DOCSLIB.ORG

The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, Vol. 1 [1835]

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, Vol. 1 [1835] The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. Richard Cobden, The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, vol. 1 [1835] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. This title is also part of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD which contains over 1,000 books and quotes about liberty and power, and is available free of charge upon request. The cuneiform inscription that appears in the logo and serves as a design element in all Liberty Fund books and web sites is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash, in present day Iraq. To find out more about Liberty Fund, Inc., or the Online Library of Liberty Project, please contact the Director at [email protected]. LIBERTY FUND, INC. 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684 Online Library of Liberty: The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, vol. 1 Edition Used: The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, with a Preface by Lord Welby, Introductions by Sir Louis Mallet, C.B., and William Cullen Bryant, Notes by F.W. Chesson and a Bibliography, vol. 1, (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903). Author: Richard Cobden Foreword: Reginald Earle Welby, Lord Welby Introduction: Sir Louis Mallet Introduction: William Cullen Bryant About This Title: Vol. 1 of a two volume collection of the political writings of Richard Cobden which focuses on foreign policy, and war and peace. Vol. 1 contains “England, Ireland, and America” (1835), “Russia” (1836), and “1793 and 1853 in Three Letters” (1853), only the first two letters are in this volume. The thid letter is in vol. 2. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/82 Online Library of Liberty: The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, vol. 1 About Liberty Fund: Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. Copyright Information: The text is in the public domain. Fair Use Statement: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 3 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/82 Online Library of Liberty: The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, vol. 1 Table Of Contents Preface Introduction to the Second Edition By Sir Louis Mallet, C.B. England, Ireland, and America. 1835. Part I.: England. Part II.: Ireland. Part III: America. Russia. 1836. Chapter I: Russia, Turkey, and England. Chapter II: Poland, Russia, and England. Chapter III: The Balance of Power Chapter IV: Protection of Commerce Appendix.: Extracts From Various Writers, Illustrative of the Condition of Turkey. 1793 and 1853, In Three Letters. Preface. Letter I.: Mr. Cobden to the Reverend — —. Letter II.: Mr. Cobden to the Reverend — —. R. Cobden PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 4 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/82 Online Library of Liberty: The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, vol. 1 [Back to Table of Contents] PREFACE The State is severe mother. She demands from her noblest sons their intellects, their energies, and, if need be, their lives; but she is not ungrateful. The men who have guided her destinies live in grateful memory and in memory the more honoured, if to great service and lofty aims they have added disregard of self, directness of purpose, and simplicity of character. Such men become household words of the nation. They create the standard by which the nation measures itself, and by which it is measured. They strike the keynote of national character. Such a man was Richard Cobden, a type of a great Englishman to Englishmen of all times, a type in his truthfulness, in his simplicity, and in his devotion to the welfare of his countrymen. It is nearly forty years since he passed away, and in the interval much has happened. During his youth and the prime of his manhood the people were suffering under the results of the Great War. Excessive taxation weighed upon all classes, but more especially upon the wage-earning and poorer classes. The progress of the nation was hampered by bad laws and unwise restrictions. The condition of the poor was miserable, for employment was scarce, wages were low, and food was dear. Education was neglected, and little had been done to make the mass of the people fit for the citizenship of a great and free country. This was the condition of the nation as Cobden knew it. He saw that improvement was impossible as long as the labouring classes were ill-fed and often unemployed, and he threw himself with all his soul into the fight for free trade and cheap food. The tale of the fight is admirably told in Morley's life of him. As one reads it, one is struck by the tact, the resource, the vigour and statesmanship of the man. Protection ruled in trade and agriculture, and the protected interests were to a man against him. But his chief foe was the agricultural interest. The great landowners were arrayed against him. The fight was long and severe, but Free