A Review of Emmanuel Todd's "La Défaite de l'Occident"

It is always refreshing to read the work of Emmanual Todd, as he is one of the few Western intellectuals to challenge beliefs which, from time to time, tend to be shared by journalists, politicians, and other members of the commentariat (and the group from which they mostly derive, namely, upper class professionals). The first time I was exposed to his ideas was in 2008, during my PhD, in a course on the subject of the rise and fall of empires, including the American one. Todd famously predicted the collapse the USSR in the early 80s, while most others at the time predicted stability, and he did this on the basis of demographic and cultural variables that were elsewhere ignored; most of his contemporaries tended to look at indices of hard power like territory, military, and economy, which, when adding the motivations of USSR’s rulers, pointed to continuity. In this example, his training in anthropology plus his analytical ability proved to be an asset, allowing him to see what most others did not. 

This tendency among Western commentators, especially in Anglo countries, to mostly sing from the same tune on the subject of geopolitical questions (it sometimes seems as if they are taking their cue from the editorial positions of the Economist, of which I have been a faithful reader for almost 20 years) is observable in the conflict which has destabilized Europe, the war in Ukraine.  In the book I will review in this blogpost, La Défaite de l'Occident (The Defeat of the West), Todd provides an alternative perspective to the mainstream one and in so doing encourages readers to question their beliefs and even revise them.

An Inconoclast

The standard view of the war in Ukraine is that it started on Feburary 24, 2022, and that one man, Vladimir Putin, is largely responsbile. His motivations, it has been stated at one time or another, range from covid-induced craziness, to the imperialist attempt to re-establish a Russian empire as the loss of the USSR was never psychologically come to terms with. Whatever the motivation, Putin and his generals are presented as acting on the basis of pure malice, ignorance, or irationality, while Ukraine and its Western backers are the voices of reason, justice, and morality. This narrative is given more layers of meaning by depicting the conflict as one between “democracy” and “authoritarianism”, which presumes that Ukraine and its Western backers are paragons of democratic rule, while Putin and his henchmen are dictators afraid that democracy in Ukraine will set an example which will lead to more demands for democracy in Russia. Questioning this framework leads to one getting labeled as a “Putin puppet” or some other designation which not so subtly implies that, in polite discourse, only one interpretation is acceptable, and that those who criticize it are either ignorant or victims of Russian propaganda.

La Défaite de l'Occident provides readers with a very different interpretation in part because Todd focuses on different variables. As in his other work, and reflective of his training and expertise, he looks at culture, religion, family structure, demographics, and sociological indicators, and how they help to explain foreign policy decisions in general and the NATO-Ukraine conflict in particular. The theoretical assumption is that the key to understanding international behaviour is to look at domestic society and politics. This is a theory of international relations which obliges us to examine a longer span of history rather than the last few years or decades. Accordingly, before examining Todd’s analysis of the war, it is essential to present his ideas on the fundamental changes in the West and especially the US, and how they relate to decisions and patterns vis-à-vis the conflict.

Rise and Decline 

Todd begins with the development of modern nation-states and looks at the role of Christianity in their formation. The Protestant reformation was crucial in this regard as it led to the publication and distribution of the bible in the vernacular languages (previously it was published only in Latin, the language spoken by the elite), as believers were obliged to establish a personal relationship with God via the written word, and not, as in Catholic countries, through the inter-mediary of the church hierarchy. This led to widespread literarcy and to the standardization of distinct languages in Protestant countries, mostly in Northern Europe. A consequence was the development of a shared value system, rooted in Protestantism, between masses and elites which would form the basis of national consciousness. Thus it was religion, and not the ideals of the French revolution, which led to the political form which we call the nation-state which would eventually become the dominant political unit in the international system. 

Protestantism was different from Catholicism in other respects. The latter’s concept of original sin implied that all were equal, while Protestant sects such as calvinism believed that some were favoured and selected by God (the doctrine of predestination), which introduced into Christianity ideas about divinely sanctioned natural hierarchy. In one of Emmanual Todd’s more original and controversial statements, he argues that this helps to explain the fact that some of the worst forms of racism occurred in Protestant countries. Nazism in Germany grew mostly out of the Protestant not Catholic parts of the country; the US abolished slavery relatively late and afterwards institutionalized segregation; Canada, the US, Sweden, and not Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain, implemented eugenics, that abonimable state-sanctioned policy of sterilization of so-called inferiors.

Leaving aside this dark aspect in Protestant countries, across the Western world religion would eventually provide a glue which binded governors and the governed; a shared language and moral framework also established the conditions for community ties and civic associations. Democracy understood as multiparty elections and the rule of law functioned with a relatively high degree of stability and legitimacy when shared values among various social classes anchored in national conscioussness were present.

Family structure worked in combination with culture and religion to produce a relatively stable social order in which democracy could function, but here too there were differences among Western countries. The nuclear family which reigned supreme in Protestant countries had hierarchical elements which reinforced the ideas of superiority and inferiority inherited from their religion. On the other hand, there were liberal elements in the realm of gender relations, namely, the social of status of both mother and father could be transmitted to the children; this, says Todd, helps explain why Protestant countries were also among the first to advance the feminist cause.  

From my reading of La Défaite de l'Occident, to understand contemporary international relations and especially Western and non-Western relations, we need to explore how the relatively stable system mentioned above began to weaken, and especially the breakdown of shared values which binded elites and masses. One must begin by pointing out that the frailing of Western institutions, such as the nation and the state, is not the discourse of obscure Russian or Chinese propoganists. It is well outlined in the work of serious Western scholars including Colin Crouch, Christopher Lasch, Michael Lind, David Goodhart, and Christophe Guilley. This crisis has been especially evident since the 2010s, as populism grew and produced several major changes in Western history, including the Brexit referendum and the Trump phenomenon, which demonstrate that millions of citizens reject their country’s system and are willing to vote for anti-establishment parties. This is evidence of a lack of legitimacy, without which political regimes, democratic or other, cannot be stable. Political polarization is another key feature of contemporary Western democracies, whereby there has been a centrifugal proliferation of many parties with supporters who view compatriots from other parties as evil or corrupt rather than, as would be the case in an ideal civic system, as possessing different views derived from reason and potentially adjustible via civil debate and discourse. Even the US, where two major parties remain, has seen a splintering into different political families which in many ways are incompatible although they sometimes campaign under the same party banner (MAGA and mainstream Republicans are the most visible examples of this trend). 

Todd’s contribution to this well-known centrifugal tendency is to connect it to the decline of religion, while introducing a distinct vocabulary to help readers grasp his reasoning. Religion went through three phases in the West and particularly Protestant countries such as the US: 1) active, 2) zombie, 3) nihilism. In the first, religion provided the shared value system mentioned above which, most importantly, bound the governed and governors and ensured a high degree of stability and legitimacy. In the zombie state, most people no longer go to mass, but they continue to engage in the religious ceremonies which mark life’s three major stages: birth, marriage, and death. Their subjective worlds are now more influenced by secular ideologies or hedonist considerations such as consumerism than by religion. In the zombie state, all religious practices and beliefs have fell by the wayside even though the legacy of religion is still visible in the names of streets, public holidays, art and architecture. 

The decline of religion in the second and third phases does not lead to the secular humanist ideal of reason, rather than superstition, being the main guide to belief. Rather, new political ideologies reign supreme and provide moral frameworks, the basis of social action and determine the formation of networks and relationships among key actors. One ideology that Todd focuses on, as it is relevant to the understanding the decline (and, as per the title, the defeat) of the West is neoliberalism, which placed market relations above all other criteria in guiding political action. Privileging economic growth and free trade contributed to, among other things, the increasing financialization of the economy, whereby capital less and less was allocated to manufacturing which was central to the creation of a middle class; rather, more capital went to stocks, bonds, and especially property, all of which was made possible by easy access to credit and high levels of debt. This helped to generate inequality as some sectors, especially banking, accounting, and law, benefited far more than others. 

