Who was George Canning? - Richard Luckett's book review of Wendy Hinde (The Spectator)

Um diplomata brasileiro, Caio de Freitas, compôs um livro, enquanto servia em Londres, na segunda metade dos anos 1950, intitulado Canning e o Brasil, sobre o papel desse ministro inglês na independência do Brasil. 

Who was George Canning? (1973)

The Spectator, 20 October 2022, 12:18pm

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/who-was-george-canning-1973-

Credit: Getty Images

Until Liz Truss, George Canning was the shortest-serving prime minister. He needn’t be forgotten by pub quizzers, general knowledge collectors and historians alike. In 1973, Richard Luckett reviewed a major biography of Canning’s life for The Spectator.

Wendy Hinde: 

George Canning

London: HarperCollins, 1973

Every schoolboy knows about the duel with Castlereagh; students of that neglected subject, abusive language, remember Brougham's description of his behaviour over the Catholic question (‘the most incredible specimen of monstrous truckling for the purpose of obtaining office which the whole history of political tergiversation could furnish’); historians recall his reputation as an orator, his part in the decision to bombard Copenhagen, his divisive effect on Tory ministries, his forceful conduct of foreign policy and the trouble caused by his early death after only a few months as Prime Minister. Anyone with a serious interest in the earlier nineteenth century knows, of necessity, a good deal more than this, but it is certainly true that Canning's career has neither been greatly studied nor greatly appreciated.

Part of the reason is to be found in a certain ambivalence in the man himself. The duel with Castlereagh illustrates this clearly enough; when he came to take his place his second cocked his weapon for him, saying: ‘I cannot trust him to do it himself; he has never fired a pistol in his life.’ Afterwards Canning, wounded, wrote to friends that if they wanted to get a ball through the fleshy part of the thigh, ‘I would recommend Lord Castlereagh as the operator.’ The whole incident — two of the King's ministers in a duel — which promises so well as material for the historical novelist is rendered slightly absurd and at the same time almost innocuous; it does not even become farcical. 

Canning's courage is evident, but what is equally apparent is his refusal to indulge in heroics; consequently the incident is defused of both its tragic and its comic potential. Something similar occurs with his oratory: this made an enormous impression on all his contemporaries, and after the death of Pitt he was widely regarded as the most brilliant speaker in the house, yet a picture of him as a man of passionate convictions would be misleading. Perhaps Coleridge was near the mark when he observed that Canning's speeches ‘flashed such a light around the constitution, that it was difficult to see the ruins of the fabric through it.’ His political opponents, noting the same phenomenon, had no difficulty in explaining it; to them Canning was a man of little principle, interested above all in personal position, in short an actor. The more reactionary members of the Tory party would never have agreed in public, for Canning was after all — in name — a Tory. But in private they expressed the same doubts. Both groups knew that early in life, and apparently for the sake of a seat in Parliament, Canning had deserted the Whig connection in which he had been brought up, and with it the friends who had helped him in his youth; both groups also knew that Canning's mother was a professional actress. It seemed to them an adequate reason to doubt his sincerity, since the circumstance not only conveniently suggested an hereditary taint, but also demonstrated a lack of background that would necessarily be reflected in his political behaviour.

Wendy Hinde has put everybody with the slightest interest in the period in her debt by writing a biography of Canning that sorts out the formidable complexities or the political manoeuvring that complicated so much of his career, and provides a sympathetic but not unduly partisan account of his beliefs and actions. 

Two factors should recommend her book to a wider public: the ease and clarity of her style, which makes it an exceptional pleasure to read, and Canning's peculiar position as the first British Prime Minister to have been a career politician in the modern sense. For, as Miss Hinde makes clear, he started from nothing; his father, who came from an Ulster family, had been disinherited, and when he died a year after Canning's birth his widow turned to the stage in an endeavour to earn a living. True, at the age of eight Canning was sent to a respectable school, but the arrangement which provided him with an education and a middle-class home deprived him of the opportunity of living with his mother, and ensured him, in his later life, no more than a very modest income. He was to suffer both from the separation from his mother entailed by his new life, and from the embarrassment that her attempted incursions into this new life would cause him.

