Group Read

[Smoke Teff]

We are now about as far from the book's publication as Cherrycoke is from
the story he's telling.

On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 4:10 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> "It's twenty years," recalls the Revd, "since we all topped the Allegheny
> Ridge together, and stood looking out at the Ohio Country,--so fair, a
> Revelation, meadow'd to the Horizon[...]"
>
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 6:03 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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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