1 00:00:00,140 --> 00:00:03,330 Hi there. Welcome to the Works in Progress podcast. I'm Sam Bowman. 2 00:00:03,330 --> 00:00:06,450 I'm one of the editors of Works in Progress. I'm here with Ben Southwood, 3 00:00:06,460 --> 00:00:08,320 who's another one of the editors of Works in Progress, 4 00:00:08,590 --> 00:00:12,160 and our guest today is Anton Howes. Anton writes a really, 5 00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:16,050 really good substack called Age of Invention, and he's also written a really, 6 00:00:16,050 --> 00:00:18,450 really, really good book called Arts and Minds. 7 00:00:19,050 --> 00:00:23,690 I think of Anton as basically being the intellectual lionhead 8 00:00:23,990 --> 00:00:28,850 of the progress studies movement because he does work in why invention 9 00:00:28,850 --> 00:00:32,450 happens and why progress has happened historically. Ben, 10 00:00:32,450 --> 00:00:34,490 what do you think about Anton's work? Before we bring Anton in. 11 00:00:34,690 --> 00:00:38,330 I would basically call myself an Anton is or a Howesian. 12 00:00:38,980 --> 00:00:43,410 Anton convinced me 10 years ago that his theory of the industrial 13 00:00:43,730 --> 00:00:48,730 revolution and why we have economic growth and progress at high speed like 14 00:00:48,730 --> 00:00:50,170 we have had since the Industrial Revolution. 15 00:00:50,310 --> 00:00:53,050 He convinced me of his theory and since then I've been going around telling 16 00:00:53,250 --> 00:00:57,810 everyone else about his theory and since then he keeps finding new details of 17 00:00:57,910 --> 00:00:59,570 his theory and elaborating and so on. 18 00:00:59,570 --> 00:01:03,410 And then I become a believer in all those details and elaborations as he 19 00:01:03,410 --> 00:01:05,850 releases them on his blog, which by the way, everyone should follow. 20 00:01:06,170 --> 00:01:11,130 I was going to ask Anton partly because I want to hear how he'll answer, 21 00:01:11,150 --> 00:01:13,770 but also because I think the other people would like to hear he'll answer, 22 00:01:14,220 --> 00:01:16,970 Anton, why did Britain have the industrial revolution? 23 00:01:18,290 --> 00:01:21,750 So great question, and the way we need to approach it though, 24 00:01:21,860 --> 00:01:24,910 I think is to sort of question the whole concept of, 25 00:01:24,970 --> 00:01:28,270 or the name Industrial Revolution. When we say industrial revolution, 26 00:01:28,690 --> 00:01:33,430 we immediately think of Dickensian Health scapes from the 27 00:01:33,490 --> 00:01:35,710 mid 19th century. We think of Oliver Twist, 28 00:01:36,290 --> 00:01:40,790 we think of cotton mills and Luddites 29 00:01:41,250 --> 00:01:45,310 and machine breakers. We think of coal, of cotton, 30 00:01:45,970 --> 00:01:49,590 of steel, of iron, of great belching, 31 00:01:49,590 --> 00:01:54,510 smoked stacks and filthy faced urchins roaming about the streets 32 00:01:54,510 --> 00:01:55,343 of London. 33 00:01:55,730 --> 00:02:00,030 And in many ways those are some of the results that you eventually see of what 34 00:02:00,510 --> 00:02:02,950 economic historians like to call the industrial revolution. 35 00:02:04,010 --> 00:02:06,830 But really when we talk about the industrial revolution, 36 00:02:06,830 --> 00:02:10,510 what we're talking about is the beginning of sustained 37 00:02:11,440 --> 00:02:16,100 continuous, technologically led economic growth. 38 00:02:16,490 --> 00:02:20,150 So this kind of constant increase in living standards that we've grown quite 39 00:02:20,150 --> 00:02:24,910 used to over the past few centuries where nowadays if we talk about 40 00:02:25,230 --> 00:02:28,150 anything less than one to 2% GDP growth per year, 41 00:02:28,290 --> 00:02:32,230 it seems like stagnation that whole way of being, this constant growth, 42 00:02:32,690 --> 00:02:35,590 not just in cotton, in steel, in iron, whatever, 43 00:02:36,320 --> 00:02:39,820 but actually across all different industries is what the industrial revolution 44 00:02:39,820 --> 00:02:44,430 is. So in a sense it's a kind of acceleration of innovation that takes place. 45 00:02:45,290 --> 00:02:47,260 And really it's not even necessarily just industrial. 46 00:02:47,670 --> 00:02:51,470 I mean it's something that takes place first and foremost really in agriculture, 47 00:02:52,040 --> 00:02:56,510 but also in various parts of services in infrastructure building, 48 00:02:57,010 --> 00:03:00,130 in roads, canals, in postal networks, 49 00:03:01,310 --> 00:03:02,290 in advertising. 50 00:03:02,530 --> 00:03:06,040 I mean anything that you can think of from agriculture all the way to 51 00:03:06,040 --> 00:03:09,810 watchmaking, I'll try to get an A to Z to zoology, 52 00:03:09,940 --> 00:03:14,930 let's say anything from A to Z is going to have some kind of innovation 53 00:03:14,930 --> 00:03:19,530 that takes place and really starts to take off over the course of the 16th, 54 00:03:19,530 --> 00:03:23,170 17th, and 18th centuries. So when we talk about the industrial revolution, 55 00:03:23,190 --> 00:03:25,250 we have that kind of Dickensian vision. 56 00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:29,250 What we're actually looking at there is kind of a hundred, 57 00:03:29,260 --> 00:03:32,490 maybe even 200 years on from the acceleration beginning. 58 00:03:32,910 --> 00:03:36,530 So wait a second. Did you just say over the 16th, 59 00:03:36,530 --> 00:03:37,970 17th and 18th centuries. 60 00:03:38,030 --> 00:03:42,650 So most people I think would associate the industrial revolution with the 61 00:03:42,930 --> 00:03:47,730 1770s or 1780s and particular steam engines being invented, 62 00:03:48,150 --> 00:03:53,010 but, and I've heard some people point to the 1700s, 63 00:03:53,010 --> 00:03:57,530 the 18th century as being actually earlier on in that century there were big 64 00:03:57,530 --> 00:03:59,610 improvements happening and we missed timed it. 65 00:03:59,720 --> 00:04:02,450 I've never heard anyone say that the 16th century, 66 00:04:02,510 --> 00:04:05,850 the 1500s were the starting point of the industrial revolution. 67 00:04:06,950 --> 00:04:08,770 So can you explain where you're coming from there? 68 00:04:08,990 --> 00:04:10,970 You are saying by the 1700s or something, 69 00:04:11,210 --> 00:04:13,170 a lot of the industrial revolution had already happened. 70 00:04:13,750 --> 00:04:14,610 That's exactly right. 71 00:04:15,110 --> 00:04:20,080 So the standard periodization of the industrial revolution will be usually 72 00:04:20,100 --> 00:04:24,610 about 1780s to 1830s or maybe 1760s at a stretch to 73 00:04:24,770 --> 00:04:25,603 1830s. 74 00:04:26,070 --> 00:04:29,130 My view is that if you actually look at what's going on in Britain versus the 75 00:04:29,130 --> 00:04:31,650 rest of Europe, let alone the rest of the world, 76 00:04:31,880 --> 00:04:35,930 Britain is already by far and away the place where everyone's looking to, 77 00:04:36,310 --> 00:04:39,690 in the same way that today people look to say Silicon Valley as the place where 78 00:04:39,690 --> 00:04:42,170 all the innovation is going on. 79 00:04:42,480 --> 00:04:44,850 It's already got that status by 1700. 80 00:04:45,230 --> 00:04:49,010 And we actually got some pretty interesting proof of this because already in the 81 00:04:49,250 --> 00:04:53,570 1710s, there are loads and loads of industrial spies from Sweden, from Russia, 82 00:04:53,830 --> 00:04:55,570 from Spain, from France, 83 00:04:55,640 --> 00:05:00,010 from basically everywhere coming to Britain and essentially trying to either 84 00:05:01,190 --> 00:05:04,490 get their way into various factories or get their way into various workshops to 85 00:05:04,490 --> 00:05:09,400 see what's going on or even trying to entice workers abroad to the extent 86 00:05:09,400 --> 00:05:13,960 that in the 1710s parliament gets quite spooked and passes a bunch of acts, 87 00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:18,330 basically saying that people who are skilled artisans we're talking watchmakers, 88 00:05:18,430 --> 00:05:22,850 people who have been making instruments in microscopes, telescopes, 89 00:05:23,290 --> 00:05:28,090 anything to do with metal tools of any kind, 90 00:05:28,900 --> 00:05:33,250 those people are not allowed to leave the country. So already by the 91 00:05:33,490 --> 00:05:37,570 1710s there's this kind of defensiveness about English industrialization, 92 00:05:37,620 --> 00:05:41,450 about English innovation and invention. 93 00:05:42,950 --> 00:05:47,730 And so what happens in the 1760s and 1770s is that a lot of the really key 94 00:05:47,730 --> 00:05:52,570 industries that really grow to an extent that's almost unfathomable before 95 00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:58,010 iron or textile machinery and so on, the ones that are quite famous, 96 00:05:58,230 --> 00:05:59,450 that's when they really take off. 97 00:05:59,460 --> 00:06:02,490 And so the steam engine certainly is a big part of that. 98 00:06:02,710 --> 00:06:04,650 But even if we look at the history of the steam engine, 99 00:06:04,650 --> 00:06:06,530 I mean the Thomas Savoury engine, 100 00:06:06,670 --> 00:06:10,930 the original one to exploit atmospheric pressure and as well as the expansive 101 00:06:10,930 --> 00:06:14,610 force of steam that's invented in the 1690s, and the Newcomen engine, 102 00:06:15,180 --> 00:06:18,400 which is most famously used initially for pumping mines, 103 00:06:18,400 --> 00:06:22,330 especially coal mines where it's most economical because the fuel is itself, 104 00:06:23,350 --> 00:06:26,730 it is itself being used to pump up the fuel to drive it. I mean that's invented 105 00:06:26,840 --> 00:06:30,450 over the course of the 1700s becomes public in 1712. 106 00:06:32,150 --> 00:06:34,370 Already a lot of these things are in place. I mean, 107 00:06:34,370 --> 00:06:37,960 even if we look at some of the stuff that people think of as being key to the 108 00:06:37,960 --> 00:06:40,400 industrial revolution in a scientific sense, 109 00:06:40,430 --> 00:06:43,610 if we look at the foundation of rural society that takes place in the 1660s. 110 00:06:44,230 --> 00:06:49,170 So my view is that actually nearly all of the things that make Britain the place 111 00:06:49,170 --> 00:06:50,810 where the industrial revolution is most likely to happen, 112 00:06:50,900 --> 00:06:55,690 that's already well in place by 1700 and maybe even well in place by the 113 00:06:55,690 --> 00:06:59,400 1650s, 1660s. So let's put this in other terms. 114 00:06:59,930 --> 00:07:03,810 I mean the country is already significantly more industrialised than anywhere 115 00:07:03,810 --> 00:07:04,643 else. 116 00:07:05,110 --> 00:07:09,650 London is already growing into the largest city in Europe 117 00:07:10,590 --> 00:07:13,810 and soon to be the largest city in the world by 1700. 118 00:07:13,810 --> 00:07:18,170 It's already got 575,000 people. It's already exceeded Paris. 119 00:07:18,360 --> 00:07:22,770 It's already hot on the heels of the really mega cities like Constantinople, 120 00:07:23,550 --> 00:07:25,690 and it's already on hot on the heels of even Chinese cities, 121 00:07:25,690 --> 00:07:26,850 which were significantly larger, 122 00:07:27,050 --> 00:07:30,810 although spread over a much larger space. 123 00:07:32,570 --> 00:07:36,030 So I think if we actually want to look at what the origins of the industrial 124 00:07:36,230 --> 00:07:36,730 revolution are, 125 00:07:36,730 --> 00:07:40,950 we need to go much further back to the point at which England is the least 126 00:07:40,950 --> 00:07:43,630 obvious place for the industrial revolution to be occurring, 127 00:07:43,630 --> 00:07:46,350 or this acceleration of innovation to be occurring rather than when it's really 128 00:07:46,350 --> 00:07:50,430 kind of obvious to all contemporaries that it's the place where things are 129 00:07:50,430 --> 00:07:51,210 happening. 130 00:07:51,210 --> 00:07:53,470 One thing I picked up on, which you haven't mentioned, 131 00:07:53,570 --> 00:07:57,830 but it is a particular interest to me because it's to do with infrastructure, 132 00:07:58,610 --> 00:08:03,390 is that I've read about in the 1700s or even earlier than that, 133 00:08:04,370 --> 00:08:08,670 the roads in England were considered to be uniquely, 134 00:08:08,810 --> 00:08:10,790 you could go very fast on them, they're very smooth. 135 00:08:11,170 --> 00:08:14,310 And this led to waggons that were going extremely quickly. 136 00:08:14,890 --> 00:08:18,630 The European visitors would be astonished by the eight miles per hour that a 137 00:08:18,630 --> 00:08:22,230 waggon could go and they would run waggons 24 hours a day so that you could get 138 00:08:22,230 --> 00:08:25,430 your posts delivered overnight and they would change horses when they were 139 00:08:25,430 --> 00:08:28,790 halfway down. And I was actually reading a novel called the Quincunx, where 140 00:08:30,390 --> 00:08:33,420 a key plot point of the first third of the book is that the boy really wants to 141 00:08:33,420 --> 00:08:36,750 see a post waggon go past because it's going so fast and he wants to leave his 142 00:08:36,750 --> 00:08:40,180 village and walk to the turnpike road where there's a post waggon whizzing past, 143 00:08:40,180 --> 00:08:42,990 and then he'll shout like way I've seen a post waggon. 144 00:08:44,170 --> 00:08:46,390 Is this an important part of it as well? And I mean, 145 00:08:46,390 --> 00:08:47,630 I've also read about canals. 146 00:08:48,050 --> 00:08:52,750 I've seen a picture of a lock which has 29 stepped stairs. 147 00:08:52,850 --> 00:08:56,370 So you go into one and then they let the water, they'd add the water in, 148 00:08:56,370 --> 00:08:58,450 you go to the next one, they add the water and they go to the next one. 149 00:08:58,450 --> 00:09:00,490 They add the water so you can take ships up a hill. 150 00:09:01,470 --> 00:09:05,040 Are stuff like canals and turnpike, roads part of this story? 151 00:09:05,790 --> 00:09:09,170 Yes. So absolutely canals, roads a really big part of the story. 152 00:09:09,720 --> 00:09:14,370 It's extremely striking to a lot of contemporaries talking foreign 153 00:09:14,650 --> 00:09:15,850 visitors in the 18th century. 154 00:09:17,420 --> 00:09:21,370 Not just how quick the English roads are, but how well maintained they are. 155 00:09:22,450 --> 00:09:23,890 A lot of that has to do with turnpikes, 156 00:09:24,040 --> 00:09:27,800 although even before turnpikes start to take off, 157 00:09:27,870 --> 00:09:32,450 it seems as though the road network in England is improving quite considerably. 158 00:09:33,130 --> 00:09:35,040 I still have to get to the bottom of exactly why. 159 00:09:36,110 --> 00:09:37,090 What's a turnpike? 160 00:09:37,870 --> 00:09:42,680 So a turnpike is a road where essentially you have to pay a toll to 161 00:09:42,710 --> 00:09:47,650 access it and it would be managed by a turnpike trust who would 162 00:09:47,650 --> 00:09:51,920 essentially be the company that would be responsible for maintaining the road. 163 00:09:51,950 --> 00:09:54,570 And so they're set up by individual acts of parliament, 164 00:09:55,860 --> 00:10:00,170 which essentially gives them the rights over those roads to take those tolls. 165 00:10:00,350 --> 00:10:05,010 Am I right in thinking that we had or Britain had especially 166 00:10:05,270 --> 00:10:07,210 big and strong horses, is that correct? 167 00:10:08,270 --> 00:10:10,970 Big and strong horses and also a lot of horses. 168 00:10:11,750 --> 00:10:16,610 My favourite case of this is two French Duke sons visiting 169 00:10:16,610 --> 00:10:17,650 the 1780s. 170 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:22,920 They're just completely flawed by the fact that everybody seems to have 171 00:10:22,920 --> 00:10:26,920 a horse to the extent that even farmers have not just a horse that they use for 172 00:10:26,920 --> 00:10:27,753 pulling the plough, 173 00:10:27,950 --> 00:10:32,850 but they have their personal use horse that they can ride for going into town 174 00:10:33,030 --> 00:10:34,290 or that their wife will use, 175 00:10:34,340 --> 00:10:39,130 maybe even their wife will have a separate horse that they'll use just to go to 176 00:10:39,130 --> 00:10:43,370 market whenever they feel like it. That kind of proliferation of horses, 177 00:10:43,380 --> 00:10:46,170 especially very large horses, is a bit like, 178 00:10:46,290 --> 00:10:50,650 I guess visitors from the Soviet Union to America in the 1960s, 179 00:10:50,670 --> 00:10:55,490 seeing just the sheer abundance of cars and how widespread car ownership is, 180 00:10:56,280 --> 00:10:59,930 that seems to be what's going on in Britain. So yes, 181 00:11:00,270 --> 00:11:03,930 and not only are horses being used in fields or for transportation 182 00:11:05,240 --> 00:11:10,130 already, even before steam engines start to take over most of the rotary motion 183 00:11:10,670 --> 00:11:13,130 for grinding pigments for paints, let's say, 184 00:11:14,180 --> 00:11:17,050 or for polishing stones, 185 00:11:17,620 --> 00:11:19,800 which are going to be for stone work 186 00:11:21,590 --> 00:11:23,370 or any kind of grinding 187 00:11:25,520 --> 00:11:30,410 work or any rotary motion that's needed is predominantly 188 00:11:30,410 --> 00:11:34,800 done in the major cities like London by horses. So horses are the literal 189 00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:37,250 industrial workhorse of the economy. 190 00:11:37,670 --> 00:11:39,680 And is this to do with fodder availability? 191 00:11:40,270 --> 00:11:43,050 So why is it that Britain has so many horses? 192 00:11:44,050 --> 00:11:47,850 A related thing that I have looked into a little bit is that I've always 193 00:11:47,850 --> 00:11:51,770 wondered why even in the 1700s and the 1600s, 194 00:11:51,770 --> 00:11:56,290 even the earliest American cities are laid out with very wide streets. 195 00:11:56,710 --> 00:12:00,850 So this is confusing because if you built a new town in, 196 00:12:01,430 --> 00:12:04,850 there's a hexagonal town in Sicily that was built in 1693, 197 00:12:05,110 --> 00:12:07,650 so it was all demolished by an earthquake and they built it fresh. 198 00:12:07,670 --> 00:12:11,730 So we can see what someone in 1693 in Sicily thought was the ideal kind of town 199 00:12:11,730 --> 00:12:14,890 which have no constraints, and they're pretty narrow streets. 200 00:12:15,150 --> 00:12:18,130 The reason being that it makes sense to have all the buildings relatively 201 00:12:18,130 --> 00:12:21,210 huddled near to one another because they don't have any mode of transport that 202 00:12:21,370 --> 00:12:24,170 anyone's using faster than walking. The richest people are all walking nearly 203 00:12:24,170 --> 00:12:24,860 everywhere. 204 00:12:24,860 --> 00:12:28,650 There aren't really sedan chairs in Europe and on the streets of Europe 205 00:12:28,650 --> 00:12:29,350 generally, 206 00:12:29,350 --> 00:12:32,730 you wouldn't cart yourself around unless you were the richest of the rich. 207 00:12:33,270 --> 00:12:37,410 And so I've always been surprised by American cities being laid out very wide. 208 00:12:37,630 --> 00:12:42,610 But one theory I have now is that American fodder is so cheap because land 209 00:12:42,610 --> 00:12:45,850 is so cheap that everyone can afford a horse, even really normal people. 210 00:12:46,510 --> 00:12:48,450 And since normal people have got a horse and cart, 211 00:12:48,710 --> 00:12:51,800 you basically have high car ownership because you have high horse and cart 212 00:12:51,800 --> 00:12:52,390 ownership. 213 00:12:52,390 --> 00:12:55,730 And so you lay your city streets out widely to deal with all the horses and 214 00:12:55,730 --> 00:12:58,410 carts you expect to go down them. Is it something like that? 215 00:12:58,430 --> 00:13:02,570 Why have we got so many horses in England or Britain and not in Europe? 216 00:13:03,370 --> 00:13:08,290 I suspect that's exactly right in that it's to do with horse availability or 217 00:13:08,290 --> 00:13:09,123 horse abundance. 218 00:13:10,800 --> 00:13:15,050 Possibly in Italy they might be using mules as well as just going at their own 219 00:13:15,360 --> 00:13:19,730 walking speed. So that's typically what you see in places where you have very, 220 00:13:19,730 --> 00:13:23,890 very bad roads is that you'll just load stuff onto pack mules because they're 221 00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:28,890 able to do this winding stuff rather than dragging carts or waggons 222 00:13:28,890 --> 00:13:33,640 and so on. Coaches along. I think the main reason for it, 223 00:13:33,640 --> 00:13:37,040 and this is actually one of those ways in which I'm a bit of a coal sceptic, 224 00:13:37,100 --> 00:13:38,360 we can maybe come back to that later, 225 00:13:38,980 --> 00:13:42,640 but one of the main ways in which I think coal does transform the English 226 00:13:42,640 --> 00:13:46,480 economy very early on, so from the 1580s onwards really, 227 00:13:46,970 --> 00:13:50,550 which is the initial is that coal by replacing 228 00:13:51,790 --> 00:13:56,720 wood or fuel over the course of 1580s onwards, 229 00:13:57,330 --> 00:14:00,160 frees up a lot of woodland as well as alternative 230 00:14:02,070 --> 00:14:04,280 sources of fuel. Like heath, 231 00:14:04,280 --> 00:14:08,680 like the kind of furs and gorse that you find growing on heathland, 232 00:14:08,980 --> 00:14:13,320 it frees up heathland, it frees up woodland, it frees up marshland, 233 00:14:13,320 --> 00:14:16,840 which is often used for turf and peat for burning people's homes. 234 00:14:17,670 --> 00:14:20,360 Coal essentially replaces all of that, 235 00:14:20,460 --> 00:14:25,000 all of those fuels so that all of that land can suddenly be transformed and 236 00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:28,960 conversant agriculture, and particularly not just arable agriculture, 237 00:14:28,960 --> 00:14:29,800 but pasture as well. 238 00:14:30,260 --> 00:14:34,560 And so you essentially have this kind of coal abundance in England in the 16th 239 00:14:34,560 --> 00:14:38,520 century creates grain abundance and livestock abundance 240 00:14:39,780 --> 00:14:41,640 to a much greater degree than anywhere else, 241 00:14:41,890 --> 00:14:45,440 which is why by the 18th century when coal has really taken off and pretty much 242 00:14:46,020 --> 00:14:49,600 as a result of ribbon allegations as a result of the growth of canals as well, 243 00:14:50,780 --> 00:14:53,850 all of these things are reinforcing one another so that more and more land, 244 00:14:54,340 --> 00:14:58,890 which used to have to be maintained for fuel, for wood, 245 00:14:59,150 --> 00:15:02,410 for peat, for furs and gauze and so on, 246 00:15:03,150 --> 00:15:07,050 all of that can now be used for grain instead. And so that kind of muscle 247 00:15:07,050 --> 00:15:11,370 abundance that you get, and it is not just making horses more common, 248 00:15:11,550 --> 00:15:16,170 but also making literally the people of England much larger than the people 249 00:15:16,170 --> 00:15:17,650 pretty much anywhere else as well. 250 00:15:17,690 --> 00:15:22,090 I mean most visitors are commenting on just how massive the English people are, 251 00:15:23,390 --> 00:15:26,530 not just in terms of muscles, sometimes it's in terms of fat as well, 252 00:15:27,550 --> 00:15:30,290 but all of these things are kind of correlated with one another. I mean, 253 00:15:30,680 --> 00:15:35,530 most visitors are absolutely horrified by the extent to which a 254 00:15:35,530 --> 00:15:36,850 relatively well off Englishman, 255 00:15:37,080 --> 00:15:40,890 even Yeomen people who are essentially engaged in agriculture, 256 00:15:41,320 --> 00:15:45,970 they'll spend half the day basically at a meal. The idea of the Hobbit saying, 257 00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:52,090 what about second breakfast is very, very a real thing in the 18th century, 258 00:15:52,090 --> 00:15:53,410 especially to foreign visitors. 259 00:15:54,070 --> 00:15:56,490 So does population growth take off at the same time as this? 260 00:15:57,600 --> 00:16:01,060 Yes, massively. So England, interestingly, after the Black Death, 261 00:16:01,960 --> 00:16:05,980 it goes for about five, just over 5 million people down to, 262 00:16:06,770 --> 00:16:08,100 well, first there's the black death wave, 263 00:16:08,100 --> 00:16:10,220 which kills off about half the population, 264 00:16:10,480 --> 00:16:13,500 and then it actually continues to decrease as a result of further plagues, 265 00:16:14,080 --> 00:16:16,740 and then just fertility completely collapses. 266 00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:21,620 So the country's population starts to hover just over 267 00:16:22,120 --> 00:16:26,580 2 million people over the course of the late 16th century. However, 268 00:16:26,800 --> 00:16:28,500 it suddenly starts to increase again, 269 00:16:29,240 --> 00:16:34,060 it not only gets up to its pre plague level, 270 00:16:35,200 --> 00:16:39,500 at which point before the black death we're talking in the 1340s at which at 271 00:16:39,500 --> 00:16:41,940 that point there's a kind of demographic crisis, 272 00:16:42,050 --> 00:16:46,660 your proper malus crisis that people scarcely have enough land 273 00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:51,460 to live on essentially already you've got these kind of 274 00:16:51,530 --> 00:16:53,300 famines, periodic famines, 275 00:16:53,300 --> 00:16:56,900 periodic plagues that are killing off the population to keep it at that level. 276 00:16:56,960 --> 00:17:00,820 It can't really exceed that. What happens in the 17th century, however, 277 00:17:01,080 --> 00:17:05,940 is that the pre plague limit is not only reached but then exceeded and 278 00:17:05,940 --> 00:17:08,660 at the same time as people getting richer and richer and living standards 279 00:17:11,070 --> 00:17:12,460 continuing to be maintained. 280 00:17:13,400 --> 00:17:17,490 So England's population growth is quite striking over the course of the 16th, 281 00:17:17,490 --> 00:17:22,210 17th, 18th centuries in that it just continues to grow and grow to a level that 282 00:17:22,210 --> 00:17:26,100 beforehand, given the kind of old technology that you had in the 1340s, 283 00:17:26,490 --> 00:17:27,700 would've just been impossible. 284 00:17:27,700 --> 00:17:32,580 And I think actually the adoption of coal and the replacement of all of this 285 00:17:32,580 --> 00:17:34,460 land with agriculture is a big part of that. 286 00:17:34,470 --> 00:17:39,420 It just makes just calories in the economy as eaten by livestock, 287 00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:40,513 by horses, 288 00:17:40,710 --> 00:17:45,620 as well as by people just so super abundant that a very large population can be 289 00:17:46,140 --> 00:17:49,810 maintained to the extent that England is actually throughout this whole period. 