Dr. Buchanan from UVM for joining us tonight to talk about a very timely topic, which is China. China yesterday, today and tomorrow. Professor Buchanan was born in London. He has a BA in modern history from Oxford, right? And then he got his PhD and MA from Rutgers University. He talks, he teaches now at UVM where he's a senior lecturer. I've taken now three of his classes and I must say that the most, they're almost transformative. I don't know if I told you that, Professor Buchanan. And that is because he has a perspective that is very unusual, which is a global perspective. For instance, right now I'm taking his class in global history since 1500, which is largely, I think, although it hasn't finished a course, it seems to be the development of the modern world and how the modern world developed through, really, the development of the transatlantic slave trade, the development of the new world, and then the transformation of China and other parts of the world. That is what I believe that this professor always does. He puts history in a global context that's very unusual and very interesting to me, and that's what I hope we hear about tonight. So here he is, Professor Buchanan, and he's living in the Adirondacks, which... Okay, so good evening, everybody, and thank you for inviting me to give this lecture tonight. I'm going to try and, right now, just share my screen. Oh yeah, whoever's the actual, I think, Beth, you're going to have to, it says you are actually going to have to enable the screen, give me the screen sharing in order to share my screen. Did that work? No. Let's have a look. Oh yeah, there we go. That's it, that's good. Okay. Great. Okay, so I hope you can all kind of see that. Okay, so, well, I was really excited to be invited to give this talk tonight by Sunday, and I'm probably going to talk for about 40, 45 minutes, and then hopefully it'll be some time for questions and discussion afterwards. I'm going to start with a little bit of a disclaimer, which is that I'm not actually an expert on the history of China. I'm a global historian, and what I hope to be able to present tonight is sort of thinking through a little bit about the place of China in world history and more yesterday and today than tomorrow, or probably more yesterday and then a little bit of today and then tomorrow we can discuss in the question and in the question answers. But I assume this is a topic on all of your minds for fairly obvious reasons. So anyway, let's get straight into it. As Sandy said in her introduction there, the global history course that I teach, and this is sort of in common with a lot of global history courses around the country, kind of breaks in 1500. So there's a part one of everything up to 1500, then a part two from 1500 onwards. And in terms of thinking about the emergence of the modern world, that makes some sense in some ways. But it really doesn't make much sense in terms of Chinese history. And 1500 was kind of right bang in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. And this map here, I'm not going to talk to you about the details, but you get a sense of the scale of China in the Ming Dynasty pretty close to its geographical current geographical area. A large centralized state, single single unified government ruling the whole the whole vast territory common, pretty much a common language, common legal system, common common common currency, powerful army deployed mostly on the border defensive defensively. All of this resting, all of this sort of superstructure of the state administration resting on millions and millions of heavily taxed peasant farmers, highly productive peasant farmers, particularly of course in the south in the wet rice regions of southern China. A population of about 125 million in around 1500, a little bit over a quarter of the entire entire estimated world population living in living under one government. Pretty amazing. I don't know why we always say this thing about Martians, but anyway, I'll say if you had been a Martian and you'd landed on earth in 1500 and you'd scooted around sort of looking at these various different states and their organization and stuff, you would have, I think by any objective measure come to the conclusion that China was far and away, not only the largest but the most centralized in many ways the most modern looking state on the face of the globe. In many ways it was typical of other large agricultural based states, the Mughal Empire, the Safavid Empire, I'm just talking about contemporaries in 1500, the Ottoman Empire, the Malian Empire in West Africa, even the Aztec and Inca empires in the Americas, all of which have some very common similar common sort of structural features, but China clearly the largest, the most powerful and most centralized. I started in 1500 just because that's where my course starts, but what I've just described to you really would have been true, I'm going to say more or less true at any time since about after about 200 BCE onwards, until the late 1700s that China was clearly the single largest most unified powerful centralized economically, militarily, etc. state on the face of the earth. I say more or less at any time because while that's true for long periods of history there were particular moments when it wasn't true. This is a graph of China's population and you can see it has this interesting kind of wave function kind of going on here, so here's Han China that I just beginning about 200 BCE, you can see the increasing population, you can see this Peking declining, this that's actually called on the chart here the era of disunity, and then you start to see the recovery the Tang dynasty, the Songjiang dynasty, and then in the 1200s the Mongol invasion, another sort of decline, and then the dynasty I've just been talking about the Ming, so here's 1500, top max is out about 1600 and then a period of decline, short relatively short, and then the population rises again in the Qing dynasty. I'm using population here as a sort of stand-in for general economic and political health, it doesn't map necessarily directly but it's pretty close, these waves mark periods of consolidation of a new dynasty, economic expansion, economic growth, military expansion, and then what we might refer to as imperial overstretch, biting off more than you can chew, trying to organize more than you can really organize, increasingly rebellion in the provinces, military rebellion in the provinces has often accompanied by by peasant revolts against against the heavy taxation, and sometimes accompanied by invasion, from the steps, from the step nomadic, nomadic peoples, and the dynasties overthrown, you go into a period of collapse of disintegration, and then after some time a new dynasty arises, so this is I don't you know this can you can oversimplify stuff and but this is a this is this is genuinely a pattern of Chinese history, it's actually truly also a pattern of history in all of the major large agricultural based states, you could draw a similar chart for India, you could look at similarly for Persia, you know in other regions, this is a pattern, it's particularly a marked pattern and an easily traceable pattern in Chinese history, so I want to contrast what I've just described with Western Europe, this is I don't know if you can, I hope you can see this, this is Eurasia in year 117 in the common era which is which is often given as the the year of maximum expansion of the Roman Empire, it's after Trajan completes the conquest of Dacia, anyway my point is here you can see that you see these two you see these two giant empires at opposite ends of Eurasia, here's Han Dynasty China, pretty much the same territory as the Ming we were looking at you know 1300, 1400 years later and here's Rome spread out around the Mediterranean world, more or less equal populations, somewhere 50 plus million in each of them at the time, they're sometimes referred to as barbells, too massive weights at opposite ends of Eurasia, so if you'd arrived at if your Martian had arrived on earth in 117 CE you might have drawn the conclusion that these two massive centralized empires, agricultural base etc etc, well of course you all know what happens, the Roman Empire collapses in the 400s, similar reasons for the for the collapse of the of the of the Chinese dynastic empires, imperial overstretched revolt of revolt of generals on the frontiers, peasant rebellion, slave rebellion in the Roman Empire, barbarian quote unquote invasions, Germans, hungs etc etc but that's where the similarity ends, rather than there being a period of of collapse and disintegration and then a new Roman Empire arises and everything gets pulled back together, i.e. the the Chinese pattern, that's not what happens in Western Europe, Western Europe remains politically, politically fragmented, there are a couple of attempts to those of you who know your European history will know there's a couple of attempts to sort of create a unified Europe, i'm thinking particularly of Charlemagne in the in the 800s or Charles V in the in the early 1500s, to actually create a centralized European state, but none of it lasts very long, Charlemagne's empire collapses within a within a within a generation and and the Habsburgs don't don't make it for very much don't make it for