I used to think that the advent of factories marked the start of the Industrial Revolution. But there were factories operated by slaves in the West Indies a century before the Industrial Revolution began around 1750. Those factories were called plantations.
While the factory—“a building or set of buildings with facilities for manufacturing”—did typify the Industrial Revolution, such a construction had appeared a century earlier in Barbados in the West Indies. By the 1660s, English owners of sugar plantations had developed an “agro-industry,” fueled by slave labor.
The consumption of sugar skyrocketed in England in the seventeenth century, and the English in Barbados (and soon, Jamaica) took advantage of the demand. In his 1985 book Sweetness and Power, Sidney W. Mintz described a system he calls “the closest thing to industry that was typical of the seventeenth century”—Barbados sugar plantations.[1]
The plantations were not just agriculture; they involved a highly complex process that started with sugar cane planting and ended with at least partially refined sugar.Slaves planted and harvested the cane, extracted its juices, and boiled those juices into products of various levels of refinement, from molasses to sugar. A typical plantation had one or two extraction mills, a boiling house, a curing house, a distillery, and a warehouse.
“The heat and noise were overpowering, there was considerable danger involved, and time was of the essence throughout, from the moment when the cane was perfect for cutting until the semicrystalline product was poured into molds to drain and be dried,” Mintz wrote.[2]
A few years ago, at a used bookstore in Leonardstown, Maryland, I picked up How to Study History. [1] Written by two well-known historians, Norman F. Cantor and Richard I. Schneider, it was published in 1967 and reflects views about history that prevailed when I was in college. They differ quite a lot from those I’m being taught now, as I will point out.
But first, you’ve got to love this book! It was written to give undergraduates a play-by-play description of how to study history. Somewhat patronizingly, it reminds the student “to carry with him [yes, him; it’s 1967] at all times a pen and some kind of note paper” and, ”as a general rule, avoid group study.”[2] But it also helps the student distinguish between demonstrable proof and inferential proof and analyze both literary and artistic primary sources.
It sets high standards. The book includes two sample papers by freshmen. Overall comment on one: “A superior paper, yet you can do better. Try to be even more concise and to the point. B+.”[3] It’s been a long time, I believe, since superior papers received a mere B+
From an 1840 Austrian book in the British Library online collection.
The United States is experiencing a period of low birth rates, primarily reflecting late marriages (aided by effective birth control techniques).[1] While low birth rates may harm the U.S. by holding back the number of productive workers, most historians of Europe have worried more about the Malthusian potential of overpopulation to outpace food production than about having too few people.
In fact, late marriages throughout much of European history prevented overpopulation.
Historians (and other social scientists) have compared family composition in northwestern Europe with families in other parts of the world, from southern Europe to China. Three academic papers, when combined, provide persuasive evidence that the family model of northwestern Europe not only prevented Malthusian excess but may have helped spark the Industrial Revolution.
Let me begin with John Hajnal’s 1982 article in Population and Development Review. Hajnal compared the age of marriage in preindustrial northwestern Europe (using figures from Denmark primarily, backed up by others), with those in India, China, and other parts of Europe. He found that late marriage—over age 26 for men, over age 23 for women—was the norm in northwestern Europe as early as the 1600s, while early marriage—before age 26 for men and before age 21 for women—was typical in the other areas studied.
Punishment should fit the crime. Last fall, taking a course on the Tudors and the Stuarts, I noticed that in early modern England (1485-1688) the punishments almost never fit the crime. A few examples follow, with comment below.
The great Catholic humanist Thomas More, author of Utopia, was Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor when Henry made himself the head of the Church of England in order to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Thomas More refused to accept Henry’s rejection of the Pope and Church doctrine, so he was beheaded for treason.
Archbishop Hugh Latimer, Bishop Nicholas Ridley, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer were not as lucky as Sir Thomas More. When Catholics returned to power under Mary I, they were burned at the stake, a horrific fate worse than beheading. In fact, nearly 300 Protestants were burned during Mary’s reign. (And Lady Jane Grey, the nine-day Protestant queen before Mary, was executed.)
Moving forward to Charles II’s reign, we find that at least 24 Catholics were executed by being hanged, drawn, and quartered (another horrific way of dying) because they were accused of being part of a ”Popish plot.” Yet there was no Popish plot. It was invented by Titus Oates, a disreputable renegade who had been kicked out of many places, both Protestant and Catholic.
What troubles me most is that these (and other [1]) travesties of justice took place in a time when the English touted their liberties and judicial protections.
“The Political Drama,” from the British Library (1834-35). “I govern the people. I pray for the people. I legislate for the people. I fought for the people. I preserve the peace for all four. And above the devil on the extreme right is; And I’ll have all five.”
Recently, I was asked whether historians avoid humor. My recent experience shouted “yes,” but I recalled that when I was a child my parents owned a small, amusing book about history. The author’s name was Richard Armour. I googled him and bought two of his books. I find him funny.
Armour was the author of at least 35 books and all kinds of poems, jokes, and essays. He was also a professor at such schools as Northwestern University and Claremont Graduate School and even dean of the faculty at Scripps College.
His best-known book, It All Started with Columbus, is a riff on the education that most Americans received in the 1950s.[1] (Every year in elementary school, like clockwork, we learned about the explorers: we never seemed to get further.) It All Started. . . is often just silly, as Armour makes puns or tangles up the facts, most of which Americans probably knew at the time.
