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Controversial Historical Opinions You Have

It's a song that requires somebody be a trained vocalist to not mangle, and given that, it's not even that good.

It's also a song about an inconsequential battle in a war nobody cares about.
 
Admitedly Baltimore was the third largest city in the United States which if the british which would have been wiped off the map and would have pretty much crippled US privateer operations, but of course the british crippled their own plans by burning DC which unlike Baltimore wasn't their main target which pretty much led to their defeat at Baltimore.

As far as American Anthems go though Hail Columbia used during the 18th, 19th and early twentieth century is vastly superior to the Current US anthem and in my view any other one save for the French anthem.
 
Yeah looking at the underlying causes behind the Luddiites its not hard to see why they were angry and it wasn't simply because they hated machines as they often did in fact use machines.
 
Allow me to just drop this quote.

"Such conditions had a dramatic impact on workers' health: When the Saxon government sough tto recruit soldiers in the 1850s, only 16 percent of spinners and 18 percent of weavers were deemed healthy enough to serve."
--Empire of Cotton, Sven Beckert, p. 194

*****

Hey kids (and I do mean children under the age of ten), how would you like to work longer hours for less money, and be so sick you can't even be dragged off by the government to die in one of their wars, and stand a rather large chance, in fact, of dying before you grow old, and not in some cool rebel way, either?

Let me clarify something. In 1837, a commission on Alsatian factory conditions suggested, and let this be noted that this is at least a minor reform, that "children age eight to ten be limited to ten hours of work per day; twelve hours for children ten to fourteen; and thirteen hours per day for children fourteen to sixteen."--Empire of Cotton, p. 189-90

Eight year olds working more than ten hours every day was seen as typical, and reducing it to ten was seen as an actual reform. Which the factories fought, mind.
 
The Laurent said:
Allow me to just drop this quote.

"Such conditions had a dramatic impact on workers' health: When the Saxon government sough tto recruit soldiers in the 1850s, only 16 percent of spinners and 18 percent of weavers were deemed healthy enough to serve."
--Empire of Cotton, Sven Beckert, p. 194

*****

Hey kids (and I do mean children under the age of ten), how would you like to work longer hours for less money, and be so sick you can't even be dragged off by the government to die in one of their wars, and stand a rather large chance, in fact, of dying before you grow old, and not in some cool rebel way, either?

Let me clarify something. In 1837, a commission on Alsatian factory conditions suggested, and let this be noted that this is at least a minor reform, that "children age eight to ten be limited to ten hours of work per day; twelve hours for children ten to fourteen; and thirteen hours per day for children fourteen to sixteen."--Empire of Cotton, p. 189-90

Eight year olds working more than ten hours every day was seen as typical, and reducing it to ten was seen as an actual reform. Which the factories fought, mind.
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I always wondered about this specific number in Beckert's work because I could never find comparable numbers for workers in other fields. However the literature on how miserable early factory work was is so well established that it really doesn't matter to his overall point. I would even go so far as to say that within academia the position that the Luddites were justified or at least understandable is the current mainstream view.

I suppose my controversial opinion is that Beckert and other major New History of Capitalism books are deeply flawed in their analyses of the origins of the Industrial Revolution and mostly get that story wrong. That said, I do think they make major contributions to understanding the practice of slavery in the American South.
 
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Dromon said:
I always wondered about this specific number in Beckert's work because I could never find comparable numbers for workers in other fields. However the literature on how miserable early factory work was is so well established that it really doesn't matter to his overall point. I would even go so far as to say that within academia the position that the Luddites were justified or at least understandable is the current mainstream view.

I suppose my controversial opinion is that Beckert and other major New History of Capitalism books are deeply flawed in their analyses of the origins of the Industrial Revolution but more successful as studies of the practice of the Southern slavery in America.
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Oh, can you clarify? Or, rather, what is your analysis of the origin of the Industrial Revolution?

I'm actually genuinely curious.
 
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Vyslanté said:
The role of a ship for shore bombardment or land support might not be dead; specific giant ships with giant cannons and fucktons of armor are, on the other hand, quite useless nowadays.
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Now days a single 4.5 inch shell can be directed with the precision to do the work of 9 16 inch shells.
 
