But, no, actually, the double-entry accounting itself isn’t the important piece of the puzzle. It’s a good – great – technical skill, that can serve to make one’s life much better.
Going over and beyond that, though, “Accounting makes it possible for capitalists to evaluate rationally the consequences of their past decisions.”
What other aspects of your life do you have a hard time objectively evaluating?
If a business loses money, and the business kept records, you can put your fingers on why. Sales went down, margins were lower than expected, defect rate was too high, overhead was too high, interest to service debt was too high, seasonality and bad cash flow management meant bankruptcy, whatever. You can figure it out.
Much of life – you can’t, unless you devise for yourself metrics and guidance.
Yeah, as much as I’d have liked to know if Julius Caesar was really hesitating and vacillating before crossing the Rubicon in a despite gamble, or if it had been a long-held conspiratorial plan… I’d have preferred to break bread and olive oil with Luca de Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci even more.
I could imagine them laying some cheese, tomatoes, and olive on bread, digging in and eating, glancing over Leonardo’s latest sketches after their hands, and then Luca speaking up,
“Hey, Leo, you ain’t going to believe this. I was just with talking with the Medici bankers and – hey, keep this to yourself – but get this – they don’t know where their buildings are!”
“Mamma mia, Luca! You should use your math to do something about that.”
“Hey, Leo, that’s not a bad idea…”
Temporal Control #5: The Intersubjective
HOW HAPPY IS WHOM...
29 October 1933 – Ankara, Turkey
The crowd gathers, looking a mix of fierce and modern. Soldiers, industrial workers, government representatives, traders and financiers and businesspeople… it is a day of festive celebration; one decade after the founding of the Republic, its leader Mustafa Kemal stands in front of them.
His speech is plain and simple, but it stirs the soul – not just of a Turk, but of any person who believes in valiance.
Kemal begins,
“The Turkish Nation!
We are in the fifteenth year of the start of our way of liberation. This is the greatest day marking the tenth year of our Republic.
May it be celebrated.
At his moment, as a member of the great Turkish nation, I feel the deepest joy and excitement for having achieved this happy day.
My citizens,
We have accomplished many and great tasks in a short time. The greatest of these is the Turkish Republic, the basis of which is the Turkish valiancy and the great Turkish culture.
We owe this achievement to the cooperative progress of the Turkish nation and its valuable army. However, we can never consider what we have achieved to be sufficient, because we must, and are determined to, accomplish even more and greater tasks. We shall raise our country to the level of the most prosperous and civilised nations of the world. We shall endow our nation with the broadest means and sources of welfare. We shall raise our national culture above the contemporary level of civilisation.
Thus, we should judge the measure of time not according to the lax mentality of past centuries, but in terms of the concepts of speed and movement of our century.
Compared to the past, we shall work harder. We shall perform greater tasks in a shorter time. I have no doubt that we shall succeed in this, because the Turkish nation is of excellent character. The Turkish nation is intelligent, because the Turkish nation is capable of overcoming difficulties of national unity, and because it holds the torch of positive sciences.”
Kemal goes on in this vein for a while, plainly spoken but powerful, until coming to the end of his speech. It later becomes the Turkish national motto, and stood, even in a century of speeches, as one of the most remarkable closing lines of a speech in all of the 20th century.
Kemal finishes –
“Ne mutlu Türküm diyene!”
“How happy is whom who says I am a Turk!”
Tears well up in some eyes, and the crowd roars with approval and in celebration.
***
HOLDING OUT
11 years earlier… Winter 1922-1923 – Lausanne, Switzerland
Kemal’s instructions to the Turkish negotiators had been clear: zero concessions of Turkey’s independence.
Kemal would repeat the principle again and again, never bowing to pressure to keep old Ottoman financial concessions, to allow the stationing of foreign troops or observers along the Turkish straits, or any such thing.
Kemal sets the boundaries as complete independence,
“... [and] by complete independence, we mean of course complete economic, financial, juridical, military, cultural independence and freedom in all matters. