Europe and the world… sins of the past… what could have we done to avoid our current situation?

[Rorshach]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

The third problem is that it's not so easy to know for certain what the rates of infant mortality looked like prior to the industrial revolution ; as I said before, the case has been made that the IR initially brought life expectancy down, and I think it's easy to see how life could be worse for factory workers in the city slums than for peasants in the countryside.

Just on a tangent here, but I don't think I caught the source for this? I'd be interested if you could share (again, probably).

The first question that comes to my mind given the short argument above is "but why did they all then move to the cities?". I can think of reasons like "they were told it would be better" and "there were more opportunities" and such, but the movement in itself is a small indication that the country life wasn't all that.

As we're seeing population growth here, it does conicide with land being divided into too small pieces to make a living from. That probably explains some. 

Anyways, I'd love to see the source

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, Rorschach - 2 said:

Just on a tangent here, but I don't think I caught the source for this? I'd be interested if you could share (again, probably).

The first question that comes to my mind given the short argument above is "but why did they all then move to the cities?". I can think of reasons like "they were told it would be better" and "there were more opportunities" and such, but the movement in itself is a small indication that the country life wasn't all that.

As we're seeing population growth here, it does conicide with land being divided into too small pieces to make a living from. That probably explains some. 

Anyways, I'd love to see the source

Chad has a similar income per head to the U.K. in 1820. Chad’s average life expectancy is 52, infant mortality is 70 per 1,000, and about 40% of children aged 5-14 attend school, at least on a part time basis.  That’s rather better than the U.K. was achieving back then, but should give an idea of what the world would be like without industrialisation.

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, Rorschach - 2 said:

Just on a tangent here, but I don't think I caught the source for this? I'd be interested if you could share (again, probably).

The first question that comes to my mind given the short argument above is "but why did they all then move to the cities?". I can think of reasons like "they were told it would be better" and "there were more opportunities" and such, but the movement in itself is a small indication that the country life wasn't all that.

As we're seeing population growth here, it does conicide with land being divided into too small pieces to make a living from. That probably explains some. 

Anyways, I'd love to see the source

The impact was mixed.  Wages and housing  conditions were generally better for factory workers than for farm labourers, but urban areas would be swept by pandemics, such as cholera and scarlet fever.  

Statista gives a very gradual rise in English average life expectancy, from 38 to 43, between 1780-1880, then accelerating to 73 by 1980.

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Rorschach - 2 said:

why did they all then move to the cities

Easy answer -- enclosures of what were pubic lands for growing food, animal forage, gathering the bounty of nuts, lumber, fishing etc., as more and more of what They came to call 'wastelands' came under the ownership of the wealthy.  People driven off the lands they'd farmed as tenants to turn them to ever more pasturage for the cash crops such as wool -- o so many reasons.  Even the making of cheap manufactured lace that women used to make at home and sell annually to the buyers who would come through. So many reasons.  The more industrialization, the more the wealthy took everything in the country for their own, the less likely anyone could make a living in the country.  Sheesh, this isn't hard, it isn't even remedial 100.  Have none of you English speakers read anything about the decline of the small farmer in England in the 18th C > throughout the 19th and 20th C?

Not to mention the death toll for women in all this time -- reason why every woman at a recent round table of the perennial, What period would you live in from the past if you could?" said not until the 1960's and birth control, reproductive rights and choice, and men keeping their filthy hands away from my birth canal during labor.

And again, of course, slave labor, which was rife in many areas through the 19th century, including USA YAY. Definitely kept down the life expectancy, just as now again, the death from childbirth and infant death -- the USA YAY is leading the world, way way way down there among African countries.

 

 

[DMC]

11 hours ago, Zorral said:

Definitely kept down the life expectancy, just as now again, the death from childbirth and infant death -- the USA YAY is leading the world, way way way down there among African countries.

The isn't true.  While it is true the US ranks at the bottom when compared to other industrialized democracies (e.g. OECD countries), overall the still rank 47th out of 201 countries in infant mortality rate, according to the UN.  Pretty much the same story when it comes to life expectancy.

[Rippounet]

15 hours ago, Rorschach - 2 said:

Just on a tangent here, but I don't think I caught the source for this? I'd be interested if you could share (again, probably).

Szreter would be my main source here (Simon Szreter and Graham Mooney. Urbanization, Mortality, and the Standard of Living Debate: New Estimates of the Expectation of Life at Birth in Nineteenth-Century British Cities. The Economic History Review (New Series), 51(1), 84–112 ; see also: Rapid economic growth and the 'four Ds' of disruption, deprivation, disease and death : public health lessons from nineteenth-century Britain for twenty-first-century China ?, Tropical Medicine & International Health 4(2) pp 146-152), but I won't pretend Engels and Marx aren't on my mind.

