There is an arch that is slender and beautiful and that defines a great empty space. I saw it shining with its silvery sparkle as it reared its apex 192 meters (620 ft.) on its spot beside the mighty Mississippi River. The Gateway Arch was built in 1967 as a monument to commemorate the place from which the pioneers departed towards the western part of the U.S.A. Seen from afar, it seems unbelievable that a gondola could climb up inside the triangular cross-section of arch. When we have boarded one of the gondolas and ridden to the top of the arch, then through the small windows we may catch a view of the vast panorama. Turning one way we can see the state of Missouri and, in the opposite direction, the state of Illinois.
In the underground theater beneath this arch we--Wallace Gray, his wife Ina, and I--enjoyed the 70mm movie, The Great American West projected on a giant-screen. It began in French.
The year is 1803 and the place is Napoleon's residence in Paris. There a report is being conveyed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs who has just arrived by coach. The person sitting in the office with his back to us, as though absorbed in thought, is young Napoleon Bonaparte. This is just prior to the time when he becomes emperor. He has already integrated most of Europe with the exception of Britain. The news that has now arrived is to the effect that the American President Jefferson has agreed to the Louisiana Purchase for the sum of $15,000,000.
Saying, "Your Excellency has emptied Jefferson's purse," the minister is just getting up to leave when Napoleon detains him with, "Just a minute!" Napoleon is examining a large but incomplete map. "There is something that I have been thinking about for some time. I have been wondering whether or not there may be a route through there to the West." "I think that is impossible," replies the minister.
So the movie goes. I do not know how accurate this exchange is. However, it is probably fairly close to the truth. At this time Napoleon did not know what he had lost. And at that moment history was in the process of being significantly altered.
Indisputable, isn't it?
Many "facts" of history are disputable, especially where thoughts and intentions are involved. We'll call attention to a few of these as we go along, especially in Bridge 11.
Wide horizons of knowledge and action are often closed to all of us because of political or commercial blinders (blunders!). Like the Napoleon of this essay, we often have fleeting glimpses of golden opportunities about to slip through our fingers.
Some of our most potent "encounters" appear as nearly invisible opportunities in daily life. -- WG
From the 16th to the 18th century, what all European nations were aiming at was Asia, especially China. The reason is that China was indeed the most advanced nation in the world because of its production of excellent goods. All countries were seeking trade with China. The eminent Dutch scholar Andre Gunder Frank addressed the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations meeting in St. Louis in 1999. On that occasion he overturned the commonly accepted theory that the period beginning with the 16th century was one characterized by Europe's preeminence in the world. Of this he said, "In the 18th century, the Gross Domestic Product for China (GDP) was three times that of Europe." Frank pointed to the fact that in China silver was being accumulated from the whole world, including Japan. In particular, the silver discovered in the New World was being used to buy Chinese products.
"Europe only gained a dominant position in the 19th century." This announcement by Professor Frank does run against common opinion, but there is much persuasive power in what he said. Yet Japan is scarcely included in this cogent revision of history, although the Iwami silver mine was producing one-third of the world's silver needs at that time. It is a fact that while Europe was planning to overturn the axis of the world system through its "industrial revolution," Japan was in the midst of an "industrious revolution." In other words, through economization and recycling, Japan "took off from" the Chinese continent in the same way that Europe did. Soon after this Japan experienced the Meiji Restoration.
If his minister had answered, "Yes, I think so" when Napoleon wondered aloud whether there might be a new route to China, history might have taken a completely different course.
A significant historical fact is that Queen Isabella of Castile (1451-1504) "and her counselors were more ready to recognize the rights of the Indians than was Columbus; she ordered some of those he had brought back as slaves to be released." (Micropaedia, Vol. 6, "Isabella I," p. 398.)
A historically disputable point concerns Japan's economic take-off. Woodburn and other Euro-American historians believe this was "triggered by [Japan's] being forced open to outside trade by American gunboats."
Hattori responds, "This comes later. Europeans' misunderstanding is to think this opening was the beginning of Japanese development. Japan did develop during the Edo (Tokugawa) period, lasting from about 1600 to 1867." Many experts on Japan and world economics are tending to agree with Hattori's conclusion about this.
For many Americans, Hattori's statement that Asia was an object of the second wave of expansion to the West may come as a surprise if not an occasion for skepticism. But here what Dr. Woodburn has communicated to me may be of special interest: The seizure of the Philippines and Hawaii were part of the rush for colonies in the run-up to world War I, in which all nations aspiring to prominence took part. Puerto Rico and Cuba were part of this effort, justified by security needs for forward bases in all directions. Your author [Dr. Hattori] might be interested in a 1898 speech , later published as a bestselling pamphlet, "The March of the Flag" by Albert J. Beveridge, which proclaimed the oceans (through means of naval capabilities of the industrial age) made such overseas territories "contiguous." Following the Meiji Restoration, Japan sought the respect of other colonizing nations not only by aggressive industrialization, but also by colonizing Korea, and Sakhalin and Mancuria after defeating the Russians in 1903-05.
I'll let Hattori state one other point on which he and many well-educated scholars have initially disagreed with Hattori's integral view of the overland "Silk Roads" and the maritime trade routes. Of the view of the Silk Road (actually a system of roads) as an exclusively overland route, he has written me, "Old idea! The notion changed since UNESCO's 1988 Integral Study of Silk Roads: Roads Dialogue! The maritime route was recognized as a Silk Road." A rather full account of this project-its origin and implications-is found in Letters from the Silk Roads by Professor Hattori. That book's very first sentence states, "The silk roads, over land and sea, were above all the routes of dialogue between civilizations."
He established the role played by oceans in the history of civilizations. On this point he joins my own thinking. The importance of maritime routes was not limited to the Arabian dhows or their successors the Moghuls or Ottomans, i. e., the Islamic powers between the 8th and 16th centuries. Newly developed Western Europe took over some of this routing after the battle of Lepanto (1571), a major turning point.
The East and South China Seas were the domain of Chinese junks for a long time. In the 16th century Japanese pirates invaded this sphere. The Ming Dynasty had closed its harbors.
The dominance of maritime routes decided the future. There was a sort of parallelism between the rise of Japan and Western Europe that followed the decline of Islamic countries and China. During its period of "national isolation" (sakoku) Japan developed "inside" by its "Industrious Revolution" at the same time Europe was developing "outside" by the Industrial Revolution, which involved much interaction with the "outside".
"Outside" may also be taken to refer to external or material development of such things as tools of mass production, assembly lines, etc., in contrast with the "inside" development of habits of frugality and personal industriousness.
In further correspondence, Hattori has indicated to me that Western scholarship's lag in acceptance of some of these discoveries is in part due to the insufficient availability in English of work such as Kawakatsu's. The present book and our previous work on the Silk Roads, he believes, should help close the knowledge gap.
For Japanese readers Hattori had elaborated further:
Already in Roman times the maritime Silk Road connected East and West, but since the appearance of Mohammed in the 7thcentury, the Arabs became the leading users of that route. Their high-speed dhows with the triangular sails went back and forth carrying Indian and Chinese products. The period of the Moghul Empire, extending until the time of the Ottoman Empire, is the period when the Indian Ocean was an Islamic ocean. However, the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571 became a turning point, and the great powers of Christian Europe now expanded into this ocean. The South China Sea had been China's, but Japanese ships advanced into it. All this meant a huge tranformation of the world system.