How Waterpunk counterfactuals explain the Modern World
A podcast with Anton Howes
The full transcript is available below.
In this episode of Caribbean Progress, Rasheed interviews Anton Howes, a historian of innovation. This conversation had no bounds as they speculated what the world could have been if we had utilized water for power in the industrial revolution instead of coal. What if the Caribbean countries remained under British rule? They examined the abolitionist movement in light of the oft-quoted Williams thesis and how Economists can better theorize progress in the modern world.
Key Points
[04:14] Japanese Techno-Toilets
[07:00] Suspicious Formation of Government Policy
[08:22] The Western Design of Progress
[15:18] Why didn’t water power the Industrial Revolution
[21:55] Can Economist Explain the Modern World?
[28:06] The unfortunate endurance of the Eric Williams thesis
[35:35] Could the Caribbean have outpaced Britain?
[40:29] The Decline Caribbean Federation
[44:18] The Caribbean was Created in London
[46:29] Why did the Baltic States fail as Colonial powers?
References
Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation
Contact Info:
Website: www.antonhowes.com
Email us at progress@cpsi.org
Full Transcript
[00:06] Rasheed Griffith: Hi everyone. Welcome back to Caribbean Progress, a podcast of the Caribbean Progress Studies Institute. Today I am speaking with Dr. Anton Howes an historian of innovation. He is the author of a great book called ‘Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation’. He also has a fantastic newsletter called Age of Invention on substack. Anton is the Head of Innovation Research at the Entrepreneurs Network and also a historian-in-residence at the Royal Society of Arts. Our conversation spans centuries from the modern wonder of Japanese toilets to contemplations on why Baltic States failed in their attempts to become colonial powers. This was a truly delightful conversation, and I hope you also find it entertaining. Now onto the show.
[01:01] Rasheed Griffith: Hi, Anton
[01:02] Dr. Howes: Hi
[01:03] Rasheed Griffith: And thank you so much for coming on the show today.
[01:05] Dr. Howes: My pleasure
[01:05] Rasheed Griffith: So I want to start from something you mentioned in one of your substacks. I will ask it this way. Why are you so obsessed with Japanese toilets?
[01:15] Dr. Howes: [Laughs] Why am I obsessed with Japanese toilets? There are a few reasons. First of all, I don't know if you've ever been to Japan. But I went for the first time just a couple of months ago. And I've never been to a place where I think, Wow, this is almost a completely different technological trajectory. It is as rich, if not richer, than what I'm used to in the UK, visiting, you know, lots of Europe and the US and so on. But where so many things have been diverged, and where so many things seem to be significantly better, there's public transport, the bullet trains are genuinely mind-bogglingly incredible. They're so smooth, they're so quick, the transportation is so effective.
[01:48] And then the toilets I mean, the toilets issue is there's a lot of factors. One is the technology itself, there's all this kind of extra thought that's gone into improving the experience of sitting on a toilet, heated seats, all of these kinds of buttons and nozzles. They're significantly more hygienic, it seems. But then there's also the fact that they're kept clean by the people who use them, which I think there's a kind of cultural element to the technology as well. Where I'm used to really grotty public toilets in Europe, and literally on the flight back, when we were coming home, we transferred in Frankfurt, and had to use the loo in Frankfurt, and I was like, ugh, I can't believe I'd like step back in time. By getting off in Germany. You know? It’s like the quality of the experience.
[02:32] And it was, you know, literally everywhere we went, you could go to a central station in the largest city in the world, Tokyo and one of the busiest times, and it would be basically spotless, I mean, this is like Star Trek levels of seeming ahead. And I think what really bothers me about it, and it does bother me, it's not just that I've been really impressed. I'm like, Oh, I wish I had that. I could enjoy that. And not just in my own home, but walking around in Britain, or in Europe or anywhere else, that wherever I go, I can rely on the fact that public toilets will be pleasant, because it is a part of people's lives. That is quite a significant enough putting in a way when it's not going to be like that.
[03:07] And the thing that bothers me is that I am saying to myself, Okay, the first public railways are invented in Britain. The steam locomotive is invented in Britain. We build all of the first railways, and yet Japan is lightyears ahead when it comes to its bullet trains. We can't even build one high speed train between Birmingham and London it turns out, because it's taking well over a decade already of planning and probably won't open the years and years. It will be massively over budget and it's not even going to be that fast. And when it comes to the toilet, I am thinking exactly the same.
[03:35] Thomas Crapper, from where we get the word crap, literally is an English guy. There is Alexander Cumming, who between them they're responsible for the S bend and the U bend. Two really, really crucial elements to the history of the toilet. Get to Japan, and they're just miles ahead already. I think there's something bothers me there, maybe I'm being a bit, damnit. But sometimes it feels as though Britain has kind of lost its edge, where it used to be the place where all these improvements were coming from, and where improvements would at least be applied immediately from other countries as well. And it's kind of lost that lead. It's sort of become complacent and sat back a bit and allowed other countries to take the lead, and quite shockingly, take the lead as well. I think that's the bit that really bugs me.
[04:14] Rasheed Griffith: Yeah, so I have been to Japan. And I was also very stunned by these, call them, mundane innovations. But Japan is also very strange and in the other sense, of we have these let’s say, life improvement innovations. But it seems to still come from a society that is actually very complacent. A very complacent social society. And I'm always very stunned then that these improvement mentality, another phrase you use often actually comes from Japan and not from a more dynamic society like UK or even the US, for example, or even Western Europe. What do you think can account for that very stark difference in structure?
[04:54] Dr. Howes: Really good question. I mean I think Japan does have a dynamism in a way I know it has big Problems with demographics and a sense, it's a very aging society doesn't have really much immigration at all, and so as a whole aging quite dramatically. But I think maybe one way to think of this is that there is in the Japanese tradition, it seems you have your craft, and then you get better and better at your craft over the course of your life, not necessarily trying to beat everyone else, or be the best, but just a kind of idea of perfection or strive towards some idea of perfection in everything that you do having that kind of care.
