies dispersed across the frontier and coordinated across hundreds of miles by telegraph and any modern means of communication available. The initial actions of WWI in the west were fought in more or less the same territory, except for the swing through the low countries broadened the war outside the French and German border.\n\nThe only thing that prevented the Franco-Prussian war from being a \"trial run for WWI\" was that it was mercifully brief. The Germans crossed the frontiers in August and surrounded Paris in mid September. The French learned many lessons from 1870, and imitated the German general staff in their planning methods. When the 1914 conflict emerged, they were better prepared and the resulting conflict shared the grueling length and indecisiveness of the ACW.\n\nSources: \n\n*Barry, Quintin \"The Road to Koniggratz Helmuth von Moltke and the Austro-Prussian War 1866\"*\n\n*Barry, Quintin \"The Franco-Prussian War 1870-71\"*\n\n*Nosworthy, Brent \"The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War\"*", "created_utc": 1534773226, "distinguished": null, "id": "e4ilt71", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/98smlo/the_american_civil_war_is_often_described_as_a/e4ilt71/", "score": 75 }, { "body": "One of the popular misconceptions about the development of combat tactics in the run up to WW1 is that all the tactical developments of the ACW and the Franco-Prussian wars were forgotten just after those conflicts. This is, in fact, not the case. The stalemate entrenchment tactics of the age of the rifle were still thriving up through the battlefield phase of the Boer War. In one of the most interesting institutional and intellectual tales of history, the doctrines of the armies of Europe actually became substantially less well suited to fight WW1 in the 10 years running up to it.\n\nAs has often been pointed out, in its last two years the ACW developed into a war of entrenchment and flanking marches as it became clear that the firepower of rifled muskets had made direct assaults foolish. This was noticed in Europe, and one of the most dramatic changes in European armies in the 1860's was the near universal adoption of standard issue entrenching tools and the new expectation that *all* soldiers were expected dig routinely, not just specialized units.\n\nHelmuth von Moltke was one of the most brilliant generals of his age, and he grasped clearly that these new developments were inclined to produce stalemate. That is why, when he commanded in the Wars of German Unification, he focused on rapid overwhelming concentration of force using rail transport and detailed mobilization schedules. But even in the largest of these wars, the Franco-Prussian war, in the largest battles the Germans proved incapable of forcing their way into French positions by direct assaults. All the greatest victories were built on outflanking and encircling smaller, slower-moving forces. And after initial stunning success even the Prussian war machine was drawn into the rifle stalemate around Paris as tiny forces proved capable of resisting larger ones through firepower.\n\nThe period of 1872-1913 was one of unusual peace within Europe. And most of the wars involving Europeans involved colonial campaigns against much more poorly equipped enemies. There were other disturbing signs of the deepening stalemate rifles could produce. At the Siege of Plevna (1877), Europe was shocked by the horrific casualties the Turks, armed with Winchester Repeating Rifles, were able to inflict on much larger Russian forces. This sent Europe scrambling to deploy magazine-fed rifles. But, ignoring a string of conflicts in the Balkans involving forces of mixed regularity that was poorly understood by the outside world, the next major shock came during the field army phase of the Boer War (1899-1900). This was the first time major armies fought using magazine-fed rifles using *smokeless* powder. The Boers fought from trench networks, and were able to stalemate and even nearly destroy seasoned, professional British armies sent to fight them. The British were only able to prevail by using larger forces and flanking movements. The lessons of this conflict were somewhat dulled by the long and politically costly guerrilla war phase (1900-1902) that followed and distracted attention from the first part. But generally speaking, the broad perception that warfare was built on digging and flanking was fairly set in the beliefs of European armed forces by the beginning of the 20th Century.\n\nThe critical and shocking turn in this tale comes in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), which was the first conflict noted for the widespread deployment of Maxim machine guns. During this conflict, the Japanese (who had not really yet experienced the rifle stalemate first hand) adopted a policy of frontal assaults on Russian trenches and machine guns. This was where the legendary courage of the modern Japanese soldier began to display itself, and the Japanese were able to win several \"victories\" by carpeting the fields in their dead. In retrospect, it seems many of the major engagements were settled by retreat by unsteady Russian commanders (reminiscent of the ACW), but that was not the lesson taken by military observers at the time. From first hand reports of this conflict by professionals there began to grow a narrative in military thinking that machine guns could be defeated by riflemen with enough guts. This idea seductively appealed to the dime novel romanticism of the era, and quickly started to spread among military thinkers.\n\nThis fad thinking, that the era of entrenchment and flanking could be ended by guts (or \"*cran*\" as the French called it) infected most militaries to some degree, but the French caught it especially bad. In the 1870's and 1880's several countries were experimenting with \"trowel\" bayonets: a wide bayonet that could serve as a shovel. By 1910 the bayonets of most armies were getting longer, thinner, and more sword-like so that \"our boys will have more reach than the enemy\". In 1908 the British reauthorized the use of the cavalry *lance*. In one of the clearest examples of this process, the French *reintroduced the cavalry saber*. The US reintroduced the cavalry sword in 1906. George Patton convinced the US Army redesign the sword in elongated French style in 1913 to improve reach. Patton was then put on exchange to France in 1913 to study *fencing* with the French Army. He graduated in June of 1915 *because the school was still functioning*. It had not been shut down despite nine months of experience of fighting WW1. In keeping with their philosophy of using *cran* as the main weapon, the French engaged in extraordinarily insane attacks through 1914 and much of 1915, managing to suffer more casualties than the Germans despite ostensibly being on the defensive for much of this time. (If you want a great example of the French tactics during this time, look up August 22, 1914 during the Battle of Frontiers.)\n\nThe strangest thing about military doctrine in this 50 year span running up to WW1 is that it took a long while to get worse. And the reasons it became worse seem to only have a little bit to do with military experience. Much of it is to do with how people from that time period interacted with the world and formed their beliefs. I'm not sure you could fully understand it without studying not just military doctrine, but also art and literature and the prevailing political narratives. But that is for another post.\n\nAn excellent source on the changes in doctrine in the run up to WW1, I recommend GJ Meyer's *The World Undone*.", "created_utc": 1534797635, "distinguished": null, "id": "e4jdx9u", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/98smlo/the_american_civil_war_is_often_described_as_a/e4jdx9u/", "score": 20 } ]

[ { "body": "More can always be said, but [this AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hgp365/i_am_dr_michael_somerville_author_of_bull_run_to/) with /u/MSomervi_UK should prove to be of interest for you, at least as regards the UK!", "created_utc": 1613688760, "distinguished": null, "id": "gnxxtvb", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lmzotv/what_were_european_military_leaders_tactical/gnxxtvb/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "Note: This is mostly based of an earlier answer to a similar question that I have answered previously.\n\n[Earlier reply by me (/u/vonadler)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8h4x03/did_the_american_civil_war_have_an_impact_on_the/).\n\nWhile Prussia, France and Britain did send military observers to watch and learn from the conflict, in general, they did not consider the American tactics noteworthy.\n\nThere's no evidence that the quote about the US Civil War attributed to Helmuth von Moltke the elder (the Prussian man behind the victories against Denmark 1864, Austria 1866 and France 1870) was ever uttered by the man (at least I have not been able to find any credible such), but it does capture some of the spirit of what the European militaries thought of the US Civil War: \"Two armed mobs chasing each other around the countryside, from which nothing could be learned.\"\n\nThe US Civil War was a war fought by amateurs, led by amateurs and conducted in a most unplanned, amateurish way according to the Europeans. Why?\n\nFirst of all, there were only 534 West Point graduates that fought in the US Civil War - and while there were also militia part time officers on both sides, both sides had a distinct lack of officers to command the roughly 1 500 000 men that were in the field at any given time. Men who raised volunteer units often commanded them themselves and appointed or let the men elect their officers and NCOs, usually men without any previous military experience. Most of the generals in the US Civil War had no experience in staff work, meaning they had not spent time with mobilisation plans, supply and movement tables by railroads or organising logistics. Men such as Halleck, Grant and Sherman had left the military at the rank of Captain to pursue civilian careers before the war. Lee was one of the few US Civil War generals with experience in logistics, having served as quartermaster general of Scott's force in Mexico, organising the supply for a force that never exceeded 8 000 men.\n\nEuropean militaries had a professional core, with officers that had gone through both an officer school and cadet training and general staff training. They had experience working with mobilisation plans, railroad tables, logistics and modern tactical theories.\n\nCaptain Justus Scheibert, a military engineer in the Prussian Army that spend 7 months observing within the Confederacy and took time to intrview and learn about previous campaigns, especially in the west was seemingly impressed with the US ability to conduct combined arms warfare with cavalry raiding ahead, regular troops and riverine flotillas in the Western Theater, but also noted that defensive fortifications were especially popular because it allowed for the slow and cumbersome decision process of the unprofessional officers on both sides.\n\nThe Europeans had shifted to rifle chain or rifle swarm tactics (the latter for the Prussians exclusivly), with the platoon as the manouvre unit, the US Civil War armies used Napoleonic tactics with the battalion as the manouvre unit on the field.\n\nThe Europeans also fielded a strong cavalry arm capable of pursuit - for example, roughly half the 20 000 Austrian prisoners taken at Königgrätz 1866 were captured by the Prussian cavalry in an hour after the Austrian army started to retreat. The combination of a strong cavalry arm to conduct battlefield pursuit, prepared and precalculated mobilisation, logistics and marching tables and always keeping a large force of professional troops in reserve meant that European battles tended to be far more decisive than American ones in this era. The victor in an American battle was usually so sapped that no proper battlefield pursuit was possible while the losing European army was mercilessly pursued until it was no longer a fghting force, or holed up in a fortified postion from which it could be staved out.\n\nThe Europeans also had a strong, professional artillery with strong traditions of standardisation. The French were especially keen here, and used rifled guns of the La Hitte system against the Austrians in Italy 1859, causing the Austrians to switch to an all-rifled artillery that served them quite well at Königgrätz 1866.\n\nThe Prussians introduced a telegraph corps in their army in 1830. The French moved around 100 000 men by rail into Italy before the Battle of Solferino 1859. Trench warfare had been common in European sieges since the early 1600s. The French used ironclads of the Aetna class against Russian fortifications in the Crimean War. The French and British used muzzle-loaded rifles with minie balls in the Crimean War and the Prussian used breech-loaded rifles in their wars against Denmark, Austria and France.\n\nThe only development in the US Civil War that actually attracted a LOT of attention from the Europeans was the first combat between two ironclads at Hampton Roads 1862 between CSS Virginia (built on the hull of the USS Merrimac) and the USS Monitor. The Europeans would experience the first fleet combat between armoured ships when the Italians were defeated by the Austrians at Lissa 1866.\n\nWhat really could be learned from the US Civil War was how to quickly and effectively create armies out of nearly nothing, and then the arderous process of increasing professionalism, structuring logistics, weeding out bad officers and generals, introducing effective drill and mobilise society to support it, from nearly nothing.\n\nThe war was not really influential on contemporary wars and tactics, as Europeans thought they had little to learn, since their battles and wars were far more decisive.", "created_utc": 1582589843, "distinguished": null, "id": "fiosc7g", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/f8y45u/during_the_american_civil_war_were_there_any/fiosc7g/", "score": 51 } ]

[ { "body": "**Yes, and in staggering numbers.**\n\nYou ask about mercenaries, and let me be clear: Neither the United States nor Confederate States went out to hire foreign mercenaries to fight in the American Civil War on a large scale. There are, however, ample instances in which both the U.S. and C.S. hired foreign soldiers and sailors who then fought under their respective flags. There is a distinction.\n\nThe Confederate Navy was perhaps the most notorious force in this regard. Charles M. Robinson's *Shark of the Confederacy: The Story of the CSS Alabama* explains how Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory faced the titanic task of building a navy in a country that had little shipbuilding capacity, few sailors and even fewer naval officers. After President Jefferson Davis rejected Mallory's request to buy ships ready for combat, Mallory switched to raider planning.\n\nThe most famous Confederate raiders were built in Great Britain, and as such the Confederacy faced huge challenges in manning and equipping these new-built ships. Because of neutrality law, these ships had to be armed and crewed in such a way that Britain could not be held responsible. (Indeed, in 1863, the Laird Rams affair brought the United States and Britain closer to war than at any time since the *Trent* Affair.)\n\n~~Gabriel~~ Raphael Semmes, captain of the Confederate raider *Alabama*, built in 1862, was extraordinarily aggressive in recruiting foreign sailors to serve aboard the *Alabama*. \"Their reasons for joining up were varied,\" Joseph McKenna writes in *British Ships in the Confederate Navy*, \"financial gain not the least. Many were in the Naval Reserve, former Royal Navy men who had served during the late Crimean War. They were experienced sailors, battle-hardened, and not content to finish their days aboard some rust-bucket in coastal waters around Britain. They sought adventure, and in the service of the Confederate Navy, they found it.\"\n\nI believe these recruited sailors are the closest thing to what you're asking about.\n\n***\n\nThose sailors were not, however, present in staggering numbers.\n\nIn the armies of the North and South were tens of thousands of men, new immigrants to the United States. Between 1820 and 1860, almost 4 million people immigrated to the United States, and many of them were from Europe, where antislavery sentiment was far stronger than it was in the United States. Of the approximately 2 million soldiers who enlisted for the Union during the war, almost one-third were not born in the United States. These included about 200,000 Germans, 150,000 Irish and 150,000 from British territories. [This article](http://wesclark.com/jw/foreign_soldiers.html) by a re-enactor explains things in plain English with some citations, but if you have some questions about the source (as I do — I just prefer its plain-English tone), I'll continue.\n\nThe most famous of the foreign-born units is [the Fighting Irish Brigade, formed under the influence of Thomas F. Meagher](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/the-fighting-irish-brigade/). Altogether, the Irish dominated at least 20 regiments in the Union Army. Their fame somewhat overshadows the participation of other foreign-born units, even though German, Hungarian and others made up a greater percentage of the Union Army.\n\nGermans are of particular note. The failed 1848 revolution in Germany forced many liberal Germans out of Europe and to the United States. They were anti-slavery almost to a man (and woman), participating in the fighting almost from the first day. In May 1861, with a showdown between pro-Southerners and pro-Northerners brewing in St. Louis, [the huge German community was key in keeping St. Louis in the hands of the Union Army and driving the Confederacy into the Missouri wilds](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/how-st-louis-was-won/).\n\nU.S. Gen. Franz Sigel, a former German military officer, became famous for issuing orders in German, having them translated into Hungarian for his officers (many of whom had fled that nascent country) and then into English and German again for his soldiers.\n\nMy favorite German of the war, however, is Carl Schurz, who [as Ted Widmer wrote in 2011](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/land-pirate/), was \"A 19th century Zelig of sorts[.] [H]e had a knack for arriving just as trouble was erupting, and for leaving just as he was about to get caught.\" \n\nSchurz was a 19-year-old student at Bonn University when the 1848 revolution struck. He was an ardent follower of the liberal revolutionaries, and when his teacher, Gottfried Kinkel, was thrown into Spandau prison for his political views, Schurz led a Mission Impossible-style rescue. \"The escape was a sensation and made Schurz the most famous teenager in the world,\" Widmer wrote.\n\nAfter the revolution failed, Schurz spent a few years in England, got married, had kids, and then in 1852 came to America, where he opened the nation's first kindergarten. He joined the Republican Party almost as soon as it got started, and Lincoln rewarded him for his support by [naming him ambassador to Spain — a shocking move, considering he was a revolutionary now in an aristocratic stronghold](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/the-wars-of-carl-schurz/).\n\nIn 1862, with the war ranging, Schurz returned to America to fight in the war. He was appointed a brigadier general and would go on to command a division, fighting at the Second Battle of Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and elsewhere. He survived the war, won election to the U.S. Senate and later became Secretary of the Interior under Rutherford B. Hayes. He died in 1906, and in 1917, the U.S. Navy renamed a captured German ship the U.S.S. Carl Schurz.\n\nGermans and Irish weren't the only volunteers. There were participants from every country in Europe, almost. There was [the 55th New York Infantry](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/lincolns-french-toast/), for example. That regiment's original recruits came from French émigrés in New York City. Even by January 1862, six of the regiment's nine companies were predominantly French. As James Johnston wrote in 2012, \"Some of the men were veterans, having served in the French Army in Algeria, the Crimean War and Italy. The rest were a motley international bunch, including German, Irish, Italian and Spanish immigrants, as well as a few Americans.\"\n\n***\n\nThe Confederacy, with fewer immigrants, had fewer foreign fighters within its ranks, but it had them. The 10th Louisiana is one such unit. As Terry Jones [wrote in 2012 of its commander, Col. Eugene Waggaman:](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/brothers-in-arms/) \n\n>\"Waggaman was a deeply religious and popular officer who commanded a motley crew of soldiers. Most of his men were from New Orleans, and they reflected that city’s cosmopolitan makeup: one company had recruits from 15 foreign countries and another was made up almost entirely of Greeks and Italians. Because many of Waggaman’s men could not speak English, the regiment used French drill commands exclusively. It was motley in other ways as well: the men of the 10th Louisiana were constant camp discipline problems and helped create the notorious reputation of the famed and feared Louisiana Tigers. It would also see its share of hard service: of the regiment’s 845 members, 205 would not survive the Civil War.\"\n\n***\n\nYou'll note that I've used the word \"foreign\" throughout this answer, but after writing all this, I think I have to change my answer. They might have come from countries around the world, but in the end, they fought under two flags. **In the end, they were all Americans.**", "created_utc": 1417328398, "distinguished": null, "id": "cmgs324", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ntaat/what_was_mexico_and_canadas_reaction_to_the/cmgs324/", "score": 619 }, { "body": "Mexico was busy fighting France. The Cinco de Mayo holiday originated around the same time, after the Battle of Puebla, and even spread to camps in the states.\n\nCanada was still British. The South begged Britain to join their cause, and they thought that the British would want to break the blockade for access to American cotton. The general feeling in the UK was anti-slavery (they abolished slavery 30+ years before us), and the British had access to other cotton rich areas in Egypt and India, so they didn't need the south. For the most part, Britain stayed out of the conflict, and so did Canada. FWIW, Canada was granted Dominion status only 2 years after the conclusion of the Civil War, thought I'm not sure if the two events were in any way related.\n\nI can't speak to the possibility of mercenaries or foreign volunteers, though I doubt there were any Mexicans, since they were busy fighting their own war.", "created_utc": 1417324836, "distinguished": null, "id": "cmgqsde", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ntaat/what_was_mexico_and_canadas_reaction_to_the/cmgqsde/", "score": 121 }, { "body": "The American Civil War had a particularly insidious result for Mexico. Mexico had just finished up her own civil war (the Reform War) when the US Civil War broke out. \n\nThe some of the Conservative losers of the Reform War fled to Europe where they successfully convinced the French Emperor Napoleon III to invade Mexico and establish a Mexican Empire with a European prince as ruler (Maximilian of the Hapsburg House).\n\nKey to Napoleon III's decision to invade Mexico, was the belief that the US would be too distracted with her Civil War to intervene in the establishment of the Second Mexican Empire.\n\nWith the end of the American Civil War, the US was again in a position to intervene against the French, and this proved one of the reasons for the withdrawal of French troops from Mexico in 1866.\n\nSource: *Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire* by John Bierman", "created_utc": 1417384398, "distinguished": null, "id": "cmhamym", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ntaat/what_was_mexico_and_canadas_reaction_to_the/cmhamym/", "score": 3 } ]

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[ { "body": "I'm going to limit myself here to talking primarily about the Union, since I can't speak to the Confederate situation. To the extent that I address the South, it will be within the context of southerners attempting to obtain compensation from the Federal (i.e., Union) government.\n\nThe Civil War was indisputably the most destructive war in American domestic history. It occasioned not only a massive loss of life (by the standards of the American nineteenth century, the death toll was apocalyptic, and its social and cultural consequences have been well documented by historians like Drew Gilpin Faust in *This Republic of Suffering* and Michael C.C. Adams in *Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War*), but also a horrific economic cost, damaging or destroying the property of thousands of - more or less innocent - civilians who were caught in the cross-fire. Wherever Civil War armies existed, they destroyed property. In camp, on the march, or in the field, they stole food, trampled crops, chopped down forests, and burned and looted homes. In the South, where the majority of the campaigning occurred, the majority of the destruction occurred also. But civilians in Union regions like western Maryland, south-central Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Kansas suffered, too.\n\nNineteenth-century America was a profoundly litigious society, and Americans responded to this crisis in much the same way as they responded to other crises: They called their lawyers and petitioned their representatives. Making claims for damages - whether to military authorities, courts, or administrative bodies - required time and paperwork, including witness testimony, affidavits, and property valuations. Whether and how property owners were able to obtain compensation for property destroyed during the war depended on who and where they were, and how their property came to be destroyed.\n\nThrough the congressional War Claims Committee and the Court of Claims (predecessor to the modern Court of Federal Claims), northerners could petition for restitution if their property was damaged or appropriated by Federal troops. Claimants filed for restitution of property taken by Federal troops or destroyed in battle, crops and livestock killed, and even land damaged by mass burials or encampments. But these claimants faced obstacles. The burden of proof was extremely high, and there were certain kinds of damage for which the Federal government simply wouldn't reimburse. Samuel Mumma's farm near Sharpsburg, Maryland was the site of some of the most heinous bloodshed during the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. His home was burned to the ground by Confederate troops in an attempt to prevent it from being used by Union troops as a nest for sharpshooters. Mumma's post-war claim for damages was denied on the grounds that the damage had been done not by Federal troops, but by Confederates. William Roulette, another Sharpsburg-area resident whose property was caught in the middle of the fighting, was similarly unlucky with thousands of dollars' worth of damage claims he filed.\n\nOf course, the Federal government was not the only game in town. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, for example, accepted claims for damage done by Confederate forces. An index of the hundreds of claims made by the residents of York County has been [digitized here](https://www.yorkhistorycenter.org/library/military-records-documents). But it's not clear how successful the claimants were at obtaining payment. Local historian Scott Mingus claims that they [weren't successful at all](https://yorkblog.com/cannonball/civil-war-border-claims-pine-hill-xenia-hall/). Sometimes, reimbursement was provided through one-off legislative appropriations, as when the government of Pennsylvania appropriated several hundreds of thousands of dollars in a series of discrete aid packages to the citizens of Chambersburg, who were the victims of a particularly destructive Confederate cavalry raid in July 1864.\n\nIf you were a southerner, unfortunately, you were probably a helpless case. An 1864 act of Congress limited the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims to northern states. The Federal government refused to compensate property owners who were disloyal at any point during the war (residence in a southern state was considered *prima facie* evidence of disloyalty, and the burden was on the claimant to prove otherwise), and would not even compensate southern blacks and loyal southern whites until the establishment of the Southern Claims Commission in 1871. The Southern Claims Commission itself compensated citizens only for property appropriated by the military, not for war damage. Approximately two thirds of the 22,000 claims made to the Commission were denied. It eventually paid out a total of [about $4.6 million](https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Southern_Claims_Commission_in_Virginia_The#start_entry) before wrapping up its work in 1880.\n\nEDIT: Corrected a couple of typos.", "created_utc": 1588914844, "distinguished": null, "id": "fpujwih", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gfcj4l/im_a_farmer_during_the_american_civil_war_and_my/fpujwih/", "score": 15 } ]

