Finally, we are 7 Billion

Video: 7 Billion,National Geographic Magazine

The human population on planet Earth has reached for the first time in history 7 billion as reported by the United Nations^[1]. As of today, October 28, 2011 at 16:44 (GMT+1) it was estimated to be 6.92 billion by the United States Census Bureau^[2] and you can check their World Population Clock. and 7 billion by . But also, we can also acknowledge that this is also the first time in human history in which most humans have access to medical services, potable water, electricity.

As Susa Lewis from Nova acknowledges, “For most of human existence our ancestors led precarious lives as scavengers, hunters, and gatherers, and there were fewer than 10 million human beings on Earth at any one time. Today, many cities have more than 10 million inhabitants each, and populations continue to skyrocket.”

Largest Urban Agglomerations, 1975, 2000, 2025

Source: United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision.

Also, the UN World Urbanizaiton Prospects reviewed that “Through most of history, the human population has lived a rural lifestyle, dependent on agriculture and hunting for survival. In 1800, only 3 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas. By 1900, almost 14 percent were urbanites, although only 12 cities had 1 million or more inhabitants. In 1950, 30 percent of the world’s population resided in urban centers. In 2008, for the first time, the world’s population was evenly split between urban and rural areas. There were more than 400 cities over 1 million and 19 over 10 million. More developed nations were about 74 percent urban, while 44 percent of residents of less developed countries lived in urban areas.”

Nova has the following interactive map in which you can trace the dramatic growth of human populations over recent centuries, and see where on Earth as many as three billion more people may live by 2050.

Launch Interactive – Printable Map Version

New challenges for humans will continue appearing with so many of us living here. However, it is not the number what really matters but how we are all going to live here. Currently, Thomas Malthus famous argument from 1798 in which he said “that population growth was a critical problem, reasoning that because human population grows exponentially while our food supplies grow linearly, that our growth would lead to massive problems” has already been proven wrong.

But what has still not being solved is the current philosophical crisis in which we live. For a great part of human history, the world has been ruled by a collectivist philosophy of life that in the words of Ayn Rand “promoted the subjugation of the individual to a group (kings, oligarchs, nobility, religions, patrimonialists, corporations, parties, communities)—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called “the common good.” The previous sentences are very important and cannot be passed without understanding its historical results. You can further explore them in the work of Leonard Peikoff titled “The Ominous Parallels“.

For more information regarding human population check the following links:

World Population Information

Human Population Reaches 7 BillionHow Did This Happen and Can It Go On? (scientificamerican.com)
Population scare: Seven Billion people on the planet (daljitsingh.co.uk)
What was the world’s population when you were born? [Culture] (io9.com)
What number are you in the world population? (telegraph.co.uk)
Visualization of the Week: 7 billion humans (radar.oreilly.com)
UN: World population to reach 7 billion on Oct 31 (laaska.wordpress.com)
Just one of 7 billion reasons for optimism (theage.com.au)
Seven billion reasons to think about sustainability… (thepunch.com.au)
World Population to Hit 7 Billion in Five Days: UN (ktrmurali.wordpress.com)

Video: A History of Economic Booms and Busts

When an economy falls into a recession, we typically observe a cluster of people making similar investment mistakes. According to historian Stephen Davies, these investment errors occur because governments or central banks manipulate the supply of money. These manipulations place artificial downward pleasure on interest rates, creating false signals that entice individuals to invest in what end up being unprofitable ventures. Booms and busts are not a new phenomenon of this century, but rather, have occurred throughout history both in America and around the globe.

via:

Why sound money is important – and the Bank must go (abolishthebank.wordpress.com)
2 minute explanation of boom and bust (abolishthebank.wordpress.com)
Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis ~ Ron Paul… (gunnyg.wordpress.com)
Winners And Losers: The New Economy (zerohedge.com)
Blame Government, Not Greed – and, Please, Ignore Central Banking (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
Wide Spread Economic Panic – The Economy And You (profitonknowledge.com)

In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World

Today I finished reading the Kindle book In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World by Judith Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff; and I have confirmed that the work of any historian cannot be done without the help of Geography and a Globalized view of the power behind migrations. In her book, the author made very clear the effects of this forced migration of black slaves to America and how they changed the botanical future of the whole American Continent. Reading this also was a great way of remembering when I worked as Collection Developer of the Wilson Popenoe Library (2,300 items) at the Ludwig von Mises Library. His was a fantastic bibliography and you could see in his books how he managed to be the first exporter of Avocados to The United States.

