Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang
“There are no kind masters, Letty,’ Anthony continued. ‘It doesn’t matter how lenient, how gracious, how invested in your education they make out to be. Masters are masters in the end.”
Babel was a fun read which made me reflect on the complexities of power, justice, and the ethical dilemmas tied to colonialism and economic development. I found myself questioning how violence and exploitation have shaped society and how they continue to do so today. Further introspection probably requires reading into the approaches and emotional identities tied to the revolutions led by Malcom X and MLK/Gandhi.
Thanks to Wyatt for reading and discussing this with me. Mayhaps we will find an adamic language and that we may soon be past the inhumanities of unfree “free markets.”
Some brief reflections:
The novel presented an ideological struggle, challenging my logical side by revealing the brutal colonial history and the necessity for violent upheaval to disrupt the system. Colonialists only react when their profits are threatened.
Silver is the essential resource enabling Western society to function. If you replaced “silver” with any other critical resource, history might reflect a similar story as portrayed in Babel. Considering the harsh conditions of silver workers, coal might have had a comparable impact.
After reading The Prize by Daniel Yergin, I’ve come to see that empires are intrinsically tied to industry. Free markets aren’t genuinely free when people are trapped in inhumane conditions without alternative opportunities.
But is an empire inherently bad? Economics isn’t wrong, but it’s often too theoretical to address immediate human suffering. In the short term, colonialism and economic feudalism (as described in Confessions of an Economic Hitman) cause immense harm and widen disparities. Yet, history shows that, over time, the standard of living can rise, allowing the impoverished to gain wealth and influence rapidly.
This is relevant to what’s happening in Africa, South America, and other regions where corporations exploit resources under private military protection, destroying cultures and labeling resistance as terrorism. It’s understandable that these nations feel enraged.
Unlike Ramy, Robin, and Victoire, I wasn’t forced to serve an empire. My family chose to come to America, seeking a better life as part of a brain drain by the U.S. I was born an American, a unique identity compared to the characters.
However, America has many flaws it doesn’t readily acknowledge. It’s held back by its past, unable to move on due to its grieving population, yet it rushes through issues needing more than just words to resolve.
I believe violent revolution is only justified in the context of non-violent resistance as advocated by Gandhi, MLK, and Buddha. Would I have left with Chakravarty, or chosen not to sacrifice myself and instead leave like Victoire?
I wish Robin had channeled his vengeance and anger more constructively. Victoire was admirable for her empathy, while Robin, though daring, was weak and remorseful at the first sign of suffering. Despite the hardships of Babel, couldn’t he have grasped basic economics? Lovell’s arguments weren’t that hard to contest or debate.
Is violence an inherent part of human nature, necessary to advance our interests against unsatisfactory opponents at a national level? This is what America and Russia essentially did to maintain their views of efficiency and righteousness.
Judging America is difficult because its key decisions often intersected morality and the necessity to remain dominant, leading in different directions. Those in power exhibited both ruthless behavior (like selling drugs to fund wars) and true moral integrity (like Carter).
On writing style: The narrative was easy to follow, and I could pick up where I left off. The book was highly listenable via Audible, with well-timed quotes from both ancient and modern classics. The research into various languages was impressively thorough.
As Jun mentioned: Knowing what I know now and feeling the same way, what would I have done if I had been part of coal industrialization?
Selections:
‘If you can see?’ The woman raised her voice and overenunciated herevery syllable, as if Robin had difficulty hearing. (This had happened often to Robin on the Countess of Harcourt; he could never understand why people treated those who couldn’t understand English as if they were deaf.)
Whenever the English see me, they try to determine what kind of story they know me from,’ Ramy said. ‘Either I’m a dirty thieving lascar, or I’m a servant in some nabob’s house. And I realized in Yorkshire that it’s easier if they think I’m a Mughal prince.’ ‘I’ve always just tried to blend in,’ said Robin.‘But that’s impossible for me,’ said Ramy. ‘I have to play a part. Back inCalcutta, we all tell the story of Sake Dean Mahomed, the first Muslim fromBengal to become a rich man in England. He has a white Irish wife. He ownsproperty in London. And you know how he did it? He opened a restaurant,which failed; and then he tried to be hired as a butler or valet, which alsofailed. And then he had the brilliant idea of opening a shampoo house in Brighton.’ Ramy chuckled. ‘Come and get your healing vapours! Bemassaged with Indian oils! It cures asthma and rheumatism; it heals paralysis. Of course, we don’t believe that at home. But all Dean Mahomed had to do was give himself some medical credentials, convince the world of thismagical Oriental cure, and then he had them eating out of the palm of his hand. So what does that tell you, Birdie? If they’re going to tell stories aboutyou, use it to your advantage. The English are never going to think I’m posh,but if I fit into their fantasy, then they’ll at least think I’m royalty.’That marked the difference between them. Ever since his arrival in London, Robin had tried to keep his head down and assimilate, to play down his otherness. He thought the more unremarkable he seemed, the less attentionhe would draw. But Ramy, who had no choice but to stand out, had decidedhe might as well dazzle. He was bold to the extreme
‘Colin’s very concerned with status.’
He didn’t question thislogic, he simply acted. It felt like falling into a dream, like stepping into aplay where he already knew his lines, though everything else was a mystery.This was an illusion with its own internal logic, and for some reason hecouldn’t quite name, he didn’t want to break it.
