lottery. the fifth homestead goes to john smith. they all celebrate and get their land. well, then with the civilized tribes, there are so many members of the tribes generally, the land is divided into several, the indian people get their lands and by 1906, that process is completed and in 1907, oklahoma becomes a state. this was a land of contrast and his story, i never seem to be amazed at the pieces of this puzzle that fit together in odd and unique ways that make oklahoma unlike any other state in the union. >> stay tuned all weekend long. learn more about oklahoma city and c-span's local content

vehicles. next month we'll feature wichita, kansas. you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span 3. >> the organization of american historians and national council on public history recently held their annual meeting in wisconsin. american history tv spoke with several of this year's attendees. next, jessica of the university of new hampshire and the university of california, santa barbara discussed the crises and how they relate to the 2008 crisis. this is about half an hour. >> american history tv is at the annual meeting of the historians in milwaukee and we are joined by two historians who will be

speaking about economic crisis. thanks for being with us. >> thank you. >> let's start early in history with the panic of 1837. professor, what was that panic of 1837? >> well, the panic of 1837 was a rather long period of time and both of the financial crisis and really hard times that followed it well into the 1840s. but my focus has really been on the experience of panic which happened between march and may of 1837 and was rather remarkably similar to our own crisis built out of speculation and consumption of goods. sort of very similar experience to what a lot of people have just went through. >> and similar in that it was an

inherited crisis? >> well, andrew jackson was present. the same day in london and new orleans the panic began. yes, it was a crisis, but a crisis inherited within administration. he was andrew jackson's right hand man. he was not exactly ignorant. >> what would the economy have been like? what was the driving engine of the u.s. economy? >> well, the period between the 1820s and mid-1830s was a period of unbelievable growth and the backbone of it was cotton. the slave plantations of the south expanded west at a rem remarkable rate for native

americans. that cotton image connected to the markets in liverpool and it really drove the economy. england supported in 1820 and 1830s with the financial backers. internal improvements and building of canals and railroads in the north. they drove the americans. >> when students tried to draw parallels between a crisis of 1837 and the 2008 crisis, where do you see the best merging of the paths? where are the two similar? >> well, they are similar in a bunch of ways. in some ways they are remarkably similar. they are built on property. the instrumentation and they are different. it is used to describe the crisis they were living through is similar to our own. we were living through the 2007,

2008 early periods of our own hard times. this is the same sort of language that 19th century americans used except 19th century americans did not have a sense of capitalism or the economy or a gdp or anything that we use as markers to try to figure out how our own system works. it's similar with people grappling with the problems of losing fortunes overnight and incredibly different. >> professor o'connor for the session on economic crisis in history. what do you plan to make as the main focus. what do you plan to make as the discussion? >> the panel itself is talking about why it is not only that economic crisis that matters in history, but what they are and how they relate to one another. why is it that narratives of economic crisis matters? some of the things that jessica was saying i resonate with and part of the rational for this panel and partly because it was our way and historians have something unique to bring to the economic crisis and why they matter. not only in the degree to which historians can step back and get a fully contextual sense of the transformations that are underlying these moments of panic and moments of crisis. historians, narrative is our tool. in helping people to make sense of the bewildering events that are happening all-around it. helping people to in that way try to rest some control, whether they can or not. they are destructing their lives possibly, but also bringing some understanding to how narratives

are used for political purposes. the economic crises matter and what they are and how they relate to each other, but why is it that the narrative matters and some of the things that jessica was just saying i resonate with and are part of the rationale for this panel partly because it's our way, i think, of acknowledging that the panel has something unique to bring and not only that they can step back and give a contextual sense of the moments of panic and crisis but narrative is our tool for making sense of the past. so we have a particular understanding of why it is that

narratives will matter. in helping people to make sense of and all sorts of different ways the very bewildering events that are happeninging all around them, in helping people to, in that way, whether they can or not, the we wild dering events that are disrupting their lives possibly but also bringing some understanding to how narratives are used for political purposes, not just narrow electoral purposes, although they absolutely are used for electoral purposes, and the politics of blame that is a big theme you can avoid it in thinking about the upcoming election. who is to blame and whose crisis is this?

the crisis is suddenly barack obama's crisis and martin van buren's crisis. that's a political process. >> and this occurred in 1933 under fdr, right? >> absolutely. and not only have they been at the core of this but in many moments and panic in particular. economic crisis that begins with financial panic that have banks at their core and they have different aspects of the whole banking system and the system of global finance at the core. one of the themes that draws all that and the origins of the crisis. that happened yesterday. the slave trade in the textile trade in england. >> the credit that enabled canals to be built and lands to be purchase and slaves and all of that.

