Started: [[2024-08-20]] ## New words - primogeniture - 1. the state of being the [firstborn](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=8f49df3e5247a172&hl=en-gb&sxsrf=ADLYWILN0AWofsNENJ9MtnWfzV9pAiFwhQ:1724309563567&q=firstborn&si=ACC90nytWkp8tIhRuqKAL6XWXX-NRk2UM7_f8V0nb3OozmREqfJhn6skzbPqclKyUO1593mgrIRHb1SODvjgZoNoYygEru_-ghLXzSvhTYztYQLEYlu9yqA%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwietZPYgYiIAxXAXEEAHYDsAZEQyecJegQIHxAM) child. - the right of succession belonging to the firstborn child, especially the [feudal](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=8f49df3e5247a172&hl=en-gb&sxsrf=ADLYWILN0AWofsNENJ9MtnWfzV9pAiFwhQ:1724309563567&q=feudal&si=ACC90nwzNcbSj6HKgPz_Y9fzn5jcfybJviqgBqRk_TpJlQe6Rfz5NnPhRK7OMQvAy19CaUL9BqB_zGzq5l2thwm8GirE_sxxXA%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwietZPYgYiIAxXAXEEAHYDsAZEQyecJegQIHxAO) rule by which the whole real estate of an [intestate](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=8f49df3e5247a172&hl=en-gb&sxsrf=ADLYWILN0AWofsNENJ9MtnWfzV9pAiFwhQ:1724309563567&q=intestate&si=ACC90nytWkp8tIhRuqKAL6XWXX-NC0En62w3-FLglJ0-nWfcDMHeAhyE4uEHJRvrLf37ISbz6WeBEecJs8np6IdKY3OjZ6mSoruz9rc90m5JT5WsCqb-xdY%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwietZPYgYiIAxXAXEEAHYDsAZEQyecJegQIHxAP) passed to the [eldest](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=8f49df3e5247a172&hl=en-gb&sxsrf=ADLYWILN0AWofsNENJ9MtnWfzV9pAiFwhQ:1724309563567&q=eldest&si=ACC90nwzNcbSj6HKgPz_Y9fzn5jc3VAhbjeg0ACIzLFI-BZvpga9sI2hB77TmzPi-vsCPCuNtnayZ3ugrBPV-Qw8mSncE9EmZg%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwietZPYgYiIAxXAXEEAHYDsAZEQyecJegQIHxAQ) son. ## New things - Hanseatic League - Pastoralism - “Pastoralism is a traditional livelihood and social system centered around the raising and herding of livestock such as cattle, sheep, goats, and camels. It often involves a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle, where communities move seasonally to find fresh grazing land and water resources for their animals. This adaptation allows pastoralists to thrive in environments that are typically unsuitable for agriculture, such as arid or mountainous regions. The practice is deeply intertwined with cultural and economic aspects, influencing social structures, traditions, and trade within pastoral communities. Pastoralism plays a crucial role in maintaining biodiversity and managing ecosystems, as it often involves sustainable land use practices.” ## Notes ### Introduction In the 1500s, The dried figs and currents, citrus fruits, almonds and spices that English merchants acquired in Antwerp accounted for only 10% of all England’s imports. By 1775 food was around 50% (by value) of its imports. By this point West Indian sugar imports was more than all manufactured goods combines. By this period imported food was no longer just for the wealthy. The Irish loved Caribbean rum and all walks of society could afford to enjoy Chinese tea with West Indian sugar. P xviii --- > “For most of the eighteenth century the term 'empire' did not denote the possession of territory but the power to dominate trade. The first British Empire was an 'empire of the seas'.” p xix --- ### 1. How the trade in Newfoundland salt cod laid the foundations of the Empire Britain has had more than one empire, apparently. GPT-4o has more: **[[First British Empire]]** - **Start**: 1583, with the establishment of Newfoundland as England’s first overseas colony. - **End**: 1783, marked by the loss of the American colonies following the American Revolutionary War. - Primarily based in the Americas and the Caribbean. **[[Second British Empire]]** - **Start**: 1783, after the loss of the American colonies, the British shifted their focus to Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. - **End**: 1997, with the handover of Hong Kong to China. These two phases highlight different focuses: - **First Empire**: Primarily based in the Americas and the Caribbean. - **Second Empire**: Expanded into Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. --- The diet of a navy sailor in the reign of [[Henry VIII]] would be salt meat, fish, biscuit, beer, cheese and butter. P5 *** The Norwegians and Icelanders would air dry their cod for preservation. Whereas at first the English simply salted their cod. Over time though they combined both methods. Lightly salting the fish before air drying it. This made it tastier and last longer. P6 --- In the second half of the [[1400s]] Bristol was England major fish hub. This was because it dominated the wine trade. And the most popular wine was [[Sack (wine)]] from the Iberian peninsula. They didn’t have much use of England main export: wool. So they traded salt cod for sack. --- When the vast quantities of cod were first discovered in [[Newfoundland]] it still remained largely untapped by the English. There wasn’t much domestic demand, as the English lacked the ability southern European’s ability to turn them into tasty dishes. So it wasn’t worth it for the fisherman to make the long journey to Canada. They would take the familiar journey to Iceland instead. The seas off Newfoundland were dominated by Bretons and Basques instead, whose home markets liked salt cod. P7 --- Since the Middle Ages, England relied on its cloth industry to fund its luxury food imports. In the [[1400s]] English merchants sold woollens in Antwerp and bought wine, spices, olive oil, currants and raisins. The economic depression of the 1550s and 1560s led to the collapse of the European market for