very much longer, so here's an interesting pattern to sort of start us thinking about to start us to start to start us thinking about these these the the the sort of the patterns of global history in the place of China in the place of China in it, so here's Europe in the 1500s, this is at the same time as those images of Ming Dynasty China I was showing you, by the by the time you get to the 1500s you have got three larger kingdoms starting to emerge, Spain, France, England, but Germany, Italy, still a complete a complete sort of kaleidoscope of small little states and principalities and city states and all kinds of and all kinds of other stuff and even the unity of Spain is pretty it's only just it's still pretty it's still pretty tenuous you've still got Burgundy's a separate state other other little other little feudal princestums in in the middle of France and and and stuff so it's not that it's not that Europe was economically unproductive you've got very highly productive present classes in in in Europe you've got about 80 million of them so not that much less than the Chinese population but politically you have this you have this entirely difference you have this entirely different picture well this lays the basis for what I'm going to refer to as the advantages of backwardness and here it is the absence of the absence of a strong centralized state in Western Europe is really is going to is going to is going to open the door to forms of economic activity which the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty China consciously exclude and that's to say of mercantile capitalism the Chinese governments all the Chinese governments really to to to to one degree or another sort of guided by Confucian Confucian ideas these ideas privilege hierarchy stability social order those kind of those kind of things both within the family and within society as a as a whole they are they are not favorable to to to innovation they're not favorable to the personal accumulation of wealth the greatest sort of the greatest goal of an elite Chinese person is not to enrich themselves as a merchant but is to is to have an honorable career as a as a civil civil servant I mean they're going to they're going to have nice come they're going to have comfortable lives don't get me wrong but that but that that that drive of personal enrichment is is is not really is not really this expressed in the same way the absence of the absence of a strong centralized state in in in Western Europe on the on the other hand creates many more opportunities for for the emergence of mercantile mercantile classes and the beginnings first of all in the in the in the realm of trade and then of course later on in the realm of production itself the emergence of the emergence of capitalism so by the so so by by by exactly at the same time as all this is taking place late 1400s early 1500s here's the here's the emergence of the Spanish empire this is a very different pattern of empire than than China this is geographically very diffuse you can see this is when they're fused this is for the period when they're fused with with with Portugal you can see most of it is small these these little blue dots kind of scattered all around the west coast east coast of Africa into the the into the into the into the Atlantic the Brazil the sugar plantations of Brazil into the spice island so-called spice islands of Indonesia the Philippines these this is this is a new type of this is a new type of this is an empire of global of global trade of capital of capital capitalist trade on a world on on on a world scale and of course it gets a gigantic it gets a gigantic boost the discovery of the Americas quote unquote by Europeans the the colonization of the Americas the the Atlanta some of the things Sandy was talking about in her introduction the the Atlantic the Atlantic slave trade the enormous profitability of the slave produced sugar in the West Indies all of this all of this contributes to to to to to to the to the transition in Western Europe from mercantile capitalism towards industrial towards industrialization and of course by the end of the by by the middle of the 1700s certainly by the 1760s and 1770s you have the development of industrial production beginning in England in England in England or in Britain connected to connected to these sort of world connected to the trade to India for example I mean it's arguable the first the first massive the first industrialization of cotton production cotton textile production in in Britain is is is to outproduce the Indian Indian cotton industry which is basically destroyed by British imports in the next couple of in the next 50 or 60 60 60 years so when you think about these patterns what we what we're now seeing is a rather than this sort of general cyclical pattern give or take the period of period of the sea I'm not trying to make some some but but but but now we have a completely new pattern emerging in Western in from Western Europe and from from Britain from Britain in in particular it's the it's a consequence of the backwardness compared to China it's a but but now it's gonna in and in a very short period of time I'm talking about less than a hundred years it's it's going to completely transform global power power power relationships first of all as I said by in India this is going to open the way of course to the British colonization colonization of of India but also a little bit later really beginning in the in the middle of the 1800s of the of the tremendous pressure of cap of capitalist trade on on on on China up until this point the Chinese had been pretty successful in in in restricting the trade with the west they wanted some trade with the west they they they particularly wanted silver which a lot of it came via via the silver mines of Central America of course but they didn't really it wasn't really important to China the Chinese considered they had everything they needed domestically they didn't really there was nothing they really needed from from from the Europeans it was fine to sell them some porcelain and some silk and stuff like that and in exchange for exchange for silver so long as we could so long as the Chinese could keep them restricted to one city Guangzhou or Canton they could only come they could only come into China into into into Guangzhou for a certain limited number of months of the year they couldn't travel the English the European merchants this is they couldn't travel into the interior of China they couldn't learn Chinese they couldn't develop their own relationships with local Chinese business people it was going to be strictly controlled well now of course the English emerging as the leading power in this process in in in Europe a sort of viewing this gigantic potential market in China they they they run up against they chafe against the restrictions placed on the on the on trade by the Chinese government and finally they came up with a brilliant solution brilliant by their lights I guess which is but is basically to to to to sell opium to the Chinese to force to force the consumption of opium they start growing enormous producing enormous quantities of opium in in in in India and and shipping it into China obviously the Chinese government tries to restrict tries to control this trade and the British reply as I'm sure you all know by launching two opium so-called opium wars against China in the middle of one in the 1840s the second one in the late 1830s 18 early 1840s the second one in the 1850s the US the Americans join in the second one by the way which actually burns a big big chunk of Beijing to the ground and sacks the summer palace of the emperor and and and so on so so this is this this war is waged by the English in the under the banner of free trade the great the great principle of free of free trade and you can see I like this for this image because it's sort of here you've got the you know the modern steam powered paddle steamer gunboat of the British of the British now actually it's actually it's an east India company ship but so there's a direct commercial thing going on here and here it is blasting the blasting the the sailing junks of the Chinese Navy destroying the destroy destroying the Chinese Navy so from backward from backward Europe we've now got to it's we've sort of had this flip advanced now advanced Europe imposing it imposing it's imposing itself on China and of course what's going to what what's going to follow from this you all know about the scramble for Africa the scramble for European colonies in in sub-Saharan Africa there's really going to be in many ways a parallel scramble for China which is really a scramble to get into and break up the the the the Qing dynasty China so you can you've got a little sense of it on this map here something happened the you you're good the the the the green areas here showing the showing the British influence so Hong Kong of course annexed by the British the the British trade up the in the Yangtze the the Chinese sorry the French colonizing Indochina and expanding their influence into southern into southern China the the Japanese annexing Korea becomes a Korean colony in 1910 Thai Japanese annexing Taiwan German German colonies I mean really you get all you get all the major imperial powers