[ { "body": "Hi there -- while you wait for further answers, you may be interested in this [Monday Methods thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9mdx60/monday_methods_on_why_did_ancient_warriors_get/) on why writing \"PTSD\" as a diagnosis applied to people in the past is a difficult thing to do.", "created_utc": 1615048003, "distinguished": null, "id": "gpz6qfb", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lz4wi3/asking_again_because_i_didnt_get_any_responses/gpz6qfb/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "*cracks knuckles*\n\nWhy did Great Britain lead the world in industrialization? A great question and one which many historians have tried to answer in various ways. Many of these answers have a very Whiggish feel to them; Whiggish being a British historian's term characterizing how many historians claimed Britain had some superior quality above its contemporaries which naturally made it succeed.\n\nSome contenders throughout history were: (1) The Protestant work ethic. This idea was that Protestants believed labor was a virtue as idleness led to sin and it meant they worked harder than their peers. This has largely been debunked as European Catholics and Protestants had similar productivity. \n\n(2) The British were more rational than their contemporaries. This is a favorite among antithiests, this argument that British secularism was the cause of its success. Except Britain was highly religious. It did have secular thinkers like David Hume but so did France and other European countries. Moreover, religion was not necessarily an impediment to scientific progress. Isaac Newton was something of a zealot who believed his greatest contributions to humanity were his theological ideas. He was one of many religious natural scientists. 'Britain was more rational' is generally considered hogwash.\n\n(3) Britain had more freedom! Not really. There were some English rights to speech, assembly and press that were more prominent than in other countries. However, the enclosure movement meant that British people lost their land to elites and were pushed into the cities to become urban workers (more on that later). Britain had many great freedoms to be sure but it was not necessarily freer than some other societies.\n\n(4) Britain had more/better scientists. It simply didn't France had a population 4x greater than England; perhaos 3x greater than Britain proper in 1750. As great as Oxford ans Cambridge are, Britain didn't have many other stellar universities. France definitely had more in that department. \n\nSo, now that we've done away with the \"Britain was just better arguments,\" what is generally left? There are 6 big ones. As a Ph.D. holder in modern British and French history this in my opinion ranked by order (and my opinion was molded mostly by Kenneth Pomeranz and his acclaimed book \"The Great Divergence\")\n\n1) Exploitation of New World resources\n\nThe Columbian Exchange killed off 90% of indigenous peoples in the Americas. Those left struggled for survival and were ill-equipped to fight Europeans. Britain was a relatively small place and so it sent over a million people to the New World before the American Rev. These Brits left because they had been kicked off their land in the enclosure movement. By contrast, France was a large and fertile country whose peasantry maintained their traditional farms. Thus, far fewer French left for the New World.\n\n2) Mass African slavery\n\nMillions of human beings transported from Africa and laboring for free at the point of a gun massively improved the British economy. Cotton, indigo, rice and sugar were enormously important. One cannot understate how crucial the mass labor supply was in the colonies. New World resources with African labor meant that Western Europe leapfrogged many other areas (like the traditionally-wealthy Middle East) in economy.\n\n3) Coal resources\n\nCoal was not the only power source in the Industrial Revolution; water and wind power were as well. But coal became the main power source and Britain had lots of it. Moreover its coal resources were more accessible than those in northern China, which probably prevented the Chinese from industrialization at the same time.\n\n4) Ideal labor situation (subjugated, urban workers)\n\nThe enclosure movement kicked Brits off their land and forced them into the cities where they became poor workers. An ideal situation for bosses running factories.\n\n5) Specific scientific developments\n\nBritain did not have better technology than France, the Netherlands, some German states or China. Yet its scientists were particularly skilled at mechanical development. French scientists were just as important; perhaps even moreso! French scientist Louis Pasteur revolutionized medicine. You're probably alive because of him! Likewise French scientists discovered quinine, which allowed for defense against subtropical diseases, allowing for European conquest of Africa and Asia. But here's the thing: biological and chemical discoveries can be easily and cheaply replicated. When Pasteur published his ideas the British could quickly adopt them. But British developments in machinery could not be easily or cheaply replicated. Thus, while British scientists were not necessarily better than their French, German and Chinese peers they worked on things that generated raw industrial power, as compared to the French, whose many biologists vastly improved human health, or the Germans who did a lot with chemistry.\n\n6) Capitalism\n\nCapitalism is often misunderstood. It is not, and never has been, free use of resources absent market control. Aristocrats got the government to commission canals and other projects all the time. But capitalism was a more rational allocation of resources than privilege. It was not a giant leap forward in human organization, hence I put it at 6th and far below many other reasons why Britian succeeded. The French guild systems often produced higher-quality works than British corporate ones. But to an extent capitalism (with Dutch banking and credit systems that William and Mary of Orange brought over during the Glorious Revolution 1688) resulted in the greater ability to pool and utilize resources.\n\nWhile I recommend Pomeranz's book, there is a great one called \"The Path Not Taken\" by Jeff Horn. It is all about how we tend to view Britain as the 'model' for Industrial Revolution, when others 'failed.' He counters this and his book is about the industrial revolution in France.\n\nIf you want a free resource, and one I think is fascinating, I interviewed [Dr. Joseph Bohling for the French History Podcast](https://www.thefrenchhistorypodcast.com/energy-and-power-with-dr-joseph-bohling/), wherein we discussed the history of France and power. What's fascinating is that France lacked coal, oil and uranium, yet still managed to compete with other countries through the acquisition of foreign resources. And yes, we discuss how France \"fell in love with nuclear\" and is now the largest nuclear-powered country on Earth. \n\nHope that helps! This is something of my specialty, among others.", "created_utc": 1682465022, "distinguished": null, "id": "jhpuwz0", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/12yyduq/why_did_the_industrial_revolution_begin_in_great/jhpuwz0/", "score": 21 } ]

[ { "body": "I have heard it said by a certain US historian of the early modern era working at the university where I got my PhD (and he was making a brazen generalization to make a point clear for students) that in the early-modern period in the USA and Western Europe, a woman either had a maid or she was one. In the generation before WWII, the generation before middle-class women entered the workforce, it was far more common in the USA (and not only the USA) for even middle-class women to have the assistance of at least one, or several, in-home domestic workers, who would do a good chunk of the childcare, cleaning, laundry, etc.\n\nI should mention that here \"middle-class\" might better be seen as \"those who get their jobs through education,\" where upper-class typically have wealth through inheritance or robber-baron capitalism and the lower-class are those who serve the middle and upper classes. If you look through English-language literature of the 19th century, it can be shocking just how impoverished the middle-class can be before they consider giving up their servant(s.).\n\nIn poorer households, there might still be servants of a kind: namely, the young women of the extended family who were boarded out to work as maids, nannies, and the like. Naturally, a lot of the hired help would also be Black Americans or foreign born.\n\nWhen I grew up in the 1980s, I think the last vestiges of this lifestyle were finally being exorcised from the zeitgeist with the help of the comedic roles in *Who's the Boss?*, *Mr. Belvedere, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air* and *Silver Spoons* (that's just off the top of my head; it's kind of weird how commonly the live-in servant showed up in 1980s-1990s sitcoms). And I would argue (maybe unsuccessfully) that this is a different flavor from the British examples like *Upstairs, Downstairs* and more recently the monumental shadow cast by *Downton Abbey*. I also grew up reading the adventures of *Amelia Bedelia* whose main gimmick is taking every idiomatic expression as though it were the literal truth... which if we were being uncharitable might be a cultural memory of the simple country girl boarded out to the middle-class family in town, the farmer's fourth daughter sent to clean house for the lawyer living on main street.\n\nIn terms of suggested reading, there's *The Maid Narratives: Black Domestics and White Families in the Jim Crow South,* a phenomenal book using interviews with both black women and the white folk they served. I never read it, but *Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens* is supposed to be fantastic. I should have checked the FAQ before writing up my answer, but the question made me think of all the TV shows I watched as a kid -- and the fact that that brand of societal reflection has not continued. Did the vacuum and the dishwasher end the commonplace maid, or did we become satisfied with the vacuum and the dishwasher because the commonplace maid had gone off to get her own education and job?", "created_utc": 1680613664, "distinguished": null, "id": "jeww640", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/12alutp/people_today_complain_that_a_40hour_work_week/jeww640/", "score": 50 }, { "body": "In short, they didn’t.\n\nThe people who were working 60-90 hours per week weren’t the same people expected to do housework. \n\nThe idea of “separate spheres” became the leading societal doctrine during the Industrial Revolution. Separate spheres meaning there is a hard line between the domestic sphere and the public sphere. Gender roles evolved to split along those lines and women were expected to complete all domestic tasks (cooking, cleaning, raising children,being a pious spiritual guide for the family), while men were expected to handle everything outside of the home (an industrial job, protection/safety). \nThe ideal however wasn’t evenly applied equally along racial lines. \n\nThis was in contrast to the previous agrarian society that worked at home and shared labor. \n\nFor single unmarried women they could make money taking on boarders for whom they did cooking and laundry, boarders were unmarried men. Those without property could work as live-in domestics. Married women who could afford it hired live-in domestic help. (This is heavily simplified and doesn’t take into account racial and heritage based discrimination). \n\nFor an idea of what work women were expected to do I suggest _Never Done: a history of American Housework_ by Susan Strasser. Early during the Industrial Revolution, women were expected to fetch 20lbs of water from outdoor hydrants or wells, build a fire from wood in their hearth, prep whole animals and grind whole grains to cook over an open flame, sew and mend clothes, among other arduous and dangerous tasks. The factories eventually began inventing machines for the domestic sphere but housework didn’t decrease, until the machines became less expensive than a servant. \n\nSome housework did become commercialized during this period like large scale bakeries, clothing factories, centralized fuel sources like gas and electric lines. Factories grew larger and some women left housework for jobs, the upper class complained “nobody wants to work anymore” and the everyone’s housework still wasn’t done. \n\nFor more on separate spheres there’s _ Woman, Culture, and Society_ by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere", "created_utc": 1680712885, "distinguished": null, "id": "jf2k5qa", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/12alutp/people_today_complain_that_a_40hour_work_week/jf2k5qa/", "score": 15 } ]

[ { "body": "Well, they were.\n\nWhile you wait for new answers, look at this one from /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/oauo7h/in_the_context_of_slavery_in_the_usa_a_lot_of/h3kac2a/\n\nand this one from /u/hotsouthernhistorian\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/w59y6y/as_industrialization_picked_up_why_didnt_factory/", "created_utc": 1681114787, "distinguished": null, "id": "jfo8gdx", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/12h8iln/why_were_slaves_not_used_in_factories_in_the/jfo8gdx/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "Any AI relies on the database it is fed. If the data is full of inaccuracies, then its output will be similarly unreliable. \n\nWith that established, let's look to the real meat of your question: every time there's a technological development that spreads into the lives of the majority of a population, is there undue panic? Is there DUE panic? Is there panic at all? \n\nLong story short, every time something big changes you can find at least one person complaining about it, but that's not much of a historical proof. The key is to look at who is complaining and what efforts were taken to slow the progress of the tech in question. If none were taken, one might be tempted to imagine that meant there were no real objectors, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. \n\nIronically, you ask about panicky *literature* when literature itself was once the main target of this very panic. Upon the spreading of movable type, the variety of books printed increased greatly. The idea of reading for pleasure as we think of it today would be quite alien to them. The one book in a European household - your Bible - would likely be in a language you couldn't even speak, much less read. Indeed, in 1455 when the Gutenberg Bible was printed, it was in the Latin Vulgate. Reading one's Bible in your own language would be a much larger dilemma to come later, when Martin Luther printed Bibles in German in 1522; a mere four years later the first English translation would see publication. *see also: the entire history of Protestantism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, the Anglican church, etc.*\n\nSo for a culture whose main interaction with books is solely with one book that most don't actually read themselves, the advent of publishing was a large technological step forward. What we see is an explosion of the types of knowledge recorded and disseminated; printing wasn't JUST Bibles, it was everything. And that \"everything\" was a part of the objection. \n\n“Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them as to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are. [...] Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature… but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself—” John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)\n\nPlato says in his *Phaedrus* (though not about the printing press/movable type, but writing in general) : “This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.”\n\nThere were some scholars who thought the printing press itself heralded disaster. These articles keep citing Gesner, though you will find many references of his exact words to be behind paywalls ( https://www.jstor.org/stable/3654293 ).\n\nMore recently, there have still been concerns over \"pleasure reading\" being a detriment instead of an edification. For those who recall, there's a line in The Music Man about \"a dime novel hidden in the corn crib\", and that's a reference to the pulp fiction of the 19th and early 20th century. (Pulp fiction in this case had NOTHING to do with the 1980s film; it was a reference to the cheap wood pulp paper used to make the paperback books.) \n\nIn his 1856 \"Madame Bovary,\" Flaubert derides the title character for having \"made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.\" Reading is the cause of her idleness and her unorthodox thinking - and to be clear, this is a bad thing. Austen's works represent some of the same fears about upper class ladies having too many ideas in their heads from writing ( https://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol20no1/benedict.html ). \n\nYou'll see even quite modern versions of this as a concern. See also \"Is Google Making You Stoopid?\" which is, to summarize, essentially the same fear it's always been: having information readily available means you don't have to remember anything anymore! But since Plato we've still not ever actually progressed from \"if you don't have it memorized and have to look it up, you've failed\". Fortunately, most of those people were wrong. Look at the education the average anglophone high school graduate has, and ask again if there's any doubt that widespread literacy has made people better able to learn. \n\n\nFurther reading:\n\nhttps://www.ancientpages.com/2021/09/18/why-did-first-printed-books-scare-ancient-scholars-in-europe/\n\nhttps://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept10/2010/10/30/printing-press-and-its-impact-on-literacy/\n\nhttps://www.tcseagles.org/faculty/nchilds/editoruploads/files/Timeline_of_Bible_Translation_History.pdf\n\nhttps://archive.nytimes.com/op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/when-novels-were-bad-for-you/\n\nBolter, J.D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. \n\nEisenstein, E. L. (1997). The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. \n\nEisenstein, E.L. (1993). The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.\n\nFebvre, L & Martin, H. (1997). The Coming of the Book. London: Verso. \n\n**Jones, B. (2007). Manuscripts, Books, and Maps: The Printing Press and a Changing World. Retrieved from http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Books/printech.html**\n\nMcLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.\n\nOng, W. J. (1982). Orality and Literacy: Technologizing of the Word. New York: Routledge.\n\nhttps://slate.com/culture/2014/09/reading-insecurity-the-crippling-fear-that-the-digital-age-has-left-you-unable-to-read-deeply-and-thoughtfully.html \n\nhttps://www.gutenberg.org/files/2413/2413-h/2413-h.htm\n\n\n\nA personal anecdote: I remember being a child in the 90s and how proud everyone was to not know stuff, and how uncool it was to be curious about anything. But now, if they're ignorant, they just look it up online, and therefore the attitude toward knowledge and learning has undergone a large atmospheric shift. Curiosity is king again. This is a good thing, regardless of how bad a dataset the entire internet is to feed a chat AI (and let's be clear, it's REAL bad).", "created_utc": 1676141337, "distinguished": null, "id": "j8587jf", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/10zmgsv/there_has_been_a_lot_of_excitement_and_dystopian/j8587jf/", "score": 45 } ]

[ { "body": "Charcoal is a renewable resource, but it's renewed fairly slowly - trees take time to grow.\n\nIn the mid-18th century, coal was being extracted from the Northumberland Coalfield at a rate of about 2 million tons per year. To replace this with charcoal would require the use of about 10 million tons of wood per year. Forest will typically yield about 100 tons of wood per acre, so this 2 million tons of coal per year is the equivalent of 100,000 acres of forest.\n\nThe total land area of England is about 60 million acres, and if it was all forest, 100,000 acres per year for charcoal production would have easily been sustainable. However, in the mid-18th century, there was less than 10 million acres of forest. This was at about the limit of sustainability if charcoal production to replace that 2 million tons of coal per year was the *only* use of England's forests. However, timber was needed for construction, shipbuilding, domestic cooking and heating fuel (either as firewood or charcoal) and in ironmaking (charcoal).\n\nIn the mid-19th century, there was only about 2 million acres of forest remaining. Industrial coal consumption was about 40 million tons per year (by this time, coke had replaced charcoal in ironmaking, due to deforestation). Replacing this with charcoal would have consumed *all* of England's remaining forest in a single year. *Domestic* coal consumption had risen to about 20 million tons per year (coal had replaced much earlier use of firewood and charcoal, due to deforestation), and would have within a couple of years depleted all English forest if firewood or charcoal was used instead.\n\nIn principle, it was possible to power the Industrial Revolution with charcoal, but to do so sustainably would have resulted in a very small Industrial Revolution due to the limited forest available. To do so unsustainably would have rapidly depleted the available forest, and brought an end to large-scale industry. Coal was necessary, not due to superiority as a fuel, but due to far greater availability.", "created_utc": 1681262842, "distinguished": null, "id": "jfwocct", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/12ipdd0/why_was_charcoal_not_enough_to_fuel_the/jfwocct/", "score": 13 } ]

