Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Why did Portugal become a great exploring nation?

I’ve been reading Eric Axelson’s 1973 Congo to Cape: Early Portuguese Explorers. It’s always an interesting question to ask how great ventures begin — Why did they start when and where they did? Why were they initiated by those individuals or groups and not others?

The circumnavigation of Africa was a great achievement over many decades. In principle many people — European, African, or Asian — could have accomplished it. So why the Portuguese?

Here is Axelson’s explanation:

“It was no accident that Portugal became the first European country in modern times to explore and colonize beyond the seas. Her medieval wars of independence against Leon and Castile, and her campaigns against the Moors in the Iberian peninsula, had encouraged the growth of a national spirit by the time—in the middle of the twelfth century—Portugal attained what are essentially her present frontiers. Bounded by unfriendly and often actively hostile Spanish kingdoms and Muslim principalities, Portugal was forced to look to the sea not merely for communication with the rest of Christendom, but also for essential trade: the export of salt and oil, of wine and cork, and the import of most of the manufactured goods her people needed. Moreover, her pastures and her cultivated lands were infertile, and the sea provided necessary food. Her fishermen became consummate seamen, and out of their ranks emerged the crews of ships that sailed in the Middle Ages to the farthest parts of northwestern Europe and of the Mediterranean” (p. 19).

Comments?

My thoughts: Axelson’s explanation is a good start but more is necessary. Many medieval peoples fought wars to protect their independence, and many places with poor soil became good at fishing; yet very few generated great exploration cultures. Axelson’s middle point about trade is strong: the map at right (click to enlarge) shows that Portugal is at the fringes when it comes to trade with just about everyone and that the land trade routes were already controlled by others (e.g., the Venetians and Levantines). But it’s still a question in my mind why the Portuguese didn’t simply acquiesce to an isolated, marginal existence; after all, that’s what many peoples throughout history have done. So who were the key deciders who initiated and led and pushed the Portuguese into great activity and accomplishment?

Another question: Axelrod gives one political and two economic motivations — were other factors such as scientific curiosity or religious evangelism significantly operative?

Here’s a list, adapted from this site, of key Portuguese names and dates:
1394: Henry the Navigator born
1419: Madeira Islands discovered by explorers Zarco and Tristao Vaz Teixeira
1427: Azores Islands discovered by Diogo Silves
1434: Exploration of the African coast begins
1444: Discovery of the Cape Verde islands
1484: Diogo Cao discovers the River Congo
1487: Bartholomeu Dias leads an expedition around the Cape of Good Hope
[1492: Christopher Columbus discovers the New World]
1498: Vasco da Gama reaches India via navigation around Africa
1500: Pedro Alvares Cabral discovers Brazil
1519: Ferdinand Magellan leads the first voyage around the World
1542: Portuguese explorers are the first Europeans to land in Japan
1569: Nagasaki, Japan is opened to Portuguese traders

Audacious historical cause-and-effect claims

In an 1846 review of Grote’s History of Greece, John Stuart Mill makes this claim: “The Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings.”

My first reaction to Mill’s sentence was agreement. My second reaction was to the audacity of the claim and to wonder how it could be justified.

The 1066 CE Battle of Hastings was 780 years Before Mill, and the 490 BCE Battle of Marathon was 2,336 years BM. But how does one make cause-and-effect claims about human actions involving millions of people across thousands of years? That takes major conceptualizing cojones.

Here is Mill’s sentence in context: “The interest of Grecian history is unexhausted and inexhaustible. As a mere story, hardly any other portion of authentic history can compete with it. Its characters, its situations, the very march of its incidents, are epic. It is an heroic poem, of which the personages are peoples. It is also, of all histories of which we know so much, the most abounding in consequences to us who now live. The true ancestors of the European nations (it has been well said) are not those from whose blood they are sprung, but those from whom they derive the richest portion of their inheritance. The battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different, the Britons and the Saxons might still have been wandering in the woods.”

Mill is doing “What-if” history: We know we are what we are today significantly because of the Greek victory at Marathon, but where would we be if the Persians had won?

