Today I’m going to summarize three articles on historical issues. One article critiques historians’ rankings of U. S. presidents; one looks at a 1752 essay by David Hume and sees insights into the Ukraine war; and the third explains why most of the theories of economic development since World War II have fallen into the dustbin of history (I wrote that last one).
Are Presidential Rankings Biased?
It is something of an event every few years when the C-Span TV network or the American Political Science Association (APSA) reports on a new assessment of American presidents. The C-Span version relies primarily on historians, the APSA on political scientists, but their evaluations are similar. To give you a flavor, the latest rankings by both organizations have the same top four presidents: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt. C-Span rates Eisenhower and Truman as no. 5 and 6; APSA chose Thomas Jefferson as no. 5 and Truman as no. 6.
Since I haven’t had many deep thoughts lately, I want to share with you some essays about history that have caught my attention. In this case, the history is pretty recent—it’s about the late Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001.
When I was an economics editor at Business Week in the 1980s, Jack Welch was becoming a legend. My editor-in-chief admired him, talked with him a lot, and featured him as a speaker at magazine functions. In 1999, Fortune called him the “manager of the century.” He was bold, smart, and unafraid.
But did he bring General Electric down?
General Electric was founded by Thomas Edison and J. P. Morgan in 1892. It developed a ubiquitous brand name and seemed to “own” the field of electric appliances.
By 1981, however, when Welch became CEO, it lacked vigor. It was a $12 billion company, but stodgy and bureaucratic. Welch attacked that bureaucracy, laid off workers, and started acquiring companies. When Welch left in 2001 the company was worth $600 billion and in terms of revenues was the fifth-largest company in the U.S.
I recently stumbled on the fact that eight states, mostly in the Midwest, defaulted on their state bonds in the 1840s. Okay, that may not seem too exciting, but when I learned about it, I also discovered a realm of American history I had not come across before: “canal mania.”
Many of those states had spent a lot of money on canals, much of it borrowed money (bonds rather than taxes), which ultimately they could not pay back. Other problems also plagued these states such as investments in railroads and banks, but canals were big.
Most of these canal ventures were kicked off by one success—the amazing Erie Canal, which opened in 1825. A few canals had been built in the East before that, such as the 27-mile canal between the Merrimack River and Boston. But the Erie Canal ran from Albany, New York, across the state to Buffalo: 363 miles. The canal required 83 locks. Continue reading ““Canal Mania”—A Waste of Money?”
Historians, both famed and anonymous, have developed theories that try to explain the course of history. The “Whig theory” of steady progress was widely shared until the horrors of the twentieth century demolished it. Marx’s theory of one class replacing another had a long run. The “Great Man” theory (now, Great Person theory) still has some adherents.
I too am trying to develop a theory of history, but not a grandiose one. I’m trying to figure out if there are consistent ways to better understand certain historical outcomes. Why was St. Louis an “also-ran” to Chicago? Why did so many orphans work in the early factories of the Industrial Revolution? Was soil exhaustion a contributor to the Civil War?
In answering such questions, I borrow tools from my friends the economists. Economists don’t spend a lot of time digging into the past but when they do they come up with surprising findings. When Deirdre McCloskey explained the scattered private fields in medieval England, she solved a mystery that had stumped historians for decades, and Eric Edwards and Walter Thurman just revealed an explanation for the U. S. Corn Belt that historians have largely ignored.
I would like to share with you a stunning essay from RealClearHistory.[1] By “stunning” I don’t mean it is absolutely correct but it is eye-opening. David Pyne lists the wars the U.S. shouldn’t have entered or supported—but did. These wrong wars start with the Spanish-American War in 1898 and end with today’s Ukraine-Russia war. As for the wars we should have fought, he bluntly explains how they were badly managed.
Pyne writes:
“A study of the outcome of major wars America has fought over the past 125 years strongly suggests that U.S. military involvement in these conflicts has resulted in tragic and unforeseen consequences leading to tens of millions of unnecessary deaths while also serving to create new, and, in some cases, much more powerful enemies, making the U.S. much less safe and secure in the process.”
This man is not a left-winger writing for The Nation or Mother Jones. He is deputy director of a nonprofit organization, EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security. EMP refers to electromagnetic pulses, which can be used to disrupt the electrical grid and possibly other critical infrastructure. The organization was initially authorized by Congress as an advisory board and works with conservative members of Congress.