[05:28] I'll give you an example, actually, of a really kind of striking thing that I noticed on an escalator. Going up an escalator in a mall, where they have these huge malls above train stations, in Kyoto and there was a guy properly cleaning the escalator handrail. The ones that are kind of these rubbery things that are constantly going around, and not just cleaning, I mean, it was like watching a ballet. He was sort of leaning, and it's quite an old guy probably in his 60s or 70s, leaning kind of getting it perfectly right in terms of where the sponge was placed, as this thing kept on going. And there's that kind of attitude to whatever it is that you're doing, you can be the best version of that thing, rather than kind of thinking of certain tasks as just being menial and not taking pride in them.
[06:10] And I suspect that in many ways that's resulted in lots of quality of life improvements, and filtering out into almost surprising areas of the kind of experience of living in Japan in a way that you maybe don't get in other countries, where the focus is on what is the kind of highest status or the thing that's going to make you the most money, and let's put all that energy into those, rather than trying to think about all these other things.
[06:33] I think most people kind of think, well, who cares? You know, who cares how clean my escalator is? Exactly. If there's a bit of dirt, whatever! I should be thinking about how to make the big bucks elsewhere. The fact that Japan does it the other way around, saying whatever it is I'm doing, this is what I care about. That's maybe where the difference is and it's widespread as well. I feel like am psychoanalyzing a whole culture, which is not a good thing to do. But it's just a kind of impressions based hypothesis, I suppose.
[07:00] Rasheed Griffith: Should our knowledge of groups like the [inaudbile] Society of Antiquaries make us more suspicious of how government policy is formed today?
[07:09] Dr. Howes: So this is referring to the substack I wrote a few months ago, right? On Society of Antiquaries. So this is a bunch of people who basically inventing history to get their own way politically and kind of being a private club, it seems a secret organization of some kind. I think groups like that have always existed, they'll always exist. Everyone's a member of one of the few WhatsApp groups or so on where it's just private chats with friends.And those private chats sometimes have much larger power than we realize in terms of sharing and inculcating ideas and letting them kind of simmer or get refined in a sort of more private space before, they kind of end up having a sort of public face put to them.
[07:52] I mean, maybe we should be suspicious in a way, but I don't think it's something that we can stamp out. There's probably value to things being first honed in private before they become ugly. I mean, just look at Twitter. Sometimes you want to tell people to just log off and stop sharing every kind of thought in their heads as though it's with a private group of people where actually it's with the world. And I think there's value sometimes in having a bit of a sense check with your friends before you start sharing things more broadly. Right?
[08:22] Rasheed Griffith: So the Corn Laws, or the repeal of the Corn Laws is generally quite celebrated as a trying from this free trade mentality or growth of free trade mentality in the UK. What I find curious is that the Corn Laws were repealed in the same session when the parliament also imposed the Sugar Duties Act in 1846. And that had a very dramatic effect on the US, in these colonies called the Caribbean countries now, and I'm curious, is this a good example if there are examples, this may be a good one, of how the free trade sentiment actually was quite disruptive for the colonies at that period of time?
[09:00] Dr. Howes: Do you know, I don't know much about the Sugar Duties Act. Was that a lowering or raising of tariff barriers?
[09:06] Rasheed Griffith: Essentially, it equalized the tariffs that were placed on sugar imports from colonies and also from outside the British Empire. So therefore, the colonial plantocracy had to pay the same fees than let’s say the Cubans and the Brazilians had to pay to push sugar into the UK, which caused a very, very big impact on their export numbers.
[09:26] Dr. Howes: So its rather than having preferential treatment for colonies effectively or for the Empire.
[09:31] Rasheed Griffith: Exactly. The end of Imperial preference, essentially.
[09:34] Dr. Howes: I mean, you can see it two ways, right. This is part of the debate that emerged about Imperial preference later on was that the imperial system was set up explicitly so to favor British manufacturers and then Imperial primary source production. Hence, why you'd end up with sugar cane being grown in the Caribbean, but then sugar processing and refining happening in Britain. And the idea there being that anything that smacked out manufacturers in the rest of the colonies would be stamped out as much as possible kind of force, a lot of other countries to only have primary sectors.
[10:10] Now that happens naturally as well, when you have very ultra competitive manufacturers. You see this in countries that Britain doesn't conquer, where sheep cotton exports, like the I guess, the Chinese made, or Vietnamese made T shirts of the 19th century or the British made cotton exports. They're flooding the market really, really cheap. And that's causing all of the weavers in the Ottoman Empire, for example, or in Egypt, to put down their looms and go into other stuff. Because there's just no point competing with that, and it makes agriculture again, the primary function or mining, often the balls and minerals and so on to be much more productive.
[10:47] And there is an argument there, that this deindustrialization, as it's often referred to in economic history literature, could have had a kind of long term impact on those economies in terms of their abilities to develop, maybe there's a lot of facets to that to date. There is a case to be made for a kind of free trade. Well, as you say, there's stability that free trade can in some ways be damaging to particular interests, or to particular countries that are affected by competition. But then there's the kind of corollary that sometimes you kind of think well as in this case, is it the fact that the Sugar Duty Act would have stimulated manufacturers in the Caribbean, we can kind of imagine that being counterfactual as well, as a result of that, even though that would be very painful to the people who were running and working on the sugar plantations at the time.
[11:33] But again, I don't really know much about that case, I'm just sort of thinking aloud through the various implications that could be there. I think the biggest thing to take note of though in the 19th century is that, regardless of what's going on with government impose tariffs and duties and policies is the sheer impact of transportation technology improvement. I think massively overwhelms nearly any impact on tariffs. The ability to send in bulk, goods that would never have been transported between continents. You could even send meat from Australia, because of refrigeration, as well as steam ships, or steam boats, the ability to send grain in bulk from the new world to the old world, and not just as a kind of when it's very expensive, but in general. That has huge impacts on loads of economy, and does seemingly kind of results of this reorientation of a lot of the world where people are suddenly specializing in certain things.
[12:28] And I think this is the big problem with when we talk about trade is that in theory, it's great for every country to specialize in a few goods, maybe even one good. When you do that, you kind of put yourself at risk of market forces changing. Actually, this is kind of what happened if everyone suddenly switches from sugarcane to beet sugar as they did in France, for example, you're kind of screwed by the new competition, because you only produce sugar you don't produce anything else. So having some level of diversification in the economy is maybe where the free trade there's an interesting case or argument, I think to be had there.
