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, Leninism, 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, 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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The combination of the Melbourne heatwave, being very busy at work (having to get up a 5.30am in the morning to beat the traffic then doing a full day’s presentation teaching takes it out of me) and an obsessive writing project have meant I have not been around much. Apologies for that. When I have [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Blogging, History, Law, Politics, Popular culture, Public Policy, Saturday chit-chat
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Also tagged Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Day Lewis, Eastern Front, Lincoln the movie, spam, Thirteenth Amendment, US democrats, US republicans, WWII
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December 1, 2012 – 9:02 am
Today I came across an interesting post, via Letters of Note, which details a letter which a former slave, Jourdon Anderson, wrote to his former master, Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee. Colonel Anderson had written to Jourdon Anderson, requesting him to come back to work on his farm. According to sources of the [...]
September 6, 2012 – 4:16 pm
The war aim of the victorious North in the the War Between the States was simple — that the Union not be divided. As Abraham Lincoln put it, the Union position was “We won’t go out of the Union, and you shan’t”. The Northern victory was, indeed, the Union victory. Freeing the slaves was a natural outcome [...]
September 5, 2012 – 5:53 pm
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. (L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between) I was forcibly reminded of the truth of Hartley’s statement while undertaking some legal research today. I have been conducting research into the doctrine of specific performance, which is when a court orders a party to a contract to perform [...]
By Legal Eagle
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Posted in Academia, England, History, Human/Civil rights, Law, Personal liberty, scotland, Society
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Also tagged abolition, Equity, History, James Somerset, Joseph Knight, Lord Hardwicke, Lord Mansfield, pearne v lisle, serfs, slave labour, slaves, Somersett's Case, specific performance
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There have been two great transformations in human affairs. One is the Neolithic Revolution, the transition from foraging to farming. This is a transformation which is still going on, as there are still some foraging groups around the planet (though it is a vanishing way of life). The second is the Industrial Revolution, the shift [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Economics, History, Immigration, Law, Middle east, Public Policy, Taxation, Technology, Welfare
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Also tagged ancient history, Assyria, Babylonia, chaos, demography, Edward I, Egypt, Evsey Domar, farming, foraging, indigenous issues, industrial revolution, information economics, Karl Wittfogel, Law, Malthusian, Mesopotamia, Neolithic revolution, order, parliament, property, raiding, Religion, serfdom, Simon de Montfort, Sumeria, surplus, sweden, Time, transparency
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One of the more irritating historical memes is the preposterous notion that the American Civil War was not “really” about slavery, it was about tariffs and states rights. Fortunately, it is easy to demolish this claim for the historical canard it is. All one has to do is to read the Constitution of the Confederate [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Economics, History, Law, Public Policy
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Also tagged Abraham Lincoln, American Civil War, American Revolution, Amerindians, australia, Australian politics, Belgium, British Crown, Canada, Civil Rights Acts, Confederate States of America, CSA Constitution, Federalist papers, Federation, Founding Fathers, free trade, Habsburgs, indigenous issues, land hunger, Low Countries, nativism, Patrick Henry, Robert Fogel, Samuel Johnson, secession, Somersett's Case, states rights, tariffs, Thomas Paine, Thomas Sowell, trade policy, US Constitution, US Declaration of Independence, US politics
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My nomination for the most misleading metaphor in modern philosophy is John Locke’s notion that, in a state of nature, one mixes one’s labour with something to rreate property. In John Locke’s words: The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out [...]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Australia, Economics, History, Law, Middle east
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Also tagged australia, comparative advantage, corruption, Economics, Elinor Ostrom, India, insurance, John Locke, John R Commons, Karl Marx, Law, permit raj, property rights, warranties
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February 7, 2012 – 3:56 pm
Via The Australian today, I see that PETA has filed a case against Sea World on behalf of dolphins, whom it claims are enslaved: US District Judge Jeffrey Miller called the hearing in San Diego after Sea World asked the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) [...]
August 11, 2011 – 8:01 pm
[SL: there was a time, not so long ago, when conservatives and libertarians could afford to be smug about the intellectual miasma in which left-liberals and progressives had lost themselves. It is unfortunate--and does us little credit--that when a decent number of left-liberals reacted in horror to the colonisation of their political tradition by postmodernism [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Posted in Economics, Guest Post, Law, Philosophy, Politics, Science, Skeptics, Terrorism, The Left, The Right
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Also tagged Adam Smith, American Revolution, common law, conservatism, Edmund Burke, French Revolution, Inflation, Modernism, monetary policy, Norman Geras, postmodernism, Samuel Johnson, Scopes Trial, Tories, torture, US Civil War, Western Civilisation, Whigs, William Jennings Bryan
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