#NowReading Civitas Dei: The Commonwealth of God (1938) by Lionel Curtis
p. 2: All these races can still mix blood with each other; for, as in the countries they inhabit, there remains beneath all these diversities a nature common to them all… They were brought into contact, made to depend on each other and merged in the framework of a single society
The crowning achievements of Clive at Plassey and of Wolfe at Quebec, in their ultimate result, meant that Europe would extend to the whole world the finest product of her civilization, a system of life based on the principle of the commonwealth.
The successful revolt of the American colonists had started the great revolution which was destined to end the rule of dynasties and call into being the national states of the modern world. —Lionel Curtis
Since the loss of the American colonies, men of this stamp had come to regard a permanent connection even with India as undesirable.
We should look upon India to be maintained until the natives shall in some future age have become sufficiently enlightened to frame a regular government. Whenever such a time shall arrive, it will probably be best for both countries that British control be gradually withdrawn
Napoleon’s paramount aim was to ruin England by excluding her merchants from all the markets of Europe.
When the American colonists had renounced their allegiance to the crown and governed themselves as a federal republic, the idea that the people themselves were the state was unmistakably realized.
England had tightened her hold on the sea, till in 1812 she had blundered once more into a fratricidal war with her former colonists in America
When these colonies had severed their connection with Spain, British merchants had found there was an opening for the trade which Napoleon was then excluding from Europe. This promising market would be closed if the colonies were included once more in the empire of Spain.
The control of Schleswig-Holstein would enable Prussia to cut a canal through the isthmus from Kiel to the North Sea, and thus become an Atlantic power
In 1849 Marx was obliged to take refuge in London, where, befriended by Engels, he devoted the rest of his life to developing the thesis, brilliantly outlined in the Communist Manifesto, in a work called Das Kapital. —Lionel Curtis
Capitalism must tend to bring the control of the whole means of production into the hands of the owners of capital whose power would be great enough to control even democratic states. Capitalists need to use & control the national state to secure markets beyond their own country
The world is distracted by crises of increasing severity, in which masses of goods are produced which cannot be sold, while masses of workers are unemployed and cannot purchase these surplus goods. Capitalists try to remedy this by scrapping machinery, destroying the surplus, etc
The slave whose sole incentive is fear of punishment can be made to produce raw materials. A great manufacturing system cannot be based upon slave labour. It limits the capacity of the masters themselves, and unfits them to manage free workers
In the South there were few openings for whites who didn’t inherit land or belong to professions, unless they could find positions as overseers. The “mean whites,” parasites devoid of all power to earn their own living or of pride in anything but their color, were ever-increasing
If a state constitution followed the model of states in the north, it would be populated by a population consisting mainly of whites willing to work with their own hands; but whites from the south bred to a system of slave economy would find no opening for their manner of life
Till the later years of the nineteenth century English statesmen commonly assumed that self-governing colonies must presently follow the example of the United States by severing their connection with the parent commonwealth
The relations of white and black throughout S Africa governed the whole situation. If these states could not come together in peace, they would meet in war. If the people of S Africa were united under one govt, they could work out future relations without expense to 🇬🇧 exchequer
So strongly was the government in India pressed by directors to avoid war that it entered where possible into treaty relations with native chiefs. These rulers agreed to accept the suzerainty of the Company in return for which the Company was to support their authority.
Autocrat as he was, Dalhousie was nonetheless led by his parliamentary experience to lay the foundations upon which the constitutional developments of the 20th century were to be based… Beyond question, his vigorous methods were intended to benefit the dumb millions of India
The English Commonwealth has outgrown the island from which it sprang, till it ceased to be British, and assumed the figure of a world polity… Legal fictions are of service so long as they are not allowed to conceal realities from those who employ them.
It was tea that fired the explosion that ruptured the British Commonwealth. In 1767 the American boycott created a glut in the British East India Company’s warehouse of 17,000,000 lbs.
In absence of any machinery like that of the League of Nations, a control which presumes agreements between numerous sovereign governments is purely fictitious.
The capital used to construct the canal had in part been provided by Egypt, and in raising this capital the Khedive discovered how easy it was to borrow from European financiers. A habit of wild extravagance was developed, which had brought his treasury to the verge of bankruptcy
In 1876 Ismail suspended the payments due to his foreign creditors, but agreed to create a commission of the public debt, on which 🇫🇷,🇦🇹, and 🇮🇹 appointed members. In 1877 was added a 🇬🇧 commissioner. Ismail was forced to agree to entrust the govt of 🇪🇬 to three foreign ministers
With internal frontiers and tariffs abolished, Germans were able to create a system of transport on a national scale. With Atlantic ports they were able to build a mercantile marine and a navy to make it respected on the seas.
In 1883 Bismarck asked the chambers of commerce at Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck to say that steps should be taken to promote German trade, especially in Africa. Their replies pointed to annexations.
The British regarded the African coast north of the Orange river as coming “within their sphere.”
Up to now [1884] the Liberal government in London had assumed that the powers of Europe would accept and apply the principle of non-annexation which England had imposed upon herself. The determined action of Bismarck shattered this dream.
One motive was anxiety to secure new markets for products which the mechanized industries of Europe were now pouring out in exchange for raw materials. But stronger still was the non-economic passion for power and dominion.
It was natural that the view of the farmer president, who could scarcely read and write, should be narrower than that of Rhodes with his Oxford training… Rhodes thought of a South Africa ruled, as the Cape was ruled, by British and Dutch together, irrespective of race.