[13:00] Rasheed Griffith: I can agree with that. I actually think essentially, the end of impure preference was not a big of a shock, I think, as the law makers at the time, hopefully in favor of imperial preference was making. Because when the emancipation of slaves happened, they didn't actually moved the economy in a way to compensate the lack of free labor now, into actually having the mechanization, as you mentioned, for example. So they were actually just relying upon the fact that they could get the Imperial preference because at the same time Cuba and Brazil were still using slave labor but they were also moving towards the more mechanization aspects of sugar production.
[13:38] And then another thing you mentioned is about the transportation thing. I think that is actually very under studied in the Caribbean, in the sense of, it was because of refrigeration that we actually were able to diversify into other products like banana or other fruits. You can't get the banana without Federation to Europe. The whole industry was created because of international refrigeration shipping. And that is one of the many ways that technology, in transportation form, really changed the way how some Caribbean economies work.
[14:08] And of course, the biggest change now though, although I don't think we tend to think about it this way as an innovation system, is airplanes because our entire tourism product is rest entirely on airplanes. And without airplanes having proper commercial flights, the entire Caribbean would probably be, kind of, went into a waste land. And it's the thing people don't think enough about, essentially.
[14:27] Dr. Howes: There's a good case to be made there of how transport innovations change the Caribbean. Yeah.
[14:32] Rasheed Griffith: Exactly. Exactly.
[14:33] Dr. Howes: That'd be a fun book actually. You could do a good history book about that. I mean, you could go all the way back of course.
[14:37] Rasheed Griffith: Yeah, it'd be a very, very interesting research topic for sure.
[14:40] Dr. Howes: Yeah. Bananas is a great one. I actually saw a Reddit thread the other day asking, someone sent me, “Would Catherine the Great have ever eaten a banana?” I think that the answer would surely be no. It was a very rare product at the time, and as you say, it's very difficult to transport. So yeah, you're right without the kind of innovations in freight particular, I don't think you can transport fruit like that over very, very long distances. Like even pineapple, which are pretty robust, right? Pineapples have this nice exterior. You can find paintings from the late 17th and 18th centuries of people presenting pineapples to Kings, because it's such a rare thing such an exotic fruit.
[15:18] Rasheed Griffith: So kind of on this point of transportation in some aspects, how would the Industrial Revolution occur if machines of the time were powered by water instead of coal?
[15:29] Dr. Howes: Yeah, this is an understudied thing, I think. Because water power is not that sexy. I think a lot of people neglect the fact that well, first of all, there is this huge mechanization that happens throughout Europe and actually the rest of the world as well, in terms of more and more processes being adapted to water power. Pretty much any stream you could find in Europe by about 1700 is being exploited. Either transportation, if possible, and if not the transportation, then you've got loads and loads of diversions of that flow to go into these water wheels. And one of the really striking things about what then happens, is that you have this extremely ancient technology use since Roman times, you know, water wheels are incredibly ancient, and known all the world over, and then they work out how to massively improve them.
[16:16] First of all, John Smeaton, an English civil engineer does a bunch of experiments and the kinds of experiments we like, this could literally have been done at any point, you know, all the way back to Roman times, if not earlier. And maybe the Greeks did it and they forgot it or those writings didn't survive or something like that. He works out that it's much more efficient to have overshot wields, where the water is falling into the wheel into kind of enclosed buckets on the wheel. And then gravity is doing the work. And rather than using undershot wheels, where the water is flowing under the wheel, it's hitting the paddles, the boards of the wheel, and pushing so through impulsion, because you're losing so much energy from the smacking of the water against the boards versus just using the gravity of the water falling.
[17:01] And so he goes all over Britain and basically converts any wheel he can find into either overshot or if there isn't a high enough fall of the water in terms of the string, creating what are called breast shot wheels. Where again, where you're using gravity, but you're not necessarily able to have the water flowing, high enough to be on the actual top of the wheel, so it's sort of hitting the wheel around somewhere in the middle. And that results in quite a dramatic improvement in the efficiency of all of these existing water powered mills and factories. I mean, everything essentially could be done by mid 18th century with water, that rotary motion.
[17:37] And then taking things even a step further, you get a whole bunch of French engineers and English engineers, but mostly French engineers, working out that they can use turbines, instead of using a vertical wheels, you could have horizontal wheels. Think of how a propeller works actively, but you can use turbines or you can have wheels on which the water is entering the wheel and then exiting it but it is still spinning the thing. And then that's even more efficient than some of the old ways in which things had always been done.
[18:02] And so all of the pre-existing industrial technology, industrial processes that had already kind of been built but had been so inefficient, not really using the water to its full potential. Like there are quite dramatic improvements, well into the period when steam engines are becoming common. And I think there's a case to be made here. Or the fact that you can imagine a scenario in which coal isn't a thing, you can imagine a scenario in which water power is still the main thing being used, where a particular country that has that configurations can still get really rich or can still seek quite alot of living standard improvement, can still see quite a lot of expansion of industry and tertiary sectors on top of that as well, before you start to reach the limits of where steam power would have been necessary.
[18:45] And I would actually go a step further than that, which is that you can even imagine using water power to leapfrog certain technologies and generate electricity and do all these other things. If you've ever played the game Civilization, or even like any kind of real time strategy game, like Age of Empires, or something like that, there's always tech trees, and you have to follow the tech trees one by one. You know, you've got to unlock the wheelbarrow before you unlock the horse mill, before you unlock this next thing. That's just not the way that things actually work. There are a lot of cases where you don't actually need these prior technologies to unlock, so to speak, the subsequent ones.
[19:20] I'm not saying that if this were the case in Britain, that it would be as rich today as it is, and it may be substantially less, so all that living standards will be not quite there. But the general trajectory of improvement I can still imagine being there. I don't think that there's anything about the fact that Britain had coal that led to other people improving things in a kind of general manner. It generally comes back to what we're talking about in Japan, right. It's about what you improve as much as that doesn't stop it being improvement. There can be many different avenues for improvement and that doesn't necessarily mean that just because we don't have a certain avenue it doesn't mean that we can't improve upon other things as well.