Trade triumphed in the end and Cobden was the leader of the victorious party. There is no passage in the records of Parliamentary debate more striking than the oft-quoted tribute which in the hour of his triumph Sir Robert Peel paid to him. “The name which ought to be associated with the success of our measures of commercial policy is not the name of the noble lord the organ of the party of which he is the leader, nor is it mine. The name which ought to be, and will be, associated with the success of those measures is the name of one who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has, with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned: the name which ought to be chiefly associated with the success of those measures is the name of Richard Cobden.” The verdict of posterity has confirmed the judgment of Sir Robert Peel. It has associated inseparably and for ever the name of Cobden with the great Act of 1846. Many men and many interests then contested and now contest the policy of that Act, but generous opponents have never questioned the power, the energy, and the singlemindedness with which he fought the fight. Six years after the repeal of the PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 5 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/82 Online Library of Liberty: The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, vol. 1 Corn Laws an event took place which fittingly crowned his labours. In December, 1852, the Tory party, after depriving Peel of office, after opposing for six long years his policy as ruinous to the nation, and after appealing to the country to reverse that policy, hauled down their colours, and the Tory Ministers of the Crown, and the bulk of their party followed the Liberals into the lobby in order to affirm a resolution that the policy of Cobden, which they had condemned, was sound and successful, and ought to be maintained. On that occasion a follower of Peel, pointing to the Treasury Bench, exclaimed, “If you want humiliation, look there.” Cobden cared little for the humiliation. It was enough for him that, an insignificant minority of some fifty excepted, both parties in the House of Commons combined to affirm the great principle of which he was the champion. It has been said that Cobden and Bright were demagogues. They were certainly leaders of the people; but a demagogue is generally supposed to secure and maintain his power with the people by flattering and cajoling them. A simple test will show whether Cobden and Bright were demagogues in this sense. In 1854 the Russian war broke out. The nation has always a warlike tendency, and when its leaders tell it that war is necessary, it accepts their judgment but too readily, throwing itself into the struggle with vigorous and earnest resolution. In that mood neither the upper classes nor the working classes are tolerant of opposition, and statesmen, however honest and capable, if they question the passion of the hour, are heard with impatience, their warnings and remonstrances are brushed aside, and, when opportunities offer, the constituencies are not slow to punish them; for the masses are unable to appreciate motives which appear to them unpatriotic. The result is intelligible, though not always creditable to the common sense of the nation. No demagogue, anxious to secure popularity and power, would oppose in such circumstances the dominant mood.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • David Urquhart's Holy
    Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 26, Number 36, September 10, 1999 I. The History of Britain’s ‘Great Game’ in Caucasus, Central Asia David Urquhart’s holy war by Joseph Brewda and Linda de Hoyos In 1785, a Chechen leader, Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh Mansur, services who was touring the Caucasus, wrote in his memoirs raised the Chechen, Ingush, Ossetes, Kabard, Circassian, that “a Circassian prince pointed out [to me] the sacred spot and Dagestani tribes in revolt against the steady advance of (as they justly esteem it) where Daud Bey had held (just the Russian Empire into the Caucasus Mountains. Before three years ago) his meeting with the chieftains of this neigh- 1774, the Caucasus and Transcaucasus region, now embrac- borhood, and first inspired them with the idea of combining ing Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, had been loosely themselves with the other inhabitants of the mountain prov- ruled by the Persian and Ottoman empires. After Russia’s inces as a nation, under one government and standard.” Daud victory over the Ottoman Empire in the war of 1768-74, the Bey had penned the declaration of independence of Circassia Russian military moved in on the Caucasus. Sheikh Mansur and designed its flag. raised the flag of the “Mountain Peoples” against the czar. Daud Bey was not a native of the Caucasus either. His Although Mansur’s 20,000-man force was crushed by the name was David Urquhart, and he had been sent into the Russian onslaught in 1791, Sheikh Mansur became the hero region on a special mission in 1834 by British intelligence.