Let’s separate two propositions:
1. The Greeks defeated the Persians at Marathon. Therefore, we are where we are today. What evidence do we have connecting those two sentences?
2. If the Persians had defeated the Greeks at Marathon, then … . How do we complete the sentence?

On 1. The Greeks’ defeating the Persians made it possible for Greek culture to be transmitted across the generations. That was not a deterministic process — each generation’s decision-makers to varying degrees had to accept and propagate its distinctive Greek inheritance of independent, naturalistic thinking, and to the extent that each generation did it developed a culture of rationality, creativity, innovation, science, and artistry. As historians we can see the positive evidence for those connections as they played out across time: the western European decision-makers of the 300-1000s largely rejected the Greek philosophy and declined into the Dark Ages; but further east Byzantium continued to flourish, keeping the Greek texts and ideas alive; the decision-makers of the 1100s to 1400s rediscovered and rejuvenated the Greeks and the Renaissance ensued; and so on.

On 2. What counts as evidence here? We can imagine victorious Persians stamping out Greek culture or dispirited Greeks letting themselves slide into insignificance. But we can also imagine a more relaxed Persian regime content with tribute or tenacious Greeks keeping the flame alive and rebelling a few years later.

Imagination aside, we can think analogically to real historical cases. From the 300s to the 500s CE, the victory of early Christianity did lead to the suppression and extermination of Greek culture. But previously, from 197 to 30 BCE, the Romans systematically defeated the Greeks — yet the Greek inheritance survived, becoming not only part of Roman culture but for many generations the dominant philosophy of the Romans. (I like the saying that the Romans defeated the Greeks but the Greeks conquered the Romans.)

So a Persian victory would have led to which result? I don’t know. And not knowing that, can we say how important Marathon was to where we are 2,500 years later?

Related:
My lecture “What Moves History: An Introduction to the Philosophy of History,” available as a free audio download.

Profiles in Liberty — series trailer

Forthcoming in January 2012.

Profiles in Liberty main page.

PIGS, Catholicism, and Protestantism

I am neither Catholic nor Protestant, so I do not have a dog in that fight but rather a cultural history question about the financially bankrupt PIGS or PIIGS countries in Europe.

With the exception of Ireland, all are in southern Europe. Including Ireland, all of them are traditionally Catholic [except Greece, which is mostly Eastern Orthodox, as William W. points out].

Some questions:

1. Is the Protestant-work-ethic thesis — which is thought to encourage diligent labor, saving, and living more frugally — relevant here?

2. Is there something contrasting in Catholicism’s cultural heritage that makes it politically more spendthrift?

3. Are there predominantly Protestant nations in as much economic difficulty?

4. What about the exceptions — predominantly Catholic countries not in the PIGS category: France, Austria, Poland, etc.?

5. If we were to place all European nations along a spectrum from financially strong to weak, what would the distribution of traditionally Catholic and Protestant nations look like?

6. Is there a carryover to economic development in the Americas–e.g., that North America was mostly settled by immigrants from northern-Protestant-European cultures and South America was settled mostly by immigrants from southern-Catholic-European cultures?

Related:
Empires of conquest and empires of commerce.
Successful nations and the British empire.

[Return to the StephenHicks.org main page.]

Elizabeth Warren and the doulos

Elizabeth Warren’s recent remarks offer a striking glimpse into a prominent strain of American political thought. Warren is a Harvard law professor and U.S. Senate candidate, and she has been a White House presidential assistant. An excerpt:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

What gives this argument rhetorical force is its appeal to a principle of economic justice: You should pay for the benefits you get from others. Don’t be a freeloader. Warren combines that principle with a list of benefits an imagined factory builder has received from others to get the implicit conclusion and policy recommendation: The factory builder has unpaid debts that justify increased taxation.

Five observations and questions:

1. On the seriousness of the economic justice claim: If we’re to conclude that the factory owner (let’s call her Jill) has unpaid debts, are we to (a) estimate how much benefit Jill the factory builder has received from others, (b) determine how much she has paid for those benefits (since presumably she paid her employees, truckers, and taxes), so that (c) we can determine whether she has paid too much, too little, or the right amount? Are we to make that serious accounting effort, or is this argument meant to generate an unspecified debt claim and a blank check for politicians and the IRS to fill in as they judge best?

