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00:21Welcome aboard the pride of the Cunard line, the magnificent QE2.
00:25For a cruise through history, I think you'll find surprising.
05:11The chap in question also sounds like a real creep.
05:13He starts life here as a grocery assistant in Switzerland.
05:17Then he leaves his wife and five kids destitute and sets out for pastures greener.
05:22Passing himself off variously as a member of the Pope's Swiss Guard, a classmate of the
05:28French Emperor, a Swiss Army Captain, and a French Officer, none of which, of course,
05:34he is.
05:37name of Johan Sutter his greatest scam is when he persuades some people to give him a lot of
05:43land so that he can set up a kind of commune which he names modestly New Switzerland here
05:49outside Sacramento California he then buys reject Russian army uniforms with which he dresses his
05:56people up to run a trading post he names modestly Sutter's Fort then in 1847 he starts a new money
06:05making venture 50 miles up the American River from his fort the plan is to sell timber to the
06:11settlers coming out west in dribs and drabs cut and dressed at Sutter's new sawmill well that's
06:17the plan but this is where friend Sutter's life starts to go very slightly haywire
06:28on January the 28th 1848 evening Sutter is passing the time
06:34fiddling the books or something typical outside it's chucking it down blinding rainstorm when
06:40suddenly in through the door rushes the carpenter who's been building Sutter's sawmill for him
06:45and who says pant pant pst holy shimole bolt the door don't be the word top secret look at this
06:55and he gives Sutter a rag containing a small rock they look it up in Sutter's encyclopedia I kid you
07:04not and when they do what it says they should do they know what the rock is and what to
07:11do next
07:14which is to put Sutter's sawmill here in what is now Coloma California firmly on the map and then
07:21to change the course of history for the state of California the United States the world and this
07:27program because they're about to kick off the 1848 California gold rush
07:40it's well known that the people who make the real fortunes out of the California gold rush were the
07:45people who got there first it's less well known that they got there first thanks to something that
07:53had been brewing for some time back in England because the English had spent the previous 200
08:02years becoming totally addicted to tea time and the real connoisseur of a good brew that is any English
08:09person will for the very best tea leaves that is the first crop of the season sell their grandmother so
08:17you got the stuff from China to London ahead of anybody else you could name your price so the
08:23Americans did charged double why well they've always been go-getters so they went and got of course the
08:34English didn't like that one little bit took the wind right out of their sails
08:44because the Americans pulled the trick with an amazing new ship with more sails than anybody'd ever
08:49seen and a new low slimline hull a ship designed to take a cargo of tea at incredible speed from
08:58China
08:58around the horn and up the Atlantic to London a ship known as the Yankee Clipper
09:09in 1851 the fastest ship in the world
09:29small wonder gold rush people in a hurry took a clipper from New York to San Francisco
09:34and got there first you know history is full of irony because the reason the American Clippers were able to
09:45take tea and then anything else to Britain and I mean legally able was because the Brits changed their laws
09:51and they did so partly because of something else American something that starved over two million people to death
10:13it was an American fungus and in 1845 it arrived in Ireland and destroyed the potato crop leaving the Irish
10:21nothing to eat
10:22not almost nothing nothing nothing there were too many corpses that winter to bury
10:38when the sheer scale of the human tragedy and devastation finally dawned on the British they changed their very restrictive
10:45import laws so as to let American ships bring in extra corn to feed the Irish
10:49but the gesture was too little and too late
11:01the American corn shipments convinced British industrialists that all anti import laws should be abolished and they use the latest
11:09means available to get that free trade message out to rally all their supporters
11:13it was a simple enough message
11:16because free trade would mean cheaper imports like American corn and that would mean cheaper bread and that would mean
11:24lower wages and jobs and economic expansion and more money all round
11:29but the major political row created by the potato famine that let the American Clippers bring their corn to Britain
11:36strengthen the hand of the free trade lobby in Parliament
11:40although they'd never have got the bill through the house if it hadn't been for some crooked politicians and some
11:46rather frank behaviour
11:52thanks to which the free trade lobby would be able to spread the word
12:00the frank behaviour
12:03involved a number of definitely strange brown paper parcels
12:07among other things
12:09a dog
12:10a bed
12:13and a housemaid
12:16all sent through the mail free
12:19this was a kind of weird shenanigans a reformer called Roland Hill exposed in 1836
12:25when he started looking into the murky workings of the British Post Office
12:29it was all to do
12:31with fraudulent franking
12:35see
12:35members of parliament had free franking privileges
12:38and they were using them to mail this kind of stuff to their pals all over the country
12:43losing the government millions in revenue
12:48not to mention the time wasted by postmen collecting money because you paid to receive a letter not to send
12:54one
12:55and in any case you couldn't read half of them because you paid by the page so people wrote up
13:00down and sideways
13:01what we need said Hill to the people here in parliament
13:05is post boxes
13:06and a standard postage rate payable in advance with a stamp on an envelope
13:11in 1839 parliament agreed
13:14to this stamp
13:15the penny black
13:16and if you ever see one grab it because it's worth a fortune today
13:20and once again thanks to America
13:22that's who did the penny black
13:24a printer from Massachusetts
13:27his main aim in life had been just to make good money
13:30but I mean literally good money
13:33on account of all the bad money floating around
13:35so this American printer solved that problem
13:38by making paper money designs so complex it was too difficult to fake
13:43his name was Jacob Perkin
13:44and in 1804
13:46he developed a printing technique that was so good
13:49by 1818 he was over here trying it on the Bank of England
13:52no luck
13:54then he bumped into Rowland Hill
13:55got the stamp deal
13:56and you know the rest
13:58well
13:59not quite
14:06Jacob Perkin had picked up his printing techniques from an earlier idea by an Irishman
14:11who developed copperplate printing to churn out this stuff by the ton
14:15printed chintz
14:16by 1790 all the rage in America and Europe
14:20when all that matching covers and curtains business started in a big way
14:24people put chintz on everything
14:26and the brighter the better
14:28speaking of which
14:29notice how crisp the colours are
14:33this was the first time they could put a whole mix of colours together
14:36even on top of each other
14:37that wouldn't run when you washed the material
14:41and all thanks to a new colour paste
14:43that used a new thickening agent
14:50well thanks really
14:52to a worm ridden heap of junk known back then as the French Navy
14:57see mid 17th century they were down to 22 ships
15:01and every one of them full of holes
15:04and then this guy called Colbert takes over
15:06decides to get a total grip on the country
15:09and turn it into an economic superpower
15:14Colbert commissions new fortresses all around France
15:18builds a new navy
15:19and offers tax breaks to anybody who'll go looking for foreign trade
15:25one lot of which whizzes down Africa to Senegal
15:28and starts sending back everything from slaves to tobacco to sugar cane
15:32and a lot of this
15:34gum from Senegal trees
15:36which the cotton printers would use as a thickener in their colour paste
15:41remember?