    [Show full text]
  • Catalogus Nederlandsch Historisch Scheepvaart Museum, P
    1 (ANTHOINE DE SAINT-JOSEPH, A.I.) Essai historique sur le commerce et la navigation de la Mer-Noire, ou Voyage et entreprise pour établir des rapports commerciaux et maritimes entre les ports de la Mer-Noire et ceux de la Méditerranée. Paris, H. Agasse, an XVIII (1805). With the folding map loosely inserted. xvi, 300, (2) pp. 8vo. Contemporary half calf, marbled boards, corners, sprinkled edges, somewhat rubbed and worn along extremities, tiny loss of calf at head of spine. € 700 Kress B.4881; Goldsmiths 19056 (without the map); Catalogue Russica , i, A-818; Polak 115; not in Einaudi. First edition The author, a merchant at Marseille, proposed a plan for an economic union between France, Russia and Poland and to create commercial possibilities through the Black Sea and Bosphorus instead of using the costly and time consuming northern routes. The French government recognized the importance of his ideas and enthrusted him with a mission to Russia, to investigate the possibilities of his plan. Catherine II and Potemkine were also interested in the project and new commercial relations and contacts were established: this is not an utopian dream but it was in actual fact a real and succesful project. 2 (AUXIRON, C.F.J. D’.) Principes de tout gouvernement, ou Examen des causes de la splendeur ou de la foiblesse de tout État considéré en lui-même, & indépendamment des moeurs. A Paris, Chez J.Th. Herissant Fils, 1766. 2 volumes. lxxx, 213, (1) pp.; (4), 314, (4) pp. 12mo. Contemporary marbled calf, spines gilt with red labels and gilt lettering, gilt triple fillets on sides, very lightly rubbed, few corners bumped, upper joint of volume 1 with a small split and small damage to top of spine.
    [Show full text]
  • David Urquhart's Ottoman Legions
    Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 26, Number 36, September 10, 1999 After Russia seized the region in the early nineteenth century, from its inception in 1917 through its dissolution in 1924). A Karabakh was repopulated by Armenians, becoming an Ar- son of neighboring Georgia, Stalin had served the Bolshevik menian enclave in the Azeri-populated czarist district of underground in Baku, Azerbaijan, where, in the words of Baku. one Azeri historian, “he witnessed the outbreaks of violence Jurisdiction over the enclave had become a heated emo- between Azeri Turks and Armenians as well as the methods tional issue for both Azeris and Armenians. General Thomson used by czarist agents and police to ensure rivalry which could deliberately intensified the problem. deflect deep-seated anti-Russian resentment.” Stalin em- While Thomson dished out military aid to Armenia and ployed the same methods. Georgia, but not Azerbaijan, he decreed that Karabakh remain Under his direction, the Azerbaijan presidium formed a under Azeri administration, and appointed an Azeri governor Central Commission on Nagorno-Karabakh affairs, which general for Karabakh, who was notorious for his massacring decreed that an autonomous Armenian enclave, only a dozen of Armenians. Thomson gave the nod to Azeri repression of miles from Armenia itself, be created within Azerbaijan. The Karabakh Armenians. decision satisified none of the parties. Thomson armed the Armenians, albeit inadequately. In Thus, Stalin continued the same geopolitical machina- August 1919, the outgunned Armenians of Karabakh finally tions in the region, played by the czar and British General accepted Azeri jurisdiction. Thomson, before him.
    [Show full text]
  • David Urquhart's Holywar
    Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 23, Number 16, April 12, 1996 I. Caucasus-Gateway to CentralAsia David Urquhart's holywar by Joseph Brewda and Linda de Hoyos In 1785, a Chechen leader, Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh Mansur, raised the Chechen, Ingush, Ossetes, Kabard, Circassian, and Dagestani tribes in revolt against the steady advance of the Russian Empire into the Caucasus Mountains. Before 1774, the Caucasus and Transcaucasus region, now embrac­ ing Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, had been loosely ruled by the Persian and Ottoman empires. After Russia's victory over the Ottoman Empire in the war of 1768-74, the Russian military moved in on the Caucasus. Sheikh Mansur raised the flag of the "Mountain Peoples " against the czar. Although Mansur's 20,000-man force was crushed by the Russian onslaught in 1791, Sheikh Mansur became the hero of the Mountain Peoples, his revolt the inspiration for the uprisings in the Caucasus today. Strangely, Sheikh Mansur was not a Chechen. He had been born Giovanni Battista Boetti, and had been a Domini­ David Urquhart, Palmerston's Peripatetic. can monk before his conversion to Islam. Although Boetti's direct ties to Venice and London are not known, his rebellion served their geopolitical aims. The occasion of Urquhart's first trip to Turkey was the Years later, another hero of the Mountain Peoples 1833 Russo-Turkish treaty, through which Russia had virtu­ emerged. In .1837, James Bell, an agent of the British secret ally won control of the strategic Dardenelles. As Urquhart services who was touring