woollens. But the English still wanted their luxury food. The Newfoundland cod could remedy this inbalance. Dutch, French, and a few Spanish vessels would sail to Newfoundland and exchange their onboard goods of wine for salt cod. By the 1620s only 10% of the cod was brought back to England. With time the southern Europeans appetite for cod outweighed the Englishes appetite for European consumables. So they started paying with cash. P12 --- A 250-ton freighter that voyaged from Newfoundland to southern Europe in the 1630s and sold salt cod could expect a 14% return on investment. The sale of the return cargo, bought with the money from selling the fish, could get another 14% return. P12 --- Before the economic downturn of the 1550s England was mostly a cog in the global commerce machine, and had a passive role. They would trade with Antwerp merchants, but had no direct contact with the people or places where these exotic goods came from. But when Antwerp failed to recover in the 1570s England sought direct contact with distant markets and they used the Spanish silver received from the sale of cod to good use finding trading ventures to Levant, Muscovy and East India. The British Empire was born on Newfoundland’s stony beaches and its cod. P13 --- ### 2. How Ireland was planted with English, became a centre of the provisions trade and fed the emerging Empire The Irish practised pastoralism, which was looked down upon by the English, who wanted to introduce tillage agriculture. They planned to do this by introducing English settlers. P19-20 “Under Edward VI, English soldiers who had finished their term of service were granted land in Ireland.” But the Tudors didn’t want the effort and cost to subdue Ireland. Under Elizabeth I a more concerted effort was made. In northern Ireland [[Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone]], who at first had Elizabeth’s trust, got too big for his boots in her eyes and the [[Nine Years' War (Ireland)]] began. It ended with English victory in [[1601]] with the Battle of Kinsale. The Irish leaders felt to the Continent and the Crown confiscated 500,000 acres of land. The Ulster Plantation was created on this land. “A mix of wealthy English adventurers and disbanded ex-soldiers who had fought to put down the rebellions were given them the land on the Plantation”. They were meant to import English tenants to farm the land, but it tough to entice settlers. However between 1580 and 1650 at least 100,000 English, Scottish and Dutch emigrants settled in Ireland. P21-22 --- Between 1560 and 1630 trade between Ireland and England expanded. And in the 1500s the English economy suffered from inflation, whereas Ireland didn’t. Irish beef became known for its sweet and savoury flavour. And the potato became a popular subsistence crop. In the past the Irish relied on butter as their staple food. But they now sold the butter and ate the potatoes. P22 --- By the 1630s southern Ireland was prosperous and Munster was ‘probably the wealthiest of any of England’s overseas settlements’. > “In the early decades of the 1600s, Ireland fulfilled the role of a model overseas plantation: it produced commercially desirable raw commodities for export to England and in return acted as a market for English manufactured goods.” *** “By 1641 Ireland was plunged into more than a decade of warfare when the English conflict between Charles I and Parliament spilled over into Ireland and sparked rebellion”. The Irish Confederation ruled over the rebellious parts of Ireland and pushed out protestants and aligned itself with the English royalists. Oliver Cromwell came over and his campaign of reconquest was merciless. About 40% of Irelands land, which was previously owned by Catholic landowners, was confiscated. After 1652 Protestant settlers were a quarter of the population but had 3/4 of the land and dominated 2/3 of the trade. P24 *** In the West Indies [[sugar]] was such a valuable crop that they didn’t want to waste any land growing food. So nearly all food was imported. P26 --- In English West Indies the slaves were fed redshanks, the spoiled salt cod, from Newfoundland. In French West Indies they were fed barrelled ‘small beef’ from Ireland. This was made from old dairy crows and oxen and often their hooves and hide were mixed in. P26-27 ### 3. How the English chased the dream of the yeoman farmer but were forced to compromise When the English Puritans first started their successful communities in America they did their best to grow the same crops and keep the same diet. But that proved close to impossible. It required a lot of work, and most farmers were family farmers with no staff. Crops failed. They had to adopt the techniques of the Native American’s instead. They stopped attempting to grow wheat and started growing maize instead. > Bread, milk, butter, cheese, beef and a good mug of beer were the staples of the seventeenth-century English diet. p30 *** When the English landed in the US, one of the reasons they felt they were entitled to take the land from the Native American’s was because it wasn’t ‘cultivated’. > John Winthrop applied the same reasoning that the English used to justify their colonisation of Ireland, arguing that because they 'inclose noe Land, neither have they any setled habytation, nor any tame Cattle to improve the Land by', they had not earned the right to own the land. The English settlers in America were, he argued, performing a Christian duty by taming the American wilderness. […] The Native Americans were cast as versions