They were men atOxford; they were not Oxford men
‘But Britain is the only place where I’ve ever seen silver bars in wideuse,’ said Robin. ‘They’re not nearly so popular in Canton, or, I’ve heard, inCalcutta. And it strikes me – I don’t know, it seems a bit strange that the
British are the only ones who get to use them when the Chinese and Indiansare contributing the crucial components of their functioning.’‘But that’s simple economics,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘It takes a greatdeal of cash to purchase what we create. The British happen to be able to afford it. We have deals with Chinese and Indian merchants too, but they’reoften less able to pay the export fees.’‘But we have silver bars in charities and hospitals and orphanages here,’said Robin. ‘We have bars that can help people who need them most. None of that exists anywhere else in the world.’
It’s just that – well, it onlyseems fair there ought to be some kind of exchange.’ He was regretting now that he’d drunk so much. He felt loose, vulnerable. Too passionate for what should have been an intellectual discussion. ‘We take their languages, their ways of seeing and describing the world. We ought to give them something inreturn.’‘But language,’ said Professor Lovell, ‘is not like a commercial good,like tea or silks, to be bought and paid for. Language is an infinite resource.And if we learn it, if we use it – who are we stealing from?’ There was some logic in this, but the conclusion still made Robin uncomfortable. Surely things were not so simple; surely this still maskedsome unfair coercion or exploitation. But he could not formulate an objection, could not figure out where the fault in the argument lay.‘The Qing Emperor has one of the largest silver reserves in the world,’said Professor Lovell. ‘He has plenty of scholars. He even has linguists who understand English. So why doesn’t he fill his court with silver bars? Why isit that the Chinese, rich as their language is, have no grammars of their own?’‘It could be they don’t have the resources to get started,’ said Robin.‘Then why should we just hand them to them?’ ‘But that’s not the point – the point is that they need it, so why doesn’tBabel send scholars abroad on exchange programmes? Why don’t we teach
them how it’s done?’‘Could be that all nations hoard their most precious resources.’ ‘Or that you’re hoarding knowledge that should be freely shared,’ saidRobin. ‘Because if language is free, if knowledge is free, then why are all theGrammaticas under lock and key in the tower? Why don’t we ever host foreign scholars, or send scholars to help open translation centres elsewhere in the world?’‘Because as the Royal Institute of Translation, we serve the interests ofthe Crown.’‘That seems fundamentally unjust.’‘Is that what you believe?’ A cold edge crept into Professor Lovell’svoice. ‘Robin Swift, do you think what we do here is fundamentally unjust?’ ‘I only want to know,’ said Robin, ‘why silver could not save mymother.’There was a brief silence.‘Well, I’m sorry about your mother.’ Professor Lovell picked up his knifeand began cutting into his steak. He seemed flustered, discomfited. ‘But theAsiatic Cholera was a product of Canton’s poor public hygiene, not the unequal distribution of bars. And anyhow, there’s no silver match-pair thatcan bring back the dead—’ ‘What excuse is that?’ Robin set down his glass. He was properly drunknow, and that made him combative. ‘You had the bars – they’re easy to make,you told me so yourself – so why—’‘For God’s sake,’ snapped Professor Lovell. ‘She was only just awoman.’
But what he felt was not as simple as revolutionary flame. What he felt in hisheart was not conviction so much as doubt, resentment, and a deep confusion.He hated this place. He loved it. He resented how it treated him. He still wanted to be a part of it – because it felt so good to be a part of it, to speakto its professors as an intellectual equal, to be in on the great game.
Quot linguas quis callet, tot homines valet. The more languages you speak, the more men you are worth.
Philip Wright, told Robin at a faculty dinnerthat the first-year cohort was largely international only because of departmental politics. ‘The board of undergraduate studies is always fighting over whether to prioritize European languages, or other . . . more exoticlanguages. Chakravarti and Lovell have been making a stink aboutdiversifying the student body for years. They didn’t like that my cohort are all Classicists. I assume they were overcorrecting with you.’Robin tried to be polite. ‘I’m not sure why that’s such a bad thing.’‘Well, it’s not a bad thing per se, but it does mean spots taken away fromequally qualified candidates who passed the entrance exams.’ ‘I didn’t take any entrance exams,’ said Robin.‘Precisely.’ Philip sniffed, and did not say another word to Robin for the entire evening.
departmental
Your tutors had you read Varro, didn’t they? He describes a glirarium in the Res Rustica.† It’s quite an elegant contraption. You make a jar, only it’sperforated with holes so the dormice can breathe, and the surfaces arepolished so smooth that escape is impossible. You put food in the hollows,and you make sure there are some ledges and walkways so the dormice don’tget too bored. Most importantly, you keep it dark, so the dormice alwaysthink it’s time to hibernate. All they do is sleep and fatten themselves up.’
We’re trapped in asymbiotic relationship with the levers of power. We need their silver. We need their tools. And, loath as we are to admit it, we benefit from theirresearch.’
