Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
Time 0:06:29
Proclamation of 1763
- Historian Woody Holton highlights the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which prevented land speculators from claiming Native American lands west of the Appalachian Mountains.
- This frustrated wealthy colonists like Washington and Jefferson, contributing to the American Revolution. Transcript: Speaker 1 Woody Holton of the University of South Carolina, author of Forced Founders, among other books, he points out that in the 1760s, the British government started tightening its economic Control in the American colonies. Speaker 4 It’s the British that are taking the initiative and trying to change the relationship between the colony and the ground. Speaker 2 Most people know about the new taxes that angered those British subjects in America. The Stamp Act of 1765, the tax on tea that led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. But before all that, in 1763, the British parliament issued a proclamation that seriously pissed off some of the American gentry. Speaker 1 The Royal Proclamation of 1763. It prevented land speculators from claiming ownership of native lands west of
Time 0:08:16
George Washington, Land Speculator
- George Washington, a young officer and aggressive land speculator, was angered by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which prevented him from claiming land in the Ohio Valley.
- This proclamation, meant to limit westward expansion, blocked Washington’s plans and contributed to his frustration with British rule. Transcript: Speaker 1 Yes. One member of the colonial elite who was infuriated by the proclamation of 1763 was a young officer and aggressive land speculator named George Washington. He had plans to claim a big
Time 0:09:44
Revolution and Slavery
- British loyalists tried to gain support from enslaved people by offering them freedom if they joined the British side.
- This enraged slaveholding colonists like Thomas Jefferson, pushing them towards revolution. Transcript: Speaker 1 Such luck. Not only did the Brits keep tightening the screws, they then stuck their noses into the colonial slave holders business, one time too many, Woody says. When it looked like there might be war between the British and the Americans, British loyalists made a move to get the support of enslaved black people. The royal governor of the colony of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, promised freedom for black people if they’d run away from their owners and enlist on the British side. Speaker 2 And some did. One or two thousand black men escaped from their plantations and joined British forces. Speaker 1 This enraged some slaveholding colonists. Most importantly,
Time 0:12:58
US Constitution’s Focus
- The 1787 US Constitutional Convention prioritized protecting private property and the interests of the wealthy.
- This was central to the national project, echoing Enlightenment thinker John Locke. Transcript: Speaker 1 So if the 55 men at the Constitutional Convention didn’t spend that summer in Philadelphia discussing freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. What were they talking about? Those rich merchants, lawyers, and slaveholding planters. A whole lot of the debate had economic ramifications. Echoing the Enlightenment thinker John Locke, framers like Gouverneur Morris, a wealthy from New York, put the protection of private property at the center of the national project. An accurate view of the matter would prove that property is the main object of society. For almost half of the convention delegates, the slaveholders, property meant people. The framers infamously reached compromises to ensure that slavery would remain legal and gave disproportionate power to the slave states so their delegates wouldn’t stomp out of The convention. There was talk about class and the fact that the wealthy, represented by the men in the room, would always be far outnumbered by the poor working classes. In those days the vast majority were farmers. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well -born, the other the mass of the people. Those are the words of Alexander Hamilton. He
Time 0:14:56
Framers’ Priorities
- The framers of the Constitution prioritized attracting and facilitating the movement of capital.
- They aimed to achieve this by making America less democratic to ensure a safer environment for investment. Transcript: Speaker 1 Most states in the 1780s held elections every year and put few checks on their legislatures. This made state lawmakers highly responsive to the wishes of ordinary white male people, tax -paying farmers. Elbridge Gary of Massachusetts said this at the Constitutional Convention. Speaker 3 The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. Speaker 1 So it didn’t include a bill of rights, but the first cut of the Constitution did have a section taking away the state’s power to print money, and to pass laws that affect business contracts Or international trade. It gave those powers to the federal government. Woody Holton says if you read the Constitution carefully and the debate around it, the framers number one priority comes through loud and clear, attracting and facilitating the movement Of capital.
Time 0:19:45
Slavery Drove US Economy
- The rise of the American manufacturing and consumer economies was built on the unpaid labor of enslaved black people.
- Slavery, particularly in cotton production, transformed the post-colonial US economy from a backwater to a global economic leader. Transcript: Speaker 1 But let’s not forget the foundation on which this industry stood, the unpaid labor of enslaved black people. Slavery, especially cotton slavery and the expansion of cotton slavery, drove that sort of post -colonial economy from
Time 0:20:20
Slavery and US Economic Growth
- The US South’s slavery-based economy became globally important, driving a new global capitalist industrial economy.
