Author: Brandon Christensen

Afternoon Tea: “English Liberties Outside England: Floors, Doors, Windows, and Ceilings in the Legal Architecture of Empire”

Brandon Christensen History , , , , ,

We tend to think of global migration and the problem of which legal rights people enjoy as they cross borders as modern phenomena. They are not. The question of emigrant rights was one of the foundational issues in what can be called the constitution of the English empire at the beginning of transatlantic colonization in the seventeenth century. This essay analyzes one strand of this constitutionalism, a strand captured by the resonant term, ‘the liberties and privileges of Englishmen’. Almost every colonial grant – whether corporate charter, royal charter, or proprietary grant – for roughly two dozen imagined, projected, failed, and realized overseas ventures contained a clause stating that the emigrants would enjoy the liberties, privileges and immunities of English subjects. The clause was not invented for transatlantic colonization. Instead, it had medieval roots. Accordingly, royal drafters, colonial grantees, and settlers penned and read these guarantees against the background of traditional interpretations about what they meant.

Soon, however, the language of English liberties and privileges escaped the founding documents, and contests over these keywords permeated legal debates on the meaning and effects of colonization. Just as the formula of English liberties and privileges became a cornerstone of England’s constitutional monarchy, it also became a foundation of the imperial constitution. As English people brought the formula west, they gave it new meanings, and then they returned with it to England and created entirely new problems.

This is from Daniel J. Hulsebosch, a historian at NYU’s Law School. Here is a link.

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. Plot 6, Row C, Grave 15 (the First World War) Malcolm Gaskill, London Review of Books
  2. Toyi-toyi Melissa Twigg, BBC
  3. Administrative Law Is Bunk. We Need a Bundesverwaltungsgericht Michael Greve, Liberty Forum
  4. Beer, and economic determinism Chris Dillow, Stumbling & Mumbling

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. Armistice Day John Quiggin, Crooked Timber
  2. The Second Hundred Years’ War Nick Nielsen, The View from Oregon
  3. When the World Tried to Outlaw War Stephen Wertheim, the Nation
  4. Blood, Oil, and Citizenship Kenan Malik, Guardian

Afternoon Tea: “Independent Indians and the U.S.-Mexican War”

Brandon Christensen History, Links , , , , , , ,

This cross-border conversation had a broad and tragic context. In the early 1830s, following what for most had been nearly two generations of imperfect peace, Comanches, Kiowas, Navajos, and several different tribes of Apaches dramatically increased their attacks upon northern Mexican settlements. While contexts and motivations varied widely, most of the escalating violence reflected Mexico’s declining military and diplomatic capabilities, as well as burgeoning markets for stolen livestock and captives. Indian men raided Mexican ranches, haciendas, and towns, killing or capturing the people they found there, and stealing or destroying animals and other property. When able, Mexicans responded by attacking their enemies with comparable cruelty and avarice. Raids expanded, breeding reprisals and deepening enmities, until the searing violence touched all or parts of nine states.

This is from Brian DeLay, a historian at Cal-Berkeley. Here is a link.

Books I’ve been reading (and elections I’ve been watching)

Brandon Christensen Books, Politics , , , , , ,

The elections were pretty decent overall. The GOP actually picked up some seats in the Senate, the Democrats picked up some seats in the House. It was a draw, and now Trump is weaker than he was in 2016 and so are the Democrats. It’s a win-win for libertarians.

Speaking of libertarians, we have a political party here in the States, and it didn’t do too bad in the elections. It looks as if the Libertarian Party has started to run candidates in districts where a representative usually goes unchallenged. So, in heavily Democratic areas like urban Dallas or suburban Denver, or in heavily Republican areas like Wyoming, Libertarians have begun running legitimate campaigns. Jennifer Nakerud won 4% of the vote in suburban Denver, and Shawn Jones got nearly 9% of the vote in urban Dallas. In West Virginia, Rusty Hollen took 4% of the vote in the Senate race. Gary Johnson didn’t do too bad, either, finishing with almost 15% of the vote in New Mexico. He was running for Senate, and he was a very successful governor there, so his losing success was somewhat assured, but still, it’s encouraging. Also encouraging is the re-election of Clint Bolick, a libertarian judge in Arizona (Damon Root reports on Bolick’s victory at Reason, here).

I’ve plowed through a bunch of books recently: Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street (1920), Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty (2010), Nicolai Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842), the Three-Body Problem trilogy (2014-2016), and Prador Moon (2006), the first book in a long, 15-part science fiction series. They’ve all been richly rewarding, and I’ll be blogging my thoughts about them sporadically throughout the next few months, so be sure to keep checkin’ in on NOL!