[ { "body": "\nOkay, finally getting around to this! Exactly why the industrial revolution happened first in England (and whether it happened only in England) is obviously an extremely complex question. There’s no limit to the number of explanations scholars have given, and to this day there is not a clear historical consensus on why it happened. So I can’t give you a definite answer, but I can explain (1) what Hobsbawm’s position is and where he is coming from, (2) how other historians have answered this question and how Hobsbawm relates to them, and (3) what sorts of issues scholars have gravitated towards in the sixty-plus years since Hobsbawm was writing.\n\n**Defining the Industrial Revolution**\n\nSo for starters: how have historians defined the “industrial revolution?” It’s worth distinguishing between the first industrial revolution, which was primarily an English phenomenon affecting in light industries, mainly textiles, at the end of the eighteenth century; and the second industrial revolution, which affected “heavier” industries like steel, chemicals, metallurgy, etc. from roughly the 1840s to the 1870s. Different historians will place a different amount of emphasis on each phase. The first phase resulted in one industry, the British textile industry, that was more productive per labor hour than virtually every industry that came before it. But the world-historical implications of it are not as immediately evident: it was largely confined to England, and not even all of England: it revolutionized the urbanized areas of Northern England and the area around London, but much of England, to say nothing of other countries, was left largely unaffected. It doesn’t make sense to speak of a truly “industrial” society until the second industrial revolution, by which time almost all of Northwestern and Central Europe was pulled into an urban system and most economic growth was driven by capital intensive industries. So really, where you come down on that question depends on whether you care more about the emergence of the first “industrial” sector (British textiles) or the society-wide transformations wrought by the second industrial revolution. Hobsbawm’s interpretation of events certainly favors the former, but his position is by no means shared by all historians. \n\nMost historians would agree that the core of the industrial revolution (and the capitalist mode of production, for that matter) was what Kenneth Pomeranz described as “indefinitely sustained per-capita growth.” I’ll come back to Pomeranz later, but for now, it’s worth emphasizing that this is a concept mostly meant to contrast with the constraints that Thomas Malthus identified as inhibiting endless economic growth: population growth generally outpaced the ability for societies to grow food, which means that any increase in wealth/urbanization would be accompanied by a corresponding decrease in food production, which would trigger a contraction in population. And broadly speaking, this held true for pre-modern societies. Pre-modern societies might have accumulated huge amounts of wealth, but the wealthy in those society weren’t capitalists since they never invested it back into the process of production like an English factory owner would have. This means they never broke free of the Malthusian trap, meaning that they were never able to increase per-capita wealth and their total population at the same time. Beginning around 1800, England accomplished exactly that.\n\nI should note that even this point is contested. Historians have contested the single-minded focus on this British story—see for example, David Cannadine, who in 1984 critiqued the “canonization” of the British industrial revolution as largely an invention of triumphalist British historians from 1880 to 1920, and instead emphasizes longer-running changes in the development of capitalism occurring across the early modern era. But I digress. \n\nHobsbawm is writing from a British Marxist tradition that usually identifies the first industrial revolution, meaning events happening in England, as the pivotal moment in the rise of global capitalism. For a long time, this position adhered to the conventional view on industrialization. Most mainstream historians (read: non-Marxist) emphasized the technological transformations occurring roughly from 1780 to 1800, like Watt’s steam engine (1784) as bringing productivity increases that enabled the “indefinitely sustained per-capita growth” that Pomeranz talks about. This is the conventional view, so I could give you any number of books that expound some variation on this perspective. But for now, it’s important to emphasize that these scholars thought that something about England or Enlightenment Europe meant that it was uniquely situated to technological innovation. See for example, Joel Mokyr, who thought that Britain was characterized by a dynamic “market for ideas” and a “republic of letters” that made those in power relatively affinitive towards new technological innovations, as compared to somewhere like China. Mokyr went as far as to say that the idea of “progress” itself was largely a European invention. I’d also toss Weber’s idea of the “protestant work ethic” into this bucket. It remains extremely influential, although Weber was talking about Northern Europe generally rather than England. \n\n**Hobsbawm’s View**\n\nAlthough this sounds a little bit like Hobsbawm’s argument, as you might have gathered Hobsbawm is skeptical of the idea that technological innovation itself was the deciding factor: plenty of other parts of Europe, to say nothing of Asia, had comparable rates of technological innovation during this time. Instead, Hobsbawm and other British Marxist historians like Maurice Dobb or Robert Brenner emphasized the unique class structure of English society coming out of the middle ages. They understand the English Civil War of the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution as “bourgeois” revolutions which cemented a state apparatus that was amenable to the interests of merchants and manufacturers, as opposed to say, France, which was dominated by landowning interests until the French Revolution. It was not so much that the English government was more pro-business than others, but more that England had a stronger class of petty manufacturers and merchants than practically anywhere else on the eve of the industrial revolution. This is an argument about class, not the government. For these Marxists, neither landowners and nor peasants were able to engage in productive growth the way industrial capitalists did: peasants had most of their needs met through subsistence farms rather than markets, so there was little incentive for them to buy more things and thus provided little basis for productive industries; and landowners (especially in a feudal system) extracted surplus value largely through coercion, meaning that they extracted more value through “squeezing” the peasantry by forcing them to work for longer or taxing them more, rather than investing in productivity-improving investments. \n\nHobsbawm emphasizes that England did not have peasants the way France, Poland, or China did. Instead, a legacy of the enclosure movement meant that most English farmers were actually free tenants, meaning they had the ability to work where they wanted without fear of political retribution. That’s why he emphasizes at the beginning of the paragraph you cite that Britain “hardly had any peasantry to speak of.” This removed a crucial barrier to industrial growth by making it possible to centralize a lot of labor in one place. The result was what Marx identified as a “three-tiered” relation between landholders, industrialists, and wage-earning workers which “necessitated” an investment in productivity-enhancing investments. \n\nI’m mostly citing Brenner here, but I think he would agree with Hobsbawm: England, according to these historians, had freer markets for land and labor than anywhere else, enabling the rise of truly productive growth based on “the integration of related work activities within a unit of production,” i.e. factories with a clear division of labor. In the countryside, landowners took control over larger blocks of land and were actively invested in “improving” them to make them more productive, meaning that they began to look like agrarian capitalists rather than rent-seeking landlords. This freed up laborers who were able to move to cities and earn a wage; in turn, improvement in the countryside meant that urban manufacturers found a rural market willing to buy their finished goods and who they could invest their excess capital into. The context of textiles were important: European demand stimulated a lot of English textile production, but the relative prosperity and market-dependence of the English countryside was more important because it ensured a stable outlet for manufactured good even if European demand eventually declined (which it did). Here you can see how England, in Brenner/Hobsbawm’s opinion, began to develop an internal basis for Pomeranz’s “indefinitely sustained per-capita growth.” Again, these historians are making an argument about class-structure. It was the relatively strength and prosperity of tenant farmers and the strength of wage labor that made truly productive capitalist economic activity possible.", "created_utc": 1676684962, "distinguished": null, "id": "j8zhoav", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/114r7up/hobsbawn_asserts_that_the_industrial_revolution/j8zhoav/", "score": 16 }, { "body": "I’m familiar with the historiography of this field, but unfamiliar with that specific argument Hobsbawm is making. Are you getting this from _Age of Revolutions_ or somewhere else? If you give me a specific citation so I can see who he’s citing I can give you a full answer when I get home.", "created_utc": 1676654563, "distinguished": null, "id": "j8xghnd", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/114r7up/hobsbawn_asserts_that_the_industrial_revolution/j8xghnd/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "There's a reason you see so many people with the first and last name of \"Taylor\". Clothing as a resource is kind of the worst of both worlds. It's highly specific and wears out at a fantastic rate and that necessitates armies of skinners and weavers to manufacture the materials and leatherworkers and tailors to maintain them, repair them, adjust them, and ultimately produce them.\n\nHistorically one of the simplest ways to clothe yourself was draping. This is when you basically have a square of fabric and, uh, wear it. It is simple in construction, highly customizable, and size is irrelevant, so it can be swapped or even passed down. Togas, kilts, skirts, robes, cloaks, all pretty good examples of drapery and a good example of how some famous clothing pieces started in antiquity but passed down to present day.\n\nBut notice where drapery comes from. Greece, Rome, India, Arabia, many places that were warm and could support a large population for the industry required to make these large squares of fabric. So what if you live in a cold place, or a place without a population to support a clothing industry that can weave big blocks of cloth? Well, you use leather. And wool. And fur. And these things aren't great for draping. They usually come in small pieces that need to be fit together. And see that's where pants come in. The materials are harder to find, but are tougher, and depending on the stitching might actually be easier to make. You can shape them to the leg, and line them with warmer materials. If your tribe or village has a tailor, who can make adjustments with those materials, why you might even be able to adjust a pair of pants over the course of your incredibly tough and short life.\n\nAnd these two tracks essentially explain the economics of clothing. You have some pieces which are of simple construction but made of light materials that must be manufactured (not to mention farmed, planted, harvested, irrigated, etc. for plant materials), and pieces that are made of tougher pieces that can be adjusted. So generally as clothing develops it takes from the two extremes. So like, medieval trousers for example are made with reuse in mind. They're at most just two blocks of cloth, baggy, meant to be bunched around the legs and waist, cheap to produce but also recyclable. So what do you wear with it? A belt, a piece of tough leather and metal that will theoretically last your whole life despite its costs. If you're a teen and you get your older brother's trousers you can have the tailor roll up the ankles and you can wear a belt. Dresses and skirts are the same.\n\nAnd this explains a lot of cultural stuff. The Greeks and Romans saw pants as barbaric because they had the industrial capacity for drapery and were commenting on the very conditions that necessitated the making and wearing of pants. Meanwhile you don't see many pioneers with very fancy clothing because any drapery had to be imported while the land they lived on was teeming with animals that could provide leather, wool, and fur. Tailors, skinners and leatherworkers could take these materials and constantly readjust, reuse or recycle them because the materials are tougher. And as the world became more global these materials and techniques to construct them combine. Rich people can afford to have a hand-stitched jacket. Or a complex dress cut from multiple pieces of cloth.\n\nThe economics of it is strategically combining the tougher but rarer materials with the cheaper and easier to adjust materials. Add someone whose job it is to make those adjustments and repairs and you have a system where you can push these materials incredibly far, which was the overall necessity for the clothing industry until the industrial revolution.", "created_utc": 1673471365, "distinguished": null, "id": "j3y0u2c", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/109ahn7/how_were_children_kept_in_clothes_that_fit/j3y0u2c/", "score": 17 } ]

[ { "body": "It certainly the case that protective gear would be worn for some occupations. You can see foundry workers and glass workers in Diderot's Encyclopedia wearing various kinds of large leather hats, aprons and cloaks to keep the intense radiant heat of a furnace or crucible of molten brass from burning them. But the concept of something called \"safety\" is relatively recent. Workers would be tasked with acting sensibly, paying attention, being careful, being trained to know what they're doing. A mason who dropped a brick off a scaffold and brained the man mixing mortar on the ground below could be at fault, and blamed. Or, there could be a debate about whether the man mixing mortar was at fault for setting up right below the scaffold. Or, the boss could be at fault for not telling the mixer to shift away from under the scaffold. Or, ( perhaps rarely) if the brick just happened to shift off the scaffold and brain a man walking by, it could be seen as an act of God, and the brick itself could become a *deodand*, forfeited to the Church because it caused a person's death ( and from there, possibly go to the local aristocrat who had acquired the right to deodands). \n\n But the whole idea of \"jobsite safety\" really does come in with the Industrial Revolution, when accidents could become much more severe. For example, in 1841 there was a major railway accident in England, at Sonning Cutting, in which a train was wrecked after running into a pile of dirt from the collapsed sides of a deep cut. Nine passengers were killed, seventeen seriously damaged. No fault was laid to the railway, but there was an attempt to hold the railway *engine* responsible for the accident and declare it and the rest of the train a deodand ( the local lord may have wanted to use the sale of these to benefit the victims). Factory owners soon learned that it actually was far more profitable to, say, cover the exposed gearing on the punch press than have to train a new worker to replace yet another one who'd been dragged into the gears and killed. Or, bad ventilation in a tightly-packed spinning mill might result in an outbreak of a respiratory disease, and force the usually-reluctant government to step in and demand better ventilation, so as not to put at risk the health of the whole community. \n\n And this early concept of safety entirely avoided the question of liability, also: a miner injured in a mine or a seaman losing a leg on a ship might, if they were lucky, get the services of a doctor who'd be paid by the owner of the mine or the ship, but the owners would not expect to have to pay for an injury.", "created_utc": 1671632184, "distinguished": null, "id": "j13wr5g", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/zr3qvr/what_did_safety_equipment_look_like_for/j13wr5g/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "I read all the rules before posting and I hope this Is an allowed kind of post. I'm trying to do some logical worldbuilding and I need to answer this question. Importantly, I already know that limestone Is important as a building material, so I'm looking for a 'special' or unnatural (even magical) property of limestone that would make it so. Consider that this limestone would be found only in one location in the whole world. Thanks in advance to everyone :)", "created_utc": 1671467037, "distinguished": null, "id": "j0uujmd", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/zpvsre/what_would_make_limestone_incredibly_valuable_for/j0uujmd/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "Here is my answer to a similar question: [Was factory work really preferred to farming ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wagd54/was_factory_work_really_preferred_to_farming/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)\n\nIn short, the element was a lack of choice, or perceived lack of choice by the population.", "created_utc": 1660245802, "distinguished": null, "id": "ijwaqhm", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/wlcj4h/with_industrial_revolutionera_cities_being_such/ijwaqhm/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I first need to address a misconception in the question itself, as you seem to be confusing 19th century and 20th century trends.\n\nWhile it is quite true in the US that farm consolidation (spurred by technology and other factors) caused a drop of number of farms (and increase in average farm size) the actual flip didn't happen until the 20th century -- you're probably thinking of a chart [like this one](http://sacred-valley-salt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/USDA-farm-size-survey.jpg). When someone left their family farm, it was more likely due to transportation -- that is, accessibility of urban areas. Also, on average, it was not farmers leaving agricultural work, but the **children** of farmers.\n\nRural numbers in the US grew during the 19th century, just at a slower rate than urban areas. The vast growth of immigrants was focused in urban areas. So an average factory worker wasn't necessarily dragged from rural to urban life.\n\nThe other issue is the term \"industrial revolution\" itself, which modern scholars have found dubious at best, an absolute misnomer at worst. There are too many overlapping events, too many starts and stops, and a good number of the associated technological innovations happened _outside_ the classical assigned time (roughly 1760 to 1843). In more popular texts (and your question) it can get shifted to the entire 19th century. For our purposes let's just avoid the term altogether and think of a.) what agricultural life was like in the late 18th century b.) what urban factory work was like generally in the early 19th century; was it unrelentingly grim? how did they survive, mentally and physically?\n\n**What was agricultural life like?**\n\nThis is precisely the sort of question that is historically elusive, as by its nature there was no set timetable, and\nhours could vary by location or cultural factors. (Chesapeake had a tradition in agricultural labor of four hours off mid-day Saturday, which did not necessarily hold farther north.) The very individualized nature of farming meant we have trouble spinning any kind of average experience. Just keep in mind that not\neveryone owned a farm; the percentage of operators in amongst free household heads in 1774 New England was at 43.9%, \nwith \"professions / commerce / crafts\" at 11%, \"no occupation but some wealth\" at 16.7%, and laborers at 28.4%. \n(The Southern colonies had rather different percentages, with only 1.9% as menial laborers, but also much more reliance on slavery.)\n\nWe can pull specific examples: Francis Pepper of Colonial Springfield,\nMassachusetts started at 4:30 tending livestock, with a half hour break for breakfast, four hours of work,\nhalf hour break, one and a half hours work, one hour dinner break, three hours work, one hour break, followed by bed.\nIf you do the math, that's 10.5 hours per day. This isn't too far from a 19th century factory in terms of hours\n(although he does get to choose his own pace and variety of work).\n\nOr, Matthew Patten a farmer who kept a diary starting in 1754, and had a farm entirely tended to by him and his family.\nHe had what you might think of as a more casual agricultural schedule, spending (on average) only 8 hours per day overall with work\n(planting seeds, moving firewood, etc.), and managing in his leisure time to go fishing, hunting, and attend community meetings.\n(These hours were spread out, though -- some months had lots of work, some had none at all.) This diary manages to continently fall just a bit before the start of factories in America, the first (in 1790) being a textile\nmanifesting factory brought over by Samuel Slater from England.\n\n**What was factory work like? Was it unrelentingly grim? How did they survive, mentally and physically?**\n\nAgain, it's difficult to consider an \"average\" factory as they varied by owner and nature. A cotton mill only hiring girls from 8 to 12 is rather different from one employing adults.\n\n>It is hoped that those citizens having a knowledge of families, having children destitute of employment, will do an act of public benefit by directing them to the institution.\n\n>-- Advertisement asking for children 8 to 12 to work in a cotton mill, Baltimore *Federal Gazette*, 1802\n\nWe have more written evidence from England than America on this; one factory owner bemoaned having trouble with\n\n>... training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton.\n\nanother noted\n\n>I found the utmost distaste on the part of the men, to any regular hours or regular habits ... The men themselves were considerably dissatisfied, because they could not go in our out as they pleased, and have what holidays they pleased and go on just as they had used to do...\n\nSome fines in early cotton mills (tending to be but not always children) included\n\n>Idleness & looking thro' window\n\n>Calling thro' window to some Soldiers\n\n>Riotous behavior in room\n\n>Riding on each other's back\n\n>Dancing in room\n\n>Going out of the room in which she works to abuse the hands in another room\n\n>Making a noise when order'not\n\n>Terrifying S. Pearson with her ugly face\n\n>Sending for ale into the room &c [etcetera]\n\nSo there were, of course, acts of defiance during work (although outright dismissal was the most common tactic used to counter) including \"celebrating St. Monday\" after a heavy night drinking the day before.\n\nEven at 70 hours a week it was possible to get in _some_ time, however small; larger sporting events like foot races and horse races could attract large crowds in the early 1800s US (in the tens of thousands) and this included the factory-working class. The moments were definitely sparse, and I'm afraid I can't quite fully answer your underlying notion of \"what would it be like inside their head?\" People still lived, they still celebrated, they still drank, they still danced, maybe just a little less than they would like. I think the important point is, for someone where the confines of a particular job were too much, where they were not someone who wanted to prove their ambitions to an employer with industriousness, they were perfectly willing to be defiant and carve out time for themselves.\n\n...\n\nApplebaum, H. A. (1996). Colonial Americans at Work. United Kingdom: University Press of America.\n\nAtack, J., M. Haines, and R. Margo (2009): “Did railroads induce or follow economic\ngrowth? Urbanization and population growth in the American Midwest, 1850-60,” NBER Working Paper, 14640.\n\nCarr, L. (1992). Emigration and the Standard of Living: The Seventeenth Century Chesapeake. The Journal of Economic History, 52(2), 271-291. doi:10.1017/S0022050700010731\n\nCunningham, H. (2016). Leisure in the Industrial Revolution: C. 1780-c. 1880. Routledge.\n\nGutman, H. (1973). Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815-1919. The American Historical Review, 78(3), 531-588. doi:10.2307/1847655\n\nHopkins, E. (1982). Working Hours and Conditions during the Industrial Revolution: A Re-Appraisal. The Economic History Review, 35(1), new series, 52-66. doi:10.2307/2595103\n\nJenkins, J., & Pigram, J. (Eds.). (2004). Encyclopedia of leisure and outdoor recreation. Routledge.\n\nLindert, P. H., & Williamson, J. G. (2016). American colonial incomes, 1650–1774. The Economic History Review, 69(1), 54-77.\n\nMokyr, J. (2018). The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.\n\nPollard, S. (1963). Factory Discipline in the Industrial Revolution. The Economic History Review, 16(2), new series, 254-271. doi:10.2307/2598639\n\nSchuman, M. (2017). History of child labor in the United States—part 1: little children working. Monthly Labor Review.\n\nSmith, B. (1988). Poverty and Economic Marginality in Eighteenth-Century America. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 132(1), 85-118. Retrieved July 23, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3143826\n\nVoth, H. (1998). Time and Work in Eighteenth-Century London. The Journal of Economic History, 58(1), 29-58. Retrieved July 23, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2566252", "created_utc": 1627080461, "distinguished": null, "id": "h6aybfx", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/opzw2r/either_travel_to_the_dirty_crowded_city_to_work/h6aybfx/", "score": 194 }, { "body": "You'd be interested in this previous post, [Is there any historian that analyzes the Industrial Revolution from a positive point of view?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/muq25u/is_there_any_historian_that_analyzes_the/) with a good answer by u/AlviseFalier, and u/teabeforetherain's suggestion of Emma Griffin's book [Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the British Industrial Revolution](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/26/libertys-dawn-emma-griffin-review) for a historian's argument that working class people had a better life in cities during this period than most people would think.", "created_utc": 1627078617, "distinguished": null, "id": "h6aump9", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/opzw2r/either_travel_to_the_dirty_crowded_city_to_work/h6aump9/", "score": 24 } ]

[ { "body": "If you are speaking of pre-industrial Britain and Europe, there's a rather fuzzy answer. You would expect a great number of people to be living by farming, and there would be children involved in that, whether it's going out and bringing in the cows at dusk, shelling peas, or tagging along with their mothers helping in gleaning a harvested field. But we could think of this as doing chores: tasks, but not day-long constant hard labor. The simple reason was that children aren't big and strong enough to do day-long hard labor yet.\n\nIt would be when they were around the age of 13 or 14, when they were getting bigger and stronger, that you would find them apprenticed or indentured, or sent off. Apprenticeships were somewhat straightforward- the boy or girl moved into the family of a craftsman or tradesman and learned the trade in exchange for their labor. That could be anything from blacksmithing to being a cloth merchant, and sometimes if it was lucrative- like, say, a merchant in foreign trade or a watchmaker- the family would have to pay significant sum along with bonding their child over. That bond meant that, for the term of the contract, the child was not free: if the blacksmith's apprentice ran off, the blacksmith could legally force him to return. There were often good reasons to do so, as in the first years the apprentice would be untrained manual labor, maybe costing more in food and lodging than he earned: but after some years of training, he was free skilled manual labor and the master of the shop would get back all he'd invested in the training. Advertisements for fugitive apprentices in the 18th c. are not uncommon in newspapers, and typically offered rewards.\n\nGirls and boys could also be sent to serve as servants in the houses of the noble and wealthy. But there would also be a practice of even ordinary farm families trading children- sending their daughter to another farm, taking in another farm's daughter. Parents today often notice that their children are much better behaved when visiting at a friend's house, and it was a stated reason then that children were sent to other families not only to learn, but to teach them to mind. And to learn to serve, as the pre-industrial world was one filled with hierarchies and service to someone higher was typical.\n\nThere would be always a significant number of children who'd lost their parents. For Britain and the British colonies, at least, there would be a local magistrate ( in England, working with local clergy who'd be doing much of the alms for the poor) who'd indenture or apprentice the orphans to local families or tradesmen, or even pack them off to the colonies as indentured servants. In these cases, the children were sometimes younger than 13: how much work they were expected to do, how they were treated, almost certainly varied- but without parents advocating for their benefit, you suspect they could get worked very hard.\n\nLaslett, Peter.( 2004) *The World We Have Lost: Further Explored* 4th edition, Routledge.", "created_utc": 1662905220, "distinguished": null, "id": "inzlsfy", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/xbicy6/before_the_industrial_revolution_what_age_did/inzlsfy/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "We get this question pretty often! Here is a recent answer by u/Iphikrates that goes into why the Romans couldn't have industrialized:\n\n[Someone on an Ask Reddit thread claimed research indicates that prior to Ptolemy VIII exiling academics from the Library of Alexandra, \"they were only about ~300 years from full on industrialization.\" Is this true? If so, where can I learn more about it?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p1oj44/someone_on_an_ask_reddit_thread_claimed_research/)\n\nand another by u/LuxArdens\n\n[“The Roman Empire was closer to an industrial revolution than you think.” I’ve read/heard something like this numerous times. Is there any truth to it?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gikcoj/comment/fqhov86/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)", "created_utc": 1658245746, "distinguished": null, "id": "igsi45s", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/w2vlzu/why_did_the_industrial_revolution_not_happen_way/igsi45s/", "score": 12 } ]

