Group Read

[Monte Davis]

Yes, across the board. Coming out of the war there was much more dynamism,
more synergy between government finance, private capitalism (or
quasi-private like the East India Company), and mercantile/imperial policy.
Like the US in WWII, the UK in the Sven Year War borrowed and spent on an
unprecedented scale that frightened Trasuruy officials-- and came out
richer and more powerful than it started.

The main point I'm driving at is not to let historical tunnel vision
collapse the 350-year history of the British Empire into one fixed thing;
when M&D start their travels there's a lot about it that is new and "where
is this taking us?" TO THEM  AS ENGLISHMEN OF THE TIME. I think P. knew
that, which makes their exchanges about what they're seeing more
believeable and less "As you know, Jere..." exposition P. contrived to put
in their mouths for our benefit.

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 5:42 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> Good stuff, Monte--I just finished that Anderson book on the Seven Years
> War you recommended, btw.
>
> Just riffing, correct me where wrong...
>
> It seems like one of the things that happens to the British Empire through
> that war--driving its emergence as a much bigger and different version of
> itself--is the Empire starts to learn and benefit from just how powerful a
> force raw capital (via conquest, control of trade) is in making & defending
> empire. Maybe this is the emergence of capitalism, inflected by
> colonialism, through the prevailing lens of mercantilism.
>
> The BE starts increasingly targeting small Caribbean islands and other
> European colonies/trade routes not only for their territorial/tactical
> importance per se, nor because of any longstanding sentimental feelings (as
> with much of the English emphasis on protecting Hanover) toward some
> particular place/people, but because some of these islands simply yield
> immense profits to their colonizers, which itself helps with the war effort
> and starts to increasingly become the lifeblood of empire.
>
> Whereas pre-7YW Europe involves a delicate balance of power among the
> major European states, Britain leaves the 7YW as such a massive and
> far-flung empire (so capital-hungry not only because of the war but because
> of the new scale of the empire itself) that it essentially becomes
> dependent on maximally exploiting its holdings. Land cannibalism. And
> messy, at that. The BE having no real idea of how much chaos is fermenting
> in the American colonies--economic and political unrest, the frontier, the
> Indians, etc.
>
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 4:07 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Full agreement as far as the first read goes, Mike. Later, though -- I
>> won'rt repeat some posts on the Seven Years War (locally for USAns, the
>> French & Indian War) from the last year or so, but perhaps worth tucking
>> away:
>>
>> 1) As M&D themselves discover at sea, it was a *world* war. Most of it
>> was in Europe, India, the Caribbean islands, and at sea, with the North
>> American part a comparatively minor theater... even if it led, unplanned,
>> to (1) control of Canada, (2) newly confident and uppity colonies along the
>> Atlantic seaboard, and (3) indirectly, French disengagement from the
>> Mississippi-Missouri basin that would become the Louisiana Purchase of
>> 1803. USAn readers naturally think it's all about us, but IIRC at the time
>> of the war of independence the UK's trade with the Caribbean sugar islands
>> was several times that with all the about-to-be-US colonies together.
>>
>> 2) The British Empire emerging in the mid-1760s was not just much larger,
>> but very different -- in organization and in Britons' attitudes toward
>> their place in the world -- from what it had been for the previous ~150
>> years. Much about it was new to M&D and their contemporaries. In some ways
>> they have more in common with Slothrop in an about-to-be-Americanized
>> Europe, or the 1950s USN sailors in the Mediterranean in V., than with
>> Godolphin and Porpentine, or the Foreign Office mandarins in AtD.
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 1:13 PM, Mike Sauve <mpsauve at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This is a huge overgeneralization, but the whole pre-America portion is
>>> the most forgivable during which to suspend the "why" question. It's also
>>> when it will come up the most, but upon first read, unless you're the type
>>> to research and make notes of every page for that kind of
>>> comprehension--it's this part you can just let wash over you, enjoy the
>>> repartee, the jokes, etc. The East India Company and Clive of Fucking India
>>> and all that is contextually important, but if you're not 100% clear on the
>>> forces at work in the beginning, know that the narrative gains a far
>>> greater cohesion and clarity once they reach the good old US of A.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 10:08 AM, L E Bryan <lebryan at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I seem to always get stuck on “WHY?” questions.
>>>>
>>>> But, of course there is that favorite advent section of GR with Roger
>>>> and Jessica. I read it out loud to my friends - when I have any that will
>>>> tolerate my idiosyncrasies  - or just to myself around this time of year.
>>>>
>>>> Lawrence, who started M&D again, last night…
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> > On Dec 21, 2017, at 2:08 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Simple banal observation which, like everything in this great writer,
>>>> > can lead to good discussion:
>>>> >
>>>> > V and M & D begin in winter, near Christmas. Seemingly P's favorite
>>>> holiday.
>>>> >
>>>> > True? and why?
>>>>
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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