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. On the inexhaustible desire to keep talking about Marx Jonathan Wolff, Times Literary Supplement
  2. The promise of polarization Sam Tanenhaus, New Republic
  3. Anglo-Saxon England was more cosmopolitan than you think Rhiannon Curry, 1843
  4. DC unfriends Silicon Valley Declan McCullagh, Reason

Eye Candy: the five largest cities in each American state, as constellations

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , ,

Yup, you read that correctly. Behold:

NOL map 50 states constellations
Click here to zoom

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. How did history abdicate its role of inspiring the longer view? Jo Guldi, Aeon
  2. Third World Burkeans Rod Dreher, American Conservative
  3. Enemy of The People Pierre Lemieux, EconLog
  4. Why wasn’t there a Marshall Plan for China? Roderick MacFarquhar, ChinaFile

100 years after World War 1

Brandon Christensen History , , , ,

In the five weeks since the Germans first requested peace negotiations, half a million casualties had been added to the war’s toll. As the delegates talked, Germany continued to collapse from within: inspired by the Russian Revolution, workers and soldiers were forming soviets, or councils. Bavaria proclaimed itself a socialist republic; a soviet took over in Cologne.

And:

But can we really say that the war was won? If ever there was a conflict that both sides lost, this was it. For one thing, it didn’t have to happen. There were rivalries among Europe’s major powers, but in June, 1914, they were getting along amicably. None openly claimed part of another’s territory. Germany was Britain’s largest trading partner. The royal families of Britain, Germany, and Russia were closely related, and King George V and his cousins Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II had all recently been together for the wedding of Wilhelm’s daughter in Berlin.

There is more here. Isolationism, or non-interventionism, often sounds good to American libertarians when World War I is brought up and discussed. And who can blame us? I think, though, that non-interventionism is one of the least libertarian positions you could take on matters of foreign policy.

I got an email the other day from an (American) economist who said that he wasn’t an isolationist because he favored free trade and open migration. Instead, he resolutely trotted out the same old dogma that he was a non-interventionist. I’ve got to bury this cognitive failure on the part of American libertarians.

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. Mia Love, Trump, and abortion Rachael Larimore, Weekly Standard
  2. Presidents and the Press — A Brief Modern History Rick Brownell, Medium
  3. The gatekeeper of Israeli democracy and rule of law Mazal Mualem, Al-Monitor
  4. Contrarians in public life Chris Dillow, Stumbling & Mumbling

Afternoon Tea: “‘Chief Princes and Owners of All’: Native American Appeals to the Crown in the Early Modern British Atlantic”

Brandon Christensen Links , , , , , ,

This paper uncovers these indigenous norms by looking at a little-studied legal genre: the appeals made by Native Americans to the British Crown in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These appeals show that they were aware of (and able to exploit) the complicated politics of the British Atlantic world for their own ends, turning the Crown against the settlers in ways they hoped would preserve their rights, and in the process becoming trans-Atlantic political actors. Focusing on three such appeals – the Narragansetts’ in the mid-seventeenth-century; the Mohegans’ which spanned the first three quarters of the eighteenth; and the Mashpee’s on the eve of the American Revolution – this paper explores the way that these Native peoples in eastern North America were able to resist the depredations of the settlers by appealing to royal authority, in the process articulating a powerful conception of their legal status in a world transformed by the arrival of the English. In doing so, it brings an indigenous voice to the debates about the legalities of empire in the early modern Atlantic world.

This is from Craig Yirush, a historian at UCLA. Here is a link.

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. The Statue of Liberty is a deeply sinister icon Stephen Bayley, Spectator
  2. From socialist to left-liberal to neoconservative hawk David Mikics, Literary Review
  3. Populism in Europe: democracy is to blame, so what is to be done? Philip Manow, Eurozine
  4. When Medicaid expands, more people vote Margot Sanger-Katz, the Upshot

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. Losing the House may actually help Trump more than it hurts him James Rogers, Law & Liberty
  2. Tyler Cowen on the elections Marginal Revolution
  3. Clifford Geertz, radical objectivity, and elections Timothy Taylor, Conversable Economist
  4. Not wearing a poppy Chris Dillow, Stumbling & Mumbling

Afternoon Tea: “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”

Brandon Christensen Links , , , , , ,

There is, however, a second group of anthropologists, WW Newcomb, Oscar Lewis, Frank Secoy, and more recently Symmes Oliver, who have found this explanation of intertribal warfare unconvincing. These scholars, making much more thorough use of historical sources than is common among anthropologists, have examined warfare in light of economic and technological change. They have presented intertribal warfare as dynamic, changing over time; wars were not interminable contests with traditional enemies, but real struggles in which defeat was often catastrophic. Tribes fought largely for the potential economic and social benefits to be derived from furs, slaves, better hunting grounds, and horses. According to these scholars, plains tribes went to war because their survival as a people depended on securing and defending essential resources.

This is from Richard White, a historian at Stanford University. Here is a link.

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. A review of Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival Jeffrey Folks, Modern Age
  2. Christians in Egypt are under attack…again Farid Farid, the Atlantic
  3. Mormons fight to be called by their full name Bruce Clark, Erasmus
  4. A Kazakh scam (post-socialism) Robert Drury, London Review of Books