Babel by R F Kuang ****

Robin Swift was rescued from a plague in Canton China by Oxford University Professor Lovell. He was tutored in Greek and Latin. Together with English and his native Mandarin, he was accepted into the Translation Institute. There he learned the multilingual magic that drove the silver industrial revolution enabling UK imperialism to dominate the world with technology such as automated cotton and woolen mills and high-speed trains and ships. In exchange for his invaluable language skills, he was supported in a life of luxury. All was well until he understood the cost of UK imperialism on his home.

I read Babel by R F Kuang after a recommendation on the Lingthusiasm podcast - a lively, deep, language-y conversation with real linguists! The book, “about infinite worlds of languages, cultures, and histories,” is set at Oxford University in the 1830s. The heroes are linguists recruited from the British colonies. The antagonists are parliament and capitalists. The immediate conflict is the run up to the Opium Wars. A mixture of linguistics and the evils of imperialism.

Much of the book rants against the rich and powerful. “Truly, the only ones who seemed to profit from the silver industrial revolution were those who were already rich, and the select few others who were cunning or lucky enough to make themselves so.”

Free trade and imperial domination: “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?”

The failure of the French Revolution: “Victoire had grown up in the great contradiction of France, whose citizens in 1789 had issued a declaration of the rights of man but had not abolished slavery and had preserved the right to property including chattel.”

The epilogue refers to the Haitian slave revolt where the enslaved people defeated the European armies. “She also learned that to much of the rest of the world, the Haitian Revolution was not a failed experiment but a beacon of hope. She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers have no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifies them. Good. It should.”

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