History

Born from a post-Civil War strategy to avoid paying formerly enslaved Black workers a real wage, America’s tipping culture is a slavery-era relic that allows employers to subsidize their payrolls with customer cash instead of their own. This system, cemented by a federal tipped minimum wage frozen at $2.13 an hour since 1991, forces servers to live on unpredictable donations, creates power imbalances that enable harassment, and is aggressively protected by a powerful restaurant lobby.… Read more

The Eight-Nation Alliance’s intervention in China during the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) is often framed as a response to anti-foreign violence, but its deeper motivations were economic. The coalition—comprising Britain, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Japan, Italy, and Austria-Hungary—was driven by the pursuit of trade dominance, territorial control, and financial interests. By the late 19th century, China had become a battleground for foreign economic exploitation following a series of humiliating defeats in the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860) and the imposition of unequal treaties.… Read more