15:42but Colbert would have felt really fulfilled
15:45if he could have seen all this garbage
15:47sorry, tourist income
15:49that one of his economic recovery ideas helped to generate
15:52to improve transportation
15:53this
15:55the Canal du Midi
15:59Colbert's Canal du Midi
16:00went from Bordeaux on the Atlantic
16:02to Marseille in the Mediterranean
16:04so you didn't have to sail around Spain anymore
16:06in 1681
16:08it was the hottest thing in commercial transportation
16:11the Western world had ever seen
16:13and became the model for every canal that followed it
16:19one of the engineers who designed the canal
16:22was a fellow called Vauban
16:23and he became a very big wheel
16:25marshal of France
16:26designed this bridge as a matter of fact
16:28to carry the canal over a river
16:31Vauban's second greatest claim to fame
16:34was building all those French border fortresses I mentioned
16:39his first claim to fame
16:41was inventing a new way of using trenches
16:44to dig your way close enough to a fortress walls
16:46to blow it up
16:48about which we Brits could have cared less
16:51until certain rebels tried the technique on us
16:54at the siege of Yorktown
16:55during that unfortunate matter
16:57Americans insist on calling the War of Independence
17:00which we lost
17:03and all went home
17:14well not quite all
17:16there was one bunch of people
17:18a hundred thousand of them
17:19who stayed on until the Americans started hanging them
17:23I mean of course all the American loyalists
17:25the one in five of the population
17:28who'd supported the British
17:29and who would now suffer
17:31for having backed the wrong side
17:37as far as the Americans were concerned
17:39they were all traitors
17:41and a certain Judge Lynch
17:43strung them up so fast
17:44he gave the English language a new word
17:47so by about 1789
17:49most of the ones left
17:51lit out for a new life
17:53in a new country
17:54with another bunch of unfortunates
17:56who had also lost everything
17:58here
17:59in Scotland
18:12this was the time of the clearances
18:14the fancy name for the eviction and starvation
18:17and brutality and death
18:19happening in the Scottish Highlands
18:20as the people were forced out
18:22to make way for money making sheep
18:24and once the absentee landlords
18:26many of whom lived in London
18:27had got rid of their inconvenient tenants
18:30a new genteel Scotland was born
18:33with bagpipes
18:34and fake tartans
18:36and Celtic revival poetry
18:37and baronial halls
18:39a kind of 19th century Disney version
18:42of the Highlands
19:07this image of Scotland we all have today
19:09was invented by the Victorians
19:11these ancient Highland games
19:13only started in 1832
19:15and Scottish dancing
19:16is really half French
19:18even the short kilt
19:20was designed by an English industrialist
19:21to stop the long ones
19:23Scottish factory workers usually wore
19:25getting caught in the machinery
19:33meanwhile the real Highlanders were long gone
19:35across the sea to join those American loyalists
19:38in a new Scotland called Nova Scotia
19:40by the early 19th century
19:42thousands of them
19:43were arriving in any ship
19:45they could get passage on
19:48a fact not unnoticed
19:50by one particular ex-loyalist
19:52from Philadelphia
19:53his name was Abraham Kunders
19:56and he had a quote lost
19:58unquote
19:59a small merchant fleet
20:00he'd operated down there
20:01till the time of independence
20:02and his hasty departure
20:04good evening
20:05Mrs. Newby
20:06and Mr. Burke
20:08nice to meet you
20:09captain
20:10captain
20:12so he started again
20:17in Halifax, Nova Scotia
20:22did remarkably well
20:24good to see you
20:25good evening
20:27by 1833
20:28his son
20:29Samuel Kunders
20:31had a small fleet
20:32and was running
20:33the first regular
20:33transatlantic passenger line
20:35once he got the contract
20:36to carry the British Royal Mail
20:37which was going to be
20:39a real money maker
20:40because of the penny post
20:41remember
20:41till the company never looked back
20:55and if you're wondering
20:56why I got the name wrong
20:57I didn't
20:59at some point
21:00in the Kunders life in America
21:01some official made a misprint
21:03and changed the family name
21:06to Cunard
21:07well
21:08that's it
21:09I hope this one
21:10hasn't left you all at sea
21:14is
21:17be
21:19be
21:19be
21:19be
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