(I love England. Not the England of today, but the England of my childhood, which is good enough to love England. My early education was heavily influenced by the British culture, starting with the English language, as one-half of my bilingual nativity; History of England by Charles Oman, as one of my favorite history books; and Shakespeare as my most memorized writer, after Pushkin. In my Anglophilic home, it was a conventional wisdom to see England and America on the opposite sides of the cultural spectrum, and no surprise as to which held which. It is therefore with some nostalgic fondness, and no malice whatsoever, that I am painting in the present entry the following dubiously flattering picture, where humor can be easily mistaken for sarcasm.)
In the historical battle for intellectual supremacy, among the foremost giants of Europe, the victor’s laurels have been split along the following lines: Italy is getting the credit for the Antiquity and for the Renaissance (with modern Greece quietly disqualified from the contest, largely for not being a “giant,” and also for not being part of Western Europe, where this competition is taking place). To France goes the Enlightenment, with its corollary in Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, and, of course, the Napoleonic Code. Germany owns the rights to philosophy; while the British ought to be well-pleased with the title of capitalist-in-chief, being credited as the progenitors of the grand science of economics.
The honorable title of capitalist-in-chief for “a nation of shopkeepers” is manifoldly validated, establishing the legality of such entitlement beyond a reasonable doubt. Among the vast body of corroborating evidence is the fact that the famed Bank of England is, perhaps, the oldest central bank in the world, founded back in 1694. (Ironically, it was nationalized in 1946, proving this impromptu adage of mine that “all that gets nationalized isn’t socialism.”)
Another fact that speaks for the title is the name of the world’s first economist.
Forget the French Physiocrats, who were perhaps the first to believe that land and its yield are the only true wealth (Gerald O’Hara with his Tara wisdom came much later, and his creator Margaret Mitchell even later still, chronologically speaking), and also that freedom of opportunity was a prerequisite of prosperity. Their luminous leader Richard Cantillon was never quite able to qualify for the golden minimum of international biography, anyway.
It was a Scotsman with the consummate English name of Smith, whose Wealth of Nations had become such a hit right after it was published in 1776, that even Eugene Onegin, according to Pushkin, was reading it, and became a “deep economist” as a result.
Incidentally, and here is a noteworthy historical rectification of fact, even the notorious soubriquet “a nation of shopkeepers” (or “une nation boutiquière,” in French), traditionally attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, as an anti-British slur on his part, is of solid British origin, as evidenced by the following paragraph in Adam Smith’s magnum opus:
“To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.” (Wealth of Nations, ii)
And finally, here is the verdict of Karl Marx. He pontificates that “England is preeminently the country of pauperism.” (On the King of Prussia and Social Reforms, 1845.) In Marx’s inimitable lexicon, this anoints England as a mighty citadel of capitalism per se, quod erat demonstrandum.
...Not surprisingly, then, England used to be known, when history was in fashion, America’s mother country.
In the historical battle for intellectual supremacy, among the foremost giants of Europe, the victor’s laurels have been split along the following lines: Italy is getting the credit for the Antiquity and for the Renaissance (with modern Greece quietly disqualified from the contest, largely for not being a “giant,” and also for not being part of Western Europe, where this competition is taking place). To France goes the Enlightenment, with its corollary in Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, and, of course, the Napoleonic Code. Germany owns the rights to philosophy; while the British ought to be well-pleased with the title of capitalist-in-chief, being credited as the progenitors of the grand science of economics.
The honorable title of capitalist-in-chief for “a nation of shopkeepers” is manifoldly validated, establishing the legality of such entitlement beyond a reasonable doubt. Among the vast body of corroborating evidence is the fact that the famed Bank of England is, perhaps, the oldest central bank in the world, founded back in 1694. (Ironically, it was nationalized in 1946, proving this impromptu adage of mine that “all that gets nationalized isn’t socialism.”)
Another fact that speaks for the title is the name of the world’s first economist.
Forget the French Physiocrats, who were perhaps the first to believe that land and its yield are the only true wealth (Gerald O’Hara with his Tara wisdom came much later, and his creator Margaret Mitchell even later still, chronologically speaking), and also that freedom of opportunity was a prerequisite of prosperity. Their luminous leader Richard Cantillon was never quite able to qualify for the golden minimum of international biography, anyway.
It was a Scotsman with the consummate English name of Smith, whose Wealth of Nations had become such a hit right after it was published in 1776, that even Eugene Onegin, according to Pushkin, was reading it, and became a “deep economist” as a result.
Incidentally, and here is a noteworthy historical rectification of fact, even the notorious soubriquet “a nation of shopkeepers” (or “une nation boutiquière,” in French), traditionally attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, as an anti-British slur on his part, is of solid British origin, as evidenced by the following paragraph in Adam Smith’s magnum opus:
“To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.” (Wealth of Nations, ii)
And finally, here is the verdict of Karl Marx. He pontificates that “England is preeminently the country of pauperism.” (On the King of Prussia and Social Reforms, 1845.) In Marx’s inimitable lexicon, this anoints England as a mighty citadel of capitalism per se, quod erat demonstrandum.
...Not surprisingly, then, England used to be known, when history was in fashion, America’s mother country.
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