trying to trying to get up trying to get into China trying to trying to open China to their trade the the the breakup of the I mean the Qing dynasty survives kind of but but under this tremendous tremendous pressure and you start getting exactly somebody's other phenomenon major peasant major peasant revolts the the Taiping revolt in the middle of the century had the box at the box rebellion at the end which the which the imperial powers kind of join forced us to help to help crush you go up here so so so so you sort of open season on China militarily prostrate before that before the the the well-equipped modern armies of of the Europeans of the Japanese and the and of course the the the the Americans this is also the temporal and to some degree this is pushed back by the Chinese by the by the great Chinese revolution in 1911 1912 this is a this is a sort of democratic revolution this is a this is the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and and and a sort of attempt to establish a a democratic modern democratic nation-state led by Sun Yat-sen but this is being done I mean this has been done under the guan of of these foreign imperial interventions so it's never you you never really get a sort of modern unified cap and Chinese capitalist nation-state emerging in this period you you although a lot of Chinese revolution sort of pushes pushes back some of these some of these projects it doesn't it it can't it can't it can't defeat them so you're going to see this pattern continuing into the 20th century of the of the various foreign powers various imperial powers kind of maneuvering to to to to to to to gain influence in in China so here's China I mean the here's here's what here's here's this is these are by the way these maps I'm going to show now you could they're all free online in the Omni Atlas that's an absolutely wonderful collection of online of online maps and so here you can see so here's here's here's here's China in 19 in 1932 we've already got the Japanese invasion of Manchuria it's going on up here and it begins in 1931 here's nationalist China as you can see it's a pretty small little it's a this is the Chiang Kai-shek Guomindang government and nationalist China and and you can see all of these others these are all they're often referred to as warlords in western histories these are all these are basically local little local mini governments all heavily armed some of them are backed by the Germans some of them are backed by the I mean they're all backed by various of the imperial powers and nationalist China is of course under tremendous tremendous pressure from from all of this from all of this in a way it's a wonderful if you think back to that map of western Europe in the 1500s with the political fragmentation we've sort of got this is now sort of imposed on on on on on on China I'm obviously simplifying a great deal of history here too bad we don't have time to go into it in great detail and you can ask me we I'm happy to go back and talk about any of this stuff in a little bit in a little bit more detail by the time we get to world war two so it's 1931 we're going into the depression here we're heading into what we're heading into world war two that that that great scramble for China I was just talking about has kind of resolved itself into into into a sort of a sort of two part a bite a two part sort of struggle on the one hand the United States which are which are long viewed China is I mean going back to the 1890s and many many American business and political elites have sort of viewed China as being the great future market for for American business and of course the the second major competitor the rise of the Japanese the rise of the Japanese empire also of course with the view to to a significant degree associating its future prosperity wealth etc with with with China so in a certain sense that that the Germans the English all those others kind of the French sort of fallen by the wayside to some degree we can talk about the reasons for that maybe by the time you get to 19 the early 1940s that it's really resolved itself into the into this bipolar competition for for control and influence in China the Japanese on the one hand who set up their own they're often referred to as puppet governments I think it's a little bit unfair because no one refers to the nationalist government as as America's puppet government but it really was if you want to use that language they all set up their local client regimes and back their local client rage local client client regimes and of course World War II follows the great the great in in in the Pacific the great struggle between the United States and Japan and so by 1945 that war is over the Japanese are completely defeated I mean utterly smashed by the United States Japan's under American military military occupation it's a story you all know very well the great the great triumph of the United States at the end of World War II but but there's a there's another side that story which is for various geopolitical and strategic reasons the United States comes out of this war which which arguably in the Pacific was a war for predominance in China certainly a central question in that war the United States comes out of that war with with in a very weak position in China there's there's there's only about maybe 50 60 000 American troops in China at the end of the war most of those are Air Force personnel or supply personnel and stuff Japan there's still about four million Japanese troop occupation troops in China and they're not they are not defeated unlike of course the Japanese troops in the Pacific and the Japanese Navy and so on and so forth and as you see from this beautiful map these these these these large red areas are kind of growing up here in the north of in the north of China you've got in the course of this war you've had a tremendous expansion in the Chinese and the influence of the Chinese Communist Party peasant lands land takeovers by the by the peasants basically land reform in the in the midst of the in the midst of the war in a much much stronger position for the for the for the Chinese Communist Party so when I teach when I write or teach on World War II you really gotta I I believe you've really gotta sort of think about when we think about the tremendous victory of the United States the rise of American hegemony all of those kind of questions which are totally true totally true but they're not a whole story the the the US position the the anticipated US dominant dominance of China at the end of World War II really doesn't really doesn't happen and when they try and send American troops into China in 19 late 1945 and into 1946 there's one of the most interesting and often unremarked upon or unnoticed factions in American military history which is you have enormous rebellions by GIs who simply refused to go they they they were recruited they were conscripted to defeat Japan Japan's been defeated time to go home we're done it's really profound it's a huge demonstrations right in Manila all across all across the Pacific they even have they have big marches by GIs in Paris and stuff in solidarity and solidarity and it really stops the American government from being able to send to send major military forces into China at the end of the at the end of the war and with that limitation which is a major limitation the United States is forced to try and negotiate a a set up a coalition government in China to broker a coalition government between the nationalists and the and the communists the nationalists foolishly believe that they that they have the upper hands they'll the Americans will back them if it comes to an open war and essentially they provoke a war with the with the with the communists the Americans of course are not in a position to back them militarily there are no American troops sent sent to China to support the Kuomintang by by 1947 the civil war or Chinese Revolutionary War breaks out in full force and by 1949 the People's Republic of China is established pronounced proclaimed by by by Mao in Beijing in October 1949 and over the next few you can see see at a time of this map there's still some nationalist forces in in the southern part of China here but by whoa there we go by October 1955 they're just the date that happens to be on this map by 1955 lo and behold we have a we have a Chinese state that's that that sort of looks in in in its geographical extent something like and China Ming China I mean like the old state of all of that all of those in all of those small little warlords have been have been have been crushed all of its unified into a single unified into a single unified state the consequences of course in American domestic politics are huge this is the human cry over who lost who lost China this is not how it's supposed to this was not how it was supposed to go down and this is four years after the end of World War II after the end of the the establishment of American global hegemony you have you have China which was in many ways the great great prize of World War II is is lost to the United States it's it's it's really powerful it's really really powerful I'm not gonna I'm not gonna try and talk about the internal developments in China over this period I will I will just say this is this