Federalist Paper #11

I have been thinking about maps, lately, in a way that suggests I am about to come up with a coherent thesis verifying the connection between map-drawing and learning, which is probably not my own idea at all, someone else must have had it already, there's probably a Malcolm Gladwell book called Maps with a tiny picture of a folded-up highway atlas in the center of an all-white cover, but the point is –

well, the point is that one of the reasons I keep these journals (and have been, ever since I was five [although I didn't start seriously journaling until I was thirteen]) is to remember things.

Which sounds ridiculous on the surface, by which I mean it sounds obvious, of course we journal so that we can remember what happens to us, so what I really mean (this week) is that I journal in order to draw maps.

Not just to remember what happened to me, because the majority of my journal entries have very little to do with the day-to-day, but to remember what I'm trying to learn.

We're going to get to the map thing, and it's going to have to do with Zork, and it's also going to have to do with love and the idea that you can't map everything (a well-documented paradox) and therefore you probably can't learn and/or love everything (a well-documented problem).

But all of this is to say that one of the reasons I am writing about the Federalist Papers is because mapping out what I understand about each of these essays is literally drawing the information into my memory (draw having a double meaning in this case).

And if I just read them without mapping them, I'd probably forget what was in them a year from now.

Which, whatever, we can always look up what someone else wrote, and when I write about Zork I'll get to that, but today I am (finally) getting to Federalist Paper #11!

FEDERALIST No. 11. The Utility of the Union in Respect to Commercial Relations and a Navy

This is where I start to wonder whether thirty-year-old Alexander Hamilton is a bit naïve, and I say this as a modestly naïve forty-three-year old who just wrote (with confidence) that love is a superposition, but also UM DOES HE SERIOUSLY THINK THAT WE CAN JUST REFUSE TO TRADE WITH GREAT BRITAIN AND THEN G.B. WILL BE ALL "OKAY, WE'LL GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU WANT AS LONG AS YOU TRADE WITH US"??????

Suppose, for instance, we had a government in America, capable of excluding Great Britain (with whom we have at present no treaty of commerce) from all our ports; what would be the probable operation of this step upon her politics? Would it not enable us to negotiate, with the fairest prospect of success, for commercial privileges of the most valuable and extensive kind, in the dominions of that kingdom? 

And sure, he acknowledges that the Brits could trade with the Dutch who would then trade with the U.S., but that would be a huge hassle for the Brits and eventually they'd come around – which means that we need a Navy, as quickly as possible, to ensure that all of this can happen without Great Britain trying to take our ports by force.

Okay, great, good luck with that, but none of this is the interesting part of Federalist #11.

The part worth remembering comes here:

The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests. Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion over them all. Africa, Asia, and America, have successively felt her domination. The superiority she has long maintained has tempted her to plume herself as the Mistress of the World, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit. Men admired as profound philosophers have, in direct terms, attributed to her inhabitants a physical superiority, and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America—that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere. Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans. It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother, moderation. Union will enable us to do it. Disunion will will add another victim to his triumphs. Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!

Alexander Hamilton understands that white supremacy is a made-up story that people use to maintain power, and that Europeans hold no physical (or assumedly mental) advantage over anyone else. It belongs to the United States to vindicate the honor of the human race, as he puts it – which is also a bit naïve, but still worth working towards.

p.s. did this idea about setting trade terms actually work?

p.p.s. the Navy part worked, in the sense that Great Britain has never taken our ports by force (except temporarily in 1812 I guess but that doesn't count because we took them back)

p.p.p.s. maybe A. Ham is even more of a genius than we realize