Canibalismo na historia: Mao Tse-tung nao foi o primeiro a promove-lo na China: Revolucao Taiping

Antes daquele líder demencial da China no século XX, vulgo Mao, promover, ativa e despreocupadamente a morte, por fome, de milhões de chineses (que praticaram canibalismo como recurso último, depois de esgotar tubérculos, raízes, grama, ratos, etc,), os chineses já tinha tido uma experiência no terreno, com a revolução Taiping, em meados do século XIX, como registrado neste excerto de livro selecionado pelo site Delanceyplace.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Today's selection -- from Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt. The most widely cited estimate of deaths in China's Taiping Rebellion is 20 million, but more recent scholarship puts that estimate as high as 70 million. The destruction to cities and farms was so pervasive that cannibalism became routine: "Meanwhile,  the  famine  in  the  countryside  deepened.  Despite  the  relief  stations  [Qing Dynasty General] Zeng  Guofan  had  set  up  in  southern  Anhui,  conditions  in that mountainous part of the province had deteriorated far beyond even the horror that had existed when he first took control of Anqing. 'Every­where in southern Anhui they are eating people,' he wrote in his diary on June 8, 1863, a remark whose very banality signified the degree to which the unthinkable had become commonplace. It was one of several notations on cannibalism in his diary, though in this instance the concern that drove him to mention it wasn't so much that human meat was being consumed per se -- for that was old news -- but that it was becoming so expensive: the price per ounce had risen fourfold since the previous year, meaning that even this most dismal of sustenances was becoming unaffordable. ... [British Army officer] Charles Gordon saw its gruesome footprint for himself while on cam­paign, though he didn't think his brethren back in Shanghai could possibly understand the true horror of it. '[T]o read that there are human beings eating human flesh:' he wrote to his mother, 'produces less effect than if they saw the corpses from which that flesh is cut.' "The most widely accepted estimates put the death toll of China's nineteenth-century  civil war at somewhere between twenty million and thirty million people. The figure is necessarily impressionistic, for there are no reliable censuses to compare from the time, so it is typi­cally based on demographic projections of what the Chinese popula­tion should otherwise have been in later generations. According to one American study published in 1969, by as late as 1913, nearly fifty years after the fall of Nanjing, China's population had yet to recover to its pre-1850 level.  "A more recent study by a team of scholars in China, published in 1999, estimated that the five hardest-hit provinces -- Jiangxi, Hubei, An­hui, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu -- together suffered a population loss of some eighty-seven million people between 1851 and 1864: fifty-seven million of them dead from the war, and the rest never born due to depressed birth­rates. Their projection for the full scale of the war in all provinces was seventy million dead, with a total population loss of more than one hun­dred million. Those higher numbers have recently gained wider circula­tion, but they are controversial; critics argue that there is no way to know how many of the vanished people died -- from the war, from disease, from starvation -- and how many took up lives elsewhere. Nevertheless, even the most subjective anecdotal reports from travelers on the lower Yangtze testified to the deep scars on China's cities and countryside, which were still far from being healed even decades after the Taiping war, and those figures begin to give a sense of the unprecedented scale of destruction and social dislocation that consumed China in what is believed to be the deadliest civil war in all of human history." To subscribe, please click here or text "nonfiction" to 22828.

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War Author: Stephen R. Platt Publisher: Vintage Copyright 2012 by Stephen R. Platt Pages: 358-359, 338-339 If you wish to read further: Buy Now

Pais Fundadores Financeiros: o primeiro banco nacional americano - book excerpt

A batalha entre Alexander Hamilton, uma espécie de desenvolvimentista avant la lettre, e os agraristas republicanos reunidos em torno de Jefferson, não se limitou à lei autorizando a criação de um banco nacional, mas se estendia à questão das tarifas alfandegárias e todos os demais mecanismos favorecendo o protecionismo e o apoio à indústria nacional, uma questão que permanece viva, presente e problemático até hoje (basta verificar as posições de Trump a esse respeito).
A questão do banco também se manteve viva, até hoje, ainda que mais uma batalha tenha sido travada em torno da criação do Federal Reserve, um empreendimento que tem pouco mais de cem anos (1913).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Today's encore selection -- from Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich by Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen. When America's Founding Fathers signed the Constitution in 1787, many believed that the new government was only authorized to do the functions specifically enumerated in that document. After all, those enumerated powers were already a bold leap forward from the Articles of Confederation. However, other signers felt that the government should be entitled to do things far beyond the enumerated powers, things "necessary and proper" to carry out its enumerated responsibilities. The difference between those two views formed an immediate rift between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson that echoes to this day -- and first exploded in the battle over a bill to create the first Bank of the United States, an institution nowhere mentioned in the Constitution:

"Banks were then highly controversial, but Alexander Hamilton was at the apex of his brilliance, guiding his Bank bill through Congress, ably aided by Congressman Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, a nationalist of the most fervent type. Although the Bank bill passed the Senate on January 20, 1791, congressman and Federalist Papers co-author James Madison tried to defeat it in the House. On February 8, the diminutive Madison and his allies lost a roll call that counted 39 in favor of the Bank and only 20 opposed. The political fighting had been particularly nasty, causing one senator to state in his diary that 'some gentlemen would have been ashamed to have their speeches of this day reflected in the newspapers of tomorrow.' The attack by the mostly southern opponents to the Bank was a landmark in American history, marking as it did the birth of the agrarian or Jeffersonian wing of the Republican Party. While this stand was the agrarian Re­publicans' first, it was certainly not their last; they would not rest in their attempt to destroy the creative work of Hamilton and his funding system.

 
First Bank of the United States 1792

"Although it had passed both houses of Congress, the Bank bill was anything but a done deal. To become law, President George Washington would have to sign it, and do so before February 26, the time limit imposed by the Constitu­tion. While Hamilton's ties to the president were many and deep, forged as they were during the crises and dangers of the Revolutionary War, Virginia's agrar­ian Republicans, led by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Attorney General Edmund Randolph, and Madison, also had strong ties with Washington. All four gentlemen shared Virginian roots and bore the stain of slaveholding, though some more thoroughly than others. ... Most importantly, their opposition was not so much political as ideological; they vehe­mently opposed the Bank as unconstitutional and potentially dangerous to republican government. Jefferson and Randolph pressed the president to veto the Bank bill, and Madison's vain attempt to galvanize opposition to the Bank in Congress made it obvious where he stood.

"Washington had a decision to make. Dare he veto a bill of such importance passed by both houses of Congress and eagerly submitted by his closest eco­nomic advisor? Dare he sign the measure and face the accusation that he had passed a law that was, according to many prominent Virginians, impolitic, poor policy, and, perhaps most damning, clearly unconstitutional? Washington showed Hamilton the arguments against the Bank set forth by Randolph and Jefferson and gave him a week to respond. In essence, he placed in Hamilton's hands the power to save his creation.


Alexander Hamilton by William J. Weaver

"It was the sixth day, February 22, and Washington's deadline loomed. ... Hamilton [worked furiously through that night to prepare a rebuttal].

"Many observers, however, demurred or remained unconvinced of the neces­sity of a national bank. Hamilton believed that the long-term viability of his new funding system depended on passage of the law. The pressure to produce a flaw­less retort weighed heavily on him, and he rose to the challenge. In the first clear articulation of the broad or loose interpretation of the Constitution, Hamilton argued that the Bank, though not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was clearly constitutional because 'every power vested in a Government is in its na­ture sovereign, and includes by force of the term, a right to employ all means req­uisite and fairly applicable to the attainment of the ends of such power.'

"Hamilton had turned the tables on his opposition. Where Jefferson, Madi­son, and Randolph argued that the federal government had no power to incor­porate a bank because it was not explicitly allowed to do so in the Constitution, Hamilton retorted that the government enjoyed all powers necessary to its func­tioning that were not explicitly forbidden. Hamilton's logic was unanswerable. From that day forth the doctrine of 'implied powers' increasingly dominated legal interpretation of the Constitution. Hamilton had gained not one but two victories, the establishment of the Bank and the widespread acceptance of the doctrine of implied powers.

"Washington signed the bill on February 25. The centerpiece of Hamilton's creation was in place. The creator had once again triumphed. However, the 'tri­umvirate' of Madison, Randolph, and Jefferson was horrified that their fellow Virginian had signed the bill. As one pamphleteer noted, 'the great Washington burst from the trammels which had been prepared for him, shook off the bias on which the triumvirate had placed their main dependence, and to the great mor­tification of their party, fixed his signature on the bill.' The agrarian trio would not soon forget."

Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich
Author: Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Copyright 2006 by Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen
Pages 11-13

If you wish to read further: Buy Now

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