[19:54] Rasheed Griffith: Tyler Cowen has talked a lot about the great stagnation references of some work you written about on substack. If a solar power steam engine could have been invented in the third century BC, would we simply have a more patient intuition when it comes to think about the pace of progress?
[20:09] Dr. Howes: I don't know. It's a difficult question. I think with the ancient world and the medieval world, it's hard to say why things were as slow as they were. My general insight on this is that the reason we wait so long for certain technologies is there just aren't that many inventors. Historically there aren’t that many, even today there are not that many people.
[20:28] Think of it a bit like the consumer funnel used in marketing. There's a lot of people, of that proportion of people, very few ever come into contact with another innovator. Of that proportion, even fewer ever think, Oh, I could do that too. Of that proportion, even fewer, not only I could do that too, but then actually start thinking about actively coming up with plans, coming up with improvement.
[20:48] Of that proportion, even fewer ever might have any success with it at all, for various reasons, they get distracted, they don’t have the resources, something else happens in their life, they're too busy with their other jobs, they can't devote time to improving things. And then of that proportion, even fewer have actually come up with something that's going to push the needle in any way. And then of that proportion, even fewer are going to be commercially successful, right? Or going to be inspirations to others, which kind of feeds back to the original bits.
[21:14] So the number of inventors is pretty small. I think this is just generally the case throughout all of history, is that we don't have that many inventors, there are so many things that you can be working on the fact that a lot of the time, there just won't be much progress or there won't be much improvement along loads and loads of metrics.
[21:29] In a way, this is kind of still the case. And there is loads of low hanging fruit. Coming back to Japanese toilets, clearly, most of Europe, America and so on could have significantly nicer toilets, but it doesn't. And maybe there's all sorts of economic factors and blah, blah, blah. You can kind of invent lots of just so stories to explain that. Ultimately, it's that there haven't been enough inventors who want to focus on that particular problem and trying to spread the use of better technology.
[21:55] Rasheed Griffith: Why can't economists explain the modern world?
[21:57] Dr. Howes: Thats an interesting question. What's underlying that question?
There's a lot of potential answers to that.
[22:04] Rasheed Griffith: I am actually, kind of taking this from the Deirdre McCloskey point of view. Where all of these variables that she explains of, that could have been the reason but when she does the analysis, in her view that none of these things kind of account for just the dramatic explosion of innovation, of progress, of growth that happened at this one part of time of the world, essentially. And I'm curious why you think that could be the case? If she is right.
[22:28] Dr. Howes: Yeah, I do generally agree with that case, though economists can be, and economic historians can be very useful in terms of explaining lots of pieces of the story. But I agree that when you look at the kind of fundamental thing that, the great factor she calls it, when you look at the fundamental thing that we're so interested in, which is the fact that across all industry, pretty much across all metrics, at around the same time, maybe a few decades here, a few decades there, but around the same time, everything starts improving all at once.
[23:00] And that is very difficult to explain with reference to just certain prices being the way they are, or certain factors being cheaper than others. I mean, economics as a field, isn't really kitted out I think to explain those things, or investigate the causes of those things. I think personally, you have to really dig into the details of the technology involved in the inventions. What are the inspirations for the inventors? What ideas do they have? So I agree with the general premise that the thing that must be having an impact here is ideas based and what those ideas are isn't different matter.
[23:33] And actually, we disagree when it comes to certain aspects of what's important, or even kind of this idea that it's an idea at all. It has to be something intellectual, it has to be something of the mind, physical factors. I agree, I don’t get us even most of the way there in terms of explaining the sheer level of improvement. And in a way I think this is worth stating as well is that when we try to get our heads around the scale of the change in the past few hundred years, we use things like GDP per capita, and they're pretty good at kind of giving us a sense of famous hockey stick graphs.
[24:04] But even they, I think massively radically underestimate the kind of sheer scale of the change. For a start, we use real GDP per capita, we try to account for inflation. But the problem with even that is that even today, when we tried to measure these things, it's not like televisions are in the consumption basket of a set of a person living in 1700 or 1650, or 1500. Right, that thing can't have gotten cheaper or more expensive. It just didn't exist at the time, we rebase inflation all the time, or we rebased the basket of goods that we use to measure inflation all the time by adding all these new technologies or even assuming quality improvements that are then just not picked up by other things at all.
[25:43] So even if let's say we looked at the price of a cup of coffee between 1650 and today I would say that the quality of the cup of coffee is going to be almost unimaginably different. What that coffee tasted like in 1650, God only knows. It could have been actually disgusting by modern standards or completely different, almost unrecognizable, potentially. Same with tea. We’re used to tea bags where you have to use actual leaves. If you imported tea in the 1750s, or 1800, it would have come as a block. Like a compressed block. That you would have then got a knife and scratched it off into the boiled water. The taste of that is just going to be totally different.
[25:22] So many qualities of changes it doesn't quite capture the full scale of the chain. This is something where time after time after time, it doesn't seem to me as though you can explain a lot of those changes, or even the appearance of particular inventions with reference to general physical market based factors. Where market based factors are important is possibly in the success of particular invention.
[25:45] So commercially, did this thing spread very rapidly or only slowly. But in terms of the actual invention of it, someone coming up with the idea and trying to implement it, very often they're kind of swimming out into stormy weather. They've timed this horribly in the same way that a lot of inventors today, sometimes they're ahead of their time, sometimes they're behind their time. A lot of the time, people aren't inventing things at the most opportune moment.
[26:08] Rasheed Griffith: So you agree that there's definitely some ideas, improvement or ideas evolution in the story. So what is the core of your disagreement with McCloskey in this particular version of the, lets say, great arrangement, as she calls it?
[26:22] Dr. Howes: I think the best way to characterize this that McCloskey thinks that a lot of the stories is to do with both social and legal permission. So she thinks if you give people legal liberty, to do things, that's one part of the story. And if you give them social permission, the dignity as she calls it, to do things, if you lift the rock off the grass, I think is the analogy she uses. So the grass will be able to grow, which kind of implies that everybody can do this kind of thing.
[26:48] Or everybody does do this, maybe actually that's the difference there. I agree that everyone can do something, but she thinks everyone does do this thing. As long as you give merchants dignity, and you give them liberty, then you're just going to get this explosion of improvement. And I disagree with that. Because I think there are plenty of commercial societies that we can pick at throughout history where merchants do have dignity and they do have liberty, where you don't necessarily see invention, or you don't necessarily see it improvement, because of the sheer rarity of inventors.
[27:14] So I don't think that liberty and dignity are actually that important. If anything, I think it's the other way around. Is that you have a bunch of inventors who seize upon particular opportunities in England, in particular, where things weren't actually that great for them to begin with. And they actively create the conditions for further improvement for the next generation of inventors to have a better time or an easier time than they did.
[27:35] My story, I guess is less about the kind of take the rock off the grass, but more that the grass itself is occasionally grass seeds are able to push the rock out of the way itself. And I think that's quite an important distinction there. A lot of my story is about inventors. Although they're rare, once they start to get together, once they start to organize, they can have a pretty big impact. But this is something that actually has to be done by every generation of inventors, they kind of have to create the conditions for the next generation as well. And it's a kind of an active, ongoing process to encourage innovation anywhere.
[28:06] Rasheed Griffith: I know that you taught a course at some point about capitalism. And there is a very active debate still, I said debate, it's not a debate. It's a very active lecturing that happens in the Caribbean still, when it comes to capitalism and slavery. Of course, I'm referring to Eric Williams thesis. That has been the basis of a dramatic, dramatic, impactful school of thought when it comes to reparations in the Caribbean. And it seems to me, and to many economists that work on this topic, that the Eric Williams thesis really doesn't hold the water that people wish it had hold or had held.
[28:43] And that, again, in academia people know the arguments. But in just society, even going to college in the Caribbean, you are just taught that reparations is the correct thing to do based on economics, based on of course, different things like Hillary Beckles, the historian, going back, of course, Eric Williams. I always kind of joke or half joke that the Williams book was probably one of the original sins of the Caribbean political economy, because it really put the countries on a very weird political path of this topic. Without much outside correction. There is a different story, of course, as to why there was no outside correction. But I'm curious, what do you think about this topic in general of the idea of the capitalism and slavery being so coherent together? I might assume what you think but what your thoughts on that?
[29:30] Dr. Howes: Oh, man, you're really getting me to do the controversial stuff today. There's actually a recent book out by Bergen Hudson, I think trying to rehabilitate Williams thesis, which I haven't had a chance to read yet so I'm going to, in a sense kind of cop out a little bit by reserving judgment based on new evidence they've come up with and are going to present on it. But in general, the Williams thesis, I mean, this is a very old thesis, this is what the 1940s. I think, maybe 1950s, that it was pushed.
[29:56] Rasheed Griffith: In 1943 or so I think.
[29:58] Dr. Howes: You're going to be hard push to find any work that's written that long ago that really stands up to scrutiny today, given so much extra work is being done on it. Now, there are obviously a few aspects to the Williams thesis. One of it is that slavery builds the British Empire or builds British Wealth. There's another aspect to it, which is about the abolitionist movement, and kind of saying, it wasn't a moral crusade, it was all based on economics.
[30:22] Interestingly, that latter argument seems to be one that has sort of disappeared, because it doesn't really make sense economically, right? The sugar trade was actually still pretty profitable. They were doing absolutely fine from slave trade. There was no reason that the sugar lobby wouldn't have wanted to continue importing slaves. That's actually kind of a very striking and interesting thing. I've certainly been very interested in the origins of abolitionism. Because it's actually a kind of a wild idea, it really sort of comes out of nowhere. It is historically unprecedented.
[30:46] People talk about there being prior abolitionist movements. But as far as I can tell, they're not actually abolitionist in the sense of let's get rid of the entire institution of slavery. They're usually more about let's not have these particular people I like, being slaves. And there's a big distinction there. There is a universalistic [inaudible] more particular principle.
[31:04] And you see this, for example, with a lot of Maroon communities in the Caribbean, was that very often they take slaves themselves. They want themselves to be free, obviously. But the idea that slavery itself is inherently bad is, I think, a bit more out there, and I think develops over the course of the 1770s 80s 90s, all over in different places. And thanks to different people, again, this is sort of ideas change that I've been drawn towards, because it seems to be so impactful as the kind of something where economics, I don't think explains it.
[31:32] So that's kind of one aspect, I'll kind of let's put that to one side. But in terms of slavery, and capitalism. Capitalism, to be honest, I know I've taught a course that was called Capitalism: For and Against, which is a lot of fun, because it challenges people's assumptions. But capitalism is not a word that I like to use, for the simple reason that I don't really know what it means. People use it to mean very different things. It's very politically charged, if it just means concentrations of investment to do something, then who cares?
[32:00] I mean, this is something that's been done since forever, this idea that there's a whole system that's all about investment, and it's all about creation of all kind of pooling of investment to do larger and larger projects. It's interesting that this kind of is automatically seen as a bad thing. And that obviously has its own political heritage as well. But I don't think there's anything inherently bad about that. And even if we were to say that that's the case, the state's doing it, I don't think it's any different to the private enterprise doing it, either.
[32:27] There's been plenty of examples of societies where the state has essentially forced people to save and then use those savings to do big projects and look at the Soviet Union look at certain East Asian economies, as they were developing over the course of the 20th century. Is that capitalism? I don't know. I mean, I don't really know what this word really means.
[32:45] To come to the example of slavery. I think, personally, part of the problem is that we focus so much on the 18th century, when it comes to explain Britain's success and in terms of its economic performance, without actually looking at what had already happened by 1700. and Britain, it is said that it starts getting involved in the slave trade in the 1560s. It's not quite true, there's a bunch of privateers go into two or three saving voyages in the 1560s. And then nothing essentially happens until well into the 17th century. And then obviously, famously got the royal African company in 1660s, and various other you start to see us real step change in involvement in colonial and especially Atlantic ventures in general in the late 17th century.
[33:25] What's striking to me though, is that Britain is already kind of looking kind of peculiar by 1700, or even by 1650. I don't think you can explain that with slavery, what you could say. And I think this is where elements of the Williams thesis and they'll be still hold some water is that Britain to become as rich as it did, at the scale that it did, obviously slavery was a part of that.
[33:46] Obviously it was. I mean, slavery based investments or plantation based investment did fund a lot of things. And that money, that investment, or that returns from that were used for other aspects of the economy as well. I guess the thing that economists like to say or economic historians want to point out is well, okay, what's the counterfactual, what does it look like absent that? And it's not clear how large an impact that has on the economy. I think some estimates will say 6%, some will say 13%. Okay, if Britain was 13% poorer by 1800s. Obviously, there's a case there that slavery may impact economically, but I guess the question, when it comes to causes of the industrial revolution, causes of the great factors is, was it the reason for the trajectory change?
[34:28] I guess there's two elements then. Was it the reason for the trajectory change to which I would say basically, almost certainly not. Does it affect the levels? Let’s benchmark years, let's say in 1700, 1800, 1900, well yeah, almost certainly it does as well, because it's a part of the economy, it has a wider impact, too. And that's where I always feel like in this debate, people are often talking past each other. Historians like to say, you know, well, obviously slavery happened and Britain was very involved, extremely involved. Obviously, it has an impact on the economy.
[35:00] But what economic historians often time, especially those who push back against the William thesis, said as well, was it necessary? I think this definition of the word necessary and or understanding of it, is I think the thing that causes all of the strife around this question. Not to mention the fact that it's a highly politicised question.
[35:15] I don't know if I hope that kind of makes sense in terms of my answer there. Well, as I said, it's a very difficult topic to address. But that I think would be my main answer is I don't think it really affects the trajectory or the overall trajectory. Does slavery have an impact on any of the inventions of the early 17th century? I don't think so. Does it have an impact on some of the ones in the 18th century? Maybe?
[35:35] Rasheed Griffith: Here's a counterfactual question, would the colonies probably have been as wealthy as Great Britain if the Empire was still together today?
[35:46] Dr. Howes: If it was still together today, I can't even fathom what would have to happen for that to be the case. I guess the counterfactual there is that Britain never ends as World War One, Britain never enters World War One, and just stays alive. And you can imagine quite a lot of British investment ends up going into British colonies while everyone else is fighting. And so you end up with a situation where capital by pursuing the highest returns, which in Britain, were getting pretty slim, is going to go into Indian railways, and the Australian mines, and Caribbean, whatever they are producing, I guess ports. Later on, it's going to be airfields and all this other stuff.
[36:25] Rasheed Griffith: And hotels.
[36:26] Dr. Howes: And hotels. And for tourism, you can imagine that being a lot more aggressive than it was because what happens in World War One is that London ceases to be the financial centre of the world. And it moves I mean, literally, within just a few years to New York. To the extent that Britain becomes a massive debtor to the United States, having literally just a few years before, being the creditor to pretty much the entire world. And that financial shift, I think, is quite striking. And then the other aspect being that, to get to your counterfactual, right, I'm always trying to like reverse engineer how we get to the Empire still being around.
[36:59] For that to have happened, you essentially can't have a massive war in which various parts of the empire have to contribute so much to defend Britain, or to defend British interests in Europe. And so not entering World War One is, I think, where you end up with a case where there aren't as vocal or successful independence movements all over the Empire. So maybe you end up with something that's a bit more like, what happens with Australia or in Canada perhaps. But even then, I mean, they contributed quite a lot in terms of World War One, and then in World War Two as well.
[37:32] So you perhaps even have something that's slightly less of an independence than they have today. It's a difficult counterfactual that one, but that's the only scenario, I can see where that happens. But I don't know how the rest of the 20th century plays out. If it doesn't enter World War One, there's going to be a lot of differences as a result of that. I don't think there's anything particular about empire that makes colonies more successful than elsewhere, though, I guess that was maybe an implication of your question.
[37:56] But given the trajectory of things in about 1910, it seems as though a lot more freedom is being given to colonies in order for them to self manage, it seems as though a lot more economic deal is shifting less towards the kind of Imperial preference system and more towards maybe a kind of free trade, or it's always kind of going back and forth, in that period. I think the main channel was investment, and its British investors being much more comfortable investing in other parts of the empire.
[38:22] Rasheed Griffith: Do you have any familiarity with the British West Indies Federation, it only lasted four years from 46 to 52? Oh, sorry. From 48 to 52.
[38:31] Dr. Howes: Tell me about.
[38:32] Rasheed Griffith: This actually was the basis of why I was thinking about that question. So the Caribbean countries, they are about ten of them at the time, actually created a federation similar to Australia in some ways, that would have been a large colony still in the empire. And that was because at the time people in the Caribbean rightfully thought that small countries like the Caribbean ones cannot exist as independent states because it's too fragile. So they said let's come together as one country with one prime minister, one government, under the queen.
[39:01] Ten years leading up to that it was just the biggest thing around. People that were living in that time, when you read the contemporary documents, people were very much in favour of it, especially all the intellectuals and so on. But when it was actually happening, and it went into force in 48, there was a lot of political squabbles happening and Jamaica pulled out, then Trinidad pulled out, then it kind of, poof! Only four years. But the rationale that they had, I think is still correct. Where you cannot exist as separate countries it has to be with one large empire type state, and as you can see now in the Caribbean, when you check data, the Caribbean countries that remained colonies of the UK, effectively, like Cayman Islands, BVI, Bermuda and so on. Actually all have better metrics than like Barbados, St. Vincent, and so on.
[39:44] So I do wonder actually, ifjust being part of that one thing, even just having the ability to migrate. Having a Vincentian passport, you can't go anywhere, you can't go anywhere in the UK. It's very hard to even leave a small rock in the ocean. Simple things, that kind of exchange and so on. Those kind of ideas shifting as having professors from London coming to your school, even those simple things I think, would actually be a bigger benefit. And we can kind of see the counterfactual play out in view, when we have the overseas territories in the Caribbean. That's kind of my view on that.
[40:11] Dr. Howes: Interesting. I guess the question then, and you know much more about Caribbean history than I do. The question then is why the Jamaica split off? Is there something endogenous going on there? Where it was almost never going to happen because of just the nature of how Jamaica differed from the other countries within that union?
