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A History Lesson (From Year One) for Trump and the Brexit Crowd: Isolationism Has Never Worked!
The Smart Manager
|March/April 2017
Professor Stephane Garelli on growing isolationism.
From Trump’s wall and immigrant ban, to Britain pulling away from its longtime partners, the tendency toward isolationist policies is on the rise in the west.
We have seen this before but it has never had the intended effect of making any country in question “great again”.
When Chinese admiral Zheng He returned to his country in 1424 after his impressive fleet vessels—of up to 120 meters in length—had navigated the world’s oceans, he was ordered by the new Emperor Hongxi to erase all traces of his expedition. Thus, began a long period of isolationism for China. In 1793, when Sir George McCartney led a British Embassy visit to Chinese Emperor Qianlong, he found a rich court, but a nation in disarray. This period of Chinese history was later described as the ‘Immobile Empire’ in a book by French writer and politician Alain Peyrefitte.
This story is from the March/April 2017 edition of The Smart Manager.
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