The monument to the migrant workers in Utrecht, Netherlands
Montaigne is of the past and Montaigne is of the present. Many of his observations were only relevant for his time, but also many of them are eternal and that makes them also relevant for the day of today. In many cases, they need a modern interpretation, indeed, but does it make them less relevant? And Montaigne himself got his inspiration often from the ancient world of the Romans and the Greeks. Maybe we should read his Essays also in order to put what is happening in the world today into perspective.
Take, for instance, this – sometimes cynical – essay: “Of ill means employed to a good end” (Essays, Book II-23). There Montaigne writes:
“Sometimes a great multitude of families are turned out to clear the country, who seek out new abodes elsewhere and encroach upon others. After this manner our ancient Franks came from the remotest part of Germany to seize upon Gaul, and to drive thence the first inhabitants; so was that infinite deluge of men made up who came into Italy under the conduct of Brennus and others; so the Goths and Vandals, and also the people who now possess Greece, left their native country to go settle elsewhere, where they might have more room; and there are scarce two or three little corners in the world that have not felt the effect of such removals. The Romans by this means erected their colonies; for, perceiving their city to grow immeasurably populous, they eased it of the most unnecessary people, and sent them to inhabit and cultivate the lands conquered by them; sometimes also they purposely maintained wars with some of their enemies, not only to keep their own men in action, for fear lest idleness, the mother of corruption, should bring upon them some worse inconvenience … but also to serve for a blood-letting to their Republic, and a little to evaporate the too vehement heat of their youth, to prune and clear the branches from the stock too luxuriant in wood; and to this end it was that they maintained so long a war with Carthage.”
In this passage we see several problems (and their “solutions”!) that rule also the present world. Should I explain?
- Migration. As Montaigne illustrates here, migration is a matter of all people and it is of all times. It’s is often a matter of “they” who come to encroach upon us but often it is or has been also a matter of we who encroach upon “them”. People migrate for all kinds of reasons, but as we see in the present world, too, most important are economic reasons and fleeing for war and violence or because people are driven from the places where they live. Didn’t originally all human beings come from Africa? And since Montaigne’s time people from Europe settled, for instance, in Southern Africa and in North and South America, and the original populations were driven to the corners of their continents or of the areas where the newcomers had arrived. Today we see people from Africa migrate to Europe, and from South and Middle America to North America, in search of a better life. And should I add that many people are fleeing the Middle East because of the wars and violence there? Migration is in our genes.
- Colonisation. The Romans established colonies elsewhere, as Montaigne remarks. However, they didn’t do that only for getting rid of a surplus of their people, but especially for developing agricultural areas that could supply Rome with grain and other food. That’s what we have seen in modern times, too. Foreign territories were occupied or governed by Europeans not so much in order to house migrants there, but in order to exploit the occupied regions economically. Examples are Indonesia before 1945 by the Dutch, parts of Africa by the British and the French and Siberia by the Russians.
- Sending people abroad, often in order to wage war against “enemies” as a diversion of domestic problems. Foreign “enemies” may be created for that reason. In this respect, Montaigne cynically remarks “and, in truth, a foreign is much more supportable than a civil war”. Creating a fictive enemy without a real war has the same effect. Think of Hitler’s Germany; the policy of confrontation by President Sukarno of Indonesia with Malaysia (1963-1966); the Falklands War started by Argentina (1982); and the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014.
Often problems are mistakenly seen as new problems. When, for example, politicians talk about migration – one of the most important political issues today – they treat it in an ahistorical way, actually in several respects. They treat it as a problem only relevant today, and simply say that it must be stopped. They ignore that migration is something that is in our genes. For this reason alone, it cannot be stopped. They also ignore that we ourselves are the descendants of migrants who once invaded the countries where we live now. And they ignore (not treated in this blog) that migration has something to do with what “we” did “there”. The globe is global. Therefore, to place it in the present world, what happens and has happened in the South is connected with what is happening in and done by the North. The one is not unrelated to the other. Seen this way, migration cannot be stopped but only managed and controlled.
However, in fact, Montaigne’s essay “Of ill means employed to a good end” is a cynical essay, and I have hardly shown that. I have taken it seriously. Too seriously?
