Katia N > Recent Status Updates

On being ruled by uk nation:Our government might have been Dutch, or French, or Portuguese, it’s essential features would have remained much the same as they are now. Only perhaps, in some cases, the organization might not have been so densely perfect, and, therefore, some shreds of the human might still have been clinging to the wreck, allowing us to deal with something which resembles our own throbbing heart.’

As we have already glimpsed, peasant rebellions were a systematic feature of a polity which, though it tolerated no criticism or resistance, nonetheless acknowledged – often perversely and after the fact – that dynasties might grow decadent and forfeit the ‘Mandate of Heaven’, at which point it was the peasantry’s proper duty to revolt.

Qing emperors regarded the relief system as their personal responsibility, and devoted substantial amounts of their time to ensuring granaries and canals were in working order, and no corruption. (It is hard to imagine a Louis XVI spending his evenings scrupulously poring over the minutiae of grain prices from Limoges or the Auvergne, although the effort might have ultimately saved his head from the guillotine.’)

Having themselves conquered China from the north, the Qing understood that walls could not eliminate the threat; in the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk with Russia, they partitioned Central Asia and then set about a successful programme of conquering and/or slaughtering nomadic peoples on the Chinese side – so extending their rule over Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet.

To prostrate oneself before the Chinese emperor was to accept the superior temporal power of the empire& spiritual supremacy of the Son of Heaven;&one’s own place ‘under Heaven’. membership of the tribute was, for many countries a political and economic necessity, establishing them as players in an system governed by generally understood rules and values (not unlike membership of the United Nations today).

Traditional Han agriculture knew concrete ecological limits, and highland areas were still inhabited by tribes such as the Hakka. In the 17th century, New World crops allowed these limits to be surpassed, in the 18th 10 mln lowland Chinese had migrated there. Internal colonisation redoubled environmental destruction, as forests previously managed by slash-and-burn pastoralists for a sustainable timber were cleared.

Ming dynasty: The role of girls and women, accordingly, became more rigorously defined (‘men plough, women weave’); there was nothing comparable to the rise in female wage labour seen in Europe at a similar time.

Free-trade policies were installed across the Mongol system in order for the specially authorised merchants to operate effectively. Systems developed for remote tribes, in other words, were scaled up to the continent: from the Baltic to the Pacific was constructed an international system based on nomadic free-trade principles – and this marked the beginning of Eurasia’s modern era.

A man of military inclinations, the new emperor, Gaozu wanted nothing to do with the cerebral bureaucracy he discovered in charge of the state. According to Sima Qian, who was writing just over a century later, Gaozu made no attempt to conceal his dislike: ‘Whenever a visitor wearing a Confucian hat [came] to see him, he immediately [snatched] the hat from the visitor’s head and [pissed] in it.’

China 226 bce: the law applied equally to everyone, including the emperor’s heir; only the emperor, the origin of the law, could stand outside.In the law: death was the punishment for most crimes, and citizens and households had an obligation to inform on each other, lest they receive the same punishments. Soldiers and farmers were given targets and quotas: those who met them could be rewarded with land and slaves.

97% of citizenship was inherited at birth, so very few could claim they ‘deserved’ their mobility while others did not. Citizenship was like inherited property, conferring massive unearned advantages. Unlike property of the financial kind, which was taxed by national governments to mitigate the effects of undeserved advantage, the inequality of a Swede and a Sudanese was not ‘taxed’ or ‘redistributed’.

Riding on the extraordinary physiques of the unemployed youths who spent their days playing football by the Atlantic, Gambia too had developed a niche: male companionship for European women. Deals were struck in the airport arrivals hall; up and down the beaches of Serrekunda, middle-aged female tourists walked hand in hand with their one-week lovers.