[ { "body": "I'm fairly certain this specific aspect of the story is a myth, or rather, a telephone-game style distortion.\n\nFirst, out of curiosity, I combed through various first-person testimonies ([Cornell has a good collection](https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/index.html), including audio recordings), and not a single person indicated they were simply disallowed to use the toilet. The closest was with [this recorded interview](http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/178/) with Pauline Newman.\n\n>They were the kind of employers who didn’t recognize anyone working for them as a human being. You were not allowed to sing. Operators would like to have sung, because they, too, had the same thing to do, and weren’t allowed to sing. You were not allowed to talk to each other. Oh, no! They would sneak up behind you, and if you were found talking to your next colleague you were admonished. If you’d keep on, you’d be fired. **If you went to the toilet, and you were there more than the forelady or foreman thought you should be, you were threatened to be laid off for a half a day, and sent home, and that meant, of course, no pay, you know?** You were not allowed to use the passenger elevator, only a freight elevator. And ah, you were watched every minute of the day by the foreman, forelady. Employers would sneak behind your back. And you were not allowed to have your lunch on the fire escape in the summertime. And that door was locked.\n\nNotice it's not \"you're not allowed to go\", just \"they're going to threaten to send you home with no pay if you go to the toilet too long\".\n\nI decided to check in the other direction; most Internet sources that made the claim [had this phrasing](https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-events/triangle-shirtwaist-fire):\n\n>At the Triangle factory, women had to leave the building to use the bathroom, so management began locking the steel exit doors to prevent the “interruption of work” and only the foreman had the key.\n\nThe use of \"interruption of work\" in quotes was a good flag for me -- it's distinctive enough that if the same phrase got used elsewhere, it's probably the source. Leon Smith's book *The Triangle Fire*, a 1962 volume which got many eyewitness accounts, did not mention the issue at all.\n\n(Quick aside, for those wondering about where the \"fire\" came from -- the reason the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory is famous in the first place is a 1911 disaster in a ten-story building where 146 people died in a fire mostly centered on the 9th floor; the women working there couldn't get out because of a locked door to the stairwell -- see the first account I quoted. There was also a rusty fire escape (which collapsed), and no sprinkler system. There was a famous court trial which resulted in a not guilty verdict, outraging people enough to kick off major reforms in labor. Now back to toilets.)\n\nIt does pop up instead in a \"grab bag\" book, *Disasters Illustrated: Two Hundred Years of American Misfortune*, from 1976, by Woody Gelman and Barbara Jackson. It features (more or less) one disaster each page.\n\n>To reach a toilet belonging to the Triangle Waist Company, the girls, who worked on three upper floors of the building, had to go through big steel doors at the end of the floors on which they worked, then go down many flights of stairs and out of the building. The bosses did not want the girls to use the elevators. It would be too easy, they felt, for the girls to carry stolen merchandise from the shop that way. In fact, the bosses didn't want the girls to use the toilets either. To prevent what they called \"interruption of work,\" the doors were locked at intervals when going to the bathroom seemed like an indulgence.\n\nRead carefully, the text indicates that the doors were locked \"at intervals\" when going to the bathroom seemed like \"an indulgence\". A less careful reading of the actual text gets the extreme version of \"no bathroom allowed, the entire day\".\n\nGreat! Now I just need to check the references where this came from and ... nope. This is a \"popular\" book from Harmony Books, New York.\n\nI also found myself puzzled by multiple references to \"the toilet room\" in the testimonials as women tried to escape the fire. \n\n>Then I went to the toilet room. Margaret disappeared from me and I wanted to go up the Greene Street side, but the whole door was in flames, so I went and hid myself in the toilet rooms and bent my face over the sink, and then I ran to the Washington side elevator, but there was a big crowd and I couldn't pass through there.\n\nAfter the fire, the Fire Department discovered a lock amongst the debris; as part of the trial, the prosecutor Charles Bostwick tried to prove the closed lock belonged to the door on the 9th floor which trapped the women inside. As part of his argument, he points out that the toilet doors had no locks, so the lock couldn't be from the toilet rooms.\n\nThis indicates to me that the \"toilet outside the building\" story was an invention of *Disasters Illustrated*.\n\nSo, to summarize:\n\nA popular book from 1976 did a bit of exaggeration based on the true story that going to the toilet while working at the factory was difficult, linking it to the fact the doors were locked at regular intervals. As part of that story, it claims the doors were locked at intervals specifically because of the bathroom. This later got exaggerated by a second source which claimed trips to the bathroom simply weren't allowed, but this claim doesn't appear at all before the 1976 book. The full myth of no-bathroom-for-12-hours was built off this book by someone (quite possibly a writer on the Internet) who misread the text.\n\n...\n\nFurther reading: Leon Stein's book I mentioned has had a recent re-issue with new material, and is the one I'd recommend most:\n\nStein, L. (2010). *The Triangle Fire*. United States: Cornell University Press.\n\nAlso, while I linked it once already, I highly recommend [the Cornell collection of primary sources](https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/index.html).", "created_utc": 1613705936, "distinguished": null, "id": "gnyvb8a", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lmoxmh/during_the_industrial_revolution_factories_full/gnyvb8a/", "score": 1149 } ]

[ { "body": "You mean this [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/language#wiki_waking_up_without_alarm_clocks) ?\n\nHave you checked out :\n\n* [Question](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cq027t/in_medieval_times_balcksmiths_apprentices_had_to/) : In medieval times balcksmiths' apprentices had to get up well before dawn to get the furnace hot. How was this done before alarm clocks were invented? by [u/Bodark43](https://www.reddit.com/u/Bodark43/)\n* [Question](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/csf8zz/how_did_romans_wake_up_to_be_in_time_for_work/) : How did Romans wake up to be in time for work? by [u/toldinstone](https://www.reddit.com/u/toldinstone/)\n\nSee also [History of timekeeping devices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_timekeeping_devices#Timekeeping_innovations_in_medieval_and_pre-modern_periods)", "created_utc": 1598725323, "distinguished": null, "id": "g39kyl4", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/iit75g/theres_an_faq_on_how_did_people_wake_up_before/g39kyl4/", "score": 641 } ]

[ { "body": "Not really. The 'steam machines', mainly Hero's aeolipile, were not a viable design for either implementation or further development, as discussed in [this response](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/uvmt04/earliest_possible_use_of_a_steam_engine_in_the/) by u/Bodark43, or [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/j7xvkp/why_werent_steam_engines_used_by_romans_in_the/) by u/Spacecircles and myself. \n\nAdditonally, u/restricteddata and u/half3clipse discuss what was needed to develop and working engine in [this thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f4pijr/did_the_greeks_ever_use_their_steam_engines_for/). \n\nTo complement the above entries, u/wotan_weevil provides a comparison between the aeolipile and and human work in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lykp5d/why_didnt_the_steam_engine_get_utilized_before/).\n\nAnd an entry about whether Greeks and Romans abandoned pursuit of steam engines because of the easy access to slave labour can be also found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bco6uq/with_the_invention_of_the_archimedes_cannon_and/), courtesy of u/Bodark43 and u/XenophonTheAthenian.", "created_utc": 1653834624, "distinguished": null, "id": "iafia2u", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/v07d4j/did_greeks_and_romans_really_have_prototypes_for/iafia2u/", "score": 13 }, { "body": "Adding to the excellent answers already posted, consider \n\n[Someone on an Ask Reddit thread claimed research indicates that prior to Ptolemy VIII exiling academics from the Library of Alexandra, \"they were only about ~300 years from full on industrialization.\" Is this true? If so, where can I learn more about it?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p1oj44/someone_on_an_ask_reddit_thread_claimed_research/) written by u/Iphikrates (check out their expansion on this idea [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sd0f30/in_pc_games_like_civilization_technology_is/huap5hr/) and u/rememberthatyoudie \n\t\t\n[“The Roman Empire was closer to an industrial revolution than you think.” I’ve read/heard something like this numerous times. Is there any truth to it?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gikcoj/comment/fqhov86/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) written by u/LuxArdens", "created_utc": 1653844388, "distinguished": null, "id": "iag3zco", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/v07d4j/did_greeks_and_romans_really_have_prototypes_for/iag3zco/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "For Britain at least, people were basically forced out of the countryside for want of work. \n\nThe \"agrarian problem\", as EJ Hobsbawm calls it, was solved in Britain primarily by a series of Enclosure Acts (1760-1830). \"Common\" land was systematically sold to rich landowners. This meant that ordinary people increasingly could not use land for subsistence through farming or hunting- they had to work on someone else's land for money. Unlike most of Europe the idea of peasantry had been done away with relatively early. These large tracts of land could then be farmed more efficiently, as opposed to the \"strip\" farmers, who farmed just enough for their families. More efficiency called for less workers. Agriculture became something done \"for the market\" by a small number, as opposed for oneself.(1)\n\nThis meant that there was an increasingly large surplus of labour in the countryside. This was compounded by advances in agriculture such as the threshing machine, which again meant less workers were needed. Landowners took advantage of this and squeezed their wages as much as possible. This led to increasing levels of unemployment and poverty amongst rural populations. William Cobbett, journalist and later a reformist MP, detailed the suffering of the poor in the countryside in his *Rural Rides*. The inequality between the rich and poor became ever more stark, leading Cobbett to compare the disparity of the countryside to the state of France under the Bourbons. As he put it after one such ride in 1821: *“Here dwell vanity and poverty.”*(2)\n\n\nNot all workers meekly moved to the cities though. Some took more direct action, and demanded higher wages. For example, In 1830 letters signed \"Swing\" began to threaten landowners who underpaid their workers, like this;\n>Sir,\n\n>This is to acquaint you\n\n>that if your threshing ma –\n\n>chines are not destroyed by\n\n>you directly we shall com –\n\n>mence our labours\n\n>signed on behalf of the whole\n\n>Swing\n\n(3)\n\nThese were inevitably followed by rioting, barn burning and machine breaking, in Luddite style. Without exception these sorts of uprisings were crushed by the government, and when found the perpetrators were typically either hanged or transported to Australia.(4)\n\nIn short, many did not stay in the countryside because it simply was not a viable option- to stay would be the certainty of a life of grinding poverty.\n\n(1): EJ Hobsbawm, *The Age of Revolution 1789-1848*, (p46-47). \n\n(2) William Cobbett, *Rural Rides*, p40 (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34238/34238-h/34238-h.htm) \n\n(3) *A letter to farmer Biddle* (https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/captain-swing-letter-to-mr-biddle-farmer-high-wycombe/)\n\n(4) Hobsbawm and Rude, *Captain Swing*", "created_utc": 1636219469, "distinguished": null, "id": "hjkn2pc", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/qnzapg/if_the_conditions_of_the_city_and_industrial/hjkn2pc/", "score": 48 }, { "body": "Because it was not necessarily better in the country. If you were a landowner, or even a tenant farmer with a good farm, you might indeed have a better time of it than in a factory job. But an agrarian economy is limited by the amount of arable land. If you were the third son of the farmer or tenant farmer, you would be stuck in place as a farm laborer, and would have no chance to take over the farm: and you would not be able to easily get your own in a place like England. Also, although it seems pretty grim to us now, a large city or mill town presented more possibilities to a young worker. The rural world tended to have much fewer of them... the blacksmith might only need a hammerman and the likely lad might have to wait for the smith to die before he could open his own shop, as there wouldn't be room for two smiths in the village. The great house might have a need for a maid with good sewing skills, and receiving vails from visitors might help the likely lass build up a dowry, but she really would not be able to marry that likely lad unless he could get on as a smith, and might be stuck instead in the great house, sewing sheets and patching linens\n\nWages would tend to be higher in places where those rural workers could move on. This was the problem for mill owners in New England, when Francis Cabot Lowell built his first textile mill in Massachusetts. On one hand, he knew that Americans were far less likely to tolerate the abuse and exploitation found in English mills- they could always head west and look for better- and so made promises to have a paternalist working environment that would not hire children, paid cash wages regularly, provide regulated housing, and offer education. On the other hand, he cleverly identified a large untapped labor force- young farm girls. They were even less likely than boys to inherit family farms, would be lucky to marry the owner of one, weren't going to head west on their own and could be paid lower wages than men. And, because the spinning and weaving machinery was water powered, brute strength was not needed to make it go: girls would do as well as men.\n\nBut still: for the most part, Cabot's mills and US factories in general did not offer a real career- a factory job still tended to be hard and dangerous ( 80 hour work weeks, and tuberculosis easily spread among the Lowell loom operators). It's notable that in all the many optimistic rags-to-riches novels of Horatio Alger, none of his protagonists gets ahead working in a factory. You do wonder why more workers didn't stay away from them.", "created_utc": 1636205786, "distinguished": null, "id": "hjjrqhw", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/qnzapg/if_the_conditions_of_the_city_and_industrial/hjjrqhw/", "score": 135 } ]

[ { "body": "Well during the industrial revolution virtually none of the people who were moving into cities to work in the factories came from hunter gatherer communities.\n\nLet's say you wanted to be a hunter gatherer in the UK during the Industrial Revolution. Where would you do it? Depending on terrain, hunter gatherers would need quite a lot of land in order to get enough food to feed themselves. If you owned that much land during the industrial revolution you wouldn't hunt to feed yourself, you'd rent out that land or sell it and you wouldn't have to work at all. If you didn't own enough land to support yourself through hunting and gathering then where would you hunt and gather? Private land? How would that work? You can't exactly set up a hunter gatherer camp in someone's garden or public parkland.\n\nThe people moving into the cities to work in factories were generally coming from farming communities. Whatever the downsides of working in a factory, rural farm labor was hardly a picnic either. Working at a tenant farmer (i.e. renting the land you were farming) involved hard work and very low income levels. \n\nAlso even if you wanted to be a poor tenant farmer that wasn't always an option. There were large increases in agricultural productivity in the 1700's in the UK which meant you needed fewer farmers to produce a given amount of food, this has only accelerated in modern times as the percentage of the population engaged in agricultural labor has steadily dropped. In addition there was the famous Enclosure Movement in which what had previously been common land (where local people could graze their dairy cows or what have you) were privatized which put landless farmers in a worse position. Also some of the farmers that were moving into the cities in Great Britain were coming in from Ireland. Factory work was bad but staying in Ireland and starving to death during the Great Hunger was worse.\n\nAlso think about what early factories were producing during the Industrial Revolution. The focus early on was often on cloth. A lot of this cloth was made with imported cotton but some was also made out of wool. This created a lot of demand for wool which meant that some large landowners switched their land over from tenant farming to sheep pasture. You need far fewer workers to herd sheep on a given area of land than you do to farm it. So if you turn a large portion of land from farmland into sheep pasture you're going to end up with a lot of unemployed people. If your landlord just kicked you out of your home in order to make room for sheep, where are you going to go? There really weren't any good options at the time, so one was working in a factory.\n\nYour question is more or less the same as \"why do a lot of people work in retail these days when retail joys have low pay an involved being shouted at by rude customers all day long.\" Well pretty much nobody wants to work in retail but people need to eat and when it comes to paying the bills most people need to get a job and they can't always be choosy. Modern people can't exactly quit their Wal-Mart job and go live in the woods by hunting and gathering and the same applied during the Industrial Revolution.", "created_utc": 1651375212, "distinguished": null, "id": "i6v6e7w", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/ufh7kh/why_did_workers_move_to_cities_during_the/i6v6e7w/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "Bitumen, a sticky, viscous form of petroleum, has been used to weatherproof buildings for thousands of years. [You can read more about that in my answer here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p2b3k5/how_were_buildings_constructed_at_a_time_when/h8kr8g6/)", "created_utc": 1654006389, "distinguished": null, "id": "ianxwjr", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/v1r0da/how_were_petroleum_oil_and_petroleum_products/ianxwjr/", "score": 8 } ]

[ { "body": "I'm not sure why the default position here should be to accept that somehow the little ice age had a causal effect on industrialisation.\n\nFor one thing, there is no obvious underlying theory; how does a variable-but-persistent cooling in the centuries preceding the industrial revolution lead to technological change? One might theorise from things like the demand for heating fuels and the exhaustion of wood supplies, or some kind of relative productivity effect with agriculture. But this would be a very vague set of speculations, not a solid theory of the industrial revolution.\n\nFor another, the chronology is not a very close fit. The little ice age (presuming its existence) lasted for centuries, beginning around 1400. The classic dates of the industrial revolution are over three hundred years later, right at the end of the LIA. Why would a downturn in the weather take over three centuries to trigger an industrial revolution? If it is only the rough chronological concurrence of the two events, why focus on those two events, and not the innumerable other factors?\n\nThere is a general literature on the \"general crisis of the seventeenth century,\" a supposed synchronisation of upheaval across Eurasia, and there is a book by Geoffrey Parker, *Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century*, that posits that the LIA played a causal role in this process. (I have not read the book, though I did see Jan de Vries discuss it in substantial detail, as in his review here.) Some of these events, perhaps the ones centred around the North Atlantic (the English Civil War(s), the Dutch Revolt, The Thirty Years' War, the Glorious Revolution, etc...) might have had some kind of effect on the industrial revolution. Certainly there are theories that suggest some of these events had an effect on the IR, like North and Weingast's famous paper on the fiscal effects of the Glorious Revolution. But this is a theory requiring at least two dominoes, where climate change leads to political upheaval, and that political upheaval leads to the industrial revolution.\n\nThere has been some debate about to what extent the LIA is real, or relevant. Cormac O Grada and Morgan Kelly rather boldly suggested that the whole notion of the LIA was nothing more than a statistical artefact of smoothing (the Slutsky effect, where smoothed random numbers create illusory \"cycles\" out of white noise). They had a back-and-forth with Sam White and with Büntgen and Hellmann in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. A more recent econometric analysis by Damette et al. using Markov switching methods seems to suggest that there is a discernible cooling pattern above and beyond the Slutsky effect illusions suggested by O Grada and Kelly.\n\nI'm not sure I quite grasp whose views are correct; I understand the basics of how the temperature proxy data sets are constructed, and the idea of a Slutsky pattern. The Maunder Minimum is clearly a real solar phenomenon, though it does not start the (assumed) LIA. And the North Atlantic Oscillation pattern clearly can cause climactic variation. But the econometrics of the more detailed analyses rapidly go above my pay grade. For whatever it's worth, I currently believe this is a real phenomenon, but that the effect is subtle and extremely variable by year and region, and therefore almost impossible to use for causal attribution. Perhaps this might work for things like \"cold weather reduced crop yields,\" but \"cold weather caused the industrial revolution\" seems well beyond our ability to discern.", "created_utc": 1651253890, "distinguished": null, "id": "i6owmql", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/uefw3w/why_did_the_great_divergenceindustrial_revolution/i6owmql/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "**Follow-up question:** How did time reporting evolve with the advent of the factory job? Was wage theft (of both employees and employers) just a normalized thing?", "created_utc": 1599564226, "distinguished": null, "id": "g4fjhqw", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/io9hit/how_did_workers_during_the_industrial_revolution/g4fjhqw/", "score": 56 } ]

[ { "body": "Kinda. (I'm assuming you're asking about American education history - I'll defer to others regarding other countries' histories.) It's more accurate to say that vocational training was brought in to supplement American public education than it say it was re-centered. \n\nSince the rise of the American high school in the mid to late 1800s, students have experienced a comprehensive liberal arts curriculum organized around the idea young people benefit from engaging in a number of topics with adults who are experts in those topics. (It's interesting to note that Greek and Latin were still required courses at most high schools until World War I or later. Not a lot of vocational application for dead languages.) And it's worth stressing how resilient that model is. The schedule of a high schooler in 1922 would look fairly similar to a high schooler in 2022 - English, Math, Science, History, PE, Music, Art, Foreign Language, and likely an elective or two.\n\nThat notion of an \"elective\" is where vocational education fits into public schools. There have been instances throughout American history where individual business owners worked with individual schools or school districts to incorporate specific vocational courses into a high school but that was in the late 1800s, early 1900s around the time of the founding of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education and the Smith-Hughes Act. One early example is the Crane Technical High School in Chicago which offered courses on the practical side of engineering. One of the challenges they often encountered, though, was the skills needs for working in a particular business were hard to translate to a high school setting - or to staff - and in many instances, it wasn't possible for a young person to meet emerging high school graduation criteria AND take specialized vocational education courses. So, the engineering courses at Crane weren't about preparing young people to be engineers, it was about giving them a leg up on the engineering courses they would take at college on their way to becoming engineers. \n\nSmith-Hughes, passed in 1917, was designed to support the expansion of vocational education - including agricultural education and home economics - and to be sure, there were business advocates of the bill who likely saw it as a way to pass off the cost of training employees but it's hard to say that was its primary goal. Again, specific vocational training programs were hard to implement in the high school setting so the programs that emerged from the implementation of the bill were typically more general and were often taught at schools established explicitly for vocational education training, including those who welcomed adult learners. In addition, unlike schools in Germany, for example, American schools don't formally track (there's long been informal tracking experienced by children with disabilities, children of color, and those adults felt weren't well-suited to academic studies.) In 1948, New York State established a series of vocational schools across the state where students could receive high school course credit in exchange for taking vocational courses but the programs were fairly idiosyncratic and it wasn't until the 1970s or so that it became common for workplaces to accept a vocational high school diploma as a substitute for a trade college diploma. (That said, no national education system means the idiosyncratic nature of vocational education, especially since World War II cannot be overstressed. Odds are good someone will read this and say, \"well, my grandfather got his trade diploma and then went to work at Factory X with no problem\" and there would be no reason to doubt them. It's just hard to say that such a structure was widespread. A high school diploma didn't become necessary for employment until well after World War II.)\n\nMost high school students experienced vocational training as an elective course in bookkeeping, homemaking, agricultural sciences, or early versions of what would later become shop class. In addition, they would also likely encounter the newly created position of \"guidance counselor\" who was positioned to help young people think about their life after high school. However, such support and electives weren't equally distributed. The children most likely to experience vocational education - meaning rather than academics, their days were spent being taught a specific trade - were Indigenous children sent to Indian Boarding Schools. One of the ways to try and disconnect the children from their families and communities was to teach them a skill that would make them \"useful\" in white society. More [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/np9lez/who_is_this_child_an_indigenous_history_of_the/) on the schools.", "created_utc": 1652272096, "distinguished": null, "id": "i86cco9", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/un29id/i_have_heard_the_premise_in_the_past_of_the/i86cco9/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "Guns and gunpowder made two major contributions to the Industrial Revolution:\n\n1. Gun and cannon manufacture was an important driver of precision manufacturing and the use of interchangeable parts. John Wilkinson's 1774 method for precise boring of iron cannons later allowed precise boring of cylinders for Watt's steam engines.\n\n2. In the late 17th century, Christiaan Huygens attempted to build an internal combustion engine, using gunpowder as the fuel. It didn't work, due to combustion gasses escaping between the piston and cylinder (Wilkinson's borer might have helped), difficulty in getting uniform combustion, and solid residue remaining in the cylinder. Denis Papin was his main assistant in this work, and did a lot of the building. Later, Papin built a steam engine, which was an important intermediary between Thomas Savery's steam pump and Newcomen's steam engine. (He also invented a pressure cooker.)\n\nThus, guns and gunpowder accelerated the development of precision manufacture and the steam engine. However, the connection between gunpowder and the steam engine is peripheral, rather than central, and it seems that the steam engine could have, and probably would have, been invented anyway. Industrial machinery had already been introduced in the textile industry (using water power), and steam power (e.g., Savery's steam pump) was being used in the mining industry before the steam engine. To go from this state of affairs to steam power in factories took two major steps: the use of steam engines (such as the Newcomen engine) in mines, and Watt's improved engine which made steam engines efficient enough for factories. Neither of these steps required guns or gunpowder, even though historically these things contributed to them.\n\nCertainly, guns and gunpowder were not enough to bring about a rapid industrial revolution. In both China and Japan, there was an increase in mining, iron-making, and manufacturing in the Early Modern period, but in neither case resulted in an industrial revolution.", "created_utc": 1649635623, "distinguished": null, "id": "i48b7hx", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/tzzbva/would_the_industrial_revolution_had_been_possible/i48b7hx/", "score": 9 } ]

