The Middle Class Learns To Stare At Its Own Anxiety

The Spanish Empire begins with the thing every empire thinks it wants: gold and silver pouring back from the New World. Source trail 0:001:18 Okay, good morning. So we start the very last section of the course today. It's on the Anglo -American Empire, which rules the world today. So we will first look at the rise of the British Empire. And to understand the...And all this money just made the system even worse. So let me explain. is that there's a rigid hierarchy of status. The nobles and the clergy at the very top. And because of all this gold and silver, the clergy and the... But Jiang's rule is that wealth is not neutral. Wealth strengthens the system it enters. Spain is a feudal Catholic monarchy, so treasure reinforces status, religious display, and royal expansion instead of building industry.

The clergy and nobility do not have to contribute. Source trail 1:182:29 And all this money just made the system even worse. So let me explain. is that there's a rigid hierarchy of status. The nobles and the clergy at the very top. And because of all this gold and silver, the clergy and the...For example, religious festivals, churches, masses. And all this money is being wasted on these religious festivals. And the third thing is monarchy. So they have a king, and this king also happens to be, through marria... Catholic attention turns away from this world and toward heaven, so money goes into festivals, churches, and masses rather than innovation. Monarchy adds the final failure: the king has almost infinite money, borrows even more, and fights the Ottomans, France, the Pope, and Europe until the richest empire goes bankrupt.

This disaster creates openings for people who work. Source trail 5:376:427:43 and Holland okay or what we call the Dutch Republic okay don't worry about the name for now and so there are three ways in which you should invest in debt in 10 years. they took advantage of this new system that the Spa...And piracy became the official policy of the English. All right? So Francis Drake was the most famous pirate of this time, and he was like an admiral in the British Navy, sponsored by the queen, Queen Elizabeth I. And h... France, England, and Holland supply the finished goods Spain cannot produce. English piracy becomes state policy, and piracy teaches long-range naval warfare: stop boarding ships, put cannons on them, and pound the enemy from a distance. Spain's extractive empire accidentally trains its competitors.

The real center of early modern profit is not only the Atlantic. Source trail 8:479:5511:1012:12 Now, there is a misconception in history that the Europeans went to Africa, kidnapped these slaves, and then transported them to the New World, okay? This is not true. The reason why it's not true is the Europeans actua...At this time in history, the most profitable product, the thing that was most valuable is actually spices. Things like nutmeg, cinnamon, peppercorn, all right? These are the things that Europeans really valued. One ship... Spices, silk, porcelain, and the East Indies matter more than gold in this telling. Whoever controls the routes into Southeast Asia controls the wealth that can fund world power. The Dutch problem is that they are small, poor, divided, and under Spanish pressure.

The solution is the VOC. A company appears that is not the government but has the power of government: it can raise armies, create laws, issue currency, and monopolize spice trade. Source trail 13:0914:05 This war would last for 80 years. Now, the problem is that Spain, it is the most powerful nation in the world at this time. The Low Countries, it's like 1.5 million people at this time. Okay, so it's a very, very small...And the solution would forever change human history. In 1602, okay, 1602, they created something called the Dutch East Indies Company. And it's known as VOC in Dutch, okay? The Dutch East Indies Company. This is really... It is a business, a war machine, a tax device, and a political technology at once.

Equity solves what patriotism alone cannot. Source trail 15:2616:29 Why would the Dutch go out and create their first multinational corporation? And the answer is, is they needed a way to unite the people of the low countries into fighting the Spanish. How do you incentivize the people...So now people actually have an incentive to actually fight the British. Because if the Dutch East Indies Company makes money, they get rich, and that's what actually happened. The Dutch East Indies Company will become e... Many people in the Low Countries are indifferent, some want independence, some remain Catholic. Shares give them a material reason to support the fight. This is the equivalent of selling war bonds with upside: if the company wins, they get rich. Capitalism and war mobilization become the same instrument.

The brilliance is inseparable from horror. Source trail 17:2018:19 this will allow the Dutch East Indies Company to work hard to control the trade in the East Indies. Because if they work hard, they're the ones who profit, not the king. And over time, what will happen is, the Dutch Eas...will recognize is, they don't actually have the population resources to maintain their empire, so they will retreat and leave this empire to the French and the English, but they will still be subcontractors to the Engli... A multinational corporation interested only in profit commits ethnic cleansing, enslaves people on plantations, and fights repeated wars to maintain monopoly. The Dutch get rich, but the wealth is not innocent. Even when the Netherlands later retreats from direct empire, it remains a subcontractor to French and English power.

The political-economic story now becomes a religious psychology. Source trail 18:1919:4720:39 will recognize is, they don't actually have the population resources to maintain their empire, so they will retreat and leave this empire to the French and the English, but they will still be subcontractors to the Engli...And God knows if you are faithful, and you yourself know if you're faithful. So if you spend money, if you build stuff, that doesn't matter. The works doesn't matter. What matters is your true faith, okay? That's the fi... Calvinism strips the Catholic Church of control over salvation. Justification by faith says the decisive relation is between you and God. Double predestination says God has already decided who will be saved and who will be damned. That liberates people from the church, but it creates a terrible question: how do you know you are elect?