In La Défaite de l'Occident, Todd reminds readers that, although this trend is visible across the West, it reached extreme proportions in the US because of the status of the dollar as the international reserve currency, which increases demand for US securities, lowering interest rates and allowing both the American federal government and US consumers to increase debt-based consumption. At the same time, it articifically inflates the value of the dollar and in so doing punishes US manufacturers while favouring imports. Another consequence is that fewer citizens study engineering, as it is more profitable and status enhancing to study business, finance, or law. Todd presents data which illustrates how China and Russia produce far more engineers than the US, and that this helps to explain why their production prowess in either natural resources or manufacturing compared to rivals, a fact not unrelated to the events in Ukraine (more on this below). 

To these trends Todd adds the indicators of health such as obesity and chronic disease, which have reached unprecedented levels in the US, and have led to a health sector which consumes 18.8% of GDP (in 2022). The opoid epidemic is more evidence of fraying social ties, as are mass shootings and gun violence. The US is the only Western country where life expectancy has decreased, which is attributable to the higher death rates of middle-aged white men in deindustrialized cities and towns. 

For Todd, it is no coincidence that these trends coincide with with the zombie and nihilist stages of religion, which led to, among other things, extreme atomisation, or the break down of community and civic ties and the rupture between masses and elites. Numerous opinion polls attest the fact that politicians and journalists are the least trusted actors, Todd reminds readers. They are percieved as selfish, dishonest, and corrupt in part because of the breakdown of social ties, the increase in inequality, the rise of social problems are the direct consequence of decisions taken by powerful people who have more in common with powerful people in other countries than they do with their lower-class compatriots. 

These observations lead Todd to question that concept which has been central to the neoliberal era, GDP. Movements in this indicator are almost daily deployed in the media as a measure of success or failure of government policy, or to compare the performance of countries and then to distill conclusions about their relative strength or weakness. In particular, the US’s ranking on GDP, both aggregate and per capita, is often cited to illustrate its status as top dog in the system. La Défaite de l'Occident shows that when we take into account that much economic activity, such as finance, often reflects parasitic ponzi schemes, or pharmaceuticals, which is indicative of widespread chronic disease and hence weakness and decline, GDP begins to lose its force as an accurate indicator of national strength. He further shows that if we measure GDP in terms of actual material production which contributes to national strength by substracting the mentioned economic activities, US GDP per capita in 2022 drops from $76 000 to $39 520 (below we will see the importance of this when we connect it to Todd’s analysis of the war in Ukraine). 

Finally, the decline of religion and its replacement with neoliberalism leads to a new clerisy with a self-ordained mission to spread liberalism around the world, through force if necessary. This pattern has occurred across the West but again, it has taken extreme proportions in the US in part because of its imperial status. During much of the 20th century, American foreign policy was led by a WASP elite imbued with Protestant values anchored in a widely shared national consciousness. According to Todd, they were more likely to understand or recongize cultural or civilizational differences which made the Western model inapt for Eastern societies, including Russia’s. It was replaced by a foreign policy elite imbued with the ideology known as neoconservatism, which is a bit of a misnomer, as it aimed to promote liberal democratic revolutions around the world utilizing various methods to enact regime change. A network of bureacrats, politicians, journalists, and academics replaced the WASP elite to make neoconservatism the dominant foreign policy paradigm, a fact recognized by the Obama administration’s designation of this network as the “blob”, which highlights how they form a kind of homogenous and invasive agent which can spread its tentacles in the aparatus of state and society. 

This “blob” is at least partly responsible for the many policy fiascos which have destablished and damaged many countries, including the invasion of Iraq, the intervention in Syria, the overthrow of Ghaddafi, and, most importantly for the present work, the war in Ukraine. For the present purposes, what matters is that it is an indicator of Western and especially US decline. We can now connect the disparate but connected themes above to the main case study.  

The war in Ukraine

The mainstream interpretation of the war—the one challenged by Todd—is that it was an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign democratic country by an authoritarian one which aims to re-establish a lost empire. When we take into acount the critiques above, a very different interpretation emerges. First, in a West and especially the US characterized with crises of representation, polarization, rising inequality, atomization, and the severed bond between the governors and the governed, it becomes misleading to characterize them as “democratic” in the ideal or unqualified sense. Todd goes farther and labels them as liberal oligarchies, as majority rule becomes untenable when there is a centrifugal splintering, polarization, and rupture in the ties that binded most citizens to their rulers. If the majority does not rule, decisions still have to be made, and these decisions often come from powerful minorities such as lobbies or the “blob” which have captured society’s commanding heights. Meanwhile, he doesn’t deny Russia’s authoritarian character, but reminds readers that opposition to Putin mostly comes from upper-class Russians in European and cosmopolitan cities like Moscow and St Petersburg; lower class citizens who live in rural areas or the periphery form the majority, and they continue to support Putin. From this strictly numerical perspective, it could be argued that Putin enjoys more popular support than most Western leaders, many of whom are utterly detested by the majority of their compatriots especially the lower class ones (Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron are the most flagrant examples of this trend). It follows that, rather than the conflict being one of democracy versus authoritarian, it is more accurate to frame it as Western liberal oligarchy pitted against Russia’s majoritarian/illiberal authoritarianism. 

The democracy vs authoritarian interpretation simplifies and obscures in other ways. Ukraine is actually divided along ethnic lines, and Todd presents a map to highlight this. In an election on 2010, the pro-Russia candidate of Viktor Ianoukovytch received between 60% and 90% amount of votes from the Russian speaking regions in the South East. They were allowed to protect their language, but Kiev passed a law which aimed to impose Ukrainian language on these regions. This delicate ethnic balance, plus the historical importance to Russia, was one reason why strict neutrality was one of the conditions of independence and enshrined in the constitution; in 2014, this was removed and replaced with the aim of joining Western institutions including NATO.  These complex ethnic, historical, and political dynamics are either ignored or minimized in most Western commentary, in part because of the democracy vs authoritarian frame leads to a binary reductionism (not coincidently, many Western commentators made the same mistake in their interpretations of ethnically diverse Iraq, Syria, and Libya).

As mentioned, Todd observes that Western states and especially the Anglo-Protestant ones have entered into the nihilist phase, and one characteristic of nihilism is to deny objective reality. To illustrate this gap with reality, he cites many of the utterly failed predictions and claims made about the war. Examples include Bruno Le Maire saying that Western sanctions would make the Russian economy collapse, or Macron’s well-intensioned but naïve statement that the West should avoid “humiliating” Russia (Russia could, if it wanted, with its hypersonic missiles, destroy France instantly). In the summer of 2023, moreover, Western citizens were led to believe that Ukraine’s counteroffensive would turn the tide, in part because the country was amply supplied by Western technology, money, and arms. One reason for this mismatch between interpretation and reality, we learn from La Défaite de l'Occident, is that Western leaders believed that since together they had the highest GDPs, they were more powerful. North American and European GDP combined is more than 20 times greater than Russia’s; this is similar to comparing the GDP say, of Germany and tiny Malta. And yet Russia is prevailing on the battlefield. Why? In part because a portion of Western GDP is fictional and not related to material production, especially the essential hardware during times of war: artillery, rockets, missiles, transport vehicles, equipment. Russia also possesess the natural resources, such as agricultural products, minerals, and oil, which it turns out have added value during times of conflict; food inflation skyrocketed in Western countries, during 2023, in part because their markets were now closed to essential primary goods produced by Russia. Countries which continued normal trade with Russia, such as India or China, enjoyed stable prices. It is this which helps to explain why, in the past two years, Russia’s economic growth has exceeded Germany’s, France’s, and Italy’s, according the IMF. It also highlights how highly financialized economies may produce many rich people but they do not necessarily add to national strength which is tested during times of war. 

Perhaps the most revealing denial of reality comes to the surface when we examine that the European and North American interpretation of the war is not shared by the rest of the world and especially the global South. China, India, and most of Asia, as well as Africa and South America, interpret Western leaders similar to how many ordinary and lower class Westerners do: as selfish, corrupt, and dishonest. They therefore are highly cynical about the moralizing of Western elites, especially when many of these same elites are responsible for the destabilizing and destructive interventions in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Moreover, they reject the social model propounded by the West of hyper-individualism, hedonism, and materialism, which, they conclude, leads to the breakdown of society. Rather, they want the good parts of modernity like technological development and economic growth while preserving their society’s cosmology (or metaphysical/spiritual values) and traditions which bind citizens of different social classes in general and masses and elites in particular. Given this interpretation of the West, the world outside Europe and North America (that is the vast majority of the planet) is more likely to interpet the conflict as being the result of Western arrogance which provoked Russia. And as many of them have been victims of Western arrogance, either in the form of colonialism or more recent interventions, they are cheering for Russia even though in public they speak with pious platitudes about the need for peace and diplomacy.  

