The New Empire of Debt: The Rise and Fall of an Epic Financial Bubble by Addison Wiggin, William Bonner, Agora Page A
Tags: Economics, Finance, Economic Conditions, Professional & Technical, Business & Money, Investing, Accounting & Finance
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bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need 9
—Rudyard Kipling
The French, meanwhile, thought the natives should learn to like baguettes and French poets. Their culture was so superior, it was said, they wanted to share it with everyone. They were all successors to Cicero, who maintained that only under Roman imperial rule could civilization flourish.
It was obvious to them all that Europeans were superior to other peoples. Was it a matter of race? Religion? Culture? At one time or another, they put forward each of these hypotheses—sometimes all of them. Europeans were a superior race; therefore, they had evolved superior forms of religion, government, and culture.
And what accounted for their racial superiority? No delusion was too preposterous. When the Romans were on top of the world, they thought their mild climate must be responsible for creating the world’s best humans. Two millennia later, when the center of empire had shifted to northern Europe, the rigors of European winters were credited with stiffening upper lips, backbones, and virtues. English ladies, traveling in the tropics, wore long-sleeved shirts and carried parasols, for fear that too much of the tropical sun might cause them to “go native.”
The effect of all this self-deception is to turn the imperialists into a race of fools. They have to believe what isn’t true—that they are, personally and collectively, better than the people they boss around. Constant dissembling has a corrosive effect on brains and a numbing effect on souls. European imperialists wondered if the Africans, East Indians, and Asians were fully human; often, they treated their subjects as though they thought they were not.
AUSTRO-HUNGARIANS
The impulse to imperial power is always the same, but there are many types of imperium. From the pure simplicity of the Mongols to the incomprehensible complexity of the Austro-Hungarians, you could make a go of almost any kind of empire.Whereas the Mongols got their empire by force, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918) also known as the dual monarchy came into being largely because they couldn’t think of anything better to do with it. Even its formal name—The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown (of Stephen)—was a pileup of words on the information highway. Then, as now, no one knew how the empire worked—including the people who supposedly ran it.
But that it was an empire, we have no doubt. “A basic, consensus definition would be that an empire is a large political body which rules over territories outside its original borders,” explains Stephen Howe in Empire. 10 Austro-Hungary ruled over the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Dalmatia, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, the Arch-duchy of Austria, the Duchy of Bukowina, the Duchy of Carinthia, the Duchy of Carniola, the Duchy of Salzburg, the Duchy of Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia, the Duchy of Styria, the Margraviate of Moravia, the Princely County of Tyrol (including the Land of Vorarlberg), the Coastal Land (including the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, the City of Trieste, and the Margraviate of Istria).
And this was just on the Austrian side. On the Hungarian side were all the many obnoxious, quarreling peoples of central Europe and the Balkans—the Slovaks, Bohemians, Moravians, Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, Serbs, Albanians, Macedonians, Croats, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Montegrans, Czechs, Magyars, and many others.
Each of these territories had its own language and customs. Many detested each other. All were jealous of power and how it was used. And at the top were some of the weakest and most confused and conflicted administrators who ever lived. Each had several layers of loyalties: to his own nation; his own class; his own religion; his own family, region, culture, and linguistic group; and his own aristocracy. How could you hope to govern such an empire?
The
To serve your captives’ need 9
—Rudyard Kipling
The French, meanwhile, thought the natives should learn to like baguettes and French poets. Their culture was so superior, it was said, they wanted to share it with everyone. They were all successors to Cicero, who maintained that only under Roman imperial rule could civilization flourish.
It was obvious to them all that Europeans were superior to other peoples. Was it a matter of race? Religion? Culture? At one time or another, they put forward each of these hypotheses—sometimes all of them. Europeans were a superior race; therefore, they had evolved superior forms of religion, government, and culture.
And what accounted for their racial superiority? No delusion was too preposterous. When the Romans were on top of the world, they thought their mild climate must be responsible for creating the world’s best humans. Two millennia later, when the center of empire had shifted to northern Europe, the rigors of European winters were credited with stiffening upper lips, backbones, and virtues. English ladies, traveling in the tropics, wore long-sleeved shirts and carried parasols, for fear that too much of the tropical sun might cause them to “go native.”
The effect of all this self-deception is to turn the imperialists into a race of fools. They have to believe what isn’t true—that they are, personally and collectively, better than the people they boss around. Constant dissembling has a corrosive effect on brains and a numbing effect on souls. European imperialists wondered if the Africans, East Indians, and Asians were fully human; often, they treated their subjects as though they thought they were not.
AUSTRO-HUNGARIANS
The impulse to imperial power is always the same, but there are many types of imperium. From the pure simplicity of the Mongols to the incomprehensible complexity of the Austro-Hungarians, you could make a go of almost any kind of empire.Whereas the Mongols got their empire by force, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918) also known as the dual monarchy came into being largely because they couldn’t think of anything better to do with it. Even its formal name—The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown (of Stephen)—was a pileup of words on the information highway. Then, as now, no one knew how the empire worked—including the people who supposedly ran it.
But that it was an empire, we have no doubt. “A basic, consensus definition would be that an empire is a large political body which rules over territories outside its original borders,” explains Stephen Howe in Empire. 10 Austro-Hungary ruled over the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Dalmatia, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, the Arch-duchy of Austria, the Duchy of Bukowina, the Duchy of Carinthia, the Duchy of Carniola, the Duchy of Salzburg, the Duchy of Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia, the Duchy of Styria, the Margraviate of Moravia, the Princely County of Tyrol (including the Land of Vorarlberg), the Coastal Land (including the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, the City of Trieste, and the Margraviate of Istria).
And this was just on the Austrian side. On the Hungarian side were all the many obnoxious, quarreling peoples of central Europe and the Balkans—the Slovaks, Bohemians, Moravians, Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, Serbs, Albanians, Macedonians, Croats, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Montegrans, Czechs, Magyars, and many others.
Each of these territories had its own language and customs. Many detested each other. All were jealous of power and how it was used. And at the top were some of the weakest and most confused and conflicted administrators who ever lived. Each had several layers of loyalties: to his own nation; his own class; his own religion; his own family, region, culture, and linguistic group; and his own aristocracy. How could you hope to govern such an empire?
The
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