[ { "body": "To some extent, you're answering your own question, but I think that your lack of familiarity with historic fashion is leading you down the wrong path in some respects - namely, the idea that braies (which were underwear) turned into breeches and hose turned into stockings. This past question, [How did medieval pants work?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/nyowq0/how_did_medieval_pants_work/) has answers by myself and /u/somecrazynerd that explain how medieval long hose was eventually split into upper and nether hose, the upper hose becoming breeches and the nether hose stockings.\n\nFollowing that, I also have an answer to [I'm a young, well-to-do Englishman of fashion in the 1810s. During which years of the decade am I most likely to wear knee breeches as opposed to long pants, and vice-versa?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8kdk46/im_a_young_welltodo_englishman_of_fashion_in_the/dz77b8f/) Here I discuss the gradual phasing out of formal breeches in the 1810s, which answers the second half of the question: elongated breeches - pantaloons - became a staple of informal dress in the early nineteenth century and were eventually considered formal enough to be worn on all occasions.\n\n(You also ask about going from trousers to pants, but these two words are synonyms, so I'm not entirely sure what is being referred to.)\n\n>This suggests that the transition from hosen/braies to socks/trousers, whereby braies elongated into breeches and thereupon into trousers, and hosen shortened into socks, took place at around the same time as when the knitting machine was invented.\n\nI am not quite sure why you are coming to this conclusion. As noted in the previous answer, the split actually preceded the invention of the knitting frame by more than a century. The knitting frame's invention itself reflected the fact that women were already *hand*-knitting stockings as a cottage industry (the patent was denied by Queen Elizabeth so as not to deprive them of their jobs), but at the same time, stockings made of cut and pieced wool, linen, and silk were also being worn. By cutting pieces on the bias of the fabric, they were able to be reasonably stretchy and conform to the shape of the leg.\n\n>We know that in the napoleonic times the revolution was spearheaded by sans-culottes, or \"without breeches.\" Culottes refers to the fancy white knee length breeches that we are familiar with from photos of 18th century soldiers like George Washington or redcoats. Below the knee were knee high socks or boots. At the same time the sans culottes disdained this aristocratic style and began to wear ankle length trousers instead.\n\n*Culotte* is simply the French word for \"breeches\", which nearly all men except the poorest wore, in many colors and materials depending on economic status, as you can see in the 1776 [*Les Costumes François*](https://www.mimicofmodes.com/search/label/Costumes%20Francois). They were not inherently fancy or white. The *sans-culottes* were trying to represent their alliance with the poorest of their society by wearing pantaloons, although said pantaloons were typically better made than what the agricultural laborers, sailors, and beggars were wearing; period art shows them being fitted much like breeches.\n\n> I am curious as to what did dark age germans (who wore wool trousers) wear in deep winter, and also what did industrial europeans (who, thousands of years later, also wore wool trousers) wear in deep winter. For example, did russians in 1812 put on multiple trousers? If so, did each pair have its own belt? Did they make quilted trousers?\n\nI would suggest asking these as a separate question, or rather as two separate questions - one on medieval winter clothing and one on Russians in the Napoleonic Wars - because they are getting lost in this post, and the people who can answer them are likely going to miss them due to the title.", "created_utc": 1645019251, "distinguished": null, "id": "hx66zxh", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/stqobs/can_someone_elucidate_the_shift_from_hosen_to/hx66zxh/", "score": 13 } ]

[ { "body": "News of such things definitely made it to the colonies. George Washington must have heard of the greater English passion for canal building, when he began to survey the Potomac River with a view to making it navigable, before the War. He and other investors would form the Potowmack Company to do just that, in 1785. But instead of digging a canal, they decided instead to use the existing river and instead clear obstacles or, if necessary, dig short diversions around them. Washington had also found someone he thought would be a good Supervisor, James Rumsey, a millwright and contractor in western Virginia who had built a working model of a mechanical boat , a paddlewheel-powered poleboat, that would ascend against the current. Rumsey's crew would first clear a channel in the river near what's now Harper's Ferry.\n\nThere was, however, no engineer with experience in canals. The Company was very much trying to keep costs low: money was tight, in the period after the War. An engineer has been defined as someone who can solve a problem for $15 that anyone can solve for $50, and Rumsey very quickly discovered that it was much more difficult and expensive than the Company had initially thought to cut and remove sections of rock ledges in the middle of a river with a crew of mostly unwilling men, camped in the woods. He also discovered that his mechanical boat had problems with stability. To make things yet more complex, to that mechanical design he'd also added steam propulsion- even though he only had seen a Newcomen engine in a book. Occupied by the tasks of figuring out how to clear the river with a restive crew and developing mechanical and steam propulsion for his boat, he did not contemplate treachery, however. His second in command told the Company he could do a faster-better-cheaper job than Rumsey, and was given a raise. Rumsey demanded a raise as well, threatening to resign- and his resignation was accepted. Rumsey's replacement also failed to deliver and was soon sacked, and the Potowmack Company would discover over the next decades that it was just going to be much more costly to finish their project and that the profits were going to be much less than hoped. \n\nAt the Constitutional Convention there was a steamboat. John Fitch had begun his steamboat after Rumsey's , and went about it in a much different way. Rumsey had tried to fund his boat with his own wages, and when he lost his job in August of 1786 his project was dead in the water; or seemed to be. Fitch had begun without a design, and had instead first formed a company, and then lobbied for and won a legal monopoly for his project, if he could produce a working boat. By August of 1787 he had something that could move- if move somewhat slowly, and with few passengers. Both Rumsey and Fitch had clearly heard of improvements to the Newcomen engine by Watt, but were also unclear as to the details. Rumsey created a hybrid engine, meant to be very simple, but with a space-saving tubular boiler. Fitch's company set about re-creating a Boulton & Watt engine, and pretty much succeeded. Fitch had not, however, realized how many of his company felt they could alter plans and add changes when they felt like it, and also discovered the company felt it didn't need to keep him from starvation.\n\nThat the two project would collide was inevitable. Rumsey had a design patent for his mechanical boat from Virginia and Maryland, but not for his steam boat. Fitch had a Pennsylvania monopoly patent for his *project*- which meant, really, for any steam boat- , and once his boat was at least moving he began applying to other states as well. And he immediately realized that Rumsey's tubular boiler would be very handy, and made noises that he considered it his own. Rumsey demonstrated his own steamboat in December 1787, and then travelled with the machinery to Philadelphia and started a patent fight and pamphlet war.\n\nA group of merchants sensibly tried to get the two inventors to cooperate on joint project, but Fitch would have none of it. At this point, a number of merchants and members of the American Philosophical Society ( including Ben Franklin) pooled their funds and created a company centered on Rumsey and his designs. But they then took the further step of sending Rumsey to England to pursue prospects there, while themselves looking into possible business in the US. The new US had far, far fewer possibilities than England. It had massive government debts, a poor mostly rural economy, little high-level manufacturing and engineering expertise, and obviously a totally incoherent patent system. Rumsey went- but though he impressed many in England with his ideas and patented many, he died before he could do much more than impress.\n\nThe patent case of Rumsey and Fitch was the first that the new US Patent Office had to decide, in 1791. Because most all patent records were burnt, in 1836, it's very unclear what they decided but it seems likely they gave all the inventors ( including a latecomer, John Stevens) all the rights to everything. In other words, no patents at all. Because of this, Rumsey stayed in England and Fitch , already ragged, had his company pretty much broken. \n\nThe failures of the Potowmack Company would turn out to be immensely useful later. When the planners of the Erie Canal contemplated using some sections of the Mohawk instead of digging a through canal, there was abundant evidence from the Potowmack Company that it was a bad idea. \n\nSo, the basic answer to your question is: yes, there were people in the US who were aware of some technological advances in England ( and, it should be noted, Thomas Jefferson's observations of French armory methods came back to the US and became immensely important in US armories, and manufacturing generally). On the other hand, successfully developing a technology requires a kind of infrastructure of expertise, funding, legal protections and a good market for the product. The US of 1787 really didn't have much of that.\n\nSutcliffe, Andrea (2004) *Steam*. Palgrave MacMillan\n\nKapsch, Robert (2007) *The Potomac Canal*. West Virginia University Press\n\nLayton, Edwin T. Jr. (1989) \n\"James Rumsey: Pioneer Technologist\" . *West Virginia History Magazine* 48/7\n\n[The Rumseian Society](https://jamesrumsey.org/)", "created_utc": 1644074100, "distinguished": null, "id": "hvpenv6", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/skffdq/when_the_americas_founding_fathers_were_drafting/hvpenv6/", "score": 11 } ]

[ { "body": "While someone might able to offer a more precise answer to your question, here are several previously answers from our FAQ list which might be of interest:\n\n* /u/Rittermeister answered [If early guns were so inaccurate and took so long to load, why did they so quickly replace crossbows, archers, and other earlier forms of projectile weaponry?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1x03jt/if_early_guns_were_so_inaccurate_and_took_so_long/cf6zwpi/)\n* /u/Valkine answered [Why were primitive firearms used when bows and crossbows were better in every way?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29zre7/why_were_primitive_firearms_used_when_bows_and/ciq6pum/)\n* /u/hborgg answered [Why was the musket used instead of the bow and arrow during colonial times? The bow was much faster, much more accurate, and much cheaper. I feel like 100 men with a bow could easily kill 100 men with muskets so why didn't they use bows instead?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kx1uq/why_was_the_musket_used_instead_of_the_bow_and/djpkmcy/)", "created_utc": 1652842919, "distinguished": null, "id": "i9134sw", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/urmmqm/it_seems_to_me_that_basically_up_to_the_us_civil/i9134sw/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "I'm best positioned to speak about American schools and feel comfortable saying if a teacher from 1820 - or even 1920 - was zapped into a classroom today, they would recognize it as a classroom (one or two adults, lots of children, books) but that would be about it. A fair amount be likely be baffling and disconcerting.\n\nTo a certain extent, education systems haven't fundamentally changed in centuries because the central premise - one or two adults passing knowledge deemed important by their society onto a group of children - has proven successful for generations, in societies around the world. Generally speaking. I'm the author of [this Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_model_school) article and I'll plagiarize myself a bit to focus on one particular \"schools haven't changed argument.\" \n\n> \"Factory model schools\", \"factory model education\", or \"industrial era schools\" are ahistorical terms that emerged in the mid to late-20th century and are used by writers and speakers as a rhetorical device by those advocating a change to the American public education system. Generally speaking, when used, the terms are referencing characteristics of European education that emerged in the late 18th century and then in North America in the mid-19th century that include top-down management, outcomes designed to meet societal needs, age-based classrooms, the modern liberal arts curriculum, and a focus on producing results. The phrase is typically used in the context of discussing what the author has identified as negative aspects of public (or government-funded) schools. As an example, the \"factory model of schools are 'designed to create docile subjects and factory workers'\". The phrases are also used to incorrectly suggest the look of American education hasn't changed since the 19th century. Educational historians describe the phrase as misleading and an inaccurate representation of the development of American public education.\n\nThere are some pretty fundamental ways primary school has changed since the 1820s. The most pronounced change is likely related to the nature of content. Up until the late 1800s, there was no real demarcation to speak of between religious instruction and the content in common or tax-payer funded schools, especially when it came to reading instruction. The texts children would read were religious (almost always Protestant) and there impetus behind giving children a formal education was typically tied to religious goals (i.e. saving a child's soul.) There was no explicit breaking with religious texts, they just were slowly replaced by more secular texts and readers. The main exception to that was a fairly dramatic shift in cities, most notably New York City, that resulted in the rise of parallel Catholic school system. Outside the cities, though, schoolteachers made the slow and gradual shift from religious to secular texts. There's a whole bunch to be said about other changes at the high school level but those didn't necessarily impact primary education.\n\nAnother important difference is related to how children were grouped. With a few exceptions, before the 1900s and the widespread adoption of grade levels (4 and 5-year-olds attend Kindergarten, 6-year-olds attend First Grade, etc.) and groupings (primary, elementary, middle/intermediate/high) young children would often be in the same space as older children. This typically meant uncomfortable seats or desks for the littles and behavior expectations that could be difficult for them to meet. (Another big change? A small child attending school in 1820 was much more likely to have a man teacher and feel the back of their teacher's hand or switch for misbehaving than a child in 1920. The latter child was more likely to have an unmarried woman as a teacher and corporal punishment was much more frowned on.) As grade levels and groupings became the norm (which emerged from advocacy for those interested in the newly emerged field of child psychology and child study as well as population changes), the buildings children attended were increasingly designed around their bodies. This isn't to say early primary schools looked like modern day ones do, but rather, primary school increasingly became fundamentally different than grammar and secondary school. Generally speaking, children would show up when showed up, participate in the tasks assigned by their teacher (learning to read, write, colors, songs, some history, playing outside, some sciences, numbers - fairly similar to what children learn now, but again, that's not necessarily a bad thing.)\n\nThere would be more shifts related to primary school following World War II with the expansion of the suburbs and the arrival of the Baby Boom generation in schools. Compulsory education was the norm by then and most localities has solidified a school tax structure that was dependent on the count of children and the idea of \"failing\" or \"holding back\" a child became increasingly common. This was also when schools began to pay more attention to children's birthdays and set hard enrollment dates. In the 1960s and 70s, there was a push for increased school safety (most noticeable in changes in playground equipment) that shifted again the look primary school.\n\nSo, primary school has changed in big ways and small and remained the same in a few fundamental ways. When someone is making the claim school hasn't changed, odds are good their advocating for a particular passion of theirs.", "created_utc": 1649100148, "distinguished": null, "id": "i3e2vgx", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/ttxziw/was_primary_education_different_before_the/i3e2vgx/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "In economic history, there are few efficient industrializers. Even within Europe, which generally industrialized first compared to the rest of the world, you find mostly ineffective industrializers - the mediterranean region, for example, is populated exclusively with late industrializers. European or not, some latecomers ended up industrializing successfully, Germany and the United States stand out in this regard. Conversely, Latin America, generally speaking, might stand out as a particularly ineffective industrializer, not only industrializing late but also not industrializing particularly successfully. \n\nIndustrialization is strange process in that the benchmark is often perceived as the most successful case: Northwestern Europe. It is common, but not always helpful, to expect industrialization to occur in the rest of the world like it did in England or the Low Countries. This is unhelpful because ultimately it means the answer to every economic question can become, “Because we are not talking about England or the Low Counties.” \n\nThe Economic conditions which drive entrepreneurs to seek efficient returns on capital investments (at its heart, what industrialization is) do not always exist in the rest of the world as they did in Northwestern Europe. This is particularly true in Latin America, which up to the turn of the 20th century had been able to achieve a fairly strong degree of relative economic prosperity in a mostly agricultural economic landscape, bereft of industrialization. This isn’t exactly a unique case (Italy, by comparison, remained the third-most productive economy in Europe well into the first half of the 19th century also without having industrialized significantly) but it does cut an economy off from the exponential growth which comes in later stages of industrialization (this is where the break-off really occurs: England and the Low Countries experienced a sort of slow-but-steady economic growth taking them to the top spot in Europe before exponentially taking off in the second half of the 19th century and really decoupling from the rest of the continent - they wouldn't be surpassed until the United States did just that in the 1920s). It is difficult but not impossible to jump directly to this second “exponential-growth” stage of industrialization with a very short slow-and-steady phase (the United States and Germany are two countries who did just that) but net of astonishing luck, it takes deliverate planning and forward-thinking policymaking to identify where gaps are and finding ways to mitigate them (Gerschenkron, an American economic historian by way of Russia, called this process “Identifying Substitution Factors”). Latin American policymakers did not take any actions linked to developing \"Substitution Factors,\" probably because they felt they didn’t need to: the capital-owing class was able to develop ever-growing portfolios of agricultural investments which were able to sustain a satisfactory level of economic growth (there is an ambiguous, or possibly even inverse, correlation between agricultural prosperity and industrialization). In Latin America, society’s scales were also never tipped towards laborers the way they were in other economies, further reducing capital owners’ incentives to develop productivity: having technology available is one thing, but feeling the need to to use it is on a widespread scale is quite another. \n\nThis is a long-winded way of re-iterating Douglass North’s conclusions that the ensemble of institutions, be they political, social, or economic, which characterize a society are what will determine its success in economic development, which in our era corresponds to industrialization. Your question is interesting in that you correctly hone in on industrialization as the key component to developing a modern economy. Broader (and more common) questions soliciting comparisons between “Anglo” postcolonial states and “Latin” postcolonial states can be reduced to this very difference: However misguided and ineffective Latin American policymakers’ decisions were in the 20th century, they ultimately stem from the single problem of not having achieved truly industrialized economies by the turn of that century. Why didn’t they? Well, in part it’s worth re-iterating the very first point I made; they are not the nations of England or Belgium, and so would always have industrialized differently, but also because their institutional characteristics were such that they did not feel the incentive to industrialize (or at least, they didn’t feel the need until it was too late). And if you look at per capita income, it’s easy to see why: While remaining largely in the slow-but-steady phase of industrialization (or pre-industrialization) many of the larger Latin American economies are nonetheless just a few percentage points short of matching industrialized Europe right up to the 1970s.\n\nThere is also a deeper question murmured in some economic history circles which asks, “But how prosperous was Latin America at the turn of the 20th century, *really*?” However impressive Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, or Mexico City might have been in at the turn of the 20th century, did these cities represent the whole of their respective countries? Are millions of disenfranchised people, many of them indigenous, accounted for in estimates of economic development? Did most citizens even have access to the same economy which built these impressive urban environments? Or, is our estimate of economic development, and thus our perception that these economies may have been on the cusp of industrialization, based on the numbers we have from the europeanized postcolonial core rather than an in-depth estimate of economic conditions across the whole of the various Latin American countries? If so, is it possible that the state of economic development (including industrialization) was deemed satisfactory up until the mid20th century precisely because we are only considering a small component of these economies? \n\nAn easy short answer that you might be looking for is ultimately linked to the postcolonial heritage and experience, which is the incipit of the “Institutions” I keep mentioning. This is summarized in Stanley Stein and Barbara Stein’s *The Colonial Heritage of Latin America* (which explains how, “it is not surprising, then, that Latin America did not begin to modernize its economy through industrialization until a century after independence”). I instead have chosen to spend more time drawing conclusions linked to more general principles of comparative economic history because I think a broader answer is what you’re interested in. And besides, Latin America is enormous, larger than a continent, after all. So I didn’t want to focus too much on, say, Argentina, and talk about specifics which wouldn’t be applicable to, say, Mexico. \n\nAnyway, another interesting examination of North and South American economic history you might be interested in is:\n\nR. J. Gordon, The rise and fall of American growth, Princeton University Press, 2016\n\nAnd a more general and classic look at industrialization which examines in detail the \"late\" industrial revolution where the United States really came onto its own (and others didn’t):\n\nA.D. Chandler, Scale and Scope, Harvard University Press, 1990", "created_utc": 1645041705, "distinguished": null, "id": "hx7r84n", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/srrw6b/why_didnt_latin_america_industrialize_during_the/hx7r84n/", "score": 11 } ]

