39 Comments

Hi Tomas, well done as always. If you were to add an appendix to your article, it might be the British embrace of learning in general and science/ technology in particular.

Most noblemen and (as the centuries went on) rich young men attended universities, particularly Oxford and Cambridge. The Royal Society gave scientifically-minded people a place to gather, report and rebate. It was also seen as an honor to belong.

The Royal Navy and merchant fleet recognized the value of technology to help them survive the sea and to defeat their rivals.

I suspect that the Church of England together with the puritans and other Protestant churches exerted a net positive on the enterprise, but much of the history I know reports the British morality being honored in the breach. But there is a uniform tendency to report bad news. There is also a tendency of those who rebelled against the British Empire, like my fellow Americans, to slant the story so that it justifies their treason/ freedom fighting.

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founding

yeah. London’s Triumph by Stephen Alford is good… the whole story is fascinatingly complex… the london guild hall is built on top of the site of the old roman forum for londinium so something unique about the geography anchored it as you point out. Alford highlights the expulsion of the Hanse Merchants / the Steelyard as a key catalyst… so London played a key role but was dominated by the continent (amsterdam), until this break…. and after that break then London needed to build

it’s own trading networks…. so it needed peace with the continent to get to minimal scale, but then it needed to break with the continent to really scale globally…. for better overall, but for the worse for a lot of places the network extended to in its early form…

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Oct 11, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

An interesting map I encountered showed population density at the time of the Norman conquest, and East Anglia was the key centre. https://www.themaparchive.com/product/englands-population-in-1086/

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Oct 10, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Do you have a resource list for more information? I would love to dive deeper into some of this! Thanks.

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Tomas, I love this history series! The Spain entry got me hooked.

Wondering if you’ve considered a “further reading” section with book recommendations or if you just use the hyperlinked resources seen throughout the article?

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Oct 6, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Brilliant article as usual. Thanks Tomas. I love how you tie geography, culture, and history together. These are so informative while being easily digestible.

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Fascinante!

Te has convertido en uno de mis escritores preferidos!

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Oct 5, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Christian Jensen should be spelled as : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristian_Jensen

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Oct 4, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

I wrote a very brief history of the UK a couple of weeks ago because you hadn't yet and it occurred to me that it has relevance to DAOs. Yours is much better!

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founding

I've always wondered why the Magna Carta created The Square Mile? Overlaying your 73 invasions and the influence of geography - one could assert that in the face of invasions, traders/merchants put the square mile in the Magna Carta so that they could continue trading despite invasions and political instability. Would be curious if anyone had any thoughts to share on how the square mile got created.... I've always wondered about that. Because then out of the square mile you get all the companies of merchant adventurers and the colonies in the US, which are originally corporations (mayflower compact is a corporate governance document) and that evolves into the modern corporate form which is arguably now the dominant form of group competition driving cultural evolution.... so its geography but then that collides with these new models of collaboration that over the course of centuries break away from church and state and explode onto the world.... ??? thoughts?

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Oct 4, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Great read, Tomas! UK Citizen here, grew up in the States. Always nice to understand a bit more about my heritage.

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author

You are absolutely right.

So why don’t I?

Maybe I can answer with another quote:

“ If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”—Woodrow Wilson

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Hi Tomas, I am generally interested in your articles however I often find that they could be more concise and powerful... remember Blaise Pascal 'I wrote a long letter because I didn't have time to make it shorter'... Thank you anyway, Jean-Luc

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".....making eastern England a prime target for invasion, pillage, and emigrants." Shouldn't that be "immigrants"? Emigrants leave, immigrants come in.

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