    [Show full text]
  • ROMA Ve BİZANS ETÜDLER VE SİSTEMATİK ESERLER
    ROMA ve BİZANS ETÜDLER VE SİSTEMATİK ESERLER ALBERT, GOTTFRIED: Die Prinzeninsel Antigoni und der Aidos- Berg. Konstantinopel, O. Keil, [1891]. s. 24-51. (15.5x22). “Mitteilungen des Deutschen Excursions Clubs, Heft III”. [I.RB/E-367] ANGOLD, MICHAEL: Church and society in Byzantium under the Comneni, 1081-1261. Cambridge, Cambridge University, 1995. XVI+604 s. (15.5x23.5). [I.RB/E-388] BALARD, MİCHEL - DUCELLIER, ALAIN (Der.) : Konstantinopolis 1054-1261. Hırıstiyanlığın başı, Latinlerin avı, Yunan başkenti. İstanbul, İletişim, 2002. 256 s. (16x23). “İletişim Yay.: 842 - Dünya Şehirleri Dizisi: 6”. [I.RB/E-405] BARSANTI, CLAUDIA : Constantinopoli e l’Egeo nei primi decenni del XV secolo: la testimonianza di Cristoforo Buondelmonti. s. 83-254. (21x29). Roma, Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’arte, 56 (III. Serie, XXIV), 2001’den. Fotokopidir. [I.RB/E-407] BARTUSIS, MARK C.: The late Byzantine army: arms and society, 1204-1453. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. XVII+438 s. (15x23) resim. “The Middle Ages Series”. [I.RB/E-408] 1 BASSETT, SARAH GUBERTI : Historiae custos: Sculpture and tradition in the Baths of Zeuxippos. s. 491-506. (21x29.5) plan, resim. American Journal of Archaeology Volume, 100, No: 3/1996’dan. Fotokopidir. [I.RB/E-391] BELGE, MURAT : Bizans mirası. Foto.: Şemsi Güner. s. 86-102. (22x30) resim. Atlas dergisi, 1994, (Sayı 17)’de. [I.RB/E-392] BOOJAMRA, JOHN LAWRENCE : Church reform in the late Byzantine Empire. A study for the patriarchate of Athanasios of Constantinople. Thessaloniki, Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1983. 239 s. (18x25). “Analekta Vlatadon, 35”. [I.RB/E-362] BRADFORD, ERNLE : The great betrayal.
    [Show full text]
  • The University of Chicago No Empire for Old Men: The
    THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO NO EMPIRE FOR OLD MEN: THE YOUNG OTTOMANS AND THE WORLD, 1856-1878 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES AND CIVILIZATIONS BY MADELEINE ELFENBEIN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2017 Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... iii Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... v Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 A Popular Response to the Crisis of Sovereignty .................................................................... 2 Saving the State from Itself ....................................................................................................... 5 Ottomanism and the International Turn ............................................................................... 16 Who Were The Young Ottomans? .......................................................................................... 19 Young Ottoman Legacies ........................................................................................................ 22 Outline of Chapters .................................................................................................................. 25 Chapter 1: A Nation in Search
    [Show full text]
  • David Urquhart's Holy
    I. The History of Britain’s ‘Great Game’ in Caucasus, Central Asia David Urquhart’s holy war by Joseph Brewda and Linda de Hoyos In 1785, a Chechen leader, Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh Mansur, services who was touring the Caucasus, wrote in his memoirs raised the Chechen, Ingush, Ossetes, Kabard, Circassian, that “a Circassian prince pointed out [to me] the sacred spot and Dagestani tribes in revolt against the steady advance of (as they justly esteem it) where Daud Bey had held (just the Russian Empire into the Caucasus Mountains. Before three years ago) his meeting with the chieftains of this neigh- 1774, the Caucasus and Transcaucasus region, now embrac- borhood, and first inspired them with the idea of combining ing Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, had been loosely themselves with the other inhabitants of the mountain prov- ruled by the Persian and Ottoman empires. After Russia’s inces as a nation, under one government and standard.” Daud victory over the Ottoman Empire in the war of 1768-74, the Bey had penned the declaration of independence of Circassia Russian military moved in on the Caucasus. Sheikh Mansur and designed its flag. raised the flag of the “Mountain Peoples” against the czar. Daud Bey was not a native of the Caucasus either. His Although Mansur’s 20,000-man force was crushed by the name was David Urquhart, and he had been sent into the Russian onslaught in 1791, Sheikh Mansur became the hero region on a special mission in 1834 by British intelligence. of the Mountain Peoples, his revolt the inspiration for the Urquhart had been a prote´ge´ of Jeremy Bentham, the founder uprisings in the Caucasus today.
