210 Boring Administrative History; Finance and Taxation Artwork

Hanging with History

The first season focuses on the origins of the Industrial Revolution or the Great Enrichment, we go deep into history to gain enough background knowledge to actually understand the various theories of the origins of the Great Enrichment. Eventually we learn that we also need to know how the miracle was consolidated, as the many other close approaches to the Industrial Revolution failed.A kwirky style, but intellectually ambitious with the goal of understanding history well enough to understand the miracle that happened that one time. It's gonna be a long series.

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Hanging with History

210 Boring Administrative History; Finance and Taxation

April 15, 2026 • Harald Hansen • Season 1 • Episode 210

0:00 | 36:57

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The wars from 1793 to 1815 included expenditure of 830 million pounds for Army Navy and Ordinance, mainly the Navy. Another 65 million pounds was spent on subsidies to allies. Looking at a total of 895 million, probably with secret funds we are over 900 million pounds. To do all this spending 578 million was added to the national debt

This was unprecedented, nobody knew how deep capital markets were or potentially were. No clue, they had never been tested like this before. Would people continue to be able to buy our debt? What if we also taxed them very high, higher than they had ever been taxed before?

These were real live questions people in Westminster and the City were asking.

What people didn’t really understand is that while Napoleon commanded the people and farms of most of Europe, Britain actually commanded most of its money, present and future, I’ll explain how that worked this episode.