290 00:17:50,590 --> 00:17:53,930 So this late 16th century onwards, a net grain exporter, 291 00:17:54,550 --> 00:17:59,330 and it's only really in the 1760s or so that you start to see the signs of the 292 00:17:59,330 --> 00:18:03,930 demographic crisis or some demographic checks beginning to bite a little bit. 293 00:18:04,350 --> 00:18:08,770 So there's greater reliance on foreign imports and there's greater reliance on 294 00:18:09,060 --> 00:18:13,690 Irish livestock and dairy and so on. But even then, 295 00:18:13,690 --> 00:18:18,530 they're able to afford a lot of the food imports that they 296 00:18:18,530 --> 00:18:21,930 require in order to keep that demographic expansion going. 297 00:18:22,440 --> 00:18:27,370 Okay, so let's say we agree with you that by 1700 or some point, 298 00:18:27,370 --> 00:18:29,210 you can clarify if you think there's a specific time, 299 00:18:29,210 --> 00:18:33,850 but let's say we agree with you by 1700 European visitors could already see that 300 00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:36,170 Britain was the Silicon Valley of its time. 301 00:18:36,590 --> 00:18:39,570 It was the most technologically advanced country. People could eat more, 302 00:18:39,570 --> 00:18:41,450 they had more animals, et cetera, et cetera. 303 00:18:44,700 --> 00:18:45,870 When did this actually start? 304 00:18:47,090 --> 00:18:51,430 Was Britain set up to succeed from a really long deep history 305 00:18:52,330 --> 00:18:53,630 in 1550, for example? 306 00:18:53,890 --> 00:18:58,790 Was it obvious from that vantage point that Britain was going to 307 00:18:58,790 --> 00:19:02,110 lead? This is like a long, long story is the more we dig into it, 308 00:19:02,110 --> 00:19:04,950 the more we find that there were roots or did something change. 309 00:19:06,290 --> 00:19:10,950 So I think something very significant changes over the course of the 1540s and 310 00:19:10,950 --> 00:19:11,783 50s. 311 00:19:12,110 --> 00:19:16,310 I think if you were an extra terrestrial visiting the world and you are looking 312 00:19:16,330 --> 00:19:17,630 for an acceleration of innovation, 313 00:19:17,630 --> 00:19:21,670 you're looking for earth's Silicon Valley and you visiting the world, 314 00:19:22,010 --> 00:19:25,110 if you were to look at England in the 1520s/30s, 315 00:19:26,130 --> 00:19:29,740 it wouldn't even come onto your radar. You'd be looking elsewhere. 316 00:19:30,090 --> 00:19:34,870 If you were looking at cities as centres of innovation and culture and so on, 317 00:19:34,870 --> 00:19:38,310 you'd be looking at northern Italy, you'd be looking at the low countries. 318 00:19:38,370 --> 00:19:42,670 So modern day Belgium and the Netherlands, which are extremely urbanised, 319 00:19:43,340 --> 00:19:45,150 have very commercial societies. 320 00:19:46,130 --> 00:19:49,430 You might be looking at China for some of the largest cities in terms of 321 00:19:49,430 --> 00:19:50,980 population density overall, 322 00:19:52,240 --> 00:19:55,980 if you were looking for the largest states thinking that you need to have a 323 00:19:55,980 --> 00:19:59,790 strong state in order to fend off predators, 324 00:19:59,830 --> 00:20:02,390 you most certainly wouldn't be looking at England because it's extremely 325 00:20:02,390 --> 00:20:07,110 vulnerable to foreign predators. Pretty much the history of the 326 00:20:07,110 --> 00:20:07,943 15th century, 327 00:20:08,610 --> 00:20:11,510 the Wars of the Roses we think of as being this internal sign warfare. 328 00:20:12,010 --> 00:20:14,870 But actually if you look at what's happening is that England is being repeatedly 329 00:20:15,060 --> 00:20:19,510 invaded from across the sea by French backed or Burgundian backed, 330 00:20:19,650 --> 00:20:23,830 or even breon backed pretenders to the throne, 331 00:20:24,900 --> 00:20:27,590 some of which succeed. So Henry VII, 332 00:20:27,590 --> 00:20:31,150 the first Tudor King is an extremely unlikely candidate to be king. 333 00:20:31,340 --> 00:20:34,710 He's basically sent with Breton and French backed mercenaries 334 00:20:36,210 --> 00:20:41,070 to invade the country, manages to get to Milford Haven, 335 00:20:41,520 --> 00:20:46,510 march hundreds of kilometres in land before he's met at the ball of Bosworth and 336 00:20:46,510 --> 00:20:49,810 just happens to win almost sheer accident. 337 00:20:51,310 --> 00:20:54,690 But there's loads and loads of other repeated invasions over the course of it. 338 00:20:54,690 --> 00:20:57,720 So in many ways, England is not only a very, very weak country. 339 00:20:58,440 --> 00:21:02,690 It's gone from in the 14th century during what we might call glory years of the 340 00:21:02,690 --> 00:21:03,770 beginning of the Hundred Years War, 341 00:21:05,020 --> 00:21:09,720 where England is about a quarter to a third, 342 00:21:09,790 --> 00:21:10,690 the size of France, 343 00:21:11,220 --> 00:21:16,130 but actually in practise is actually larger than that because most of what 344 00:21:16,130 --> 00:21:19,690 the French King controls is not really his to control. You've got the Dukes of 345 00:21:19,810 --> 00:21:23,240 Burgundy, you've got the Dukes of Britain, they're kind of semi-independent. 346 00:21:23,460 --> 00:21:26,810 The dutchy of Accutane is actually controlled by the English king. 347 00:21:27,070 --> 00:21:31,570 So actually the difference isn't so great by 1500 England is, 348 00:21:33,120 --> 00:21:35,210 it's about a sixth the size of France, 349 00:21:35,270 --> 00:21:37,890 and France is actually fully under the control of the French King, 350 00:21:37,960 --> 00:21:42,240 with the exception of this tiny little toehold left at Calais, which is 351 00:21:43,980 --> 00:21:48,960 the one remaining fortified bit of the English land water with 352 00:21:48,960 --> 00:21:53,130 France. So it's not a particularly strong state. 353 00:21:53,510 --> 00:21:55,730 You've got very large empires that are suddenly growing. 354 00:21:55,730 --> 00:22:00,290 The Habsburgs are emerging, the French kingdom is growing significantly, 355 00:22:01,530 --> 00:22:03,690 even conquer Scotland to the north, which is only a fifth, 356 00:22:03,790 --> 00:22:08,450 its size by population. Ireland is kind of under nominal control, 357 00:22:08,870 --> 00:22:13,130 but not really something, not really an area where the English king, 358 00:22:13,550 --> 00:22:18,410 his writ actually extent does very much beyond the pale around Dublin 359 00:22:19,070 --> 00:22:23,650 as it's called. So England is not a particularly strong state. 360 00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:26,930 It's not particularly urbanised. It's not particularly industrialised. 361 00:22:27,080 --> 00:22:32,010 Most of it's the things that it requires in terms of keeping up to date with the 362 00:22:32,010 --> 00:22:37,010 gunpowder revolution. Nearly all of that stuff has to be imported from Antwerp. 363 00:22:37,110 --> 00:22:38,370 So from the low countries, 364 00:22:38,480 --> 00:22:42,810 it's entirely dependent for nearly all of its access to culture, science, 365 00:22:42,810 --> 00:22:47,330 technology that's going on in Europe via that trade that it has with Antwerp. 366 00:22:47,350 --> 00:22:48,183 In many ways, 367 00:22:48,550 --> 00:22:53,530 London is a kind of satellite city to Antwerp that only really exists as 368 00:22:53,610 --> 00:22:57,610 a major cultivation, about 50,000 people, really quite small, 369 00:22:57,910 --> 00:23:01,170 not one of the largest cities in Europe, not really, I think even in the top 10, 370 00:23:02,160 --> 00:23:07,010 despite being a capital city. So it's really a minor backwater, 371 00:23:07,630 --> 00:23:10,890 if you like, and the economy as a whole is extremely agrarian. 372 00:23:11,350 --> 00:23:15,730 So England at this point is exporting and producing raw materials, 373 00:23:16,070 --> 00:23:19,370 but not transforming those raw materials into anything more sophisticated. 374 00:23:19,630 --> 00:23:24,010 Is that what you mean by because industrialization or industry in this period 375 00:23:24,060 --> 00:23:26,770 feels a bit anachronistic to my mind at least. 376 00:23:26,850 --> 00:23:29,730 I think of steam and coal and things like that, 377 00:23:29,910 --> 00:23:31,240 but you're using the term slightly differently. 378 00:23:31,980 --> 00:23:34,770 The main industry by far this period, 379 00:23:35,110 --> 00:23:37,530 and actually well into the 18th century as well, is cloth making. 380 00:23:38,590 --> 00:23:42,290 So taking your raw wool, spinning it, 381 00:23:42,620 --> 00:23:47,480 which is quite time intensive or carding it potentially first 382 00:23:47,830 --> 00:23:51,890 or at least combing it, spinning it, weaving it. 383 00:23:52,430 --> 00:23:53,610 And then for English wool cloth, 384 00:23:53,610 --> 00:23:56,290 what you'd also do is you'd oil it up and you'd fill it, 385 00:23:56,290 --> 00:24:01,240 which is kind of pound all of the very short fibres into a kind of felty 386 00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:04,810 mass, which would then be stretched out over tenter hooks. 387 00:24:05,470 --> 00:24:08,690 And that's the main industry that England has. 388 00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:13,930 There's a bit of tin mining, which is, there's some of that, 389 00:24:13,930 --> 00:24:15,770 there's a bit of lead mining as well. 390 00:24:16,910 --> 00:24:20,240 But really in terms of what we might think of as interesting industries, I mean, 391 00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:24,890 some of the stuff that later takes off is barely being touched. 392 00:24:25,050 --> 00:24:29,970 I mean, iron, about 75% of England's iron is imported from northern Spain, 393 00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:34,610 from the Basque country. Copper is just almost unheard of. 394 00:24:34,610 --> 00:24:35,443 There's something, 395 00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:37,410 although there are loads of copper mines and loads of copper in the ground, 396 00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:39,970 it's just simply not being exported. 397 00:24:40,490 --> 00:24:44,050 Brass isn't being produced despite the fact that you've got everything you need 398 00:24:44,510 --> 00:24:45,570 for brass production. 399 00:24:46,310 --> 00:24:50,650 So even with even basic materials where you think there could be some primary 400 00:24:50,650 --> 00:24:52,970 production going on that's not taking place, 401 00:24:53,030 --> 00:24:57,010 let alone the secondary production that you might see in terms of working up 402 00:24:57,010 --> 00:24:59,890 those materials into something else. So yes, 403 00:24:59,950 --> 00:25:03,730 I'm not talking necessarily about steam engines and factories and so on, 404 00:25:03,870 --> 00:25:08,090 but really even just the taking your primary produce and turn and transforming 405 00:25:08,110 --> 00:25:12,290 it into something slightly more sophisticated with the exception of cloth 406 00:25:12,290 --> 00:25:14,090 making, there's very little going on. So. 407 00:25:14,350 --> 00:25:19,210 Why then with this incredibly bad starting position with Britain being 408 00:25:19,730 --> 00:25:23,650 a poor, backward, small, ineffective, 409 00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:27,170 weak country constantly being invaded by foreign pretenders, 410 00:25:28,190 --> 00:25:32,480 how then according to you, did this change so quickly? 411 00:25:33,310 --> 00:25:37,450 So before I answer that, I'll say it gets even worse before it gets better, 412 00:25:37,740 --> 00:25:40,770 and I think the way in which it gets worse is actually quite important to 413 00:25:40,770 --> 00:25:42,050 understanding why it gets better. 414 00:25:42,830 --> 00:25:47,480 So what happens during Henry VII's reign is that he essentially decides that 415 00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:48,970 like his namesake Henry V, 416 00:25:49,590 --> 00:25:53,570 one of the things he'd likes to try is just to keep invading France and see if 417 00:25:53,570 --> 00:25:57,610 he can recon make Britain great or make England great again. 418 00:25:58,310 --> 00:26:02,810 So he attacks the French in the 1510s in the 1520s. 419 00:26:03,030 --> 00:26:05,850 In the 1540s, he often also attacks the Scots, 420 00:26:05,870 --> 00:26:07,090 not with a view to conquering them, 421 00:26:07,090 --> 00:26:11,890 but really just to keep them at bay so that he can then completely 422 00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:16,330 destroy as much of Scotland as possible before he then has an invasion of 423 00:26:16,330 --> 00:26:19,130 France. In order to do this, 424 00:26:19,710 --> 00:26:23,730 he taxes the hell out of the English population to a degree that simply hadn't 425 00:26:23,730 --> 00:26:24,563 been seen before. 426 00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:28,930 Many people have heard of the poll tax as being a thing in the 1380s, 427 00:26:29,030 --> 00:26:30,240 at least the peasant revolt. 428 00:26:30,280 --> 00:26:34,240 What they're unaware of is that there's another poll tax in the 1510s and 429 00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:38,730 another poll tax in the 1540s to pay for Henry's wars. 430 00:26:39,390 --> 00:26:42,610 And he comes up with this whole structure of taxation, 431 00:26:43,100 --> 00:26:46,170 which was unlike anything that had been seen for well over a hundred years, 432 00:26:46,590 --> 00:26:51,290 at least, if not since the beginning of English history as far as I can tell, 433 00:26:52,780 --> 00:26:56,930 which is essentially getting parliament to vote what were called subsidies, 434 00:26:57,140 --> 00:26:58,770 which is a bit confusing, 435 00:26:58,770 --> 00:27:01,480 but they're subsidies to the crown in order to fight wars. 436 00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:04,450 So essentially there are actually taxes rather than subsidies. 