is this is profoundly contradictory in my opinion on the one hand you have a genuinely a genuinely popular revolutionary peasant based land reform based move revolutionary type movement you have a leadership which is which models itself very closely on on Soviet Stalinism including the cults of personality and all those other things with all of with all we know we know about how that how that functions and operates so you kind of had these two things going on Western histories tend of course to focus on the Stalinist aspects we we can read a lot about the the failures of the great leap forward or the cultural revolution and those and those kind of things and and and they were disasters but at the same time I think there's a there's there's there's a process of of rising living standards of healthcare of education amongst amongst amongst the peasantry in China which is which is in marked contrast let's say to India if you just look at the sort of paths of India and China from from the end of the war until the 70s and 80s you can you can see that I think very very very very quickly but thinking about China in the world I'm going to jump ahead to the reintegration of China into the world market in in the early 19 into in the early 1970s the reopening of China to the world by by conscious decision of the Chinese the Chinese leadership of course the the the the goal here for Nixon or one of the goals for Nixon I mean the immediate goal is to is to is to try and get leverage over the negotiations at the end of the Vietnam war but but the bigger picture goal here is is is we're now we're now this is now overlapping with a period in which the great the great upswing of American capitalist expansion coming out of world war two is now is now running out of is now running out of steam faith US businesses facing increased competition from from from Germany from Japan from in particular from the European Union and US business interests become increasingly enthusiastic about that about offshoring production finding new cheap labor platforms offshore they start in they start in Mexico of course but they also become very very interested in China the Chinese government is going to cooperate with this they set up the special industrial economic zones on the coast on the coast of China they welcome foreign capital the operation of foreign capital but of course the real the real the real plan here is to begin to develop Chinese Chinese Chinese domestic domestic capital as a result of this as a result of this experience and and and I think you're all I'm sure well aware of some of what that starts to of what that starts to look like I don't know exactly what to do what to call it I I I I generally use the term state directed state directed capitalism you still have a significant state sector in China you still have the Chinese government making a large-scale planning decisions but of course you also have the lot you also have the substantial operation of private capital in China but as you're all well aware this is this this this has the capacity for enormous resource mobilization I I I often have shown pictures here of the development of the China's high-speed rail network and stuff like of stuff like that enormous infrastructure projects but I think that surely the one that's impressed us impressed us all the most over the last year is the response to the to the to the coronavirus pandemic the construction of I mean this is just one city this is in Wuhan I mean literally two giant hospitals built from absolutely from scratch in 10 in 10 days I mean these are stunning these are stunning achievements of mobilization of resources mobilization of mobilization of capital and they and they and they and of course this this this comes on the back of a couple of at least decade and a half of very substantial year on year I mean we're talking 10 12 15 percent I mean very very rapid very very rapid growth this of course has been parallels by a couple of major international projects the the the the one road one belt initiative which is promoting infrastructure Chinese promoting promoting infrastructural developments increasingly in sub-Saharan Africa in in India Pakistan Iran and and and and is and is connected to projects in in Italy and in Belgium in in in Russia in other in in in all kinds in all kinds of other places enormous amounts of enormous amounts of resources enormous amounts of capital being invested in port port development railroad construction those kind of those those those kind of things and on the right here the the a sort of new it's almost like a parallel it's almost like a parallel global economic infrastructure the this is the Asian infrastructure investment bank the member states in green and then other members I mean the only major state that's absent from this whole thing is the United States it's it's very it's very it's very very it's very very striking and of course we're going to see we're going to see not surprisingly this is going to be this is going to be paralleled by a by a by a substantial increase in Chinese military power this is the first Chinese aircraft carrier was bought it was it was bought basically is a rusty Hulk from the Ukrainians it's refurbished and and and and it doesn't sound like very much a you know you okay China's got it but you got to think up until this point really the only major power operating aircraft carriers which are the sort of signature force projection tool of modern global strategy the only major one has been the United States and now China has a significant has a significant aircraft carrier development development program the second one the first one that's to say the first one that was completely built in China was launched two years ago at least another one or maybe two are already under already under construction this is these these these are flying aircraft with sophisticated stealth capacity with other kinds of warships with ultra modern radars and all I mean this is the whole this is the whole modern naval force power projection power projection force the first overseas Chinese military bases have been in Djibouti the first the first one in the in the Horn of Africa again doesn't necessarily seem so striking we're very used to thinking about the United States having military bases all around the world which of course has been the global force structure of the United States but the fact that the United States is really is no longer the only power or the United States in the former colonial powers are no longer the only powers with operating overseas military bases that the Chinese are now beginning to do this gaining the experience of of of real global power projection is very very is very is very very significant you know there's a huge literal literature now huge literature on around the question of can China rise peacefully or is the is the rise of China inevitably gonna gonna gonna produce gonna produce war I think it's the wrong question history to history shows that the the the hegemonic global hegemonic powers will fight to defend their hegemony even once the economic basis of it has passed I believe that will be the case I believe we are likely to see military confrontation or at least the possibility of military confrontation in the south China sea and and elsewhere but it's not so much I mean it's provoked by the rise of China if you like but it's it's it's it's the it's the it's the running out of alternatives from the point of view of the United States except the use of except the use of military force so this is a kind this I'm just just wrapping up here with a couple of just a couple of final final thoughts this is a kind of interesting chart this is this is um this is actually from the Deutsche Bank a paper they produced entitled the world economy and millennial perspective so you can see you can see the kind of forces that are thinking about these questions so this is this is this is this is gross domestic percentage of world gross domestic product on the left on the left hand scale here so this is China so here's the decline of China this this down swinging line here so we begin in 1820 with about 40 percent I mean it's still enormously powerful right and then this uninterrupted decline this is the period of the opium wars and everything else I've been talking about the the the scramble for China dismemberment of China and then and then the sort of bottoming out during the period of the of the Chinese of the Chinese revolution and then the increase here of the rising the rising arc China of course producing more and more of the world's gross domestic product so here's Britson you can see about quarter of the world's GDP in the in the in the 1800s this is that this is the great century of the British empire and then kind of declining as essentially as the United States which is the the blue line here light blue line rises so there's a certain point here it's it's actually exactly where it is doesn't matter but but it's right around 19 between 1900 1910 where the the the percentage of world gross domestic product produced in the United States surpasses that produced in Britain so the former hegemon the or rather the existing hegemonic power britain is is passed by the by the by the United States well of course the actual in terms