    [Show full text]
  • Remittances, Short-Term Credit and Financial Intermediation in Anglo-Dutch Military Finance, –
    Financial History Review . (), pp. –. © European Association for Banking and Financial History e.V. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/./), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:./S ‘The whole art of war is reduced to money’: remittances, short-term credit and financial intermediation in Anglo-Dutch military finance, – PEPIJN BRANDON Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The literature on the financial revolution and the rise of the English fiscal-military state frequently gives the impression that a singular set of reforms emanating from the Glorious Revolution of changed the entire landscape of English army finances, allowing a fundamental shift from patchwork solutions based on short-term credit and managed through a system of wholesale venality to a solid system of long-term funded loans raised on an impersonal market. This article focuses on the crucial role that merchant net- works and the personal connections of financial intermediaries continued to play in international troop payments arranged by the English state through the Dutch Republic. Even when the English or Dutch treasuries could find the necessary money to pay and provision the troops in time, getting the money to the military commanders in the field or to their distant suppliers often depended on long and complex credit lines. Short-term loans acquired in making military expenditure – consisting of unpaid bills to suppliers, payments advanced by officials and officers, and temporary loans contracted by financial inter- mediaries – as well as the widespread reliance on commercial credit in the form of bills of exchange as a way to transfer funds effectively formed the life thread of army finance.
    [Show full text]
  • The Work of Js Bell and D. Urquhart In
    International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET) Volume 9, Issue 8, August 2018, pp. 1041–1048, Article ID: IJMET_09_08_113 Available online at http://iaeme.com/Home/issue/IJMET?Volume=9&Issue=8 ISSN Print: 0976-6340 and ISSN Online: 0976-6359 © IAEME Publication Scopus Indexed THE WORK OF J.S. BELL AND D. URQUHART IN CIRCASSIA IN THE 1830S: ENABLEMENT OF COMMUNICATION Anzhela CHEUCHEVA Professor, Doctor of History, Professor of the Department of World History, Department of World History, Historical Faculty, Adyghe State University, Maykop, Russian Federation Bayzet KAGAZEZHEV Professor, Doctor of History, Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Sociology, Department of Philosophy and Sociology, Adyghe State University, Maykop, Russian Federation Batyrbiy SHEKULTIROV Professor, Doctor of History, Professor of the Department of the Theory and History of State and Law and Political Sciences, Department of the Theory and History of State and Law and Political Sciences, Faculty of Law, Adyghe State University. Maykop, Russian Federation Rustam BEGEULOV Professor, Doctor of History, Professor of the Department of History of Russia, Department of History of Russia, Faculty of History, U.D. Aliev Karachay-Circassian State University, Karachayevsk, Russian Federation Andrey PANARIN Professor, Doctor of History, Professor of the Department of World and National History, Department of World and National History, Faculty of History, Armavir State Pedagogical University, Armavir, Russian Federation ABSTRACT While carrying out political interaction, economic cooperation and cultural exchange, cross-cultural communication employs diverse methods, such as diplomatic channels, business activity and cultural exchange. The issues concerning political and cultural communication and the formation of the country’s positive image are very much on today’s agenda and worth of the closest analysis.