437 00:27:05,270 --> 00:27:10,090 So by parliament voting these taxes to the king. However, 438 00:27:10,870 --> 00:27:14,530 one thing I hadn't even realised until I was researching this and writing up 439 00:27:14,530 --> 00:27:17,570 these bits about a year ago is just how inefficient these taxes are, 440 00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:21,810 just how terrible it would've be the economy. Because what they've done is 441 00:27:21,810 --> 00:27:26,610 they're levied as percentages year after year with often 442 00:27:27,310 --> 00:27:30,370 sps of years. So it only happens every time parliament's called. 443 00:27:30,390 --> 00:27:31,850 But every time it happens, there's this, 444 00:27:32,230 --> 00:27:36,810 the whole economy has a mini recession and a credit crunch because 445 00:27:38,070 --> 00:27:42,930 for most people it'll be levied on their goods and their goods 446 00:27:42,930 --> 00:27:46,970 as value. So essentially any capital that you owned, 447 00:27:47,190 --> 00:27:49,610 the whole value of that is what's being taxed. 448 00:27:50,110 --> 00:27:54,450 So when it's 2.5% or 5% year after year for a sp of years, 449 00:27:54,450 --> 00:27:59,410 as Henry goes off to repeatedly and try to invade France and fail pretty much 450 00:27:59,410 --> 00:28:00,243 every single time, 451 00:28:01,590 --> 00:28:05,330 what's happening is that your typical taxpayer, 452 00:28:05,340 --> 00:28:10,090 let's say it's a merchant or even just a yeoman who's trying to farm some 453 00:28:10,090 --> 00:28:13,730 land, what they're having to do is they're having to value all of their goods, 454 00:28:13,950 --> 00:28:18,480 all of their stock in trade, all of the debts that are owed to them, 455 00:28:18,860 --> 00:28:20,170 minus the debts that they owe, 456 00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:26,450 even the value of the lease of their house or the lease of their farm. All of 457 00:28:26,450 --> 00:28:29,810 that is what's being used for the calculation of what the percentage is going to 458 00:28:29,810 --> 00:28:30,550 be. 459 00:28:30,550 --> 00:28:35,370 So your 2.5% is not just 2.5% of what you've got in cash is 2.5% of 460 00:28:35,740 --> 00:28:39,890 all of your stock in trade, essentially all of your assets. 461 00:28:41,300 --> 00:28:46,000 So these kinds of wealth taxes that you're essentially seeing are extremely 462 00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:48,760 damaging to the economy because most people don't actually have that much cash 463 00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:50,200 on hand with which to pay them. 464 00:28:51,300 --> 00:28:56,240 So suddenly you often see a kind of deflationary recession 465 00:28:56,430 --> 00:28:59,720 because everyone's having to try to sell off their goods just to pay the tax. 466 00:29:00,620 --> 00:29:02,080 But because everyone's doing that all at once, 467 00:29:02,740 --> 00:29:07,640 it results in prices plummeting and the effective tax 468 00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,760 rate actually being higher than that, that was originally they were assessed on. 469 00:29:12,220 --> 00:29:15,760 So that whole bureaucratic infrastructure is set up in the 1510s to do this. 470 00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:17,350 Interestingly, 471 00:29:17,350 --> 00:29:22,160 it's done secretly because what they do is they do it initially as a way 472 00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:26,240 to figure out what the military capabilities of the country are. And so they 473 00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:29,080 went around the country sending people for this kind of military survey 474 00:29:31,620 --> 00:29:34,000 in the 15, 10, 1520s to work out 475 00:29:36,180 --> 00:29:41,080 how many nights weapons everyone should have because based on your 476 00:29:41,170 --> 00:29:41,430 wealth, 477 00:29:41,430 --> 00:29:45,890 you are supposed to be able to provide a certain number of soldiers or a certain 478 00:29:45,890 --> 00:29:49,090 amount of weaponry in order to go and fight in the king's wars. 479 00:29:49,270 --> 00:29:52,730 And so you actually get lots of people very optimistic going very Jing 480 00:29:52,730 --> 00:29:55,290 Egoistically saying, oh yeah, I've actually got, 481 00:29:55,630 --> 00:29:59,410 I'm even wealthier than I say I am because I want to show just how patriotic I 482 00:29:59,410 --> 00:30:02,610 am about the impending invasion of France. 483 00:30:03,830 --> 00:30:07,650 And those people I suspect were really regretting it when they turn around a few 484 00:30:07,650 --> 00:30:10,290 years later and they kind of say, well, 485 00:30:10,530 --> 00:30:14,890 actually what we've used to assess your military capabilities and how many 486 00:30:14,890 --> 00:30:16,130 weapons, how much you've got, 487 00:30:17,140 --> 00:30:21,370 we're actually going to use that as the basis to tax you for these wealth taxes. 488 00:30:21,750 --> 00:30:22,650 And interestingly, 489 00:30:22,650 --> 00:30:25,210 the other way round it is that it's not just based on people's wealth, 490 00:30:25,830 --> 00:30:29,410 but if you are a landholder and so nobility/gentry, 491 00:30:29,550 --> 00:30:31,250 you've paid as a percentage of your rent, 492 00:30:31,310 --> 00:30:35,410 so your income rather than of your landed wealth, 493 00:30:35,430 --> 00:30:38,930 the idea being that it's not very easy to sell land. 494 00:30:39,910 --> 00:30:44,650 So what essentially happens is there's actually a kind of great big distortive 495 00:30:44,670 --> 00:30:47,290 effect of this, which is a lot of merchants at the moment, they get rich, 496 00:30:47,760 --> 00:30:50,970 they immediately try to put as much of their wealth into land as possible 497 00:30:50,970 --> 00:30:55,340 because it cuts their tax by about 95% because 498 00:30:56,020 --> 00:30:56,860 is always taken us to, 499 00:30:56,860 --> 00:31:01,580 which is the larger your landed wealth or your wealth in goods as it's called. 500 00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:06,740 And so very often you seem to see this kind of wholesale shift of people out of 501 00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:11,780 the mercantile economy and out of manufacturing into simply trying to 502 00:31:11,780 --> 00:31:13,100 become landholders as well. 503 00:31:13,490 --> 00:31:17,420 This is a bit like the Herberger tax that people have proposed where you have to 504 00:31:17,420 --> 00:31:22,140 self-assess the value of something and then pay a tax based on the value you 505 00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:25,660 assess it at, but you have to sell it at that value if someone comes to you. 506 00:31:26,020 --> 00:31:28,300 I suppose in some ways it might be similar to that, 507 00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:31,140 the extent to which it self-assess kind of interesting. 508 00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:35,700 It appears as though it is self-assessed and then increasingly under oath, 509 00:31:36,270 --> 00:31:37,180 which people took very, 510 00:31:37,180 --> 00:31:41,540 very seriously in those days for the first few decades of Henry's wars, 511 00:31:42,570 --> 00:31:46,380 only after the 1540s does the tax tapes start to decrease. 512 00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:49,940 And it seems as though people start getting, because it just keeps happening, 513 00:31:50,170 --> 00:31:51,900 they start getting a bit wise to it. 514 00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:56,140 But you do have commissioners essentially who go around the country and also on 515 00:31:56,140 --> 00:31:57,220 oath to parliament, 516 00:31:58,120 --> 00:32:01,060 go around assessing what they think their neighbours are worth. 517 00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:05,500 So it does become this kind of extremely oppressive system. 518 00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:08,420 But essentially every time there's a war, 519 00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:10,900 you see not only this recession and deflation, 520 00:32:10,900 --> 00:32:13,820 but because there isn't really a Royal Navy, it's barely a dozen ships, 521 00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:18,580 it increases a bit over Henry VIII's reign to a few dozen. 522 00:32:20,500 --> 00:32:23,320 But even to send his invasion force, 523 00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:28,280 he's essentially requisitioning all pretty much the whole of the English 524 00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:29,353 merchant, Marine, 525 00:32:29,580 --> 00:32:33,360 any ships that are in English ports in order to send his invasion force. 526 00:32:34,220 --> 00:32:37,880 So trade often just comes to us complete standstill as a result of it as well. 527 00:32:39,150 --> 00:32:41,170 So that's one extremely damaging aspect. 528 00:32:41,910 --> 00:32:46,010 But to fight the wars in the 1540s that turns out to be not even anywhere near 529 00:32:46,010 --> 00:32:48,490 enough over the course of 1530s, 530 00:32:49,510 --> 00:32:52,850 tax on the clergy increases, especially with the break with Rome. 531 00:32:53,830 --> 00:32:58,010 So the rise of an English church separate from 532 00:32:58,660 --> 00:33:02,410 Roman, the jurisdiction of the Pope in Rome, 533 00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:06,970 they increase taxes in addition to the stuff that they thought was just being 534 00:33:06,970 --> 00:33:11,730 syphoned off from the English economy to be sent to fund the papacy. 535 00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:18,450 Even that however, doesn't account for even a third of what's required. 536 00:33:19,150 --> 00:33:24,090 And so there's this wholesale seizure essentially of church land, 537 00:33:24,170 --> 00:33:26,930 monastic land and also land for chant trees, 538 00:33:27,540 --> 00:33:31,330 which is kind of a lot of charitable stuff that's being done with a kind of 539 00:33:31,610 --> 00:33:35,010 religious aspect to it. So funding, even town infrastructure, 540 00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:37,170 city infrastructure guilds, 541 00:33:38,050 --> 00:33:40,250 a lot of the kind of charitable uses that that's done, 542 00:33:40,430 --> 00:33:43,450 people over centuries would've donated land to the church. 543 00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:47,850 Essentially the idea that the income from that land would've then funded all 544 00:33:47,850 --> 00:33:49,690 sorts of charitable uses, some of the religious, 545 00:33:49,690 --> 00:33:50,930 some of them kind of quasi-religious, 546 00:33:50,930 --> 00:33:55,090 some of them with a religious aspect to something that's actually kind of more 547 00:33:55,090 --> 00:33:58,050 like what's being done to favour civic society. 548 00:33:59,150 --> 00:34:00,210 And in the 1530s, 549 00:34:00,210 --> 00:34:04,370 Henry essentially claims it gets parliament to back him 550 00:34:05,670 --> 00:34:10,090 and seizes all of that land and then starts selling it off and market rates as 551 00:34:10,090 --> 00:34:14,450 quickly as possible over the course of the late 1530s, early 1540s, 552 00:34:15,180 --> 00:34:19,450 which accounts for another third of the expenditure that he has. Oh, 553 00:34:19,450 --> 00:34:22,490 and I should actually add, there's another aspect that makes it even worse. 554 00:34:23,710 --> 00:34:26,450 I'm going to keep going with the ways in which it gets worse and worse and worse 555 00:34:26,550 --> 00:34:27,840 over Henry VIII's reign. 556 00:34:29,340 --> 00:34:33,290 But another one is that a lot of people assume that English property rights were 557 00:34:33,290 --> 00:34:38,050 quite secure over the course of well back into the Middle 558 00:34:38,160 --> 00:34:41,650 Ages. But the reality of it is that in the 1530s, 559 00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:44,210 there's another kind of tax that even the landholders, 560 00:34:44,210 --> 00:34:45,250 the Genting mobility of paying, 561 00:34:46,500 --> 00:34:51,250 which is always the kind of inheritance tax that being done in the most 562 00:34:51,250 --> 00:34:52,650 oppressive way possible, 563 00:34:53,020 --> 00:34:55,800 which is that if you are what's called a tenant in chief, 564 00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:59,210 that's someone who holds land directly from the king. So in theory, 565 00:34:59,340 --> 00:35:01,250 all land in the country is actually owned by the king, 566 00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:03,610 only the king has title to land. 567 00:35:03,930 --> 00:35:07,090 Everyone is actually kind of a tenant. And then everyone who's a tenant of those 568 00:35:07,290 --> 00:35:09,090 tenants, the tenants in chief as they're called, 569 00:35:09,430 --> 00:35:11,090 are sort of subtenants of the king, 570 00:35:12,110 --> 00:35:16,390 a system that seems to have existed since shortly after the northern conquest 571 00:35:16,390 --> 00:35:19,470 and maybe since the 10 eighties. It's unclear 572 00:35:21,690 --> 00:35:22,910 if you are a tenant in chief. 