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)

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.

Concorde’s last day in Global History

Video: Concorde’s last flight.

There are moments in history in which the World Order changed and historians are always trying to get them accepted and applauded by their colleagues. Those specific moments in history may be not seen immediately but until enough time has passed to understand the direct and indirect effects that shaped the course of History.

Many of these moments are the product of technological innovations that changed the way humans lived. One of them could be October 24, 2003 when three BA Concordes made the last commercial flights in history: G-BOAG flew from New York to London; G-BOAE made a return flight to Edinburgh; and G-BOAF flew around the Bay of Biscay. All three circled over London before landing within minutes of each other at Heathrow Airport.

The relevance of this event may not yet be so evident. However, we can be certain that the impact that had the catastrophe of a Concorde near Paris in July 2000 is going to determine the future of space flights. Specially after the last flight of Atlantis (the last Space Shuttle of the United States) in July 21, 2011.

The blog The Modern Historian posted a great/short overview of Concorde’s history and here is it:

During the late 1950s, aircraft manufacturers around the world started working on designs for supersonic passenger jets. The costs for such projects were so prohibitive that few of them progressed beyond the design stage. In the early 1960s, the British Aircraft Corporation, which had inherited the Type 223 supersonic transport (SST) project from the Bristol Aeroplane approached the French Sud Aviation, who were working on the Super-Caravelle SST, with an offer to co-operate on a joint project.The result of this co-operation was Concorde, which made its maiden flight in 1969. By this time, Concorde only had one compettitor, the Russian Tupolev Tu-144, but cold war tensions and the crash of a Tu-144 at the 1973 Paris Air show meant that it was Concorde that attracted orders from the major airlines. Nevertheless, the oil crisis of late 1973, environmental concerns about nervousness about sonic booms (the noise the aircraft made as it broke the sound barrier) resulted in the cancellation of all the orders except those from the national airlines of France and the United Kingdom. These orders for ten aircraft each still required substantial government subsidies to keep the project alive.In spite of these setbacks, Air Franceand British Airways (BA) started scheduled flights using Concorde in 1976. Although other airlines occasionally leased the aircraft, the high operation costs meant that supersonic travel was only feasible for the most profitible routes. Nevertheless, to continue running the services required high ticket prices, the continued government funding in the case of Air France and the sale of the British fleet of aircraft to BA at a knock-down price.All this changed following the crash of a Concorde near Paris in July 2000. The year long grounding of all the Concordes contributed to the decision taken by both airlines to withdraw the aircraft. On 27th June 2003, an Air France Concorde flew for the last time and on 24th October that same year three BA Concordes made the last commercial flights by the aircraft: G-BOAG flew from New York to London; G-BOAE made a return flight to Edinburgh; G-BOAF flew around the Bay of Biscay. All three circled over London before landing within minutes of each other at Heathrow Airport.

Reenacting The Battle of the Nations 16-19 October, 1813

Today I had the pleasure of attending (living) the reenactment of The Battle of the Nations (also known as The Battle of Leipzig) that took place half mile south of Leipzig on 16-19 October, 1813. The battle was fought by the coalition armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden against the French army of Napoleon. Napoleon’s army also contained Polish and Italian troops as well as Germans from the Confederation of the Rhine. The battle involved over 600,000 soldiers, making it the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I.¹

This allied victory over Napoleon at Leipzig marked the first significant cooperation among European nations against a common foe. “Napoleon limped back toward Paris. Behind him he left 60,000 dead, wounded, or captured French soldiers. The Allies had lost a similar number, but they could find replacements far more quickly and easily than Napoleon. Other countries, including the Netherlands and Bavaria–which Napoleon had added to his confederation by conquest–now abandoned him and joined the Allies. On December 21, the Allies invaded France and, following their victory at Paris on March 30, 1814, forced Napoleon into exile on Elba.”²

Indeed, it was the cooperation of all the region’s powers that Leipzig led to the fall of Paris and the abdication of Napoleon. The decisiveness of this battle had a global impact that redefined the course of history.

I invite you to see all the pictures I took of this fantastic battle: