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Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 47
We haven't had a new post since before December 25, so obligatory Yuletide link to this hilarious story of Frederick the Great babysitting his bratty little brother, with bonus Fritz/Fredersdorf!
1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
This diplomat was Michał Wielhorski. When he showed up in Paris in 1770, this happened:
Wielhorski: Rousseau! A few years ago, when Corsica was in rebellion, you wrote up "How to govern a country" for it! Can you do the same for us? The Confederation is going to win this rebellion, and then we're going to need some good laws.
Rousseau: I'm entering the paranoid persecution mania stage of my career, but I haven't gone into total isolation here, so sure! Previously, I said that Corsica was the only nation in Europe capable of rational legislation, but now that someone is asking me to come up with some for Poland, suddenly I've discovered many traits about Poland and the Poles that will make it very other nations of Europe. The heroic love of the Poles for their fatherland is like that of the Romans, and they are closest nation to my favorite ancient governments (Sparta 4ever!), seeing as how most of Europe has well and truly diverged from that model.
Rousseau: Plus it's got a simple socio-economic structure and low degree of civilizational development, and it's somewhat protected from foreign influences. All nations are doomed to eventual failure, but Poland has a lot in its favor, since it lacks my least favorite corrupting developments: complicated economics, complex and hierarchical social structures, elaborate state mechanisms, active international relations and refined civilization. All those things just hold you back.
Rousseau: PLUS, all my enemies, like Voltaire and Grimm, are currently mocking the ineffectual anarchy of the Confederation of Bar, so I'm in the mood for talking up how the Confederation of Bar is the greatest thing ever.
Rousseau: One little problem: I don't know much about the details of Poland except what I've been able to osmose over the years. Not that this is a problem, as I don't consider myself excessively bound by reality, I like to make up governments from scratch based on ideals, but I need to know what I'm working with here.
Wielhorski: Not a problem! I have written a whole treatise, which you may draw on for your work. Then I will bring it to the attention of the rest of the Confederation, and it will be helpful to us in governing Poland after our extremely likely victory.
Rousseau: Excellent! After all, Catherine's in that war with the Turks, so soon they'll be able to dictate peace terms to her. A twenty-year treaty between Poland and the Turks, guaranteeing Polish independence, and you're set!
Wielhorski: Perfect! P.S. My treatise ignores all laws passed since Poniatowski became king, for the Confederation does not recognize him, and according to us, there's been an interregnum since August III died.
Wielhorski: So, getting into my treatise, Poland's number one problem: we have no diplomatic service to speak of, and no decent central army.
Rousseau: That's fine, you don't need one! A decent central army only brings trouble.
Wielhorski: …
Rousseau: All you need is a cavalry made up of your nobles, who will be obliged to serve.
Wielhorski: No peasant militia? I really wanted a peasant militia.
Rousseau: Burdensome for the country and dangerous to liberty.
Wielhorski: A functional economy? We could introduce reforms like other countries are doing.
Rousseau: Never follow the example of other countries! They are all degenerate.
Wielhorski: Okay. Well. Currently we have 'three estates': the king, the senate and the equestrian nobles, who assemble at the diet.
Rousseau: Nonsense! First of all, that's not how it currently works; your king is elected by the same people as make up the legislative body, and the king can't do anything without their agreement. He's not a separate estate. Second, the "will of the people" means *all* the people, as a body. It is against the law of nature to have only the nobility participating in the legislation.
Wielhorski: Including the peasants? Who are serfs?
Rousseau: Down with serfdom! Serfdom is bad!
Wielhorski: Well, of course, in principle slavery is bad. I am an enlightened man! However, we have this problem in Poland, which is that our serfs are "drunks, idlers and layabouts, and also insolent." If we free them, they will have no idea what to do with this freedom.
Rousseau: Hmm. That does sound like a problem. Okay, we can't just up and free the slaves. Maybe gradually, over the course of generations. We'll start with the really well-behaved ones: do a good job farming your own land and make it productive, and you can earn your freedom! Meanwhile, since I am Rousseau and EDUCATION is my thing, we will set up good education so that the peasants can gradually learn to understand and take advantage of liberty.
Wielhorski: Great! Plus, I promise that our implementation of serfdom isn't so bad. The owners of serfs can do whatever they want in theory, but in practice there are many customs restraining them.
Rousseau: Perfect! I accept your word on this. Now that we have made some noises in the direction of freedom, we have done our duty as enlightened men. Moving on, I do realize that it's impractical to have every single issue voted on by every single person, so I acknowledge representative government as a necessary evil.
Rousseau: What I propose instead is the local diets, the dietines, send representatives to the national diet with binding instructions. No faithless electors! If you vote against your instructions, you're fired. If an investigation finds it was because you were corrupted, death penalty for you!
Wielhorski: I like it! This is going to become a big thing amongst Polish republicans between now and the beginning of the end of Poland in 1792. In the big Four Year Diet in 1788-1792, it will become a major source of argument between the Patriotic Party, and Poniatowski, for Poniatowski is an Anglophile who wants to introduce the English way of doing representation.
Rousseau: I will be dead by then, so sounds good to me. In the meantime, the biggest problem with your country is not its weakness or the current prevailing anarchy, but that it's just so big. Smaller countries, like Corsica, are easier to reform. Perhaps a good outcome would be if your neighbors took over parts of your country and made it smaller.
Mildred: NO REALLY, HE SAID THAT.
So then that happened, and this whole treatise thing became an academic exercise, because Turkey did *not* dictate peace terms to the Russians (other way around), and Poland did *not* get its twenty years of being left alone, and shrinking the size of Poland did *not* make Poland stronger and easier to reform. But, as mentioned, Rousseau's ideas did at least have some effect on political thought in Poland for the next two decades. And I thought the project was at least *interesting*, if not exactly brimming with pragmatism and high chances of success.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
Yet another reason why Voltaire and Rousseau didn't see eye to eye, to put it mildly. And why young Maximilian Robespierre in the provinces is an ardent Rousseau fan. Meanwhile, Boswell of course managed to gatecrash and get interviews with Rousseau and Voltaire both. (And later even got Rousseau to attend his wedding and be one of the witnesses signing the contract.)
Re: Corsica, I think it was John Wain or Frederick Pottle who, in one of the introductions to selections of Boswell's diaries, said there's always one country which gets hopelessly idealized and seen as the ideal social experiment before reality and more extensive reports on the actual goings on there set in, and then goes on to compare Corsica being this for a while in the 18th century to Cuba being this (not in the US, I know! But in Europe!) in the early 1960s. I can't help but note the end of Corsica romantization also coincides with the most famous Corsican ever rising to the top, and then some.
If an investigation finds it was because you were corrupted, death penalty for you!
Robespierre: *hearteyes* (Okay, I'm being unfair to Maximilien R., who actually was anti death penalty, in a tragic irony, for most of his life and held speeches to that effect when starting his political career. Alas...)
Perhaps a good outcome would be if your neighbors took over parts of your country and made it smaller.
Mildred: NO REALLY, HE SAID THAT.
Wow. Do we know what Wielhorski's reaction was?
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
I'm not 100% sure, but I don't know that we do. I've presented this as a dialogue for readability, much the same way as I often make countries talk to each other and you often make biographers debate with each other, but only as a literary device. There is no record of any conversations between them, we're not even sure if any took place, and I *believe* all we have is Wielhorski's treatise that he presented to Rousseau, and the treatise Rousseau wrote in response.
Much of this essay is trying to reconstruct from the sparse evidence questions like how Rousseau came onto Wielhorski's radar, why on earth he would agree to his project at his time of life, what other works Wielhorski may have presented Rousseau with and that Rousseau might be writing on conversation with, etc. I would have to reread to be sure, but I don't know that we have any record of Wielhorski's reaction to Rousseau's plan, especially as it quickly became obsolete with Russia's victory in the Russo-Turkish War and the way the First Polish Partition actually played out.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
Huh, I didn't know Voltaire was anti-Sparta! Good for him!
(Okay, I'm being unfair to Maximilien R., who actually was anti death penalty, in a tragic irony, for most of his life and held speeches to that effect when starting his political career. Alas...)
I DID NOT KNOW THIS.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
OMG, Sparta was his favorite ancient government? The place that had a high proportion of slaves, with brutal repression of them?
Perhaps a good outcome would be if your neighbors took over parts of your country and made it smaller.
Ha ha!
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
You were LUCKY if you could get someone in our period to pay lip service to "slavery is bad", never mind do more than pay lip service, never mind be consistent in applying that to which governments they admired!
When it comes to the helots: no1curr.
ETA: I opened the document to see if there was an answer to Selena's question, and the page that I opened to landed me on the author calling Rousseau out:
One gets the impression, however, that Rousseau, like other eighteenth-century admirers of ancient republics, lamented this situation quite moderately, and that essentially he passed quickly over the fact of slavery; the thought of it did not disturb his exalted raptures over the liberty, virtues and patriotism of the Spartans and Romans. Similarly, writing dithyrambs in honour of Geneva, that is, the privileged group of its citizens, to which he was evidently proud to belong, he passed over in indiferent silence the fact that three quarters of the state’s population were deprived of political rights and faced economic disadvantages. Since Spartan society, co-existing with the helots’ slavery, and since Genevan society, ruled by a privileged minority (and in essence by a still narrower oligarchy) aroused his fervent admiration, so the liberty-loving society of the Polish nobility, even before it had emancipated other estates and had combined with them in one body, could be a positive phenomenon for Rousseau.
This is Jerzy Michalsky, "Rousseau and Polish Republicanism," translated from the Polish by Richard Butterwick (several of whose works I own).
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
...I laughed really hard at this, because TRUTH. :P
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Rousseau
Mildred: NO REALLY, HE SAID THAT.
WOW.
At some point I would like to know more about Rousseau and education in general. (This is something I might do myself, but I'm guessing that right now I know less than you guys, so I'd welcome any primers.)