[ { "body": "In my opinion, attempts to work out which culture or people is being stereotyped in fiction reveals more about the commenter than it does the author. In this case, it is probably a product of the annoying tendency to take Rowling's recent objectionable position on trans people and project that back in the past as proof that she has *always* been a bigot. Considering that Rowling has lived in Scotland for nearly thirty years, it would be exceptionally odd if she \"meant\" for the goblins to be stereotypes of Scots.\n\nBut I digress: in the eighteenth century there *was* a perception among the English that the Scots were, in the words of Linda Colley, \"poor and pushy relations, unwilling to pay their full share of taxation, yet constantly demanding access to English resources in terms of trades and jobs.\" Following the Act of Union of 1707, the English taxation regime was extended to Scotland, which especially following the victory in the War of the Spanish Succession, included new duties on such commodities as beer, salt, linen, soap, and malt. Used to a relaxed taxation regime, which was not even sufficient to cover the costs of the Scottish civil government and administration, the Scots were aghast at these new levels of taxation, which was seen by many as an attempt by the English to pay down their National Debt. For their part, ministers in London were appalled at the scale of smuggling and customs evasion. An effort to extend the malt tax to Scotland in 1713 was so controversial that it could not be properly enforced, while a motion to dissolve the Union put forward in the House of Lords by the Earl of Findlater was only narrowly defeated by four votes.\n\nThis all fed into the 1715 Jacobite Rising led by the Earl of Mar, previously an advocate for Union with England, who rallied a force of 10,000 men in an effort to install the Old Pretender as King. Once the Rising was defeated, it was clear that something had to be done to ameliorate the impact of Union on Scotland. This did not proceed quickly: Sir Robert Walpole's government against extended the Malt Tax to Scotland in 1725, which led to rioting in Stirling, Dundee, Ayr, Elgin, Paisley, and Glasgow. Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay (later third Duke of Argyll), was appointed to manage the situation, and reported on the almost complete lack of civil government in Scotland since the dissolution of the Scottish Privy Council in 1708. Islay would become the dominant political figure in Scotland until his death in 1761, with the responsibility of delivering political stability in Scotland and the votes of Scottish MPs to Walpole's government in exchange for patronage and the authority to govern north of Gretna. However, since there were never enough civil or judicial jobs in Scotland to go around to Islay's clients, posts in the East India Company proved to be an attractive alternative.\n\nDisproportionate numbers of Scots would ultimately serve in the East India Company: between 1774 and 1785, 47% of writers in the Bengal Presidency were Scots, as were 49% of the officer cadets and more than 50% of the assistant surgeon recruits. The attrition from disease was enormous, but equally enormous fortunes could be made in India. John Johnstone of Westerhall returned to Scotland in 1765 with a fortune of £300,000, with which he acquired three estates. William Hamilton arrived in India in 1711 as a surgeon and was showered with gifts when he cured the Mughal Emperor of venereal disease, including an elephant, diamond rings, 5,000 rifles, and a presentation set of surgical instruments in gold. John Malcolm, born in 1769 as one of sixteen children of a tenant farmer in Dumfriesshire, was in many ways the classic Scottish Imperial success story: with little in the way of family connections or wealth, he joined the Easter India Company at the age of twelve, rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, served as an emissary to Persia on two diplomatic missions, and became governor of Bombay before returning home with a knighthood.\n\nSuch was the Scottish elite's investment in the East India Company, as well as other massively-profitable ventures such as Glasgow's key role in the tobacco trade, or slave-grown Caribbean sugar, that when the 1745 Jacobite Rising led by Bonnie Prince Charlie broke out, there were no Scottish Lords putting forward votes to dissolve the Union: instead, the Presbyterian establishment in Scotland was horrified that Highlanders had sought to overthrow the Protestant succession. It would not be for many more years that the Highlanders, thought of as \"barbarous and lawless ruffians... a crew of ungrateful villains, savages, and traitors\", would be seen as emblematic of Scottish culture. Instead, Presbyterian Scotland celebrated the victory at Culloden and supported Cumberland's reprisals in the Rising's aftermath, because it was now invested in the Union and Empire.\n\nNevertheless, Scottophobia remained an aspect of British politics for some time: not only did the disproportionate influence of Scots in Imperial trade evoke envy, it was also seen as deeply embarrassing that in 1745, a small force drawn from the mountainous northern periphery of Britain had marched as far south as Derby before withdrawing. John Wilkes, a radical English polemicist, relentlessly attacked King George III's favourite, and the first Scottish Prime Minister, John Stuart, Earl of Bute, for his nationality, portraying him as a corrupting influence over the King even long after his retirement in 1763. As late as 1776, Wilkes was accusing Bute of influencing the British Government's response to the deteriorating situation in the Thirteen Colonies, something that was enthusiastically picked up by American Patriots. In the 1780s, Henry Dundas, nicknamed \"King Harry the Ninth\" for his dominance of Scottish politics, had to warn against advancing too many Scots into Indian service because he feared that their already-dominant position might incite another backlash.\n\nIn summary, the stereotype of the \"miserly Scot\" developed as a result of the rough early years of the Union, where Scottish resistance to new taxation met English exasperation at the perception that they were refusing to pay their way. This was intensified by the disproportionately-powerful position Scotland assumed in Imperial trade as a result of efforts to ameliorate the worst impacts of the Union on Scotland and reconcile the Scottish elite to it. As for the goblins, I myself doubt that they were inspired by stereotypes of Scots *or* Jews: the goblins of *Harry Potter* were inspired by the \"Gnomes of Zürich\", which is an old nickname within the British left for Swiss bankers, and one that J.K. Rowling would be familiar with given her long association with the Labour Party.\n\nSources:\n\nT.M. Devine, *Scotland's Empire: The Origins of a Global Diaspora*", "created_utc": 1647783308, "distinguished": null, "id": "i1egs3p", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/tigmdn/what_were_the_stereotypes_of_scots_in_the/i1egs3p/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "In short, the best application of Hero's invention was still a machine that was inferior to a work of a single person while necessitating far greater initial costs and substantial costs of operation (fuel and maintenance), as explained by u/wotan_weevil in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lykp5d/why_didnt_the_steam_engine_get_utilized_before/), that it also references the obstacles to the industrialization in the antiquity presented by u/restricteddata and u/haf3clipse and the detailed explanation [why it took much more than steam engine to bring the Industrial Revolution](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gikcoj/the_roman_empire_was_closer_to_an_industrial/) by u/LuxArdens.\n\nThe aeolipile or Hero's turbine itself, it has pretty little in common with the concept of a steam engine that gained popularity in 18th century. From the technical standpoint, it is a reaction machine (it operates using the force opposite to the force of the reaction mass being propelled in the opposite direction with the reaction mass being the steam) and thus is essentially a rocket engine rather than a reciprocal steam machine.\n\nThe main problem with the Hero's turbine is, as already noticed, a significant lack of scaling. First, to operate anything, aeolipile needs to propel itself i.e. move the entire assembly minus the support. This is easy to achieve in a small toy, but as soon as the size of the engine and thus its mass would have rise, more and more energy would have been needed to move the entire engine, before anything was even powered by it. Furthermore, as the steam engine utilizes pressure, it needs to be made of a substantially durable material to generate adequate power. Roman metallurgy was not bad, but it did not involve technology allowing for predictably consistent and what is more important, uniform steel. Whenever high pressures are involved, all pressurized containers must be as uniform as possible, because if there is one structurally weaker place, it doesn't really matter how durable the rest of the boiler is, as it will likely rupture in aforementioned location, as pressure of the gas is distributed more or less uniformly. And such level of steel manufacture was possible only around the time when the first steam engines were made.\n\nFueling of the device is also highly problematic. Given the configuration of aeolipile, one would need to locate the heat source outside of the engine and provide the adequate clearance for it to spin freely, what also means substantial losses of heat. It could have been alleviated by changing the sphere to a horizontal cylinder enclosed in the middle in some refractive chamber, but this would still be not enough. Furthermore, as this is a reaction engine, the operation would have quickly deplete the water inside. To refill the aeolipile, one would need to wait until it cools down enough to not start spinning when the water is added and then heat it again. This means frequent, long periods of downtime, severely reducing already dubious gains from the adoption of the engine, not to mention waste of fuel that was not free, either.\n\nNow, there is of course the matter of the suspension that in this particular configuration would have required extremely durable and precisely made bearings to decrease friction. And that would be as difficult as making the material for the device itself i.e. completely beyond human technological capacity for the next 1700 years or so. And last but not least, regulation of the speed or stopping the machine would have been impossible save for manipulation of the fuel supply (that is imprecise and has a significant lag) or by introduction of the clutch and gears assembly of complexity rivaling that used in the modern automobiles (read: unavailable to people at the time, at least not on a wide scale).\n\nAeolipile was also very unlikely to become a starting point for a modern concept of a steam engine that operates on completely different principles and uses the differences of pressure (including partial vacuum) that was a concept unknown by ancient people in the Mediterranean region despite Ctesibius' forays into pneumatic and hydraulics in 3rd century BCE. This area of physics has been developed only in early 17th century (with Evangelista Torricelli being usually credited with the most crucial work on the subject). \n\nIf we consider all of these drawbacks, we can easily see that it made absolutely no sense to invest in this technology, as Romans already had much better equivalents available in the form of water wheel and horse mill, both being extensively used for at least three centuries. They were cheap (simple and made primarily of wood), relatively easy to make by ubiquitous carpenters, easy to scale to a substantial size, very easy to regulate (by driving or slowing the animals and operating the locks on a stream). And indeed, both water wheels and horse mills were commonly used to operate large millstones, lumber mills, forges and similar devices since and remained so for more than 1500 years (windmills and water mills were still operational in rural Europe, especially in its eastern and central parts as late as the first half of 20th century).\n\nSo, to sum it up, even an operational, efficient steam engine alone would not amount much to anything. The Industrial Revolution was, for all intents and purposes, a literal revolution that involved many changes on economical, social and technological levels. In short, Greek or Romans around 1st century AD did not have cultural or economical need for such a complex machinery, because the application of animals and relatively complex machines, such as treadmills and waterwheels that, supplemented by the muscle power of slaves that was ubiquitous at the time covered all the needs local societies might have required. In other words, any steam engine based on the concept of Hero's turbine would have been more complex and thus far more expensive, dangerous and ineffective in comparison with what Greeks, Romans or Egyptians have already been using on a daily basis.", "created_utc": 1641828696, "distinguished": null, "id": "hs2n1oi", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/s06oik/what_prevented_ancient_greece_from_achieving_an/hs2n1oi/", "score": 16 } ]

[ { "body": "By 1840, coal had been mined for far longer than a century. In fact, Londoners had been complaining about air pollution from burning coal for far longer than one century--six of them, in fact. Especially in England, coal mining was very much already an industry and a profession in the later Middle Ages.\n\nEvidence for the *use* of coal dates back even further, with specific and limited uses in mind. It appears to have fueled cremation fires in modern-day Wales as early as the *Bronze Age*, and Roman England saw a decent amount of use: providing heat for northern forts, possibly Greco-Roman temples before Christianization, and for use in homes and blacksmith forges in East Anglia.\n\nBut even if the term \"Age of Coal\" has been used to signify basically every other historical era *besides* the Middle Ages, it was the 13th century when England rediscovered its benefits and made it a central part of making fire. It's not a mystery why, either: the 13th century was when English people had a reason to start looking around for new fuel sources.\n\nRapid population growth prior to the early 1300s (yes, *before* the Black Death) was intimately bound up with increased use of land for agriculture as well as increased need for construction and fuel materials. The predictable result was mass deforestation, in terms of trees as well as substantial brush, and competition among the remaining lumber to serve as fuel versus houses and ships. (The papacy tried to ban the sale of timber to Muslims, theoretically fearing its military use. In practice, the \"fine\" they levied on merchants who violated the canon served as a sales tax.) This was particularly true in London, which was a *massive* city by medieval European standards.\n\nSo, why not coal? Rudimentary coal mining needed no canaries or helmets with headlights. The most basic method was locating coal seams just beneath the surface of the earth, where miners could just clear off a few feet of dirt and shovel. The geographic extent of this type of mine was rather limited, of course. John Hatch further suggests that much of the archaeological evidence here points to very local use, maybe even peasants \"scratching\" up a bit of coal for their homes, village smith's forge, or village ovens.\n\nSo there were various forms of pit mining. One strategy was simply to dig a shaft and use a well-type mechanism to lift coal out by buckets--and then, when the shaft inevitably caved it, sink another shaft. But just like with the pillars of bridges, and sewer cesspits, some mines reinforced the walls of the shaft/pit with rocks/bricks.\n\nMining wasn't the best alternative career to farming--that was milling. But it nevertheless attracted a decent number of the rural teenagers and young adults who chose to leave their village in search of...well, the typical explanation is that women would work to earn a larger dowry, and men, to earn enough money to be their share of establishing a household. (Women were not miners; however, if evidence of women as petty laborers *surrounding* the actual construction part of medieval construction sites can be a sign, they might have worked around mines as well.)\n\nAs for the eventual destination of mined coal, the fuel is especially associated in contemporary literature with forges and other artisanal use. Of course, industrial *dirtiness* was a common trope (especially with dyers and butchers), and London in the late Middle Ages was intimately familiar with the dirtiness of coal burning. In the 1280s, the city set up a committee to \"investigate\" the problem. In 1306, they finally turned out a measure to limit the use of coal (which was essentially \"ban it\"), but this worked as well as you might expect (which was essentially \"it didn't.\")\n\nThis isn't to say that the use of coal in the Middle Ages was limited to England. In 1473, university graduate and physician Ulrich Ellenbog of Augsburg was *not* happy with the use of coal in his city's forges:\n\n> To the skillful, subtle, and noble craft of Goldsmithery:\n\n> I...have observed the great, severe, and remarkable harm to which this skillful craft comes through the fumes and vapors of the things which the said craft has to work with, so I could not withhold or refrain from giving advice...\n\n> In your subtle craft, you use coals for the fire. The smoke or vapor of the same is poisonous...for this vapor burdens the head and also the chest, and when one dallies there too long, the sight grows dim, so that is seems as if there is green and blue and such before one's eyes, or flies in the air. This vapor also makes for heavy, unnatural sleep.", "created_utc": 1624555433, "distinguished": null, "id": "h2wni7l", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/o72zq7/the_industrial_revolution_as_we_know_it_with/h2wni7l/", "score": 49 }, { "body": "As u/sunagainstgold mentioned, coal was used well before the start of the industrial revolution. They already covered how it was mined, so I'll focus on what it was used for.\n\nAs early as the 1300s, coal was used in energy intensive tasks such as making salt, glass, lime, brewing, and to some extent in the production of iron. There was a large increase in the amount of coal consumed in the 16th and 17th centuries, largely driven by the use of coal to heat houses, which by the start of the 18th century consumed perhaps half or more of all coal used in England. It also expanded to other industries such as alum, baking, and the production of dyes. \n\nThat heating was not a major consumer of coal in the 1300s, despite it being a large source of energy use, seems to be due to the difficulty of adapting houses to burning coal as well as urban centers still being relatively small-it was easier to source fire wood in rural areas. Burning coal required keeping the fire at a constant temperature that was higher than the average wood fire, and produced toxic fumes that traditional British housing, with a large hall and a fire in the center of, were badly equipped to handle. Modifying houses-adding chimneys, creating covered fireplaces with a grate below to pull air through the fire, and so on, was a long process that required many small innovations by architects and construction workers. \n\nThe growth of the city of London in the 16th and 17th centuries provided both of these factors. The size of the city created demand for fuel which outstripped what local forests could provide, and shipping woods from increasingly distant areas to meet demand increased the price of wood to above that of coal. As a growing city, London also had large numbers of architects and builders, who could gradually improve the ability of new housing to burn coal, and disseminate what worked among each other. From there, the best techniques spread through the rest of the country.\n\nOver this time demand for manufacturing increased as well. The cheaper prices of coal in London encouraged the use of coal in a variety of areas, such as baking. There was a huge number of industries that used coal over this time as well, in the production of alum, paper, dye, and so on, as well as in the smelting of brass and copper. Part of this was driven by disruption of imports-England's main source of alum in the middle ages was mines in the Papal states, which was no longer available after they broke from the Catholic church, and there were disruptions in salt imports from France and Spain due to conflicts with Spain and internal conflicts in France. \n\nThis increased in demand, primarily in heating but also in manufacturing led to more than a [tenfold increase in coal production from 1560 to 1700](https://imgur.com/WD5jlOi) (from Allen).\n\nThe further massive growth in coal production in the 18th century was driven both by further urbanization, more of the population working in manufacturing than ever before, as well as further new uses for coal. In terms of urbanization, while the majority of urbanization before this took place in London, other cities in England rapidly grew in the 18th century, and building techniques and coal consumption in heating continued to spread throughout the country.\n\nThe most striking new use of coal was using coke iron production, which dramatically reshaped the industry, but it started to be used in steam engines as well. Starting with Derby in 1708 and going through a couple decades of further development in Coalbrookdale, by 1750 the technology was ready. Over the next few decades coal rapidly displaced charcoal in iron production, [leading to both cheaper and more iron being produced](https://imgur.com/PuxebKh) (from Riden). Coal was also used in steam engines starting with Newcomen's engine for pumping water out of coal mines in 1712, which then spread to coal mines throughout the country. By the end of the century improvement in the size and efficiency of steam engines led to them being adopted, although still only gradually, in manufacturing and other industries, though by 1840 the majority of power in spinning and weaving was still supplied by water. \n\nSo even before the use of coal in railway and the dominance of steam engines in manufacturing, coal was widely used, for both heating and a huge range of industries.\n\n---\n\nSources:\n\n\"The History of the British Coal Industry: Volume 1: Before 1700: Towards the Age of Coal\", by Hatcher has very detailed descriptions of the variety of industries that consumed coal. There is a second volume covering 1700-1830, but that seems to be impossible to find now? If you want to read in detail which industries used coal and how they used it, this is the book to go for.\n\nAllen's \"The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective\" goes in detail about quite a bit of the processes involved: from how the growth of the city of London drove both demand for coal and supplied an environment where the changes to housing could take place, to the development of coke in iron production and the use of steam engines.\n\n\"The Output of the British Iron Industry before 1870\" by Riden has detailed statistics on the transition of iron manufacturing to use coke, and on the growth of the industry.\n\nThe Cambridge project on [the occupational structure of Britain 1379-1911](https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/occupations/overview/) has estimates on the scale of change of British society over this time, though I'd take the exact numbers with a grain of salt.\n\nFinally, \"Urban Growth in Early Modern England: Food, Fuel and Transport\" by Wrigely has numbers on British urbanization as well as an overview of fuel usage.", "created_utc": 1624563713, "distinguished": null, "id": "h2x63gs", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/o72zq7/the_industrial_revolution_as_we_know_it_with/h2x63gs/", "score": 23 } ]

[ { "body": "Great, timely topic, OP! I hope you don’t mind me writing a meandering response in lieu of providing one or two sources on your question. I will keep the discussion largely focused on the early 19th century when the country was undergoing a market revolution and nascent industrialization.\n\nTechnology affected employment during this period but its impact was further shaped by a number of factors, including the level of public investment in infrastructure, currency stability, and (as with all things in the early republic) slavery. \n\nTechnological innovation in the early 1800s consisted of manufacturers using waterwheels to operate mechanical looms and mass-produce textiles. Outside these nascent factory floors, new inventions like steam-powered boats and railroads also affected the profile of employment in the United States by expanding the reach of manufacturers, increasing competition between businesses, and depositing migrants to new spaces where they would create demand for manufactured goods. \n\nManufacturers initially recruited female members of traditional farming households. Early industrialists believed that they could keep their factories fully staffed by absorbing this “surplus” workforce, which brought much-needed supplemental income to rural families. In doing so, manufacturers played a role in diversifying the rural workforce that had traditionally been concentrated in agriculture. \n\nOver time, newly-arriving immigrants would also find employment in these manufacturing facilites. \n\nGrowth of a workforce in the manufacturing sector was contingent on the factories selling the goods to a wider market - first to previously self-sufficient farming homesteads, then to new communities on the frontiers of the expanding country. Ergo, investment in transportation infrastructure played a role in sustaining the manufacturing workforce. Canals, roads, and railroads delivered not only factory-made goods but also carried migrants to these newly-expropriated western lands where they became buyers of manufactured goods. \n\nConstruction of the steamboat Clermont in 1807, the Erie Canal (completed in 1825), and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (construction began in 1828) represent key moments that accelerated the growing demand for manufactured goods. \n\nSimultaneously, this development had a complex effect on employment in the agricultural sector of the Northeastern United States. Farmers who had traditionally sold their cereal and produce to nearby cities found themselves competing with new sellers - and as cheaper grain from the west flowed east through newly-established transportation nodes, many farms on the east coast had to either specialize or fail. \n\nThere was an analogous impact on artisans like shoemakers who traditionally made bespoke products for the local market - the inflow of cheaper products from northeastern factories into their communities created significant dislocation. \n\nThe makeup of the labor force changed accordingly: In 1800, less than 1% of American workers were engaged in manufacturing. By 1850, the share increased to 15%. \n\nDisplacement, migration, and retraining resulting from this industrial transformation would have been difficult enough - but it was made traumatic by policy missteps and international developments that yielded bank failures. In 1819, the withdrawal of gold from the money supply to redeem bonds issued for the purchase of Louisiana Territory combined with the drop in European demand for American agricultural goods triggered a financial crisis.\n\nThe ensuing crisis was catastrophic. Lenders across the country recalled loans, depressing business activity and shuttering manufacturing facilities. While the government did not keep unemployment data for the whole country, officials in urban centers like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia estimated that local joblessness reached 50 percent of the workforce.\n\nBank failures were particularly catastrophic during this period because paper money was issued not by the U.S. government but by individual private banks - and the entire manufacturing operation was contingent on American consumers having access to banknotes that they could use to make purchases. \n\nAnother crisis would occur in 1837 when the value of American cotton exports fell in Europe, leading to a cascade of bank failures and a spike in unemployment across all economic sectors. \n\nThese financial crises also played a role in pushing surviving factory owners to make capital investments at the expense of wages - so, manufacturing workers increasingly faced severe wage repression. \n\nSlavery was another factor that prevented the manufacturing sector from flourishing further. The presence of forced labor in the southern United States meant that immigrants were less likely to migrate to this region, stunting the growth of a potentially larger market for the domestic manufacturing sector. \n\nIn summary, technology did lead to changes in employment during the early years of the republic - but it shaped the labor market in concert with other variables. \n\nAs an addendum, a recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research ([https://www.nber.org/papers/w31163](https://www.nber.org/papers/w31163)) suggested that improvements in technology (specifically electrification in the paper’s study) may have contributed to the reduction in wage inequality within the manufacturing sector during the late 19th and early 20th century. \n\nSources:\n\nBrowning, Andrew (2019). “The Panic of 1819.”\n\nLarson, John Lauritz (2010). “The Market Revolution in America.”", "created_utc": 1682821484, "distinguished": null, "id": "ji9c6ze", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/12xoqny/is_there_a_study_on_does_technology_steal_jobs/ji9c6ze/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "As for the global context of the saltpeter trade/ production, /u/ParallelPain also posted an East Asian (Japanese) interesting case in: [Where did the original raw materials for gunpowder (black power?) come from](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mub1gs/where_did_the_original_raw_materials_for/), together with my brief mention of England's struggle to secure stable supply of saltpeter, citing Cressy's seminal book.", "created_utc": 1635599248, "distinguished": null, "id": "hin0cky", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/qiy3st/how_was_potassium_nitrate_saltpeter_made_before/hin0cky/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "This isn't so much a response but more a comment on form. \n\nThis isn't really a question that *can* have a simple historical answer because it's both incredibly normative (why \"curse\" instead of \"blessing\"? Is someone to \"blame\" for a good thing?) and working off a very debatable (and debated) set of assumptions. Are we in fact living under a \"curse of efficiency\"? I personally don't really think so, but if I went indepth on any of these questions, I'd be going against the spirit of this sub. And therein lies the issue.\n\nThis is a question you might have more success with if you rephrased it into something a historian *could* answer, or if you took it to another more appropriate subreddit like perhaps /r/askphilosophy.", "created_utc": 1623655382, "distinguished": null, "id": "h1phd5r", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/nz3cw9/bertrand_russel_warned_of_the_plague_of/h1phd5r/", "score": 27 } ]