- Cotton became the world’s most valuable commodity, like oil today, giving the US an advantage with its own mills and land. Transcript: Speaker 1 Industrial economy. And slavery in the US South is central to all of that. Historian Edward Baptist of Cornell University, author of The Half Has Never Been Told, Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. He says in the first half of the 19th century, cotton became the world’s most traded and most valuable commodity, much like oil in today’s world. It’s easy to see why the United States had an advantage over its competitors across the Atlantic. The Europeans had mills, but they had to import cotton. The U .S. Now had its own mills and its own land for cotton fields, which the new nation got busy expanding and expanding. Americans hear a lot about the nation’s westward expansion, those wagon trains rumbling across the prairie to Oregon and California. But before that, the United States pushed its frontier into the old Southwest, what we now call the Southeast. Of the 13 original states, only South Carolina and Georgia were in prime cotton growing territory. Seeing a chance to build a cotton empire, U .S. Leaders moved aggressively into what would become Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and eventually Texas. Remind us of the steps that are needed. First of all, you got to take the land. Yep. First of all, you have to take the land and that meant for one thing, cutting deals with the European empires
Time 0:21:29
US Cotton Empire
- To build a cotton empire, US leaders expanded into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
- This involved taking land from Native American tribes like the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole through wars and treaties. Transcript: Speaker 1 Seeing a chance to build a cotton empire, U .S. Leaders moved aggressively into what would become Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and eventually Texas. Remind us of the steps that are needed. First of all, you got to take the land. Yep. First of all, you have to take the land and that meant for one thing, cutting deals with the European empires that still made claims to that land, France and Spain, the giant Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the annexing of Mississippi territory, the future states of Mississippi and Alabama in 1804. And above all, you have the native pupils themselves. The Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole peoples who lived on their lands across what is now the southeastern United States. The U .S. Gradually defeats and pushes out all of them in a series of wars and forced treaties, let’s say. The states of Tennessee and Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana are swarmed with a huge number of white settlers who bring ultimately what becomes a population Of about two million enslaved African Americans in those states by the 1850s. Ed Baptist says the new white owners of that southern land first put black people to work cutting down forests, then growing and picking cotton. You have the transformation of a subcontinental sized area from woods
Time 0:23:39
Cotton and US Economic Power
- By the 1850s, Southern US states produced 88-95% of the cotton sold in Liverpool, the world’s biggest cotton market.
- Between 1800 and 1860, US cotton production grew 500-fold, establishing the US as a major economic power. Transcript: Speaker 3 Those states by the 1850s are producing like 88 to 95 percent, depends on the year, of the cotton that is sold in Liverpool, which is the world’s biggest cotton market. Speaker 1 Wow. Between 1800 and 1860, cotton production in the US multiplied 500 fold from 4 million pounds a year to 2 billion. Ken Cotton, more than any other single industry, made the US an important economic power just decades after independence. The country’s even more explosive rise in the last half of the century is more familiar. Told in a certain way, it’s another cherished part of the national story. Speaker 4 America’s growth following the Civil War is nothing short of epic. Train tracks link east to west as never before. Oil lights homes from coast to coast. And steel is remaking the landscape in a way never thought possible. Speaker 1 That’s from the History Channel mini -series, The Men Who Built America. The series, aired 2012, tells stories of men like Vanderbilt, Morgan,
Time 0:27:23
Carnegie and Frick’s Union Busting
- Carnegie instructed Frick to demand wage cuts and refuse negotiation at his Homestead steel plant.
- This led to a violent strike with the Pinkertons, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries. Transcript: Speaker 3 We all approve of anything you do, Carnegie wrote from 3,000 miles away. We are with you to the end. Speaker 1 When Homestead’s workers went on strike, Frick brought in replacement workers and the Pinkertons, a private security force. Speaker 3 At least 16 people were killed and more than 150 injured in the battle that followed. Speaker 1 The swiftly rising economic tide did lift many boats. Average working class wages rose during the late 1800s. But the Gilded Age was known for extreme inequality and shameless consumption by the rich. Historians Steve Fraser and Nell Irvin Painter in the PBS program. Speaker 3 For people to see a country developing before them that is increasingly clearly divided into the haves and have -nots. Gilded is not golden. Speaker 2 Gilded has the sense of a patina covering something else. It’s the shiny exterior and the rot underneath. Speaker 1 Mainstream American accounts of the late 19th century often embrace the great man theory of history.