of politics and military power the actual transition of hegemonic power doesn't doesn't take place for another another 30 or 40 years to work till the end of world war two when the United States percentage of global gross domestic product is going to max out here about 30% but this is the art this is the period between between the inflection point here where the where the Chinese become sorry where the United States becomes the largest world economy well it really depends what measure you measure of you choose how you choose to measure gross domestic product there's a number of different ways you can do it but but but but there's no question that the the the the tendency of these of these lines is the declining percentage of world gross domestic product produced by the United States and the rising percentage produced by China those lines are going to cross i mean that's the absolute they may already have crossed dependent on which measure you take that's absolutely that's absolutely cast iron prediction and that adjustment just as this adjustment here in the early 1900s leads to leads to a period of great global instability to world wars a great depression i mean these are the products of this i think you could kind of imagine that what's going to follow this point is going to be in some ways similar similar similar patterns i think if you think about it in terms of the long the long patterns of history i've been i've been describing tonight i mean obviously at great speed and not in any great not in any great depth but but but there's a certain sort of swing of the pendulum of of of this sort of sense of of world politics world economics back towards back towards asia back towards back towards china final point however is that it's a great the great great wild card in all of this is of course what's going to happen what what what are the work is going to do and we often think about nation states and in some ways i've been talking about them tonight a sort of homogeneous entities which have common interest and which we all know is really not is really not true these states are divide a class divided people have different different interests um what's happening in china in many ways uh all proportions guarded looks like the kind of pace of industrial development in the early in the early industrial revolution in britain or something like that a massive movement of people from the from the countryside into the into the into the into the into the cities um and and really the creation of a new of a new working class um and a working class that's going to find it's that's organized in massive workplaces i mean we're talking about factories with 40 50 60 000 people i mean giga the sort of workplaces that that you had in the like in the united states in the 1930s 40s 50s um and all of the potential political power political strength political activity that can that can emerge from it and already is doing i mean it's it's there's not a lot of you have to dig for this in in the united states but the the the there are already increasing signs of political activism from the from the working class in china so i believe you have to yeah in addition to looking at these bigger sort of state level economy level questions that i've been raising with you all tonight it's also i think important to think about how that how this how this shapes up in sort of terms of of social divisions class class divisions um and and impossible and possible outcomes um going in well potentially i think very optimistic directions but maybe we can come back to that in the discussion so i'm going to leave it there i've covered an awful really an awful lot of ground um i hope giving you something to think about and and let's talk let's hopefully um let's talk about it for a bit well thank you so much professor you can and um i had one question which arose because i watched your lecture today as well um when you're speaking about china though in 1500 obviously did not develop any kind of a free uh capitalism right and is that because of the stability in a way of the centralized state versus in western europe where capitalism did develop out of kind of a chaos and the lack of a centralized authority i i i my opinion is yes that's that's very substantial factor in the in the equation i mean there are obviously historians who have different answers to that i mean there's a whole i don't know if i've got the book here someplace okay this uh this is a very important book for people if you want to for for studying this stuff this is kenneth pomeo answers book the great the great divergence um which which discusses some of these questions he has a very he he he looks he he comes to some rather different conclusions than i than i have done here um he um he he uh he he he's uh he talks about um he talks about the problems of decentralized resources in china he talks about the the location of coal and iron ore and the difficulties of bringing together and stuff like that um in comparison to britain where they're relatively it's a small area they're relatively they're relatively centralized and stuff so so so i think that's an interesting argument i don't think it's totally i don't think it's totally untrue um but i don't think it's i personally don't think it's i think i think these social and political questions of the attitude of the of the chinese states to to mercantile activity is in my opinion is is is it is is much more weighty um and certainly i think that that make as you were pointing out there sandy i think that makes the contrast with western europe of the of the of the consequences of political decentralization in western europe um it kind of makes that very very clear i i i i i believe um that the ability of merchants to operate um in in europe is on is just on it is on a it's on a far higher level than it is than it is in china i mean it's it's not that the men don't want merchants they do want i mean confucian confucian confucian ideology recognizes the importance of merchants you need people to move stuff around and you know you that they they play an important social play an important social function but it's but but but they're dangerous they're dangerous because their because their desire for personal acquisition um always has this potential to spill over into into sort of political into political opposition and destabilizing etc etc etc so you want to keep them you don't want to encourage them you don't want to validate what they're doing ideology ideologically you don't want to give them too much leeway you you particularly want to control foreign their their relationship with with with with foreign trade i i think whereas in whereas you know whereas in western europe i mean if particularly if you look at england from certainly from the from the uh you know from the period after the after the english civil war in the 1660 16 on onwards the the english status i mean the function of the i think one of the main functions of the english state is to promote commerce and trade overseas is to build a navy and all that you know that's capable of protecting and acquiring new territories and colonial outposts so the relationship between the state and and the economy and in in in western europe is is completely completely different once once this you know once this once this process once this process begins so um i i to me that's the heart of the matter but you know you pay your money and you take your choice on the global history questions there's a lot there's a lot of variables in play and thinking about how it all how it all works how it all works together it's you know it's it's it's obviously a it's it's it's a major challenge and are there other questions or comments i have a question yeah that that's been a it's been a fascinating lecture so far i i have a question about um how you view the i guess the cultural hegemony that that's how the the anglophone world has has really dominated in so many different ways culturally uh and the influence of that um i would say linguistic and cultural hegemony um i grew up in india right and and that was was a a huge part of my upbringing was was sort of this the the the constant bombardment of of western uh cultural language and that is a place where i feel like china is lagging compared to its military strength its economic strength um and i'm curious to think curious to sort of think about how that might influence um the the continued rise of china yeah that's a really that that that that's a really great question and i and i mean clearly um you know what we might refer to as soft power as a sort of cultural because cultural power cultural influence um is it is very central to the to the to the organization to the organization of of u.s global global hegemony absolutely you're absolutely right to raise that um i mean what's interesting is it has a sort of life of its it has a sort of life of its own to some degree i mean it's which means that that that in some ways now the cult the cultural or linguistic that you know predominance it sort of reminds me of that old road runner cartoon you know where he has little his little legs at the road runner was spinning around and and and and he's run off the edge of the cliff but the legs are still spinning um it's there's an aspect of that