A review of “Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire” (PBS Empires)

Japan's initial contact with the West in 1543

In the year 1543, a Portuguese trading ship arrived in the Japanese island of Tanegashima. Its passengers were the first Europeans to set foot in Japan. From a European perspective, they “discovered” Japan; but from an Asian perspective, they were not the first people to “discover” these islands; since these islands had been inhabited for centuries by that time. An ancient civilization resided here, with its own language, culture, and religions. At least one of its major religions (namely, Buddhism) had been imported from outside, but its Shinto religion was native to Japan itself. To those who lived in Japan, their empire was no “secret.” But to the people back in Europe, this island was indeed a “secret empire.” The European empires were equally “secret” to the Japanese, of course; and to the Japanese, these Christian Europeans were something of a novelty; and so were the strange goods that they carried.

Japanese painting depicting a group of Portuguese foreigners

Early trade with Europeans, including in weapons

The Portuguese carried valuable cargo that they wanted to trade for the Japanese goods. Both sides were eager to engage in this trade, as it turns out, and so Japan's first contact with Europeans established a long relationship with the West. This relationship would not always be as friendly as it was here, but the strange European imports have long fascinated the Japanese. The most important of these imports at this time was the musket. The Japanese realized very early on that these European weapons were very powerful. The Europeans were willing to sell them these weapons for a price, and certain tribes in Japan took them up on this offer. The ones that “got in” on this trade the earliest were able to dominate the other tribes via these weapons, and so these weapons had a massive effect on Japanese internal politics. This documentary starts at the moment of initial contact in the sixteenth century, and continues on through the end of Japanese isolationism in the nineteenth century. Internal Japanese politics are also covered, of course, but there is also a strong emphasis on Japan's complicated relationship with the West.

Various antique Tanegashima muskets

Some parts of the Constitution mention “Indians” or “Indian tribes” …

“[The Congress shall have the power] To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes … ”

– Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution

When people today talk about the original Constitution, they often mention specific clauses that are relevant to black history. These include the Slave Importation Clause, the Fugitive Slave Clause, and the Three-Fifths Clause. When people today talk about the civil rights amendments, they often mention the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment (and rightfully so). But when they talk about minority history, they seldom discuss the clauses specific to Native American history, even though the words “Indians” and “Indian tribes” are mentioned in three different clauses from either the original Constitution or its amendments.

Constitution of the United States

It is important to be clear on this point: there are actually no clauses in the Constitution that mention Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, or Pacific Islander Americans by any of their specific names. There are clauses specifically about African Americans, but none that mention them by name (even by names like “blacks”). However, three clauses from either the original Constitution or its amendments mention “Indians” or “Indian tribes” by these names. Thus, I would like to go over all of these clauses here, and show what the “supreme law of the land” has said about the legal status of Native Americans.

Charles Curtis (the 31st Vice President of the United States),

who was of Kaw, Osage, Potawatomi, French and British ancestry – served 1929–1933

Rousseau's “Discourse on Inequality” is long on detail, but short on evidence …

“The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!”

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau's “Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men” (1754), first paragraph of “Second Part”

I first read this work in English translation …

In the spring of 2007, I voluntarily read Jean-Jacques Rousseau's “Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes” (“Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men”) in English translation. This would contribute to my later desire to read it in the original French. But it would be several years before I ever got the opportunity to do so. Thus, by the time I started this later project, more than a decade had passed since my first reading of the book in 2007.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

But more than a decade later, I read it in the original French, too

But I had been laboring for some three years on another French work, which was “in line” ahead of it, so to speak. This other work was Montesquieu's “De l'esprit des lois” (“The Spirit of Laws”), which I describe here. In 2018, I finally finished this work by Montesquieu, and could thus finally start on Rousseau's “Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes.” This book is known by many titles in English, including “Discourse on Inequality” and “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” (both abbreviated versions of the full title). For simplicity's sake, I will use these abbreviated versions of this English title for the most part. I started this work in January 2018, and finished it some six months later in June 2018. Thus, I have read this entire work in its original French, including Rousseau's notes at the end. I can thus certify that my criticisms of this work are not based on mistranslation.

Statue of Rousseau on the Île Rousseau, Geneva

What are “auxiliary subordinate rights”? (Answer: Rights intended to protect other rights)

“In the three preceding articles we have taken a short view of the principal absolute rights which appertain to every Englishman. But in vain would these rights be declared, ascertained, and protected by the dead letter of the laws, if the constitution had provided no other method to secure their actual enjoyment. It has therefore established certain other auxiliary subordinate rights of the subject, which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights, of personal security, personal liberty, and private property.”

– Sir William Blackstone's “Commentaries on the Laws of England” (1765), Book 1, Chapter 1

Sir William Blackstone once said that the most basic rights of human beings were personal security, personal liberty, and private property. (More about this in another post.) Blackstone said much about this in his “Commentaries on the Laws of England,” a major legal work from the eighteenth century. But he also said that “in vain would these rights be declared, ascertained, and protected by the dead letter of the laws, if the constitution had provided no other method to secure their actual enjoyment.” (Source: Book 1, Chapter 1) Therefore, Blackstone argued that the British Constitution had established “certain other auxiliary subordinate rights of the subject, which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights, of personal security, personal liberty, and private property.” (Source: Book 1, Chapter 1)

Sir William Blackstone

Blackstone believed that these “auxiliary subordinate rights” were vital to the protection of basic rights. They are subordinate unto the other rights, because their primary purpose is to sustain and protect these rights. And they are auxiliary rights, because they exist as backup plans in case of emergency, where the government tries to infringe on these other rights. Thus, it might be appropriate to examine these rights for a moment, and show what Blackstone believed to be necessary in this endeavor. (All quotations from his “Commentaries” in this particular blog post will be from Book 1, Chapter 1. This volume was first published in 1765.)

Coat of arms of Great Britain, 1714-1800

The minimum wage doesn't really help the poor …

One day, a man named Bob goes to the store to buy some milk for his family. Since the price is only $2.00 per gallon that day, he decides to buy 2 cartons of it for a grand total of $4.00. But when he goes to the store again a week later, he finds that the price has risen to $4.00 per gallon. Consequently, he decides to buy just 1 carton this time around for the same price, and wait until the price goes down to buy more. Some people would cut back more than that, and others would cut back less than that. But the demand for the product is not decided by just one customer's purchases. You have to add up the purchases of all of the consumers in that economy to get an accurate demand number. This is known as an “aggregate” figure, and represents the total demand for a given product in a given place at a given time. When you look at these “aggregate” numbers, we can say that the quantity demanded still goes down as the price goes up. Even if some people are still purchasing the same amount of milk as before, the total demand for that milk still goes down. (Applied to your own pocketbook, that logic will probably make sense, at least for some products.)

A review of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s “Africa's Great Civilizations” (PBS)

“The High Contracting Parties do by the present Charter establish an Organization to be known as the ORGANIZATION OF AFRICAN UNITY. The Organization shall include the Continental African States, Madagascar and other Islands surrounding Africa.”

– Charter of the “Organization of African Unity” (predecessor of the current African Union), 25 May 1963

Before watching this series, I knew next to nothing about the history of Africa – I admit it freely. The only part of this continent's history that I really knew much of anything about was Ancient Egypt, and then only in that period through the Roman conquests. This documentary did not neglect Ancient Egypt, as it turned out, but this was far from being its only focus. It tried to cover all of the written history of the entire continent, which is a truly ambitious scope for a documentary of any length. They did not cover everything, of course, nor could they have done so in the mere six episodes that they had here. But they were actually able to cover quite a bit in their limited running time, and I thus marvel that they were able to do so much.

A review of “Queen Victoria's Empire” (PBS Empires)

“ ♪ Rule, Britannia!
Britannia, rule the waves.
And Britons never, never, never shall be slaves. ♪ ”

– “Rule, Britannia!” (1740), a British patriotic song written decades before Queen Victoria was born

At the height of the British Empire, it was the largest empire in the history of the world. Its geography was so widespread that people often commented that the sun “never set” on its borders. Actually, it is not the only empire in history to be described in this way, but it may still be the most prominent of them. The British Empire actually predates Queen Victoria's reign by some centuries, with its “first empire” going from 1583 to 1783 (the year that they lost America). The “second empire” went from 1783 to 1815, the year that the Napoleonic Wars ended. But a number of historians believe that Britain's “imperial century” was from 1815 to 1914, the year that World War One began. Queen Victoria reigned for more than half of this latter period, as it turns out, and was alive for an even larger share of it – part of which was before she assumed the throne in 1837. Thus, historians sometimes refer to this empire as “Queen Victoria's” empire, and to this era of British history as the “Victorian era.”