Education at Eton and Christ Church has since become an accepted pattern for the aspiring Tory leader, but it was not so well worn a path when Canning trod it. He had to make the most of his opportunities, and he did so brilliantly, editing a magazine at Eton which was read with approval by the Royal family and was perhaps even more noteworthy in that it showed a reasonable financial return. At Eton and Oxford he revealed a remarkable talent for making friends, and when, on leaving Oxford to read for the bar, he offered his services to Pitt, he demonstrated an even more remarkable talent for keeping them. In due course the ultras of both parties would regard this capacity to remain on terms of affection with men of different political loyalties as evidence of innate hypocrisy. It was a quality which his friends interpreted rather differently. 

In any case his most valuable associates were those who shared his new political creed, and they were to form a caucus to be reckoned with in any political struggle. Their loyalty to their leader — for that was the position which Canning swiftly and effortlessly came to occupy amongst them — was matched only by his loyalty to Pitt. Canning's adherence provides another instance of his capacity to go through the motions of high drama and yet to remain unscathed, since by following Pitt out of office in 1801 he made a gesture that was at once extravagant and extremely hazardous to his own career, and at the same time managed to survive his period in the wilderness. It was not enough, however, to convince his enemies of his loyalty and until his death the charge of deviousness was at the root of many of their criticisms.

Canning rose because of his brilliance and his capacity for hard work, but the actual mechanics of the rise were those of influence and patronage. His marriage, to a girl in whom devotion and good sense were almost miraculously allied to a considerable fortune, eventually enabled him to buy his own way into parliamentary seats, if he wished, but not until the death of Pitt was he entirely free from obligations which influenced his political behaviour. The problem, then, is to identify those causes about which he felt passionately, and to mark the point at which his concern ceased to be the implementation of policy and became its formulation. 

From the start he was opposed to discrimination against Roman Catholics, to the slave trade and to despotism. On issues concerning freedom of individual conscience, that is, he was liberal, and this almost induced the Whigs to believe that he was one of them. At the same time he entirely rejected what he regarded as the pusillanimous Whig line on foreign policy, and his pre-emptive strike against the Danes reduced the Whigs to fury. High Tories were equally—though more circumspectly displeased with his rejection of Metternich's ' holy league,' his championship of the cause of South American independence and a number of his economic measures. 

But on the central issue, parliamentary reform, he was firmly Tory, and this indicates a further paradox. For Canning rose through a system which it was impossible to reconcile with the ideas of the reformers, without possessing any of the hereditary interests which the anti-reformers sought to defend. If on one level he lacked — and still today seems to lack — credibility, it was because of this. Like Burke and Sheridan he seemed to exist to speak, yet his speaking was limited by that fact; unlike his fellow countrymen he reached high office. 

Late in his career he discovered, in the people of Britain, a new audience and a new political base which could serve as a bastion against a king who began by cordially disliking him (George IV thought that he had been one of Queen Caroline's lovers) and an unconvinced Parliament. His speeches to corporations became as important as any that he delivered in the house. Yet he never reconciled his political creed with his dependence on his new allies, and it is difficult to imagine what would have happened had he lived on. 

Perhaps the truth is merely that the events of 1832 would have been postponed. It emerges from this that the difficulties faced by Canning were very much those of the modern politician, who seldom emerges from the class whose interests he seeks to defend (e.g. Mr Heath) and who professes, on the one hand, a belief in the ineffable rightness of public opinion and, on the other, confidence in his own rectitude and the ineffable rightness of his private judgement. A further similarity emerges from something which Canning said, but to which Miss Hinde does not refer. I owe the reference to Coleridge, who put it like this: ‘The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong in this country, that it has more than once prevailed in our foreign councils over national honour and national justice.’ Canning felt this very keenly, and said that he was unable to contend against the city trained-bands. 