[40:29] Rasheed Griffith: No, it was truly a charismatic leader that had power ambitions. And when you check like, because leading up to it was a very substantial in favour of it, but then when the actual thing started, but a lot of essentially, we call misinformation or disinformation these days, we call it these days about how the finances of Jamaica will have to support all the other countries. It's essentially almost an early Brexit in many ways, and that really caused a lot of problems.
[40:55] And then when Jamaica went out, Trinidad went out, but funny thing, there's a thing called the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, the OECS. This is like, eight Caribbean countries, it's very small ones, in the eastern Caribbean that have like a semi union. It's a semi union, you can travel between others, work easily and so on. That actually is the remnant of the Federation. Those are the ones that were in it, and they kind of never really left it, but they have separate governments but alot of coordination, essentially, so that's a remnant of that. But the big ones: Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, they pulled out in various ways, and the popularity to go back towards a much more federated state, never really happen again in history. That's a very strange thing to me. But it was raised as a political thing.
[41:33] Dr. Howes: That's fascinating. It's almost like the 13 colonies for the Caribbean, right?
[41:35] Rasheed Griffith: Yes, Exactly.
[41:38] Dr. Howes: Becoming their own union.
[41:40] Rasheed Griffith: That was the idea. In my view, I felt if that had went on, as planned, there'll be one Caribbean, and I suspect also there'd be a lot more Canada Caribbean interaction at the time, because obviously colonial empire was much more coherent in those days. And that could have had very dramatic impact on how the British Empire actually did trade in Northern America similarly, as well, but that's counterfactual didn't. It didn't happen.
[42:04] Dr. Howes: Yeah, only other thing I'd say about the other places that stayed, I guess they would now be called dominions, is that overseas territories, I guess there were reasons why they stayed as well, it may have already had stronger ties, or they were just a bit smaller, and hey didn't have internal movements to break away as much.
[42:21] Rasheed Griffith: The internal movement. There is no good historical analysis of why these particular things stayed and when these kinds of things shifted. I've been trying for years to find it. And in fact, very little about the Caribbean has actually been written, this is a weird thing. A lot of like, old, old Caribbean history is written, but let's say quote unquote the ‘new history’.
[42:40] The new history of the Caribbean isn't actually written yet. And when a lot of the writing on Caribbean econ history and political history kind of began, which is kind of post independence, people in the intellectual class were very left wing, socialist, Marxist leaning. So you see a lot of the tinge of that when you're going through the conversation. It's not particularly productive. But there's so much there that historians could look at if they just had an interest.
[43:04] Dr. Howes: Yeah, it's interesting. I guess the Williams thesis is part of that as well, and that it's a very economics focused work. It's very much based on what are the prices? What are the economic conditions? Less so on the politics around it or trying to explain away the politics ideas as just being people's underlying economic interests kind of coming to the fore? That's really interesting. Oh, that'd be I mean, that's really fascinating. I guess even with that union, though, it's coming so late on for my counterfactual, we have to go back to the 1910s. and work out what happens if it works out slightly differently.
[43:34] I mean the other thing to note there though, I guess, is also Canada is maybe a good example. Where Canada really comes together in terms of the provinces and becomes kind of a more cohesive political unit, as a result of effectively invasion from Irish Republicans crossing the American border and invading Canada, even though it's tiny little battles that you scarcely could be called battles today, that seems to be one of the things that actually helps congeal those provinces into a single nation. And it's kind of seen as being the beginning of Canada’s, not its independence movement, but it's kind of choerent. Had you seen that during that union, maybe things [inaudible] Mexican invasion of something of the Caribbean, that would have brought them all together in a way that you can't really see all at once.
[44:18] Rasheed Griffith: I don't think that will make a difference because you can't invade the Caribbean. You can invade a country because there is actually no space called the Caribbean particularly speaking, but also it goes back to the federal British Caribbean Federation constitution is based on Australia and not Canada. Because they wanted a more separated power structure while still having Confederation. I don't know why they chose that. That would be a very interesting topic for someone to tell me.
[44:42] But also, is one of the things where there's a famous line from a Caribbean author named George Lamming, you may know of him. And he said, the idea of the Caribbean was created in London. What he meant by that was because, again, there was still a lack of transportation technology and so on in the Caribbean. The first time this is 1930s or so, he met someone from Trinidad, was in London at school, because that's kind of where those things happen.
[45:09] I kind of have been making this point several times with random people, London during 1920s, 30s and 40s for the Caribbean is odd, because every single Prime Minister the Caribbean has had at independence obviously went to LSE or Oxford. Those two schools. Every single one.
[45:20] And they all met, they all chatted, even Pierre Trudeau in Canada was there. Lee Kuan Yew was there at the same time. That London of 1940s or 30s had such a dramatic impact on the world and the British Empire. And I don't think many people write about that kind of time period, let's say from a colonial perspective of what being there was in that time period.
[45:41] Given that every single independent leader in the British Empire was there at the same time, and they actually had chats, because there is some fragments I've come across where they actually had like this colonial Student Union type thing happening. So it was a very dynamic time happening. What happened that they wanted to go back and become independent, because there was the older ones that were pushing the Federation, but it was the younger ones that were in college in the 40s that are pushing the independence.
[46:06] Dr. Howes: That's interesting. Yeah. Who was teaching them? Who was influential? Isn't that fascinating?
[46:12] Rasheed Griffith: Yeah.
[46:13] Dr. Howes: Yeah. They're all there at the same time learning from the same people, discussing ideas. I mean, that would be a fantastic read if that were a book. Maybe it exists already, but the student politics of every independence leader, and presumably a lot of African independence leaders as well, is that similar right?
[46:29] Rasheed Griffith: A lot of them were there as well. That's right. Next question. Why were the Baltic countries so unsuccessful as colonial powers?
[46:38] Dr. Howes: The Baltics? Thats a great question. I mean, the first thing to tell all the listeners is that the Baltics were trying to colonize alot of other countries. Sweden, Denmark, all had colonies in the Indian Ocean, in Africa, and obviously there is the Danish Caribbean islands. There's a sort of awareness that yes, Denmark had a few who had managed to colonize a few islands, but I guess they're not as well known. The Baltics do, do that, and this is my favourite one.