of the barbarous Irish, who had forfeited their right to the country by their failure to properly order the landscape and realise its potential. ### 4. How the West Indian sugar islands drove the growth of the First British Empire Colonel James Drax was the wealthiest man on Barbados in the 1640s, making his fortune via sugar. When he imported food from England it had a long journey, crossing the Atlantic via boat. Before then being carried from the port of Bridgetown to his house on the backs of black slaves. This was done at night to avoid the food spoiling in the heat. P42 --- The English in Barbados originally grew tobacco, cotton and other crops. But the tobacco quality was poor. Cotton worked for a while. But the market became saturated thanks to cotton being grown elsewhere around the world too. So in the 1640s and 1650s they switched to sugar and it became a cash cow crop – after 10-15 years of learning how to make it properly. In the 1630s the north-eastern coast of Brazil was the sugar making capital: > The world centre of sugar manufacture had gradually moved from northern India to the Levant in the early medieval period, and by the fifteenth century Cyprus and Sicily were Europe's main suppliers. But when the Portuguese discovered the Azores in 1427 and Madeira in 1455, they found that the climate of these Atlantic islands was better suited to growing sugar than the Mediterranean, and when they took Brazil in the 1540s, they expanded production into their new colony. One hundred years later, as Portugal's position as the pre-eminent European maritime power was on the wane, the Dutch West India Company seized control of the Brazilian sugar plantations as well as Portugal's slave-trading forts dotted along the West African coastline. Dutch vessels now criss-crossed the Atlantic Ocean, bringing African slaves to work on the plantations, and returning laden down with huge cargoes of sugar destined for Antwerp's refineries. Drax and his associates would have been aware of this trade, and it was reportedly a Dutch visitor to Barbados who persuaded him and some other planters to try their hands at cultivating this potentially lucrative crop. Barbados was small. So the value of land increased massively. P43 + p46 --- The English discovered Barbados in 1625 thanks to Captain John Powell as he was sailing home to England from South America. He returned two years later, along with 50 other settlers. P43-44 --- One of the things I’ve noticed is how reliant the English were on the local inhabitants of places they colonised when it came to surviving. There’s this image I have of the English bringing over technology and know-how to these places. But generally speaking there ideas didn’t work in these new places and crops failed. They relied on local knowledge to learn how to live off the land. Whether that be via the Native Americans in America. Or here again in Barbados, where three canoe-loads of Arawak Indians were brought along as they had the agricultural knowledge needed. P44 --- The Barbados sugar factories were just that. And they were a precursor to the factories of industrial Britain. Each person had a specific job and that was all they did – they were a cog in the machine. And production ran 24 hours a day, except on Sunday it seems. But only barely. Production started at 01:00 on Monday morning and didn’t stop until Saturday night. P47 --- In the 1620s, 1630s and 1640s a lot of the work was done via indentured whites from England and Ireland. Between 1530 and 1630 about half the rural peasantry in England were pushed off the land because of Enclosure. Some developed new skills, worked as artisans or hired themselves out to enclosed estates. But many roamed the countryside looking for work. America took advantage. English merchants would transport them to America where they were sold to a planter for a 4-5 period. At the end of the contract the workers were due to get £10 to set themselves up in the New World. But it was essentially temporary slavery. They could be bought and sold. Conditioners were often bad. And planters referred to them as ‘white slaves’. Later on people had the delusion that whites couldn’t work in the tropics. In the 1600s there was no delusion, they just wanted workers to make money. The Cromwellian state ‘Barbadosed’ 12,000 Irish rebels and royalists, transporting them to the West Indies and forbidding them to return. The first black slave ship arrived in 1641. African slaves cost more than indentured white workers, costing £25-£30 versus £12. But slaves would be kept forever, so they were a worthy investment if you had the cash. Often planters would start with indentured workers, before switching to black slaves once they had the capital. > By 1660, there were around 20,000 enslaved Africans on Barbados. The appalling working conditions, malnutrition and disease led to such a high mortality rate among the slaves that in 1688, English sugar islands needed 20,000 new slaves a year just to maintain their labour force. This constant demand for new workers for the sugar plantations stimulated the growth of the English slave trade. P50-51 --- By the 1690s sugar had gone down in price enough that a skilled craftsman could afford a sugary treat every now and then. P54 --- ### 5. How West Africa exchanged men for maize and manioc The vast majority of slaves purchased from West Africa were sent to the West Indies sugar trade. Conditions were so bad that the average life expectancy was 7 years after they arrived. P61 --- West Africa proved