15 hours ago, Rorschach - 2 said:

The first question that comes to my mind given the short argument above is "but why did they all then move to the cities?".

As Zorral said: enclosures. Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi all talk about it.

14 hours ago, SeanF said:

Chad has a similar income per head to the U.K. in 1820.

Probably the only thing they have in common.

15 hours ago, SeanF said:

That’s rather better than the U.K. was achieving back then, but should give an idea of what the world would be like without industrialisation.

*without efficient public health policy.

Quote

Although these gains were not subsequently lost, there was no further significant increase in the national average for life expectancy at birth until the 1870s. In other words, the period of most impressive, rising economic growth rates, c.1800 to 1870, ensued in little if any health improvements for the nation as a whole.

and btw, it's well-known that life for the working class in the industrial cities of England was nasty:

Quote

Average life expectancy at birth for the inhabitants of Liverpool in 1841 was a mere 28 years and in Manchester it was 27 years. [...]

By the late 1840s, this was certainly not out of simple ignorance concerning the health threats they faced: the alarming death rates of different cities were well known and increasingly well publicized in the local press, with the annual and quarterly reports issuing from the GRO.

I think if anyone wants to know why life expectancy rose dramatically at the end of the 19th century in Europe, this page from the Encylopedia Britannica explains it.

It's very obvious that public health policies combined with improvements in scientific knowledge (i.e. Pasteur, Koch... etc) are what made life expectancy rise dramatically. Industrialisation played its part, in that at some point it became cheaper to actually improve the workers' standards of living than to deal with the consequences of the endemic diseases of the slums... Not sure the cynical calculations of the capitalists mean industrialisation should get the credit here...

 

[Zorral]

The opening chapters of Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower, way back in 1966,  the book which made her reputation as a public, vs. academic intellectual and historian -- because it became a massive Best Seller!, delineates life for the average working class person in the decades preceding WWI.  When the draft was levied then, to pump up Britain's army, a shocking number of the draftees were disqualified due to being so small, so frail, so mal-nourished, i.e. unhealthy.

A look at England, via William Cobbet -- particularly via his best known work, Rural Rides.

People moved out of the country to the urban world for all the reasons they still are -- there's no way to survive in their rural world -- most of them are essentially forced to.  Do you all not ever recall other discussions that are perennial on this very board about our own country's 'rural' population, and why they should move away? and condemning them for not leaving their 'rural' world?  Do you not understand all these same forces were in operation throughout the industrialization of production throughout Europe and the US?

Why do you think Marx and Engels were compelled to do their work?  Why were there so many 'reform' movements of everything both in Europe and the US in the later decades of the 19th century?  The living conditions for so many millions were horrendous.  

As for today, look at the stats for just the USA alone, and the numbers of children who are expected to go to bed hungry and go to school hungry.

 

[Here's Looking At You, Kid]

On 2/25/2022 at 8:49 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The abandonment of Poland… the abandonment of Eastern Europe… the creation of the “modern” Near East… the rape of Africa and Asia by Colonial powers.

What could we have realistically done differently?

This is to pull the historic debate out of the Ukraine thread:

discuss…

Scot. That's a rather big bag of many questions there.  I am not an academic by any means but I will try at some answers to specific current situations as I see it.  I will do my best to give you some answers without getting personal. I don't want the message to get lost. 

I do not believe in reparations for past injustices unless the people who are to receive them were the direct victims of the crime.  Life, the world, are just too complicated for us to determine who got hurt indirectly after many generations down the road of time.  Inequality is not necessarily the result of past or present oppression.  I firmly believe bad choices in life are the culprit.  The oppressors are all gone as well as their victims. 

Many blue (Liberal) American cities are in ruins because the mayors, district attorneys, and politicians have decided to remove culpability from those who are struggling in American society.  Liberal politicians perpetuate the lie that oppression is the cause of inequality and use this narrative as their stepping stones to power.  Never mind that it creates generations of angry people who got brain washed into believing their bad lot is not due to bad personal choices but rather done to them by oppressors.  This bitterness destroys hope.  The so-called "progressives" are allowing crime to happen in the name of social justice.  They release violent criminals from jails and prisons, in the name of social justice and equity.  Looting, theft, and muggings are on all time highs because the criminals are confident of protection from their mayors and district attorneys.  The result is tragedy and decreased quality of life for the tax-paying public whenever the democrats push policies to address inequality. 

