Category: European History

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Cholera, Stormy Seas, and Survival: A Family Story

Louis and dorothea sophia wellendorf

A guest post by David Brook

David Brook is retired from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources where he was director of the Division of Historical Resources. He has also written two books on the history of historic preservation in North Carolina.

Before modern vaccines and antibiotics, generations of Americans were routinely plagued by contagions including yellow fever, typhus, measles, and diphtheria. Cholera, however, topped them all in sheer terror. Caused by a bacterium not identified until 1884, cholera is a horrible intestinal disease, spread through contaminated food and water. With a short incubation period, cholera kills through severe dehydration. Untreated victims can die within hours of onset. In the 19th century, crowded immigrant communities were especially hard hit.

The coronavirus pandemic brings to mind the impact of cholera on the life of my great-great grandfather, Ludwig “Louis” Wellendorf (1831-1899). Louis was from Bresewitz, a small town on the Baltic Sea near Rostock, in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany. According to family lore, he had participated in the failed Revolution of 1848, and fled to Denmark to hide for a time. Continue reading “Cholera, Stormy Seas, and Survival: A Family Story”

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April History News: Anzac Day. . . All about Zinn. . . Kennedy Censored Talk Radio

Anzac Day: Australia and New Zealand remember the Gallipoli tragedy of 1915. Howie Tanzman explains.

President Kennedy censored right-wing radio. In the Cato Policy Report.

Melted ice patch in Norway reveals artifacts from travels in Roman times and  the Middle Ages. In the Smithsonian. 

VE-Day in Europe, not so joyous: ‘Some extraordinary vigil over a corpse.’ BBC’s History Extra explains.

Countering Howard Zinn’s ‘tendentious, simplistic, and relentlessly negative view of the American past.’ Wilfred McClay reviews Mary Grabar’s critique.

Saving the chimney sweeps: Anton Howes tells us about an Industrial Revolution innovator who has not received his due.

Why did plague doctors wear masks with beaks? The BBC’s History Extra  explains.

Continue reading “April History News: Anzac Day. . . All about Zinn. . . Kennedy Censored Talk Radio”

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The Marketing Genius of T. R. Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus has had a very long run. Issuing his first essay on population in 1798, he has persuaded millions of people that the world is threatened by overpopulation.

“The effect of Malthusianism was immediate and dramatic,” writes historian Gertrude Himmelfarb. “For half a century social attitudes and policies were decisively shaped by the new turn of thought.”[1] And the impact continues.

Until November I had never read Malthus’s essay.[2] To my surprise, it is a delightful essay—-clearly written, easy to read, a relatively short book. (Subsequent editions were more ponderous, I understand.)

Malthus is thoughtful and civil—deferential toward Adam Smith in spite of a disagreement and polite toward the two men whose arguments he demolished, William Godwin and Nicolas de Condorcet. The essay is full of plain-spoken metaphors (using examples such as watches and telescopes)[3] and full of common sense.

The strange thing is this: Not only was his claim about population vs. food production wrong, as we now know from 120 years of experience, his argument for it was just armchair theorizing. Continue reading “The Marketing Genius of T. R. Malthus”

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They Didn’t See It Coming: Prosperity

As I have stated before, historians are often influenced by what’s going on around them when they write about the past. In the 1950s and 1960s, the newly-independent countries looked as though they might experience  their own industrial revolutions. That led to an interest among historians in the early Industrial Revolution. [1]

Economists caught the enthusiasm, too. They viewed the great potential of these countries and expected an Industrial Revolution—what W. W. Rostow called these countires’ “take-off.” [2] But that period  of enthusiasm was followed by disillusionment. It turned out that many countries failed to achieve the take-off that seemed right at their doorstep.

I suggest that the economists were looking at the wrong things.

More than 20 years ago in an article for  the Journal of Private Enterprise [3] I wrote about  economists’ views of development as reflected in Paul Samuelson’s famous textbook.  (That’s the one you probably  read in your first economics class if you are of a certain age.)

I looked at Samuelson’s treatment of international development in four editions of the textbook, 1951, 1961, 1964, 1985. In them he reveals both his own views and those of other leading development economists.

In the 1961 edition, optimism for growth still reigned. Continue reading “They Didn’t See It Coming: Prosperity”

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February News about History and Historians

Historians debate the return of the Elgin Marbles and other artifacts. In History Today.

What the British learned, and didn’t learn, from the U.S. Civil War. On Military History.

Seventy-five years later, the original movie recording of planting the flag on Iwo Jima is missing. In the Washington Post‘s Retropolis.

Historians have paid little attention to Poland’s resistance to Hitler, says Roger Moorhouse in First to Fight: the Poland War 1939 (reviewed in History Today).

What Is the American History for Freedom project and should Congress pass it?

Who was right about Americans—Dickens or Tocqueville?  On Law & Liberty.

A Marxist discusses Marx’s and Engel’s views of slavery (in connection with the New York Times‘ 1619 Project).

Why did some innovations take so long to occur?

American Historical Association tries to bring teaching to the center of the profession, with slow progress. In Inside Higher Ed.

Continue reading “February News about History and Historians”