Perspective

There was some trouble posting this earlier; Blogger did something weird to the formatting. It's still not quite right, but I figured having something here is better than nothing, especially for people who use the RSS feed.

The first US census was taken in 1790. Boston, according to the census, housed 18,320 people. The famous Battle of Bunker Hill, Boston’s main battle in the American Revolution, saw about 2,400 colonial militia face off against at least 3,000 British redcoats.

Let’s put that in perspective. In 1970, Kent State University had about 21,000 students - slightly more than 1790 Boston. The protest which ended with the Kent State shootings drew about 2,000 students.

So, comparing the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Kent State shootings, we see communities of comparable size, and “rebel” forces of comparable size.

In 1775, a few strong writers and orators (e.g. Samuel and John Adams) could rile up the entire city of Boston to the point of armed rebellion. Imagine this today - despite the daydreams of protesters and organizers, it seems pretty unlikely that a major city would be driven to arms by politicians and activists. There’s just too many people to reach them all. But in 1775, the entire city if Boston was only as big as a mid-size modern university. The entire community could be riled up by a handful of writers and speakers.

The comparison between 1775 and today grows even stranger when we think about the battle itself. 2,000 militia - roughly comparable to a campus protest, but with guns - went toe-to-toe with the military of the world’s dominant empire. When the war was over, the student-protesters-with-guns came out ahead, and an entire new nation was founded.

In 1775, a person, a pen, and a soapbox could make that sort of thing happen. Today, no way. Why? Population growth. When the third largest city in the region is smaller than today’s universities, communities were small enough that a few people could mobilize a large fraction of the population. But as populations grew, the methods which once mobilized tight communities no longer worked.

One more piece of perspective, to drive home the point. In the 1790 US census, New York City had a population of 33,131. That’s comparable to today’s Claremont, CA, where I went to college. Claremont isn’t a tiny town - most people don’t know each other. On the other hand, their kids all go to the same high school (Claremont High). That was New York City, the largest city in the US, in 1790: small enough that everybody’s kids would have fit in one modern-day high school.

Some of the teachers at Claremont High have probably met a majority of the people in Claremont. Shaking hands with everyone in the city is quite feasible, and politicians in 1790 New York probably did just that.

And that was the largest city in the nation! When Jefferson called the US a nation of small farmers, he wasn’t waxing poetic or fantasizing. The whole nation had 3.9 million people in 1790; the 24 largest cities housed just 0.2 million. 90% of the population worked on farms - I’ll have more to say about this in a future post.