that that cultural hegemony that those cultural influences are sort of still they're still very powerful but there's the underpin that the economic underpinnings have have have begun to have begun to erode i mean i'm not making some you know huge production that there's going to be a massive you know that we're on the verge of a massive shift or some or something like or something like that but you know i i i mean it's interesting that you raise india because i mean i think if you i think if you were if you if you were i'm gonna stick my neck out here now i think if you grew up in the in india today rather than a few years ago when you when you when you when you were growing up there i'm not gonna it would be yeah you're still going to be exposed to a great deal of of of american western culture but you it doesn't mean to say these are all progressive influences right um politically or or or whatever but but but i think you would find that there's that that that the that the challenge to that is is probably greater now than it than even than even a few than even a few years ago um that you know the sense that the united see the the hegemony question that the question of hegemony is it rests on economic and military power but there's also there's hegemonic leadership implies cultural i mean there's a sort of moral element to it right that the hegemon is the is the source of justice is the source of is the it's the source of it's the it's the source of sort of moral authority in the world which the united states lays claim to in 19th i mean you can say however unjustly in reality but but lays claim to that and it and it sort of works you know i'm very interested by this because i think there's another side of this covid thing which is which is you know the the moral authority of the united states in the covid crisis is like sub zero on a global on a global scale right the moral authority of china has been enhanced by this it's it's it seems to me um you know and again i'm not making some huge predictions everything's changed and stuff but you know that's significant i think other things that have great that have great cultural weights i mean if you think it's like things like space programs right um you know that if you think about the sort of high points of the united states hegemony in the in the in the sixties that the tremendous sense of national accomplishment that was built up around the around around this well who's doing that now um you know the us a good as you all know a good chunk of the the sort of uh you know us space program has been subcontracted to elon musk and other private private entrepreneurs for their own whatever in contrast right in contrast to what china again i i i i don't want to exaggerate any of this but but i think that um you know i think that the i i think that that cultural hegemony is real i think it was an absolutely absolutely critical part of the of the establishment of american power after world war two but i'm not sure that its longevity is quite what it might have seemed even if even a few even a few years ago it's not about to it's not about to disappear but i think it's i think it's claimed to i think it's claimed to moral justice and rightness is looking a little weak or weaker should we say i don't know does that answer does that answer your question is a great question kurt kurt did you have your yeah yeah i i did uh thanks professor b canon for this uh wonderful talk uh my uh comment was uh kind of in relation to what the prior uh person just uh brought up and that there's a competing theory regarding soft power and the use of soft cultural power and that china is actually benefited from not bombarding many countries with their views their personal and cultural views as well well as language and pop culture and i know in many cases in countries in africa they have actually been very uh receptive to the chinese position because that cultural baggage you know if i'm using a pejorative term to describe it but the cultural baggage that the united states may have had or the the prior european colonizers had china usually doesn't go in with that and uh you know they're there to build a highway and be paid for without necessarily you know uh changing the language or changing the religion of the uh native populations in the countries and and in many cases they're doing quite well yeah again i i i yeah no i think that's i again i think that's that that's that's that's absolutely that's absolutely true although as a sort of um rider to that may be corollary to that whatever i would say that the that that that that that the ability of china to present itself as the as the even as the the non-colonial or even as the anti-colonial power in sub-saharan africa for example right in a sense that's its own form of soft power so you know um and of course at the end of world war two the u that was the in sub-saharan africa that was the that was the us calling card in sub-saharan africa however in the course of the 1950s it became painfully obvious that that in fact the united states when it really you know on most critical question it's going to back the form of the form of european imperial powers in africa sure so so so you know the arrival of china of china now chinese investment i'm thinking about the massive railroad construction in in in in in uh the east african railroad project in uh in in tanzinium and and and you and you gander um you know these are so yeah that's that that in and of itself becomes a different form of sort of a projection of of of of power and and of and of influence so i'm not i'm not disputing what you what at all your your your your main your main point i'm i i'm but i guess i'm sort of saying that the ways in which soft power can be deployed you know we we tend to think because of because of our own experience of the us experience that it's about you know it's the i mean one historian describes it the cocoa colonization of the world right so it's sort of seen in those terms but there there are other there are other potential modalities which are actually could could be quite effective in this particular historical conjunction it's it seems it seems to me i think i'm i'm sorry robin robin you're muted yeah well in reaction to this um i have two two questions sort of one is a reaction to what you're just talking about and this is maybe a a bigoted uh and lack of knowledge but it seems to me that confusionism doesn't have the kind of strength to compete in the digital age culturally with pop culture i mean that and that's okay that's but my real question was uh related to why did uh the neoliberals of the last couple of decades outsource uh you know manufacturing to China okay we didn't want to pay decent salaries here and we could get all the things produced in China cheaper and then they would be brought back but didn't wasn't wasn't that a way of totally undermining our strength and and i mean and that's what trump is saying now why did you do that right yeah well that's a great question i mean you know i think that the capitalism is not assessed capitalism and capitalists are not are not really given to long-range planning okay so this is that they make decisions on on on a very short term basis by and by by by and large um and and on and on on on the basis of of of profit i mean i'm i'm i'm simplified obviously but i i don't think by much so from that point of view think about what they do 1945 1946 1947 they rebuilt the marshal plan they rebuild the entire german western european economy which was completely flattened right at the end of world they they rebuild it's not the marshal plan but it's the parallel to it they rebuild the japanese economy from the from the ground from the ground from the ground up it makes it makes complete an utter hundred percent sense for them to do that they need markets for american products the wars over they still produce you know they need to reconvert to to to consumer goods they need markets they need they need they need markets they need markets for all of that and they create them at the cost of billions of dollars but they create them it's very effective it's one of the things that powers the great post war expansion of american of american capitalism but there's a price to pay down the road which is until the 1960s even until the early 70s as as some of you because we live through this you didn't find a japanese car on the roads of america not a i mean not not like not many i mean none what had happened was that was it was that the united states rebuilds the japanese economy correctly for its own reasons in its own short-term interests but of course japan then creates is then able to create a much a more productive manufacturing model which 15 or 20 years later is then able to start to undercut the united states itself i mean so so you know a lot of these sort of right-wing ideologues will be like well it was a terrible mistake we should never have rebuilt this we should never rebuild germany in japan but it was they from their point of view they were it was completely right to do so but there was a price to pay for it down the road there was a price to pay for all of that it's the same with the it's the same with the the the off-shoring of manufacturing you have a period of tremendous expansion