An Unevenly Combined Year
This Blog, Angus Bylsma, 2024.
Although I started this blog in October of 2023, I had only published a handful of reviews by the beginning of this year. So I feel motivated to pen a reflective post on what is approximately one year of this thing which I, during a feverish daze in Nafplio, decided to call Unevenly Combined Thoughts — a name that I imagined captured not only my subject matter, but also the haphazard nature of my attempts to get to grips with it. So please forgive me this self-indulgent reflection.
The first thing to address is you: my audience. On the 1st of January, this blog had 23 subscribers — mostly kind friends and immediate family. Now, we have 970 subscribers, mostly not friends and family — a 4217% increase!1 It is much appreciated that you take the time to read what I write, and knowing that the reviews I put out are actually read is a great motivator to be as sharp as I can.
Of course, this growth has not come from nowhere. About half of it is directly attributable to recommendations from other authors who are kind enough to vouch for my work. So I have to acknowledge Joe Francis, Brad DeLong, Adam Tooze, Johan Fourie, and Oliver Kim — if any of you are reading, thank you! To have such support — considering I am a larval economic historian at best — is really extraordinary.
Moving on, I would like to consider my writing itself: is it any good? How has it developed over time? How would I like it to develop it in the future? I think it has improved substantially since I started (I wince reading some of my first forays), both in terms of style and, most importantly, my ability to balance an overview of the book, critical reflection, and the ‘why you should care’ part. I think if you compare one of my earliest posts (on Isabella Weber’s How China Escaped Shock Therapy) and one of my latest (Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing) you will find those components are better balanced; In the former, I am clearly not yet comfortable taking a critical tone, while such engagement is — I hope — more evident in the latter. However, there is still much room for improvement. I think my best are the reviews of Arrighi’s The Long Twentieth Century, Charles Maier’s Recasting Bourgeois Europe, and all three entries on Fernand Braudel’s Civilisation and Capitalism trilogy. The worst? Probably the reviews of Adam Tooze’s The Deluge and the edited work, Fiscal Capacity and the Colonial State in Asia and Africa. In both cases, I feel I lapsed into shallow summary and did not engage as critically as I would like. So, going forward, I will be aiming for more of the former and less of the latter!
Quantitatively, I am happy with my output: one 1500-1800 word piece every two weeks is about as much as I think I can manage on top of university and work. There is no chance of shorter pieces — if there is one thing I hate, it is the plethora of people who ‘review’ books on the internet with nothing more than a few sentences of insipid praise. With less than 1000 words there is no room for anything other than glib criticism and GPT-style summary. Longer writing sometimes appeals, but not enough to seriously consider leaving the 1500-1800 range, which also seems a reasonable demand on the reader — in any case, I am not writing for the LRB! I skipped just one week this year, only because my publishing date coincided with an econometrics exam and, more importantly, the US election. I plan to keep up this consistency.
If you agree/disagree with any of these reflections, please let me know! Once again, this entire project is a work-in-progress — as am I. If there are things I have written which you hate, I want to know. If I get something wrong, I want to know. If you have further reading recommendations, I want to know. Many of you will often know much more about the topics I cover than I do. This is a research diary, not a pulpit; and I am a student, not a columnist.
It is worth outlining what I have in store for 2025. I will soon be finishing my undergraduate degree at ANU in Canberra, and, most likely, I am going to be commencing postgraduate studies in the UK in September (I have one offer, at the LSE, already — but I won’t commit to specifics until all the cards have been laid down, especially regarding funding). This means, however, that my reading for the next few months will be focussed on my research interest — twentieth central monetary and central banking history. So I will be reading and re-reading Eric Monnet, Barry Eichengreen, Charles Kindleberger, and Eric Helleiner, among others. After that, I might change tack as I go into my final exams, and maybe look to medieval economic history for some respite. Or I may not. My urgent reading list is long and getting longer.
Finally, I want to briefly mention my decision to enable paid subscriptions. It is a bit ridiculous, I know — as in no way is my output worth anyone’s money. I am still worried that by having it enabled, and producing extra for it, I am in some way implicitly claiming otherwise. But I spend a serious amount of time writing these essays, and given I am about to embark on an expensive shift to the northern hemisphere, I hoped that those of you with more kindness than sense might consider playing patron. As a full-time student who pours beers for work, it is much appreciated — and my warmest gratitude to those of you who already have. I promise I won’t disappoint your trust.
Anyway, that is more than enough self-indulgence for one year. Whether you read every review or just one every few months, thank you. For my part, I can say that writing this is the most intellectually fulfilling thing I have ever done. I would probably still be writing without you — but I would not enjoy it nearly as much. So thanks once more, and a happy new year to you all!
At time of writing.
You have given me a lot of good food for thought, for which thanks. Where do you pour beer?
It’s always a pleasure reading your work, Angus. Keep it up!