Norton's 1774: the Long Year of Revolution

 Mary Beth Norton published this book in 2020,  Reading it in the light of the 1619 Project and our current partisanship makes it particularly interesting.  

Tidbits:

She defines a "long 1774", essentially starting with the Boston Tea Party (December 1773) and ending with Concord and Lexington in April 1775.

Different communities reacted differently to the importation of tea by the East India Company--the Tea Party was the most extreme among the ports (NYC, Philadelphia, Charleston) in that property was destroyed.+

Gadsden writes from SC that the colony is weakened by its high proportion of enslaved blacks--makes them indecisive in responding to the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Port Act (the first UK response to the party).

The activist faction used tactics to manipulate the results.

"Patriotic terrorism" was a thing in 1774. The "woke" were sometimes successful in silencing their opponents, those who disagreed with nonimportation and possibly nonexportation agreements to protest the "Coercive Acts" punishing Massachusetts for the destruction of tea in the Boston Tea Party.

Much of the dynamic seems to be a recognition that all the colonies needed to act together, hence the first Continental Congress and the "Continental Association"

There was a ratchet effect, each big event pushed the sides further apart. In America the progression cemented unity among the colonies and a sense of being a separate country.  Americans might have accepted a revised status similar to that achieved by Canada and Australia in the next century but neither side was able to offer concessions which could have initiated such negotiations.

Within America there was a splitting, as some came to recognize themselves as "Loyalists" and others as committed to the "Patriot" cause, even at the risk of civil war. As the book progressed the reactions of the players seemed similar to those we have seen recently.  As the Patriots coalesced they tend to unite around stronger positions much as the way progressive Democrats have emerged and coalesced since the days of euphoria over Obama's election.

If the Bill of Rights had been in effect in 1774 the Patriots would have violated many of its provisions. Assessing them it seems they followed the rule: look at what we say, disregard what we did.

The British government was receiving reports from the Netherlands and elsewhere of Americans buying arms and gunpowder to smuggle into America.  They took steps to intercept such shipments and pressured the Dutch government to block such sales.  Norton describes these reports but doesn't offer any description of the background--were these individual entrepreneurs acting out of fear of war, much as today people go to the gun store when alarmed, or hope of profit, or were some acting as agents for people in the legislative bodies attempting to speak for the colonies (some improvised conventions, some the colonial assemblies)? Likely there's little documentation to provide such background. 

Although Amazon reviews have criticized the writing as dull, I liked it--it's well done scholarship. 

British Race Relations?

Both the Post and the Times ran reports on the "audit" of UK race relations.   Their discussions focus on "white" and "black" groupings, in other words using the categories we're familiar with from the American experience.  But the UK is not America, and the experience of race and ethnic divisions in Britain is quite different than that of America.

When you look at the British reports and the actual audit you see a somewhat different picture.  For example, you've got 19 different "ethnicities" which were surveyed, including such categories as "White and Black Caribbean", "White and Black African", "Black Caribbean", "Irish", "White and Asian", and "Gypsy or Irish Traveller"

How the Brits Do Government IT

The blog.Gov.uk site is the blog for the UK government, as you might guess.  It's interesting to follow the posts, seeing some of the differences and some of the similarities between British IT and US IT.  The British government is a lot more centralized than the US, both at the national level with its civil service setup which uses more cross-department transfers than the US (SES was supposed to incorporate that, but doesn't really), and in the structure of local government--no federalism.

Even though their IT efforts seems to follow the same pattern, with more basic applications being shared across departments, they still have silos.  An excerpt:

"We transitioned 300+ websites onto one platform in 15 months. That meant we didn’t have the time or the opportunity to look properly at how that content fitted together.
And because each organisation’s website moved on to GOV.UK separately, that content came onto the site siloed and has remained siloed. And there are now more than 300,000 individual items on GOV.UK."

The UK's Approach to IT

I've posted before, but not recently, about the differences between British and American governmental use of IT.  Briefly, as would be implied by the UK's civil service setup, the Brits are much more uniform, much more top down, while the US is (excessively) fragmented and siloed, much more bottom up.

Here's the website of the Government Digital Service:

• Going on the road to spread the gospel "we're here to help" to the field and "local authorities" (i.e., no states here)
• They have a Service Toolkit.
• Something called "roadmaps" (i.e.high level graphic representations of IT systems?)
• Clear writing training.

The Results of Ending Fox Hunts in Britain

That's the door of No. 10 Downing Street, according to this article.  
It only takes a few years for the foxes to take over. 

Reached from Kevin Drum's Friday cat blog post by following the link to the Sun.

Small Gardens in the UK

The "allotment" in the UK is like a plot in a community gardens in the US, except with a much longer history..  It's a reflection of the difference in the two nations that a scholar is able to come up with estimates of the total number of allotments over more than a century, up to a million such gardens in a nation of maybe sixty million people.  Also in the UK, unlike the US, the national government had legislation on the subject, dating back to 1907, with allotment gardens dating back to the early or mid 19th century.

According to the linked piece, the evolution of allotments in the UK involved differing motivations and rationales: supplying the needs of the working class; serving as a hobby for middle classes; a focal point for socialization; and finally the trendy ecological concerns of recent times.