The answer is hard work. Then the sign of hard work becomes accumulation. Source trail 20:3921:4323:0023:54 is, no, the church doesn't, because at the beginning, at the beginning of time, even before the world was created, God had already decided who would go to heaven and who would go to hell, okay? That's the idea of double...Okay? Through simple, hard work, okay? And so how do you know if you are working hard? How do you know that your life is simple enough? Well, because you're accumulating money. Does that make sense? Money now is actuall... Money now is actually useful because wealth is no longer mere display. It becomes a testament to faith. This is the radical change: before, status meant being seen and approved by the community. Now wealth becomes the measure of inner spiritual standing.

The middle class is born from anxiety, uncertainty, and competition. Source trail 25:0526:1127:06 And this will mark a radical change in how art is created, okay? And also, because of this, you have a new idea called materialism. So the accumulation of goods. If you don't spend your money on the community, if you do...in history the Dutch Republic is at war of Spain Spain again is the most powerful Empire in the world you don't know you'll survive you don't know if the Dutch Republic will survive against Spain and it probably will no... Anxiety comes from not knowing whether one is faithful. Uncertainty comes from war and precarious trade. Competition comes from trying to prove oneself better than other wealthy people. Out of those pressures come money-making, materialism, the art market, and eventually literature.

That is why the lecture suddenly points at China. Source trail 27:06 than your the other members of the middle class well there's gonna be competition okay you have to prove that you are a more simple more faithful individual all right and because of these three factors anxiety uncertain... China did not pass through Dutch Calvinism, but Jiang says the Chinese middle class still lives with Dutch values from 500 years ago: money-making, materialism, and the accumulation of artistic objects. The history is European; the pathology is modern.

The historical review sharpens the contrast. Source trail 28:1329:5030:5131:57 And so that's the history here. Any questions before I go into the evidence and some of the history? Was this clear to you guys? I know I'm going fast, but we have a lot to do in order to finish the semester. Okay, so l...And again, everybody knows that. And what this does is it creates opportunities for piracy, which the English and the Dutch will exploit very heavily. Okay, and these centers of economic exploitation will also need a lo... Spain is not really colonizing the New World in this account. It is extracting gold and silver, creating targets for piracy and demand for enslaved labor. Its wealth gives it Cervantes, great buildings, royal display, and dynastic reach, but it also produces waste and overextension.

The Dutch Republic is different because it is small, tolerant, commercial, and federated. Source trail 35:2036:1537:0938:12 The Dutch are superior sea people, but the British are superior sea people, okay? The British are much more persistent and the British have a much greater population. The British are like the Romans. Remember, the Roman...So everyone had to be Catholic and everyone had to obey the power of the church. And so you may have heard something called the Spanish Inquisition, right? So it was the Spanish who created, what people call the Jesuits... Spain enforces orthodoxy. The Dutch are forced into tolerance, and expelled Jews bring trade networks, financial networks, and intellectual life. Spain extracts and produces inequality. The Dutch focus on mercantile trade and produce a middle class.

The republic is also a coordination problem. Source trail 38:1239:1940:21 you do is focus on exploitation, this will lead to mismanagement and this will lead to a lot of wealth inequality. And that was the issue facing Spain. But if you focus on mercantile trade, then you can create a middle...All right, so another really important thing to remember about the Dutch Republic is that it's a coalition of the Dutch Republic as a federation of different city -states, okay? There's seven different places within the... Seven city-states cannot all compete separately for the East Indies, so the VOC concentrates resources into one monopoly. Canals and land reclamation literally expand the country as trade expands the class. The institutional lesson is blunt: extraction makes inequality; trade makes a middle class.

Art enters because it gives a portal into psychology. Source trail 40:2141:2342:30 most famous philosophers were coming from this region, including, including Erasmus, who is contemporary of Martin Luther, and who was one of the main, considered one of the great philosophers and theologians. He's prim...So, this is the Spanish Golden Age, and a lot of the time, a lot of this money is going into patronizing great art. And as you can see, Spanish art, it's very Catholic. So, if it's Catholic, then it's very allegorical.... Spanish Catholic art is allegorical, Biblical, and devotional. Las Meninas matters because the painting looks back: we are not only observing the painting; we are inside the universe it observes. That looking-back quality will become crucial once the lecture turns to Dutch middle-class art.

The Calvinist household replaces the Catholic church as the sacred interior. Source trail 43:2444:2645:39 So, this is a Catholic mentality, all right? So, let's move on to the Calvinist, Dutch mentality of paintings. All right, so let's do a compare and contrast. This is the Dutch, this is a Dutch painting. This is a Cathol...Why, because the middle class itself is a very fluid, very flexible, very, and, and uncertain group of people, okay? So, their paintings will reflect this anxiety and this uncertainty, all right? So, as you can see, the... In Dutch paintings, the inside is full of light and the outside is dark, mysterious, and uncertain. Still life celebrates the material world because Protestants celebrate the here and now. The sacred has moved into the household.