in the us in the 50s in the 50s it's it's real i mean you know some of us live through this you remember this year on year right it's just a sort of you know that next year's okay there's a there's a business cycle there's some ups but the in general the general trajectory was was was was rising that runs out of that that runs and it's partly fueled by their by their world by their world status by the by the by the 70s by the late 60s and early 70s that's running out of steam the relative competitiveness of us business is declining it's connected to the loss of the war in vietnam but that's a whole other that's a whole other question so they start to they they start to try and find other avenues to to to increase their profitability it's it's very it's very straightforward start in mexico the mexico starts getting a little bit too expensive you move on to some of you i mean you chase this round the world china bangladesh india vietnam i mean you know the story right it's not that it's wrong from them from their immediate point of view but then we have the rust area of the whole middle middle west of our country so-called absolutely i don't of course and an enormous and an enormous social consequence that the absolute devastation of vast sections of the united states and so on and so forth in a sharp of wider class division in the united in the united states yes those i'm not sure i'm not saying it's morally right or politically right i'm saying from the point of view of the people making the money it was it made economic sense for them to do that but there's a price but there was a price to pay down down the road now i do think china because i because of the the structure of the sort of state managed capitalism state directed capital there is a little bit there is and again i'm not i'm not justifying this morally i'm not it's not my point at all but but i think there is a greater capacity for for planning for organization for mobilization of resources etc etc which which which gives them a tremendous advantage at certain at certain levels in this you know the problem is the only way you bring manufacturing back to the united states under capitalism i mean i'm talking about under capitalism it's the it's the drive the wage levels of the united states work is down to something approximating to those in china or or or or or or india make it profitable to produce here you all know the consequence you know you start posing it like that then you start seeing this china this sort of global pattern i've been talking about in a little bit of a different in a little bit of a different light as well i think so and and it's why this question of how people it's not just these unified homogeneous states but how the different social classes within those states we start reacting to that starts to become a major starts to become a major factor i mean look the two-party system which has been the main prop of political structuring of of american of american society cap and capitalist society is it's coming apart before your very eyes yeah um and it's not going to be put back together right and it's coming apart under pressure i mean and it's not that these are all people don't think it in class terms but but but it's manifesting those it's manifesting those the consequences of the rust belt and the massive unemployment and all and all the rest of it and you know these to go back to the point about the soft power these become these become start becoming major sort of soft power questions right of the perception of what these states look like how they behave how what what moral authority they claim all of those kind of all of those kind of questions it's i mean you know it's it's a super interesting it's a super interesting this is a turning point of history period we're entering into here yeah i mean that would be the conclusion of the whole lecture right in a certain in a certain way um in which things that have been not on the agenda or not being thought about as as part of our world suddenly become part of it in ways that you know unanticipated and anyway i think kurt maybe maybe we should wind up also as it's kind of getting kind of late but kurt meida by the way uh professor becan this is kurt meida who is an attorney uh colleague of mine maybe i can just say this is robin loy the murals i don't i didn't get your other name but anyway these are all part of vicki and um okay i mean i'm going to go get my dinner in a while but don't i'm not in any hurry to rush off so if you guys want to carry on talking i'm happy to carry on talking it's only like you know the most important thing we can talk about yeah so a quick question slash comment uh in response to even what robin was saying you know a lot of politicians i feel right now are talking about exactly what the professor said you know why did we bend over backwards for china why did we do this and i'm wondering you know in addition to the economic soft uh the economic whether it's soft power or the shortsightedness of you know the capitalist powers you know uh that we are referring to uh you know you showed a slide of uh richard nixon president nixon meeting with moussey tongue and i mean i think it's important also to remember that there was also a political right uh you know part of this issue also in that you know we were trying to encourage the sino-soviet split right right uh so there was a you know a political component to this uh discussion and end this bending over backwards and giving china a most favored nation status in in the context of trade so i mean how much you know is that you know you know how much of a role did that play in the growth of china uh economically speaking yeah i mean i think there's i mean there's again that's a great point and i think there's a you know these these kind of decisions are they're they're often they are often multi-led right that there's an immediate political there's a political purpose and not only to deepen the sino-soviet split which is definitely a piece of it but but in particular to try and engineer and exit from here from losing from the from the war they were just losing in vietnam right so there was there was some definitely conjunctual political you know because it's you know it's it's it's really how history works in a way it's the question behind this which is which is a big big big question right which is not that there's some like you know cabal of capitalists who says go boy we really need to get into chart we need to you know that's we really need to exploit some cheap there are plenty of cabals of capitalists by the way but that's not how the decisions it's not how these big decisions get you know we really need to get into china start super exploring the chinese workers and you know that's going to sell a bunch of workers in the american midwest down the river and how are we going to deal you know they they they just they act in what they perceive as their interests right so when the dip when the political and diplomatic openings come there's there's there's other people there's other forces and they are represented politically they are represented diplomatically you know let's try a while we're there let's see if we can do a trade deal you know let's see if we can you know while we're while we're while we're talking while we're you know prodding now into deepening the Sino-Soviet split or why we're trying to find a way out of the war in vietnam let's also try and do this other thing we need to do which is let's see if we could and then let's see if we can start producing never you know really there's a tremendous see you've got to remember that the idea of china i mean this really this really goes back to the united states in the 18 and even in the 1890s when they have a when they have an economic downturn in the 1890s that they're already i mean economists politicians business figures in the u.s already thinking about china i mean they even have a thing they even have a sort of ideological completely bonkers but it was very popular idea at the time which is that the sort of sense of civilization is always moving it's always sort of moving westward right so it's sort of from europe it jumps across to the americas it crosses the continent and now it's going to you know now it's going to head out across the pacific and then the new the new frontier is going i mean you read and you read theodore roosevelt he's always thought this is how he describes it so so so the place of china i mean the the multimillion market of china is always there in their minds particularly in some of the you know export oriented business sectors and stuff so so i don't know i'm not really answering your question i'm just saying that these are not these these phenomenon happen on you know they're they're multi-layer phenomenon right that yes there's a political just if there's an immediate political and and diplomatic maneuverings i mean i study it in world war two there's there's a mean that you know yeah they don't just there's millet how does military decision making factor into these broad economic you know those are complicated questions but but there is that multi-layered thing as they move forward as they re-engage with china yeah it opens the way to some other and once that thing starts to get rolling it doesn't