Time 0:29:53
Modern Technological Progress
- Since 1870, technological progress has been around 2% per year, compounding annually.
- This exponential growth means more progress occurs in one year now than in a generation before 1500, or a decade between 1500 and 1770. Transcript: Speaker 1 He makes a case that human history after 200,000 years entered an entirely new stage around 1870. Speaker 3 You try to guess at what the actual rate of improvement of technology is. And we look around us today and we see that since 1870 worldwide, you know, it’s kind of 2% per year, you know, that every year we can make what we made last year 2% more cheaply. And so we have, you know, 2% more resources person available to make other things and to discover and invent other things. Speaker 1 Two percent doesn’t sound like a big number, until you consider it’s a 2% increase in material capacity every year. Delong says that’s about five times the rate of advancement in the century before 1870, 10 times the rate during the several centuries before that, and maybe 50 times faster than humanity’s Progress before the year 1500. Speaker 3 That is, we get more technological progress in one year than they got in a generation back before 1500.
Time 0:29:53
A New Stage in History
- Around 1870, human history entered a new stage due to rapid technological advancements.
- This period saw unprecedented progress in wealth and technology, exceeding that of the previous 8,000 years. Transcript: Speaker 1 He makes a case that human history after 200,000 years entered an entirely new stage around 1870. Speaker 3 You try to guess at what the actual rate of improvement of technology is. And we look around us today and we see that since 1870 worldwide, you know, it’s kind of 2% per year, you know, that every year we can make what we made last year 2% more cheaply. And so we have, you know, 2% more resources person available to make other things and to discover and invent other things. Speaker 1 Two percent doesn’t sound like a big number, until you consider it’s a 2% increase in material capacity every year. Delong says that’s about five times the rate of advancement in the century before 1870, 10 times the rate during the several centuries before that, and maybe 50 times faster than humanity’s Progress before the year 1500. Speaker 3 That is, we get more technological progress in one year than they got in a generation back before 1500. And we get more progress in one year than they got in a decade, between 1500 and 1770. And that’s been more or less the rule since 1870. Speaker 1 Brad DeLong’s big book, Slouching Towards Utopia, was published in 2022. It’s an economic history of what he calls the long 20th century, 1870 to 2010. He argues that period is the most consequential in human history, a sudden spurt in which humans made as much progress in collective wealth and technological prowess as in the previous 8,000 years. But DeLong’s book is more of a lament than a celebration. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, more on the claim he’s making about that 140 -year period. So, how were things in 1870? Speaker 3 Well, you know, they’re still pretty bad. Speaker 1 DeLong quotes the British philosopher John Stuart Mill, who wrote in the early 1870s that all the technological discoveries up to that moment had only allowed a greater population To live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment. Speaker 3 All the mechanical inventions of the Industrial Revolution,
Time 0:34:05
Productivity vs. Population Growth
- Before 1870, economic growth couldn’t keep up with population growth, limiting improvements in living standards.
- Only after 1870 did productivity grow fast enough to outpace population growth and allow for improved living standards. Transcript: Speaker 3 Humans are naturally very, very fertile. Speaker 1 People made more children than the land could comfortably feed, even as farms did gradually get more productive. Malthus thought sexual abstinence was the only way out of this conundrum. He was wrong. Speaker 3 It’s only after 1870 that productivity growth becomes fast enough, that there’s no way that human fecundity can keep up with it. There’s no way the population explosion can keep living standards from rising. Speaker 1 Wage of a working man in London could buy just the bare necessity, 2,000 calories a day for the worker and his family.
Time 0:35:29
Post-1870 Abundance
- Post-1870 technologies like steamships, railroads, telegraphs, and industrial research labs fueled globalization and a global economy.
- This led to an unprecedented acceleration in economic growth and standards of living. Transcript: Speaker 1 Abundance? Speaker 3 What you really need is you need for 1870 to come and for 1870 to bring with it the ocean -going screw -propeller steamship, the full build -out of the railroad network, the full build -out the telegraph network, globalization. You know, the creation of a global economy. And you need the industrial research lab, so it’s not just individual inventors thinking of things and then trying to scramble to put together an organization, but rather you rationalize And routinize and so revolutionize the process of technological development. Speaker 1 It’s because of the industrial research lab, he says, that guys like Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla weren’t just scientists tinkering in their own labs. Backed by corporate investors like JP Morgan and Westinghouse, they became inventors of world -changing technologies. Speaker 3 And you also, I
Time 0:35:30
Post-1870 Abundance
- After 1870, human productivity outpaced population growth, leading to increased abundance.