573 00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:27,590 So essentially then ability or the gentry who hold land directly from the king 574 00:35:28,570 --> 00:35:33,550 if you die before your heirs of age, then the ward, 575 00:35:33,890 --> 00:35:35,990 so the orphan that you've left and we're talking, 576 00:35:36,070 --> 00:35:37,730 I think it's people under the age of 21, 577 00:35:39,820 --> 00:35:43,360 the awards doesn't actually get to enjoy their land that they've inherited. 578 00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:44,793 Instead, 579 00:35:48,070 --> 00:35:50,170 the ward is essentially kept by the king, 580 00:35:51,030 --> 00:35:56,010 and then the ward's lands pretty much often auctioned off to the 581 00:35:56,010 --> 00:36:00,970 highest bidder to be managed by that person who often just kind of 582 00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:06,250 runs the assets of the ward down until they're of age. 583 00:36:07,710 --> 00:36:10,770 So you don't really get to enjoy your inheritance until you're 21, 584 00:36:10,860 --> 00:36:13,450 and in the meantime, your inheritance has been completely depleted. 585 00:36:13,860 --> 00:36:18,170 Any timber that you've got growing is going to be cut down and sold off the land 586 00:36:18,190 --> 00:36:22,050 is going to be worked as hard as possible so that the soil is all depleted. 587 00:36:22,450 --> 00:36:23,170 I mean, 588 00:36:23,170 --> 00:36:26,490 anything that you can think of in terms of basically other people controlling 589 00:36:26,490 --> 00:36:30,730 your inheritance. As a result of which over the course of the 15th century, 590 00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:32,800 there's a tax dodge that's come up with, 591 00:36:33,340 --> 00:36:37,890 which is essentially to instead of ever having the holder of the land die, 592 00:36:38,990 --> 00:36:42,290 the person who's the owner gives it over to a trust called a use. 593 00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:48,980 So essentially to be used instead and is able through the use of these kind of 594 00:36:50,500 --> 00:36:55,340 immortal trusts to assign land whoever they like using wills. 595 00:36:55,340 --> 00:36:58,380 So the whole concept of having a will and saying, well, 596 00:36:58,380 --> 00:37:01,740 I actually want my assets to be divided up in such and such a way or the land to 597 00:37:01,740 --> 00:37:05,540 be divided amongst say lots of children, or I don't really like my older son, 598 00:37:05,550 --> 00:37:08,540 so I'm going to give it to a different son, 599 00:37:08,540 --> 00:37:12,090 or potentially give it to some of it to daughters to provide for various 600 00:37:12,090 --> 00:37:13,860 different relatives or to a wife or whatever. 601 00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:18,570 The use of wills becomes extremely common over the 15th century as a result of 602 00:37:18,570 --> 00:37:23,460 the use of uses and loads and loads of case law shows that uses are perfectly 603 00:37:23,460 --> 00:37:24,293 legitimate, 604 00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:29,340 but it's resulting in the kind of income that the crown gets from the feudal 605 00:37:29,410 --> 00:37:33,780 dues from wardship depleting. So when Henry VII comes to power 606 00:37:34,130 --> 00:37:35,980 through his coup in 1485, 607 00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:41,260 he tries to really crack down on the remaining people who are still not using 608 00:37:41,530 --> 00:37:44,700 uses. And then under Henry VIII in the 1530s, 609 00:37:45,790 --> 00:37:50,610 Henry VIII essentially because Parliament doesn't do anything to 610 00:37:50,720 --> 00:37:55,540 reform what he sees as the abuse of landholding and this 611 00:37:55,550 --> 00:37:59,900 use of wills with the use of uses with these trusts, 612 00:38:01,730 --> 00:38:06,550 he essentially leans on judges to give him a judgement . I mean, 613 00:38:06,550 --> 00:38:09,390 we're talking actual full on bullies, the judges 614 00:38:10,890 --> 00:38:15,110 to essentially render all of the use of uses completely invalid, 615 00:38:15,860 --> 00:38:19,750 essentially throwing all land in the entire country into open question because 616 00:38:20,220 --> 00:38:21,110 over a hundred years, 617 00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:25,430 nearly all of that land has been changing hands as a result of that had 618 00:38:25,430 --> 00:38:29,030 originally been this tax dodge. So pretty much all property, 619 00:38:30,610 --> 00:38:32,550 if you've been a tenant of that property, 620 00:38:33,450 --> 00:38:38,250 is rendered uncertain until he basically gets parliament in the 621 00:38:38,250 --> 00:38:40,570 1530s and around the time, interestingly, 622 00:38:40,570 --> 00:38:44,450 where a lot of the break with Rome is going on and things like the dissolution 623 00:38:44,450 --> 00:38:47,320 of the monasteries are being discussed, 624 00:38:48,680 --> 00:38:53,320 gets parliament in exchange for a kind of amnesty where all of the 625 00:38:53,650 --> 00:38:56,170 existing property titles which have just been rendered illegal, 626 00:38:57,190 --> 00:39:02,170 are confirmed to basically bring back to abolish the use of uses. So it's called 627 00:39:02,170 --> 00:39:06,450 the statute of uses and abolish the use of wills as well. 628 00:39:07,190 --> 00:39:12,010 And it's only in the 1540s just a bit later that because he's so short 629 00:39:12,090 --> 00:39:13,970 on cash and keeps having to come back to parliament, 630 00:39:14,550 --> 00:39:17,890 that there's an amendment to this, the statute of wills, 631 00:39:18,610 --> 00:39:23,290 which essentially allows them to not have to do this to two thirds of the land 632 00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:24,800 that they're passing on. 633 00:39:25,430 --> 00:39:30,170 So in exchange for reducing just how onerous warship is and all of these 634 00:39:30,450 --> 00:39:31,890 futile dues that come alongside it, 635 00:39:33,390 --> 00:39:36,530 all these extra essentially inheritance taxes that the ability and gentry having 636 00:39:36,530 --> 00:39:39,770 to pay, he kind of gets this quid pro quo. 637 00:39:40,270 --> 00:39:43,570 By completely undermining property rights for a few years. So Anton, 638 00:39:43,860 --> 00:39:47,010 so I'm hearing that with backward, small, 639 00:39:47,070 --> 00:39:50,130 weak country constantly invaded, lots of coups, 640 00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:55,320 very high taxes and also property rights are extremely insecure and we 641 00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:57,610 have kind of an authoritarian government smashing everything. 642 00:39:57,820 --> 00:40:00,450 Did they do anything good? How did this change come about? 643 00:40:00,550 --> 00:40:04,490 I'm interested in and why after all of this by 1700, 644 00:40:04,590 --> 00:40:06,930 you say that Britain has already gone through the industrial Revolution, 645 00:40:06,930 --> 00:40:09,360 it doesn't seem like that much time. What's happening now? 646 00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:10,840 What are these big changes that happen? 647 00:40:11,590 --> 00:40:14,360 So the biggest change of all is that after all this stuff, 648 00:40:14,720 --> 00:40:16,570 they do the worst thing possible, 649 00:40:17,460 --> 00:40:21,050 which is that because a third of the war in the 1540s still can't be funded, 650 00:40:21,720 --> 00:40:25,610 they debase the currency. And the reason that's important, 651 00:40:25,690 --> 00:40:27,250 I won't go into the details of debasement, 652 00:40:27,300 --> 00:40:29,890 but essentially it's a kind of creates this 653 00:40:32,550 --> 00:40:36,530 extremely damaging inflation. So for most of the 15th century, 654 00:40:36,550 --> 00:40:40,320 you essentially have to remember that the country is kind of in this 655 00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:42,410 deflationary recession, 656 00:40:42,750 --> 00:40:46,210 but pretty much a whole century you had a bit of inflation off the black death, 657 00:40:46,590 --> 00:40:50,770 and then everything is completely stagnant the entire 15th century and well into 658 00:40:50,770 --> 00:40:53,970 the early 16th century as well with a bit of an uptick towards the end. 659 00:40:54,970 --> 00:40:58,770 Debasing of the currency creates extraordinary inflation over the course of just 660 00:40:58,770 --> 00:41:03,570 a decade because they keep debasing something that 661 00:41:03,570 --> 00:41:06,490 essentially hadn't really happened much in English history at all, 662 00:41:06,490 --> 00:41:10,290 right? So many other countries throughout the rest of Europe has had a bit of 663 00:41:10,730 --> 00:41:15,570 inflation because they were periodically to base the currency in order to fund 664 00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:19,610 wars, and it kind of just depleted English. 665 00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:22,540 The famous English sterling is extremely, 666 00:41:22,770 --> 00:41:27,380 extremely high in its silver content as a result of the fact that debasement 667 00:41:27,380 --> 00:41:30,980 just hadn't been something that was resorted to by English kings until Henry 668 00:41:30,980 --> 00:41:32,940 VIII just towards the end of his reign, 669 00:41:33,590 --> 00:41:38,570 and then by the regents of his success of the young boy, king Edward, 670 00:41:38,570 --> 00:41:39,403 Edward VI. 671 00:41:40,990 --> 00:41:44,930 And the reason that's important is because you essentially kind of get 672 00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:48,690 what always looks like the 1970s over the course of the 1540s/50s 673 00:41:50,260 --> 00:41:55,130 where because of this sudden inflation, which no one is prepared for, 674 00:41:55,130 --> 00:41:56,570 even the government's not prepared for it, 675 00:41:56,910 --> 00:42:01,770 all of the long-term revenues of the English crown are depleted 676 00:42:01,770 --> 00:42:06,450 because everything is done pretty much in nominal terms. So customs revenues 677 00:42:06,770 --> 00:42:07,603 absolutely crash. 678 00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:12,250 Even the crown as a landholder in terms of the rents it receives from its own 679 00:42:12,250 --> 00:42:15,050 crown lands, all of that is inflated away. 680 00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:17,840 Most of the ability to see their incomes inflated away, 681 00:42:18,260 --> 00:42:21,840 especially because they had for many during the deflationary period, 682 00:42:22,180 --> 00:42:23,690 being much like with a mortgage, 683 00:42:23,690 --> 00:42:27,530 you kind of have fixed or variable mortgages during the deflation. 684 00:42:27,710 --> 00:42:32,530 You want to kind of fix your tenancy in a very, very long-term tenancy. 685 00:42:32,550 --> 00:42:35,130 So they're always paying a fixed amount because the thing you're worried about 686 00:42:35,130 --> 00:42:38,410 is not having a tenant at all when inflation suddenly hits. However, 687 00:42:38,890 --> 00:42:41,930 a lot of the people that they'd locked in who would essentially been those two 688 00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:45,360 poor since the 15th century, the descendants of 689 00:42:47,250 --> 00:42:48,083 serfs and villains, 690 00:42:48,980 --> 00:42:53,770 those have been too poor to get onto nice and flexible variable tendencies, 691 00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:57,890 very short term ones where they can chop and change things very easily. Those 692 00:42:57,890 --> 00:42:59,250 people are suddenly a bit, 693 00:43:01,090 --> 00:43:04,530 I guess a bit like New Yorkers who have got rent control apartments since the 694 00:43:04,730 --> 00:43:08,360 1970s, and they're paying absolute pittance for some prime agricultural land, 695 00:43:08,570 --> 00:43:12,210 especially as prices of all produce is rising as a result of 696 00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:19,210 this kind of monetary shock that you see in the 1540s and 50s to pay for Henry's 697 00:43:19,210 --> 00:43:20,320 and then Edward VI's Wars. 698 00:43:21,430 --> 00:43:26,050 So you've got this complete upheaval to the extent that in the 699 00:43:26,050 --> 00:43:30,930 1540s essentially the English state almost collapses because you 700 00:43:30,990 --> 00:43:33,840 see mass protests across the entire country. 701 00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:39,090 There's a coup of Edward VI's Regent, his uncle, uncle, the Duke of Somerset. 702 00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:45,450 Even I think you can even look at the rise of English Protestantism through that 703 00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:50,360 lens in that the clergy who are also on these fixed incomes are kind of 704 00:43:50,360 --> 00:43:55,170 radicalised because they're losing about half their income 705 00:43:55,390 --> 00:43:58,690 and through inflation. And so half of them are thinking, oh, 706 00:43:58,690 --> 00:44:00,930 things used to be better when the monasteries were still around. 