What we should do is to let natural cause and effect play out.  Let's get rid of affirmative action.  Forget policing reform.  The people who have difficulty with the police are those who have trouble following and obeying the law.  If you spent your elementary and high school years misbehaving instead of learning and you end up struggling as an adult.  That is how it should be.  Expect to get arrested if you break the law.  

[SeanF]

When you read of some of the death tolls, across 5,000 years of recorded history, along with mass enslavement, mass rape, and recreational torture, I think it’s hard not to despair of human nature.

For sheer inventive cruelty, serving no purpose other than amusement, I think that either the Romans or the Assyrians came top.  Or perhaps, the Imperial Japanese Army.

[Rorshach]

18 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Szreter would be my main source here (Simon Szreter and Graham Mooney. Urbanization, Mortality, and the Standard of Living Debate: New Estimates of the Expectation of Life at Birth in Nineteenth-Century British Cities. The Economic History Review (New Series), 51(1), 84–112 ; see also: Rapid economic growth and the 'four Ds' of disruption, deprivation, disease and death : public health lessons from nineteenth-century Britain for twenty-first-century China ?, Tropical Medicine & International Health 4(2) pp 146-152), but I won't pretend Engels and Marx aren't on my mind.

As Zorral said: enclosures. Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi all talk about it.

Probably the only thing they have in common.

*without efficient public health policy.

and btw, it's well-known that life for the working class in the industrial cities of England was nasty:

I think if anyone wants to know why life expectancy rose dramatically at the end of the 19th century in Europe, this page from the Encylopedia Britannica explains it.
 

Thank you!

Now, I did know of the enclosures. That was me asking a silly question to get a nuance across - that the start of the IR might have coincided with a time where in fact standards of living was higher in cities - and thus factories - than in the countryside. This also is the time where infant mortality starts dropping, leading to larger populations. You mention this as well

Basically, what may very well be true (this is not my speciality, my MA in history is about Ethiopia, about missionary history and modern day) is that people *not* moving would lead to harsher living conditions than actually moving. Now, and bear in mind, this is me speculating along, this might suggest that living standards would have dropped no matter what, and consequently the IR managed to keep them at a higher level. Probable? I don't know, but possible.

I think part of the problem also resides in the fact that rapid urban growth, as we see over this period, probably led to inadequate living quarters (space, heating, sewers etc) for a while, leading to a drop-off where infrastructure and wages had to play catch-up. Which also was hampered by capitalism's drive for profits, and the absence of unionisation. This was a time, of course, where labour was plentiful, and workers were rather without rights, and also the possibility to get those rights, as they could be replaced readily.

Rambling along to something resembling a point here: the IR may have kept standards higher than what would have been the case had it not happened, while not actually keeping them up. However, as workers got together, managed to get some power by uniting and putting pressure on employers and the state, conditions improved. And the higher production (of, well, everything) then led to higher living standards across the board.

Not really arguing your point directly, but perhaps a nuance.

[Rippounet]

On 2/28/2022 at 1:51 AM, SeanF said:

When you read of some of the death tolls, across 5,000 years of recorded history, along with mass enslavement, mass rape, and recreational torture, I think it’s hard not to despair of human nature.

Oh, I totally do.
I deeply despair about the human nature of the rich and the powerful.

In all seriousness, humans can be vicious creatures in some circumstances, kind-hearted and generous in others. We have a lot of science and data to go beyond a simplistic view of our species. "Human nature" is a flawed concept because we are very flexible creatures. In any structure that gives humans power over their fellows, there will be some who abuse that power ; there will also be many more who don't. To focus on the atrocities of the past and ascribe them to anything innate is to overlook the importance of the socio-economic structures that allowed them to happen, and the ideas on which such structures are built. And ironically, the idea that some humans or all humans are "bad" in some way, has always helped keep such structures alive.
Anyway, I don't buy a universal drive to enslave, rape, and torture. If that were the case, I don't think we'd be having this exchange (we most probably wouldn't even have the means to do so). So I don't think what the colonial powers did (be they European or not) gets a pass. And we should take a look at what our ancestors thought, so as try not to repeat their worst mistakes at least.

On 2/28/2022 at 10:01 AM, Rorschach - 2 said:

Rambling along to something resembling a point here: the IR may have kept standards higher than what would have been the case had it not happened, while not actually keeping them up. However, as workers got together, managed to get some power by uniting and putting pressure on employers and the state, conditions improved. And the higher production (of, well, everything) then led to higher living standards across the board.

That seems to me a totally reasonable and realistic point of view.

[SeanF]

18 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Oh, I totally do.
I deeply despair about the human nature of the rich and the powerful.