- Key factors: steamships, railroads, telegraphs, globalization, industrial research labs, and modern corporations. Transcript: Speaker 3 What you really need is you need for 1870 to come and for 1870 to bring with it the ocean -going screw -propeller steamship, the full build -out of the railroad network, the full build -out the telegraph network, globalization. You know, the creation of a global economy. And you need the industrial research lab, so it’s not just individual inventors thinking of things and then trying to scramble to put together an organization, but rather you rationalize And routinize and so revolutionize the process of technological development. Speaker 1 It’s because of the industrial research lab, he says, that guys like Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla weren’t just scientists tinkering in their own labs. Backed by corporate investors like JP Morgan and Westinghouse, they became inventors of world -changing technologies. Speaker 3 And you also, I think, really do need the modern corporation. You know, big corporations are good at taking some idea and putting it to work not in one factory but in a hundred factories all over the world. And they’re also very good at looking at their neighboring corporations and saying, hmm, we should be doing that too.
Time 0:37:00
Exponential Material Capacity
- Humanity’s material capacity began doubling every generation after 1870.
- This exponential growth is a novel phenomenon in human history. Transcript: Speaker 1 Humanity’s material capacity started doubling every generation. A new thing in human history. And yet, here’s Brad DeLong reading from the conclusion of his book, slouching towards utopia. Okay. Speaker 3 And organize ourselves, have we done so little to build a truly human world to approach within sight of any of our utopias? Speaker 1 Ellen, we’ll hear more about what Brad DeLong means over the next episode or two, but we kind know what he’s talking about, don’t we? Speaker 2 I think we do. He’s saying that over the last century and a half humanity took huge steps towards solving what seemed to be our greatest material challenge. How to build a big enough economic pie so
Time 0:40:29
Wealth Extraction
- Business owners don’t generate wealth out of thin air.
- Rather, they extract profits from existing resources, labor and markets. Transcript: Speaker 2 When people say capitalism generates wealth, there’s this tendency to talk as if the money just spins up out of thin air. It just materializes because Henry Ford or Steve Jobs had a brilliant idea.
Time 0:41:51
Stolen Wealth
- The wealth of the US was built on stolen land taken from Indigenous peoples.
- Enslaved Black people contributed over 400 billion unpaid labor hours. Transcript: Speaker 1 Even earlier than 1619, and the beginning of slavery and what would become the United States. It starts before that with the land, and everything the land makes possible. There is no USA, no cotton empire, no agricultural powerhouse, no lumber, railroads, no oil fields, without this vast and abundant land. Speaker 2 Which the colonizers took by genocidal force and deception from the people who belonged to this land for thousands of years. So an undeniable sense, the wealth that resulted from the exploitation of this land in particular was stolen. Speaker 1 A whole lot of the wealth that built this country was stolen in another way, too. Speaker 2 Yes, from the enslaved black people who provided against their will absolutely pivotal labor in the construction of the U .S. As an economic power. Speaker 1 Researchers have estimated that a total of 10 million African people lived their lives as chattel in colonial America and the United States between 1619 and 1865. And those people contributed. Are you ready? Over 400 billion
Time 0:44:18
US Economic Growth
- The growth of the US economy in the 19th century was fueled by various workers, including enslaved people, railroad workers, and those in factories and farms.
- The US government played a key role by granting land to railroad companies. Transcript: Speaker 1 Growing economic might in the 19th century and where that wealth came from besides the land, Think of all the workers. Speaker 2 The construction of the railroads, which accelerated economic growth, required the labor of hundreds of thousands of people over decades. Those workers came from all over the world. In the Western U .S., the majority were Chinese immigrants recruited to this country specifically to do that job. Because white men were not applying in big enough numbers. Speaker 1 I looked up their pay. Chinese rail workers in California in the 1860s, working six days a week, were paid an average of 6 ,000 a year in today’s money. Speaker 2 No wonder those rail companies had to go across the Pacific to a much poorer country to find workers. We could go on though through different industries. The workers in those textile mills, in the shipyards, the mines, the steel mills, the oil fields, on farms all over the country in garment factories. Come again, who built the wealth of the United States? Speaker 1 I gotta add this footnote about the railroads, though it’s not really a footnote, it’s pretty dang important. The US government, having taken land from indigenous tribes, made land grants of and millions of acres to the railroad companies in the 1850s