‘No. I just don’t see what difference it makes,’ said Robin. ‘Babel is – Babel. And you’re just—’
‘A small cluster of exiled scholars chipping away at the behemoth?’ Griffin supplied. ‘Say what you mean, brother, don’t dither.’
‘I was going to say “massively outnumbered idealists”, but yes. I mean – please, Griffin, it’s just hard to keep faith when it’s unclear what effect there is to anything I do.’
Griffin slowed his pace. He was silent for a few seconds, considering, and then he said, ‘I’m going to paint you a picture. Where does silver come from?’
‘Griffin, honestly—’
‘Indulge me.’
‘I’ve got class in ten minutes.’
‘And it’s not a simple answer. Craft won’t throw you out for being late just once. Where does silver come from?’
‘I don’t know. Mines?’
Griffin sighed heavily. ‘Don’t they teach you anything?’
‘Griffin—’
‘Just listen. Silver’s been around forever. The Athenians were mining it in Attica, and the Romans, as you know, used silver to expand their empire once they realized what it could do. But silver didn’t become international currency, didn’t facilitate a trade network spanning continents, until much later. There simply wasn’t enough of it. Then in the sixteenth century, the Hapsburgs – the first truly global empire – stumbled upon massive silver deposits in the Andes. The Spaniards brought it out of the mountains, courtesy of indigenous miners you can be certain weren’t paid fairly for their labour,* and minted it into their little pieces of eight, which brought riches flowing into Seville and Madrid.
‘Silver made them rich – rich enough to buy printed cotton cloth from India, which they used to pay for bound slaves from Africa, who they put to work on plantations in their colonies. So the Spanish become richer and richer, and everywhere they go they leave death, slavery, and impoverishment in their wake. You see the patterns so far, surely?’
Griffin, when lecturing, bore a peculiar resemblance to Professor Lovell. Both made very sharp gestures with their hands, as if punctuating their lengthy diatribes with hand movements instead of full stops, and both spoke in a very precise, syncopated manner. They also shared a fondness for Socratic questioning. ‘Jump forward two hundred years, and what do you have?’
Robin sighed, but played along. ‘All the silver, and all the power, flows from the New World to Europe.’
‘Right,’ said Griffin. ‘Silver accrues where it’s already in use. The Spanish held the lead for a long time, while the Dutch, British, and French were nipping at their heels. Jump ahead another century, and Spain’s a shadow of what it once was; the Napoleonic wars have eroded France’s power, and now glorious Britannia is on top. Largest silver reserves in Europe. Best translation institute in the world by far. The best navy on the seas, cemented after Trafalgar, meaning this island is well on its way to ruling the world, isn’t it? But something funny’s been happening over the last century. Something that’s been giving Parliament and all the British trading companies quite a headache. Can you guess what it is?’
‘Don’t tell me we’re running out of silver.’
Griffin grinned. ‘They’re running out of silver. Can you guess where it’s all flowing now?’
This Robin knew the answer to, only because he’d heard Professor Lovell and his friends complaining about it for years during those sitting room nights in Hampstead. ‘China.’
‘China. This country is gorging itself on imports from the Orient. They can’t get enough of China’s porcelain, lacquered cabinets, and silks. And tea. Heavens. Do you know how much tea gets exported from China to England every year? At least thirty million pounds’ worth. The British love tea so much that Parliament used to insist that the East India Company always keep a year’s worth of supply in stock in case of shortages. We spend millions and millions on tea from China every year, and we pay for it in silver.
‘But China has no reciprocal appetite for British goods. When the Qianlong Emperor received a display of British manufactured items from Lord Macartney, do you know what his response was? Strange and costly objects do not interest me. The Chinese don’t need anything we’re selling; they can produce everything they want on their own. So silver keeps flowing to China, and there’s nothing the British can do about it because they can’t alter supply and demand. One day it won’t matter how much translation talent we have, because the silver reserves will simply not exist to put it to use. The British Empire will crumble as a consequence of its own greed. Meanwhile, silver will accrue in new centres of power – places that have heretofore had their resources stolen and exploited. They’ll have the raw materials. All they’ll need then are silver-workers, and the talent will go where the work is; it always does. So it’s all as simple as running out the Empire. The cycles of history will do the rest, and you’ve only got to help us speed it along.’
‘But that’s . . . ’ Robin trailed off, struggling to find the words to phrase his objection. ‘That’s so abstract, so simple, it can’t possibly – I mean, certainly you can’t predict history like this with such broad strokes—’
‘There’s quite a lot you can predict.’ Griffin shot Robin a sideways look. ‘But that’s the problem with a Babel education, isn’t it? They teach you languages and translation, but never history, never science, never international politics. They don’t tell you about the armies that back dialects.’
‘But what does it all look like?’ Robin persisted. ‘What you’re describing, I mean – how is this going to come about? A global war? A slow economic decline until the world looks entirely different?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Griffin. ‘No one knows precisely what the future looks like. Whether the levers of power move to China, or to the Americas, or whether Britain’s going to fight tooth and nail to hold on to its place – that’s impossible to foretell.’
‘Then how do you know that what you’re doing has any effect?’
‘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.’