707 00:44:01,110 --> 00:44:03,810 We should go back to Catholicism. The other half are saying, look, 708 00:44:04,210 --> 00:44:09,050 everyone's becoming so greedy and demanding higher wages and demanding higher 709 00:44:09,050 --> 00:44:13,090 prices. So they blame merchants, they blame landlords for higher rents, 710 00:44:13,090 --> 00:44:16,010 they blame even workers for demanding higher wages, 711 00:44:16,430 --> 00:44:20,090 and they're thinking greed is becoming this thing that's becoming more common in 712 00:44:20,210 --> 00:44:23,930 the economy and throughout the commonwealth is a kind of cancer on the 713 00:44:23,930 --> 00:44:27,050 commonwealth without really realising the actual root cause of it. 714 00:44:27,340 --> 00:44:32,050 And the reason that's all important is because the change occurs as a 715 00:44:32,050 --> 00:44:35,970 result of I think the people. And if you look at the precise people, 716 00:44:36,070 --> 00:44:37,970 the people who actually understand what's going on, 717 00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:42,770 there's a handful of people generally associated with the mint. 718 00:44:42,910 --> 00:44:47,840 So actually often the people who has had to put the debate into effect as well 719 00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:50,530 as a lot of merchants who are engaged in foreign trade, 720 00:44:51,390 --> 00:44:55,730 people like Thomas Gresham, who's essentially Henry VIII's 721 00:44:57,470 --> 00:44:59,610 guy in Antwerp who's raising foreign loans, 722 00:44:59,780 --> 00:45:04,530 which again are getting more and more biting as inflation bites. So 723 00:45:04,530 --> 00:45:07,930 there's this handful of people who understand what's going on. 724 00:45:08,050 --> 00:45:09,890 They know that the root cause is to basement. 725 00:45:09,990 --> 00:45:11,090 And actually one of the key people, 726 00:45:11,150 --> 00:45:15,210 and this is one of these texts that I really think ought to be like a key text 727 00:45:15,210 --> 00:45:18,010 in English history, almost no one's heard of, I think because the author, 728 00:45:18,050 --> 00:45:22,210 a guy called Thomas Smith is such an unremarkable common name. 729 00:45:22,210 --> 00:45:25,130 It's a bit like if their name was John Doe, John Smith, 730 00:45:25,270 --> 00:45:30,250 Thomas Smith is one of the key people in the government 731 00:45:30,460 --> 00:45:32,050 who's not always been listened to, 732 00:45:32,150 --> 00:45:34,930 but he writes when he's actually sidelined in the fifties, forties, 733 00:45:35,510 --> 00:45:40,450 he writes what's called a manuscript called the Discourse of the Common Wheel, 734 00:45:40,830 --> 00:45:42,840 in which he actually just goes through in a very, 735 00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:47,650 very simple terms in a way I guess that policymakers would understand a kind of 736 00:45:47,930 --> 00:45:51,450 dialogue between all of the different groups of society. So there's the 737 00:45:51,690 --> 00:45:53,970 landlords, there's the merchants, there's the artificer, 738 00:45:54,070 --> 00:45:58,930 and then there's the doctor represented by himself who goes through all of the 739 00:45:58,930 --> 00:46:00,170 problems in the commonwealth. 740 00:46:00,630 --> 00:46:05,090 All of the things that all of the kind of inflationary effects are actually the 741 00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:07,610 root is the root result of debasement. 742 00:46:08,190 --> 00:46:11,410 And the reason that's important I think, is that the debasement people, 743 00:46:11,630 --> 00:46:12,463 if you look at them, 744 00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:17,840 they're exactly the kind of people who think that the way out of the problem is 745 00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:21,890 that they need to get an injection of silver into the English economy because 746 00:46:21,890 --> 00:46:25,330 unfortunately, undoing debasement is extremely, extremely difficult. 747 00:46:25,330 --> 00:46:27,290 There's essentially only two ways to undo it. 748 00:46:27,470 --> 00:46:32,250 You either need to get lots more silver because having taken a sort of currency 749 00:46:32,250 --> 00:46:35,650 and added lead, it's very difficult to essentially remove the lead out of it. 750 00:46:35,830 --> 00:46:38,360 You either need a technique that's only really known in Germany, 751 00:46:38,670 --> 00:46:42,330 so you can either get foreign antithesis from Germany where they know how to do 752 00:46:42,330 --> 00:46:43,690 this over into the country, 753 00:46:45,670 --> 00:46:50,250 or you need to use foreign trades to try and get extra silver into the country 754 00:46:50,250 --> 00:46:53,130 because essentially there aren't really gold and silver mines in England. 755 00:46:53,130 --> 00:46:56,090 There's a bit, but there's really not very much that can be used. 756 00:46:56,310 --> 00:46:58,930 So you either get, and again, you might need foreign miners, 757 00:46:58,930 --> 00:47:01,730 foreign expertise to try and even find these mines in the first place. 758 00:47:02,470 --> 00:47:04,930 And the way to get silver into the economy is essentially through trade. 759 00:47:05,670 --> 00:47:07,730 If you can create a positive balance of trade, 760 00:47:07,830 --> 00:47:10,970 if you can make sure that English exports are worth more than the imports, 761 00:47:11,720 --> 00:47:14,970 then potentially you can get an injection silver with which to undo the basement 762 00:47:14,970 --> 00:47:18,770 to recall the currency and kind of get rid of this root cause of what's going 763 00:47:18,770 --> 00:47:21,360 on. And so what they do is, again, 764 00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:25,090 they think that the way to do this is to rely on foreign expertise is to get 765 00:47:25,090 --> 00:47:27,970 people who know what they're doing from other countries, foreign 766 00:47:29,640 --> 00:47:33,890 experts who can come in and teach the English essentially how to do this. 767 00:47:34,750 --> 00:47:36,840 And one of the key ways they do this is not just through, 768 00:47:37,090 --> 00:47:40,050 I guess through we might call proto industrial policies, 769 00:47:40,580 --> 00:47:41,930 proto innovation policies. 770 00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:45,690 It's not just through bringing foreign expertise over, 771 00:47:46,830 --> 00:47:50,610 but one of the ways they want to do this is through by more directly trading 772 00:47:50,610 --> 00:47:52,650 with the places that they can potentially export to. 773 00:47:52,750 --> 00:47:56,610 So rather than all of English trades essentially coming through Antwerp and 774 00:47:56,610 --> 00:48:01,490 being extremely vulnerable in that regard, instead having English ships, 775 00:48:01,490 --> 00:48:04,690 taking English exports directly to Spain, 776 00:48:05,050 --> 00:48:09,930 directly to the Mediterranean across the Atlantic, and potentially even, 777 00:48:10,910 --> 00:48:13,810 and this is the thing they really try to do, go 778 00:48:16,030 --> 00:48:20,050 around Europe all the way to China. 779 00:48:20,390 --> 00:48:25,130 So Anton, what you've described sort of sounds to me like a rational basis for 780 00:48:25,130 --> 00:48:29,490 mercantilism. Usually we think of it as being about accumulating gold, 781 00:48:29,950 --> 00:48:34,890 but the basic idea of exporting more than you import so that you can hoard 782 00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:39,170 some precious metal normally sounds crazy to us in the present day, 783 00:48:40,030 --> 00:48:44,610 but what you are describing makes it sound like it's quite rational. 784 00:48:45,910 --> 00:48:48,400 Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think mercantalism 785 00:48:49,980 --> 00:48:54,360 got a really bad rap in the 18th century when it's taken to new extremes. 786 00:48:55,340 --> 00:48:58,680 It's almost like that you might call the bullism where there's this obsession 787 00:48:58,680 --> 00:48:59,960 with always having enough gold and silver. 788 00:49:00,740 --> 00:49:02,480 But from the context of the 16th century, 789 00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:06,280 I think is extremely rational because they do need more silver in the economy. 790 00:49:07,470 --> 00:49:09,590 They do need to be able to sell, 791 00:49:10,310 --> 00:49:13,880 they do need English exports to be worth more abroad in order to get the kind of 792 00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:15,110 luxuries, not just luxuries, 793 00:49:15,110 --> 00:49:18,680 but kind of basic necessities even that they're importing. And actually, 794 00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:23,000 if you look at some of the tracks that are written about trade at the time, 795 00:49:23,550 --> 00:49:25,240 some of 'em are rubbish as you'd expect, 796 00:49:25,260 --> 00:49:28,640 but a lot of them are actually extremely subtle in the way that they think about 797 00:49:28,790 --> 00:49:29,680 foreign trade. 798 00:49:29,700 --> 00:49:32,720 And then the way they think about bullion. It's not bull for its own sake. 799 00:49:33,270 --> 00:49:34,920 They do realise that they do need 800 00:49:38,390 --> 00:49:40,320 efficiently circulating currency. 801 00:49:41,150 --> 00:49:43,640 They need one that's not being completely debased, 802 00:49:44,060 --> 00:49:46,640 and they also need to not be completely dependent 803 00:49:48,380 --> 00:49:51,440 on foreign merchants for their foreign trade where everything could be dictated 804 00:49:51,610 --> 00:49:56,040 by essentially the pawns potentially of foreign powers. 805 00:49:56,660 --> 00:49:59,590 To give a good example of this, throughout the whole period we're talking, 806 00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:04,640 I think it's from 1437 onwards, even the merchants of the Hanseatic league, 807 00:50:04,700 --> 00:50:07,920 so this is German and Baltic merchants who had 808 00:50:09,500 --> 00:50:13,110 the league itself as alliance of mercantile cities and merchants, 809 00:50:14,070 --> 00:50:18,000 they are actually paying even lower customs duties than even English native 810 00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:19,590 merchants in England. 811 00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:25,240 I think it's only 25% for most imported goods compared to 812 00:50:25,670 --> 00:50:29,730 what English merchants are paying because England is so reliant on foreign 813 00:50:29,760 --> 00:50:33,210 traders. So a lot of the mercantalist ideas, 814 00:50:34,030 --> 00:50:38,360 the idea that you should be trying to boost the value of exports, 815 00:50:39,190 --> 00:50:42,530 the idea that you should be controlling English trade, 816 00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:47,840 have it in English ships with English merchants in control of them, 817 00:50:48,410 --> 00:50:49,930 a lot of that does have this origin there, 818 00:50:50,070 --> 00:50:53,330 and I think is actually quite important for the way that they're thinking about 819 00:50:54,590 --> 00:50:59,530 the way to economic recovery from the real pits of the 1540s and 50s. 820 00:51:01,030 --> 00:51:03,770 The thing that I think gives it a bad rap, and I think rightly so, 821 00:51:03,770 --> 00:51:07,090 is that there is also at the same time some people are saying, well, 822 00:51:07,340 --> 00:51:12,130 the other way to address the trade balance is to reduce foreign imports as well. 823 00:51:12,670 --> 00:51:16,890 And so you do see a kind of mechanical attitude there where you see things like 824 00:51:17,200 --> 00:51:17,730 sumptuary laws, 825 00:51:17,730 --> 00:51:21,890 which are laws essentially saying that people shouldn't be buying more expensive 826 00:51:22,130 --> 00:51:26,770 cloths and more expensive kind of luxury things to wear because it's something 827 00:51:26,770 --> 00:51:29,290 relatively easy to enforce because you can see literally what people are 828 00:51:29,290 --> 00:51:30,123 wearing. 829 00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:34,210 There's this idea that only people of a certain degree or rank should be wearing 830 00:51:34,640 --> 00:51:38,930 certain types of cloth or certain kinds of things on their person. 831 00:51:40,030 --> 00:51:43,090 So that in many ways is a way to try and restrain 832 00:51:45,790 --> 00:51:49,650 the trade balance as well. So there is a rational basis to it, certainly. 833 00:51:50,610 --> 00:51:51,443 Just to clarify, 834 00:51:52,450 --> 00:51:56,910 why don't prices just rise to normally when you have inflation, 835 00:51:57,050 --> 00:52:01,750 you have a period that's really awful where some prices are rising, 836 00:52:02,360 --> 00:52:05,340 wages haven't risen yet, or some have, but some haven't. 837 00:52:06,130 --> 00:52:09,310 But eventually you settle at a new price level and you can live with that. 838 00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:13,750 So why is it that doesn't happen at this time and that you need to undo the 839 00:52:13,750 --> 00:52:16,230 debasement rather than just adjusting to this new normal? 840 00:52:17,250 --> 00:52:18,910 So I think a lot of it is to do with that. 841 00:52:18,910 --> 00:52:23,630 When you get this kind of inflationary period, it's so dramatic, 842 00:52:24,530 --> 00:52:29,110 but also it propagates unevenly that when people 843 00:52:29,110 --> 00:52:33,340 experience inflation, certain people benefit actually at the expense of others. 844 00:52:33,550 --> 00:52:35,190 I mentioned long-term tenants, 845 00:52:35,190 --> 00:52:38,550 the descent of serves find themselves sitting in these 846 00:52:40,410 --> 00:52:44,030 locked, fixed in rents. Some of these rents literally inheritable, 847 00:52:44,500 --> 00:52:47,590 they'll be passed down for generations and generations. 848 00:52:47,800 --> 00:52:49,750 These guys are descendants of serfs. 