it came from england. it came from banks like the roth childs and the big banks in england and the bank of england controlled the credit markets for all of that. banks are an interesting part of the panic of 1837. for a long time, historians focused on the bank runs at the end of the period as the start. that was the end of when people were panicked. the causation was just as plilt political, and arguing that martin van buren was somehow responsible, the wigs argued for the democrats and

merchants and the international forces. even when we try to think about it as banks at the center, that's an argument that got shaped in the financial crisis. >> in 2008 crisis, we didn't have too many runs on banks per se. governments stepped in largely to rescue a number of institutions. i was struck by in 1837 there was actually a call for the government to step in. is that a theme throughout the financial crisis in history? >> well, it's interesting. in 1837, it's often thought that there were not that many bank runs. they shut themselves down in terms of trading paper money before there could be bank runs. those who didn't want the intervention agreed with the existing policies which were already an interventionist measure to bring back more gold and silver.

the 1830s moments because the parties are new. the looming economy. the scale was really different. >> going back to 2008 and the narrative you talked about in terms of the history that focused on the bank's role in 2008 and how that fits into the narrative of past. the financial crisis that remains in some ways that has a crisis. that can be resolved through bailing out the banks or stabilizing the banks or stabilizing the system of financing and reinforcing it. >> this narrative that you talked about in terms of what history focused specifically how that fits into the narrative of past economic crisis. >> well, interestingly, holding the banks accountable and essentially framing this has a crisis that began as a financial crisis and that remained in some

ways as a financial crisis that can be resolved through fixing the financial system, through stabilizing the banks or somehow stabilizing our system of financing, it reforming it, is somewhat a narrow way of reframing the issue even though the very, very big issues are involved. but what that doesn't pay attention to is what is it that caused this financial instability in the first place? absolutely that's connected to the banks and they go through a larger process of economic reform and financial deregulation over the course of several years and the restructuring of capitalism that we've been seeing over the course of several decades now. but it's also absolutely deeply routed in these problems of inequality that essentially put people in a position of being so vulnerable to the whole process

of subprime lending, of essentially debt financed ways of getting by, not just ways of getting by but simply ways of getting by. that remains unaddressed and remains a gigantic crunch. >> i want to ask you about that. do you have something to add? >> yes, i was just going to say that people not being able to sort of deal with the crisis as it's happening is something that in 1837 was really remarkable because it ended up changing the way that people felt about economics for the next century and a half. they started with strong arguments that individuals were responsible for their economic lives, and it was sort of an

important trove. and they argued that they are not responsible, that self-made failure is sort of divorced from self-made success. so in some ways it's the reverse argument happening in the 1830s where during the crisis they start to look for bigger forces and that process kind of leads to changes in the economics. >> it sort of came out of the depression because we all have parents or grandparents that went through the depression although those memories are fading. among the social things that you hear, the lessons of the depression, the frugality, the idea of building savings, are there social lessons that we're learning from the 2008 crisis,

for example? >> well, i think that is another story and in many ways a historical revision. you see literally this debate happening before our very eyes. one version of the great depression, which traces its roots to a whole series of structural problems in the economy that had to do with what is happening in the agricultural sector, with what is happening in the global economy versus a version of, you know, what happened to cause the great depression that says, no, actually, it started as kind of a credit crunch. you know, the great contraction and then government so-called

interference, if that's what caused the great depression. so oh that version of the great depression is being replayed in arguments that say, well, what happened is, the government stepped in and bailed things out and then the obama administration made things worse by this economic stimulus package, by not allowing the free market to rein and then it becomes obama's crisis. so in many ways we're fighting out this so-called lessons of the great depression and the way that we're managing the crisis now. i can point to one other thing. i think it's very, very important. you might really what to do about the great depression. >> 2008? >> yeah. really, there's a big question of when all of this started but early on in the obama administration there was a lot

of talk about 1937 and there's the great lesson of 1937 supposedly the consensus lessened in 1937 is that what you do not do in times of great economic recession is go too quickly to the politics of austerity. that's the great lesson of the roosevelt lesson in 1937. and for quite a while early on, you know, that was the prevailing consensus. that has clearly disappeared as we have turned to the politics of austerity. they have really become dominant, certainly in our own political discussion and absolutely in the broader global discussion about the european debt crisis and what to do about that. so it's interesting to see how lessons kind of rise and fall in the course of a few short years as especially the economic crises extends. or months, in my case.