    [Show full text]
  • The East India Company Career of Sir Robert Cowan in Bombay and The
    The East India Company Career of Sir Robert Cowan in Bombay and the Western Indian Ocean, c. 1719-35 Edward Owen Teggin A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Department of History University of Dublin 2020 Declaration I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other university and it is entirely my own work. I agree to deposit this thesis in the University’s open access institutional repository or allow the Library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and acknowledgement. i Summary This thesis has undertaken the first in-depth study of Sir Robert Cowan, something which has until now been missing from the wider scholarship of the East India Company. The evaluation has focused on Company affairs in the western Indian Ocean throughout the years 1719-35, although discussion has also been given to the wider intra-Asian sphere during 1680-1750 as well. It has been shown, by using Cowan’s Indian career as a case study, how the devolved power structure incorporating Company servants gave great opportunity for defining policy and actions. This was particularly evident in Cowan’s career during his postings at Goa, Surat, Mocha and Bombay. Further, it has been shown how this devolution of power represented the dual aspect of the Company in the early modern period. In England it was seen to act as a commercial trading company, whereas in India it had far greater scope to act as a sovereign power.
    [Show full text]
  • Romantic Orientalists: Urquhart and Kinglake on the Ottoman Empire
    Romantic Orientalists: Urquhart and Kinglake on The Ottoman Empire Valerie Kennedy Introduction: An Unlikely Comparison of Two Controversial Figures An initial reaction to a comparison of the writings on the Orient of Alexander Kinglake and David Urquhart might be surprise or even disbelief since both the men and their works seem so different. As Geoffrey Nash says, “In key respects Kinglake produced a polar narrative on Ottoman Turkey to that of Urquhart” (“Politics, Aesthetics and Quest” 62). Urquhart, the Highland Scot, is immensely proud of his heritage (Robinson 20, 64-65); he received a cosmopolitan education with private tutors, studied at the Dominican College of Sorèze in southern France, and matriculated at St. John’s College, Oxford in 1822, although he was forced to interrupt his studies because of ill health (Bolsover 444). He was critical of many aspects of European life, notably its system of taxation, its mechanical military organization, and its ignorance of the culture of Islam, of the Turkish language, and of the structures and manners ruling Eastern life.1 Conversely, Kinglake is English although of Scottish descent, middle class, and was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge (Tuckwell 15-23); he is confidently Eurocentric, sure of the superiority of his country, its culture, and its power in the world (Morris iv). Urquhart spent the six years from 1831 to 1837 in the Ottoman Empire (Nash, From Empire to Orient 44).2 He produced two substantial works, Turkey and Its Resources (1833) and The Spirit of the East (1838), which Gertrude Robinson claims were still required reading in the 1920s (46).
    [Show full text]
  • Yamamoto Chandos for Circulation
    Koji Yamamoto, 'Beyond rational vs irrational bubbles: James Brydges the first duke of Chandos during the South Sea Bubble', in Le Crisi Finanziarie: Gestione, Implicazioni Sociali e Conseguenze nell'Età Preindustriale (Series: Fondazione Istituto internazionale di storia economica "F. Datini", 2016), 327-357. Email: [email protected] Abstract: One key question over the South Sea Bubble of 1720 has been whether or not it was a ‘rational’ bubble as economists would now define it. The underlying analytic dichotomy between 'rational' and 'irrational' bubble seems to have hit a point of diminishing return, however. We need fresh studies that combine different sources and methods. This paper contributes to this larger task by focusing on one of the largest investors during the Bubble period: James Brydges the Duke of Chandos (1674- 1744). The case is unique in that we have both financial accounts and the letters he sent to his friends and financial partners in 1720. Combining these sources, the paper reports the duke's investment strategies, and reveals how he was able to coordinate a large-scale speculation without risking his reputation and respectability. Strikingly, however, while pursuing a rational strategy to 'ride the bubble', Brydges viewed other actors to be driven by folly, greed and irraitionality. This, combined with other strategies, enabled him to maintain an impression of social distance from the very act of speculation. It will be shown that sophisticated market speculation - characteristic of modern financial market - was undertaken in ways that were consistent with the early modern moral economy. N.B. Since the publication of this article, I have been collecting investors' letters and financial accounts from British archives in order to assess how well the case of James Brydges fits into broader practices and understanding of specualtion during the bubbles of 1719-20 and beyond.
    [Show full text]