849 00:52:49,750 --> 00:52:52,340 They end up within just a few decades being wealthy, 850 00:52:52,570 --> 00:52:54,630 yeomen buying land themselves, 851 00:52:54,910 --> 00:52:58,990 becoming even landowners within just a short space of time while everyone else 852 00:53:00,060 --> 00:53:03,070 ends up being who was on a very short lease. 853 00:53:03,240 --> 00:53:05,670 Their rents are suddenly rising absolutely through the roof. 854 00:53:06,700 --> 00:53:09,950 They're being what's called rack rented as they're on a torture rack by their 855 00:53:10,150 --> 00:53:13,030 landlords is how it's referred to landlords. At the same time, 856 00:53:13,460 --> 00:53:14,710 they find themselves, well, 857 00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:19,590 often three quarters of the land that they had would be on permanent fixed rent 858 00:53:19,690 --> 00:53:24,670 leases, ones that last for either lifetimes or even multiple generations, 859 00:53:25,550 --> 00:53:28,330 or even sometimes even less so decades. 860 00:53:28,550 --> 00:53:31,090 But on these very fixed long-term leases, 861 00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:34,890 they're finding themselves unable to adjust very quickly. 862 00:53:35,190 --> 00:53:38,690 And so they're getting annoyed. The government has, 863 00:53:38,710 --> 00:53:41,890 in order to raise taxes to new levels, has to implement changes. 864 00:53:43,930 --> 00:53:48,930 I mentioned that customs duties were based on, in normal terms, their own rent. 865 00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:51,890 They're a landholder themselves. All of that is, again, 866 00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:55,360 they have exactly the same problem that things are very fixed in, 867 00:53:56,790 --> 00:53:59,890 and so they find it very difficult to adjust. So you end up with a very, 868 00:53:59,890 --> 00:54:04,840 very weak state from the mid 16th century onwards in that everything 869 00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:05,890 Henry VIII does pretty much, 870 00:54:06,070 --> 00:54:10,890 he gets all these massive boons seasons of monasteries, debaters, the currency, 871 00:54:11,310 --> 00:54:14,410 all these massive mega one-off windfalls. 872 00:54:14,410 --> 00:54:16,690 But his successors basically find themselves with very, 873 00:54:16,690 --> 00:54:20,770 very decaying revenues and extremely difficult to increase, 874 00:54:20,770 --> 00:54:24,330 again without causing a lot of civil strife, if you like. 875 00:54:25,510 --> 00:54:26,450 And merchants as well, 876 00:54:26,450 --> 00:54:31,210 they can't necessarily respond because since the 14th century, 877 00:54:31,210 --> 00:54:32,810 since the last time there'd been inflation, 878 00:54:34,860 --> 00:54:38,410 market prices are very heavily regulated. So justices of the piece, 879 00:54:39,180 --> 00:54:42,010 everything had to happen in the market or buying and selling 880 00:54:43,610 --> 00:54:48,250 justices and magistrates at market are making sure that people aren't asking 881 00:54:48,320 --> 00:54:49,330 over certain prices. 882 00:54:50,190 --> 00:54:53,690 So there's all sorts of different problems that you get of adjustment where 883 00:54:53,690 --> 00:54:57,930 instead of actual the price going up, the quality decreases, problems like that. 884 00:54:59,190 --> 00:55:03,530 And then the other aspect that I think is really important is that wages are 885 00:55:03,530 --> 00:55:05,810 also capped since the 14th century. 886 00:55:05,990 --> 00:55:09,770 So the ability of labourers to even demand more is very, 887 00:55:09,770 --> 00:55:13,650 very heavily restricted because there's all sorts of problems in place in terms 888 00:55:13,650 --> 00:55:15,770 of, again, 889 00:55:16,290 --> 00:55:19,170 justices of the peace capped wages, 890 00:55:19,170 --> 00:55:21,090 and they're trying to prevent people from earning more. 891 00:55:21,590 --> 00:55:22,423 So Anton, 892 00:55:24,340 --> 00:55:27,610 you've now given me an extra reason why I wouldn't expect the industrial 893 00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:31,360 revolution to happen in Britain, which is that they have debased the currency. 894 00:55:31,510 --> 00:55:34,530 You said the one thing they did that made it happen is they did the worst 895 00:55:34,770 --> 00:55:37,450 possible thing. I feel like I'm further away from an explanation, 896 00:55:37,450 --> 00:55:40,490 and then as we were explaining the details of the one worst thing they did, 897 00:55:40,490 --> 00:55:42,530 you explained some other reasons why I wouldn't expect them to have an 898 00:55:42,530 --> 00:55:43,363 industrial revolution, 899 00:55:43,400 --> 00:55:47,250 like they have massive wage and price controls and various other constraints. 900 00:55:47,550 --> 00:55:52,490 How did all of this stuff like the Debasement lead to your theory 901 00:55:52,490 --> 00:55:53,570 of the Industrial Revolution? 902 00:55:53,950 --> 00:55:58,810 So the key thing is that the group of people who understand the causes, 903 00:55:59,030 --> 00:56:01,010 who understand that debasement is the problem, 904 00:56:01,590 --> 00:56:05,490 they're the ones who essentially a very small group of people is mint officials 905 00:56:05,750 --> 00:56:08,010 and a few merchants who really understand what's going on. 906 00:56:08,520 --> 00:56:12,840 They basically self-organize and they shift 907 00:56:13,670 --> 00:56:14,330 in place certain, 908 00:56:14,330 --> 00:56:18,890 they managed to get the government to put in place certain policies that allow 909 00:56:18,890 --> 00:56:20,930 for the new trajectories to take place. So Britain, 910 00:56:21,560 --> 00:56:23,380 over the course of just these few decades, 911 00:56:24,070 --> 00:56:26,330 or England over the course of these few decades, 912 00:56:26,800 --> 00:56:30,730 goes from being basically a land economy, an agrarian economy, 913 00:56:30,990 --> 00:56:33,690 to being one that's stressing the importance of trade. 914 00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:37,570 It's one that stresses the importance of having a Navy. 915 00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:41,130 It's one that stresses the importance of having its own merchants. 916 00:56:42,400 --> 00:56:44,050 It's a merchant marine. 917 00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:49,290 They get people like Sebastian Cabot or Caboto, 918 00:56:49,950 --> 00:56:52,810 who was the Venetian born, 919 00:56:54,720 --> 00:56:57,050 allegedly. He's born in Bristol, but the Venetian born 920 00:56:59,200 --> 00:57:02,330 head of navigation for the Spanish Empire. 921 00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:06,210 They managed to poach him in the 1540s, late 1540s, 922 00:57:07,420 --> 00:57:10,210 bring him over to essentially teach the English, how to navigate, 923 00:57:10,310 --> 00:57:15,050 how to use the kind of latest navigational techniques so that they can start 924 00:57:15,050 --> 00:57:17,850 trading directly with the Mediterranean directly across Atlantic. 925 00:57:18,350 --> 00:57:21,730 He sends them off in search of a northeast passage to China, 926 00:57:22,070 --> 00:57:25,650 and given it's actually pretty icy, what they actually find is Russia, 927 00:57:26,030 --> 00:57:30,370 and there's a direct route where they can trade with via the port of Archangel 928 00:57:32,200 --> 00:57:36,510 with the tar of Muscovy, they start trading into the Baltic, 929 00:57:36,510 --> 00:57:38,110 they start extending that range. 930 00:57:38,770 --> 00:57:42,990 And so you've get this great wealth coming into London as a result of that. 931 00:57:42,990 --> 00:57:46,990 And I think London's growth is particular growth starts to take off as a result 932 00:57:46,990 --> 00:57:47,450 of that. 933 00:57:47,450 --> 00:57:51,830 And then the other is that they bring over the artifices and experts that they 934 00:57:51,860 --> 00:57:56,710 need to undo the effects of the basement specifically. So there's a group of 935 00:57:56,710 --> 00:58:01,310 Germans, essentially who they hire to do the Recoined 936 00:58:02,090 --> 00:58:06,110 in 1560 to 1561. And what's especially astonishing, 937 00:58:06,110 --> 00:58:08,190 and the more I've looked into this, the more striking it is, 938 00:58:08,210 --> 00:58:13,030 is that they set up a bunch of companies, which all of these, 939 00:58:13,030 --> 00:58:13,510 this group, 940 00:58:13,510 --> 00:58:16,910 small group of people are the main investors again and again and again in 941 00:58:17,740 --> 00:58:20,950 essentially joint stock corporations, which hadn't really existed before. 942 00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:27,070 Those are set up in order to exploit various English 943 00:58:27,070 --> 00:58:28,990 industries for the first time in a very major way. 944 00:58:28,990 --> 00:58:32,070 So copper mining and brass production, 945 00:58:32,810 --> 00:58:35,750 the kinds of things where they've been entirely depending on foreign trade for 946 00:58:35,750 --> 00:58:38,590 before taking English resources and 947 00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:45,070 using them in ways that hadn't been appreciated before. Even the origins of 948 00:58:47,020 --> 00:58:47,590 coal use, 949 00:58:47,590 --> 00:58:52,110 which I think has a lot to do with the adoption of various foreign techniques. 950 00:58:53,250 --> 00:58:58,230 The German invented technique for brewers in London in the 1570s 951 00:58:58,230 --> 00:59:01,550 and eighties. The people who have been brought over to implement those are 952 00:59:01,550 --> 00:59:06,310 exactly the same people who have been brought over in the 1540s/50s/60s to try 953 00:59:06,310 --> 00:59:08,550 and undo the effects of debasement specifically, 954 00:59:08,690 --> 00:59:10,710 and by that specific very small, 955 00:59:10,710 --> 00:59:13,390 tight-knit group of people who understand what's going on. 956 00:59:13,570 --> 00:59:18,510 So it's essentially a small group of people who have the no or have 957 00:59:18,510 --> 00:59:23,170 that understanding of what the sources of many of England's problems are. 958 00:59:23,500 --> 00:59:28,210 Those are the people who bring over with this kind of emphasis on trade 959 00:59:28,670 --> 00:59:33,330 on England as a maritime nation rather than a kind of land nation which has land 960 00:59:33,330 --> 00:59:34,610 borders with Scotland, with France, 961 00:59:34,610 --> 00:59:38,330 around Cali to the west around with the rest of Ireland, 962 00:59:39,310 --> 00:59:43,370 to being one that we think of as a kind of island nation that we've thought of 963 00:59:43,370 --> 00:59:48,330 ever since. All of that emphasis, all of that change of vision, 964 00:59:48,390 --> 00:59:51,650 if you like, for England, all of that comes about, 965 00:59:51,810 --> 00:59:56,090 I think as a result of that group of people. And what they set in motion is that 966 00:59:56,100 --> 00:59:57,570 generation after generation, 967 00:59:57,570 --> 01:00:01,290 because you have such a weak state that's been completely impoverished by 968 01:00:01,290 --> 01:00:03,050 debasement essentially, 969 01:00:04,030 --> 01:00:07,450 and as a result of the knock-on effects of a lot of these things is that they 970 01:00:07,470 --> 01:00:12,370 put in place or they're forced to put in place the kinds of institutions 971 01:00:12,440 --> 01:00:17,010 like joint stock corporations like the use of monopoly patterns where the 972 01:00:17,010 --> 01:00:20,170 Monarch essentially gets to introduce 973 01:00:21,690 --> 01:00:24,730 a new technology without actually having to hire directly the people to do it. 974 01:00:24,730 --> 01:00:27,410 They give them the monopoly. With the monopoly, 975 01:00:27,410 --> 01:00:30,410 they're able to get investors for a much broader group of people. 976 01:00:31,230 --> 01:00:34,890 It creates this kind of more robust infrastructure, if you like, 977 01:00:34,950 --> 01:00:36,330 or institutional infrastructure, 978 01:00:37,500 --> 01:00:41,690 which over the course of the late 16th century and early 17th centuries makes 979 01:00:41,690 --> 01:00:42,810 London the place to be. 980 01:00:42,830 --> 01:00:46,810 It means that instead of being completely reliant on the centre on the Monarch 981 01:00:46,870 --> 01:00:48,330 to be the fungi of innovation, 982 01:00:48,330 --> 01:00:52,290 which is what you see in the courts of the rest of Europe instead because 983 01:00:52,290 --> 01:00:53,490 they're so impoverished, 984 01:00:53,910 --> 01:00:58,530 but because this infrastructure has been set up to draw investment and draw 985 01:00:58,530 --> 01:01:03,170 support from essentially the entire mercantile community and even some of the 986 01:01:03,170 --> 01:01:08,050 inability of gentry that results in a kind of robustness for support 987 01:01:08,070 --> 01:01:11,130 for innovation. Because a lot of those institutions keep getting more and more 988 01:01:11,130 --> 01:01:11,480 investment. 989 01:01:11,480 --> 01:01:15,210 They keep getting more and more support generation after generation after 990 01:01:15,210 --> 01:01:16,000 generation. 991 01:01:16,000 --> 01:01:20,410 That I think is kind of the key element that makes first London and then the 992 01:01:20,410 --> 01:01:22,090 rest of England so important. 993 01:01:22,860 --> 01:01:24,730 Sorry, I'm confused. 