Extend the reference to the trained-bands of organised labour and the parallels become even more striking. Miss Hinde's achievement is to have given us a picture of Canning in which the elements of personal ambition and of principle are held in a believable balance; further than this, she has something to tell us about our own times.

Written byRichard Luckett

Richard Luckett was a lecturer in seventeenth-century literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He died in 2020.

Quanto tempo de reinado terá o Imperador Xi Jinping? - Francis Pike (The Spectator)

 

How long will Xi Jinping rule China?  The Spectator, June 12, 2022 Francis Pike

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-long-will-xi-jinping-rule-china

For some time now it has been assumed that in November the National Congress will rubber stamp Xi Jinping’s continued role as China’s supreme leader for a third five-year term, which would make Xi the first Chinese leader for a generation to serve more than two terms. 

Just a year ago his position as one of China‘s three pre-eminent leaders was confirmed when the 400 members of the Central Committee passed the third ‘Historical Resolution’ in the Chinese Communist Party’s 100-year history. The previous two were organised by Mao in 1945 and Deng Xiaoping in 1981. The resolution highlighted the concept of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ as a historical equivalent to that of his two legendary predecessors. But a number of crises, international and domestic, have put a question mark against Xi’s continued omnipotence. 

When Xi met Putin before the Beijing Winter Olympics, the allies, who had moved ever closer over the last decade, declared that there were ‘no limits’ to the Russia-China relationship. What followed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, about which Xi was forewarned, is therefore a puzzle. Although China voted against the UN resolution to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s active support for Russia has been notable by its absence. 

There has been no public expression of support for Putin’s ‘special military operation’. Xi himself has subsequently stated that China is ‘committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries’. Russia has asked for military aid from China but no answer, at least publicly, has been forthcoming. If, as one suspects, China is helping Russia, it is being done in secret. 

Neither does it seem that China wants to risk being involved in trade wars with the West. It is notable that Union Pay, China largest credit card company, has, like Visa and Mastercard, stopped working with Russian banks. Chinese companies, particularly those established in the US, appear to be equally circumspect about breaking US sanctions. 

The Russia-China allegiance may now be superglued but to what strategic benefit to China? It is difficult to see how China’s geopolitical ambitions can be burnished by its support for an ally, albeit half-hearted, whose actions are causing global inflation and, in some countries, starvation. This is not how you win friends among the ‘non-aligned’ nations – just look at the borrowing default, food riots and political crisis in China’s ally Sri Lanka over the last month. 

If China’s friendship with Putin is toxic internationally, it also seems likely that this toxicity applies in some measure at home. The leadership of China is opaque when it comes to identifying opposition to Xi. However, it is highly unlikely that factions who supported the cautious internationalism of Deng Xiaoping and his successors can be happy with the consequences of Xi’s overtly aggressive foreign policy which appears to have united the West in a Russia-China containment strategy. It has to be asked whether it was Xi or other government members who decided that there should be limits to Xi’s ‘no limits’ relationship with Russia. 

The domestic economic costs of Xi’s campaign against western values are also becoming apparent. Under the influence of the Wang Huning, the communist party’s chief ideological theorist, a member of the Politburo’s seven man Standing Committee, Xi has pursued increasingly authoritarian attacks on the stars of China’s new economy. 

Last year technology entrepreneur Jack Ma, the charismatic founder of Alibaba, was ‘disappeared’ and his company Alibaba forcibly restructured. A swathe of new regulations has hit China’s tech sector. The US$100bn online digital education industry, deemed inegalitarian, has been devastated by new regulation. Cryptocurrency has been banned. Even China’s social media stars such as Zhao Wei, a billionaire actress, pop singer and influencer whose online presence was erased in August last year, have been reined in. 

Wang, a social puritan, believes that a ‘nihilist individualism’ has undermined the moral fabric of the US. He and Xi are determined that China will not be infected by such Western-style moral corruption, which they believe is fostered by social media. 