tougher to dominate that the Americas. > Even in 1800, after 300 years of interaction, the European presence in West Africa was confined to around 60 forts and factories dotted along a 3000 mile coastline. The Europeans hardly penetrated into the interior of the continent. The Africans and their rulers could be violent, and they were good at playing the various European nations off each other. P62 --- In order to develop a relationship with African chiefs the English would pay them, or give them gifts, to get first choice of slaves. The Portuguese on the other hand married women from the Chief’s wider family. > The women who entered into these alliances were known as nharas (a corruption of the Portuguese senhorita). No mere pawns, they were often active participants in their husbands' affairs, translating and mediating for the men, who were ignorant not only of African languages but also the nuances of African politics and culture. P63 --- Surprisingly the population of West Africa held steady during the 300 years years of the slave trade. This was because female slaves were usually not sold the Europeans. They were often used as concubines, which allowed the men that were left in Africa to maximise the number of children they would father. P65-66 --- ### 6. How pepper took the British to India, where they discovered calicoes and tea In England pepper had always been the most popular of all spices. Drowned sailors on the Mary Rise had a stash of peppercorns in their baggage and pockets. Medieval cooks associated the colour black with melancholy, so preference I use a combination of saffron and ginger, instead of pepper. But in the 1600s pepper became the everyday all-purpose spice. In the past it had been an exotic, expensive spice. Now it was cheap, and salt and pepper became the default spice for nearly every dish. P75-76 --- Spices fell out of favour after the medieval and Renaissance eras. English food became increasingly plain, dominated by roast and boiled meats, pastries and pies. However, condiments became more popular. Mustard, horseradish sauce, pickles or fruit jellies. P75 --- At first the East India Company made its money in India via pepper. But by the 1660s it was Indian textile pieces that made up 75% of their trade. Pepper had been relegated to a ballast cargo, “poured into the holds to help stabilise the ships”. Tea then eventually took over from textiles. P78 and P81 --- “Tea was the last of the new colonial groceries to arrive on the English market.” It was first sold in 1658 and Pepys tries it in 1660. Though at first it was mostly taken for medicinal reasons, not pleasure. > But it soon became fashionable among gentlewomen, who revelled in the beauty of the paraphernalia that surrounded its consumption: the lockable polished wooden tea caddies; the delightfully patterned china teapots; delicate porcelain cups and saucers; sugar bowls, silver strainers and silver spoons. p79 As sugar become less popular with cooks and the medical profession it found a new home in tea. The English drank their tea heavily sweetened by sugar. > Between 1663 and 1773, the amount of sugar consumed per head of the population increased twentyfold, while that of tea increased fifteenfold. P81 --- ### 7. How the impoverishment of the English rural labourer gave rise to the industrial ration > In the eighteenth century, the English, Scots and Welsh were united into a single state and began to define themselves as British. This new identity derived from a sense of a shared Protestantism, which was highlighted by their opposition to Catholic France. With the British triumph over the French in Canada and India during the Seven Years War (1756-63), public pride in Britain's navy and imperial strength grew. Victories at sea were now marked by the ringing of church bells, and there was a populist dimension to the celebration of empire - merchants, artisans, people in the provinces all took pride in Britain's overseas triumphs. National morale was affected by imperial success (or failure). And Britain's military might was financed by its empire. In the 1760s, the duty the government made on sugar imports was roughly equivalent to the cost of maintaining all the ships in the British navy. More directly, the government raised loans from the East India Company to finance its wars. The consumption of colonial goods became linked to pride in Britain's imperial greatness, and both became an integral part of what it meant to be British. p92-93 --- > Tea sweetened with sugar eventually displaced beer as the primary drink of the poor. Tea itself does not seem an obvious alternative to beer until the sweetness of the eighteenth-century brew is taken into account: the amount of malt it contained would have produced a heady, sweet beer that may have predisposed people to develop a liking for strong, sugary tea. p94 --- As the poor moved from consuming beer to tea it actually had negative health effects. The beer was healthier, bizarrely. In many ways it was liquid bread and was a way of turning grain into edible food. It had protein, vitamin B and about 350 calories per pint. Tea had no vitamins or protein and even when plied with sugar had less calories. And of course sugar isn’t good for a person. However tea probably would have felt healthier. It has no alcohol, so wouldn’t have made them feel lethargic. And the sugar would have given been an instant energy release, unlike the slower releasing beer. It also was hot, which would have been a welcomed thing to a labourer on a cold day. P95 ---