[47:06] The Duchy of Courland, which is in modern Western Latvia. Courland and Semigallia. I think the Duke of Courland and Semigallia tried to, in fact, did start creating colonies in Africa. I think, if I remember rightly, also attempted one in the Caribbean as well, in the course of the 17th century. When you think of colonial nations, you obviously think of Britain and France and Spain and Portugal, those are your classic four, and then you think, well, maybe Germany in the 19th centuries, in Belgium, they try to get in on the act, but the fact that the Baltics are doing similar, is I think very very striking.
[47:40] It's a good question as to why they're not as successful. I think partly, it's location, obviously, they don't have that direct access to the Atlantic. Denmark, in a sense, does control the interchange between the Baltic and the Atlantic boats, and you can expect it having a bit of an impact. I think part of the problem is probably also just going to be internal walls. You know, there's a lot of reconfiguration of what's going on with, with Scandinavia. They're heavily affected by the 30 Years War, and then the Great Northern War in the mid 17th, and then the 18th centuries, there's the rise of Russia, which starts to kind of impact on them.
[48:17] Russia interesting is not often thought of as being a colonial nation, but very much is, but it's a land colonizing nation. If you look at maps of Russia, it's one that's expanding into Siberia, all the way to the Pacific. And then and this is another thing people don't realise is that Alaska was colonized by Russia. It even has forts in what is now Hawaii, like Russian built forts, and all the way down the coast of whats now California. Every country was kind of expanding, expanding, expanding to try and hold on to get more territory.
[48:46] I guess, in terms of successes, I think it is those problems, though, is that they don't really have the resources. They're often strategically distracted. If you're France, you're basically Europe's superpower. You're absolutely gigantic population wise until the 19th century, other countries start to kind of catch up, partly because of the fertility decline in France. If you're in Britain, it makes sense after the 1550s to focus on anything that's to do with sea, because you've lost your land borders.
[49:15] England loses its land border with Scotland because they're under the same crown. The English lose Calais, which means they cease to have a land border with France. If you look at the countries that have colonies, Portugal and the Netherlands have them but they end up being again, they suffer from the problem of having to focus resources into their own land borders. There's the threat of France and threat of Spain. If you're Spain, you'll have to worry about France and then the British Empire infringing on your territory.
[49:44] And so if you're Denmark and Sweden, you kind of going to get pushed out by the bigger players, especially if they have much larger navies, they have a lot more investment going. The thing to remember is the Baltics were pretty poor countries. Sweden and Denmark have wealth. They're still very highly agrarian countries. It's only in the 17th century that Sweden starts to lean heavily into metallurgy. Starts being one of the major iron producers for Europe, especially for places like England. There's not the huge kind of pressures that you have in those other countries that are closer to the Atlantic.
[50:13] Rasheed Griffith: So for my final question, you have mentioned a few times in Arts and Minds, your very good book, some aspects of the Royal Society having some discussion about the Caribbean and so on, for example, on page 202, there’s a throwaway line that said, “Visitors might otherwise come to the site to hear discussion of Indian timbers or agricultural industries in Jamaica.” I'm curious are there anything particularly interesting that you could tell me about the Royal Society of Arts and West Indies.
[50:41] Dr. Howes: There's a huge connection. The Journal of the Society of Arts or from 1908 became the Royal Society of Arts, is full of information about what was going on throughout the British Empire, and then later throughout the Commonwealth in the 20th century. And this is up until about the 1970s. So it had a programme in the late 19th century that continues on for quite a while, into the 20th century devoted to discussing what's going on in the empire.
[51:08] And it's literally like that is the surface. But if you're in London, you go along to find out what's going on in the empire, by which I mean, what are the cultures like? What is the economy like? What are the demographic trends? You know, if you want to find out statistical information about it, you would go along to the RSA for an evening lecture and find out, and what's really interesting, actually, and maybe this speaks to what you were talking about with all of these independence leaders being in London at the same time. Is very often the contributors to the discussion, all of which is recorded in the journals that are made, and actually says what their comments were.
[51:39] So you'll have the paper. And then you can actually read what the q&a was afterwards. And then people standing up and saying, Oh, by the way, I can tell you about what it's like back there, because I'm from there. And there are quite a few. I noticed some of the leaders of the Pan African movement, were present at these discussions. It's a discussion of what's going on on the Gold Coast, or what's like mining industry in South Africa, there's a lot of contribution from locals who happen to be in London, often for education or often other jobs at the time.
[52:11] It's probably a rich resource that you can find all of the back issues on JSTOR a rich resource just to find out more about what was being discussed. And I find quite striking also is that I mean, there's a kind of a longer association with Empire and colonies that the Society of Arts had, in part because there was a colonies and trade section, even from the mid 18th century, which was all about them thinking how can we promote industries in the colonies? Or how can we promote new trade routes? How can we promote new things that could be grown there, sometimes with a connection to slavery, especially very early on.
[52:42] By the 1780s and 90s actually, the abolitionist movement is pretty strong within the society. Wilberforce, famous, William Wilberforce is the vice president of the Society, it seems as though there's a change in emphasis and as a society, and at that time, in the early 19th centuries, was a direct democracy. So whoever was turning up, who ever the members were whatever beings they had were discussed and thought were important, and that's what the view society as a whole had, it was basically the sum of its parts.
[53:10] 19th century though that differs and it becomes much more of a kind of lecture based society and exhibition based society where it's about presenting things and discussing them. So I think there is a lot to learn from it. And it's something as you say, a throwaway line that I touch upon the book, but hopefully as an invitation to other scholars to look into the Society of Arts, as this rich resource of information accounted for what seem to be mined, if you will, as to what was going on, not just in Britain, but also in the rest of the British Empire.
[53:37] Rasheed Griffith: Anton, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
[53:40] Dr. Howes: Thank you.
Loved the discussion. Fascinated by the love of Japanese toilets as I recently had a 2 part discussion on this topic!
https://hiddenjapan.substack.com/p/japanese-idiosyncrasies-and-the-galapagos