as the panic of the 1837 intensified because there was no communication and in those months narratives of even the same author changed from -- there was a novel written about three experiments of the living. it's about an individual family and how to govern your finances and it comes out in december of 1836 and it's a run away best-seller in the spring of the summer of 1837 and comes up with another book and the lesson of the second book isn't about how your individual choices can prevent your family's downfall. it's about how you are caught in a big cobweb and you can do things to protect your family but you can't control the system. >> so even in two months, the

same author can change her mind. >> you touched on this a little bit earlier. has the way that we've measured success, has that changed over the course of now 180 years, 175 years? >> of course it has. it's hard for me to talk, of course, of the nation because in the 1830s they didn't necessarily speak be in those terms. they didn't measure economic growth as a component of what they were going to be studying. they were still thinking in individual terms generally and so domestic economy, political economy, novels, there's been a lot of work about how all of these genres of measurement, of discussion are intertwined with one another. it hasn't become the model that we think of today. so when historians apply the models of today on the 1830s to

try to figure out whether the economy was successful, it's sort of a fiction because there's just no way for us to know. they didn't collect the data that would be useful for us. >> by 2008 we have plenty of ways for us to figure this out. >> certainly with the length of recession and times of economic growth and debates among economists about how you should measure, you know, date recessions when they begin and end and how they should be measured as well. >> if i could just jump in, and

people were shorter than what they came before or after. it took a toll on people's bodies. >> well, one of the issues is unemployment and you read an article about the myth of the economic crisis and this has come up as an issue and this is one of the things that is going back to this whole idea of how economic crises are married. and during the recession, men are the ones that lose their

jobs because they are the ones that hold the jobs. but, again, the argument is that in the past men are also the first to recover. the argument is that it's more prolonged and more severe than the hardship being suffered by women. this is how the argument went and the notion that this is unique in being a man session as opposed to somehow a woman's session. it's a way of furthering other agendas. the so-called man session was a way drawing attention to the way of the economy and the way politics were femmeinized and how special interests, women in particular were making a special

claim on the administration to supposedly to need special assistance. none of which was true. i think the whole man session is not a very helpful way of dealing with the economy. but what it does draw our attention to is something that we frequently see in the experience of severe economic be downturn do downturn, a long economic downturn. it's disruptive of family lives and the ways that they think about their place in the world and the way that they think about where they should be and the way that they think of bread-winning and their own sense of responsibility, their sense of manliness. but, frankly, their sense of womanhood as well because so many women are bread winners in their own family.

a lot of talk about changing gender roles are played out in the way of the current recession just as they have been played out over and over and over again in the way people make sense of the big economic crisis. i know jessica here and her work as well. >> in the 1830s, the same situation. crisis caused incredible disruption in people's lives and they struggle to make sense of them. gender is a way in which they change as a course of financial crisis. in the immediate proceeding of the panic of 1837, a bunch of new york working men had a riot. they through flour out of the windows of warehouses and as my friend said, because their sense of masculinity was threatened. they couldn't provide for their

families. >> it was a wage they were arguing over? >> the price of flour. they were being paid less and less because the flour's price is going up and up. people ate mostly bread. poor people couldn't afford much to eat. this was before they expected square meals and balanced diets. before a social safety net. if a working man didn't make a wage that could buy barrels of flower, and that was part of life in the free market world. people just starved. >> it would be another 24 years before the civil war started in 1837, right? >> yes. >> how long did the effects of that cry says impact that? >> there is an argument among economists how long it lasted.

some say it ended the mexican war, a big ex pang boom but i think it hurt people for a really long time and it didn't just heard people in america. there was a global sort of economic turning and in england the 1840s were known as the hungry '40 by the early 20th century because there was such a period of sar vags. >> in looking at that lesson from 1837, where are we now going up to the 208 crisis? >> this is another thing. we keep drawing attention to the continuity and we all want to caution that this is not the same thing. >> that's right. >> but, again, another important thing is the long-term impacts especially these extended periods of crisis. there is research being done about the effects. especially for young people who are about to enter or have

recently entered the labor market, who have lost their jobs, who have had to downside early on in their career. there's a lot of research done about how you follow the experience of long-term employment. but i would argue thaw absolutely see it at the end of life -- at the end of the working years as well. people who are close to retirement age have had to kind of throw that out the window whose economic security has been completely undermined and who defined themselves, i mean, really on the brink of experiencing hunger. rates of hunger have gone up tremendously over the past few years as relying on what used to be called food stamps. but measurable rates of hunger have gone up which, again, has

long-term impacts, especially in terms of child nutrition. so there are many things that we can gleam from the past but now we're paying closer attention to the long-term impact. >> we have a couple minutes left and then i'll ask you both more broadly. we talked on this a little bit. we're here with historians. >> yeah. >> when people ask, why should we study history? >> i think history provides us with a way of understanding the world, a way of paying close attention to the sources of the past and show you how they frame their own lives. i think that's important to think for ourselves and it's not just how we live our lives and in some ways the structures that frame our lives but also in the sort of cultural implications of

what we think about it and i like to see my students end differences when they study the past. college kids leaving school without employment which comes up in my classroom. i would say it happens at least every other day in the semester, especially because i'm teaching a course on the long 19th century. you know it's a major issue in the student's lives and so constantly trying to get them to see the similarity of the people that we're studying and sources that we're probing for information and at the same time to recognize the past is actually different and their own lives can take different forms. not every crisis is a golden opportunity but there are moments when we actually have some control over a future