Category: Geography

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Why Did the Europeans Win?

My last post, “Land Grants or Land Grabs,” revealed that most federal land that started land-grant universities had been taken from Indians. I  received some constructive pushback. (See the comments.) But that feedback reminded me of a question, Why did the Europeans invade the New World in the first place and conquer Native Americans, rather than Native Americans invading Europe and conquering Europeans?

The phrasing of this question will alert some readers to the subject of this post, the powerful 1997 book by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.[1]

Diamond’s book travels through time (back to the origins of humans) and space (all continents except Antarctica) to answer that question—to determine why some societies became so powerful, with such technology, that they could cross an ocean and conquer millions of people. The European/Native American conflict is the most obvious example, but history has many examples of more powerful groups overcoming less powerful groups.

Continue reading “Why Did the Europeans Win?”

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Why Was St. Louis an “Also-Ran”?

St. Louis Union Terminal now a Doubletree

Urban historians sometimes puzzle over why one city grows and its competitors do not. One rivalry, between St. Louis, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois, is particularly interesting.

In 1840, St. Louis was a thriving part of the “urban frontier,” with a population of 35,979. It managed a rich fur trade, was a major transfer point for goods coming upriver from New Orleans (the nation’s third-largest city at the time), and its two major rivers enabled it to send grain from Midwestern prairies down the Mississippi for shipment east.  Indeed, as one historian noted,

“Perhaps no American city was born under such favorable auspices as St. Louis, Missouri. It was located at the confluence of navigable water courses which drained over a million square miles of the continent, and it was built by a number of big businessmen (“big” for that time, which was 1764) who knew precisely what they were doing.”[1]

In contrast, Chicago was a hamlet of 4,470 people.

But by 1880, when St. Louis had grown to 350,158 people, Chicago’s population had galloped ahead to 503,185.[2] Continue reading “Why Was St. Louis an “Also-Ran”?”

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Is There a Case for Colonialism?

Map of Africa

A few weeks ago, Bruce Gilley, a political science professor at Portland State University, was hit with an online petition opposing his forthcoming book about Sir Alan Burns, a colonial British governor. In response to the petition, the publisher withdrew the book and canceled the series it was supposed to inaugurate.

Although the publisher minimized its aggressive action (“we put the book on hold and removed it from our website while we reviewed the matter”), the petitioners were elated: “Rowman and Littlefield paid attention to the academic community and Gilley’s shameful series has been rejected.”

Something similar happened in 2017. Gilley’s article, “The Case for Colonialism,” was withdrawn from the Third World Quarterly after 18,000 petitioners sought to have it removed, and 15 members of the editorial board resigned. The journal’s publisher withdrew the article due to death threats to the editor who had approved its publication.

Don’t feel too bad for Gilley, however. He wrote Oct. 8 in the Wall Street Journal that “this sort of publicity is hard to buy” and he expects another publisher to pick up his latest book.

What, exactly, is he saying about colonialism? In this post I will share the argument outlined in “The Case for Colonialism.” (His article was published in Academic Questions after the Third World Quarterly withdrew it.)[1] Continue reading “Is There a Case for Colonialism?”

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Going Against the Grain, Environmentally Speaking

Beaver Dam

When economist Harold Demsetz looked into the history of the fur trade in the Labrador Peninsula in 1967, he was not studying environmental protection. He was exploring the origins of property rights. Yet his findings contributed to a major rethinking of environmental issues. Here’s what he found.

Before 1700, Indians hunted beaver in forests around Quebec, using them for food and fur. Because the demand for beaver was limited, says Demsetz, “hunting could be practiced freely.”[1]

But around 1700, Europeans came to the peninsula, eager to purchase beaver skins from the Indians. Continue reading “Going Against the Grain, Environmentally Speaking”

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January News about History and Historians

A short history of recycling. By Jane Shaw Stroup on the Environmental Blog.

The Hoover Institution at 100: George Nash discusses its significance.

Mark T. Mitchell reviews  Walk Away, which tells the stories of ten people who left Marxism.  On Law & Liberty.

Robert Paquette explains the views of Eugene Genovese, a historian with Marxist roots and possibly conservative branches. In Chronicles.

Howard Zinn was no historian. On Law & Liberty.

KC Johnson says the New York Times’ 1619 project fails the truth test.

More on the 1619 project from Sean Wilentz in the Atlantic.

Librarian and bookseller plead guilty to stealing $8 million worth of antique books from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library. In the Washington Post’s Retropolis.

Take a peek at the oldest still-operating business in each state in the U.S. From workandmoney.com.

We’ve had 30 years of misdirected Alzheimer’s research, says Sharon Begley on STAT.

Continue reading “January News about History and Historians”