An Essay in Universal History
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AN ESSAY IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY From an Orthodox Christian Point of View VOLUME III. THE AGE OF REVOLUTION (1789 TO 1861) PART 2: from 1830 to 1861 Vladimir Moss © Copyright, Vladimir Moss, 2017. All rights reserved. 1 III. THE WEST: LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM (1830-1861) 5 36. LIBERALISM AND SLAVERY 6 37. SLAVERY IN AMERICA 12 38. RICH AND POOR: THE ROTHSCHILD CENTURY 15 39. VICTORIAN RELIGION AND MORALITY 29 40. THE BRITISH EMPIRE 40 41. THE BRITISH IN IRELAND 43 41. THE BRITISH IN CHINA 46 42. THE BRITISH IN INDIA 53 43. MILL ON LIBERTY 59 44. UTOPIAN SOCIALISM 66 45. THREE WESTERN JEWS: (1) DISRAELI 78 46. THREE WESTERN JEWS: (2) HEINE 83 47. THREE WESTERN JEWS: (3) MARX 88 48. "THE SPRINGTIME OF THE NATIONS" 100 49. NAPOLEON III, THE MASONS AND ITALY 113 50. THE ORIGINS OF NATIONALISM: (5) ITALY 117 51. THE WORLD AS WILL: SCHOPENHAUER 121 52. THE WILL IN NATURE: DARWIN 126 IV. THE EAST: THE GENDARME OF EUROPE (1830-1861) 134 53. TSAR NICHOLAS I 135 54. THE ORIGINS OF NATIONALISM: (6) POLAND 140 55. THE RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE ANGLICANS 145 56. THE JEWS UNDER NICHOLAS I 153 57. RUSSIAN HEGELIANISM 156 58. GREECE AFTER THE REVOLUTION 160 59. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (1) CHAADAEV VS. PUSHKIN 164 60. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (2) BELINSKY VS. GOGOL 173 2 61. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (3) HERZEN VS. KHOMIAKOV 179 62. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (4) KIREYEVSKY 186 63. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (5) DOSTOYEVSKY 195 64. THE SLAVOPHILES ON THE AUTOCRACY: (1) KIREYEVSKY 201 65. THE SLAVOPHILES ON THE AUTOCRACY: (2) TIUTCHEV 205 66. THE SLAVOPHILES ON THE AUTOCRACY: (3) THE AKSAKOVS 209 67. THE OLD RITUALISTS ACQUIRE A HIERARCHY 215 68. METROPOLITAN PHILARET ON CHURCH AND STATE 218 69. THE CRIMEAN WAR 226 70. RUSSIA IN THE CAUCASUS 233 71. RUSSIA IN ASIA 237 72. RUSSIA IN AMERICA 243 73. THE ORIGINS OF NATIONALISM: (7) GREECE 248 74. THE ORIGINS OF NATIONALISM: (8) SERBIA 256 75. THE ORIGINS OF NATIONALISM: (9) ROMANIA 261 CONCLUSION. THE TSAR, THE SULTAN AND THE PATRIARCH 267 3 A state without a Monarch is like an Orchestra without a Conductor [Kapelmeister]. Alexander Pushkin. The human I, wishing to depend only on itself, not recognizing and not accepting any other law besides its own will - in a word, the human I, taking the place of God, - does not, of course, constitute something new among men. But such has it become when raised to the status of a political and social right, and when it strives, by virtue of this right, to rule society. This is the new phenomenon which acquired the name of the French revolution in 1789. F.I. Tiutchev, Russia and the Revolution (1848). Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gathering substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Cardinal Newman, Biglietto Speech. Come to me, Lucifer, Satan, whoever you may be! Devil whom the faith of my fathers contrasted with God and the Church. I will act as spokesman for you and will demand nothing of you. Proudhon, Idée générale de la revolution. Some people by the word “freedom” understand the ability to do whatever one wants ... People who have the more allowed themselves to come into slavery to sins, passions, and defilements more often than others appear as zealots of external freedom, wanting to broaden the laws as much as possible. But such a man uses external freedom only to more severely burden himself with inner slavery. True freedom is the active ability of a man who is not enslaved to sin, who is not pricked by a condemning conscience, to choose the better in the light of God's truth, and to bring it into actuality with the help of the gracious power of God. This is the freedom of which neither heaven nor earth are restrictors. St. Philaret of Moscow, Sermon on the Birthday of Emperor Nicholas I, 1851. In democracy there is a terrible power of destruction. Alexander Herzen. The root elements of our Russian life have been characterized long ago, and they are so powerfully and completely expressed by the familiar words: Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality. That is what we must preserve! When these principles become weaker or fail, the Russian people will cease to be Russian. It will then lose its sacred three-coloured flag. St. Theophan the Recluse, Letters, VII, p. 289. 