Badaboom – tching.

Try the veal.

This is wrong too. Two points: first, as noted above (Ellie at 66, for one), the 19th century was actually one of general peace within Europe, certainly compared to the 18th and 20th centuries. And the US actually did go to war with two major powers in the 19th century*: the CSA in 1861 and Spain in 1898. In the same period, Britain went to war with one: Russia. France went to war with two: Russia and Prussia. So the US did just as well as the European powers, despite its geographical disadvantage. If France wanted to fight another power, all she had to do was cross the Rhine or the Pyrenees – the US had to cross an ocean.

It’s also worth mentioning that the US was founded, in part, because its founding fathers wanted to fight lots of aggressive wars, and the British wouldn’t let them.

(*In the Hobsbawm sense – i.e. 1815-1914).

This is probably stupid of me, but don’t unstable tax policies and the Atlantic Ocean have as much to do with this as pacifism?

I guess it’s always been my implicit understanding that the United States didn’t/couldn’t get extensively involved in direct conflict with other industrializing imperial powers because (a) the U.S. didn’t have the engineering talent to develop a world-class navy yet, which is what “we” would’ve needed in order to successfully engage in Europe, (b) regardless, the cost of engagement would be too high, in part because the US didn’t have a secure military-funding structure in place until something like 1861 or 1864.

By the 30s Japan had a picture-storytelling industry, and its comic industry was already – what – 50 years old? So I imagine that this style of comic strip would have been a viable business entity even after the invention of movies.

I saw a kamishibai performance at the Barbican a year or two ago, and they had a Q&A afterwards. Apparently, the arrival of sound film in the 1930s meant there were no longer jobs for the professional narrators who used to accompany silent films, so kamishibai developed as a way they could still make money from their skills. (There may be more to it than this, of course. A lot of cultures have older picture-storytelling traditions, although I don’t know about Japan specifically.)

And as a clarification … The performances were actually sort-of free. Technically the money came from selling sweets before the performance, although I think it was normal not to begin the performance until you’d sold enough sweets and/or let children who had bought sweets stand closer to the show. And the cards themselves were rented, so there wasn’t a lot of profit-margin for the performer.

I would have said that magic lanterns weren’t traveling theater affairs, but clicking the link, I learn that they were. So that’s the sort of thing I’m looking for.

How about panorama paintings in 19th century America?

Paintings of “the entire Mississippi” see – http://www.jstor.org/pss/4633401