Xi’s regulatory crackdown on technology companies has crashed stock prices. According to TechNode, a Chinese technology media company, there is an ongoing bloodbath in tech sector employment. Xiaohongshu, sometimes described as China’s Instagram, has recently laid off 10 per cent of its staff. According to Reuters, even the major tech companies such as Alibaba and Tencent are planning large-scale redundancy programmes. 

Investment in start-ups, already in decline before Covid, has plummeted. Many technology entrepreneurs are quitting mainland China and heading to safer regulatory locations such as Singapore or the US. 

Furthermore, China’s main technology and financial hub, Shanghai, has been particularly badly affected by Xi’s doubling down on his zero-Covid stance. Shanghai’s officials and its business elite are reportedly furious. Unlike other zero-Covid zealots, such as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who have given up on draconian lockdowns, Xi appears determined to stay the course. As long as Xi remains committed to the policy of zero Covid, how is China ever going to open up its borders? It is a question that must have occurred to many within China. 

As a result of Xi, a perfect storm of problems is now bearing down on the Chinese economy. His foreign policies, particularly in relation to his threats to Taiwan and his support for Russia, are scaring off foreign investors. Revelations about Xi’s brutal suppression of China’s Uighurs are a further negative for investment in China. Foreign Direct Investment has fallen to just 2 per cent of GDP compared to 6.5 per cent in the mid-1990s. Meanwhile Chinese companies are offshoring manufacturing capacity to countries such as Vietnam. 

At the same time the Chinese property sector is in a cyclical downturn. Xi’s clampdown on property leverage following the collapse of residential property behemoth China Evergrande Group is crashing the property market and construction sectors. This is a disaster for China’s regional governments whose finances are highly dependent on property sales. 

No wonder then that, after a first quarter of negative GDP, global investment banks are busy slashing their growth estimates for China in 2022. Real GDP growth is now forecast to halve from 8.1 per cent in 2021 to around 4 per cent in the current year. Even that may prove optimistic. 

This is not the economic background that Xi would want in the run up to the Politiburo Standing Committee elections in November. Confusingly, Xi’s lockdown orders to Covid-hit cities, the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, not a Xi acolyte, has emerged from the shadows to exhort Chinese companies to get back to work. In some quarters there is clearly alarm at the economic downturn. Does Li’s sudden appearance centre stage indicate a power struggle at the heart of government? 

Xi’s government remains broadly popular. The Edelman Trust Index shows that the Chinese government enjoys a 91 per cent trust rating compared with just 39 per cent for the US government. But Xi’s future will not be decided by the Chinese people; power struggles are fought within the Communist Party behind closed doors. 

Though there is no sense that things are so bad that Xi might fail in his bid to win a third term as China’s leader, there can be little doubt that his reputation is tarnished within some political factions – particularly the ‘Shanghai gang’ who dominated Chinese politics for a generation until Xi’s emergence. While we should not expect a political earthquake at the National Congress in November neither should we rule one out, particularly if the economic outlook in China continues to deteriorate.

Written byFrancis Pike

Francis Pike is a historian and author of Hirohito’s War, The Pacific War 1941-1945 and Empires at War: A Short History of Modern Asia Since World War II.

The Growing Danger of the Sino-Russian Alliance - Francis P. Sempa (The Spectator)

Analogias históricas são sempre enganosas, na maior parte do tempo equivocadas e inadequadas, e não servem para prever o futuro. Depois de 60 anos de "desassemblagem" do comunismo – com a cisão China-URSS –, 50 anos de promoção da China pelos EUA, e 30 anos de irresistível ascensão chinesa, temos agora um "retour en arrière": aliança Rússia-China e nova Guerra Fria, desta vez provocado pelos EUA, contra os dois outros, que acharam melhor declarar aliança, aliás basicamente motivada pela atitude arrogante dos EUA. Isso não quer dizer que se possa traçar analogias com velhas alianças e caminhadas para a guerra, como no passado. Acadêmicos adoram especular. O mundo não é tão complicado assim e se os generais se preparam para a guerra a decisão sempre está com os políticos.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Subject: Ignorance of History Led to the Transformative Diplomatic Revolution of 2022 