‘Translating poetry is forthose who haven’t the creative fire themselves. They can only seek residual fame cribbing off the work of others.’ Robin scoffed. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’‘You wouldn’t know,’ said Pendennis. ‘You’re not a poet.’ ‘Actually—’ Robin fidgeted with the stem of his glass for a moment, thendecided to keep talking. ‘I think translation can be much harder than original composition in many ways. The poet is free to say whatever he likes, you see – he can choose from any number of linguistic tricks in the language he’scomposing in. Word choice, word order, sound – they all matter, and withoutany one of them the whole thing falls apart. That’s why Shelley writes thattranslating poetry is about as wise as casting a violet into a crucible. † So thetranslator needs to be translator, literary critic, and poet all at once – he must read the original well enough to understand all the machinery at play, toconvey its meaning with as much accuracy as possible, then rearrange thetranslated meaning into an aesthetically pleasing structure in the target language that, by his judgment, matches the original. The poet runsuntrammelled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles.’ By the end of this spiel Pendennis and his friends were staring at him, slack-jawed and bemused, as if they weren’t sure what to make of him. ‘Dancing in shackles,’ Woolcombe said after a pause. ‘That’s lovely.’ ‘But I’m not a poet,’ Robin said, a bit more viciously than he’d intended.‘So really what do I know?’
The truth of this encounter hit him with such clarity that he nearly laughed out loud. They were not appraising him for membership. They were trying toimpress him – and by impressing him, to display their own superiority, toprove that to be a Babbler was not as good as being one of Elton Pendennis’sfriends.But Robin was not impressed. Was this the pinnacle of Oxford society? This? He felt a profuse pity for them – these boys who considered themselves aesthetes, who thought their lives were as rarefied as the examined life could be
This still seems to be an insecure conclusion of the problem. Not an acceptance, but him possessing his own hurtful superiority complex on them
‘You say it like it’s a resource,’ said Ramy.‘Well, certainly. Language is a resource just like gold and silver. Peoplehave fought and died over those Grammaticas.’‘But that’s absurd,’ said Letty. ‘Language is just words, just thoughts –you can’t constrain the use of a language.’‘Can’t you?’ asked Anthony. ‘Do you know the official punishment inChina for teaching Mandarin to a foreigner is death?’Letty turned to Robin. ‘Is that true?’ ‘I think it is,’ said Robin. ‘Professor Chakravarti told me the same thing.The Qing government are – they’re scared. They’re scared of the outside.’‘You see?’ asked Anthony. ‘Languages aren’t just made of words.They’re modes of looking at the world. They’re the keys to civilization. Andthat’s knowledge worth killing for.’
Robin took Sanskrit with Professor Chakravarti, who began their first lesson by scolding Robin for having no knowledge of the language to begin with. ‘They should teach Sanskrit to China scholars from the beginning. Sanskrit came to China by way of Buddhist texts, and this caused a veritable explosion of linguistic innovation, as Buddhism introduced dozens of concepts that Chinese had no easy word for. Nun, or bhiksunī in Sanskrit, became ni.* Nirvana became nièpán. † Core Chinese concepts like hell, consciousness, and calamity come from Sanskrit. You can’t begin to understand Chinese today without also understanding Buddhism, which means understanding Sanskrit. It’s like trying to understand multiplication before you know how to draw numbers.’
Latin, translation theory, etymology, focus languages, and a new research language – it was an absurdly heavy class load, especially when each professor assigned coursework as if none of the other courses existed. The faculty was utterly unsympathetic. ‘The Germans have this lovely word, Sitzfleisch,’ Professor Playfair said pleasantly when Ramy protested that they had over forty hours of reading a week. ‘Translated literally, it means “sitting meat”. Which all goes to say, sometimes you need simply to sit on your bottom and get things done.’
Sitzfleisch
Sitzfleisch,’
When the new cohort – no girls, and four baby-faced boys – had appeared at Babel that fall, they’d given them scarcely any attention. They had, without consciously intending to, become just like the upperclassmen they had so envied during their first term. What they’d perceived as snobbery and haughtiness, it turned out, was only exhaustion. Older students had no intention of bullying newer ones. They simply didn’t have the time. They became what they’d aspired to be since their first year – aloof, brilliant, and fatigued to the bone. They were miserable. They slept and ate too little, read too much, and fell completely out of touch with matters outside Oxford or Babel. They ignored the life of the world; they lived only the life of the mind. They adored it.
She seemed bewitched as she observed the print, as if she’d seen actual magic. ‘It’s us. Frozen in time, captured in a moment we’ll never get back as long as we live. It’s wonderful.’ Robin, too, thought the photograph looked strange, though he did not say so aloud. All of their expressions were artificial, masks of faint discomfort. The camera had distorted and flattened the spirit that bound them, and the invisible warmth and camaraderie between them appeared now like a stilted, forced closeness. Photography, he thought, was also a kind of translation, and they had all come out the poorer for it.
