Dreylad posted:

until the Stellaris thread started accusing Wiz of racism over immigration mechanics lol

also the Battle of Blair Mountain is nuts. imagine gathering together all your unions and allies to face off against company strikebreakers and associated corrupt sheriffs and the loving air force shows up and bombs you

Weka posted:

To be pedantic, it was the United States Army Air Service at the time.

Suplex Liberace posted:

Hello I have a request I need everyone's favorite/good history books. Topic is not super important I just need the biggest list possible to pull from.

Suplex Liberace posted:

Hello I have a request I need everyone's favorite/good history books. Topic is not super important I just need the biggest list possible to pull from.

Suplex Liberace posted:

Hello I have a request I need everyone's favorite/good history books. Topic is not super important I just need the biggest list possible to pull from.

Suplex Liberace posted:

Hello I have a request I need everyone's favorite/good history books. Topic is not super important I just need the biggest list possible to pull from.

Suplex Liberace posted:

Hello I have a request I need everyone's favorite/good history books. Topic is not super important I just need the biggest list possible to pull from.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

i remember liking figes' history of the russian revolution and his crimean war book but there was some scandal involving his academics iirc

Suplex Liberace posted:

Hello I have a request I need everyone's favorite/good history books. Topic is not super important I just need the biggest list possible to pull from.

Suplex Liberace posted:

Hello I have a request I need everyone's favorite/good history books. Topic is not super important I just need the biggest list possible to pull from.

Some Guy TT posted:

quote:

You may be interested in this paper by Ugo Bardi. While not strictly speaking history, it is an ecological economics study of the history of the whale industry and the process of substitution. Bardi's conclusion is that the end of the whale industry was largely caused by depletion of the whale population which caused whalers to travel further and longer for less reliable catches and less about the birth of the oil industry. There's a few important take aways.

• Peak whale was likely somewhere around 1849. By 1879 Starbuck notes that the whalers are finding catches more difficult and that longer voyages, longer cruise times and more expensive outfittings are the norm in his time.
  
• Looking at inflation adjusted prices for whale products there are huge drops in prices between 1850 and 1860 (Graph on page 3). However, these drops are from all time price highs. The bottom of the price collapse in the mid-1870's is only slightly lower than the highest average yearly price for any year before 1850. As such the price doesn't so much collapse as it does rise as whale depletion starts to affect the price.
  
• Alcohol blends began to dominate the lighting oil market as early as 1830. They were substantially cheaper than whale oil. Whale oil was a premium product which already had lower priced alternatives namely 'Camphene' (a mix of camphor, alcohol and turpentine), lard oil and coal oil. Camphene was the leading lamp oil with something in the area of 200 million gallons per year while whale oil peaked at around 18 million gallons. . "By the late 1830s, alcohol blends had replaced increasingly expensive whale oil in most parts of the country. It “easily took the lead as the illuminant” because it was “a decided improvement on other oils then in use,” (especially lard oils) according to a lamp manufacturer’s “History of Light.” By 1860, thousands of distilleries churned out at least 90 million gallons of alcohol per year for lighting. 22 In the 1850s, camphene (at $.50 per gallon) was cheaper than whale oil ($1.30 to $2.50 per gallon) and lard oil (90 cents per gallon). It was about the same price as coal oil, which was the product first marketed as “kerosene” (literally “sun fuel”)." ( Kovarik, 1998)
  
• Rock oil (kerosene) was only marketed as lamp oil in the 1860's 15 years after the peak in whaling in 1849. Kerosene was more of a direct competitor to Camphene than to whale oil in price and market niche. At this point there are no cost savings between camphene and kerosene as they are priced more or less the same.
  
• In 1862 and 1864 a $2.08 tax on alcohol was implemented raising the price substantially. This raised the costs of Camphene just as the equivalently priced kerosene enters the market. "The imposition of the internal-revenue tax on distilled spirits … increased the cost of this ‘burning fluid’ beyond the possibility of using it in competition with kerosene..,” said Rufus F. Herrick, an engineer with the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory who wrote one of the first books on the use of alcohol fuel." (Kovarik, 1998)
  
• "the American alcohol tax meant that kerosene became the primary fuel virtually overnight, and the distilleries making lamp fuel lost their markets. The tax “had the effect of upsetting [the distilleries] and in some cases destroying them,” said IRS commissioner David A. Wells in 1872. “The manufacture of burning fluid for lighting suddenly ceased; happily, it was replaced by petroleum, which was about to be discovered.” Similarly, C.J. Zintheo, of the US Department of Agriculture, said that 90 million gallons of alcohol per year were used for lighting, cooking, and industry before the tax was imposed. Meanwhile, use of oil shot up from almost nothing in 1860 to over 200 million gallons in 1870. “The effect was disastrous to great industries, which, if [they were to be] saved from ruin, had to be rapidly revolutionized,” according to Irish engineer Robert N. Tweedy. " (Kovarik again)
  

In short the idea that kerosene replaced whale oil is something of a myth. Whaling largely collapsed due to depletion and over hunting. Whale oil was a premium product that was largely replaced by camphene and then kerosene and then the electric light not by kerosene directly. Kerosene enters the market in large part due to a political decision to tax one of it's competitors principle ingredients, alcohol.
the full cite for the camphene element is Bill Kovarik, Automotive History Review, Spring 1998, No. 32, p. 7 – 27.

Platystemon posted:

It’s a popular story, but just a story.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5lh07z/when_america_was_switching_from_whale_oil/

Weka posted:

Did Lincoln have backers in the oil industry?

Main Paineframe posted:

in 1862, there were big tax increases on just about everything, due to a sudden pressing need to fund a certain very expensive war

the North American oil industry barely existed in 1862. the first oil wells on the continent had only been built a couple years prior

Suplex Liberace posted:

Hello I have a request I need everyone's favorite/good history books. Topic is not super important I just need the biggest list possible to pull from.

Suplex Liberace posted:

Hello I have a request I need everyone's favorite/good history books. Topic is not super important I just need the biggest list possible to pull from.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee.

HootTheOwl posted:

Ok but the poop shortage one better be real.
The guano islands being scraped bare.