British interests meant that a British minority must submit to be ruled by a Boer majority, which had lately yielded in armed to the might of the whole British Empire.
The American colonies were in the main founded by people seeking to escape from the established system of religion in England, which had then tried to monopolize their trade.
The British Commonwealth, to endure, must develop a conception new in the experience of mankind, an organic polity large and flexible enough to embrace in one commonwealth national states on the largest scales divided by oceans one from another.
The war, in their view had been forced on the world by autocracies in Europe, which placed the virtual control of policy in the hands of military leaders… The Allied people were nerved to their final efforts by ideas their leaders expressed “to make the world safe for democracy”
A foreigner endeavoring to understand the true character of the British Empire … would be tempted to think that it was devised rather to make mutual interference impossible than to make mutual cooperation easy. Such a criticism completely ignores the historical situation
In the Statue of Westminster which was passed into law on December 3, 1931, the British parliament renounced all future right to legislate for the self-governing Dominions except at the instance of their own governments.
In the course of time India and Ceylon, Burma and Palestine will claim and acquire control of their foreign affairs… They will find that self-government can only be attained by joining together in one Dominion which will presently demand equality with the others.
Bismarck was the product of a state which had risen to power by the military methods of Frederick. On all but a fringe of the German people he imposed a system of govt which made them the dominant power in Europe, and gave full play to their industry and gift for organization
From all sides, we received reports that no responsible government could disregard that Italy would regard the oil embargo as a military sanction or an act involving war against her.
The French are allowing themselves to be dragged in the diplomatic game of a foreign power which is only seeking to bring about among the nations of Europe a disorder from which she alone will reap the benefit.
“The Kingdom of God was first conceived in the Hebrew mind…”
—Lionel Curtis in The Commonwealth of God (1938)
—Lionel Curtis in The Commonwealth of God (1938)
In Marx’s view the mechanization of industry had merely enabled a capitalist minority to seize the power of exploiting the majority, which before was monopolized by the privileged classes.
The end and object of human society is to increase in men their sense of duty, one to another, and not, as a British statesmen has told us, to raise the standard of living. —Lionel Curtis
We have now reached a stage in the growth of civilization which cannot go further, and is doomed to go back, until we discover the means of passing from the national to the international state… —Lionel Curtis
🐱 After identifying nationality, national interest, and standard of living as maladies of mankind, Curtis then compares them to the desire for pleasure which he says needs to be remedied by a sense of selfless duty toward a British system of international relations.
🐱 this is about interloping in the affairs of every nation on the planet
🐱 Curtis writes that Jesus preached globalism, which will be an improvement even on Christianity, after saying that miracles did not happen, that Paul was lying, and that God did not create the world.
🐱 Curtis on “the doctrine of authority”: World govt must appeal to men’s consciences so that men will reason their own way to treating their word as the Hebrews judged the teachings of Moses due to craving for certainty. “…a man returned from the grave cannot help him to judge”
Hebrew thought in the Old Testament seldom gets far from the idea of sovereignty and power as the dominant aspect of Jehovah… To the Hebrew mind, it was natural to think of duty, as the duty of obedience to a sovereign God… which united the children of Israel
A vast project of creation was outlined by Jesus and left to those who followed him to realize. We now have better ideas of what creation means than men had in his day. We no longer see the world and the forms of life which people it, each fashioned in turn by a master craftsman
The end and object of human life is to be like God, to achieve more goodness and in doing so to join in his ceaseless work of creation. I think this idea of God was mainly reached through Hebrew conceptions. —Lionel Curtis
In a world divided into national states the growth of virtue in men, however developed in those states, must be arrested at a certain point. —Lionel Curtis
Political thinkers are beginning to say, and almost to say with one voice, that the cause of civilization is lost unless national states will agree to abandon some part of their sovereignty. —Lionel Curtis
🐱 Somebody said this book is about Britain becoming like America so here is Curtis’s analogy: World government ought to be to national governments what the US federal government is to the states. There u go.
The transference of American loyalty from the state to the Union was a gradual process… They came to think of the Union rather than the State… And so it will be with the first international commonwealth which survives for one or two generations. —Lionel Curtis
The public opinion which is needed to lift the course of human affairs to a higher plane must from its nature be religious in the truest sense of the word. —Lionel Curtis
My contention is that war is not the essential evil, the real impediment which arrests the advance of civilization. It is merely a symptom of a far more inveterate evil… National sovereignty is threatening to stifle human progress. —Lionel Curtis
I do not believe that the leading statesmen in the leading commonwealths can begin to release human affairs from their present impasse until bodies like churches have created the public opinion upon which they can act. —Lionel Curtis
If an international commonwealth built from countries within the British Empire came to include countries in Europe which had never been part of that Empire, the most difficult stage … would have been crossed. The British Empire will have done its work and passed into history.
When the British Commonwealth had been transformed into something which, beyond dispute, was an international commonwealth, the time would at least be in sight when the United States would become an integral part of it. —Lionel Curtis
Before a commonwealth had moved very far on the lines here rapidly sketched… Human society would have recovered at least the degree of stability reached in the 19th c … in which one national commonwealth was strong enough to control and police the maritime routes of the world.
The people of Great Britain are acutely aware that the slightest error of judgement on the part of their government may involve themselves and the whole world in a conflagration. In Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa the people have no such feeling…
I feel that when once the Protestant churches had learned to regard the creation of a world commonwealth as an all-important aspect of their work in realizing the Kingdom of God, an international commonwealth in the English-speaking world would come to be in a few generations
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