But the household is not peaceful. Source trail 45:3946:59 They do that through depictions of the, of life in the household, okay? And what will happen is this. At first, the Dutch Republic, it's at war, and it's very poor, because all this money is going into the military. But...So the Dutch see life as a constant struggle between your urges and your faith, between your emotions and reason, okay? And this picture, it depicts that. And so what paintings are doing is it's taking all this internal... The Dutch see life as a struggle between urges and faith, emotions and reason. Painting takes that internal anxiety and projects it outward. The image becomes a visual form of the conflict, a way to stare at the problem and relieve it. That is why a tiny republic can sell five to ten million paintings in a century.

The poor become a talisman. Source trail 47:5949:2450:2351:33 That's the, that gives you a sense of the appetite for the sort of visual depiction. Now, one thing that obsesses the Dutch middle class are the poor, okay? Why? Because the middle class, they are an anxious, uncertain...And hey, if you go to Amsterdam today, it's still popular, right? Amsterdam is sort of famous for the legalization of prostitutes. So at this time, what's happening is you have all these prostitutes, but good middle -cl... Paintings show them as drunk, lazy, sexual, excessive, and unable to resist temptation. The middle class uses these images to define itself against the poor: do not become that. But the images are also seductive. They let the viewer enjoy the life that is forbidden, the life of appetite, without publicly surrendering to it.

The same mechanism explains culture today. Source trail 52:3853:5355:1956:1657:21 They like to enjoy this anxiety between not having something because it's bad for you and wanting it, okay? This is a very famous painting called the Procurus. So remember, within this world, it's very common for middle...So as you can see, these paintings are ones of simplicity, ones of restraint, ones of temperance, ones of prudence, okay? So within these paintings captures a lot of middle class Christian values, all right? This is ano... Art represents the other, transfers forbidden desires into an object, and shields hypocrisy behind refined taste. The artwork is armor, a dress of good values. It displays virtue while allowing desire to circulate underneath.

The final movement belongs to Vermeer. Source trail 1:01:531:02:55 Ivy League will actually hurt and hamper your life chances for success okay but if you think about the pathology of the middle class what it means to be in middle class the fact that they're uncertain and anxious and ge...the depth guys this was painted about 1650 I have no idea how he did this no one has any idea how he did this the lighting is perfect okay it's like he had a camera like like an iPhone and a and he snapped a picture of... Every age produces an artist who subverts the movement, who reveals the pathologies and paradoxes inside it. Vermeer does this to Dutch middle-class life. Jiang's theory of his greatness is almost mystical: the artist dissolves his ego and body until he becomes the painting itself, and the painting becomes the expression of his soul.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is not only beautiful. Source trail 1:04:031:05:13 Girl with the Pearl Ery, right? This is a beautiful painting, but I will show you something else. I will show you some problems or some ironies in this painting. Obviously, this Pearl Ery is a problem because she's an o...But more importantly, it shows you the hypocrisy within middle class life. Because the entire purpose of prostitutes is so that the husband will not do this crap at home, right? Because it's important to maintain the sa... It is a mystery of class and desire. Why does this likely poor young woman have such an expensive earring? Why does she look at us with yearning? The imagination supplies a household, a patron, perhaps a husband and maid, perhaps power and sex. The painting becomes a novel.

The Milkmaid works the same way. Source trail 1:05:131:06:19 But more importantly, it shows you the hypocrisy within middle class life. Because the entire purpose of prostitutes is so that the husband will not do this crap at home, right? Because it's important to maintain the sa...have just made the wall white, but instead he's showing us the cracks, the blemishes within the wall, which is a metaphor for the blemishes and the cracks within middle class bourgeoisie life, all right? Now, when you f... At first it looks like simple Calvinist labor: a hardy, faithful young woman at work. Then the light reveals blemishes in the wall, cracks in the surface, sexual possibility in the scene. The respectable household has a hidden center. The painting is meant to make the middle-class viewer uncomfortable because it shows what the household is supposed to control.

By the end, the middle class is defined by looking without admitting it wants to look. Source trail 1:07:381:08:53 All right, another really famous painting by Vermeer, okay? Interesting is, we are here, right? sneaking in, right? We are looking in. We're spying into the scene. And that's what Vermeer is saying is, that's what the m...It's fundamentally hypocritical. It gets captured in literature later on. First in Madame Bovary, okay? And then most famously, the most famous novel of all time, Anna Karenina, right? That middle class life, it's funda... It fears participation but loves peering into the forbidden. That is why art exists: to hide behind the curtain and watch taboo safely. Later literature inherits this hypocrisy. Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina are not departures from Dutch painting; they continue its problem. Middle-class life demands sanctity and order while trapping people inside taboos and boundaries.

This is the handoff to Britain. Source trail 1:09:55 And this is what's going to drive literature from now on. Okay, that's it. So next class we will do the rise of England. But it's important that we remember that the British Empire, a lot of the ideas of the British Emp... The British Empire will rise next, but its seeds are already here: multinational corporations, capitalism, middle-class life, art, and literature. The empire that rules the modern world begins in a Dutch solution to Spanish failure, and that solution carries its own inner fracture.