Scott Reynolds Nelson @nelsonhist.bsky.social

@DislikedShip @RenMacLLC New anxiety unlocked: does my discussion of past financial disasters make me look like Thanos?

@RenMacLLC @nelsonhist Thanos

You can’t understand where we are today if you don’t know where we’ve been. Thank you to ⁦@nelsonhist⁩ for providing RenMac Edge with perspective.

From the Journal of the Civil War Era: I have a piece on how the "diploma divide" & the manipulation of new media - then & now - shaped elections. Mostly I am fond of this dig at Elon Musk & the dad he wants everyone to forget. muse.jhu.edu/pub/12/artic...

Look what @Profhaha won! along with Bryant Barnes & Cole Wicker ofc. So proud of her Athens Film Project @AthensHistoricalSociety" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@AthensHistori… inc. Athens' founding, emancipation, industrialization, & Knox Institute. All framed around Black history, & cover the K-12 Standards of Learning

book notes (24 of b) ------------- 1/8 Oceans of Grain by Scott Reynolds Nelson (@nelsonhist) 369 pgs, Published 2022 (#booknotes from 2022) Context: ------------ These #booknotes are not book reviews, nor book summaries. Just my high-level thoughts on the book along with some quotes which I find interesting. If @nelsonhist would not like me to quote from this book, please DM me the same, I would promptly delete the quotes here-from. In some quotations, I have included bracketed text (like this) to enable flow / context and three dots (like this...) to bring together dispersed sentences, to synthesise an idea My Notes: ------------ This is a history book like no other. While it is quite short, it packs in so much that every sentence is a keeper, and I could not resist the temptation of reading it once again, last week (in Dec 2022), after my initial read mid-year (around Jun 2022) This book frames the struggle for empire for almost 3000 years starting 800 BCE as essentially a struggle for control of grain and takes us through the Greek, Roman, Arab, Byzantine, Ottoman, Russian, European and American empires as it weaves it's tale. And in doing so, one traverses along a wonderland of historical ideas and structures: – from Marx to Lenin, - from the founding fathers of America to those of Russia, - from the role of dynamite to that of shipping lanes, - from roots of political power to those of merchant power and of divine power, - from rise of Genoa, Venice and other city states to rise of nation states, and - from power-shifts driven by innovations (futures contracts, steam-based-locomotion) to those driven by social structures (slavery, serfdom, capitalism). The book covers much ground and as always I have found it hard to retain it all. And as always. I have struggled to select paragraphs to quote, as I cannot reproduce the whole book here and whatever I include here seems so distant from the book’s essence. In the net, this book cannot be summarised, its essence cannot be tl;dr'd, its a masterpiece to be slow-read in its entirety, a few times. Some quotes from the book follow: #oceansofgrain #ScottReynoldsNelson #history #empire #ukraine #russia #shipping #power

Guest copy: foreignpolicy.com/2025/04/11/tar…

Here's my piece in Foreign Policy about how we've seen radical changes in tariffs or trade rules in the past (1819, 1837, 1890, 1930) & it ain't pretty. foreignpolicy.com/2025/04/11/tar…

This morning Wall Street will watch a dead cat bounce. Historians will be here to tell you the depression that followed when Congress surrendered power to Pres. Andrew Jackson, aka Captain Ahab youtube.com/watch?v=Q-0J8L…

Radical tariff changes put the US into depression in 1819, 1893 & 1929. Hasty executive action did so in 1837. Buckle up #nationofdeadbeats penguinrandomhouse.com/books/120669/a…

@ColbyRigg I'm assuming 'was' means 'what does'? There are not enough polling places in heavily Democratic districts in Georgia - around Atlanta people have waited many hours to vote in 2016, 2018 and 2022. Voting early frees up spots for others to vote

@nelsonhist And was early voting accomplish over voting on election day?

I flew home and voted early today. An easy choice between Kamala Harris and a twice-convicted felon who aims to destroy the US constitution. Vote early, especially if you are in Georgia or NC!

History PhD friends: our department (UGA history) is hiring in three fields. Medicine & Gender: ugajobsearch.com/postings/396501 Museum Studies: ugajobsearch.com/postings/398289 Science & Technology: ugajobsearch.com/postings/401535

Proud to say that EP Thompson was my advisor's advisor - loved his work but I never got to meet him

@arielronid @gibsonabr Yes, the US military railroads regularized the gauge of most of the rrs it controlled & joined them together for continuous travel. It's a big part of Atlanta's success story postwar. Also, the southern railways got new rolling stock for pennies on the dollar @ war's end

@gibsonabr This was the case throughout the country to some extent, maybe more in the South. But I don’t really remember. @nelsonhist would know

The Union significantly improved the southern railroad system over the course of the Civil War. In some cases it "literally rebuilt entire lines" (Hess, Civil War Logistics, 95). Worth remembering when thinking about the condition of the southern economy after the war.

@Profhaha & I try to educate UGA's administration (again) with a little history lesson. redandblack.com/opinion/guest-…

I've never before liked the idea of a yearly subscription fee for a computer game, but after I heard that @BethesdaStudios had a wall-to-wall union I thought: Bethesda game? A wall-to-wall @CWAUnion? I'm in! (Not a screenshot)

New #BRICS #Grain Exchange Idea Gains Traction tinyurl.com/ycy9j8ns #Ukraine $WEAT @dtnpf @mercoglianos @LSynkovska @kannbwx @GilbertieSal @nelsonhist @sizov_andre @TeucriumETFs @ArlanFF101 @ToddHultman1 @GoddessofGrain @agtradertalk @paulmotty @ScottIrwinUI

@joguldi Heat is an issue, absolutely, but catastrophe didn't happen in part because as grain prices rose, farmers in more temperate places have planted it. I see it growing between Athens, GA & Atlanta! It's growing again in Kansas. Australia had an amazing crop in 2023.

Looking for comment from @nelsonhist

Oceans of #Grain: How American #Wheat Remade The World: Or, The Origins Of The Wheat War @NelsonHist tinyurl.com/3wa46mbs $WEAT @sizov_andre @GoddessofGrain @agtradertalk @mercoglianos @kannbwx @johnkonrad @paulmotty @buzzkillprof @myHNN @ScottIrwinUI

OMG. When a 30-something Chinese journalist understands your book's arguments better than you do yourself. This was a fantastic interview. m.guancha.cn/ScottReynoldsN…

Made my day - my week actually