‘I can’t predict how every encounter will shake out,’ Griffin clarified. ‘But I do know this. The wealth of Britain depends on coercive extraction. And as Britain grows, only two options remain: either her mechanisms of coercion become vastly more brutal, or she collapses. The former’s more likely. But it might bring about the latter.’ ‘It’s such an uneven fight, though,’ Robin said helplessly. ‘You on one side, the whole of the Empire on the other.’ ‘Only if you think the Empire is inevitable,’ said Griffin. ‘But it’s not. Take this current moment. We are just at the tail end of a great crisis in the Atlantic, after the monarchic empires have fallen one after the other. Britain and France lost in America, and then they went to war against each other to nobody’s benefit. Now we’re watching a new consolidation of power, that’s true – Britain got Bengal, it got Dutch Java and the Cape Colony – and if it gets what it wants in China, if it can reverse this trade imbalance, it’s going to be unstoppable. ‘But nothing’s written in stone – or even silver, as it were. So much rests on these contingencies, and it’s at these tipping points where we can push and pull. Where individual choices, where even the smallest of resistance armies make a difference. Take Barbados, for example. Take Jamaica. We sent bars there to the revolts—’ ‘Those slave revolts were crushed,’ said Robin. ‘But slavery’s been abolished, hasn’t it?’ said Griffin. ‘At least in British territories. No – I’m not saying everything’s good and fixed, and I’m not saying we can fully take the credit for British legislation; I’m sure the abolitionists would take umbrage at that. But I am saying that if you think the 1833 Act passed because of the moral sensibilities of the British, you’re wrong. They passed that bill because they couldn’t keep absorbing the losses.’ He waved a hand, gesturing at an invisible map. ‘It’s junctures like that where we have control. If we push in the right spots – if we create losses where the Empire can’t stand to suffer them – then we’ve moved things to the breaking point. Then the future becomes fluid, and change is possible. History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.’ ‘You really believe that,’ said Robin, amazed. Griffin’s faith astounded him. For Robin, such abstract reasoning was a reason to divest from the world, to retreat into the safety of dead languages and books. For Griffin, it was a rallying call. ‘I have to,’ said Griffin. ‘Otherwise, you’re right. Otherwise we’ve got nothing.’
Something had seemed to break between them all – no, break was perhaps too strong a word, for they still clung to each other with the force of people who had no one else. But their bond had twisted in a decidedly hurtful direction. They still spent nearly all their waking moments together, but they dreaded each other’s company. Everything was an unintended slight or deliberate offence – if Robin complained about Sanskrit, it was insensitive to the fact that Professor Harding kept insisting Sanskrit was one of Ramy’s languages when it wasn’t; if Ramy was pleased he and Professor Harding had finally agreed on a research direction, it was a callous remark to Victoire, who had got nowhere with Professor Leblanc. They used to find solace in their solidarity, but now they saw each other only as reminders of their own misery.
In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly toavoid doing what I knew to be wrong.’CHARLES DICKENS
Soinstead of using their wits to learn a skill that might actually be useful,they’ve decided to whine about it on our front steps. Those protests outside aren’t anything new, you know. There’s a sickness in this country.’ ProfessorLovell spoke now with a sudden, nasty vehemence. ‘It started with the Luddites – some idiot workers in Nottingham who thought they’d rather smash machinery than adapt to progress – and it’s spread across England since. There are people all over the country who’d rather see us dead. It’s not just Babel that gets attacked like this; no, we don’t even see the worst ofit, since our security’s better than most. Up north, those men are pulling offarson, they’re stoning building owners, they’re throwing acid on factorymanagers. They can’t seem to stop smashing looms in Lancashire. No, this isn’t the first time our faculty have received death threats, it’s only the firsttime they’ve dared to come as far south as Oxford.’
Professor Lovell scoffed. ‘Never. I look at those men, and I think of the vast differences between us. I am where I am because I believe in knowledge and scientific progress, and I have used them to my advantage. They arewhere they are because they have stubbornly refused to move forward withthe future. Men like that don’t scare me. Men like that make me laugh.’
He didn’twant to dwell on all the things they represented – the fact that for all of hisprofessed allegiance to revolution, for his commitment to equality and tohelping those who were without, he had no experience of true poverty at all.He’d seen hard times in Canton, but he had never not known where his nextmeal might come from or where he would sleep at night. He had never looked at his family and wondered what it might take to keep them alive. Forall his identification with the poor orphan Oliver Twist, for all his bitter self-pity, the fact remained that since the day he had set foot in England, he hadnot once gone to sleep hungry.
At last, Griffin shook his head and said, ‘You’re lost, brother. You’re aship adrift, searching for familiar shores. I understand what it is you want. I sought it too. But there is no homeland. It’s gone.’ He paused beside Robin on his way to the door. His fingers landed on Robin’s shoulder, squeezed sohard they hurt. ‘But realize this, brother. You fly no one’s flag. You’re free toseek your own harbour. And you can do so much more than tread water.
Mountains will be in labour, the birth will be a single laughable little mouse.HORACE, Ars Poetica, trans. E.C. Wickham
Balderdash’, he would drawl slowly, ‘is a word which used to refer to the cursed concoction created by barkeeps when they’d nearly run out of everydrink at the end of the night. Ale, wine, cider, milk – they’d dump it all in and hope their patrons wouldn’t mind, since after all the goal was simply to getdrunk. But this is Oxford University, not the Turf Tavern after midnight, and we are in need of something slightly more illuminating than getting sloshed.Would you like to try again?’
the Babel faculty madeavailable a set of silver bars for examinees to use as study aids. These barswere engraved with a match-pair using the English word meticulous and itsLatin forerunner metus, meaning ‘fear, dread’. The modern usage of meticulous had arisen just a few decades before in France, with theconnotation of being fearful of making a mistake. The effect of the bars wasto induce a chilling anxiety whenever the user erred in their work.
Stress had the unique ability to wipe students’ minds clear of things they had been studying for years. During the fourth-year exams last year, one examinee was rumoured to have become so paranoid that he declared not only that he could not finish the exam but that he was lying about being fluent in French at all. (He was in fact a native speaker.)They all thought they were immune to this particular folly until one day, aweek before exams, Letty suddenly broke down crying and declared sheknew not a word of German, not a single word, that she was a fraud and her entire career at Babel had been based on pretence. None of them understood this rant until much later, for she had indeed delivered it in German.
