Holiday Supply Chain Issues of Ancient Rome

The Journey of the Magi by Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni), c. 1400-1450
 via JSTOR

If you haven’t yet finished your holiday shopping, chances are you are aware, more so than usual, of issues with the global supply chain. Whether it’s shipping delays, container shortages, or workforce disruption, we have all become armchair experts in the logistics of delivery.

The myths around Christmas have always been lessons in supply chain management. The three wise men (or Magi) bring to the manger gold, frankincense, and myrrh: tokens of kingship, divinity, and humanity, and of wealth gathered from the ends of the earth. Frankincense, an expensive fragrance, came from India and Arabia; myrrh, an embalming oil, came from bushes in Ethiopia and Arabia. While Christmas shopping as we know it began in the early nineteenth century, gift-giving has long been part of the holiday imaginary, and Santa Claus’ sleigh ride across the globe now offers an optimistic vision of a world unified by the economies of transportation—a vision that the COVID-19 pandemic is both exposing and unraveling.

So begins Ayelet Haimson Lushkov’s seasonally-tied summary of historian Matthew Fitzpatrick’s article “Provincializing Rome: The Indian Ocean Trade Network and Roman Imperialism.” You can read Lushkov’s entire JSTOR piece here.

HOW ‘AUTOMATION’ MADE AMERICA WORK HARDER

Office workers at the Chrysler Corporation in Detroit, 1942. “Automation” promised ease for workers, but usually just created more work. Courtesy of Library of Congress / Arthur S. Siegel, photographer

The world confronts “an epochal transition.” Or so the consulting firm McKinsey and Company crowed in 2018, in an article accompanying a glossy 141-page report on the automation revolution. Over the past decade, business leaders, tech giants, and the journalists who cover them have been predicting this new era in history with increasing urgency. Just like the megamachines of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and early 20th centuries—which shifted employment away from agriculture and toward manufacturing—they say that robots and artificial intelligence will make many, if not most, modern workers obsolete. The very fabric of society, these experts argue, is about to unravel, only to be rewoven anew.

So it must have come as a shock to them when they saw the most recent U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, which debunks this forecast. The agency found that between 2005 and 2018—the precise moment McKinsey pinpointed as putting us “on the cusp of a new automation age”—the United States suffered a remarkable fall-off in labor productivity, with average growth about 60 percent lower than the mean for the period between 1998 and 2004. Labor productivity measures economic output (goods and services) against the number of labor hours it takes to produce that output. If machines are taking over people’s work, labor productivity should grow, not stagnate.

So begins historian Jason Resnikoff’s fascinating post at Zocalo Public Square. You may read his entire piece here.

On “Stagecoach Mary” Fields

Stories of “Stagecoach” Mary Fields always note the gun she carried, the cigar she smoked, the fights she got into (and usually won). Born in Tennessee in 1832 or 1833, Fields would make her way to Montana where she became, at various times, a mission worker, a restaurant owner, a laundry owner, and the first Black woman to be a Star Route Carrier for the United States Post Office Department.

So begins Ashawnta Jackson’s concise overview of the life of Mary Fields. You may read the entire JSTOR Daily story here.

Reconsidering the Past: Again and Again; a Nebraska case of perspective.

At the History Nebraska Blog, David L. Bristow helps readers consider the issue of historical interpretation. He does it through considering the case of a 1929 policing and race incident in North Platte, NE. You can read Bristow’s concise yet thoughtful piece here.

On the word “esquire” and its uses and misuses; a history

The English justice system has a certain style. SMITH ARCHIVE / ALAMY

THE MINOR DEBATE OVER FIRST Lady Dr. Jill Biden’s title, which came up shortly after her husband’s election, may seem completely ridiculous and insulting, which it is, but it’s also the latest in a line of kerfuffles relating to how people in power in the United States present themselves. The extensive intricacies of British titling, and the power those titles conferred (and to a lesser extent, still confer), have left a lasting residue in some of the empire’s former colonies.

Those who think Dr. Biden should not use her earned title suggest she simply go by “Mrs.,” which signifies only that she is married, or “Madam,” which signifies only gender. The unstated goal of all this talk is a gross collection of sexism, elite gatekeeping, anti-elitism in general, and a simple partisan attack on the Biden administration. The idea of attacking someone in power by attacking a title is not a new phenomenon, and “Dr.” is not the only target.

So begins Dan Nosowitz’s fascinating tale about some of the history of the word “esquire”. You may read his entire Atlas Obscura post here.

