Syria and Europe: Lessons from the Nineteenth Century

Arab Spring [LP] (Photo credit: Painted Tapes)

Popular demonstrations are taking place across the region's capital cities.

Rioters are demanding political reform, greater freedoms and the removal of the old dictators.

An economic crisis has been a catalyst for a wave of popular uprisings across the continent by the growing educated middle classes.

Liberal reform is everywhere, opposed by entrenched political elites.

Should foreign troops be deployed in support of the protesters?

The Arab Spring?

No - Europe in the early decdes of the nineteenth century.

Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the subsequent Congress of Vienna, liberal and republican movements took to the streets in cities as diverse as Manchester (1819), Lisbon (1820), Paris and Brussels (both 1830), and Rome (1831). The protests were often violent, resulting in many deaths. In some countries, elements of the armed forces joined with the rebels.

Protests were often put down, not only by national governments and their armies, but also through intervention by allied powers - Austrian forces into northern Italy, British troops to Portugal and French soldiers into neighbouring Spain. Elites defended one another against the growing tide of liberal and republican sentiment.

Comparisons with the Arab Spring and its related uprisings are especially relevant in examining the experience of Greece during this age of revolution. A revolution broke out in 1821, aimed at freeing Greece from the rule of the Ottoman Empire and establishing a liberal constitution for the country. This aim was only partly realised when the Ottomans received military support from the Egyptian viceroy Muhammed Ali, whose troops seized a large part of the Greek mainland by 1826.  Only the southern part of the country remained free enough to sustain its independence from Ottoman rule. 

Fast forward two centuries, and the comparisons with events in the Middle East and North Africa are striking.

 

 

  

  




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Financial Crisis: Time to Diversify Currencies?

Image via Wikipedia

The idea of creating, using, or producing currencies other than those officially sanctioned by the state, is gaining momentum.

This from the BBC website today:

Parliament is to debate a call for foreign currencies to be made legal tender in the UK. Such a move would protect savers by allowing them to hold the currency least likely to be devalued, Tory MP Douglas Carswell told the Commons. He said people could then "extricate themselves from the monetary masters that hold them all captive".

Ryan Grant at the Distributist Review goes further, calling on American states to exercise their legal right to mint their own currencies, in response to what Grant sees as the inevitability of the collapse of the US dollar as a credible global currency.   

The root of our system of currency and credit is not based on value, the thing money is supposed to represent, but on debt, its antithesis. .....

Among Grants five solutions to the debt crisis is that the government must 

Allow and promote local currencies based on local assets, namely to have currency which is based on value and not on debt

David Boyle at The New Economics Foundation meanwhile is critical of

The idea that every nation, or even every continent, should have just one currency to serve everybody’s needs is a piece of eighteenth century Whig ideology that we have been stuck with unthinkingly ever since.  The plight of Spain and Greece is evidence of how faulty it is. 

Boyle calls for currencies that are as diverse as human societies.

With the collapse of the Euro a distinct possibility, and calls for the drachma to be reintroduced into Greece's domestic economy, such radical measures may be forced into the mainstream whether we like it our not.

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Related articles

• Legalise foreign currencies - MP (bbc.co.uk)
• Extreme markets need extreme measures (tradingfloor.com)
• "The Euro Is Finished" (lonerangersilver.wordpress.com)

Democracy, Greek Style

Not for the first time in its history, Greece has been teaching the world something about democracy.

Let me be clear. I don't generally support violence against people or property. However....

Whereas politics in many western countries is increasingly restricted to electing governments to rule on our behalf, and while these elections increasingly resemble beauty pageants rather than platforms for substantial political debate, the Greek students through taking to the streets this week are expressing an older form of democratic activity involving mass, direct action in pursuit of the objectives of ordinary citizens, 20% of whom (in Greece) live in poverty while youth unemployment runs at 19%.

In a country that has been ruled by generals within my own lifetime, I would prefer to see young people protesting against police brutality than sitting at home watching X Factor.

Meanwhile, Reuters news agency is quoting police sources as saying they are running out of tear gas after using more than 4,600 capsules in the last week. Apparently, foreign suppliers are being contacted for fresh quantities.

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