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Sulemain said:
Controversial opinion: the British (and French at that point) should have started strategic air raids on Germany the moment war was declared.
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All this achieves is wiping out Bomber Command enough that they won't play any role in the Battle of Britain or anything else.


Allied strategic bombing was utterly useless and impotent against Germany in the early years of the war and literally did nothing other than throw away valuable aircrew for zero gain.
 
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The Laurent said:
Oh, can you clarify? Or, rather, what is your analyses of the origin of the Industrial Revolution?

I'm actually genuinely curious.
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To caveat this a bit, I think that the origin of the Industrial Revolution is one of the the most interesting and contested questions in history today. I don't think anyone has offered a complete answer on this topic, and as such I am more certain Beckert and those in his camp are wrong more than someone else is right.

In my eye the Industrial Revolution is first and foremost a productivity revolution driven by technology. Any theory that explains the Industrial Revolution needs to successfully explain why this technological innovation occurred. I think the explanation that I would tentatively endorse would be the High Wage Theory of Robert Allen (the basics of his theory are laid on in this paper) as the most convincing explanation of the Industrial Revolution in current scholarship. Basically, imperial trade in the pre-Industrial Revolution period drove wages up in Britain, making the use of technological substitutes for labor profitable on a wide scale. This supplied the demand for labor substitutes that then drives the Industrial Revolution. This sort of theory is the kind I think you need to explain the productivity explosion of the period.

Beckert and others in his camp, in my view, do not provide a convincing explanation for the technological explosion that characterized the Industrial Revolution as opposed to other epochs of economic expansion. I feel they over-emphasize slavery and imperial extraction at the expense of factors. There is no reason why mass extraction should lead to the productivity explosion of the Industrial Revolution; it hadn't in past imperial periods nor in Spain or Portugal even in the Early Modern period. Beckert and others like him also emphasize cotton as it is both the most international and most obviously extractive industry in the period. However, they do this at the expense of the other major industries of the Industrial Revolution such as coal and steel which are equally if not more important to the success of the Industrial Revolution. I don't think you can discount these industries, nor is the high claim of cotton's necessity for the Industrial Revolution proven. Was cotton important to the industrial revolution? Obviously yes, but it cannot be taken as necessary for the Industrial Revolution as I think Beckert and others make it.

Beyond the question of theory, I also think Beckert just gets wrong significant parts of the global cotton trade during this period. This article really rips into the Beckert, Johnson, and Baptist from the perspective of economic history and points out some significant errors in their analysis. Beckert comes in for less criticism than his fellows, but his errors around labor costs in the American South are particularly gnawing. Even an elementary understanding of American economic history should show that even slave labor was not "cheap" in the US South.

In my view Beckert is too eager to promote the necessity of cotton to the Industrial Revolution and hence center slavery as the primary cause. Its just places too much on a theoretical assumption of primitive accumulation contra to the evidence. This all said I do think Beckert provides an overall strong analysis of cotton as a commodity even if his greater theory of capitalism is dead on arrival. Baptist is on much shakier ground and I think he is basically wrong about what drove cotton productivity in the South.

None of this is to diminish the obvious cruelties and evil of slavery. This analysis is also focused on the origination of the Industrial Revolution in Britain; the necessity and critical role of slavery in the American Industrial Revolution specifically is I think a much stronger case (though this debate rages with equal ferocity).
 
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Dromon said:
To caveat this a bit, I think that the origin of the Industrial Revolution is one of the the most interesting and contested questions in history today. I don't think anyone has offered a complete answer on this topic, and as such I am more certain Beckert and those in his camp are wrong more than someone else is right.

In my eye the Industrial Revolution is first and foremost a productivity revolution driven by technology. Any theory that explains the Industrial Revolution needs to successfully explain why this technological innovation occurred. I think the explanation that I would tentatively endorse would be the High Wage Theory of Robert Allen (the basics of his theory are laid on in this paper) as the most convincing explanation of the Industrial Revolution in current scholarship. Basically, imperial trade in the pre-Industrial Revolution period drove wages up in Britain, making the use of technological substitutes for labor profitable on a wide scale. This supplied the demand for labor substitutes that then drives the Industrial Revolution. This sort of theory is the kind I think you need to explain the productivity explosion of the period.

