Thread by @FromKulak

🧵 People in the Past were Desperately Poor 🧵
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Whenever I discuss history its shocking how much ignorance I encounter from even trained historians about the level of poverty in the past

Contrary to idiots and revisionists No. People in the past were horrifyingly impoverished

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Medieval buffs and scholars are the absolute worst for this.

Figures in the renaissance and enlightenment made bullshit up about how "Backwards" the Medievals were compared to themselves, or the ancients... and now every medieval scholar has a chip on their shoulder.

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Its true the Medieval period isn't some great outlier from the ancient world, renaissance, or early modern.

But that's because all of these eras were horrifyingly, unthinkably, impoverished by the standard of anyone living today.

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This is the most important graph in history.

World GDP per Capita from the ancient world to today

In WW2 UK gdp per capita was $10k per person (modern Dominican Republic), in 1870 it was 5k (El Salvador), and before 1800 it was below $2k (Haiti) before 1600 $500 (Somalia)

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The most horrifically crushing poverty you can imagine was the norm, Everywhere, for almost all of human history.

I've focused on the UK because it was the first to industrialize, so unless you're American (which got wealthy "Slightly" faster) assume your country was worse

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This leads me into the point I get vastly more pushback on.

How common prostitution was and how horrifically near ruin was for women.

If women screwed up their prospects, lost a husband or father, or were socially "Fallen" They were obscenely likely to become prostitutes.

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For some reason there are vast collections of history buffs and even historians who will try to contest when all the scholarship and primary sources scream this fact.

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Early modern writers from Shakespeare to Ford, to Wilmot, to Defoe, to Fielding, to Richardson are all clear about this.

They account the harrowing peril women would find themselves in and the life or death struggle to protect their reputations and marriage prospects

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Because once a woman became pregnant out of wedlock, or was known to have lost her chastity... to have "Fallen", that was most likely impossible for her to ever have financial security again unless she had a very generous family benefactor.

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the Lancet Medical Journal of 1887, estimated there were 80,000 prostitutes in London. 3% of the total population of 2,360,000. or 6% of all women.

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700 years earlier there were 1000 prostitutes employed BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH in London in the 1100s

The Church ran these "for the girl's protection". We have their records

The population of London was 20-40k in 1100

this was 10% of London women just in church run brothels

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Rampant prostitution as a matter of survival is just a fact of life in in horribly impoverished times and places like modern Haiti, or the entirety of human history before 1900, and every source we have on the matter agrees

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Throughout the 19th century sentimentalists and moral reformers like Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, and Thomas Hardy tried to reframe the prevailing moral narratives around "Fallen Women" through their writing and Dickens and others set up the first women's shelters.

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But inspite of the incredible work of historians, the overwhelming economic consensus about how horrific the past was, the archeological evidence of terrifyingly low lifespans form ancient Rome to the victorians, and cut and dry records...

People deny this.

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Somehow people can look at the undeniable horrors of Victorian London, the wealthiest city that had ever existed, see again and again that every other era describes nothing different

And then choose to believe fairy tales about the 18th or 16th or 12th or 8th or 1st century

P.S.

Also checkout out my deep dive into Modern institutional decay and prison Gangs in my hit piece:

Cocytarchy: Rule of the Damned

anarchonomicon.substack.com/p/cocytarchy?r…