April 29, 2013 – 10:00 am
Adam Smith called the crossing of the Atlantic by Columbus and rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama the greatest events in human history. They led to, for the first time, a truly global trading economy, where the Eurasian trade economy was extended to, and profoundly changed by contact with, the Americas. [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Economics, History
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Also tagged Adam Smith, Atlantic passage, Bank of France, bills of exchange, bimetallism, Black Death, Brazil, British East India Company, British Empire, Castile, cavalry, chariots, china, Christopher Columbus, clipper ships, coin debasement, Constantinople, Crisis of the 3rd Century, Deng Xiaoping, Eastern Roman Empire, eunuchs, Eurasian disease pool, Eurozone, FDR, Ferdinand II of Aragon, foraging, forced labour, foreign humiliations, globalisation, gold standard, Granada, Great Depression, Han dynasty, horses, Indian Ocean, industrial revolution, Isabella of Castile, knight service, labour camps, Mamluk Egypt, medium of account, medium of exchange, mercantilism, Music, Nazism, nomads, opium, Opium Wars, Ottoman Empire, Peasants' Revolt, Portugal, price level, Price Revolution, Prince Henry the Navigator, Qin dynasty, Qing dynasty, railways, Reconquista, Roman Empire, russia, Saharan passage, selenium, serfdom, Sharia, silk, Silk Road, silver, silver standard, slave trade, slavery, Spain, spices, Stalinism, steamships, Sudan, Suez Canal, Thirteenth Amendment, Trebizond, US Constitution, US Federal Reserve, Vasco da Gama, West Africa, Western Roman Empire, WWI
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February 19, 2013 – 9:15 am
In a his excellent The World Is Not Enough blog, Charles Richardson comments on an essay by Israeli journalist Yossi Gurvitz. Gurvitz’s essay applies the analogy of Germans expelled from the Sudetenland, Silesia, Prussia etc after 1945 to the Palestinians expelled from Israel in 1947-48. As Charles notes, it is a revealing analogy. But revealing not [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in History, Human/Civil rights, Immigration, Middle east, Politics, Public Policy, Religion, The Left, The Right
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Also tagged Algerian Civil War, Arab Spring, Arab-Israeli conflict, Armenian Genocide, Auschwitz, Charles Richardson, Christian exodus, debt bondage, EU, Fascism, Greece, Haj Amin al Husseini, Hamidian massacres, Israel, Israeli Defence Force, Israeli Labour movement, Lebanese Civil War, Likud, Nazism, population exchange, refugees, scapegoat, Shin Bet, Sudanese Civil Wars, Syrian civil war, the holocaust, Turkey, Yossi Gurvitz
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January 24, 2013 – 9:30 am
First, a minor bit of boasting. I occasionally submit pieces to Agora, the journal of the History Teachers of Australia Victoria (HTAV). They are doing a “reprint” edition, the best of the last five years, and two of my essays will be included: Finding Patterns in Ancient Civilisations Agora No.3 Vol.43 2008 Discovery, Connection and [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in History, Public Policy
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Also tagged Adam Garfinkle, agora, Algerian Civil War, Bomber Offensive, Carter Administration, Cold War, Cold warriors, Great Patriotic War, HTAV, jihadi, Jihadi War, Luftwaffe, mujahideen, nazi germany, Soviet-Afghan War, Zbiginiew Brzezinski
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January 8, 2013 – 9:30 am
The always worth reading Prof. Gene Callahan recently posted – citing Jared Diamond’s example of warfare among the Dani of New Guinea — that violence is rooted in human nature, not the state. Prof. Callahan observes: The problem isn’t the State: the problem is human beings. And the problem with admitting that problem is you’re not left [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Defence, Drugs, Economics, History, Law, Personal liberty, Public Policy, Religion, Technology
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Also tagged democide, Gene Callahan, gun control, homicide rates, Jared Diamond, monopoly, Nazism, paradox of politics, paradox of rulership, R J Rummel, Somalia, Steve Sailor, steven pinker, violence, war on drugs
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November 12, 2012 – 9:30 am
The BBC recently noted that interest rates on public debt in the Eurozone varied according to the religious majority of the population — Orthodox Greece had the highest interest rates, followed by the Catholic countries with the Protestant countries having the lowest. Interest rates being a measure of risk, this represented clear market judgements on [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in History, Law, Middle east, Politics, Public Policy, Religion
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Also tagged catholicism, consanguinity, crime, Fascism, islam, Jacobin, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Nazism, Orthodox, protestantism, Sharia, sola scriptura, Srdja Trifkovic, trust
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October 16, 2012 – 9:30 am
We think of the World Wars of the C20th as being unprecedented in their death tolls. That is not true in either total deaths or, still less, death rates. While the 1939-45 War did have the largest death toll of any war in history, the 1914-19 War does not come second. When one considers the huge [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in History, Law, Philosophy, Public Policy, Religion, Technology
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Also tagged chaos, china, Confucianism, north korea, order, war
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October 2, 2012 – 9:30 am
I recently had the unexpected experience of reading a book that appalled me; this is not a reaction I can remember having to a book before. The book has a title I agree with: Ideas Have Consequences. Regarded as a classic text of postwar American conservatism, the book is a long jeremiad at the corruption [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Books, History, Philosophy, Politics, Society, Technology, The Right
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Also tagged Beethoven, Dostoyevsky, Etienne Gilson, Great Depression, Impressionism, Jazz, Modernism, nominalism, Plato, Richard Weaver, Scientific Revolution, steven pinker, Walter Bagehot, William of Ockham
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