They brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned. . . They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They would make fine servants . . . with fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
What This Cruel War Was Over, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it.
.. Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman’s body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas.
.. You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.
.. I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. If the worm-eaten throne of Spain is willing to give it for a fair equivalent, well—if not, we must take it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican Stats; and I want them all for the same reason—for the planting and spreading of slavery.
.. Thus in 1861, when the Civil War began, the Union did not face a peaceful Southern society wanting to be left alone. It faced an an aggressive power, a Genosha, an entire society based on the bondage of a third of its residents, with dreams of expanding its fields of the bondage further South. It faced the dream of a vast American empire of slavery.
.. Fighting for slavery presented problems abroad, and so Confederate diplomats came up with the notion of emphasizing “states rights” over “slavery”—the first manifestation of what would later become a plank in the foundation of Lost Cause mythology.
.. “I’ve never heard of any other cause than slavery,” wrote Confederate commander John S. Mosby. The progeny of the Confederacy repeatedly invoked slavery as the war’s cause.
.. This mythology of manners is adopted in lieu of the mythology of the Lost Cause. But it still has the great drawback of being rooted in a lie. The Confederate flag should not come down because it is offensive to African Americans. The Confederate flag should come down because it is embarrassing to all Americans.
What Caused Capitalism?
Since the future seems up for grabs, so is the past. Chances are, if a historian’s narrative of the European miracle and the rise of capitalism is upbeat, the prognosis for the West will be good, whereas if the tale is not so triumphal, the forecast will be more ominous. A recent spate of books about the history of global capitalism gives readers the spectrum.
.. Only a few in the periphery, such as Japan, got the mimicry right
.. Mokyr, for instance, has championed the view that capitalism owes its existence to the cognitive, cultural, and intellectual breakthrough that came about as the scientific revolution swept Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
.. “A successful economy . . . needs not only rules that determine how the economic game is played, it needs rules to change the rules if necessary in a way that is as costless as possible. In other words, it needs meta-institutions that change the institutions, and whose changes will be accepted even by those who stand to lose from these changes.
.. The internalist narrative has long been shadowed by an externalist rival, which sees Europe’s leap forward as dependent on relations with places beyond Europe. Externalists summon a different battery of action verbs. Instead of “coordinating” or “interacting,” the system favored “exploiting” and “submitting.”
.. After the American Civil War, King Cotton fell on hard times, because Brazilian, Egyptian, and Indian estates could hire displaced peasants more cheaply than freed slaves.
.. His description of the American Civil War as “an acid test for the entire industrial order” is a brilliant example of how global historians might tackle events—as opposed to focusing on structures, processes, and networks—because he shows how the crisis of the U.S. cotton economy reverberated in Brazil, Egypt, and India. The scale of what Beckert has accomplished is astonishing.
Of all the superpowers, which one has had the most net positive effect on the world?
Athens were great before Peloponnesus War. It ruled by law instead of tyranny.
.. Rome was great during its growth phase. It had a robust republican system, built roads and aqueducts, emancipated the conquered people, and for the first time in history, provided a path for them to become full Roman citizens. This was the first time when being conquered did not automatically mean death and slavery. It meant that one paid the price, and then had a chance to become a full Roman citizen and even rose up to be the Emperor.
.. The commonality here is obvious – given the existing “norm”, for a nation to become great, it has to offer something better than “the norm”, both to themselves and to others. That was how these nations gained power and influence. But once a nation becomes great, it invariably tries to hold on to what it has by any means necessary, thus it becomes a conservative power for status quo, instead of incremental improvement.