Beckert and others in his camp, in my view, do not provide a convincing explanation for the technological explosion that characterized the Industrial Revolution as opposed to other epochs of economic expansion. I feel they over-emphasize slavery and imperial extraction at the expense of factors. There is no reason why mass extraction should lead to the productivity explosion of the Industrial Revolution; it hadn't in past imperial periods nor in Spain or Portugal even in the Early Modern period. Beckert and others like him also emphasize cotton as it is both the most international and most obviously extractive industry in the period. However, they do this at the expense of the other major industries of the Industrial Revolution such as coal and steel which are equally if not more important to the success of the Industrial Revolution. I don't think you can discount these industries, nor is the high claim of cotton's necessity for the Industrial Revolution proven. Was cotton important to the industrial revolution? Obviously yes, but it cannot be taken as necessary for the Industrial Revolution as I think Beckert and others make it.

Beyond the question of theory, I also think Beckert just gets wrong significant parts of the global cotton trade during this period. This article really rips into the Beckert, Johnson, and Baptist from the perspective of economic history and points out some significant errors in their analysis. Beckert comes in for less criticism than his fellows, but his errors around labor costs in the American South are particularly gnawing. Even an elementary understanding of American economic history should show that even slave labor was not "cheap" in the US South.

In my view Beckert is too eager to promote the necessity of cotton to the Industrial Revolution and hence center slavery as the primary cause. Its just places too much on a theoretical assumption of primitive accumulation contra to the evidence. This all said I do think Beckert provides an overall strong analysis of cotton as a commodity even if his greater theory of capitalism is dead on arrival. Baptist is on much shakier ground and I think he is basically wrong about what drove cotton productivity in the South.

None of this is to diminish the obvious cruelties and evil of slavery. This analysis is also focused on the origination of the Industrial Revolution in Britain; the necessity and critical role of slavery in the American Industrial Revolution specifically is I think a much stronger case (though this debate rages with equal ferocity).
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I'm actually probably closest to some sort of Social/Culture/etc historian than an economic one, so a lot of this definitely would have gone over my head without hearing the other side of things. Though I do know that slave labor is far from cheap, though one supposes one would have to compare it to the costs of non-slave labor doing the same work, and whether they'd tolerate the same conditions, to which the answer would seem to be no? But then again, non-slave-labor can grow cotton, they just didn't think it could.

Hmm, other comments. It seems that Imperial Trade is something that can't be entirely divorced from Imperial Extraction/etc, or at least it seems like it might be all of a kind. One thing I was sort of frowning about in a way thus far (halfway through the book, it's for a class, actually) is to what extent Industrial Capitalism and War Capitalism can even be divided. He emphasizes, for these concepts, the way they work hand in hand, but... I'm not sure.

(On a completely different topic, I've actually seen Edward Baptist speak on his Policing African-Americans work, and it was a really excellent speech. Which doesn't say anything about whether or not I'd agree with the conclusions of a full monograph, but seeing as I saw his name mentioned, I thought that providing some personal character might improve this post, as it were. :V)

(On a not that different note, do you have a history degree, or are you just an interested and clearly literate-in-the-theoretical-field and capable of discussing it seriously non-academic historian?)
 
Sentinel 677 said:
All this achieves is wiping out Bomber Command enough that they won't play any role in the Battle of Britain or anything else.


Allied strategic bombing was utterly useless and impotent against Germany in the early years of the war and literally did nothing other than throw away valuable aircrew for zero gain.
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All true. I guess in a wider sense I think the allies should have gone on the offensive in 1939.
 
Sulemain said:
All true. I guess in a wider sense I think the allies should have gone on the offensive in 1939.
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The French did, and then promptly got into a salient and nommed on for their troubles. Problems in the command and tentative commanders really slowed them down, though.
 
Oh, oh, here's one:

The Holy Roman Empire had a legitimate claim to being the Roman successor-- at least as much as the Byzantines.
 
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