1815: A Year in Review
This summer the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo dominated Historyland: a real life reenactment in Belgium, a real time reenactment on-line, thousands* of new books on the subject, and a gazillion Waterloo-related blog posts on topics as large as the Congress of Vienna and as small as false teeth. It was a big, flashy anniversary that served as shorthand for a number of important events related to the end of twenty-three years of almost constant warfare between France and pretty much everyone else in Europe.
But a historical year is more than just its biggest anniversary, no matter how much ballyhoo it gets. Here are a few of the high points (or low points, depending on your perspective) of 1815:
- The Battle of New Orleans ended the War of 1812,** changed power dynamics on the North American continents (again), and inspired a catchy tune written by Arkansas teacher/folk singer Jimmy Driftwood and recorded by Johnny Horton. (You can thank me for the earworm in the comments.)
- [Reminder to those of you who receive this via e-mail,*** you may need to go to your browser to hear the video.]
- Cornish chemist Sir Humphrey Davy invented the first miner’s safety lamp, perhaps in part due to his experiments with batteries. This may not seem like a big deal in a world where industrial safety regulations are commonplace, if not always followed. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, this was huge.
- Someone in Switzerland founded the first commercial cheese factory. And while I love my artisanal cheeses as much as the next foodie, I must admit that a world with access to more cheese strikes me as a better world.
- On April 5, Mount Tambora, located in what was then the Dutch East Indies, erupted, killing more than 90,000 people and triggering the twelve months of extreme weather, crop failures, famine, and apocalyptic fears known as the Year Without Summer.
*Okay, dozens. It only felt like thousands to this overwhelmed history nerd.
**Which was both the second American War of Independence and an unimportant side show in the Napoleonic Wars, depending on which side of the Atlantic you were standing on.
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1915: A Year in Review
In 1915, the world was in the second year of the Great War. Over the course of the year, the use of poison gas, submarine warfare, and aerial bombing changed the face of war. Britain and the Ottoman Empire squared off at Gallipoli–a military stalemate with heavy losses on both sides that helped form the national identities of Australia, New Zealand and Turkey. The sinking of the Lusitania* outraged the United States, though not enough to overturn America’s official neutrality.
Depending on what part of Historyland you hang out in, it’s easy to forget that the war wasn’t the only thing that happened in 1915. Or maybe it is easy to forget. Here in the Margins, World War I vanished altogether. Not a single blog post on the subject.
Either way, here are a few things–good and bad, large and small–worth remembering:
- Alexander Graham Bell placed the first transatlantic phone call on January 25. I leave it to you to decide whether this was a good thing or the first step in the decline of civilization.
- On April 24th, the Ottoman empire killed thousands of its Armenian citizens, in what is generally considered the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century.
- Einstein postulated his theory of general relativity,** which changed our understanding of the structure of space and time. Not my personal understanding.*** Maybe not yours. But the understanding of the people who understand these things.
- Political cartoonist Johnny Gruelle created Raggedy Ann.
- One of my favorite books was published: John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps.
- The Ford assembly line produced its millionth car.
* Which contained contraband arms and munitions for Britain in its hold, an inconvenient fact that explains Germany’s decision to torpedo the passenger ship.
** Not E=mc2. That’s special relativity. You now know everything I know about this.
***Though now that I think about it, I spend a lot of time thinking about time and space as a historian. And cultural relativity. Hmm.
From the Archives: Déjà vu All Over Again: Closing the Border
Concerns that immigrants flooding across the border threaten the nation’s basic institutions. Construction of armed posts to defend the border. Passage of new, more restrictive immigration laws. Sound familiar? Welcome to Mexico in 1830.
The story began when Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821. At first the newly independent country welcomed settlers from the United States. The government signed contracts with immigration brokers, called empresarios, who agreed to settle a set number of immigrants on a set piece of property in a set amount of time. In exchange for the right to buy land, settlers agreed to obey Mexican law, become Mexican citizens, and convert to Catholicism. At the same time, the US Congress passed a new land act that made emigration to Mexico even more appealing. Public land in the US cost $1.25/acre*, for a minimum of eighty acres and could no longer be bought on credit. Public land in Mexico cost 12 1/2¢/acre and credit terms were generous. For many of the westward bound it was a no-brainer.
Some empresarios brought in groups of settlers from France or Germany. More, including Stephen Austin,** brought in settlers from the southern United States. Most new colonists settled in new communities east of modern San Antonia. By the mid-1830s, Anglo settlers outnumbered native Tejanos by as much as 10 to 1 some parts of Texas. These settlers brought the culture of the American South with them, including slaves and slavery.*** Worse, from an economic point of view, many Anglo settlers traded (illegally) with Louisiana rather than with Mexico.
Concerned about the growing American economic and cultural influence in the Texas region, the Mexican government passed a law banning immigration into Texas from the United States on April 6, 1830. They also assessed heavy customs duties on all US goods, prohibited the importation of slaves, built new forts in the border region and opened customs houses to patrol the border for illegal trade.
The law didn’t have the intended affect. Instead of re-gaining control over Texas, Anglo colonists and the Mexican government were in constant conflict. The law was repealed in 1833, too late to staunch the wound. The first shots in what would become the Texas War of Independence were fired on October 2, 1835.
*$31.44 in today’s currency. Still a bargain.
** Hence Austin, Texas. (I don’t know about you, but I’m always curious as to how a town got its name.)
***Outlawed in Mexico is 1829–so much for obeying the laws.