need very much right needs a few businesses and say this is going to work great these guys are going to cut us some great deals with they're going to the chinese government is going to basically provide us with cheap labor they're going to suspend all their labor laws in these special districts that they're not going to tax us what you know what's not to like so then so then their rivals want to get in on the deal as well so you don't want to be you know so the thing starts and it's very quick by the late by the late 70s early 80s that you know these special economic zones the the whole things off to the races in china there's no question and of course they are learning how to do this stuff they're observing there studying there they're they're going to try and develop you know they don't they don't have no intention of being a it have been an export producing platform indefinitely you've got to develop a chinese can chinese consumer market okay nile is that right nile nile i'm sorry thank you i know and you made this point towards the end of your electron i think it's a really critical one that china is not immune to the internal political forces that you know in some ways there are some parallels to what the us is experiencing over europe experienced and and and the tendency to shift towards the strongmanship that we're seeing in china now is actually fairly exceptional in the in the span of the last several decades with what presidency and and and there you do see this tendency or the shift towards self-interest governmental self-interest short-term thinking and and that that i think could be could be detrimental to to sort of the the long-term planning that had had put china on this uh tremendous path uh from the from the 70s 80s onward so so that that's also a shift and i think the i think young people that would be the influential political class in china now are increasingly connected to the west in ways that they they they manifest and express their influence often in a way that that that models the ways of of of western aristocracy or and and that's a really interesting tendency as well because that's brand new in china so so that's at some point going to come to your head as well and it's really interesting to see how that compares to what is is is happening perhaps happening uh you know 30 40 years ahead of where china is right now yeah i mean i i you know these all of this all of this stuff becomes more difficult for china to navigate there's no question i mean the states get higher the options get tighter in certain in in in certain ways um and the consequences of promoting a chinese i mean you say middle class but you know chinese domestic consumption and so on yeah that you know um become become more chance more more more risky but and and and within that framework you know the possibilities i mean this is a we don't we we haven't really seen this i mean the possibilities of massive labor struggles in a country that's still nominally communist right in which it's official ideology you know i mean that's where does that go what forms what forms does that what what political forms does that start to start to take i think that's very interesting question what sort of engagement with the history of starlin and starlinism and it's and the imposition of those sort of models you know reckoning with the cultural revolution or reckoning with the great leap forward those kind of things that's that's i would have the only thing i would set on the other side of the scales and it's i think there's been a sort of facile thing in the world not cues in europe in fact but there's been a sort of facile thing in the west that somehow that kept the relationship between sort of liberal freedom of you know freedom of speech and freedom of free free exchange of ideas and all this stuff is sort of critical to to innovation and stuff i don't i mean that doesn't seem to be i that doesn't seem plausible to me at all that it that's that the what's necessary for innovation on these sort of levels is basically huge huge amounts of state funding and big research projects and and and and stuff right and and the idea that capitalism would necessarily breed liberal liberal politics in china i think is is is is not true um and and seems and seems not to be seems not to be the case and of course there's this is also matched by the increasing illiberalism in an in american society that the restrictions on them on on democratic rights and free speech and all the rest of it some of it done in the name of prosecuting trump and stuff right yeah um you know now becomes very very in my opinion becomes very very becomes very very dangerous and and and also them the the sort of the sort of model of the us as the as the sort of moral leader of of of democracy and freedom and liberty becomes increasingly become you know becomes increasingly tarnish basically um which which is which is kind of interesting because it means the opportunity for other for other political ideas for other for other perspectives to to get to get some to get traction in this kind of situation i don't think it's necessarily going to be the case that as chinese youth become more rebellious against the situation in china they're gonna their natural the natural turn will be towards embracing the values of the united states i don't think that's there's no reason it seems to me no reason to suppose that that's true at all um just as it's not true in india as we were talking about as we were talking about earlier and it may not look pretty in the short term um but the openness there's that there's that the sort of openness to to to to engagement with different sets of ideas is i think going to be very very interesting so anyway are there any last questions i think we all maybe are all going to have some dinner but robin and that maybe should be our last go ahead robin well um dr becanon this has been so fascinating and especially with all the maps and so on i love that uh sandi has told me about your course and uh i'm over 65 and i understand maybe would i be able to get into it even at this late date to just zoom in if you um let's talk about that i don't know it's not so easy at this point but it comes around don't worry it'll come around oh yeah but it also he also teaches a fabulous class on the 20th century on both world war one and world war two in fact i i do have one last comment for my book here global history of world war but i asked you how to get it i asked you in an email how i can get it and you didn't respond how did you get it amazon i hate to say but go on and like go and line jeff bezas's pockets get it from amazon all right okay but let me let me just say that one of the things that he brought that professor becanon brought to my mind was that americans in general think of world war two in particular as a war in europe right as a great confrontation between britain americans and the germans but there was a whole different war going on in in asia and the pacific that i never gave much thought to and if you do think about it the main war for the united states point of view was the war over china wasn't it i mean we're equal equally important yeah right and and i hadn't i don't think most americans think about that at all right i agree and plus i don't think it ends in 1945 i mean i think for example that you'd have to see indian independence as a direct as a direct right as a constituent part of the outcome of world war two and also the victory of multitone i suppose oh absolutely chinese revolution the the developments of i mean the indian indonesia vietnam yeah the whole thing absolutely you know i mean our view of world war two is this thing that comes to a screeching halt in 1945 it's an absolute barrier to understanding what the whole thing was really about exactly and and how and what the outcome really and what the outcomes i shouldn't say outcome the outcomes really really really were i mean you know the form that's i mean just the form that indian independence takes is is at least in part the and it is at least in part deflecting some of the absolutely the depth of the popular radicalism that came out of the that came out of the wall which wasn't was not just about an independent you know let's create a nice independent capitalist india but was but had but had really profound social transformative elements elements to it and it comes right out it comes right out of the wall there's no question and and and and likewise in indonesia in vietnam in china obviously and korea too right and korea yeah this sounds like another this sounds like another great topic for us to take on anytime what happened right world war two today great well thank you beth and thank you for hosting this and hope to well i'll see you again professor becau you will all right i'm good to meet you on great questions thanks for thanks thanks for your questions really really appreciate it as you see there's nothing i like better than talking about this stuff so you know it's a great opportunity with a great with a great audience so thanks so much for having me i really appreciate it okay okay so well maybe we'll continue the discussion at some point that would be fun so anyway take take take take care folks i'm gonna i'm gonna go and have my dinner now so yeah