In fact, all the strange, ill-defined awfulness oftheir third year had evaporated with the news that they’d passed their exams. Letty no longer grated on Robin’s nerves, and Ramy no longer made Letty scowl every time he opened his mouth.To be fair, their fights were tabled rather than resolved. They had not really confronted the reasons why they’d fallen out, but they were all willingto blame it on stress. There would be a time when they had to face up their very real differences, when they would hash things out instead of always changing the subject, but for now they were content to enjoy the summer andto remember again what it was like to love one another. For these, truly, were the last of the golden days. That summer felt all themore precious because they all knew it couldn’t last, that such delights were only so because of the endless, exhausting nights that had earned them. Soonyear four would start, then graduating exams, and then work. None of themknew what life might look like after that, but surely they could not remain a cohort forever. Surely, eventually, they had to leave the city of dreamingspires; had to take up their respective posts and repay all that Babel had given them. But the future, vague as it was frightening, was easily ignored fornow; it paled so against the brilliance of the present.
Robin had always beenwilling, in theory, to give only some things up for a revolution he halfwaybelieved in. He was fine with resistance as long as it didn’t hurt him. And the contradiction was fine, as long as he didn’t think too hard about it, or looktoo closely. But spelled out like this, in such bleak terms, it seemed inarguable that far from being a revolutionary, Robin, in fact, had noconvictions whatsoever.
He did notknow that impressing a white man could be as dangerous as provoking one.
Over the middle of the table was suspended an immense fan made of a cloth sail stretched over a wooden frame, which was kept in constant motionby a coolie servant who pulled and slackened it without pause throughout the dinner service. Robin found it quite distracting – he felt an odd pang of guilt every time he met the servant’s eyes – but the other residents of the factory seemed to find the coolie invisible.
‘There are no other exports,’ said Mr Baylis. ‘None that matter.’ ‘It just seems that the Chinese have a rather good point,’ Robin saidhelplessly. ‘Given it’s such a harmful drug.’‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Mr Baylis smiled a wide, practised smile.‘Smoking opium is the safest and most gentleman-like speculation I am awareof.’This was such an obvious lie that Robin blinked at him, astounded. ‘The Chinese memorandums call it one of the greatest vices ever to plague theircountry.’‘Oh, opium’s not as harmful as all that,’ said Reverend Gützlaff. ‘Indeed,it’s prescribed as laudanum in Britain all the time. Little old ladies regularlyuse it to go to sleep. It’s no more a vice than tobacco or brandy. I oftenrecommend it to members of my congregation.’‘But isn’t pipe opium a great deal stronger?’ Ramy cut in. ‘It reallydoesn’t seem like sleep aids are the issue here.’ ‘That’s missing the point,’ said Mr Baylis with a touch of impatience.‘The point is free trade between nations. We’re all liberals, aren’t we? Thereshould be no restrictions between those who have goods and those who want to purchase them. That’s justice.’ ‘A curious defence,’ said Ramy, ‘to justify a vice with virtue.’ Mr Baylis scoffed. ‘Oh, the Qing Emperor doesn’t care about vices. He’s stingy about his silver, that’s all. But trade only works when there’s give and take, and currently we’re sitting at a deficit. There’s nothing we have that
those Chinamen want, apparently, except opium. They can’t get enough of the stuff. They’ll pay anything for it. And if I had my way, every man, woman, and child in this country would be puffing opium smoke until they couldn’tthink straight.’He concluded by slamming his hand against the table. The noise was perhaps louder than he intended; it cracked like a gunshot. Victoire and Lettyflinched back. Ramy looked too amazed to reply. ‘But that’s cruel,’ said Robin. ‘That’s – that’s terribly cruel.’ ‘It’s their free choice, isn’t it?’ Mr Baylis said
This stuff changed everything, he said. This corrected the trade deficit. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget what I saw.’ He rested his elbows against the bridge and sighed. ‘Rows and rows of flowers. A whole ocean of them. They’re such bright scarlet that the fields look wrong, like the land itself is bleeding. It’s all grown in the countryside. Then it gets packed and transported to Calcutta, where it’s handed off to private merchants who bring it straight here. The two most popular opium brands here are called Patna and Malwa. Both regions in India. From my home straight to yours, Birdie. Isn’t that funny?’ Ramy glanced sideways at him. ‘The British are turning my homeland into a narco-military state to pump drugs into yours. That’s how this empire connects us.’ Robin saw a great spider’s web in his mind then. Cotton from India to Britain, opium from India to China, silver becoming tea and porcelain in China, and everything flowing back to Britain. It sounded so abstract – just categories of use, exchange, and value – until it wasn’t; until you realized the web you lived in and the exploitations your lifestyle demanded, until you saw looming above it all the spectre of colonial labour and colonial pain. ‘It’s sick,’ he whispered. ‘It’s sick, it’s so sick . . .’ ‘But it’s all just trade,’ said Ramy. ‘Everyone benefits; everyone profits, even if it’s only one country that profits a good deal more. Continuous gains that’s the logic, isn’t it? So why would we ever try to break out? The point is, Birdie, I think I understand why you didn’t see. Almost no one does.’ Free trade. This was always the British line of argument – free trade, free competition, an equal playing field for all. Only it never ended up that way, did it? What ‘free trade’ really meant was British imperial dominance, for what was free about a trade that relied on a massive build-up of naval power to secure maritime access? When mere trading companies could wage war, assess taxes, and administer civil and criminal justice?
