Episode 21 is here.

The Govenment gets desperate and is keen offload the national debt to the South Seas Company.  And it looked for a while that the share price might rise forever but as always the bubble bursts.

Enjoy

Tony

Back after almost a year with the first part of a two series on the South Sea BUbble.

War maybe Hell but it’s also very, expensive and like every other country in 1700 England was deeply in debt.  Enter the South Sea Company and a story that mixes avarice, corruption, deceit, international intrigue and vast sums of other peoples money.

Enjoy!

Tony

The 1647 Putney Debates saw the development of many of the key democratic ideas we take for granted today. As Thomas Raisborough put it. 

the poorest he that is in England has a life to live, as the greatest he: and therefore truly, Sir, I think it is clear, that every man that has a life to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to the government that he has not had a voice to put himself under

All of this was of course against the backdrop of the English Civil War which in many ways makes if even more remarkable.

The First World War marks the end the supremacy of the battleship and the beginning of the end for Pax Britannia.  The decline of Royal Navy mirrors the that of the British Empire for obvious reasons and the it's future is unclear.

Sails are finally done away with as steam power takes over and the race between armour and guns gets under way.  Pax Britannia turns maps of the world red as the Americans, Japanese and Germans aspire to have navies just like the British; the road to World War One begins.

This episode covers the end the Napoleonic Wars and what Britain did next, how the Royal Navy had to change and the technological advances that might threaten or enhance it's dominance.

Tony

The episode looks at the period from the start of the French Revolution to the Battle of Trafalgar.

http://bingethinkinghistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/15-reign-of-terror-to-trafalgar.html

Hello everyone.  Just to let you know the podcast now had a new website.

http://www.bingethinkinghistory.com

The mp3 files will remain hosted on Libsyn as it's a great service and the new site will link to the individual files, in fact I'll probably have to run the two sites along side each other.  You don't have to adjust anything.

Episode 15 is under way too!

This episode takes a look at explorers not the usual fighting and politics.  Cook sails to the Pacific times and Bligh is only remembered because of a certain mutiny.

Episode 13 at long last. 

The American colonys are lost and things look bleak.  However the reputation of the Royal Navy and Britain is saved by someone whose own was highly suspect. 

Merry Christmas everyone.

All the best

Tony