A favorite introduction of mine:
(If you don't have time to read the full excerpt, the bolded portion will give you the general impression. If you do have time, I recommend reading through the whole thing.)
Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of
History, and What They Reveal About the Future
Albert in Beijing
London, April 3, 1848.
Queen Victoria’s head hurt. She had been
kneeling with her face pressed to the wooden pier for twenty minutes. She was angry, frightened, and tired from
fighting back tears; and now it had started raining. The drizzle was soaking her dress, and she
only hoped that no one would mistake her shivers for fear.
Her
husband was right next to her. If she
just stretched out her arm, she could rest a hand on his shoulder, or smooth
his wet hair—anything to give him strength for what was coming. If only time would stand still—or speed
up. If only she and Prince Albert were
anywhere but here.
And
so they waited—Victoria, Albert, the Duke of Wellington, and half the court—on
their knees in the rain. Clearly there
was a problem on the river. The Chinese
armada’s flagship was too big to put in at the East India Docks, so Governor
Qiying was making his grand entry to London from a smaller armored steamer
named after himself, but even the Qiying was
uncomfortably large for the docks at Blackwall.
Half a dozen tugs were towing her in, with great confusion all
around. Qiying was not amused.
Out
of the corner of her eye Victoria could see the little Chinese band on the
pier. Their silk robes and funny hats
had looked splendid an hour ago, but were now thoroughly bedraggled in the
English rain. Four times the band had
struck up some Oriental cacophony, thinking that Qiying’s litter was about to be
carried ashore, and four times had given up.
The fifth time, though, they stuck to it. Victoria’s stomach lurched. Qiying must be ashore at last. It was really happening.
And
then Qiying’s envoy was right in front of them, so close that Victoria could
see the stitching on his slippers. There
were little dragons, puffing smoke and flames.
It was much finer work than her own ladies-in-waiting seemed able to do.
The
envoy droned on, reading the official proclamation from Beijing. Victoria had been told what it said: that the
Grand Exemplar the Cultured Emperor Daoguang recognized the British queen’s
desire to pay her respects to the imperial suzerainty; that Victoria had begged
for the opportunity to offer tribute and taxes, paying the utmost obeisance and
asking for commands; and that the emperor agreed to treat her realm as one of
his inferior domains, and to allow the British to follow the Chinese way.
But everyone in Britain knew what
had really happened. At first the
Chinese had been welcome. They had
helped fund the war against Napoleon, who had closed the continent’s ports to
them. But since 1815 they had been
selling their goods at lower and lower prices in Britain’s ports, until they
put Lancashire’s cotton mills out of business.
When the British protested and raised tariffs, the Chinese burned the
proud Royal Navy, killed Admiral Nelson, and sacked every town along the south
coast. For almost eight centuries
England had defied all conquerors, but now Victoria’s name would go down
forever in the annals of shame. Her
reign had been an orgy of murder, rapine, and kidnapping; defeat, dishonor, and
death. And here was Qiying himself, the
evil architect of Emperor Daoguang’s will, come to ooze more cant and
hypocrisy.
At the appropriate moment Victoria’s
translator, kneeling just behind her, gave a perfect courtier’s cough that only
the queen could hear. This was the
signal: Qiying’s minion had reached the part about investing her as a subject
ruler. Victoria raised her forehead from
the dock and sat up to receive the barbaric cap and robe that signified her
nation’s dishonor. She got her first
good look at Qiying. She did not expect
to see such an intelligent- and vigorous-looking middle-aged fellow. Could he really be the monster she had
dreaded? And Qiying got his first look
at Victoria. He had seen a portrait of
her at her coronation, but she was even stouter and plainer than he had
expected. And young—very, very young. She was soaked and appeared to have little
splinters and bits of mud from the dock all over her face. She did not even know how to kowtow
properly. What graceless people!
And now came the moment of blackest
horror, the unthinkable. With deep bows,
two mandarins stepped from behind Qiying and helped Albert to his feet. Victoria knew she should make no sound or
gesture—and in very truth, she was frozen to the spot, and could not have
protested had she tried.
They led Albert away. He moved slowly, with great dignity, then
stopped and looked back at Victoria. The
world was in that glance.
Victoria swooned. A Chinese attendant caught her before she
fell to the dock; it would not do to have a queen, even a foreign devil queen,
hurt herself at such a moment.
Sleepwalking now, his expression frozen and his breath coming in gasps,
Albert left his adopted country. Up the
gangplank, into the luxurious locked cabin, and on to China, there to be
invested as a vassal in the Forbidden City by the emperor himself.
By the time Victoria recovered,
Albert was gone. Now, finally, great
sobs racked her body. It could take
Albert half a year to get to Beijing, and the same to get back; and he might
wait further months or years among those barbarians until the emperor granted
him an audience. What would she do? How could she protect her people, alone? How could she face this wicked Qiying, after
what he had done to them?