 

The Growing Danger of the Sino-Russian Alliance

It may be too late to stop them.

by FRANCIS P. SEMPA

February 19, 2022, 1:55 AM

With the formation of the Sino-Russian strategic alliance, the world has witnessed the near completion of a diplomatic revolution that may change the global balance of power. This development in some respects echoes the diplomatic revolution of 1756 (when Austria and Prussia switched alliances) that set the stage for the outbreak of the Seven Years War — the first global war in history. And it also echoes in some respects Prussia’s unification of Germany in 1871, which set the stage for the First World War. If we are not careful, the diplomatic revolution of 2022 could lead to another and much more dangerous global conflagration.

China during the 1970s and 1980s was a de facto ally of the United States and the West in the Cold War. China’s role as our ally against the Soviet Union resulted from increased tensions between the two Eurasian communist powers in the 1960s, which the skillful diplomacy of President Richard Nixon exploited in the early 1970s. This, too, was a diplomatic revolution that, as Nixon later said, organized a grand coalition against which the Soviet Union could not prevail. When the Cold War ended, there were two victors: the United States and China. From the 1990s until the latter years of the Trump administration, the United States attempted to continue engagement with China while neglecting the need to keep China and Russia apart. Instead, successive administrations from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama needlessly expanded NATO, prompting Russia’s historic paranoia to resurface and nudging Russia into the Chinese orbit. It didn’t happen overnight. But as the United States was distracted in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Global War on Terror for more than two decades, China and Russia grew closer.

U.S. foreign policy has acted as if a Sino-Russian alliance didn’t matter. It was a colossal failure of historical and geopolitical imagination.

When the George W. Bush administration and some voices in Europe suggested that Georgia and Ukraine could be NATO’s next two members, Russia’s reaction was entirely predictable. Indeed, the American historian and former diplomat George F. Kennan predicted it. In an article in the New York Times on February 5, 1997, Kennan wrote that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” NATO expansion, he explained, would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion.” Kennan later told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that NATO expansion “is a tragic mistake.” It will start, the intellectual architect of containment said, a “new Cold War.” Kennan, you see, had the ability to see things from Russia’s perspective — an ability sorely lacking in most American statesmen for the previous three decades.

So instead of following Nixon’s example of using diplomacy to keep Russia and China separated, and instead of heeding Kennan’s warning against the unnecessary and provocative expansion of NATO, U.S. foreign policy acted as if a Sino-Russian alliance didn’t matter. It was a colossal failure of historical and geopolitical imagination. For centuries, Great Britain as the world’s leading sea power had pursued a foreign policy designed to prevent a single power or alliance of powers from achieving command of the Eurasian continent. Since America’s involvement in the First World War, our statesmen had followed a similar policy approach, and during and after World War II, the United States succeeded Britain as the “holder” of the Eurasian balance of power. The outcome of World War II with an unbalanced Europe provided the impetus for Kennan’s containment doctrine, and the formation of the Sino-Soviet bloc in early 1950 produced NSC-68 — the then-classified national security strategy that expressed the goal of maintaining the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia. (READ MORE: As China and Russia Plot New World Order, Academics and Media Look the Other Way)

It may be too late to prevent the completion of the diplomatic revolution of 2022. China supports Russia over Ukraine. Russia supports China over Taiwan. The two powers cooperate in exploiting the melting Arctic Ocean, energy security, and much, much more. The two greatest autocracies on the planet confront the United States, Europe, and Asia with a Eurasian bloc possessed of enormous human and natural resources, first-class militaries and growing navies, growing and modernizing nuclear arsenals, and common interests in challenging the U.S.-led world order. Few in Washington seem to understand, as the Biden administration proceeds from crisis to crisis, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, in strange paradox, using tough, resolute rhetoric, while manifesting weakness and irresoluteness. You reap what you sow.