2. On the transfer of debt: Warren points out that, for example, many of the factory’s employees were educated in government schools. The government has taxed its citizens and used that money to educate, say, Jack. Interestingly, Warren does not say that Jack now has a debt to society that he should pay. Instead, the debt seems to shift to Jill when she hires Jack. How does that work?

3. On disingenuous application: Warren targets her argument only against the prosperous. Yet middle and low income people also receive the same benefits as the factory builder—they use the roads, enjoy police and fire protection, use the services of those educated in public schools, and so on. Why is Warren not also hectoring middle and low income people for apparently violating the social contract?

4. On the compatibility of the economic justice principle with the rest of Warren’s political philosophy: Warren here suggests strongly that Jill the factory builder has freeloaded on unpaid benefits from the rest of society and that justice requires that she pay for what she received from others. Does Warren therefore favor abolishing the welfare state? I rather doubt it. So we end up in an odd position: Those who live on or profit from government welfare get a pass in Warren’s system, while those who build factories are considered freeloaders.

5. On the doulos and a historical echo: In Plato’s Crito (50d), Socrates argues that he has no right to escape from prison, even if he is innocent. Socrates imagines himself in conversation with the Laws of the State and has the Laws say to him, ‘”In the first place did we not bring you into existence? Your father married your mother by our aid and begat you. Say whether you have any objection to urge against those of us who regulate marriage?” None, I [Socrates] should reply. “Or against those of us who regulate the system of nurture and education of children in which you were trained? Were not the laws, who have the charge of this, right in commanding your father to train you in music and gymnastic?” Right, I should reply.’

Socrates has agreed that the State made possible his existence and upbringing. Consequently, he is in debt to the State, as the Laws go on to conclude forcefully:

“Well, then, since you were brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the first place that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you?”

“Doulos: In ancient Greece, a slave (δοῦλος).” In the above translation of Plato’s text, doulos is translated as either child or slave. Thus we have an argument for paternalism and slavery: Socrates, his ancestors, and presumably his descendants, are creatures and chattels of the State.

Is Warren’s position that different?

Perhaps hers is not meant as a serious argument, though, and only as red meat thrown to the “Tax the rich!” political base. But what if Warren is serious?

APEE update — Deirdre McCloskey

Why did the modern economic revolution in production and trade first happen in north-western Europe?

At the APEE conference, Deirdre McCloskey delivered a plenary address based on her new book, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World. Her argument is that neither material resources nor technology nor capital accumulation nor geographical factors drove the transformation. Rather, it was a change in ideas and attitudes: the producers, merchants, and traders who make up the bourgeoisie came to be respected. They got dignity, in marked contrast to the traditional disparaging in cultures dominated by the otherworldly, ascetic values of religion and the predatory martial values of tribal warriors and feudal aristocrats.

Respect for the bourgeoisie meant that they went on to develop the institutions of modern capitalism, they became a political force that undermined traditional feudalism and paved the way for modern democratic-republicanism, and the resulting more free political economy became wealthy, generating the science, the technology, and the educational institutions that we are now familiar with. A virtuous cycle was created.

Note that McCloskey’s explanation is in terms of ideas rather than reductive material forces, and in terms of ethical ideas in particular. That is to say, she is arguing that philosophical ideas are the key causal power.

Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand had earlier argued for ideational over materialist causes of history. Here is Mises in Planned Chaos (1947):

“The history of mankind is the history of ideas. For it is ideas, theories, and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends. The sensational events which stir the emotions and catch the interest of superficial observers are merely the consummation of ideological changes. There are no such things as abrupt, sweeping transformations of human affairs. What is called, in rather misleading terms, a ‘turning point in history’ is the coming on the scene of forces which were already for a long time at work behind the scene. New ideologies, which had already long since superseded the old ones, throw off their last veil, and even the dullest people become aware of the changes they did not notice before” (p. 62).

Here is Rand in For the New Intellectual (1961), focusing more narrowly on philosophical ideas as decisive: “Just as a man’s actions are preceded and determined by some form of idea in his mind, so a society’s existential conditions are preceded and determined by the ascendancy of a certain philosophy among those whose job it is to deal with ideas. The events of any given period of history are the result of the thinking of the preceding period” (p. 27).