 

Unfortunately, not just the rich and powerful.  People who thought it fun to watch girls being raped by animals in the Arena were drawn from all classes.

[Rippounet]

13 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Unfortunately, not just the rich and powerful.  People who thought it fun to watch girls being raped by animals in the Arena were drawn from all classes.

And yet there were far fewer people organising and (directly or indirectly) profiting from it. And there were ideas that tought that this was ok.
Humans haven't exactly been angels in the last few centuries, and yet I don't think you could give me a country in which the masses still find human suffering entertaining, right?

[Zorral]

4 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

yet I don't think you could give me a country in which the masses still find human suffering entertaining, right?

Yet we do find loads of countries including my own who think, at the very least, masses suffering is an excellent thing.  Look at what is done in the name of my country with immigrants seeking to cross over from South America.  And we sure do know that very, very, very many do find suffering hilariously entertaining, while even more don't care, at least if it can be kept out of their vision -- as with the millions who have died and suffered from covid, and for the last year, mostly needlessly.  Yet many of these same people do find watching suffering, particularly of young women, very enjoyable.  Look at what's on television and the movies and has been for decades and decades. The thing about this as entertainment, coming into our eyeballs 24/7, if so we wish, makes it more acceptable and, we may say, even craved, and also believed to be natural.

 

[Heartofice]

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

And yet there were far fewer people organising and (directly or indirectly) profiting from it. And there were ideas that tought that this was ok.
Humans haven't exactly been angels in the last few centuries, and yet I don't think you could give me a country in which the masses still find human suffering entertaining, right?

I think the urge to revel in others suffering is still there, it’s just diluted quite a lot. If you watch any reality tv which proved to be so popular it’s really just a modern version of watching executions! 
 

The big change is that as a society we have happily been removed from the facts of death and suffering so much that we can kind of pretend it doesn’t happen. So if we do see it, it’s shocking to us. Would the same have been true to a medieval peasant who’s seen numerous plagues and wars wipe out everyone they know?

[SeanF]

9 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Oh, I totally do.
I deeply despair about the human nature of the rich and the powerful.

In all seriousness, humans can be vicious creatures in some circumstances, kind-hearted and generous in others. We have a lot of science and data to go beyond a simplistic view of our species. "Human nature" is a flawed concept because we are very flexible creatures. In any structure that gives humans power over their fellows, there will be some who abuse that power ; there will also be many more who don't. To focus on the atrocities of the past and ascribe them to anything innate is to overlook the importance of the socio-economic structures that allowed them to happen, and the ideas on which such structures are built. And ironically, the idea that some humans or all humans are "bad" in some way, has always helped keep such structures alive.
Anyway, I don't buy a universal drive to enslave, rape, and torture. If that were the case, I don't think we'd be having this exchange (we most probably wouldn't even have the means to do so). So I don't think what the colonial powers did (be they European or not) gets a pass. And we should take a look at what our ancestors thought, so as try not to repeat their worst mistakes at least.

That seems to me a totally reasonable and realistic point of view.

As against that, I think one has to cut people quite a bit of slack for acting in ways that were normative in their era.  Pretty much every successful leader in the past, however enlightened, had to be a hard bastard. Some were sociopathic butchers.

This forum is largely dedicated to a book series in which every leader would be considered a war criminal by the standards of Western Europe in 2022, but that judgement would be anachronistic.

[SeanF]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I think the urge to revel in others suffering is still there, it’s just diluted quite a lot. If you watch any reality tv which proved to be so popular it’s really just a modern version of watching executions! 
 

The big change is that as a society we have happily been removed from the facts of death and suffering so much that we can kind of pretend it doesn’t happen. So if we do see it, it’s shocking to us. Would the same have been true to a medieval peasant who’s seen numerous plagues and wars wipe out everyone they know?

Given that one can, without much difficulty, find websites that are dedicated to the torture and prolonged execution of naked young women, I’m inclined to agree.

[rotting sea cow]

On 2/25/2022 at 5:34 PM, Free Northman Reborn said:

What nonsense is this? Everyone has been horrific to everyone, forever. Europeans just happened to be on top when the Industrial Revolution happened.

If China, India or Africa got there first, the same or worse would have happened, just in the opposite direction.

Who are these hippies who think everyone would have been loving brothers if not for the evil Europeans?

Have you read what Shaka did to other black tribes in Southern Africa to build his Zulu kingdom? He “genocided”whole areas.

Are you aware of what the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs did to neighbouring tribes?

How about the history of China or the Middle East?