994 01:01:25,170 --> 01:01:29,970 I had always taken you to have the view that the important thing that went on is 995 01:01:31,050 --> 01:01:33,850 everyone starts innovating all the time. And so like you said at the start, 996 01:01:34,030 --> 01:01:37,290 we were talking, they improve watches, they improve ship sails, 997 01:01:37,290 --> 01:01:40,130 they improve navigation, they improve everything, not just cotton. 998 01:01:40,430 --> 01:01:45,370 And now it sounds like your theory is about the institutional structures that 999 01:01:45,370 --> 01:01:47,770 existed that allowed the industrial revolution to happen. 1000 01:01:48,940 --> 01:01:50,410 Which one of those is true? 1001 01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:54,010 Well, I think they're both connected is 1002 01:01:55,920 --> 01:01:59,330 once you have these institutional structures set up, 1003 01:01:59,840 --> 01:02:01,250 when you have the use of patents, 1004 01:02:01,250 --> 01:02:02,970 when you have the use of joint stock corporations, 1005 01:02:03,280 --> 01:02:08,050 when you have this broad investor class that's being created in a sense in 1006 01:02:08,050 --> 01:02:08,883 London, 1007 01:02:09,470 --> 01:02:14,250 and you have that kind of broad based bottom up support for a lot of the things 1008 01:02:14,250 --> 01:02:16,890 that are necessary. I mean, this even extends to print culture, right? 1009 01:02:17,600 --> 01:02:20,770 Because you have this broad investor class and you are trying to always get 1010 01:02:20,770 --> 01:02:24,410 investment from lots of merchants rather than just from the monarch. 1011 01:02:24,510 --> 01:02:28,610 You end up with a lot of the secrets to innovations being printed over the 1012 01:02:28,610 --> 01:02:33,010 course of the late 16th, early 17th centuries. Not necessarily all the details, 1013 01:02:33,070 --> 01:02:35,650 but enough of the details to get investors interested. 1014 01:02:35,950 --> 01:02:38,970 So there's a kind of selective revelation of a lot of invention, 1015 01:02:38,970 --> 01:02:43,730 which again builds one thing upon the other. So by broadening the 1016 01:02:43,730 --> 01:02:45,370 knowledge base, that becomes 1017 01:02:48,220 --> 01:02:51,380 a crucial driver of more knock on innovation, 1018 01:02:51,520 --> 01:02:53,820 not just in that particular field within other ones as well. 1019 01:02:54,400 --> 01:02:58,140 So because London becomes this hot bed and starts growing as a result of the 1020 01:02:58,140 --> 01:03:01,980 wealth that comes in pretty quickly as a result of those changes, 1021 01:03:03,320 --> 01:03:07,420 it means that it has that kind of, it's something in the air if you like, 1022 01:03:07,680 --> 01:03:09,500 as people would refer to with Silicon Valley, 1023 01:03:09,500 --> 01:03:11,660 that it's actually a result of all of these 1024 01:03:13,260 --> 01:03:17,620 separate pieces that result in it being kind of a bottom up source of support 1025 01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:20,780 for innovation, for invention. And that applies across the board. 1026 01:03:20,780 --> 01:03:24,460 That's what applies to all of the various different industries and is I think 1027 01:03:24,460 --> 01:03:27,940 the result that is the reason we need to look at the late 16th century as being 1028 01:03:27,940 --> 01:03:29,660 the key period. 1029 01:03:30,400 --> 01:03:34,140 So is Shakespeare and is the literary and theatrical 1030 01:03:34,890 --> 01:03:36,380 flowering that's going on at this time, 1031 01:03:36,440 --> 01:03:38,780 is that related to this or is this happening independently? 1032 01:03:40,030 --> 01:03:42,430 I think there probably is some relation. I've not looked into it closely, 1033 01:03:42,580 --> 01:03:43,130 I'll admit, 1034 01:03:43,130 --> 01:03:47,630 but I think there must be some kind of connection there. 1035 01:03:47,780 --> 01:03:52,630 It's striking even that Shakespeare's patrons are often of that kind of second 1036 01:03:52,650 --> 01:03:55,710 or third generation who are involved with a lot of the same projects. 1037 01:03:56,770 --> 01:03:59,670 The group around the Earl of Southampton, Walter Raleigh, 1038 01:04:00,770 --> 01:04:05,710 the Earl of Essex in the 1590s before he tries to do a coup and gets killed. 1039 01:04:07,390 --> 01:04:10,550 A lot of the same sorts of people are connected. 1040 01:04:11,780 --> 01:04:14,350 Even some of the artists like Nicholas Hilliard, 1041 01:04:15,740 --> 01:04:20,350 he's the famous miniature painter of the late 16th century. He's also, 1042 01:04:20,350 --> 01:04:21,183 funnily enough, 1043 01:04:21,870 --> 01:04:26,550 a jeweller in Goldsmith who tries to do all sorts of stuff with mining and salt 1044 01:04:26,550 --> 01:04:27,830 making up in Scotland. 1045 01:04:29,050 --> 01:04:33,190 So he seems to be involved with the same set of people with these foreign 1046 01:04:33,190 --> 01:04:37,990 connections and constantly bringing over foreign artisans and foreign innovators 1047 01:04:38,770 --> 01:04:41,350 making England one of the most attractive, one of the more, 1048 01:04:41,410 --> 01:04:44,710 at least certainly more attractive places for them to flock to. 1049 01:04:45,210 --> 01:04:48,910 And what role does the Crown have in this, and what role do the monarchs, 1050 01:04:48,910 --> 01:04:53,870 so Henry VII sounds like basically the worst monarch in English history so 1051 01:04:53,970 --> 01:04:57,790 bad that he created the crisis that kind of led to the revival. 1052 01:04:58,610 --> 01:05:01,310 Is it Elizabeth or James or 1053 01:05:03,970 --> 01:05:08,590 who gets the credit for steering the country in a different 1054 01:05:08,590 --> 01:05:09,423 direction? 1055 01:05:10,070 --> 01:05:14,710 I think in many ways they're just very constrained because of the fiscal crisis 1056 01:05:14,820 --> 01:05:17,830 that Henry VIII leaves to his successes. 1057 01:05:18,460 --> 01:05:21,470 Mary does a little bit of it. She does rerate the customs. 1058 01:05:22,050 --> 01:05:26,670 So the customs become a much bigger deal in English or 1059 01:05:26,890 --> 01:05:27,830 for crown revenues, 1060 01:05:27,830 --> 01:05:32,070 which possibly actually makes it a little bit more sensitive to mercantile 1061 01:05:32,070 --> 01:05:35,670 demands rather than just the demands of landholders landowners. 1062 01:05:36,170 --> 01:05:39,190 So there's possibly something subtle going on there, I'm not sure. 1063 01:05:40,810 --> 01:05:43,830 But really I think Elizabeth, in many ways it has her hands tied. 1064 01:05:43,830 --> 01:05:48,150 There's very little that she could do even to raise the salaries of 1065 01:05:48,690 --> 01:05:51,390 her officials all the time. She ends up granting monopolies, 1066 01:05:51,770 --> 01:05:54,310 or even not even necessarily monopolies, but the reversions. 1067 01:05:54,490 --> 01:05:57,110 So when someone dies and they lose their monopoly, 1068 01:05:57,770 --> 01:06:02,150 she even sells the next person sells the right to become a monopolist to the 1069 01:06:02,150 --> 01:06:06,350 next person on just to raise some cash. So because she's so constrained and 1070 01:06:06,350 --> 01:06:08,950 James after that as well, from 1603 to 1625, 1071 01:06:09,660 --> 01:06:13,470 when James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England, he's very, 1072 01:06:13,470 --> 01:06:16,870 very constrained in what he can do. The only thing I would say though, 1073 01:06:16,870 --> 01:06:18,630 that maybe Janes has to his credit, 1074 01:06:18,630 --> 01:06:22,990 which I think helps enormously with England really starting to very noticeably 1075 01:06:22,990 --> 01:06:24,790 take off over the course of the 17th century, 1076 01:06:24,810 --> 01:06:28,910 is that he keeps the country at peace for an extraordinary long period of time, 1077 01:06:28,910 --> 01:06:30,670 pretty much from the moment he becomes king, 1078 01:06:30,970 --> 01:06:32,990 he very quickly makes peace with the Spanish, 1079 01:06:33,730 --> 01:06:38,350 and then he persistently avoids getting drawn into the 30 years war 1080 01:06:38,380 --> 01:06:42,030 despite the fact that it's his own son-in-law and daughter who start the whole 1081 01:06:42,030 --> 01:06:45,790 thing when as the elector, as the electoral of the pattern, 1082 01:06:46,300 --> 01:06:50,110 they claim the crown of Bohemia. So he's constantly fighting this battle, 1083 01:06:50,140 --> 01:06:54,310 even against his own domestic interests to keep England at peace. 1084 01:06:54,930 --> 01:06:57,470 And I think that actually probably does result in 1085 01:06:58,970 --> 01:07:02,270 if we were to give credit to at least one monarch over the course of this, 1086 01:07:02,750 --> 01:07:04,150 I think James the first as a peacemaker, 1087 01:07:04,150 --> 01:07:09,150 as the peaceful king potentially allows England to do a great 1088 01:07:09,150 --> 01:07:11,350 deal of economic development and growth through trade. 1089 01:07:12,820 --> 01:07:13,360 So Anton, 1090 01:07:13,360 --> 01:07:17,600 what you've described actually sounds a little bit like the story that you often 1091 01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:18,520 hear about the Renaissance, 1092 01:07:18,530 --> 01:07:23,320 where the fall of Constantinople leads to a lot of artists and 1093 01:07:23,680 --> 01:07:28,680 merchants and so on. Fleeing to northern Italy and kicking off the Renaissance. 1094 01:07:29,350 --> 01:07:34,200 What you are describing is craftsmen and merchants and inventors and 1095 01:07:34,300 --> 01:07:38,920 people like that. Moving to England, the catastrophe is in England, 1096 01:07:38,920 --> 01:07:41,280 but this causes this influx of people to come in. 1097 01:07:41,550 --> 01:07:45,000 What I don't understand is why England, 1098 01:07:45,690 --> 01:07:48,920 there were catastrophes all over Europe at this time. 1099 01:07:49,090 --> 01:07:54,040 There were catastrophes that led to debasement of currencies and wars as 1100 01:07:54,040 --> 01:07:58,720 you've talked about that led to essentially states going into permanent decline. 1101 01:07:59,020 --> 01:08:02,960 So what was it about England that led to the 1102 01:08:04,720 --> 01:08:06,840 rising from the ashes that you've described, 1103 01:08:07,070 --> 01:08:10,080 whereas so many other countries just never had that? 1104 01:08:11,370 --> 01:08:14,990 My story right is very much one of a small group of people I 1105 01:08:16,470 --> 01:08:17,660 exercising agency. 1106 01:08:17,760 --> 01:08:21,810 And despite the fact that they've got the card stacked against them, 1107 01:08:21,810 --> 01:08:24,900 despite the fact that English government is repeatedly doing all sorts of other 1108 01:08:24,900 --> 01:08:27,020 crazy laws and other regulations as well, 1109 01:08:27,270 --> 01:08:29,940 making often the crisis even worse, 1110 01:08:30,890 --> 01:08:35,340 they do manage to get a few of the key policies that they need through 1111 01:08:35,840 --> 01:08:39,140 in order for England's trajectory to change. So really it's actually, 1112 01:08:39,170 --> 01:08:41,380 it's not that there's anything about England at the time. 1113 01:08:41,520 --> 01:08:45,730 It's not that there's anything specific geographical or even economic 1114 01:08:46,120 --> 01:08:50,500 that's necessarily causing that causes the change in terms of an underlying 1115 01:08:50,500 --> 01:08:53,460 factor. It's that it's human agency ultimately, 1116 01:08:53,460 --> 01:08:57,420 there's a small group of people with the right ideas, with the right diagnosis, 1117 01:08:57,960 --> 01:09:02,940 and then solutions that I think often even unintended by them have these 1118 01:09:03,850 --> 01:09:07,060 massive ripples, massive echoes further down the line. 1119 01:09:07,770 --> 01:09:09,730 Essentially it's really down to human agency. 1120 01:09:09,770 --> 01:09:14,140 I think that England was lucky enough to have the right people at the right time 1121 01:09:15,370 --> 01:09:20,340 with the right skills and with the right persistence, 1122 01:09:20,640 --> 01:09:21,310 if you like, 1123 01:09:21,310 --> 01:09:24,660 to get through some of those policies that they needed to poach exactly the 1124 01:09:24,660 --> 01:09:27,060 right people that they needed for England's transformation. 1125 01:09:28,390 --> 01:09:29,223 So there you have it, 1126 01:09:29,890 --> 01:09:34,480 a country on its knees economically that thanks to the agency of a few 1127 01:09:34,680 --> 01:09:39,170 individuals focusing and prioritising the right solutions managers to 1128 01:09:39,790 --> 01:09:44,410 fly out of the ashes if only there was a country today that had some kind of 1129 01:09:44,600 --> 01:09:48,560 parallel at that. Anton Howes, thank you very much for joining us. 1130 01:09:49,430 --> 01:09:53,410 Ben. Thanks for being here with me, and thanks for these excellent questions. 1131 01:09:54,260 --> 01:09:54,600 Anton, 1132 01:09:54,600 --> 01:09:58,730 where's the best place for people to find you if they want to hear more and read 1133 01:09:58,730 --> 01:09:59,563 more of what you do? 1134 01:10:00,470 --> 01:10:04,970 The best place would be my blog, my Substack, my blog/newsletter, which is 1135 01:10:07,270 --> 01:10:08,103 ageofinvention.xyz. 1136 01:10:08,370 --> 01:10:11,190 And if you want to hear more from Anton and read more of his excellent work, 1137 01:10:11,730 --> 01:10:15,710 go to ageofinvention.xyz and subscribe to a Substack. 1138 01:10:16,330 --> 01:10:17,550 And if you want to hear more from us, 1139 01:10:17,960 --> 01:10:21,980 visit worksinprogress.co read everything that works in progress is doing, 1140 01:10:22,290 --> 01:10:25,100 and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Thanks a lot.