he had no idea how to convey what he meant, and all he could grasp at were memories, passing references. ‘Did you ever read Gulliver’s Travels? I read it all the time, when I lived here – I read it so often I nearly memorized it. And there’s this chapter where Gulliver winds up on a land ruled by horses, who call themselves the Houyhnhnms, and where the humans are all savage, idiot slaves called Yahoos. They’re swapped. And Gulliver gets so used to living with his Houyhnhnm master, gets so convinced of Houyhnhnm superiority, that when he gets home, he’s horrified by his fellow humans. He thinks they’re imbeciles. He can’t stand to be around them. And that’s how this . . . that’s . . .’ Robin rocked back and forth over the bridge. He felt like no matter how hard he breathed, he could not get enough air. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
The origins of the word anger were tied closely to physical suffering. Anger was first an ‘affliction’, as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a ‘painful, cruel, narrow’ state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in turn came from the Latin angor, which meant ‘strangling, anguish, distress’. Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe. And rage, of course, came from madness.
It took him a moment to realize what it was that grated on him, and when he did, it would bother him constantly, now and thereafter; it would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.
‘Nice comes from the Latin word for ‘stupid’,’* said Griffin. ‘We do not want to be nice.’
Your ranks are what, a couple dozen? At most? And you’re going to take on the entire British Army?’ ‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Griffin. ‘The thing about violence, see, is that the Empire has a lot more to lose than we do. Violence disrupts the extractive economy. You wreak havoc on one supply line, and there’s a dip in prices across the Atlantic. Their entire system of trade is high-strung and vulnerable to shocks because they’ve made it thus, because the rapacious greed of capitalism is punishing. It’s why slave revolts succeed. They can’t fire on their own source of labour – it’d be like killing their own golden geese.
‘Violence shows them how much we’re willing to give up,’ said Griffin. ‘Violence is the only language they understand, because their system of extraction is inherently violent. Violence shocks the system. And the system cannot survive the shock. You have no idea what you’re capable of, truly. You can’t imagine how the world might shift unless you pull the trigger.’ Griffin pointed at the middle birch. ‘Pull the trigger, kid.’
She translated gökatta to “rising at dawn”, only in Swedish, gökatta has the particular meaning of waking up early to listen to the birds sing.
Anthony laughed gently. ‘Do you think abolition was a matter of ethics? No, abolition gained popularity because the British, after losing America, decided that India was going to be their new golden goose. But cotton, indigo, and sugar from India weren’t going to dominate the market unless France could be edged out, and France would not be edged out, you see, as long as the British slave trade was making the West Indies so very profitable for them.’ ‘But—’ ‘But nothing. The abolitionist movement you know is a load of pomp. Rhetoric only. Pitt first raised the motion because he saw the need to cut off the slave trade to France. And Parliament got on board with the abolitionists because they were so very afraid of Black insurrection in the West Indies.’ ‘So you think it’s purely risk and economics.’ ‘Well, not necessarily. You brother likes to argue that the Jamaican slave revolt, failed though it was, is what impelled the British to legislate abolition. He’s right, but only half right. See, the revolt won British sympathy because the leaders were part of the Baptist church, and when it failed, proslavery whites in Jamaica started destroying chapels and threatening missionaries. Those Baptists went back to England and drummed up support on the grounds of religion, not natural rights. My point being, abolition happened because white people found reasons to care – whether those be economic or religious. You just have to make them think they came up with the idea themselves. You can’t appeal to their inner goodness. I have never met an Englishman I trusted to do the right thing out of sympathy.’
The Greeks loved parricide, Mr Chester had been fond of saying; they loved it for its infinite narrative potential, its invocations of legacy, pride, honour, and dominance. They loved the way it struck every possible emotion because it so deviously inverted the most basic tenet of human existence. One being creates another, moulds and influences it in its own image. The son becomes, then replaces, the father; Kronos destroys Ouranos, Zeus destroys Kronos and, eventually, becomes him. But Robin had never envied his father, never wanted anything of his except his recognition, and he hated to see himself reflected in that cold, dead face. No, not dead – reanimated, haunting; Professor Lovell leered at him, and behind him, opium burned on Canton’s shores, hot and booming and sweet.
And I alone am left of all that lived, Pent in this narrow, horrible conviction. THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES, Death’s Jest-Book
She held grammar rules the way other women held grudges.
Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence. FRANTZ FANON, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox
And that, the key to Griffin’s theory of violence, was why they might win. They’d finally worked it out. It was why Griffin and Anthony had been so confident in their struggle, why they were convinced the colonies could take on the Empire. Empire needed extraction. Violence shocked the system, because the system could not cannibalize itself and survive. The hands of the Empire were tied, because it could not raze that from which it profited. And like those sugar fields, like those markets, like those bodies of unwilling labour, Babel was an asset. Britain needed Chinese, needed Arabic and Sanskrit and all the languages of colonized territories to function. Britain could not hurt Babel without hurting itself. And so Babel alone, an asset denied, could grind the Empire to a halt.
The blood vials of all but the eight scholars who’d remained within the tower had been smashed against the bricks, doused with oil poured from unused lamps, and set aflame. This was not strictly necessary; all that mattered was that the vials were removed from the tower – but Robin and Victoire had insisted on ceremony. They had learned from Professor Playfair the importance of performance, and this macabre display was a statement, a warning.
The seed ye sow, another reaps; The wealth ye find, another keeps; The robes ye weave, another wears; The arms ye forge, another bears. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, ‘Song to the Men of England’
‘This is how Babel was designed to work,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘We made the city as reliant on the Institute as possible. We designed bars to last for only several weeks instead of months, because maintenance appointments bring in money. This is the cost of inflating prices and artificially creating demand. It all works beautifully, until it doesn’t.’