The tendency to deny reality leads to other observable patterns, such as Western leaders telling their citizens that the objective of support for Ukraine, including potentially sending troops, is “Ukraine’s victory” or Russia’s “strategic defeat”. Apart from the impossibility of defining these goals, it obscures the real stakes and relative positions of the beliigerents and, in so doing, is not helpful for ending the war. We know from various sources, including the letter Putin sent to Washington before the invasion, plus the negotiations which occurred two months after, that Moscow’s main demands are the preservation of Crimea to protect its naval base in Sevastepol and access to the black sea; the protection and autonomy of Russian minorities in the South East; and the permenant status of neutrality of Ukraine. Negotiations in Turkey in 2023 also highlighed that Russia would accept Ukraine joining the EU, but not NATO, as it is a military organization. If Western leaders genuinely believe that none of these demands are acceptable, and that only complete withdrawal from Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, while allowing Ukraine to join NATO, can end the war, they should be explicit about the price they are willing to pay for this. Judging by their actions, they are unwilling to sacrifice their own citizens’ lives, nor are they willing to risk nuclear war. If this is the case, then those objectives are unachievable and only a negotiated compromise can end the conflict. 

Such a compromise, along the lines under negotiation in 2023, is the most likely outcome. The tragedy is that it could have been achieved earlier, before hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure destroyed. The West’s and especially the US’s inability to see its own weaknesses, its tendency to simplify or to deny reality, the rise of inequality and the rupture of masses and elites which has effectively replaced majority rule with powerful minorities like neoconservatives, all contributed to this state of affairs, and all can be traced to the zombie and nihilistic phases of Western culture. This is the most important lesson of La Défaite de l'Occident. 

On Learning Chinese

In this blogpost I like to record events and experiences which have left a lasting impression. It is for that reason that most posts are on important books I’ve read and on places I’ve travelled to. I have occasionally written on experiences unrelated to those topics, such as the passing of a good friend, or the excitement of learning how to start and tend a fire. In this blogpost, I’ll write about my experiences of learning Chinese. It is my 5^th language—Italian and English my first, and I learned French and Spanish later in life—and learning Chinese has been unlike the others for reasons I will now try to articulate.

 

While living in France and Spain, learning was accelerated by forming friendships with locals, many of whom could not speak English, and so in those countries, I never had to pay for language lessons. In contrast, learning Chinese while living in China’s economic capital, Shanghai, takes a great degree of conscious effort and investment because it is an international city where most can speak at least some English. For these reasons, it would be possible for me to live comfortably in the city without ever learning the local language (which is often the case among foreigners I meet). Of course, this would be unacceptable and something I would later regret.

 

I started learning on an app in November 2022, which involved 1 hour per day of listening to, and repeating, words and short sentences. Then, from late February to early May of 2023, I took a course at the university which entailed two 90-minute classes per week. During July and August of 2023, I paid for four 1-hour private lessons per week, a decision made because I spent that entire summer in Shanghai and had some extra time from not having to teach classes. And starting in September of 2023, I reduced the number of weekly classes to two, while practising several times a week with language exchange partners.  At the time of this writing (November 2023), I am at the HSK 3 level, which roughly corresponds with beginner-intermediate; I can now structure full sentences, and have conversations, about daily life—for example work, food, friends, weather, travel (while often making copious amounts errors in pronunciation and grammar).

 

As learners will inevitably discover, a unique feature of Chinese is the importance of tone. There are four, which roughly correspond with high, low, rising and falling. A change in tone of the same syllable produces a whole new meaning. This is one of the biggest hurdles for students because this structure is absent in other languages. Consequently, foreigners and especially Westerners must train their listening to spot patterns in shifts of tone, and developing this skill involves a lot of laser-focused listening and deciphering of the same sentences over and over again until the shifts can be detected.

 

It is also essential to train the tongue to pronounce sequences of sounds which do not exist in the other languages I speak. For example, 我们 可以从  中间这会条路, which translates to “ we can start from the middle of this road and go up,” is pronounced "wo men kè yi cóng zhöng jiän zhe tiao lu shang qu.”  Try saying that very fast!  These kinds of sentences are tongue twisters because the phonetic sequences are alien to foreign vocal chords.

 

Another important feature is that Chinese is a very context-based language which means that meaning is often derived equally from the specific situations rather than from the sounds emanating from the speakers mouth. For example,  差不多 is pronounced "cha bu duo", and in one context means “similar,” in another this same pronunciation means “ending.”

 

It is essential to learn the Chinese characters. This is something I wanted to avoid because of the extra work and difficulty. There are around 50 thousand, and so it would be impossible at this stage in my life to learn them all. I’ve been told that 1500 are used in 90% of text, and memorizing them is in principle doable, but still: I have a busy schedule and so there are limits to the amount of time I can devote to studying Chinese. Nonetheless, it eventually became unavoidable, for several reasons. One is that I sometimes need to type and receive text messages in Chinese. Of course, I can use the translator, and I often do, but I also would like to read and type Chinese without the aid of technology. Additionally, learning the characters allows for a deeper understanding of the language, which of course has value in its own right. As of this writing, I’ve memorized several dozen, and so can type and read simple messages like “where shall we meet?”, “at what time?”, “let’s meet at the library.” By next year, I hope, I’ll be able to read full paragraphs.

 

It is a very metaphorical and hence poetic language, which accounts for the countless axioms and pearls of wisdom often expressed in pithy form. An example is 一叶知秋, pronounced "yí yè zhi giù," which translates to "the falling of one leaf heralds the coming of autumn," but which means "a small sign can indicate a great trend." 

Moreover, so many words I’ve learned seem to be creative combinations of several separate concepts. One of my favourites is “enthusiasm” 热情 which combines the characters for "hot" and "emotion." 

 

Another charming feature is how Western names become sinocized. My own, Filippo, is 菲利波 and pronounced "fe li bo." Madrid is 马德里 pronounced "ma de li"

The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire

In the Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, Edward Luttwak makes several useful contributions to scholarship on international relations, and to readers interested in the underlying dynamics of imperial politics, past and present. A key claim is that the Roman empire can be usefully divided into three distinct stages, loosely corresponding with expansion, consolidation, retrenchment. Each phase reflected an imperial strategy with a distinct hierarchy of priorities conditioned by various factors including Rome’s unsentimental and materialist culture, the ebbs and flows of Rome’s enemies, especially Parthia in the South and the German tribes in the North, and by the “economy of force”—defined as the available resources, men and infrastructures, necessary to carry out Rome’s will. Remarkably, readers learn, this “grand strategy” occurred despite Rome not having maps, or indeed any official documents which outlined systematic thinking about international relations.

To sustain this argument, Luttwak relies on several assumptions which, in my view, are quite sound. Perhaps the most important one is that, in discerning patterns of Rome’s imperial policy, we need to pay attention to what Romans did more than what they said. Looking only at the latter, for example, would be misleading because Roman writers often spoke with highfalutin rhetoric about their empire as being the apogee of mankind, and destined to reign forever. In reality, Luttwak shows, Roman officials were very pragmatic and utilized various techniques to achieve the two main objectives for inhabitants of the empire, security and prosperity. It was the effective provision of these two goods which ensured the obedience of Rome’s subjects, and cost-benefit calculations occurred among them as well. When the empire provided these valuable goods at an acceptable price, the system was stable, but when Rome could no longer secure their provision, or could only do so at an unacceptably high cost, its days were numbered, which is precisely what occurred. 

In this blog post, I will outline Luttwak’s account of Rome’s imperial strategy while endeavouring to distil insights relevant to the dynamics of international security and, more generally, to patterns of imperial politics in the present era.

Three systems

Rome, as we know, was a republic from 509 BC to 27 BC, and officially became an empire after the civil wars which began with the killing of Caesar and which culminated with Octavian’s defeat of Anthony and Cleopatra. Luttwak’s story, then, begins when Octavian, later named Augustus, became Rome’s first emperor. The first system, categorized by Luttwak as “Julio-Claudian,” roughly lasted from 27 BC to 69 AD, and was characterized by expansionism. Military spending under Augustus, who reigned for 45 years, was roughly half of total expenditures, and major conquests included Britain, and parts of Germany until the defeat in the battle of Teutoburg which put an end to Augustus’s attempt to conquer the North.

Augustus 

A key objective was to provide security to the frontiers of conquered territories, a necessary condition for prosperity and Romanization. However, the methods used to provide these goods were not homogenous across the vast expanse of the Mediterranean. In some provinces, Romans settled and established direct political control. In others, Romans relied on the client system; this latter is extensively analysed in The Grant Strategy of the Roman Empire because of how it supports the book’s main thesis. Many local tribes were acutely aware of Rome’s awesome military strength, and especially its willingness to crush recalcitrant or disobedient peoples (most dramatically illustrated by the siege of Masada). Rome strategically utilized this armed suasion to establish client relations with some tribes: the latter could provide security at the frontier in return for autonomy and various perks including citizenship and subsidies. From Rome’s perspective, this was a much cheaper way of establishing rule than sending legions to settle and pacify local peoples, and it allowed the allocation of precious resources to more troublesome areas, especially in the Western part of the empire. The client system allowed a very favourable “economy of force”—that is, the relation between military inputs (soldiers, settlers, infrastructures necessary for transportation and taxation) and outputs (security of the frontiers). 

Another effective device for maintaining security with a favourable input-output ratio of material resources was demonstrated by the status of Armenia as a neutral and buffer state.  This small country was sandwiched between two ancient great powers—Rome and Parthia—who periodically fought for supremacy between 54 BC and 217 AD. These wars, of course, were costly, and so both parties had an interest in peace, and one of the ways they secured this was agreement over Armenia’s status. Luttwak elaborates on the special and systemic character of a buffer state. It cannot be a great power, otherwise it itself would threaten the security of its neighbours, but its geographical location can potentially be used by competing great powers to threaten rivals. By agreeing to strict and enforceable neutrality, it reassures its powerful neighbours and, in so doing, lessons the sense of insecurity which is often the catalyst to war (as we will see below, this has important implications for the war in Ukraine, which at the time of writing this blogpost remains unresolved). 

The second system assessed by Luttwak in the Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, called “Antonine,” lasted roughly from 69 AD to the 3rd century AD. Here, we see the fruits of the successful system built by Augustus and his immediate predecessors: shared prosperity and Romanization. During this period, Roman technology, culture, and wealth radiated outwards from the capital to the provinces and clients across the empire. The paradox of this development is that Rome’s enemies also adopted Roman knowledge and technology and, consequently, became more advanced in terms of political organization and military capacity. They now posed a greater threat than previously, when they were scattered and mostly illiterate barbarian tribes who often fought among themselves (divisions which Rome strategically exploited, of course). 

As Rome’s enemies became stronger, the cost of providing security to the frontiers increased, and the client system became less and less useful. Now, Rome had to commit more resources and especially soldiers, but also building extensive barriers which divided the empire from its enemies; Hadrian’s wall in Northern England is the most famous example. The economy of force was now less favourable in the sense that military inputs were directly proportional to military outputs. This system was sustainable, of course, as long as available resources permitted. But the crises in the third century including plague, internal strife, and economic recession put serious strain and began the process of the empire’s unravelling. 

This led to the third and final system in Luttwak’s framework, in which Rome was constantly on the defensive, because of the twin pressures of internal decay and decline and the increase in barbarian strength. Under these conditions, Rome could less and less provide the empire’s raison d’etre: security to citizens, an essential condition for their prosperity. Meanwhile, the capital still demanded payment of taxes to fulfil its fiscal needs. Here, the calculations of Romans especially in the provinces and frontiers were altered; their obedience and willingness to pay taxes depended on Rome’s provision of security and prosperity, and when it could no longer be provided at a reasonable price, they became more willing to accept the security provided by Rome’s enemies. The Western part of empire consequently slowly unravelled until its demise in the fourth century.

These three systems, argues Luttwak, reflected, as per the book’s eponymous title, “Rome’s Grand Strategy.” Many scholars may be sceptical about this argument, given the following considerations: first, the concept of grand strategy is a contemporary one, and it seems anachronistic to apply it to antiquity. Second, and related, is that there is little evidence in the narrative sources that Romans thought systematically about international relations in the manner posited by Luttwak. Third, Romans lacked maps which allowed them to precisely delineate their frontiers, an a priori essential condition for strategic thinking about imperial policy. 

Luttwak begins his response to these critiques by challenging common notions of strategy. For most contemporary readers, the concept conjures images of specialized officials in a capital’s headquarters engaged in elaborate and systematic theorizing about the various costs and benefits of different approaches; this eventually results in an agreement of the most optimal way to move forward, itemized in some official document which then guides decisions. Readers of the Grand Strategy are invited to consider a rather non-intuitive but plausible definition of strategy as a reflection of the decisions made during the struggle of adversarial forces, which is refracted through the lens of culture and constrained by the available resources. Applied to Rome, decisions about the provision of security depended on the character of her enemies; if they were strong and were a major threat, Rome would send the legions on the offensive and militarily crush them; if the threat was minor, such as border raids by small tribes, the client system was sufficient. 

Threats were interpreted through Rome’s pragmatic unsentimental, and materialist culture, where close attention was paid to the allocation of precious resources, and adjustments were made if required by circumstances. By looking at the changes in how Rome managed its frontiers, we can distil insights on the drivers of imperial policy, which reveals a calculating and systematic thinking which would be obscured if we looked only at the textual sources. To illustrate this tendency, Luttwak compares Rome to the empires of Alexander the Great and Napoleon; the latter two, unlike Rome’s, were very short lived-in part because of the egotistical expansionism of the two emperors. Alexander and Napoleon, both of whom sought glory and conquest as an end in itself, lacked the pragmatism that would have perhaps led to a greater sensitivity of the material costs and benefits of a particular action, and to better decisions on how precious resources could be optimally allocated in a way that ensured the security and hence stability of their conquests. 

Roman Emperors, of course, boasted and waxed philosophical about Rome’s eternal mission to civilize and rule mankind. The reality was rather different, which is why Luttwak invites readers to make conclusions about what Romans actually did more than what they said. This observation is sound and could usefully be applied to imperial politics in the present day. If one were to pay attention only to the official documents produced in Washington’s bureaucratic-military machinery, one may conclude that the capital’s policy is to spread liberty to all mankind. The reality is perhaps more prosaic: establish relationships with countries regardless of the regime, provided they support the empire’s goals. Moreover, although officials may develop official documents on strategy, decisions will always flow from the strength of adversaries. In the present system, for example, the rise of China, and Russia’s willingness to sacrifice blood and treasure to push back against NATO expansion, are interpreted through reigning cultural paradigm of decision-makers in Washington. Decisions on the management of the empire’s boundaries and zones of influence will also be conditioned by ideas on how to allocate scarce resources of military inputs (soldiers, infrastructures, etc). The clearest example of this was former president Barak Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” which aimed to redistribute precious resources away from the Middle East and towards the far East, and includes strategic use of Washington’s Asian allies (Australia, Japan), protectorates (Taiwan) and clients (Philippines), to counter the rise China. 

The example of Armenia’s status as a neutral and buffer state to keep the peace between Rome and Parthia has important lessons for imperial politics in the present era. As is outlined in the Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, the benefits were manifold, including reducing the outbreak of costly wars between the two ancient great powers, and in so doing, allowing Rome to allocate more resources to more troublesome frontiers such as Britain and Germany. Readers cannot avoid seeing the uncanny parallels with the war in Ukraine. After the country’s independence from the USSR, it committed itself to strict neutrality, but this was overturned in 2014, when Victor Yanukovych was overthrown in a coup. It subsequently made a commitment to join NATO, a military alliance which is perceived as hostile in Moscow. Before Russia invaded in January 2022, president Putin proposed a return to neutrality, which, according to Jeffrey Sachs, was rejected by the US and subsequently Ukraine. It is for this reason that Sachs, and many other commentators, affirm that Ukrainian military neutrality, in the form a strict commitment to not enter NATO, is a condition for peace between Russia and the West. Evidently, such an outcome may be in Washington’s interest; if its goal is to contain or counter the rise of China, an optimal allocation of resources would include finding a peaceful settlement over Ukraine so that more can be allocated to the Asian theatre. 

It may seem remarkable that Romans could make the types of calculations assumed in the Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire without the use of maps, but Luttwak plausibly argues that they could establish their frontiers via other methods. In some parts of the empire, they built barriers which clearly established the boundaries of inside/outside, and Hadrian’s wall was the clearest example. Elsewhere, there were natural barriers which performed the same function, such as the Rhine and the Danube in Germany. Where there was a lack of barriers, natural or manmade, the names of local tribes or peoples, and their relationship to Rome (client, neutral buffer, settlement, etc) sufficed. Moreover, Rome’s elaborate construction of roads, on top of precise travel itineraries for travel and for official correspondence, added to their geographical knowledge. Together, these elements gave the imperial capital an abstract representation of the empire’s boundaries sufficient to make decisions adumbrated above.  

Ultimately, no amount of strategizing can overcome the twin dynamics of internal division and weakness, on the one hand, and the increased strength of geopolitical rivals on the other. But it can make the difference between the egoistical hubris of short lived empires and the longer lifespan of more pragmatic ones like Rome. 

Review of Mary Beard's SPQR

In 2023, I continued my practice of taking the extra time afforded by the summer break to read on the subject I have an enduring fascination with, ancient Rome. This interest developed in large part because of my regular travels to visit family in Italy since I was a kid, where I would often go to ancient Greek and Roman sites—some relatively well preserved—located close to my ancestral village in the province of Salerno (notably, Pompei and Paestum). The text selected for the summer of 2023 was Mary Beard’s SPQR: The History of Ancient Rome. It is a work of general history, and its chief value is that it brings to life many of the social dimensions that are neglected when, as is often the case, the discussion centers around the lives of emperors and their conquests. There are two elements I will focus on in this blogpost: the relative openness of Roman culture and citizenship, which distinguished it from other ancient civilizations, and the rise of inequality and corruption which was partly generated by this very openness—the increased wealth derived from incorporation of large swaths of territory and vast numbers of people, over time, became concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. 

The latter is related to my scholarly interests on the phenomenon of populism, which often represents a lower class uprising against the elites who benefit from expansion and openness to trade. As we will see, the fact that this pattern can be observed during antiquity, in a civilization dramatically different from our own, and in the present, highlights the recurring and structural character of certain political patterns: the geographical and economic expansion of great powers, followed by the unequal distribution of gains, and the resulting political opposition from those who do not benefit, or are disadvantaged, by the system.

Empire without End

Rome’s openness can be traced to its very beginnings, in 753 B.C. According to the mythology of the nation’s origins, it was founded by foreigners escaping hostile lands in the East (here we see echoes of America’s original settlers), and when Rome’s founding fathers, the brothers Romulo and Remo, announced the new polity, they welcomed rejects, refugees, and reprobates from other parts of the Italic peninsula (more echoes of America here, as displayed on the Statue of Liberty: “give me your tired, your poor…masses yearning to breathe free…the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”). Unlike in America, however, the polity was initially a traditional monarchy. It transitioned to the republican system of government in part because of the corruption of the king Lucius Tarquinius “the Arrogant.” The general assembly voted to replace the office of the king with that of the consoles—who had many of the same powers but were elected to serve 1 year terms. Now, power was divided between the Senate, composed of members of the aristocracy, and the consoles, elected directly by the people. The Senate and the People were Rome’s constituting elements, hence the appellation Senatus Populus Que(is) Rome, or SPQR, and title of the book under review. 

Consoles were magistrates who often came from the privileged classes, but they eagerly courted voters, giving the latter sway in political outcomes. Electoral campaigns in which candidates competed by making promises, replete with slogans displayed on busy streets, and tactics devised by professionals to increase the vote, were a regular feature. As recognized by the Greek writer Publius, the genius of this constitution was that it combined elements of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, leading to checks and balances which avoided excesses, created stability, emanating outwards and allowing Rome’s prodigious expansion, especially in the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.

Another key feature was Rome’s conception of citizenship. It granted all the rights inscribed in Roman legislation, was gradually extended to vast numbers of people, and was a major instrument of social stability and power. Emblematic is the social war composed of disgruntled legionaries and slaves, in the early fist century B.C. Rome replied by granting citizenship to almost all inhabitants of the Italian peninsula. Stability was established by the decision to include them in the polity, rather than relying exclusively on military might. The highest expression of this policy occurred in 212 A.D., when the emperor Caracalla granted citizenship to the entire empire, which by then was vast: 65 million people, or 21% of the world’s population.  

One of the revolutionary aspects of this openness was that it separated citizenship from territory and blood relations. Unlike, say, in Athens, where citizenship was restricted to local inhabitants and their off-spring, who were believed to be connected to the land since time immemorial, Roman citizenship was an idea, or an identity, not organically tied to the city of Rome that could co-exist with local identities in a complimentary way; thus, for example, a citizen in a Roman province such as Egypt could consider himself Roman while speaking the local language (at the time, Greek), and practicing local customs. Along with other Roman technologies such as roads, aqueducts, and architecture, citizenship diffused Roman civilization around the Mediterranean and would set the stage for the entity we now call Europe and, eventually, the Americas.

Roman religion was also open, or, in the more contemporary verbiage, “inclusive.” There was no single religious book or document, or single god for that matter; there were multiple gods, and different ones were related to distinct peoples and/or their territories. For example, Jews believed in Jehovah, Egyptians in Isis, and Persians in Mithras, and few seemed to question the general idea that different people had different divinities. During Rome’s expansion, there was no attempt to extirpate local gods and impose those of the Romans. Subjects' and territories’ gods were incorporated into the empire’s pantheon. This occurred, in part, because for Romans, belief in gods was not connected to any concept of individual salvation or personal morality, nor was it that important as a theoretical question; rather, it was the social and practical functions of religion that mattered, such as participation in the sacred rituals and festivals which marked the calendar. (Here, we see echoes of the contemporary Catholic church, which not uncoincidentally has been key in preserving many aspects of the Roman legacy in the West).

This relative openness of citizenship and religion should not be conflated with liberalism as it is understood today. Rome, for example, was very militaristic, and this was manifest in culture, institutions, and practices. Romulo and Remo, the founding fathers, were believed to be offspring of Mars, the god of war. Democracy, understood as the right to vote, was granted to free (i.e. non-slave) males, in part because as soldiers they bore the brunt of Rome’s wars, and because wars often required majority approval. Women did not participate in the fighting at the time, which mostly relied on brute physical force and endurance rather than, as today, on technologies that have reduced the importance of face-to-face combat. Other conditions militated against more female participation: in a world without contraception, and where up to half of children died before their 10th birthday, the estimated birthrate, just to preserve the stability of the population, was 5-6 children per woman. Only the wealthy—a small minority—had slaves and servants to help with child-rearing and household labour.

There was never a clear separation of the military and the civil polity, and Roman generals made decisions on civil matters. The path to glory was success on the battlefield, and emperors sometimes participated in the wars they waged. Literature which suffused Roman society, like Virgil’s Aeneid, exalted the virtues of self-sacrifice in the pursuit of military success and territorial conquest. This book was widely read and studied and, according to Mary Beard’s SPQR, represented a cultural reference point which was shared among the Roman elite and the masses. Entertainment for Romans of all social classes included gladiatorial fighting between humans, and between humans and animals, to the death. There was no organized police force, and so many had to rely on themselves, or the powerful men of the families, for personal security; when they were insufficient, they relied on vigilantes, who of course were led by brutish men. 

Although relatively open by the standards of other ancient civilizations, legal equality did not exist. The major groups were the plebs (in today’s terms, the “people” or the “masses”), the patricians (or the wealthy) and slaves; the last were mostly European in origin (unlike the race-based slavery of the modern period). Greeks, for example, were valued as slaves because of their literacy, and often served as secretaries and other roles which involved mental work such as accountancy, letter-writing, or proof editing drafts of texts to be published by their owners; Germans were also highly represented among slaves in part because of Rome’s constant fighting on its northern frontier, and captured Germans were often brought back to Rome as slaves suited for physical labour. However, unlike in ancient Greece, where slaves had little chance to escape their plight, Roman slaves often became freemen and Roman citizens, because they could either buy their freedom, or the owner could grant it; some evidence suggests that up to half of slaves were freed this way.  Overtime, this contributed to Rome’s unique ethnic diversity and mixing (and which is still visible among the peoples of the Mediterranean).

Major conquests occurred from the third to the first centuries B.C. The entire Italian peninsula was subdued with the defeat of the Etruscans ad Sannites by 275 BC. Later, the famous Punic wars against Hannibal, and the eventual destruction of Carthage, gave Rome possession of Spain and North Africa, while Greece was conquered shortly after, in 168 B.C. Caesar conquered Gaul (modern day France) in 50 BC,  and Pompey consolidated Roman rule in Judea and Syria (Asia) during the same period. Egypt became a Roman possession after Octavius’s victory in the civil wars.  

The increase in territory and population led to an increase in the various sources of wealth. Not only the expropriation of natural resources (precious metals, building materials, grains), but also tribute from locals in either direct taxation, or in soldiers for the Roman army, and expanded commercial opportunities, especially luxury goods from the east. Much of this new wealth financed public projects, such as the still-astounding Colosseum and the timeless Pantheon, which transformed the capital city, giving it its majestic character which continues to dazzle millions of tourists every year. Privileged groups, often through corrupt dealings with authorities in the Senate and in the provinces, had better access to the wealth derived from the newly incorporated territories and peoples. The aristocracy used this wealth to build ever more palatial abodes (many still well preserved), and to purchase and consume more imported luxuries from the east. Meanwhile, many of the inhabitants of the city lived in squalor, or what today we would call shanty towns. Here, Rome was distancing itself from the martial and inclusive ideals of its founders, and from the Republican institutions which were supposed to give voice to the plebs. Many among the masses had fought in Rome’s wars and contributed to the empire’s expansion, only to return to their homes in the Italian peninsula without jobs, land, or the capacity to live a dignified life.

The Gracchus Brothers: Ancient Populists

This led to a feeling of betrayal among many Roman citizens and laid the groundwork for candidates to office who promised justice. In Mary Beard’s SPQR, two are extensively assessed: Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, brothers and war heroes in the wars against Carthage who were outraged by the conditions of the plebs, especially those who had served Rome. Their lives were extensively documented and hence we possess a considerable amount of information about them. Both would be considered “populists” in today’s political lexicon. Their enemies were mostly the aristocratic interests defended by Senators (or, in the language of contemporary populists, the “corrupt elite”). Of the two, Gaius was perhaps the most radical, and proposed reforms to benefit the plebs  which included anti-corruption measures, restrictions on application of the death penalty, redistribution of fertile lands, and publicly funded and distributed grains (here we see echoes of many left-wing Latin American populists).  Other proposals included granting citizenship to greater numbers of inhabitants of the empire, which of course would increase the numbers who would be beneficiaries of the rights adumbrated above. This last proposal, in particular, highlights how the “people” were not understood in the exclusive and nationalist sense; rather, they included those without Roman citizenship but who were victims of exploitation, which was a violation of the norms upon which Rome was founded. 

Gaius won two elections as representative of the plebs, and out of the mentioned proposals, the distribution of grains remained for centuries, and as far as we know, did not have any equivalent elsewhere in the ancient world. The other elements of his agenda never saw the light of day, or were short lived, in part because Gaius was murdered by the aristocratic elements threatened by this populist program. 

This clash between Rome’s poor and the aristocracy was also evident in the more celebrated and known civil conflict in the 1st century B.C., that between Pompey and Caesar. Together with the wealthy Crassus, Caesar, and Pompey collectively ruled Rome via the office of the Triumvirate, but as ever, eventually had a falling out and this sparked civil conflict. The main contenders were Pompey and Caesar, and factions aligned with one or the other fought across the empire. Popular history has cast their conflict as a dispute about democracy and dictatorship, which culminated in the ides of March, when Caesar was stabbed to death in the Senate shortly after being declared dictator for life. Senators, it is widely believed, were defending the republic against a tyrant. Mary Beard’s SPQR highlights another dimension: Caesar was a quasi-populist, promoting reforms similar to those of the Gracchus brothers, such as the redistribution of lands, which threatened the interests of aristocracy, and it was partly for this reason that the available evidence suggests Caesar was loved by Rome’s masses. Pompey’s social base, meanwhile, was more represented among the privileged classes, and his death in Egypt heralded a victory of the Caesarian faction, an intolerable outcome which ultimately led to Caesar's assassination.

The republic, contrary to the pretensions of the perpetrators, was not restored after the assassination, and the civil conflict between the two factions continued. Now, it manifested as the conflict between Caesar’s adopted son, Octavius, and Mark Antony, who was seduced by one of Caesar’s former lovers, and mother of one of Caesar’s children, the Queen of Egypt Cleopatra. They initially shared power in the Triumvirate, but disputes about the empire’s spoils, and about who was Caesar’s legal heir, led to fighting. Octavius’s forces prevailed in the famous battle of Actium, and the humiliated Mark Anthony and Cleopatra fled and eventually committed suicide. 

Octavius became Rome’s first official emperor, now known to us as Augustus. Republican institutions still formally existed but they were emptied of substantive power; authority for most major decisions resided in the office of the emperor. Putting an end to the civil wars, and centralizing authority, however, established the conditions for stability and a new golden age. Augustus ruled for 50 years, and during that time invested heavily in public works, while trade expanded across the empire. Homogenization proceeded apace, but not because of a conscious policy similar to France’s missione civilatrice 17 centuries later. It was rather the movement of people, ideas—especially citizenship and education—and goods which helped to radiate Roman civilization across the its vast territories. 

As ever, this golden age was temporary, in part because many of Augustus’s successors—most notably, Nero, Caligula, Commodus—were either incompetent or meretricious. Increased wealth, and bad leadership, inevitably led to disputes about the distribution of the spoils. Meanwhile, Rome’s enemies gathered strength. This combination of internal division, and external threat from the now better organized and more numerous Germans, was ultimately fatal.

It was under these conditions that Christianity emerged on the scene. It was in one sense rather populist in that it challenged the "establishment" and elevated the moral purity of the poor and excluded. On the other hand, it did not participate in public life, and had beliefs which violated the Roman moral code. Partly for this reason, Christians were persecuted, as Romans viewed their beliefs as a threat to the moral order. SPQR cites the scholar Pliny the Elder to illuminate how authorities viewed this strange new sect. One element that was puzzling to the Romans was that the Christian deity was not organically tied to any territory or people; it was rather for all people and all time, which implied the utter rejection of all other gods. While Romans exalted the pleasures of this world and of the flesh, Christians viewed them as corrupting and an abomination and looked forward to the happiness of the next world. For this reason, Roman authorities went to great lengths to extinguish Christianity. Very few would have predicted what actually occurred: Christianity would become the official religion of the empire, spread across its territories and replace paganism, and eventually spread to all humanity when Europeans, almost 1500 years later, began to colonize the entire planet. 

This is one of the biggest social scientific puzzles of all time, and SPQR does not provide a definitive answer, but it does highlight that Rome’s expansion and openness were necessary conditions for the spread of Christianity. Roman trade, roads, currency, and institutions ensured frequent movements between the farthest parts of the empires, which at the extremes represented vast distances: from Hadrian’s wall in the West (modern day Northern England) to Syria in the East. Proselytizers from Judea, where Christianity was born, often travelled to the capital, and from there, ideas spread to other parts of the empire. And as the empire was falling apart in the 3rd and 4th centuries, where wealth and stability was replaced with foreign invasion, chaos, and poverty, Christianity’s profession of the evils of the world resonated more and more. 

Overtime, this led to revolutionary overturning of the moral order. A deeper and more extensive analysis of that will have to wait for a future blogpost, where I will review the work of the historian Tom Holland, who has extensively documented Christianity’s revolutionary impact, and the way it still manifests in secular guises on questions related to human rights, equality, and democracy. Before then, by the end of this summer, I’ll post a review of Edward Luttwak’s The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, which focuses more on foreign rather than domestic policy, and which I am presently reading.

Initial Impressions of Shanghai

I arrived in Shanghai in mid-February 2023. In this blogpost, I will record my initial impressions of the city and its culture, while making some tenuous connections to the experience of living and working in China.

Many Americans, British, Italians, Germans, Russians, and other Western expats live and work in Shanghai, and some have settled semi-permanently. A profile of the typical expat is that they are either a teacher/professor (like me), or in business, between 30 and 50 years old, and as befits the city they live in, very cosmopolitan. They organize many activities, such as book clubs, art and philosophy discussions, or talks on contemporary and topical matters. I was invited to give a talk at one of the these events on the subject of populism, which I did, and about 45 people attended—mostly expats but also Westernized locals. 

Participating in these activities has been a goldmine of intellectual growth and social enrichment for several reasons. First is that often, the subject is China, allowing me to deepen my knowledge about this ancient, complex, and fascinating civilization. Many of the participants in the mentioned events are Chinese, while others are foreigners and, unlike me, have lived here for a long time, speak the language fluently, and some have deeply assimilated via marriage and family; this gives them unique perspectives and insights. Second is that I have been able to connect with like-minded individuals and have a semi-social life in the city. After a long day of work, participating in one of the events organized by the expat community in Shanghai provides highly valued meaningful connection and conversation.

In other non-English speaking cities I have lived in—in Paris and Madrid, for example—I have almost always connected with locals rather than expats, in part because, by the time I arrived, I had basic or inter-mediate conversational ability in the local languages (I have recounted those experiences here and here). And I now have a good level of French and Spanish in no small part because of the intense learning accrued during periods of full immersion in France and Spain. This time it’s a little different mainly because when I arrived, I knew very little Mandarin. I started learning the language on an app very recently, and by February of this year I could communicate some simple sentences, while my listening skills were basically zero. I have continued to learn the language using the same app and taking weekly classes at the university, and although progress is slow, it is easily one of the most fascinating and enjoyable aspects about living in Shanghai. I can now communicate the essentials, for example, when shopping, and each advance, however little, is gratifying. I hope to obtain conversational capacity in a year, and perhaps by then, I will be able to participate in local activities in Mandarin rather than in English. At that point, a deeper assimilation will be possible. 

One unexpected discovery is how technologically advanced Shanghai is, particularly its transport, communication, and financial infrastructure. I take the metro and train frequently, and both are hyper-modern, very clean, always on time, very cheap and relatively easy to use. For example, a return ticket from Shanghai to Suzhou—a distance of about 80 kilometers—on a high-speed train that travels at almost 300 kilometers per hour costs the equivalent of about 8 euros. Travelling the same distance in Europe on a high-speed train would cost double or triple that. Meanwhile, a single trip on the metro is equivalent to less than a dollar—here, the cost is similar in European cities, but not in Toronto, where one trip costs more than 3 dollars. 

The high-speed trains I frequently use are marvels of human engineering that are so integrated into the city’s quotidian fabric, that they have become banal to locals. I have a vivid memory which illustrates this. One early morning I was on the train to Suzhou. As it arrived, I and other passengers got up and formed a queue and waited to get off. We started moving towards exiting the train, and as I approached the exit looking straight ahead, in front was the outline of the train’s sliding door, which divided the interior of the train, with its white walls and artificial light, and outside the train, where the soft rays of the morning sun were reflecting on the surfaces of the platform’s shiny grey marble floors. At that moment, on the other side of the platform, directly in front of me, another train—which didn’t stop at Suzhou—raced by travelling at over 200 kilometers an hour and made a kind of high-pitched swooshing sound. Between me exiting the train, and the racing train in front on the other side of the platform, were other passengers blithely looking at the phones. I was awestruck by what for me was a most extraordinary scene was, for the rest, hardly noticeable.  

In Shanghai, the digital infrastructure is far more advanced than in other cities I have lived in. Because all payments can be done digitally, it is in effect a cashless society. Although cash can still be used, and sometimes still is by senior citizens or tourists, in practice, most payments are made with a QR code on your phone directly connected to your bank account, including for large and small transactions. This system is much more efficient than what I am used to, and this was recently brought home to me when I had to make a payment to Whirlpool Canada from China (I owed them some money for servicing the washing machine in my Toronto apartment). To pay them, I had to call during their open hours (somewhat tricky while in China’s time zone), and when I did, I was put on hold for 10 minutes. I finally spoke to someone and had to give him the invoice number plus credit card information, and this information needed to be communicated slowly and sharply to ensure it was correctly received. The entire process took 20 minutes. With the payment system in China, Whirlpool would have sent me a QR code, I’d scan it with the payment app, and then I’d receive a text message with the electronic receipt; the transaction would have lasted 5 seconds at most.  

Apps are used for countless other activities, from going to the library, to using the metro and the public biking system. Cycling in Shanghai has been an interesting experience. Like other forms of transportation, it is very cheap and accessible, and the public bikes can be found on most streets. So, for example, when leaving my building, there are always available bikes in front. I scan the QR code on the bike with the app on my phone, the bike unlocks, and off I go to visit a friend, or go shopping; there is no time limit, and when reaching my destination, I can leave the bike, and then follow the same process when returning home. It is very different using public bikes in Toronto and Paris; in both, there are 30-minute time limits for each ride, meaning one must find a bike station within 30 minutes otherwise they are charged additional fees.  

Biking in the city has been quite the experience because of how crowded it is. Shanghai has around 25 million residents, and many work downtown, close to where I live. During rush hour, large numbers of bikes, cars, and pedestrians are competing for relatively little space. It is partly for this reason that often there are officers at major intersections. Traffic lights can be insufficient to properly regulate the flow, leading to jams, and at these moments, officers help by telling some to stop, others to go. This is mostly a problem for car drivers; although the streets can also be crowded with bikes, there is always enough space for them to move forward, in part because most streets have large bike lanes, and in part because when the bike lanes are full, it is easy to zig-zag into the car lanes or even onto the sidewalk (while scrupulously avoiding pedestrians). Watching a scene like this—hundreds of people moving on bikes on a small street full of cars—an external observer may perceive chaos, but as a cyclist in Shanghai, I can confirm that beneath the surface there is an underlying harmony, where bike-riders compete for space while respecting others doing the same, producing generally accepted implicit rules. So, for example, the rule that those who want to race ahead can go onto the car lane is pretty much respected by everyone—cars and bikers alike—even though it is not formal or written. It basically emerges from practice. Another is that cyclists and pedestrians can cross a red light if there are few cars, while this would be unacceptable for an automobile, which always must respect traffic lights. It is these implicit rules which form an emergent order and which minimize accidents on crowded and superficially chaotic streets.

A common scene in Shanghai

As can be surmised from the above, in Shanghai one is almost completely dependent on their phone. This raises a number of tricky practical issues, as the following will attest. One day in late February, as usual, I had plugged in my phone at the university to ensure a full battery for my return home. At the end of the day, I unplugged the phone, and went to the train station, and discovered that it had not charged (perhaps it was not plugged-in well, or the outlet malfunctioned). I had a brief and mild panic as it dawned on me that I would not be able to access the metro in Shanghai, or take a cab, or use a bike, any of which would be essential to reach my place from the central train station. Of course, I could go on foot, but I would not be able to use Apple maps, an essential tool for a newly arrived foreigner in a sprawling city like Shanghai. I walked around the Suzhou train station looking for an outlet and could not find one. It then occurred to me that I could plug the phone to my laptop, which still had a full battery; this gave the amount of battery power needed to get home. In other cities I have lived in, nothing remotely similar has ever happened, because, of course, I was never so utterly dependent on my phone. It was a lesson that advanced digital infrastructure brings convenience and efficiency but also creates fragility of the kind that occurs when value—defined as the essentials, not only in the monetary sense—is concentrated in a single place. 

Then, of course, there are the ethical quandaries, as this system gives immense power to authority to control its citizenry. On this a few comments based on my short experience in the country may be worthwhile. For the vast majority of people I have encountered, locals and foreigners, this does not seem to be a problem, perhaps because they are law-abiding. Second, and relatedly, through my conversations with many Chinese, it becomes clear that the authorities enjoy a very high level of legitimacy. Perhaps this is rooted in Confucian culture, which, unlike the individualist Western one, still places a high value on respect for all types of authority (parents, teachers, the state, elders). It may also be rooted in the sense that the government functions well in terms of providing order, security, and the conditions of economic growth; this is the implicit social contract upon which the government’s legitimacy depends. 

The older part of the Bund

A few final comments on the unique architectural landscape of Shanghai, which combines multiple influences. Right in front of my building, for example, there is a Buddhist temple that is a reconstruction of the one that was built there almost 2000 years ago, and later destroyed. It bestrides modern the skyscrapers that characterize Shanghai and that are the fruit of the economic boom which began after China’s opening in 1978. Moreover, many European empires that colonized Shanghai have left their architectural mark, most notably the French and the British. 

Shanghai's iconic skyline

One of the more charming neighborhoods is the French concession, which contains many houses and buildings of the same style found in Paris. Meanwhile, the British influence is more widespread, and can be especially seen in the Bund, the area with Shanghai’s iconic skyline. On one side are towering buildings, some reaching 100 stories, which at night are brightly lit with playful neon colours, creating an almost psychedelic impression, as if one is completely immersed in some virtual reality video game. On the other side, there are much smaller brick and marble structures built by the British in the early 20^th century, the kind that can be seen in other former-British colonies or in Britain itself. They, too, are brightly lit at night. Walking along the Bund, one cannot help but be struck by this juxtaposition of buildings; some embody China’s colonization and humiliation by foreign powers, while facing them are towering skyscrapers, grand and imposing and seemingly saying:  we are now in charge.

The Strange Fascination and Primal Pleasure of Fire

As I am typing these words, I am sitting on a balcony in the old family house in Italy near the city of Salerno. It is on a hill 400 meters above sea level and faces the Mediterranean Sea. Directly in front of the balcony there is a garden which includes an orange tree which has borne delicious fruit since before any living member of the family can remember. It is late-December and so the air is cold by Southern Italian standards—at night it can go down to 6 or 7 degrees, and during the day between 11 and 15, but when the sun is shining, as it is now, the rays provide sufficient warmth to be outside in a t-shirt. 
 
I am here during the Christmas holidays, and will stay until mid-January, after which I will fly to Shanghai to take on a new teaching position. While in Italy I am staying in an old family house, where my mom, as well as my maternal grandad, were born and raised. There is no modern heating, and so for warmth while indoors I have to light the fireplace. My routine has been to do that early in the morning immediately after rising, at around 6 AM, and then spending the entire morning in front of the glowing flames working on the various projects which need to be completed. In this blog post, I will reflect on this new routine with a particular focus on the strange fascination and primal pleasure of fire. 

Look Mom, I can do it on my own!

I have been coming to this old house in Southern Italy almost every year since I was a little boy, mostly during the summer. The last time I was here in the winter was perhaps 12 years ago, and at the time it never occurred to me to use the fireplace, in part because during the day I’d be at my uncle’s apartment, which has all the accoutrements of modern life, such as gas heating and wifi. And so I only slept in the old family house, and thick blankets provided sufficient warmth at night. This time, I am spending much more time in it, as when needed I can connect to the internet via my mobile phone, and I can consequently spend the mornings in blessed silence working in front of the fire. 

 I am almost 45 years old, and never properly lit a fire until this winter. When I first tried, I clumsily placed a large log on some crumpled paper and assumed that, after lighting the latter, the former would quickly go ablaze. Hah! How wrong I was, and how humbling it was for someone with a PhD to be unable to carry out a most simple task which ensured the survival of our ancestors.  My uncle showed me the proper method of 1) placing a large log near the back, 2) positioning smaller logs on top but in a way which allowed space for the oxygen to fuel the flame, 3) place highly flammable paper below the smaller logs, and 4) continuously feed the paper until the smaller logs burned autonomously. It took 3 or 4 attempts to get it right, and when I did, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment, similar to the feeling of riding a bike for the first time without training wheels or external support. 
 
Since then (at the time of writing, about two weeks ago), I have been lighting the fire every morning, and am struck by how enjoyable the process is. As ever, I have reflected on the reasons for this effect, and have arrived at several potential conclusions. 
 
The first is the sense of relief from the warmth. Just as, when one is hungry, eating food is immensely enjoyable, when one is cold the onset of warmth is pleasurable. It is a primordial pleasure associated with survival, and so in this sense likely activates the most primitive part of the brain. Perhaps this explains the sensual, almost unconscious aspects of attraction to the fire, that feeling that it is pulling me closer, demanding my attention and care independently of will or of the more rational and cognitive faculties.
 
The fire stimulates almost all the senses, particularly touch, sound, sight, and smell. Lighting the fire, like trying to seduce a potential lover, takes effort and action, trial and error, for the tinder to turn ablaze, but the process continues even after this crucial first part is accomplished. Tender care is required to keep the blaze going so that it continuously emits that satisfying heat: logs must be repositioned, for example, to go closer to the flame. Meanwhile, the fire exudes a soft light which dances on the surfaces of whatever object is facing it, mingling an orange glow with shadows as they dance to the rhythm of the throbbing heat consuming the logs. The smell of wood burning is pleasant, while the light whooshing sound, as if inhaling deeply, of the climaxing flame, and the crackling sound of the consummation of the wood, is first intense, then soothing and relaxing. At a certain point, the fire reaches a kind of stable equilibrium, whereby it is mostly autonomous, and here, I am able to concentrate more on my work; but in the background, the heat, sounds, lights, and smells are creating a very pleasant ambiance.
 
Another discovery is that lighting, tending, and sitting by the fire is a quasi-spiritual experience. I have been doing mindful meditation for years, and one of the key purposes is to train one’s mind to live in the present moment. The reason is that much mental stress, as well as anxiety and depression, arise in part because of the tendency to obsess about things that happened in the past, or to fear things which may happen in the future. It follows, ipso facto, that when we live in the present moment, we are less likely to pointlessly ruminate over things we have no control over, and calmness, tranquillity, and even a sense of freedom are the result. The fire can achieve a similar outcome if only because the simultaneous simulation of the senses in the present moment militates against obsessing about the past or future. It reminds me of being on the beach in Tulum, Mexico, in the winter of 2021-2022, during sunrise, as the soft heat of the rising sun and the light salty wind gently touched my skin, the sound of the waves splashing the shores, the sand beneath my feet, combined to help me perceive and feel the moment with an intensity which made me oblivious to anything outside of it. 
 
The fire has a spiritual meaning in another sense. While observing the flames as they consumed the wood, I was struck by a sense of being in the presence of a powerful primal force with the transformative power to give and destroy life. This element allowed our ancestors to survive in the cold, and to cook meat, which further contributed to human’s prodigious expansion across the earth. The lack of fire for heating and eating ultimately could be a question of life or death. At the same time, the very heat which provides so much comfort and upon which life depended could quickly and mercilessly turn everything of value, including life itself, to ashes. Countless lives perhaps have been lost to fire, as have innumerable forests. And then, as if through magic, this process of destruction generates new life. The ashes from the flames can become fertilizer to grow more and healthy vegetation, which then go on to feed more people, which increase in numbers, and so on, in a never ending cycle of destruction and birth which characterizes all organic life. In our comfortable Western lifestyles, in which we deny or purposely forget the reality of death, it is easy to ignore this primal fact of nature. And yet for some unexplained reason the simple act of lighting and tending the fire forced me to face this reality and reminded me of why the ancients either worshiped fire or attached deep religious significance to it. 
 

Closeness to nature, then, is one of the main benefits of my stay in the old family house in Southern Italy during the winter of 2022-2023. While here, I have spent mornings in front of the fire, which starts to flicker out about 9:30 AM. At this point, I go and sit on the small balcony on the second floor and take in the warm rays of the rising sun, the same sun which nourishes the plants which feed the planet’s population, including me, or which, in other contexts, may cause heat waves with deadly consequences. I go from one source of warmth, the fireplace, to another, the sun, both primal elements of nature, both givers and destroyers of life.