Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

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> the much later famines in the Bengal regions...entire British Raj came about through state capitalism

There is an interesting thread of history in the earlier 1770 famine in Bengal.

The EIC over-taxed during the famine, leading to "a large proportion of the dead [being] spinners and weavers who had no reserves of food" [1]. Dead spinners produce no textiles, which caused the Company losses. That crashed the stock and--together with a short squeeze in EIC stock and ensuing pan-European banking panic--prompted Britain's first modern credit crisis [2]. That, in turn, required a bailout from the Bank of England and, among other assistance, the Tea Act in 1773 [3], which, together with images of the EIC's ruthlessness in Bengal, caused the Boston Tea Party [4] which kicked off the American Revolution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bengal_famine_of_1770

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_credit_crisis_of_1772–...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Act

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

Thanks for sharing this! I didn’t realizs the connections… just like I didn’t realize that the Bay of Pigs invasion was a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis because Cuba wanted to defend itself against the US “special military operations”, and made an alliance with USSR. Not at all dissimilar to what’s happening in Ukraine at the moment. Anyway, I like making these connections across disciplines — at the time the people reacted exactly to these things.

DOES ANYONE KNOW OF A BOOK THAT COVERS SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES IN THIS WAY?

The vast majority of ways science is taught, we just learn the shrinkwrapped version. I want to know how they finally figured out the mind was in the brain vs heart, how they got past spontaneous generation, humors, phlogiston, who was a proponent of luminiferous ether after the michelson moey experiment, and more importantly… how did they discover molecules and the atom, what did they know before they had electron microscopes… how did they use the older, worse theories and how did they eventually discover these new concepts like tectonic plates etc

did Popov and Marconi and Tesla know each other… in short how did science develop? Any books like that?

I think 'Cosmos' the TV series (old and new ones) is the best 'popular' version of such a history.

The thing that I think you are overlooking though is that Tesla and Marconi and Popov were not required to invent radio and modern electronics. There is a reason why a lot of groundbreaking inventions get invented by different people in different places at around the same time. Look into 'multiple discovery theory'[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery

This is a very interesting chain of events. All European exploitation was cruel and history was written by victors. With China and India rising, a lot of the shenanigans are going to come out and made common knowledge. Right now, history is heavily tilted towards the western story.

> with China and India rising, a lot of the shenanigans are going to come out and made common knowledge

None of this was hidden. American political, British financial and Indian geopolitical history are just rarely taught together.

India and China have no paucity of cruel and exploitative histories. Both contain periods of empire building, ethnic cleansing and wrenching inequality. A better takeaway is recognizing the common impulses our economic and political systems cause in us and how they may be foreseen and mitigated.

For example, the history I just recounted followed the Seven Years' War, in which the British (among others) beat the French and Spanish (among others) [1]. (This also circles back to Paris backing the American revolution.) At the time, the Spanish dollar was the world's reserve currency and Britain a rising power. Guess how they framed their rise and predecessors' fall?

(Unnecessary aside: and they were right. The British I mean. My Indian descent obliges familiarity with British atrocities on the subcontinent and abroad. But at least we, with a competent government led largely by those descended from the indigenous at the time when the British came, can name them. She scale and continuity of the Spanish crown’s atrocities and exterminations show no such delineation nor legacy. And on the next turn, my American citizenship obliges familiarity with our illegal invasions and proliferation of war crimes. But at least we label them as much. In the time of the British Raj and America in the Philippines, that was business as usual.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War

From what I understand, the Spanish conquistadores were far more brutal than the British, who were in turn more brutal than the French, who actually befriended the natives and gave them horses.

Having said that, most people die from “mundane” things like influenza and famines, and not necessarily cruelty. Those are the things we all have to try to prevent the most.

There isn't a moral arc to history, but perhaps a moral regression. We tend towards goodness, simply because we each know more throughout time.

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