I show my prejudices by noting this long historical perspective should serve as a caution to US enthusiasts.

British Agriculture and US

I think one big difference between the UK and the USA is land tenure.  Oversimplifying, to get people to work the land the USA mostly offered ownership, though in the South we used slavery.  In the UK they always had enough people for the land and technology which were available, so they've always had tenants without ownership.  Of course these days the US has lots of renters, but typically outside the South the renter has some owned land, and has expanded her operation by renting from the heirs of deceased owners.  (I don't know how many errors I've written so far.)

To me this difference is shown in the Duke of Westminster, who just died.  The pieces on his death noted he was one of the biggest landowners in the UK, including some 300 acres worth of London.  I don't believe we would see similar stories in the US.  Yes, we've some big owners, like Ted Turner, but their lifestory isn't centered around landowning.

Another big: the Tenant Farmers Association, a UK organization:

  The TFA is the only organisation dedicated to the agricultural tenanted sector and is the authentic voice on behalf of tenant farmers.  The TFA lobbies at all levels of Government and gives professional advice to its members.

The TFA seeks to support and enhance the landlord-tenant system.  It represents and advises members on all aspects of agricultural tenancy and ancillary matters.  It also aims to improve the professional and technical knowledge of its members, to increase the flow of new tenancies onto the market and to help the farming industry best apply existing agricultural tenancy legislation.

The Brits Do It Better

Wonky bureaucrats often admire Britain and its Civil Service, even to the extent of trying to reform our bureaucracy along its lines.  (See Jimmy Carter's civil service reforms, which created the Senior Executive Service with the dream, so far unrealized after 40+ years, of having the best people identified and moving from agency to agency and department to department as the need arose. In other words, Jimmy wanted to duplicate the Dwight Inks of the world.)

We bureaucrats and pundits forget the differences in the societies of the two nations, and the structural differences of our governments.  Nonetheless, when I see this report from FCW, I can't resist being envious.

"British citizens can access tax, pension and drivers licensing information through a single, secure login called GOV.UK Verify. The system is set to exit a public beta and go live the week of May 23."

The UK hasn't progressed as far as Estonia, but they're way ahead of the US.  

British Agriculture in the Modern World

I found this long piece from the London Review of Books very interesting. The writer's hook is Brexit. The EU budget is heavily focused on agricultural subsidies, but the EU also imposes regulations, so he can find a mix of opinions.  The writer interviews farmers about Brexit and considers the various impacts, but the piece ranges broadly. What's especially fascinating to see what's common to English and American agriculture, such as expanding farm size and conservation concerns, and what's different, particularly the continuing position of the wealthy/noble landowners. And finally the writer discovers the variety which exists behind all the stereotypes of farmers.

A couple quotes:

"[a farmer involved in conservation] was grateful for one aspect of his new life: he gets to meet people when he talks about his work. Mechanisation has isolated farmers. Wright and his brother farm alone where once 14 people worked."

"When the English government recently had the chance to carry out its own, independent CAP reform – in agriculture, there essentially is an English government, with the four parts of the United Kingdom having separate policies – it proved eager to go on subsidising the big landowners"

 Read it.

Thanks to commenter "rupello" for the lead.

Rugby and "Swing Low..."

Who knew?

There's a strong association between British rugby and the song "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" per wikipedia.

This comes from an Ann Althouse link to a Brit article on a Labor politician getting canned for tweeting a picture of a house covered by St George's flags, which led to the wikipedia article on St George's flag, a flag which has some connection in Britain with racism which led to a discussion of patriotism and the possibility of selecting an anthem for the English, one of the options mentioned was "Swing Low..."

Downton Abbey and British Agriculture

Been re-watching Downton Abbey, season 3.  What does it tell us about British agriculture, or at least farming on the Earl's estate?  (Caution: We probably can't assume Julian Fellowes is an expert on early 20th century agriculture.)

It appears that the estate includes a substantial acreage of farmland, divided into farms held by tenant farmers.  Remember that when Daisy the assistant cook visits Mr. Mason's (father of her late husband) farm, he tries to entice her to live with him by offering to make her his heir, inheriting all he has.  He describes that as essentially equipment and livestock, but not the land. We've no clue how much land he's farming, but he's obviously done well.  I'm not sure whether Mason is one of the Earl's tenants, but it indicates the pattern that existed, or Fellowes thinks existed, in Yorkshire.

When Matthew and Tom work out a plan to modernize the running of the estate, it includes offering the tenants a buy-out, so the land they are farming can be reworked into bigger estates.  Though there's no discussion of why bigger is better, season 2 did include scenes of Lady Edith driving a tractor.  Presumably that tractor was the farmer's, not the estate's, but being able to afford such modern labor-saving devices would require the tenant to farm more acreage.
 

Bureaucrat versus Civil Servant; Scheme verus Plan

The Brits and their former colonies tend to use "scheme" as a perfectly neutral synonym for plan. To American ears it rings false, because the word carries a connotation of deviousness and "plan" is preferred.

The Brits and their former colonies tend to use "bureaucrat" as a neutral descriptor for office worker.  To American ears bureaucrat is an epithet, and civil servant is the more neutral term.

Both differences show the American propensity for cynicism and populism.