It's a bit of a late answer and I haven't gone through the whole thread.

While it's true that humans have been horrific through all their history and across practically all cultures, there have been horrors brought through the world that can be directly traced to colonialism. In fact, current geopolitics have been shaped by that and the competitions between different powers. Russia/West issues are just recaps of the "Great Game" under the guise of different arguments or ideologies. The unsolved problems from the colonial period have brought us two World Wars, the Cold War, the Middle East clusterfuck and now whatever comes in the near future. 

What could have been done differently? No idea.

What can be done now? No idea either.

 

[Heartofice]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

As against that, I think one has to cut people quite a bit of slack for acting in ways that were normative in their era.  Pretty much every successful leader in the past, however enlightened, had to be a hard bastard. Some were sociopathic butchers.

You have to consider the context in which people are living, the dangers they face, the problems they need to solve in their lives, the pressures they are under. We are so lucky we live when and where we do, we don't have to think about getting murdered or eaten, or starving, we can get a good standard of living by acting in a peaceful, co-operative way. That hasn't been true for most people in history. 
 

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

Given that one can, without much difficulty, find websites that are dedicated to the torture and prolonged execution of naked young women, I’m inclined to agree.

Well hopefully that is a very niche interest to people. And really this is another point worth considering, that people are different. Some people are more  prone to violence, less empathetic, less interested in co-operating and trading with others and more interested in taking stuff. If those people are given an environment where they are enabled to be more successful then you probably see a lot more horrible experiences. Maybe those people are all CEOs now, who knows. 

[Rippounet]

10 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The big change is that as a society we have happily been removed from the facts of death and suffering so much that we can kind of pretend it doesn’t happen. So if we do see it, it’s shocking to us. Would the same have been true to a medieval peasant who’s seen numerous plagues and wars wipe out everyone they know?

9 hours ago, SeanF said:

As against that, I think one has to cut people quite a bit of slack for acting in ways that were normative in their era.  Pretty much every successful leader in the past, however enlightened, had to be a hard bastard. Some were sociopathic butchers.

You both raise the issue of norms and normative behavior.
The thing with that argument is that, imho, it's a self-defeating point. If you start justifying atrocities by some form or the other of conformism, then you can't explain how things ever changed. To be clear, if you want to explain the horrors of colonialism through norms, then the abolitionist movement and its success make no sense at all, because why would 1833 Britain be any different from 1783 Britain, or even 1733 Britain?
The fact remains that only a nuanced perspective on "human nature" can help explain how human societies can evolve at all. Even the past wasn't a mere succession of atrocities (far from it). For every sociopathic butcher you will find an "enlightened" or "liberal" ruler in the same era. And only a close look at the differences can help understand reality, which is always going to be more complex than a few hasty generalities.

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

You have to consider the context in which people are living, the dangers they face, the problems they need to solve in their lives, the pressures they are under. We are so lucky we live when and where we do, we don't have to think about getting murdered or eaten, or starving, we can get a good standard of living by acting in a peaceful, co-operative way. That hasn't been true for most people in history.

The problem with that argument is that it's just not true. It's again focusing on the darkest side of things, while ignoring the obvious fact that it couldn't be that bad.

Take a history book (any history book) and a map. Try to work out how long wars, famines, pandemics, or other horrors lasted in any given region over the course of centuries or millenia.
What you'll find is the very opposite of what you wrote: most people in history did not, in fact, live in terror.
Of course, they had to worry about survival, that is, hunt or farm, and yes, they lived under what we can only describe as oppressive regimes. But no, most humans did not have to worry about "getting murdered, eaten, or starving" on a day-to-day basis. I truly think reading any serious book on anthropology should instantly dispel such a -flawed- perspective of the past. I don't think even bloody Pinker (who is not an anthropologist or historian btw) went that far.

I'll go a bit further. This kind of dark view of our past (and of our nature) has no basis in science. It's an ideological product, and you'll only find it in this kind of discussion.

So yes, I agree that we should take into account the circumstances of past atrocities. But you know what? I don't think that makes the rich and powerful look any better. I don't think this is going to give a slaver merchant from 18th century Britain that much of a defense for instance...

7 hours ago, SeanF said:

Given that one can, without much difficulty, find websites that are dedicated to the torture and prolonged execution of naked young women, I’m inclined to agree.

As far as I know, this is completely false.
Genuine videos of "torture and prolonged execution of naked young women" border on the mythical. We're talking urban legend territory here, like in Nic Cage's "8 mm" movie. As far as I know there have only been a handful of confirmed cases.
I personally know of only one certain example, which has basically (and thankfully) been erased from the internet.