Now, I invite you to check the book review via Project MUSE® prepared by Brian Grabbatin,

Many geographers know Judith Carney from her award-winning book Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (2001). There she explored the development of rice growing techniques in Africa and subsequent role of enslaved Africans in transferring those techniques to North American plantations, particularly in the South Carolina low-country. In the Shadow of Slavery, a new book coauthored by Carney and independent researcher Richard Nicholas Rosomoff, builds on these findings, examining how enslaved Africans participated in botanical exchanges that have shaped foodways in the Atlantic world. In contrast to Black Rice, this book focuses on a variety of subsistence crops instead of a single cash … Read More

Tracing DNA Not Just to Africa but to 1 Tribe (theroot.com)
UN seeks designs for memorial to slavery victims (sfgate.com)
Black History: The True Identity of the West African Slaves (blackpeopleshistory.wordpress.com)
Abolitionist Movement (egrejeen.wordpress.com)
Is Slavery Still Alive? (goodnewsnow.wordpress.com)
Slavery on the 19th-Century Swahili Coast (egrejeen.wordpress.com)
Was slavery different in Trinidad? (repeatingislands.com)
Forced Servitude Calculators – The Slavery Footprint Website Raises the Pressing Issue of Slavery (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)

Egypt and the first modern factories

Today I had an epiphany in Economic History thanks to Ph.D. Isa Blumi who gave a lecture on “The Ottoman Legacy: Socio-Economic Dynamics and the Origins of Modern Politics” emphasizing the economic history of Egypt and The Ottoman Empire during the 18th. and 19th Centuries.

The first great argument was rooted in how Egypt had been already transforming its economy and society long before The Napoleonic French Campaign (1798-1801). As well, he made very clear how Napoleon’s interest in acquiring Egypt’s wheat was much more important than posing for a picture in front of the Sphinx. He explained the consequences of this invasion and the resulting liberation of Egypt by the genious of Muhammad Ali Pasha.

The epiphany to my research interest came when he localized the first modern factory 2,500 miles away from the cities of Derby, Birmingham and Manchester. Most surely, researching this argument would surely enlighten the current historiography of Economic History and establish more roots of entrepreneurial activity, innovation and mass production in the Middle East. Doing this will also disentail the roots of the creation of Wealth from the Eurocentric historigraphy that has been in fact characterized by its antipodes: mercantilism, patrimonialism and altruism.

If you are interested in learning more of this subjects here are recommended readings that Professor Blumi shared with me:

Ariel Salzmann, “An Ancien Regime Revisited: ‘Privatization’ and Political Economy in the Eighteen-Century Ottoman Empire,” Politics & Society, Vol. 21 No. 4 (December 1993): 393-423.
Peter Gran,Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840 (New edition: Syracuse University Press, 1998), first two chapters.
Judith Tucker, “Decline of the Family Economy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” in The Modern Middle East, Albert Hourani et al eds., (Berkeley, 1993): 229-254.
Akram Khater “’House’ to ‘Goddess of the House’: Gender, Class and Silk in 19^th century Mt. Lebanon,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28/3 (1996): 325-348.

The Great Narrative and the School of Salamanca

The Great Narrative in regard to 16th Century Spain is focused on the expansion of Spanish Mercantilism in America and in how the Ottomans were defeated at the naval Battle of Lepanto bringing their dominance of the Mediterranean to a close.

Sadly (to a great extent), this Euro-centric perspective started to change and more emphasis was given to the production of knowledge in the Peninsula via the appropriation of the culture and scientific knowledge brought to Europe by the al-Andalus Muslims. The Great Narrative and its “Western exceptionalism” discourse won the battle again and it focused on how “Europe” or the “West” acquired this knowledge and created a “Renaissance of Knowledge” while forgetting the source of it.

This Western Renaissance is today widely know and studied as the School of Salamanca. A School that Western historians like to remember as the product in 100% of Catholic Religion, Spanish rationalist theological work, Western humanism and by the Protestant Reformation that was consolidated in Salamanca with the writings of the Scholastics Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Martín de Azpilcueta (or Azpilicueta), Tomás de Mercado, and Francisco Suárez.

The “non-western” roots of this Renaissance in the Spanish Peninsula are still not well discussed nor researched. There’s still the need for further study the inherited knowledge from the al-Andalus Muslims (who were later known as Mudéjars) and to establish a direct link of many of the roots of “Europe’s Renaissance” in places as far as the Tigris and Eufrates.

Today, my book recommendation will be a great work that exemplifies how this Great Narrative idealized the School of Salamanca as the product of 100% “Western values”. It is worth reading and studying carefully in order to not commit the same mistakes.

The School of Salamanca

Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson’s remarkable classic, The School of Salamanca, posed an extraordinary challenge when it first appeared in 1952. The book is not only a pioneering presentation of this lost school of monetary theory—fantastic thinkers of Old Spain that were more advanced than the English classicals centuries later–it is also beautifully written.