Power in the Modern World - Part 2

So the East India Company...

Well basically you have noble families, emporer's and whatnot who have totally controlled the populations of their respective countries for hundreds of years via a combination of military enforcement (control of the armies) and ownership of the land. Since no one owned land apart from the ruling classes, people could be kicked out at any time and also had to donate large portions of anything they produced to the local lords.

These various ruling families were far from segregated from their equivalents across borders and overseas. In fact the vast majority of them had various kinds of familial connections between them either by blood or marriage.

Once the French Revolution took place though it became clear that they were vulnerable. It was not like the modern day where the vast majority of powerful weapons are owned by and restricted to the government of a country and it's forces. Hundreds of years ago, anyone could pick up a knife, pickaxe or farm tool and with the help of a few thousand of their neighbours, have a fair chance of overthrowing the local lord. The French Revolution saw this take place, but on the level of hundreds of thousands and this time not in support of some new king, but rather a kind of power which was intended to be shared by all the people.

What to do in the face of this?

Well I believe the various people in power studied the ways of the world and looked around to see what methods could replace armies and brute force to maintain control of the people. Religion was probably the most successful way of the past, but now was running a bit thin, especially since many people now had direct access to religious books and teachings in a language they could understand (previously all bibles were written in Latin or Greek), so could interpret the scriptures as they saw fit, rather than having to follow the words of others. Education and philosophy were also starting more and more to come into the hands of ordinary people. So that left only money...

Economic forces had always been a powerful influence in the world and money had been the cause of many wars and topling of important figures. However, money had always been a force of the rich and the noble, not particularly a way to control the vast lower level populations. Well not quite true...

You see since 1600 the East India Company had been operating and from a certain period onwards the had essentially been runinng entire countries (most notably India) by economics alone. Nearly all military might required to support the operation was paid for in cash by the East India Company, making it a subsidiary of it's business power, rather than a means to grant it power. This model had survived for over a hundred years by the time of the French Revolution and had been very successful.

It is my belief that at this time the powerful ruling bodies of Europe looked at this system, evaluated it's now long-term success and started restructuring their own governing system from the old ways of "rule by the sword" to the modern way of "rule of the dollar".

Through setting up powerful private banks with massive reserves, creating investment banks and setting up companies to control raw materials and means of production (where before these had been held by the aristocracy), they gradually transferred their interests to what massively powerful independent financial institutions.

It is no coincidence that from Kennedy to Rockefeller, from Morgan Stanly to Merrill Lynch and even to the Federal Reserve Bank, we can trace back the origins of all these major people and economic institutions to some of the oldest powerful families of the Western world, many of whom come almost directly from noble families and those most closely associated with them.

This is where I believe the balance of the old world noble families shifted to, from military might to economic control.

Next time a little about America...