Peter Mathias (1928–2016)

A beautiful but sharp warning, especially to shallow Christians. I found this free on podcast, when I was looking for the audio of John Bunyan's work of the same name. Learning the pastor was from Nigeria got my attention, since I have heard that Christianity is thriving in that part of the world, far better than in America.

Laments about the present state of the Christian church add weight to his expositions of the gospel. He describes several categories of false Christians. Like me, he is very concerned about us being distracted by the vanities and anxieties of this age. I never heard before that we should always "have heaven at heart." He also emphasized the fear of the Lord which I appreciated very much.

At one point in chapter two, my alarm bells started going off because he seemed to be contradicting the whole rest of the book by supporting prosperity gospel, because he said it is God's will for us to prosper in this life. But he saturated this idea with so many warnings about mammon, it's clear he is of the same mind as John Wesley, who famously advised us to "earn all you can, save all you can (thrift in spending, not storing treasures), and give all you can." The author was saying we should prosper in income and productivity, not in lifestyle or nest egg.… (mehr)

This is a collection of essays previously published in journals, conference proceedings and studies of economic history around the world. They are interesting explorations of what made the Industrial Revolution uniquely English, whether it's fair to compare English activity with that on the European mainland, and how incipient globalisation impacted on knowledge exchange and technological development. I had to read The First Industrial Nation during my first degree, so I knew how engagingly Mathias writes on his subject and many of the themes were familiar to me. It was a bit like reading a collection of short stories by an author better known for novels. I particularly enjoyed his exploration of how closely entwined scientific discovery and technological advance actually were, and what the relationship was between science and industry prior to the institutionalisation of science in the 19th century. Also of interest, and seeming fresh even 36 years after publication, was the exploration of wage rates for the working classes and the pernicious assumption on the part of the holders of wealth that keeping people poor would increase their productivity. As Mathias points out, this goes against empirically tested theories of supply, demand and pricing. At the root of the assumption, which extended to the belief that higher wages would increase indolence and encourage antisocial behaviours (enjoying the same leisure activities that the holders of wealth wanted for themselves), was a need on the part of the wealthy to control the workers whose exploitation brought them wealth. Same old, same old. The final essay is an attempt to put a new spin on Samuel Johnson, who had connection all over the place, and could be interpreted as having an interest in economics. At a pinch. Mathias gives it a go, anyway!… (mehr)

A wonderful book dealing with the changes and transformations that the brewing industry underwent in England from 1700-1830; it would be no exaggeration to say that large-scale industrialization first happened in brewing, and that patterns of industrialized development established in brewing resonated throughout the rest of the industrial revolution in England. Mathias deals with not just the colorful history and narratives of certain breweries and brewers, but also with a lot of hard-core detail and data. (There's a statistical appendix, for example.) For anyone interested in the history of English brewing, this book is well worth your time... though sadly out of print and, unless you're lucky like me and find it cheaply gotten second hand someplace, rather expensive to acquire.… (mehr)