4 III. THE WEST: LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM (1830- 1861) 5 36. LIBERALISM AND SLAVERY As the nineteenth century progressed, one issue threatened to divide the Great Powers between and within themselves: slavery. At the Vienna Congress in 1815, they had agreed a common statement, as Bernard Simms writes, “that the slave trade was repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality. For the moment this was mere aspiration, but the potentially huge international ramifications of the issue were already clear…”1 These ramifications revolved around the fact that while the victors of 1815 had declared themselves against slavery, in the eyes of many liberals and revolutionaries the monarchical regimes of Russia, Prussia and Austria kept the peasants and subject nations of their empires in virtual slavery, or at any rate serfdom. This gave a propaganda advantage to the only victor nation that had – officially, if not yet de facto in all her dominions - abolished slavery and serfdom, Britain, and it allowed the British, while formally belonging to the monarchical, anti-revolutionary Holy Alliance, to interfere on the side of liberals and revolutionaries in such places as Spain and Italy. Of course, it may plausibly be argued that the condition of industrial workers in Britain, as of many millions of subjects in the British empire, was little short of slavery; but the propaganda advantage remained, and was used vigorously by the British. Before we examine how the British played the slavery card, let us look at how and why slavery was introduced into the West. According to Yuval Noah Harari, “At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe. During the early modern period, the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Unrestrained market forces, rather than tyrannical kings or racist ideologues, were responsible for this calamity. “When the Europeans conquered America, they opened gold and silver mines and established sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations. These mines and plantations became the mainstay of American production and export. The sugar plantations were particularly important. In the Middle Ages, sugar was a rare luxury in Europe. It was imported from the Middle East at prohibitive prices and used sparingly as a secret ingredient in delicacies and snake-oil medicines. After large sugar plantations were established in America, ever-increasing amounts of sugar began to reach Europe. The price of sugar dropped and Europe developed an insatiable sweet tooth. Entrepreneurs met this need by producing large quantities of sweets: cakes, cookies, chocolate, candy, and sweetened beverages such as cocoa, coffee and tea. The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman rose from near zero in the early seventeenth century to around eight kilograms in the early nineteenth century. “However, growing cane and extracting the sugar was a labour-intensive business. Few people wanted to work long hours in malaria-infested sugar fields 1 Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, London: Allen Lane, 2013, p. 181. 6 under a tropical sun. Contract labourers would have produced a commodity too expensive for mass consumption. Sensitive to market forces, and greedy for profits and economic growth, European plantation owners switched to slaves. “From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, about 10 million African slaves were imported to America. About 70 per cent of them worked on the sugar plantations. Labour conditions were abominable. Most slaves lived a short and miserable life, and millions more died during wars waged to capture slaves or during the long voyage from inner Africa to the shores of America. All this so that Europeans could enjoy their sweet tea and candy – and sugar barons could enjoy huge profits. “The slave trade was not controlled by any state or government. It was a purely economic enterprise, organized and financed by the free market according to the laws of supply and demand. Private slave-trading companies sold shares on the Amsterdam, London and Paris stock exchanges. Middle-class Europeans looking for a good investment bought these shares. Relying on this money, the companies bought ships, hired sailors and soldiers, purchased slaves in Africa and transported them to America. There they sold the slaves to the plantation owners, using the proceeds to purchase plantation products such as sugar, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, cotton and rum. They returned to Europe, sold the sugar and cotton for a good price, and then sailed to Africa to begin another round. The shareholders were very pleased with this arrangement. Throughout the eighteenth century the yield on slave-trade investments was about 6 per cent a year – they were extremely profitable, as any modern consultant would be quick to admit. “… The African slave trade did not stem from racist hatred towards Africans. The individuals who bought the slaves, the brokers who sold them, and the managers of the slave-trade companies rarely thought about the Africans. Nor did the owners of the sugar plantations. Many owners lived far from their plantations, and the only information they demanded were neat ledgers of profits and losses…”2 However, consciences began to stir… In the early modern period, writes Henry Kissinger, “the West expanded with the familiar hallmarks of colonialism – avariciousness, cultural chauvinism, lust for glory.