Thiago Krause

Do send me a pdf, please, low!

Foi idiossincrático, admito!

EM é early modern, não coube no post! Tou lendo o Beckert. É uma atualização legal (estou na parte I ainda) do Wallerstein e Braudel, uma síntese bem organizada - mas ainda um tanto anglocentrica, supervalorizando Barbados (por mais que seja importante!).

(Chart 1: “Sugar Prices at Amsterdam, 1609–1763”): Line chart of annual average sugar prices in Amsterdam (y-axis: groten per pound; x-axis: years 1609–1763) for multiple origins and grades: Brazil White (highest series), São Tomé, Barbados, Caribbean & Surinamese aggregate, Martinique, Saint-Domingue, and dashed “powder/refined” series (Martinique Powder, Saint-Domingue Powder, East Indian Powder). Brazil White is very high and volatile in the 1620s–1650s (peaks above 30 groten), then reappears lower (roughly 9–13) in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; raw Caribbean series cluster mostly around 4–9 groten when present, while powder/refined series sit above the raw lines and rise sharply in the 1750s–1760s. Shaded background bands mark major conflict periods (Dutch Brazil 1630–54; Nine Years’ War 1689–97; War of Spanish Succession 1702–13; War of Austrian Succession 1744–48; Seven Years’ War 1756–63), and line breaks indicate years with no surviving quotations.

(Chart: “Sugar Prices at Amsterdam, 1664–1763”): Line chart of annual average sugar prices in Amsterdam (y-axis: groten per pound, roughly 2–20; x-axis: 1664–1763) with separate series for Brazil White (highest line), São Tomé, Caribbean & Surinamese (aggregate), Barbados, Martinique, Saint-Domingue, and dashed refined/powder grades (Martinique Powder, Saint-Domingue Powder, East Indian Powder). Brazil White is very high in the mid-1660s (around 16–19 groten), then mostly around 10–13 when quoted (with long gaps), and rises again in the 1750s. Barbados and the Caribbean/Surinamese aggregate sit lower (generally about 5–9), with a clear dip in the early 1720s. Martinique and Saint-Domingue begin only in 1719 and cluster around 4–6 through the 1720s–1730s, then rise in the 1740s and especially the 1750s. Powder/refined series appear mainly after 1750 and run above the raw Martinique and Saint-Domingue lines, reaching the mid-teens by the early 1760s. Shaded background bands mark major wars (Franco-Dutch War 1672–78, Nine Years’ War 1689–97, War of Spanish Succession 1702–13, War of Austrian Succession 1744–48, Seven Years’ War 1756–63); vertical dashed markers label key moments (Rampjaar, Methuen, Law/SSB, Aix-la-Chapelle). Line breaks indicate years with no surviving quotations.

Looking at EM sugar prices across multiple periods is fascinating, even though my series is incomplete. The collapse after Barbados enters the picture makes every other change look like peanuts. I knew that (and the literature has known it for ages), but it is still wild to see it plotted.

I’d like to bring you here in person next time!

But I finally transcribed and translated one of the documents of the Lima pardos case that is available online and some from Archivio Storico de Propaganda Fide on the extraordinary case of Lourenço da Silva de Mendonça to discuss them with my students next week. Looking forward to it!

One of my favorite classes to teach in my HIS 3000 course on slavery is a discussion of how to think about early opposition to slavery and an intellectual history of the enslaved. I always assign @kbgraubart.bsky.social's awesome WMQ article and the famous Quaker Germantown petition from 1688...

The Edge of Mathematics Terence Tao, the legendary mathematician, explains the promise of generative AI.

“AI tools are like taking a helicopter to drop you off at the site. You miss all the benefits of the journey itself. You just get right to the destination, which actually was only just a part of the value of solving these problems.”

I don’t think you did, thanks! Will be on the look out for her work!

War, crop failures, fleets that didn't sail, etc.

I wasn't familiar with this paper, thanks!

It has been surprisingly hard to find decent data on eighteenth-century sugar reexports, except for Great Britain. I made some heroic assumptions, so this chart is not fit for publishing, but if it is even in the correct ballpark, it shows how French reexports really were something else entirely.

Not the most appropriate for a US-centered course! But it is great, I look forward to her book.

I’d be curious to see what you’re going to assign… I usually assign Samantha Payne, “‘A General Insurrection in the Countries with Slaves’: The US Civil War and the Origins of an Atlantic Revolution, 1861–1866,” Past & Present, 257:1 (2022): 248-279 and Steven Hahn.

To incoming University President Mnookin: Please don’t let artificial intelligence devalue the liberal arts Last month, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin <a href="https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2025/12/uw-receives-approval-to-move-l-ss-largest-majors-to-new-ai-focused-school...

“The reading assignments were longer, too: ten 40-page papers per week, which he asked us to feed into AI for a summary rather than read ourselves. When it came to lectures, he told us to simply upload the slides to AI and ask it to teach us whatever he failed to explain properly in class.”
What?!

I have to try it at some point. Definitely better to pay $10 for a halfway decent index than blindly read 7,000 pages in 5 languages...

Through the API? I have thousands of merchant letters which would be benefit from some indexing... I indexed up to 50 pages on AI Studio, but I have never tried doing that at scale.

I had somehow missed it! Will try at some point with things with good handwriting - at this cost, it is amazing, even if it is not perfect! (And how did you go about creating an index?)

Line chart of Amsterdam tobacco prices, 1673–1763. X-axis: year; Y-axis: price (stuivers per pound). Brazilian tobacco (blue circles, solid line) is consistently higher and more volatile than Virginian tobacco (orange triangles, dashed line): brief near-parity in the late 1690s and early 1710s, a sharp Brazilian spike around 1708–1721 (peaking near 17–18), then a sustained mid-century premium as Virginia declines toward ~4 while Brazil stays mostly ~8–12.

Chart 2: Average Prices of Brazilian and Chesapeake Tobacco in Amsterdam, 1673-1763 (Stuivers per pound) Sources: 519 Amsterdam price currents from the Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen, Faktorregnskaber (1676-1781), vols. 72-83; IISH (including copies from the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta and the SAA); Kungliga Bibliotek, Stockholm, 123 Ch Handel Nederländerna; ARB, Manuscrits Divers 2025; BNA, C104/128 and HCA, 30/232/8; Jean Pierre Ricard, Le Negoce de Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1722): 100; Journal de Commerce et d’Agriculture (Brussels, 1759-60).

Finally finished the tobacco price chart: 519 observations, unevenly distributed. Tried some statistical analyses of correlation, structural breaks, etc, that won’t make it into the article (already at the word limit). A ridiculous amount of work. It is at least pretty - and more important, done!

Good short thread, and it suggests that people often confuse formal polished writing with learning and thinking - and they’re not the same thing!

He Researched Dishonesty. He Got Friendly With Jeffrey Epstein.

“it was Dr. Ariely’s celebrity rather than his scholarly rigor that appeared to be the selling point for Mr. Epstein, who made a sport of collecting star academics.”

An Ottoman Turkish document viewer built with Claude Cowork I’m sharing the product of five hours work with Claude Cowork spread over a day.

I’m sharing the product of five hours work with Claude Cowork spread over a day. I have been using Cowork now for ten days and this is my biggest project to date. The product is a static 5 annotation layer IIIF viewer for Ottoman Turkish. #ottomanturkish generativelives.substack.com/p/an-ottoman...

One more try here - does anyone know if USD was circulating widely in the Caribbean in the 1870s? Dominica had only irregular steamship commerce (mostly resale from Barbados and Martinique). But maybe it was a dominant currency, as most imported food was of US origin? Guesses welcome! 🗃️ #skystorians

meu deus a Butlerian Jihad

An Extraordinary Account of a Dangerous Marriage Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir is an astonishingly honest look at her life with a man who did the unthinkable.

Even more disturbing when paired with this review of Giselle Pélicot’s book at @theatlantic.com.

How tech turned against women As AI-generated sexualised images proliferate and app-facilitated abuse spreads, we are sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality. It is time to regulate properly

Harrowing but importante piece at the @financialtimes.com

Me sowing: Haha fuck yeah, I have hundreds of price currents to complete my dataset of sugar and tobacco prices!!! Yes!!

Me reaping, putting the prices on said dataset one by one: Well, this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

Screenshot of a manuscript-transcription web app. Left panel shows metadata for “DE.R.B. Merchant Correspondence Radcliffe Family” (Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies) and a thumbnail list of 28 scanned pages. Center panel displays a sepia scan of a handwritten letter dated May 1717. Right panel shows the typed transcription with the search term “sugar,” with multiple “Sugar” hits highlighted, including references to “one chest Sugar” and an invoice for “fine Brazee Sugar.”

Thanks to @judithflanders.co.uk, I'm in possession of scans of said merchant letters, all transcribed now, thanks to @leotranscribes.bsky.social !

Made me think of this gem.

Just attended a presentation from a colleague who is also a professional developmental editor. They have a suite of fine-tuned GPTs that they now use at various (really every) stage of manuscript revision. +