My take on change over time
To My Visitors:
While I am no longer adding regular posts to this site, I hope you will feel free to look at the articles about history that have been posted here for the past seven years. Feel free to contact me with questions about them (janeshaw5966@gmail.com).
I continue to write about history (all kinds, but these days especially American history). I am currently serving as the editor of the North Carolina History Encyclopedia. I welcome your visits there.
Jane Shaw Stroup
When I began my master’s degree in history in 2016, I knew what I wanted to study. To me, the most important event in Western history is the economic revolution that occurred in Europe beginning about 1750—the Industrial Revolution. I was steeped in knowledge about its impact from reading books like The Rise of the Western World, How the West Grew Rich, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism, and The Great Divergence.
Indeed, my master’s thesis concentrated on details of that revolution. But my history studies taught me much more. My academic adventure evolved into a struggle to understand why “change over time” (that’s how historians define history) occurs as it does. That is one of the reasons I created this blog: I was looking for a theory of history.
To some extent I have come up with one. Continue reading “What I’ve Learned about History”
Before discussing Jane Jacobs, let’s look at the problem. Consider Raleigh, North Carolina.
Like many cities, Raleigh has been planning, subsidizing, and revising its downtown for decades. In 1977 it turned a downtown thoroughfare, Fayetteville Street, into a pedestrian mall. That didn’t work out—in 2006 Fayetteville became a street again. Raleigh supported a gourmet restaurant (the Mint) with $1 million. It failed. In 2008 taxpayers paid for a downtown convention center and wooed a name-brand hotel with $21 million.
This wasn’t good, either. “The only way the RCC [the convention center] attracts users is by offering deep discounts on rooms and services and even paying large subsidies to attract conventions and meetings,” wrote two policy analysts in 2008.[1] Now the government is planning another convention center at an estimated price of $387 million.
I could go on . . . but if you live in an American city, you probably have seen (and paid for) something similar—public efforts to bring people downtown. Continue reading “Let’s Not Blame Jane Jacobs”
Have you ever thought about the difference between the biblical Jesus who said that the meek will inherit the earth and the Christ in whose name the Crusaders warred against Muslims and Jews?
These examples are, of course, at the extremes of Christianity—Jesus’ love of the least-favored people versus triumphant soldiers who went to war with the cross on their flags. But the image of Christians conducting wars and inflicting pain still jars us, and it is impossible for Christians to approve of those who took over Jerusalem in 1099 and massacred Muslims and Jews in the process.
How did this transformation take place?
We are witnessing one of the greatest ironies of modern history: the population policy of the Chinese government. The state’s coercive one-child policy—complete with forced birth control, sterilizations, late (even caesarean) abortions, and likely infanticide—began officially in 1979 and went on for more than 35 years. It was gradually softened, beginning in 2013.
In 2021 the plan was completely revised—even reversed.
The government’s goal now is to increase population by increasing fertility. Continue reading “A Chinese Tragedy”