Some years ago in my search for causes of the West’s prosperity I came across Deepak Lal’s 1999 book Unintended Consequences. The book planted the seed of an idea that has recently borne some exotic fruit.[1]
According to Lal, in 597 AD Catholic missionaries were trying to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons in England. Augustine, a monk who later became Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to Pope Gregory I asking him whether several of the converts’ marriage habits were allowed.
In his reply, the pope was strict. He did the following: 1) he rejected marriage to close relatives or to close in-laws (called affines by anthropologists), 2) he banned the adoption of children, and 3) he prohibited concubines. (Divorce was already prohibited, based on scripture). Why? Continue reading “The Medieval Church and Its Consequences”
As you know, I’ve paid a lot of attention to child labor in British factories during the Industrial Revolution. Child labor was a big issue back then; public agitation probably started in 1796, when the Manchester Board of Health issued a devastating paper about the health of families in that increasingly industrial city.
But it wasn’t until 1833 that Parliament passed a law that was effective in limiting the hours young children worked. Earlier acts had no method of enforcement. The Factory Act of 1833 (also called “Althorp’s Act) did have teeth: it required inspectors.
In my last column, “A Blot on the Poor Law,” I noted an unintended consequence of England’s poor law: It made possible “pauper apprentices.” Had the poor law not been in existence, parishes would not have sent large numbers of children to the textile mills, where they worked long hours and were sometimes cruelly treated.
I hope my readers aren’t tired of the English poor laws because, after a year or two of research, something has occurred to me that I had completely missed. There is a flaw I didn’t see. Continue reading “A Blot on the Poor Law”
The First World War is endlessly fascinating—to historians, to the public, and to me. It was so devastating, so unexpected, and it set in motion thirty years of war and turmoil. By 1990, 25,000 books and articles had been published on the subject [1] (and I have read four major books published since then, the latest being July 1914 by Sean McMeekin) [2]. No one can stop trying to answer the fundamental question, Why did it happen?
