HOW THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR CAUSED A FAMINE IN BRITAIN
The Philippines, Treaty of Tordesillas, Hemingway, and Teenagers.
BOC#027
5 MINUTE MUNCH
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR…
…was fuelled by the ongoing debate around the legality of slavery, particularly in the southern states. While the free states of the north (the Union) pursued the termination of slavery, the southern states (the Confederacy) were still pushing for its continued permissibility. The then president, Abraham Lincoln, sought to terminate the use of slaves across the states, which had until now, contributed massively to American economic prosperity. Lincoln thus decided to close the Southern ports from which American cotton was traded. Corinne Fowler* writes:
Lincoln was determined to hit the Southerners where it hurt, ordering a naval blockade of Southern ports. Now, the Confederate states could no longer export their plantation-produced cotton to Lancashire. - Fowler, Corinne. Our Island Stories: Country Walks through Colonial Britain (p. 129).
The British government remained neutral, although the Confederates had secretly hoped that Lincoln’s actions would lure Britain into the war. The movement of slave-grown cotton was thus halted, exacerbated by the suspension of trade by Liverpool’s traders who were awaiting a price hike (Liverpool, whose wealth had transition from sugar to cotton, supported the Confederacy). All of this had a profound impact on the Lancashire cotton mills whose stockpiles had been depleted by 1862. The Famine had begun.
The northern city of Blackburn in Lancashire depended heavily on cotton production. 25,000 of their 63,000 population worked in the cotton industry in 1861, with a further 25,000 dependents relying on the industry’s income. The closure of the southern ports and the subsequent cessation of the English cotton industry caused the ruin of 89% of Blackburn’s inhabitants (some 56,000 people). Men faced the impending doom of unemployment while families crammed into fewer houses, selling their clothes and furniture to buy food. Corinne Fowler writes:
Visiting Blackburn in 1862, one visitor noted that the chimneys were not smoking and the air was unusually fresh. But the place, he wrote, had lost its life; people walked aimlessly through the streets. - Fowler, Corinne. Our Island Stories: Country Walks through Colonial Britain (p. 130).
This period of economic peril lasted until 1865.
Recommended Reading:
DID YOU KNOW THAT THE PHILIPPINES…
…are named after King Phillip II of Spain having been claimed for the Spanish crown by Ferdinand Magellan whose Patagonian exploits we discussed in BOC#018. It was during the reign of Phillip’s father, Charles V, that much of the New World fell to Spain.
John Elledge, Author of A History of the World in 47 Borders* writes:
"If you could pinpoint a single moment when someone fired the starting gun on nearly half a millennium of European imperialism, the Treaty of Tordesillas would be it."
The Treaty of Tordesillas, inspired by Pope Alexander VI, was signed in 1494. It contained an agreement between Spain and Portugal to divide newly discovered lands outside of Europe between the two kingdoms. This division was based on a line of demarcation, with Spain claiming lands to the west and Portugal to the east.
But how was this all funded?
In The Republic of Pirates*, Colin Woodard writes:
'The Spanish Empire was fuelled by the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru, where armies of enslaved Indians were worked to death. The Peruvian “silver mountain” at Potosi alone produced two million pesos’ (£500,000) worth of that precious metal each year, and the other gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru added another 8.7 million (£2,175,000). There was little to buy in the new world, so all those riches had to be shipped to Spain. Thus the need for the great treasure fleets.'
PASSAGES BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY…
#1 Don’t fret over that over the things you can’t control. Worrying is as good as trying to predict the path of a falling leaf. Hemingway writes:
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
― The Old Man and the Sea
#2 Remember that weeds need no encouragement to grow. Negativity respawns instantaneously. When good things expire, the onus is on you:
“By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.”
― A Moveable Feast
ON THIS DAY: 7TH JULY
The Alaska Statehood Act was signed by President Eisenhower on this day in 1958, making Alaska the 49th state of America as of January 1959.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the London bombings that saw the killing of over 50 commuters in 2005.
17 year old German tennis star Boris Becker beat South African Kevin Curren to become the youngest person to win Wimbledon in 1985.
The first sale of sliced bread took place on 7th July 1928, sold by the Chillicothe Baking Company in the U.S.
Today is National Strawberry Sundae Day - Treat yourself.
WORDS: FOREGO VS FORGO
To forgo is to go without i.e. “American people are unwilling to forego what some might consider to be their right to right to free speech in this matter.”
To forego is to go before, or to precede.
On raising teenagers:
"Raising children is a game of tug of war that you ultimately must lose…They’ll always be your kid, but you won’t always be their parent." - Ric Elias on the Peter Attia Podcast episode #79.
MISSED LAST WEEK?: Robert Fitzroy, Sufis, Stealth Bombers, & Alaska
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Loved reading bits from the history of the world.
And the words of Hemingway felt like a treat to me. The Old Man and the Sea is my travel companion in Istanbul. I read and reread my favourite books.