[ { "body": "Whole books or libraries have tried to address this problem, and there is no perfect answer, but I will outline what I consider to be at least one of the most *complete* and convincing analyses, given by Kenneth Pomeranz in *The Great Divergence.* Texts that may be familiar in addressing this problem include:\n\n* The aforementioned Pomeranz, which is quite scholarly and at sometimes difficult to fully synthesize because he wisely makes use of many caveats and contingencies.\n* Ian Morris' *Why the West Rules... For Now*, which is written more for a popular audience and probably gets the broad strokes right, but is too cursory in places and oversimplifies many of the specifics of industrialization that Pomeranz outlines in greater detail.\n* The much-maligned *Guns, Germs, and Steel*, which again has elements of a convincing thesis, but drastically oversimplifies many of the core issues, and is straight-up wrong in its oversimplified analysis of China vs. Europe. In essence, the book makes a reasonable case for \"why Eurasia and why not the Americas,\" but it's far less convincing on \"why Europe and not China or India.\" Read up on the FAQ for the specific critiques of this work, which I will not mention further.\n* *Civilization: The West and the Rest* by Niall Ferguson, which credits \"the west\" (a term that Ferguson re-defines or fudges in a number of places) with six \"killer apps\": competition, the scientific method, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. In my opinion this is pretty boilerplate, unsatisfactory, and contains too many shifting goalposts to be convincing. But it is also written for a popular audience and offers *an explanation*, though not one I'm particularly satisfied with.\n\nThere are many others who have attempted to address this problem, but that's a brief overview of recent (last 20-25 years) major works. So with that out of the way, let's summarize some of Pomeranz's argument, in brief:\n\n1. On comparisons: Pomeranz finds that comparing China to individual European nations is problematic and inexact because of profound size differences, and that comparing China to Europe as a whole is problematic because of the tendency to obscure political and cultural differences. Therefore, he aims for geographic specificity and tries to compare similarly-sized or similarly-structured regions, like Britain vs. the Lower Yangtze valley.\n2. Ecology: all societies face a problem of resources in their development; in order to obtain the intense specialization needed to sustain industrialization, there must be a sufficient surplus of food and raw materials to supply workers and consumers who are not themselves direct producers. Europe, India, and China faced *relatively* similar ecological constraints and faced problems at the margins prior to about 1700 that prevented them from further development. But Europe did have the advantage of access to New World resources, *not only* for raw material, but as an outlet for both surplus labor *and* ready markets for their goods. Pomeranz is hardly the first to argue for the critical role played by New World access, but he expands considerably on other explanations he considers overly simplistic, such as Marx's \"primitive accumulation\" of capital theory. Just crediting the conquest of New World societies and the plundering of their mineral and ecological resources is insufficient, but it is an important factor.\n3. Market Hypotheses: Pomeranz also critiques the \"institutionalist\" argument that suggests that European foundations of markets built on strong property rights and competition account for the presence of capital forces needed to undergird industry formation (these factor heavily in Ferguson's aforementioned argument). He makes a fairly convincing case that in terms of the \"perfect markets\" of informed consumers imagined by Adam Smith, China might have been a more \"free\" market than most European states, which intervened heavily through mercantilist economics, state-granted monopolies, various forms of coerced labor (serfdom, slavery, etc). Instead, Pomeranz suggests that as late as 1750, both Europe (especially Britain) and China (especially the Yangtze Delta) enjoyed relatively similar levels of \"proto-industrial\" development, i.e. expansion of \"nonmechanized industries, mostly composed of rural laborers producing for distant markets through the mediation of merchants\" (Pomeranz, 21).\n4. Agricultural Markets: However, when considering (2) and (3) side by side, Britain had ready markets for its proto-industrial cloth in its colonies and peripheral states, while Yangtze cloth producers had trouble finding adequate markets for their products, not because of any \"flaw\" in Chinese economics, but because their chief areas of export were not agriculturally-specialized colonies, rather they were other proto-industrial areas of China (Pomeranz divides these into 8-9 macro regions, each similarly large to typical European states). To quote Pomeranz again, \"a combination of inventiveness, markets, coercion \\[especially in the form of the slavery-plantation complex\\], and fortunate global conjunctures produced a breakthrough in the Atlantic world, while the much earlier spread of what were quite likely better-functioning markets in east Asia had instead led to an ecological impasse.\"\n5. World Systems: To further expand on (3), Pomeranz argues that a lot of the factors that would seem to credit European ingenuity and market formation relied significantly on extra-European factors. All of that New World silver would have been valuable, but not nearly to the same extent had China not re-monetized its economy based around silver in the 15th century, before any European set foot in the New World.\n6. Fossil Fuel Technologies: With regard to technology, Pomeranz again stresses that up to 1700 or even 1750, Europe, the Ottomans, India, and China all had access to the tools needed to build industrial machinery: metallurgy, monetized economies, agricultural markets, knowledge of pistons and turbine engineering, etc, but distribution of fossil fuels was not as even across societies. Again, Britain enjoyed an advantage here, as being relatively small, the proximity of coal to growing industrial centers and then to urban cores formed a virtuous circle. In China, the journey was more arduous, as the Lower Yangtze Valley did not have comparable coal deposits, though China as a whole had probably been longer and more prevalent users of coal than Europe. For somewhat idiosyncratic reasons (based in part on geography and invasions of China from the North), the coal sector was somewhat isolated from various industrial centers at this critical moment. Furthermore, England's coal mines further stimulated some industrial technology because mines frequently needed to be dredged. Coal mines in northwest China, by contrast, were too dry, and needed \"ventilation rather than powerful pumps\" (Pomeranz, 65).\n\nThat's a lot to take in, and Pomeranz's argument is *incredibly* complex and nuanced, so a closer reading is definitely encouraged, as I cannot fill all the gaps here. But if we have to produce a few takeaways:\n\n* Contingency is important, and we should be skeptical of arguments that are reductive down to the level of culture, since Europe and China in particular were at relatively similar levels of economic and technological development as late as 1750.\n* Geography is important, but not a singular factor (which is a major reason why analyses like Diamond's fall flat), and not always in the way that people would think.\n* Access to the New World was an important factor for Europeans, but one that would have been incomplete without proto-industrial development, established maritime trade, and monetized economies in India and East Asia.\n* Political competition among European states was probably *a* factor, but cannot on its own explain the technological drive among European engineers and inventors.\n\nSo on the whole, we should be pretty skeptical of any singular factor, and Pomeranz spends almost as much time critiquing others' arguments as he does developing his own, and for good reason.\n\nI can try to follow up some of the specific areas in your question (\"geographical, cultural, demographics, economic, and political factors\"), but probably the best thing I can do is point to works that deal with this question in more detail. I would encourage other posters to add reading recommendations, but *The Great Divergence* is a good starting point for addressing this question, and for gaining some insight into the historiography of this problem.", "created_utc": 1614576869, "distinguished": null, "id": "gp9rxtj", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/luff20/why_did_industrial_revolution_happened_in_europe/gp9rxtj/", "score": 12 } ]

[ { "body": "There will be more to say about some of the specifics of this question, but I wrote an earlier response that attempted to contextualise the reasons why so few people in northern European countries could swim in the pre-industrial period, and this touches on some important attitudes that have a bearing on your query. [You might like to review that response](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5elczb/is_it_true_that_a_lot_of_oldtimey_sailors_couldnt/) while you wait for fresh answers that target the sunbathing and leisure food aspects of the problem.", "created_utc": 1622306692, "distinguished": null, "id": "gzvwlwi", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/nnko3y/did_people_used_to_chill_on_the_beach_in_large/gzvwlwi/", "score": 13 } ]

[ { "body": "The question was asked [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qnzapg/if_the_conditions_of_the_city_and_industrial/) recently, and there was a discussion by, among others, u/Cedric_Hampton, u/Captain_Jackbeard, u/rememberthatyoudie and I. You'll notice that there isn't a tidy answer: there's no doubt that economic conditions in the country pushed people into the cities, but just how much of that was due to enclosure and appropriation by large landowners is still being debated.", "created_utc": 1638885714, "distinguished": null, "id": "hnldxp5", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/raoc2r/why_people_migrated_in_britain_during_the/hnldxp5/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "Mercantilism was definitely a part of the early economy of the North Atlantic colonies. Manufacture, as u/bolUwUdo points out, just means something made, finished goods as opposed to raw materials, and the early colonies had little chance of doing much of it. Virginia set a commission to look into encouraging crafts in the colony, in the early 18th c., and it reported that any craftsman hoping to set up shop there had dismal prospects: very few population centers that would bring enough trade to any artisan, little development of roads and transport, very meager supply of expert labor and sources of supply. While they were talking about a big sparsely-populated rural landscape of plantations, the same sort of problem existed in most of the colonies.\n\n As the colonies became better established, however, craftspeople did become established as well- the shortage of skilled labor made the colonies attractive to craftspeople wanting to emigrate. So, despite the intentions of the British government, the colonists soon began to make more of their own stuff. But with limits: a gunsmith in Lancaster Co. Pennsylvania would have ample supplies of wood, for stocking, and of far better quality than he could get in England. He could get wrought iron from colonial iron producers for forging his own barrels, and he could likely also scrounge enough scrap brass for casting. However, though he could make his own locks, he mostly found it more cost-effective to buy imported ones from England, where large special shops could make them more cheaply. There was no mass-production in the industrial sense, yet, but by dividing up tasks skilled workers could develop more efficiency than one generalist could muster, and the English labor costs were lower. A lot of gunlocks could be fit into a cask for shipping, as well. The Lancaster gunsmith could not compete with a lockmaker like Ketland. So, most Kentucky rifles of the period had imported locks. And, when the Revolutionary War broke out and the Americans attempted to make at least some of their own muskets, a major obstacle was that imported locks were no longer to be ordered from England. \n\nThose specialist shops could often do very high quality work, as well. Washington would order an especially fine fowler from an English gunsmith, and ask his friend Thomas Jefferson to pick up a good pocket watch for him while Jefferson was ambassador in France. A specialist gunsmith shop, with a dedicated engraver and stock carver, could produce something fancier than a Pennsylvania shop with one or two workers. And the great number of steps required of many specialists to make a good pocket watch- and the tools and supplies for doing so- were difficult to achieve in the colonies.\n\nBut some items were not nearly as cost-effective to import, and relatively easy to make. Hatters were flouting the ban on manufacturing hats in Boston fairly early. Not as many hats would fit into a cask as gunlocks, would not survive as well, and the beaver pelts to make them were already being produced in the New World.\n\nBridenbaugh, Carl . Colonial Craftsmen (2001). Dovers, Paperback(2011).", "created_utc": 1632849213, "distinguished": null, "id": "hem8ktr", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/pwzu6o/what_does_manufactured_goods_mean_in_a/hem8ktr/", "score": 7 }, { "body": "You are right that one of mercantilism’s big stances was importing raw materials and exporting finished goods (they equated this with having that whole positive balance of trade, large monetary reserves thing). I am not too sure about metalworking, but the textile industry is talked about often by economic historians as there were obvious changes to the way they made things post-Industrial Revolution. For what counts as a manufactured good, it could be anything really made. If you check Johnson’s dictionary from the mid-1700s, “manufacture” could mean (1) “the practice of making any piece of workmanship” or (2) “anything made by art”. This is why mercantilists and their opponents tend to put the artisanal goods under that definition.\n\n\r \nAs for how things were produced, in Britain, there were different production methods. One was the putting-out system where clothiers would provide raw materials (things like animal fleece and plant fibers) and capital so that spinners, weavers, etc. could make the goods for piece rate wages. There was also the Kaufsystem, where villagers bought their own materials and then sold finished goods to merchants who would sell them to customers (“The Decline of Textile Prices in England and British America Prior to Industrialization” by Shammas 1994). The presence of a guild also had an impact on the system used as they were pretty influential in who could practice the arts, production, and trade. Whoever made textiles had access to things like looms or spinning wheels depending on what they wanted to do, and then could get money for those goods.\n\n\r \nThere is an interesting paper called “Textile Production and Gender Roles in China, 1000-1700“ by Francesca Bray (1995), on the textile industry in pre industrial china that mentions 4 different types of textile producing establishments. Bray lists (1) peasant households, (2) large elite households where a family head or mistress organized production of other household members, (3) state manufacturers using workers, and (4) urban workshops of different kinds. (3) and (4) had more complex production methods like drawlooms and would usually buy raw goods, whereas (1) and (2) would produce their own raw goods (silk and plant fibers) and use cheap/simple looms. Spain was also known to have royal textile manufactories with foreign artisans, though this was post 1700s (“Royal Textile Factories in Spain, 1700-1800” by Clayburn La Force 1964).", "created_utc": 1632817142, "distinguished": null, "id": "hekm973", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/pwzu6o/what_does_manufactured_goods_mean_in_a/hekm973/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "N.A.M. Rodger's *Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain 660-1649* has few short sections on docks in the 1400s and 1500s. The docks were constructed by digging an excavation into the shore of a area with large tidal fluctuations like Portsmouth or London. Initially these docks were closed with a dam of earth, which was economically feasible due the the cheapness of unskilled labor in that era. Gradually more and more timber was added to the docks until by the end of the 1500s timber gates that could be caulked watertight were added and the first true \"Dry Dock\" was created and the earlier docks were renamed \"Mud Docks\" to distinguish them.\n\nThe method that the most of the water was removed from the docks, (both mud and dry) was simply moving the ship in at high tide and letting the water escape at low tide. However the docks were also equipped with pumps, which had long existed aboard ships to evacuate the water in the bilges, and could be used to get the docks a bit drier than they would be by tidal action alone. I don't have any sources that explain how this process worked in less tidal areas like the Mediterranean. It's noteworthy that galley's and other more lightly built oared ships can be simply dragged out of the water and stored in galley houses when being repaired or simply not being used.", "created_utc": 1612708752, "distinguished": null, "id": "gmfvm3x", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lejxsk/dry_docks_are_where_ships_were_brought_in_for/gmfvm3x/", "score": 99 } ]

[ { "body": "I was hailed by a mod. I have barely posted here in years, but this is fun and I love this stuff. Forgive my rustiness, I am in another career field now.\n\nLet's go!\n\nAll this socially acceptable crying is part of a movement called Romanticism. \n\nRomanticism comes to us on the heels of the Napoleonic challenge; Napoleon Bonaparte has gone and overthrown the balance of Europe, and the region is righting itself again after war. Decades of it. Three million people in Europe are dead because of the French Revolution and Napoleon's grab for power, you've got conservatism rising to denounce revolution as anarchy, you've got a demand to return to \"property rights, prejudice, and tradition.\" (Thanks, Edmond Burke.) And you know what prejudice is? Old traditions. Burke says things based on thousands of years of tradition deserve respect! The throne and the altar are important pillars of strength, and by going against them, you've undermined all of society! If we're going to restore the countries of Europe to some sort of stability and power, let the old traditions be our moral compass!\n\nYou know what that means?\n\nConstitutional monarchy is back! So the monarchies have been restored, most based on legitimacy, including the French one. \n\nDo we have the order that everyone wanted? \n\nNo! It's never that easy!\n\nThe British aristocracy doesn't want to loosen its grip; they suspended habeas corpus so they could war with France, suppressing their own population with the abolishment of rights of man and freedom of expression, as well as the criminalization of demands for political reform. (This is where the Peterloo Massacre happens.) And over in France, Napoleon has left a power vacuum of censorship, and the revamped education system has kicked out any trace of liberalism, giving the Church serious power. And if you keep going East, it gets harsher; Austria is laying down the Metternich system in the Germanic states, which will rule for the next forty years, blacklisting anyone who speaks in the behalf of nationalism, and blacklisting means you'll never find a job in any German state. University students and professors are by far hit the hardest, particularly as the tiny educated minority group. Russia has Alexander wiping out any trace of liberalism to the point that liberal roots *still* haven't taken much in Russia even today. The more East-ward you go, the more authoritarian and tight the regime.\n\nPlease, God, who will help us in this age of stodgy, unthinking, unfeeling tradition that wants to shove us all back in our little boxes after years of revolution had promised us FREEDOM?! \n\n**ARTISTS!**\n\nArtists become the main social voice criticizing social order, and they make up Romanticism. And Romanticism *is* liberalism; it's fighting all the things that tie down literature and art and society, and well, it's romantic –– it's about *feelings*, one's mood!\n\nThink of the artists from this time period. Musicians like Beethoven, Chopin, Rossini, Liszt. Writers like Goethe, Novalis, Heine, Byron, Hugo! And the visual arts –– Friedrich, Turner, Delacroix! Art can be passionate in any time period, but now the Feelings are out. It's dialed up to 11 at all times. Even a painting of a shipwreck is *actually* about destiny and what nature decides and how no man can guarantee his actions because life is unexpected! (The Shipwreck by Turner.) And you're not just marching to liberate your country, you're marching with Liberty herself, a beautiful naked woman who is the purity of your revolution, your demand for a better society! Everything is dramatic! (Liberty Leading The People by Delacroix.)\n\nAnd literature! One particularly popular piece of literature is \"The Sorrows of Young Werther\" by Goethe. It is exactly as the title suggests, about how crap poor Werther's life is, particularly due to unrequited love, and then he –– spoiler alert! –– kills himself and nobody even goes to his funeral! This book is an immediate success, to the tune of inspiring hundreds (if not thousands) of young men to kill themselves because of their own tortured love affairs. It even prompts a fanfic in response that rewrites the ending so Werther lives, and lives happily at that, and Goethe isn't very pleased and it's all crazy. Crazy passionate.\n\nAnd Byron –– oh lord, Byron. Despite Britain being home to some of the coldest and stiffest lips, Byron and his crowd make up the best of the Romantic writers, and Byron writes with *feeling*, and he demands open hearts of young men. He writes his teenage boys with emotional turmoil, and the love letters pour in from fangirls; imagine that, men with feelings! And when Byron's passion leads him to sleeping with people you weren't supposed to be sleeping with in that time period, he has to flee to avoid execution, and he decides to just make lemonade out of lemons and travels to Italy and Greece to take up the cause of liberalism! (He died doing this; tragic and romantic in life and death, which netted him a massive funeral attended mostly by young women.) And his good pal Percy Bysshe Shelley, also an incredible poet, has decided to denounce the church and promote atheism, and write essays criticizing British society! He dies in a shipwreck, hunted out of Britain, tragic and romantic.\n\nAnd Beethoven, Beethoven who had liked Napoleon, until Napoleon decided to go and declare himself emperor, the ultimate of selfish power grabs. Beethoven scratches out the dedication to Napoleon on his symphonies. Fuck megalomania, right?\n\nAnd Chopin, a man of Polish descent when Poland is now largely under Russian control; he felt the only way he could keep his prestige and the spirit of Poland was to bring Polish elements into his music, and so his music includes those elements to piss off the Russians *as a rebellion.*\n\nAnd have you ever heard of that song, Lisztomania by Phoenix? It's great, and very catchy. It's referencing Lisztomania, a hysteria for the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, whose mere presence could drive people into an emotional mania. Even the fellow who coined this term, writer Heinrich Heine, noted this hysteria to be politically motivated: \"I shrugged my shoulders pityingly [...] [I] looked on it as a sign of the politically unfree conditions existing beyond the Rhine...\" And yet he, too, was swept up in the audience's applause and outpouring of emotions at the concert.\n\nSo that's what you're seeing: art meet politics often, and it offered a new interpretation for life. Enlightenment promoted the mind, but without a heart you’re a robot. And at this point in history, you might as well throw everything to the wind and put all your feelings out there. Fucking cry, Werther!\n\nTL;DR: Nothing is more manly than crying during a revolution.\n\nSources:\n\n* John Merriman, Modern Europe vol.2\n\n* T.C.W. Blanning, The Nineteenth Century\n\n* Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders, Europe 1800-1914\n\n* And some old-ass lecture notes from the wonderful V. Dimitriadis of the University of Toronto's Department of History. :')", "created_utc": 1506408899, "distinguished": null, "id": "dnit9ds", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/72fyow/sensitive_somewhat_weepy_male_characters_abound/dnit9ds/", "score": 1459 }, { "body": "Hopefully it is acceptable to ask for context? Which characters and novels specifically are you thinking of?", "created_utc": 1506401959, "distinguished": null, "id": "dniq0ej", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/72fyow/sensitive_somewhat_weepy_male_characters_abound/dniq0ej/", "score": 59 }, { "body": "Lots of interesting comments here.\n\nI wonder what a proponent of the Strauss-Howe Generational theory would make of this? I've heard one of them in an interview once comment on something of this type to the effect that men become what women wish for them to be, and that it fit into their generational cycle theory.", "created_utc": 1506445329, "distinguished": null, "id": "dnjf85m", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/72fyow/sensitive_somewhat_weepy_male_characters_abound/dnjf85m/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "[The answers in this old Askhistorians discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1i0xw7/how_close_was_china_to_industrializing_before/) based on a similar question by /u/astrogator don't really meet current standards, but you might find them a good starting point.", "created_utc": 1490708017, "distinguished": null, "id": "dfifffy", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/61xn3f/ive_heard_a_few_times_that_the_southern_song/dfifffy/", "score": 168 }, { "body": "OP's question is related to a rather controversial topic in the areas of economic history and world history. The central issue of the so-called \"Great Divergence\" debate is as follows: Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in the West and not in China (or anywhere else)? The answer to this question largely depends on who you ask. I will summarize two of the major approaches (these are by no means the only theories regarding the rise of the West, for example the world-systems theory also has many proponents):\n\n* ***Eurocentric*** school: This is oldest approach, dating back to Karl Marx and Max Weber, which has persevered through the work of historians like David Landes. Eurocentric historians attribute the Industrial Revolution to cultural, religious, or institutional qualities that are unique to Europe. Weber's view was that the \"Protestant ethic\" was crucial to the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. The West's \"spirit of capitalism\" could be explained by the Calvinist belief in predestination. Landes in his *Wealth and Poverty of Nations* also attributes the Industrial Revolution to the cultural values of the West. While he concedes that many technologies originated from China, he argued that China lacked Europe's culture of innovation and institutionalized property rights, which prevented China from industrializing.\n* ***California School***: This approach is more recent and has grown in response to the declining popularity of the Eurocentric approach in academia. The thesis of most California School historians is that both China and Western Europe were capable of industrializing, and that the rise of the West was neither inevitable nor permanent. In their view, Europe was less advanced than civilizations in Asia until a few centuries ago, when fortuitous circumstances in the West allowed it to surpass the East. Kenneth Pomeranz believes that prior to the Great Divergence around 1800, China and other parts of Asia were economically on par with Western Europe. In his *The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World*, he attributes British industrialization to its easy access to coal and the resources it acquired through its colonies.\n\nEDIT: Unfortunately, the majority of historians working on the Great Divergence have focused exclusively on the Qing dynasty. To quote Peer Vries (I would also recommend reading his article about the historiography of the Great Divergence):\n>The question why there was no breakthrough under the Song and why (probably) the Song achievement was never repeated is still open and, what is more surprising, all but ignored, by Californians as well. Debates about the Great Divergence almost exclusively focus on the question why Qing China did not take off. As I confine myself here to synthesising and evaluating existing scholarship, my references will also primarily be to the Qing era, although there are very good reasons in the future, pending further research to pay far more attention to the Song period.\n\nHowever, Vries does cite a few historians who have examined the Song/Yuan period in relation to the Great Divergence. The first is Mark Elvin, who makes the case in *The Pattern of the Chinese Past* that Song and early Yuan China experienced a \"medieval economic revolution\" in agriculture,commerce, urbanization, and science and technology. Elvin attributes Chinese stagnation after the 1400s to what he calls the \"high-level equilibrium trap\". Chinese advancements in agricultural and transportation technology during the Song/Yuan period (in addition to inexpensive human labor and a large population) had reached the point that it discouraged investments into further technological innovation. \n\nEric Jones's *The European Miracle* also discusses the Song/Yuan period extensively. He writes, \"By the fourteenth century AD, China had indeed achieved such a burst of technological and economic progress as to render suspect the frequently expressed belief that industrialisation was an improbable historical process.\" Jones gives two examples: a water-powered hemp-spinnging machine that is \"as advanced as anything Europe until about 1700\" and the Chinese production of iron in the 11th century, which was \"approximately the same as the entire production of Europe in 1700.\" Jones attributes the rise of the West to a combination of several factors that were unique to Europe, but absent in Asia.\n", "created_utc": 1490717944, "distinguished": null, "id": "dfinxwg", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/61xn3f/ive_heard_a_few_times_that_the_southern_song/dfinxwg/", "score": 319 }, { "body": "(This is a \"follow up\" question.) I see no mention of the portable clock. Is it an antiquated view that China refused adoption of the portable clock during one of their periods of general repulsion of all things Western? And that by not embracing it, organizing labor in an 'timely' manner was more difficult - thus leaving them at a relative industrial disadvantage? ", "created_utc": 1490723665, "distinguished": null, "id": "dfitgzg", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/61xn3f/ive_heard_a_few_times_that_the_southern_song/dfitgzg/", "score": 16 } ]