McCloskey has been influenced by Israel Kirzner, who was one of Mises’s students. McCloskey’s importance is her is singling out of ethical ideas as fundamental. (Though see also Roark’s courtroom speech in Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943) for the mid-career Rand’s focus on a culture’s moral evaluation of innovators and creators as a key determinant of the course of history.)

I wrote earlier about McCloskey’s wonderfully ambitious Bourgeois Virtues:
* Why life is 255 times better now than in 1800.
* Capitalism versus the good old days.

Also relevant here is the work of Nimish Adhia on India’s recent transformation as a case study in the power of a culture’s moral ideals. Adhia was one of McCloskey’s doctoral students.

The book version of Nietzsche and the Nazis

… is forthcoming in August and is now available for pre-order at Amazon. It will be published in both hardcover and Kindle formats. The image is a gray-scale version of the cover.

The book version is based on the script of the 2006 documentary and is now complete with footnotes, index, bibliography, appendices, and other documentation.

The 2006 documentary is available on Netflix and in DVD format at Amazon.

[Go to the StephenHicks.org main page.]

Hindsight and future resolve [Section 40 of Nietzsche and the Nazis]

[This is Section 40 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]

Part 8. Conclusion: Nazi and Anti-Nazi Philosophies

40. Hindsight and future resolve

We know from historical hindsight that it took a world war to defeat the Nazis. Tens of millions of human beings died in that war. Actual human beings who lived, loved, cried, had dreams—and then were killed. Millions of others had their lives damaged and disrupted seriously. Over and above all that, the economic and cultural costs—the wrecking of people’s homes and possessions, the destruction of works of art, the obliteration of historical artifacts, and so on—those costs are incalculable.

The Nazis lost that war, but it was a close call, and there is no guarantee that it will not happen again.

And this is why it is important that we understand what really motivated National Socialism. By the 1930s, the Nazis had the entire political and economic muscle of Germany at their disposal—but more important than that, they had intellectual muscle behind them and they had a set of philosophical ideals that motivated and energized millions of people. That intellectual and idealistic power more than anything made the Nazis an awesome force to be reckoned with.

History has taught us that the philosophy and ideals the Nazis stood for were and are false and terribly destructive, but we do not do ourselves any favors by writing the Nazis off as madmen or as an historical oddity that will never happen again. The Nazis stood for philosophical and political principles that appealed to millions—that attracted some of the best minds of their generation—and that still command the minds and hearts of people in all parts of the world.

And that means we must face the National Socialists’ philosophical and political ideals for what they actually are—we must understand them, know where they came from, and what intellectual and emotional power they have. Then and only then are we in a position to defeat them. We will be able to defeat them because we will understand their power and we will have more powerful arguments with which to fight back.

Arguing over philosophical and political ideals is often unpleasant. And the issues involved are often abstract, complicated, and emotionally difficult. But there are no shortcuts. Perhaps the best motivation for doing the hard work comes from reminding ourselves regularly and often how much more it costs to settle disputes by war.

We may not like that the Nazis had arguments and positions that many people find attractive. We might find it repulsive to take their arguments seriously. We might find it difficult to get inside their heads to see where they are coming from.

But we have a choice: We either fight those ideas in theory or we fight them in practice. We either fight them in the intellectual realm or we fight them on the battlefield. It might still come to fighting them on the battlefield—but that is always the most terrible option, the most expensive in every possible way, and the one we should avoid if there is any other way to defeat them.

So that means that defeating National Socialism intellectually is the strategy we should follow first. Defeating them intellectually means taking their positions seriously, understanding them, and knowing how to argue against them.

The second rule of politics is: Know your enemy. The first rule of politics is: Know yourself. Know what you stand for and why. Know what matters to you fundamentally and what you are willing to do to achieve it—and, when necessary, to fight to defend it.

That is a very large project, and that is why a culture’s philosophers and other intellectuals do important work—or, if they get it wrong, great damage.

As a beginning to that project, let me indicate a clear direction to start in.

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