Over the past couple of years, an interest towards studying about the American Revolution has skyrocketed, with the famed production of Hamilton at Broadway, which teaches American history through catchy tunes, or the presidency of Donald Trump, which encourages students to read into the history of politics behind the nation.
Ian Tyrell attempts to compare America’s relationship with the wider world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly during the years of American Independence and the French Revolutions. He does this by considering both Britain and France. What truly intrigued me, however, was Chapter 3, which focused on the fluidity of ideas across borders. While Chapter 4 does focus on migration, I emphasised on it in my last blog post (while writing of the South Asian diaspora). Chapter 3 links into Chapter 4 beautifully, as migration does lead to the spread and the divulgence of ideas across the world. Tyrell does seek to argue that people lead to the spread of ideas. While Chapter 4 focuses on the people, Chapter 3 focuses on the ideas.
As foreign travelers travelled west to take a look at a post-1815 America, readers learn of a spread of ideas that was radical. British newspapers broadcasted America’s progress as a nation, foreign travelers such as Tocqueville became aware of new societies. This suggests that it is ultimately people who carry ideas across the world. This brings me back to the discussion we were having during our last seminar, about the Silk Road. After reading a bit more of Peter Frankopan’s “The Silk Roads: A New History Of The World”, I learned more about the ideas, diseases, plagues that seemed to cross the world through these borders. Frankopan makes interesting claims. One that particularly interested me was the notion that the Indian legend of the Mahabharata influenced the Illiad. The spread of ideas through Asia, Europe and the Americas has been taking place for centuries, and makes the subject all the more intriguing to consider.
Tyrell also seems to focus on how connected America seemed to be with the rest of the world. He writes of how the Americans demonstrated to express solidarity with the Poles who were oppressed by the Tsar in 1831, thus revealing that the spread of ideas did not simply function one way. Americans who travelled abroad often took certain ideas with them, and brought other fresh concepts back. It might be quite interesting to look at how this was used in Japan, with the Meiji Restoration of the early 1900s. While China, in the early 1900s, had been through numerous reforms, Japan’s only Meiji Restoration seemed to strengthen the country. This was seen as being partly due to the notion that China was unwilling to look to the West for help. Japan, on the other hand, took inspiration from Germany (and their military, which was strong before WW1) and Great Britain, sending numerous students to study there. Such spread of ideas naturally enhanced the nation, proved by the fact that they grew into one of the strongest empires in the world until the Second World War. China believed that there was “no appreciable difference between merchants and governments. All were barbarians.”(1) Japan’s first prime minister, Ito Hirobumi, was one of the Choshu Five, who were chosen to go to University College London in 1863. He returned, convinced that Japan should adopt the western way of living. As this probably suggests, the spread of ideas across the world seems elemental to the grand decisions made by a government and a country, which is exactly what Tyrell attempts to argue in his chapter.
Further to this, Tyrell’s writings are riddled with case studies and examples of how ideas were spread as early as nineteenth century America. He looks at the Temperance Society in America, implemented by ship captains to abstain from liquor to Liverpool. Tyrell uses examples of pamphlets that were handed out, warning people of the dangers of drinking in America. He writes about the translation of certain pamphlets in foreign countries and new movements that were created in support of the Temperance Society. While moral reforms can be difficult to pin down, as they are commonly led to different scales around the world, it is interesting to note how swiftly these ideas spread across the world.
(1). Edwardes, M. (1973) ‘China and Japan’, in Johnson, D. (ed.) The World of Empires. (London: Benn), p. 298
Thanks so much for writing in such depth on one of our readings for today, Ian Tyrrell (he gave a great talk here on the book a few years ago…). So: ideas & people on the move… and or people & ideas on the move. There are a number of points we could discuss in class, one I would pick is how we phrase and analyse what you & Tyrrell describe as “spread” (e.g. the “spread of ideas…”). Is it just spreading ideas, i.e. as a by-product of people on the move (as perhaps as a by-product of migration), is it an active process of spreading & disseminating ideas / concepts OR a process of active and deliberate borrowing (see your point on Japan).