[ { "body": ">Is there a simple reason why the industrial revolution started in the 1800s in western europe, \n\nThere is not a simple reason. Because the prerequisites for it to happen - including such things as patent law, universities, individual freedoms, skills in metallurgy, banking, ... - had foundations that were all laid in the medieval era through the enlightenment.\n\nThus, it is necessary to explain why did Europe take the direction it did in the years 1000-1800 with Great Britain arriving uniquely with all these many essentials to spark the industrial revolution.\n\nClearly that is very complex topic and modern historians will include everything from religion to geography in their explanations, and then argue the relative importance of each. It is a very hot topic in popular history. But to understand it, I recommend \"The Most Powerful Idea in the World\" by William Rosen which charts the evolution of steam engines and gives a good understanding of all minutiae required to make it happen.\n\nAs to whether it could happen anywhere else/sooner, the tautological answer of, of course, if that place/era had arrived at the necessary prequisities first. One only has to look at Silicon Valley today. Why did it rise to become a world center of information technology. There's not really one answer, and perhaps anywhere in the western world could in theory have done so, but it uniquely had all the prequisities first.", "created_utc": 1628260997, "distinguished": null, "id": "h7xv5u0", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/oxwxq2/why_did_the_industrial_revolution_happen_when_it/h7xv5u0/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "More can be said, but in the meantime I’ll turn your attention the [9Science fiction and the future before electricity” section of the FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/vfaq#wiki_when_did_p_start_.2F_how_did_people_q_before).", "created_utc": 1622477775, "distinguished": null, "id": "h03fhm8", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/np479j/before_the_eighteenth_century_did_anyone_believe/h03fhm8/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "There are some answers in the [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/language#wiki_waking_up_without_alarm_clocks).", "created_utc": 1625299447, "distinguished": null, "id": "h3wfoms", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/ociqzq/how_did_people_know_when_to_wake_up_to_go_to_work/h3wfoms/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "I don't really know of any authors who take stances pro or against the industrial revolution, and please don't think I'm being snarky but I can't help but ask, do these authors instead argue that they would prefer to live in an agricultural economy?\n\nIndeed, I'd be interested to ask (and I will get on with answering below) if you mean Marxian, meaning the academic framework focusing on the relationship between capital and labor, or explicitly Marxist, where an industrial economy would be a necessary step in achieving dictatorship of the proletariat? In both approaches, the industrial revolution is always going to be just \"a thing that happened,\" which had an enormous impact on people's way of life. \n\nMore so than mount a defense or an attack on industrialization, what can instead be done is ask questions of the consequences of the industrial revolution. I think these can be organized along three broad lines: \n\n- Did the Industrial Revolution lead to an increase in economic growth? \n\n- Did the industrial revolution lead to an increase in standard of living? (and how did this very across social categories) \n\n- What alternative paths to achieving a modern economy does history show us are possible?\n\nThe answer to the first question is unquestionably \"Yes, industrialization does cause overall economic growth.\" Indeed, until fairly recently (we're talking the 1980s) almost all modern economic growth was fundamentally industrial growth. There simply is no comparison between the ability of an industrial economy to produce goods and an a non-industrial economy's ability to produce goods. Additionally, contrary to popular belief, places which industrialized actually increased overall wages in the long run, allows for easier economic diversification, and is pretty much pivotal to create a society featuring a lot of the things we take for granted. You can read about that process in Sylla and Toniolo's *Patterns of European Industrialization: the Nineteenth Century*.\n\nBut now we have the second question: What about quality of life? We are all familiar with the popular image of the industrial revolution as a time when industrialists exploited workers. Were these workers worse off than the previous generation, which had been largely employed in agriculture? \n\nWe can't be entirely sure. Life on a farm isn't as easy as you might think, especially without modern machinery. And pre-industrial everyday household items are expensive (if they're not made at-home) which means that most industrial workers probably had more material possessions than their rural grandparents (of course, we can reject the \"fetishization of commodities\" as Marx instructs us, but unfortunately we have little else to measure material prosperity with). The industrial revolution also allowed for the emergence of a middle class made up of specialized workers, from engineers to accountants, who would constitute the upper middle class of \"service sector\" workers. For these individuals, the industrial revolution greatly increased their standard of living. Literacy and life expectancy also generally increased during the industrial revolution, so in spite of the popular image of squalid life and social strife, some overall improvements did occur. \n\nWhat we can say with certainty is that the electric light and the factory clock probably meant that workers in the industrial revolution did toil longer hours than their parents did on the farm. u/PartyMoses is more prepared on the topic than I am, and wrote an extensive answer [here which might interest you](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/i4igt7/did_people_in_the_past_really_have_more_leisure/g0kh4kt/).\n\nWhich brings up to out last point: are there economies which have become materially prosperous without going through a phase of industrialization phase? Fact is, there are actually very few economies which made the jump from a primarily agricultural economy to a service-sector economy without passing through industrialization. These exceptions rely on some fairly unique caveats, as they are typically very small countries with a large neighbor that did industrialize and to which they can provide services to: some examples include the Bahamas, which \"provide\" tourism, or Singapore, which provides financial services. You could conversely argue that some particularly isolated economies like Cuba managed to fulfill societal goals like achieving income, literacy, or healthcare milestones without mimicking the Industrial Revolution, but that's not entirely true either: industrial production does exist in Cuba, only it is collectively owned (by whatever formula) rather than privately owned (industrialization in Cuba was also underway prior to the revolution, but this is a cursory example, not an in-depth dive on Cuban economic history).\n\nSo that's my best answer to your question. I know I only suggested one book, but maybe if you have follow-up questions I can clarify a bit more and can suggest a few more.", "created_utc": 1619046465, "distinguished": null, "id": "gvdrltf", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/muq25u/is_there_any_historian_that_analyzes_the/gvdrltf/", "score": 23 }, { "body": "Would recommend taking a look at the work of Emma Griffin, especially her book Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution.\n\nhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16073191-liberty-s-dawn", "created_utc": 1619009107, "distinguished": null, "id": "gvbfu0a", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/muq25u/is_there_any_historian_that_analyzes_the/gvbfu0a/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "*My answer focuses on Euro-American food.*\n\nThe boring answer is, quite simply, nothing. \"Junk food\" as a term dates to the *Information* Revolution. Even \"junk\" meaning valueless waste is first attested in writing in the 1840s, well into the era of industrial manufacturing. Our metrics for defining it are equally modern: vitamins weren't isolated until the early 20th century, and the standard working class meal before and during the Industrial Revolution was bread, cheese, and beer--three things that have all appeared on lists of \"junk food\" at various times in recent years.\n\nOn the other hand, the Twinkie was invented in 1930, and the only metric against which Twinkies are not junk food is in comparison to the *deep-fried* Twinkie.\n\nAnd this raises the essential question: what *is* a junk food? Is it a food devoid of nutritional value? A food we eat because we *want* to instead of need to? A processed food? Does it make a difference whether it's eaten as part of a meal or in between, like a muffin for breakfast or a pizza slice for dinner? Or is a junk food simply any food a kid wants to eat that their parent won't let them? All of these factors play into our concept that unites \"chips, cookies, fries, whipped cream straight from the can\"--which suggests junk food isn't just about nutrition (or \"health\"), it's about social context and the stigma attached to different foods at different times, consumed by different people, eaten in different amounts.\n\nIn ancient Greek formal dining, we can already see a connection between food consumption with some degree of stigma attached, food judged unhealthy, and food that people want to eat anyway. Classical formal dining was divided into tables/courses. In some of the earliest Greek writings, we have descriptions of first table or course offerings--stews, beans, meats, fish. For second servings, writing mentions things like dried fruits and nuts, hardly junk food--but contemporary art already depicts these tables with assorted cakes. It's only in later literature that the cakes get mentioned as well, and we have recipes for them (some of them have distinctive shapes) making it clear they are sweetened in some way, usually honey or fruit syrup. \n\nThis is especially noteworthy because of ancient \"nutrition\" beliefs, tied into the 'humours' understanding of human anatomy. Sweet foods, as well as spicy ones and alcohol, were considered \"hot\": they needed to be consumed in extreme moderation by most, avoided entirely by some, and always balanced out with \"cold\" foods eaten afterwards. But in second table, Greeks were eating their sweet food *last*--and conveniently forgetting to mention it.\n\nMedieval Latin Europe's combination of Christian ascetic ideals and nobles' prestige-by-consumption created an ever-shifting matrix of food considered physically and spiritually healthy/harmful, socially appropriate or forbidden. From a strictly theological perspective, the only food that was not \"junk\" was the Eucharist: scholastic theologians argued that because the Host (bread) became the actual Body of Christ, it was unfitting for the human body to excrete it as solid waste like ordinary food.\n\nBut there was also \"treat food\" for sure. A great example is the *Lebkuchen* for which Nuremberg became the most famous from the late Middle Ages on--cakes ideally flavored with spices, definitely sweetened with honey, and fancifully decorated.\n\nA good illustration of these ideas comes from the saga of Anna Laminit and Kunigunde of Austria, which I've discussed a couple times before here. Around 1500 in Augsburg, Laminit achieved massive fame as a *Hungermartyr* or self-starving holy woman and prophet. But in a sting operation organized by Kunigunde, the imperial princess and former duchess of Bavaria who had retired to a convent, Laminit was unmasked as a fake when she was caught throwing her excrement out the window. She had claimed to subsist only on the Eucharist, which should not have produced junk. To cement the debunking, Kunigunde and her fellow sisters forced Laminit to join them in eating *Pfefferkuchen*--fancy food, not even the bread and water of penitence.\n\nBut then we come to the utterly ridiculous feasts of late medieval courts. Is it \"junk food\" or not when the insane meals (entire peacocks with their feet and beaks dipped in gold...and that's just the second course) serve a very specific and acceptable socio-political purpose? The expenditure on guests asserted the power of the host; that's not junk, right?\n\n> My Lord Costanzo firstly had ordered to be made numerous sugar castles with turrets, fanciful battlements, weapons, trees, flowers, animals, and other things all worked in gilded sugar with fine colours, as wide and as large as a man could carry. And apart from these castles, there were many antique vases full of ornamental golden streamers, as well as eagles, lions, and other animals made of sugar, all good to eat...[Eighty servants in Sforza livery] carried a basket about two-feet long and a hand span deep, gilded and filled with confectionery of all sorts, such as those made from three types of coriander, and from hazelnuts, almods, oranges, and cinnamon. Each basket also contained many large pieces of crystallized sugar and candied lemon prepared in the Sicilian manner.\n\n...and that's after the jellies and truffles and pies and sugar onions, but before the sugar trees and the pastry camel and...\n\nOkay, yeah, *junk food*.\n\nThat particular 1475 wedding took *full* advantage of the earliest stages of European imperialism, the conquest of the Canary Islands and establishment of sugar cane plantations worked by slaves. Sugar is perhaps the most in/famous \"junk food\" product of colonialism--indeed, it was only then that Europeans came to see sugarcane as a *food* ingredient instead of a rare spice with mostly medicinal uses. And as the reference to crystallized lemon indicates, other commodities that became more widely available or available for the first time in Europe created new possibilities for prepared treats. It was around this time, too, that pastry/pies, the food that along with pancakes unites the world, moved into the realm of sweetened desserts/treats instead of just savory meat-delivery devices.\n\nBut for all of sugar's importance in the Atlantic world, it wasn't the only \"junk food.\" In fact, one of Native Mesoamerica's most treasured treats would take Europe by storm--and set an intriguing precedent for very post-Industrial Revolution conceptions of junk food.\n\n\"Chocolate\", not the candy but as a cold, unsweetened frothy drink, was one of the things European colonists appropriated from Indigenous people in Mexico. And while white people in America and Europe partook, one group in particular became strongly associated with its consumption: women. Early modern clerics *rage* against drinking chocolate, virulently chastizing women who go so far as to sneak the beverage into Mass, they're so unable to put it down.\n\nThe cultural gendering of chocolate consumption in contrast to its *actual* fans (i.e. everyone) heralds the 19th-century association forged between women and sweet things. This was pushed for two reasons as women's visibility in public and importance as independent *consumers* became more important and consequently more anxiety-provoking. First, the marketing of ice cream parlours and candy rooms as women's or women's-only social spaces was intended to keep women out of alcohol-serving establishments that needed to be the province of men. Second, in conjunction with (ideally) keeping women away from alcohol, it cast women as child-like, with childish tastes and eating the same things as children. When the military decided candy was a useful food for its troops in the 20th century, it had to embark on a massive marketing campaign to convince men that eating candy was *manly.*\n\nAnd ultimately, that's where we still are today: junk food, a \"food that appeals to popular *(esp. juvenile)* taste but has little nutritional value\" (OED).\n\nFurther Reading:\n\n* Jane Bridgeman, *A Renaissance Wedding: The Celebrations at Pesaro for the Marriage of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla Marzano D'Aragona*\n* Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela, *Colonial Angels: Narratives of Gender and Spirituality in Mexico, 1580-1750*\n* Sidney Mintz, *Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History*\n* *The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets*\n* Jane Dusselier, \"Bonbons, Lemon Drops, and Oh Henry! Bars: Candy, Consumer Culture, and the Construction of Gender,\" in Sherrie Inness, ed., *Kitchen Culture in America*", "created_utc": 1503784135, "distinguished": null, "id": "dm62bf6", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6w5igk/what_was_preindustrial_revolution_junk_food/dm62bf6/", "score": 1124 }, { "body": "You'd probably be interested in this answer by /u/sunagainstgold: \n[What was the late night drunk snack back in the Middle Ages?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5pfwqw/what_was_the_late_night_drunk_snack_back_in_the/)", "created_utc": 1503772297, "distinguished": null, "id": "dm5tlcc", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6w5igk/what_was_preindustrial_revolution_junk_food/dm5tlcc/", "score": 241 }, { "body": "If you consider foods with less nutritional value to be defined as junk food -- how about non-nutritional and even *dangerous* food?\n\nAdditives to bulk up food such as wood cellulose, milk watered down with plaster, and lead, to brightly color sweets, were not occasional exceptions in the late 1800s in the West.\n\n>Hassall's work showed that adulteration was the rule rather than the exception...\n\nhttps://eic.rsc.org/feature/the-fight-against-food-adulteration/2020253.article\n ", "created_utc": 1505696082, "distinguished": null, "id": "dn5e7xq", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6w5igk/what_was_preindustrial_revolution_junk_food/dn5e7xq/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "Question: How far back are you willing to go? Water systems happen to be my specific field of interest, but I've only studied *Medieval* ones with a touch of Early Modern - definitely not reaching into the Industrial Revolution. As we could perhaps quibble on the statement of municipal water not being widespread (Exeter's aqueduct system is a pretty solid example - that city had underground vaults dug out specifically to service its water pipes in the Middle Ages!), but that depends on how you're defining the term.", "created_utc": 1621060156, "distinguished": null, "id": "gy6u0gw", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/ncoj4l/what_did_potable_and_waste_water_treatment_look/gy6u0gw/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Meta question: Do Western Acedemics even agree? If they do, what are their interpretation? On what issues do they debate?", "created_utc": 1472747168, "distinguished": null, "id": "d75k3tw", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/50m2xw/do_historians_in_china_japan_and_russia_largely/d75k3tw/", "score": 198 }, { "body": "/u/peppigue\n\nI will address this in the context of *The Great Divergence*, starting with the western interpretation of the Industrial Revolution and how these viewpoints can be used to analyze the divergence between the \"West\" and the \"East\". \n\nThe \"Western interpretation\" of the industrial revolution that I know of revolves around three key figures: Adam Smith, Max Weber, and Karl Marx. Not all them are historians, but they all construct frameworks through which they examined the industrial revolution in Europe and used their models to extrapolate its impact on humanity and its potential for the future. \n\nSmith focused on productivity and labor, and argued that specialization of labor (or division of labor) optimizes productivity, with trade as naturally connecting various specialized outputs. He rejected the mercantilist view that the accumulation of money as the ultimate objective. Marx saw the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism as a necessary development stage, but that the resulting greed and societal pressures would lead to socialism, the movement beyond capitalism to socialism being inevitable. Weber focused on cultural primacy, that Protestant ethic uniquely enabled Northern Europe to thrive ahead of Southern Europe, and by extension, the rest of the world. \n\nAll three views argued against each other. \n\nWhen the same approaches are used in analyzing East Asia (I'm excluding Russia because I am not an expert, and I can only postulate Russia follows the Marxist view), the focus of the analysis is usually on the so-called *Great Divergence*, which is the comparative study of Europe versus Asia as the former overcame early modern growth constraints and thus pulled well ahead of the latter. \n\nThe Smithist view is simple: that Asian countries faced hurdles in their evolution toward the Smithian utopia, namely the various wars, trade restrictions imposed by colonial powers, Opium Wars, etc. The Marxist view is similar and to some degree an extension, in that Europe was able to draw wealth from the colonies, thus accelerate Europe's headlong entry into the industrial revolution and capitalism (and thus arguing it naturally will enter Marxism). Whereas Asian countries themselves are left behind because they were stuck in a pre-capitalist state. \nThe Weberist view is that Asian cultures and societies had impediments in organizing themselves efficiently.\n\nAnd now, on to the *Asian Revisionist school*.\n\nThe general arguments tend to focus on either disagreements on the level of divergence that actually developed over time, in particular in the critical period of the 1500-1800. There are many aspects to this, of course. One is the military aspect, where arguments tend to be around levels of technology (Europeans had major advantages in guns! and in sailing technology! and in astronomy! and in pre-scientific thinking!) or levels of industrialization (Europeans could build more guns better and cheaper! Europeans could organize trade better!). The Revisionist school argues that China too went through its industrial revolution, evident in that China produced many goods of high value that were desirable in Europe. \n\nOther arguments tend to focus on Marxist and Weberist views. The argument against the Marxist view is that while the ultimate goal of an utopian Marxist society, the path toward that tend to be seen as a strictly theoretical construct, as the impact of capitalism on Asian countries is very different than its impact on European countries. Some insist they are the same, some argue they are very different. Weberists have done comparative studies of Asian countries in the 19th-20th centuries, in particular in analyzing the rise of Japan as a major power. They tend to praise Japan's successful centralization of power, and military consolidation, in similar fashion to a Smithist view. \n\nThe are many studies into Asian cultures and religions done through a Weberists perspective. The Eurocentric Weberist perspective is fairly straightforward: they highlight protestant work ethic and tried to measure the degree and potential of Asian societies approaching the same ethics. The non-Eurocentric perspective examines the political realities of Asian societies and countries to identify enabling factors and hurdle factors toward an efficient ordered society. \n\nSo in summary, there are two lines of disagreement among the so-called Revisionists. One is on the reality of the Great Divergence during the period of the industrial revolution. Another is on how Europe and Asia evolved and impacted each other in this period. \n\nWant to know more? See Pomeranz' *The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy*, 2000. ", "created_utc": 1472758832, "distinguished": null, "id": "d75t6dk", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/50m2xw/do_historians_in_china_japan_and_russia_largely/d75t6dk/", "score": 133 } ]

[ { "body": "Hi there -- you may be interested in [this recent answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p1oj44/someone_on_an_ask_reddit_thread_claimed_research/h8f4jfa/) by /u/iphikrates to a very similar question. The short answer is that mills themselves do not an industrial world make -- the process of industrialization requires many more contingent factors, such as a concentration of capital, a supply of labor, a demand for the product being produced, etc. This is much like the mistaken assumption that the printing press led to a demand for written material -- the demand for written material drove the invention of the press, not the other way around.", "created_utc": 1628800976, "distinguished": null, "id": "h8p82uv", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/p3882r/how_did_the_barbegal_mills_from_ancient_rome_not/h8p82uv/", "score": 7 } ]