The First U.S. Vice President of Color: Charles Curtis

Vice President Charles Curtis (1860-1936) casts a vote in the US Senate in 1929. 
kansasmemory.org, Kansas State Historical Society, Copy and Reuse Restrictions Apply

Since the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, journalists, scholars, and activists have celebrated Harris as the first vice president who is a woman and of Asian American and African American heritage. She is not, however, the first person of color to hold the office. For many people, this comes as a surprise. However, for scholars of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), as well as many US historians whose work focuses on the executive branch of the federal government, Charles Curtis’s name is already well-known. Curtis, a member of the Kaw Nation and the first person of color to serve as vice president, is suddenly a figure of popular interest.

So begins Kiara M. Vigil’s concise examination of the complexities of Kaw Nation member and U.S. Vice President Charles Curtis. You may read the entire essay at the AHA Perspectives on History here.

Art and Whaling

The 19th-century whale hunt was a brutal business, awash with blubber, blood, and the cruel destruction of life. But between the frantic calls of “there she blows!”, there was plenty of time for creation too. Jessica Boyall explores the rich vein of illustration running through the logbooks and journals of Nantucket whalers.

You can Boyall’s entire essay, with its stunning illustrations, at The Public Domain Review here.

An Archival Perspective on Some History of Christmas Trees and National Forests

The National Christmas Tree being a living tree is a relatively new phenomenon; during President Kennedy’s tenure the tree was still harvested from various National Forests and shipped to Washington DC. This photograph was taken December 15, 1962, and the caption reads “Test lighting of the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in President’s Park, Washington, D.C. The White House is visible in the background” (Credit Abbie Rowe, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum). Correspondence from Senator Allott found in our USFS holdings noted he was there that day inspecting the progress.

On November 14th, 1962, the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (DRGRR) pulled two 53 foot flat cars, numbers 21025 and 2106, into Salida, Colorado. On hand were several U.S. Forest Service (USFS) officials as well as the DRGRR Vice President of Traffic, R.K. Bradford, all to oversee the loading of the VIP cargo – that year’s National Christmas Tree. It wasn’t an entirely smooth evolution. The tree was so massive that the bottom 15’ of branches wouldn’t fold and so they were cut off, to be reinserted when, after three more railroads and nearly 1800 miles of travel, the tree would arrive in the nation’s capital. A few days later, the forest supervisor wrote Colorado Senator Gordon Allott and sent along a San Isabel Forest hard hat joking “…as you may have heard some San Isabel trees get out of control at times.”

So begins NARA archivist Cody White’s post on Christmas trees and the National Forests. You may read his entire Text Message post here.

A 2020 Native American perspective on 1620

Sun shines through the statue of Wampanoag Indian chief Massasoit that stands atop a hill overlooking Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Mass., on Aug. 27, 2015.
 John Tlumacki—Boston Globe via Getty Images

The 400th anniversary of the day the Mayflower dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor on Dec. 16, 1620, is the 400th anniversary of an American beginning—for the nation as a practice, an idea, an experiment. That’s true even though, for the colonists and their descendants, 1620 was not much more than a blip in colonial history. For Native people—in whose communities and homelands the Puritans arrived—the date, and what it signifies and symbolizes, matters a great deal.

So begins Ojibwe writer David Treuer’s astute reflections on 1620 and Native Americans then and since. To read his entire Time piece, see here.

Pilgrims and American fractiousness

December 22 marks the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth. Their legacy remains evident in today’s fractured and polarized republic. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

December marks the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth, the moment habitually yet mistakenly thought of as the beginning of America. The conflation of New England’s history with that of the nation at large, encouraged by generations of Harvard-reared scholars, continues to warp Americans’ understanding of their past. By the time the Mayflower dropped anchor off Cape Cod, the Jamestown settlement in Virginia had survived (barely) for more than a decade, while Spanish settlements at Santa Fe, New Mexico, and St. Augustine, Florida, were far older.

In part, the importance of the Pilgrims has been exaggerated because of the peculiarly American values that they are said to have brought to the New World and spread through the colonies: rigid discipline, austere rejection of earthly pleasures, the fusing of religious impulses with political ideas. All of these indeed distinguished the Pilgrims from other groups of early trans-Atlantic migrants, though the old easy binary between profit-seeking Virginians and pious Yankees no longer commands much respect among scholars.

Yet it is another attribute of the Pilgrim influence that arguably holds even greater sway four centuries after their arrival. Understanding that influence starts with the history of their name. The Pilgrims weren’t called that in their day. Instead, they were known as “Separatists,” for their desire to break completely from the Church of England, rather than cleanse and reform it from within—the approach urged by the more moderate Puritans.

So begins Richard Kreitner’s concise and informative reminder that the Pilgrims were known in their time as Separatists–and for good reason. You may read his entire piece at Zocalo here.