‘It’s very embarrassing,’ Victoire observed one afternoon over tea, ‘how much it all depends on Oxford, in the end. You’d think they would have known better than to put all their eggs in one basket.’ ‘Well, it’s just so funny,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘Technically, those supplementary stations do exist, precisely to alleviate such a crisis of dependence. Cambridge, for example, has been trying to establish a rival programme for years. But Oxford wouldn’t share any resources.’ ‘Because of scarcity?’ Robin asked. ‘Because of jealousy and avarice,’ said Professor Craft. ‘Scarcity’s never been an issue.* We simply don’t like the Cambridge scholars. Nasty little upstarts, thinking they can make it on their own.’ ‘No one goes to Cambridge unless they can’t find a job here,’ Professor Chakravarti said. ‘Sad.’ Robin cast them an amazed look. ‘Are you telling me this country’s going to fall because of academic territoriality?’ ‘Well, yes.’ Professor Craft lifted her teacup to her lips. ‘It’s Oxford, what did you expect?’
He had fully converted now to Griffin’s theory of violence, that the oppressor would never sit down at the negotiating table when they still thought they had nothing to lose. No; things had to get bloody. Until now, all threats had been hypothetical. London had to suffer to learn.
‘I think we all got good at choosing not to think about certain things.’ She seemed not to hear him. She stared out of the window at the green below, where the strikers’ protest grounds had been turned into what looked like a military camp. ‘My first patented match-pair improved the efficiency of equipment at a mine in Tyneshire,’ she said. ‘It kept coal-laden trolleys firmly on their tracks. The mine owners were so impressed they invited me up for a visit, and of course I went; I was so excited about contributing something to the country. I remember being shocked at all the little children in the pits. When I asked, the miners said that they were completely safe, and that helping out in the mines kept them from trouble when their parents were at work.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘Later they told me that the silver-work made the trolleys impossible to move off the tracks, even when there were people in the way. There was an accident. One little boy lost both his legs. They stopped using the match-pair when they couldn’t figure out a workaround, but I didn’t give it a second thought. By then I’d received my fellowship. I had a professorship in sight, and I’d moved on to other, bigger projects. I didn’t think about it. I simply didn’t think about it, for years, and years and years.’ She turned back towards him. Her eyes were wet. ‘Only it builds up, doesn’t it? It doesn’t just disappear. And one day you start prodding at what you’ve suppressed. And it’s a mass of black rot, and it’s endless, horrifying, and you can’t look away.’
Egypt would suffer her ten plagues.
‘But that’s precisely the devil’s trick,’ Robin insisted. ‘This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.’ ‘Even so, there are lines you can’t cross.’ ‘Lines? If we play by the rules, then they’ve already won—’ ‘You’re trying to win by punishing the city,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘That means the whole city, everyone in it – men, women, children. There are sick children who can’t get their medicine. There are whole families with no income and no source of food. This is more than an inconvenience to them, it’s a death threat.’ ‘I know,’ said Robin, frustrated. ‘That’s the point.’ They glared at each other, and Robin thought he understood now the way that Griffin had once looked at him. This was a failure of nerve. A refusal to push things to the limit. Violence was the only thing that brought the colonizer to the table; violence was the only option. The gun was right there, lying on the table, waiting for them to pick it up. Why were they so afraid to even look at it? Professor Chakravarti stood. ‘I can’t follow you down this path.’
invoking hatred might be good. Hatred might force respect. Hatred might force the British to look them in the eyes and see not an object, but a person. Violence shocks the system, Griffin had told him. And the system cannot survive the shock. ‘Oderint dum metuant,’ he said.* ‘That’s our path to victory.’ ‘That’s Caligula,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘You’re invoking Caligula?’ ‘Caligula got his way.’ ‘Caligula was assassinated.’ Robin shrugged, wholly unbothered. ‘You know,’ said Professor Chakravarti, ‘you know, one of the most commonly misunderstood Sanskrit concepts is ahimsa. Nonviolence.’ ‘I don’t need a lecture, sir,’ said Robin, but Professor Chakravarti spoke over him. ‘Many think ahimsa means absolute pacifism, and that the Indian people are therefore a sheepish, submissive people who will bend the knee to anything. But in the Bhagavad Gita, exceptions are made for a dharma yuddha. A righteous war. A war in which violence is applied as the last resort, a war fought not for selfish gain or personal motives but from a commitment to a greater cause.’ He shook his head. ‘This is how I have justified this strike, Mr Swift. But what you’re doing here is not self-defence; it has trespassed into malice. Your violence is personal, it is vindictive, and this I cannot support.’
‘They’re not your motherlands,’ said Letty. ‘They don’t have to be.’ ‘They do have to be,’ said Victoire. ‘Because we’ll never be British. How can you still not understand? That identity is foreclosed to us. We are foreign because this nation has marked us so, and as long as we’re punished daily for our ties to our homelands, we might as well defend them. No, Letty, we can’t maintain this fantasy. The only one who can do that is you.’
