In my latest Rebel piece I say that getting there first is no substitute for getting there free. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GxbkOb0F2E
The audio-only version is available here: [podcast title="Robson Rebel, September 8"]http://www.thejohnrobson.com/podcast/John2016/September/160908Rebel.mp3[/podcast]
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What are the dangers of direct democracy and are the limitations of party politics a good thing? https://youtu.be/x06Gy-r8KZc
The audio-only version is available here: [podcast title="Ask the Professor, Septmber 8"]http://www.thejohnrobson.com/podcast/John2016/September/Ask_Professor_52.mp3[/podcast]
September 8 is the anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine, Florida by admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. It happened in 1565, well before the first settlement that didn’t flee, die or both in what would later be British North America, namely Jamestown in 1607. And Samuel de Champlain’s founding of Quebec City in 1608. So you can see with that head start while Spain’s colonial empire proved the most… um… uh…
Stagnant. That would have to be the word. It might not have felt that way to, say, the Aztecs or Incas whom the Spanish brushed aside and plundered in roaring off to an early lead, bagging the tropical stuff, the spicy stuff and the gold and silver-filled stuff, creating permanent settlements in Central America in the 1490s and leaving everyone else playing catchup, especially the English who were busy with religious upheaval and civil war while Spain was… stagnant.
Yes, stagnant. Superficially impressive, rich and powerful, but lacking in dynamism. Everything was just too well under control. Including its highly bureaucratic empire answerable to an absolute monarch.
Just how stagnant was it, you ask? And rightly so. It was so stagnant that Florida, of which Menéndez de Avilés was also the first governor, had just 4,000 inhabitants of European descent in 1763 when the British bagged it from Spain in return for Havana, by which point the population of British North America was north of 1.5 million and growing fast.
So did the population of Florida once the British got it. With actual freedom to make a new life, people poured in. (And yes, brought slaves with them, both from the Caribbean and from South Carolina and Georgia.)
The Spanish got Florida back in the aftermath of the American revolution, which neither East Florida nor West Florida wanted any part of. It’s funny, in fact, that over many years of studying American history including the Revolution it never occurred to me to wonder what part if any the Floridas played. The short answer is they were too behind all the others, thanks to long Spanish control, to be self-governing societies at that point. They were just British outposts.
As for Spain, it supported the revolution. But quietly at first, given the ominous implications of colonial revolts for its shaky hold on its (mostly South and Central) American possessions. By 1779 it decided to jump in against Britain. And in the Treaty of Paris, a.k.a. the Treaties of Versailles, it got to keep West Florida which it had conquered, and also East Florida in return for the Bahamas.
It was a bum deal. For Florida itself, which stagnated. And for Spain, which lost its whole colonial empire in the 19th century to various revolts, having long since lost its status as a great power by being stagnant. It even lost Florida to the United States, which had been nibbling steadily at it both formally and informally, with hillbillies pouring in in defiance of the authorities, until in 1821 the U.S. went whsst chomp burp.
Since then Florida has done really well despite being on the wrong side in the American Civil War, to which it contributed little and from which it suffered little direct damage.
To this day, St. Augustine celebrates its quaint Spanish heritage. While breathing, very possibly, a quiet sigh of relief that it didn’t last any longer than it did, because the only solid contribution it ever made to prosperity is as a historical tourist attraction.
“And savagery is not history: it is either the beginning of history or the end of it.”
G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas
September 7 1876 was a very bad day for the Jesse James gang. I’m not sure they really had many good days; that lifestyle was never as glamorous as some films and popular culture have suggested. But if they did have such days, September 7 1876 in Northfield Minnesota wasn’t one. They were caught in a shootout while robbing a bank and lost badly. To armed citizens not the cops.
It wasn’t even much of a bank, apparently. No offense to Northfield but it wasn’t a booming metropolis and the First National Bank of Northfield had a better name than it did a balance sheet. Now possibly the gang, whose origins were as Confederate guerrillas in Missouri during the Civil War, had a grievance against a major bank shareholder, former Union general Adelbert Ames. And they wrongly thought he had recently put a big pile of cash into the bank. So it was a badly planned caper. But it got worse fast.
The gang were evidently somewhat the worse for likker when they headed for the bank early in the afternoon after lunching on fried eggs and bad hooch. Once there, three went in and murdered a clerk who refused to open the safe while five stood guard including Jesse James himself. Well, maybe stood guard isn’t the right word.
They swaggered around firing guns to scare people. And it didn’t work. Instead the locals realized a robbery was going on and some of them grabbed guns including from local hardware stores, took up good positions, and opened fire on the criminals to deadly effect. Two of the gang were killed outright and all the others wounded including those inside the bank who ran out into the battle with a few bags of nickels for their wicked pains.
The surviving gang fled. But the citizens of Minnesota pursued them and caught three and killed one. Only Frank and Jesse James got away, but without their gang. And after three peaceful years in Tennessee Jesse returned to a life of crime, dragged Frank in (apparently he was happy just farming), and on April 3, 1882, got himself shot in the back of the head while unarmed and adjusting a picture by an lowlife acquaintance named Robert Ford in return for a public reward. (Ford himself was gunned down a decade later in a makeshift saloon. Unsurprisingly.)
As for Frank James, he turned himself in in 1882, tired of a life of crime and constant running from the law. He somehow got himself acquitted by two different juries over two different offences, avoided ever being tried in Northfield, and lived until 1915, partly doing odd jobs, partly on his fame or infamy including in a Wild West show, before improbably dying peacefully at age 72.
Obviously he’d have been far better off just farming, as he eventually realized. But that’s not the main point here. The main point is that this arguably most infamous of all the Wild West criminal outfits was brought down not by the law but by armed citizens. And not some particularly ornery group of black-clad gun-fighting “citizens” with ominous nicknames like “Kid Shelleen” but just a bunch of regular folks including Swedish farmers. One innocent civilian was killed in the fight, but by a member of the James gang (apparently Cole Younger) not by one of the, well, vigilante is too strong a word. They were just regular people willing and able to defend decency and order against these vicious boozy thugs.
By the way, Northfield hosts annual “Defeat of Jesse James Days” in September. As arguably should we all.
“If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’”
Economist Ely Devons “via economist Ronald Coase via economist Hernado de Soto” according to William Watson in National Post December 29, 2001
In my latest National Post column I say the European Union ordering Ireland to make a tax lunge at Apple shows the wisdom of the Brexit... and maybe not just for the UK.