Albert never
came back. He reached Beijing, where he
astonished the court with his fluent Chinese and his knowledge of the Confucian
classics. But on his heels came news
that landless farm workers had risen up and were smashing threshing machines
all over southern England; and then that bloody street battles were raging in
half the capitals of Europe. A few days
later the emperor received a letter from Qiying suggesting that it might be
best to keep a talented prince like Albert safely out of the country. All this violence was as much about the
painful transition to modernity as about the Chinese Empire, but there was no
point taking chances with such turbulent people.
So Albert stayed in the Forbidden
City. He threw away his English suits
and grew a Manchu pigtail, and with each passing year his knowledge of the
Chinese classics deepened. He grew old,
alone among the pagodas, and after thirteen years in the gilded cage, he
finally just gave up living.
On the other side of the world
Victoria shut herself away in underheated private rooms at Buckingham
Palace and ignored her colonial
masters. Qiying simply ran Britain
without her. Plenty of the so-called
politicians would crawl on their bellies to do business with him. There was no state funeral when Victoria died
in 1901; just shrugs and wry smiles at the passing of the last relic of the age
before the Chinese Empire.
In reality, of
course, things didn’t happen this way.
___________________________________________________________
A rough introduction of my own:
Adam Smith has canonically been
interpreted as the father of classical economics, and with good reason. He introduced numerous conceptual innovations
to the world of eighteenth century political economy, the foremost of which was
his recognition of the importance of the division of labor. He likewise displayed a consistent keenness
in developing and presenting empirical insights regarding the
increasingly mercantile world that surrounded him. Nevertheless, his achievements in political
economy only rose into popular prominence after his death, and in the two
centuries that followed. Posthumous
commentators increasingly emphasized his economic theory as the magnum opus of his career. As a result, his moral philosophy has
conventionally been separated from and subordinated to his economics. But recent scholarship has brought the moral
philosophical side of his work back into conversation with his more popularly
known economic theory.
Discussions of Smith’s theory and
writings typically center on his exposition of the mechanics of commercial
society. True, he recognizes and affirms
the potential of free market systems to produce unprecedented wealth and
prosperity. He sees liberty of commerce as the key
to unleashing the power of markets, and thus advocates for minimal
state intervention in economic affairs.
Yet, he addresses much more than the basic structures and forces of a
system built on free exchange. He also
enumerates a series of necessary factors for its existence and function, and
simultaneously, presents a pointed critique of commercial society. Acknowledging the significance of this critique,
and bringing neglected portions of Smith’s thought back into conversation with
his canonical economic theory will allow for the construction of a more
accurate and nuanced interpretation of his contributions as a whole.
As part of this critique, Smith
introduces an extensive theory of education, as well as a prescription for how
educational systems should be implemented.
His attitude towards education, among other aspects of his work,
demonstrates that he did not consistently advocate for state minimalism in all
situations, as has often been argued. Rather,
as a result of some of the inherently destructive effects of commercial
society, and the division of labor in particular, he argues for the use of
state-supported education as an ameliorative and preparatory tool. That is, for Smith, education acted both as a
necessary apparatus to develop the vocational skills of the populace, but also as
a mechanism that allows broad swaths of society to access and engage with ideas
and culture traditionally available only to those at the pinnacle of the social
hierarchy. In his understanding,
education serves as both a means and an end; it prepares workers for employment
and allows citizens to pursue meaningful, fulfilling, and perhaps even intellectual
lives outside of industry.
In addition to this proposal of
broad-based public education, which he intended primarily for laboring and
working classes, Smith also comments on university education and educational
instruction for the wealthy and elite strata of society. In particular, he
wants to reconfigure remuneration structures for university teachers in order
to create more effective incentives for inspired teaching at the level of
higher education. His educational theory
exhibits an oft-unacknowledged willingness to allow for state intervention in
addressing some of the largest social difficulties produced by commercial
society. Additionally, he sees education
as a tool that enables markets and economic actors to function and interact
effectively. Finally, Smith also
advocated for a kind of less-formalized moral education that would take place,
at least to a certain extent, outside of the state’s purview. Taking place within families, moral education
would prepare youths to enter and exist within a commercialized civil
society. With all three of these
components of education working in concert, Smith envisioned a materially
prosperous, politically sound, and morally engaged commercial society.
Through the creation of a broad public
system of education for all, reforms to the existing university system, and the
cultivation of morality and virtue through more informal methods of education,
he hoped that commercial society could be embraced without rendering undue
damage to its constituent members. His
educational theories, though dispersed throughout his writings rather than
concentrated in a single tract or treatise, should be viewed as a central piece
of his body of work. Without considering
this portion of his thought, and how it affects interpretations of his other
ideas, one cannot fully understand his work.
Through a study of this often overlooked piece of Smith’s thought, it
becomes possible to recognize differences in valence and emphasis in his
economic and moral theories that would otherwise be veiled and inaccessible.
Smith’s thought should be understood in its full totality and nuance, and his
theory of education should be viewed as a vital component of his
contribution to eighteenth century thought.
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