‘Did you ever read that poem the abolitionists love? That one by Bicknell and Day. It’s called The Dying Negro.’ Robin had read it, in fact, in an abolitionist pamphlet he’d picked up in London. He’d found it striking; he still remembered it in detail. It described the story of an African man who, facing the prospects of capture and return to slavery, killed himself instead.* Robin had found it romantic and moving at the time, but now, seeing Victoire’s expression, he realized it was anything but. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘It was – tragic.’ ‘We have to die to get their pity,’ said Victoire. ‘We have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways – I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows. PLATO, Apology, trans. Benjamin Jowett
For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language; there was no candidate, not English, not French, that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No; a thousand worlds within one. And translation – a necessary endeavour, however futile, to move between them.
‘It’s so odd,’ Robin said. Back then they’d already passed the point of honesty; they spoke to one another unfiltered, unafraid of the consequences. ‘It’s like I’ve known you forever.’ ‘Me too,’ Ramy said. ‘And that makes no sense,’ said Robin, drunk already, though there was no alcohol in the cordial. ‘Because I’ve known you for less than a day, and yet . . .’ ‘I think,’ said Ramy, ‘it’s because when I speak, you listen.’ ‘Because you’re fascinating.’ ‘Because you’re a good translator.’ Ramy leaned back on his elbows. ‘That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.’
Victoire Desgraves has always been good at surviving. The key, she has learned, is refusing to look back. Even as she races north on horseback through the Cotswolds, head bent against the whipping branches, some part of her wants to be in the tower, with her friends, feeling the walls come down around them. If they must die, she wants them to be buried together. But survival demands severing the cord. Survival demands she look only to the future.
Letty, she knows, cannot allow her to roam free. Even the idea of Victoire is a threat. It threatens the core of her very being. It is proof that she is, and always was, wrong. She won’t let herself grieve that friendship, as true and terrible and abusive as it was. There will come a time for grief. There will come many nights on the voyage when the sadness is so great it threatens to tear her apart; when she regrets her decision to live; when she curses Robin for placing this burden on her, because he was right: he was not being brave, he was not choosing sacrifice. Death is seductive. Victoire resists. She cannot weep now. She must keep moving. She must run, as fast as she can, without knowing what is on the other side. She has no illusions about what she will encounter. She knows she will face immeasurable cruelty. She knows her greatest obstacle will be cold indifference, born of a bone-deep investment in an economic system that privileges some and crushes others.
Anthony called victory an inevitability. Anthony believed the material contradictions of England would tear it apart, that their movement would succeed because the revels of the Empire were simply unsustainable. This, he argued, was why they had a chance. Victoire knows better. Victory is not assured. Victory may be in the portents, but it must be urged there by violence, by suffering, by martyrs, by blood. Victory is wrought by ingenuity, persistence, and sacrifice. Victory is a game of inches, of historical contingencies where everything goes right because they have made it go right. She cannot know what shape that struggle will take.
Victory is a game of inches, of historical contingencies where everything goes right because they have made it go right.
‘Mande mwen yon ti kou ankò ma di ou,’ she’d told Anthony once, when he’d first asked her what she thought of Hermes, if she thought they might succeed. He’d tried his best to parse Kreyôl with what he knew of French, then he’d given up. ‘What’s that mean?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Victoire. ‘At least, we say it when we don’t know the answer, or don’t care to share the answer.’ ‘And what’s it literally mean?’ She’d winked at him. ‘Ask me a little later, and I’ll tell you.’
a debate between the Orientalists,including Sir Horace Wilson, who favoured teaching Sanskrit and Arabic to Indian students, and the Anglicists, including Mr Trevelyan, who believed Indian students of promise ought to be taught English.This debate would come down firmly on the side of the Anglicists, best represented by Lord Thomas Macaulay’s infamous February 1835 ‘Minute on Education’: ‘We must at present do our best to form aclass who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern – a class of persons Indianin blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.
slavery continued in India under the East India Company for a long time after. Indeed, slavery in India was specifically exempt from the Slave Emancipation Act of 1833. Despite early abolitionists’ belief that India under the EIC was a country of free labour, the EIC was complicit in, directly profited from, and in many cases encouraged a range of types of bondage, including forced plantation labour, domestic labour, and indentured servitude. The refusal to call such practices slavery simply because they did not match precisely the transatlantic plantation model of slavery was a profound act of semantic blindness. But the British, after all, were astoundingly good at holding contradictions in their head. Sir William Jones, a virulent abolitionist, at the same time admitted of his own household, ‘I have slaves that I rescued from death and misery, but consider them as servants.’
The papers always referred to the strikers as foreign; as Chinamen, Indians, Arabs, and Africans. (Never mind Professor Craft.) They were never Oxfordians, they were never Englishmen, they were travellers from abroad who had taken advantage of Oxford’s good graces, and who now held the nation hostage. Babel had become synonymous with foreign, and this was very strange, because before this, the Royal Institute of Translation had always been regarded as a national treasure, a quintessentially English institution. But then England, and the English language, had always been more indebted to the poor, the lowly, and the foreign than it cared to admit. The word vernacular came from the Latin verna, meaning ‘house slave’; this emphasized the nativeness, the domesticity of the vernacular language. But the root verna also indicated the lowly origins of the language spoken by the powerful; the terms and phrases invented by slaves, labourers, beggars, and criminals – the vulgar cants, as it were – had infiltrated English until they became proper. And the English vernacular could not properly be called domestic either, because English etymology had roots all over the world. Almanacs and algebra came from Arabic; pyjamas from Sanskrit, ketchup from Chinese, and paddies from Malay. It was only when elite England’s way of life was threatened that the true English, whoever they were, attempted to excise all that had made them.