Sound like a familiar argument? :)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-americas-aim-was-empire-1481924308

The pain of the past: Lessons from a fight between economists and historians | The Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2016/12/pain-past

Using our class historical frame for current events

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/opinion/sunday/when-borders-close.html

California's Indian Population

"For over a quarter-century, Madley shows how the region became a quilt of many killing fields. Of the estimated 80 percent decline in the California Indian population during these years, around 40 percent has been attributed to outright "extermination killings" alone.":

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/11/24/indians-slaves-and-mass-murder-the-hidden-history/

Maps on the Web — A map of what Columbus expected the world to look...

http://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/151659032840/a-map-of-what-columbus-expected-the-world-to-look

Off stage in our class, what happens to France at the global economics level after helping the birth of the United States

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/09/28/2174991/the-euro-crisis-and-the-french-revolution/

Hits some of our points from last night in different ways and from a different angle

(Remember, you can jump the paywall with a google search)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-necessity-of-taking-up-arms-1472845975

I'm not on board with this book review, but....

This first line certainly caught my attention as it would relate to the argument I'm making for our class:

"In the great Iberian empires of the 16th and 17th centuries, a career was already avail-able in global administration not very different from the lives of the bankers or lawyers who globe-trot today."

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/the-pacific-ocean-really-was-mare-incognitum-for-the-early-navigators/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20161001_Culture_House_37

The issue of the "return" on a college education came up in discussion. Here's a look at it.

"In any event, if we index the wage growth of college grads with the cost of attending college since 2001, the picture that emerges is not very pretty.":

Skip the first market summary to get to the student loan part:

https://macro-man.blogspot.in/2016/09/the-student-loan-debacle.html?m=1

Douglass paper prompt

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7l8we3xyyrk2czy/Douglass%20paper%20prompt.pdf?dl=0

Do me a quick favor?

Can anyone let me know if Android and Windows open this and it looks ok?

https://www.icloud.com/pages/0JvYsV8m1bhmAh_B222evcO_w#Syllabus

Has a noticeable bias in approach, but interesting way of framing global trade issues

You can jump the paywall by googling the title:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-risks-of-trading-abroad-from-mesopotamia-to-apple-1473434334

That mosquito vector question

You can jump the Journal's paywall (with a monthly limit, I think?) by typing the title of the article into Google.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mosquitoes-are-deadly-so-why-not-kill-them-all-1472827158

The legacy of slavery in Brazil

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21706510-american-thinking-about-race-starting-influence-brazil-country-whose-population

Saw this on a history listserv with the title "We are so f**ked"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/02/meet-the-parents-who-wont-let-their-children-study-literature/?utm_term=.25286e548066

A thoughtful piece.

http://chronicle.com/article/It-s-Time-to-Ditch-Our/237530/?cid=VTKT1

Ooooops

I just realized I meant Ibn Battuta (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta) when I mentioned the anecdote about walking across Eurasia! Sorry!

A visualization of the class theme

Unfortunately it's highly Eurocentric, but the concept still shows well:

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/watch-2600-years-of-culture-grow-and-die?utm_source=tcpfbusads

Hello Fall 2016!

If you want to get a feel for the kind of themes we are going to deal with this semester, check out the posts below. I clear out old lecture notes every semester, but leave everything else. :)

Legacies of Atlantic slavery

http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21698805-one-about-hold-elections-other-has-not-had-proper-government-months

Your framing of history always becomes political

I think you can see the basic framework of our class being discussed here:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86c8faa8-1696-11e6-9d98-00386a18e39d.html

Great quote find

Hat/tip to Toren for this one:

"Slavery did not end because everyone became moral," he says. "The reason slavery ended is because we had an industrial revolution that made man's muscles obsolete. For the last 150 years, the economy has been based on man's mind. Capitalism, it turns out, works better when people are chasing a carrot rather than being hit with a stick. 

Found here: http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-george-hotz-self-driving-car/

Remember yellow fever from earlier lectures?

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21698597-unwelcome-resurgence-outbreak-yellow-fever-angola-could-go-global

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

https://www.openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/us-history

Another book with similar themes to the class

I'm sorry the NYRB is paywalled, but I do honestly think it is well-worth paying for a subscription. I consider it the premier intellectual journal in English, and it's only $6 or so a month.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/21/silk-roads-different-vision-of-history/

Those coal-gas holders I referred to tonight

Here's a picture of the famous one I mentioned outside the cricket pitch in London:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/picture/2010/aug/19/1

And here's a good piece on their history:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_holder

Another brilliant, apropos essay, and again paywalled. :(

I don't think you can use Google to jump the paywall with the NYRB like you can with the WSJ:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/07/mysterious-brilliant-frederick-douglass/

Paywalled, alas...

But this piece is amazingly apropos of Tuesday's lecture:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/britains-canvas-wings-1458328576

"Contact" between highly differential cultures in the contemporary world. Amazing story.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/world/asia/india-jarawas-child-murder.html?_r=1&referer=

And another....

This one is a different kind of model based in technological change, but I think that, in a bank-shot sort of way, it also sets up an economic model of historical causation that is worth thinking about:

https://stratechery.com/2016/the-voters-decide/

Those discussions last night on how to talk about politics without it being so frustrating?

I think this is an excellent first pass at modeling an economic causation to current politics

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/opinion/campaign-stops/why-trump-now.html

A lot of commentary recently on the nature of higher education. Here's one side of the debate.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/opinion/dont-turn-away-from-the-art-of-life.html

Don't worry about all the crazy details and examples I use for the points I try to make!

Several students wondered if they needed to remember things about Proto Indo-European and such. Nope! I'm only interested in people seeing the big picture of my story. The stuff tonight was sort of about the underlying idea before the story even begins.

As a matter of fact, I think you guys will be the last students to hear the specific points I was trying to make tonight. I think they are just too theoretical, and I need to move into the meat of our class quicker next time.

I'll post the notes here later after I do some re-arranging as I'm moving stuff I didn't get to tonight to next week. Don't worry-- it's less theoretical and more "down to business" next week! :)

Hello Spring Semester!

Back to school! :)