Few non-Western countries wished to compete wth the model of diversified economy, democratic political system, highly evolved protections for property and people; that model was declining even in the West. emerging countries in the 21st studied China: its system of authoritarian capitalism suited their situation much better &was selfconsciously imported by Ethiopia, Rwanda, Angola, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, etc

The much-trumpeted Universal Declaration of Human Rights did not stand a chance. The United Nations was not a world parliament:could not guarantee those rights; responsibility for enforcing the Declaration was therefore devolved to the highest authority in existence, which was national governments themselves.this was self-evidently absurd: no agency had more effective means, of infringing a human rights Nat. Gvmt

‘After 1945, everyone was condemned to the European model. Sorting the global population into bounded states would throw up conflicts which continue to dominate our headlines today; in many cases it would demonstrate, retrospectively, the superior capacities of the regimes that were destroyed in the process. ‘

Does this imply people who actively fought for independence didn’t have agency? (Algeria or India)

We can speculate about a very different twentieth century, in which the USA managed the transition of the colonised world to liberal, democratic, capitalist independence. But that is a fantasy, not least because Wilson’s internationalism was moderated by a strong sense of white, Protestant supremacy, and he could never have lived up to the revolutionary portrait made of him in Asian and African debating rooms.

20th cent. equalisation of income and legal status of capital owners&workers went into reverse: the gap between American execs and the Chinese workers who made their products was similar to that between 19th century textile moguls and their Manchester machine operators. Just as in that earlier era, twenty-first-century capitalists were free and politically empowered; their workers were disenfranchised and unfree.

If authoritarian China benefited most conspicuously, however, it is because the objective was never merely that; it was, more fundamentally, to escape the democratic excesses of the West’s own past. After the brutal rout of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 – which sent a clear message that China would not succumb to Western-style democratic decadence – global capital rushed in.

Britain’s socialist parties broke apart, in fact, in the twenty years before the First World War – for socialism, especially in its internationalist form, was difficult to reconcile with British supremacy. Over time, labour politics became nationalist and even imperialist – its purpose less to interrupt the flow of British profits, and more to ensure they were better distributed within the islands.

The perennial story of Eurasian relations was this: Europe wanted Asian products, and was willing to pay dearly for them; Asia wanted nothing from Europe. Europe’s effort to source bullion to pay for the resulting deficit bent the world to a new shape.

the Glorious Revolution inaugurated the modern state in its raw form: an undemocratic commercial machine that unleashed terror at home and abroad. It is important to understand what has been called Britain’s ‘long eighteenth century’ (1688–1815) because in many ways it represents the model to which rich states – especially the United States – are now reverting.

Thomas Vyre’s identity had been stolen. Some might have found this troubling; Vyre was happy about it. It hadn’t suited him anymore. He had long since grown weary of the man he had been, or, at least, the man that others had thought him. Anyone who wanted his identity was welcome to it. (His bank account less so; fortunately no one had tried a hit on that yet.)

It was once said there were ‘five keys to lock the world,’ and these were the British-controlled waters around Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, Alexandria, Gibraltar, and Dover. Now there are still five keys, but they are Malacca, Yokosuka, Hormuz, Suez, and Panama.

A character says about the third decade of the 19th century. Or does he: ‘In any case, this world is in such a bad shape that anyone who does not actively seek ill to others is doing an enormous good.’

I think every writer is a born actor. In first place, the writer takes on the role of themselves and really inhabits the part. A writer is someone who tires easily, and ends up feeling slightly bored with herself, since her intimate contact with herself is, of necessity, too prolonged.

Knowing how to forget evil is another way of remembering. (Saber olvidar lo malo es tener memoria). A Spanish proverb.

When you cannot find the words to express what is actually there, you have the impression of being blind. At such moments one stops for a coffee. Not that coffee helps one to find the right word but it represents a wild gesture of liberation, a gratuitous act which brings freedom.

People who don’t understand life think it’s just a series of things that happen. Those same people adore Van Gogh because he cut off his ear; Toulouse-Lautrec because he was a dwarf; Rembrandt because he starved to death; James Dean because he died in a car accident; Marilyn Monroe because she killed herself. Such people believe in posterity because they think they are posterity. Well then: I say stuff posterity.

I don’t like it when people say I have an affinity with Virginia Woolf (I only read her after writing my first book): the reason is that I do not want to forgive her for committing suicide. Our horrible duty is to keep going to the end. And not to rely on anyone. Live your own reality. Discover the truth. And in order to suffer less, numb yourself slightly.

After I discovered in myself how people think, I was no longer able to believe in the thoughts of others.