Historical Crashes and Resets by Miles Harris
The Crash that Crafted Modern Finance
Miles Harris: 6-18-2025
Of course, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as Florence Cathedral or the Duomo, was constructed between 1296 and 1436.
Completed after the setting of this video and during Medici financed "renaissance." The imagery was important in setting the subject location in the thumbnail!
Regarding the loans to Edward III: Bell et al. in “Credit Finance in the Middle Ages: Loans to the English Crown 1272–1345” found that: “[Edward] did owe them [Bardi and Peruzzi] huge sums of money. But the true picture is more nuanced. First, when Edward issued a ‘stop’ on assigned payments from the Exchequer in May 1339, he specifically excluded those to the Bardi and Peruzzi.
Second, Edward never formally repudiated his debts and, even after the Bardi and Peruzzi had ceased to make significant advances to him, he continued to assign them sizeable repayments.
Between 1345 and 1348, after the Bardi had been dissolved, Edward paid over £23,000 to their representatives and he and his grandson Richard II continued to make occasional payments until the remaining debt was forgiven in 1391.
Third, the Bardi and Peruzzi had raised large sums of money from depositors in England, and both Edward and Richard protected them from legal proceedings brought by their English creditors.
The English kings seemed to have tried in good faith to repay the Florentine merchants, even at the expense of their own subjects.”
00:00 Intro
00:36 Florence's Financial Empire
01:27 Sovereign Lending
02:19 Collapse
03:14 Fallout
04:00 Modern Parallels
04:30 Florence Rebuilds
05:44 Key to Survival
06:04 Tangible Assets
07:04 A Crash that Crafted the Future
The Great Taking of 1350 & The Black Death
Miles Harris: June 25, 2025
The Black Death (1347–1351) was a demographic catastrophe—but for Europe’s elites, it was also a windfall.
As half the population perished, immense wealth was left behind—unclaimed, contested, or vulnerable.
Rather than disappearing, this wealth was redirected upward. Across cities like Florence and Venice, mass death became elite opportunity. Merchant families, religious institutions, and even medical authorities seized the chance to rewrite rules, bypass wills, and capture estates.
What followed wasn’t just tragedy—it was consolidation. The plague triggered a great taking.
00:00 Intro
00:54 Legalized Looting
02:15 The Cloaked Hand
03:20 Medicine or Mechanism?
05:13 Echoes Across Europe
06:16 The Peasantry that Thrived
08:10 From Death to Dynasty
The Great Reset of 1351: Plague, Profit & the Rise of Oligarchic Capitalism
Miles Harris: 7-2-2024
The Black Death of the mid-14th century was not only a demographic catastrophe but a socio-economic turning point.
While some historians argue it led to better living conditions and a more mobile workforce, a closer examination reveals a darker trajectory: one that laid the groundwork for oligarchic capitalism through land consolidation, coercive labor laws, and expanding bureaucratic power.
This is the third video in a miniseries which chronicles the years from the financial crisis in the 1340s, to the Great Taking, to the Great Reset of 1351.
00:00 Intro
00:43 Labour Scarcity meets Legal Constraint
01:54 Land, Credit & Consolidation
02:59 Enclosure & Monetization of Survival
05:52 The Rise of Bureaucratic Power
06:50 Cultural Alignments
07:42 Conclusion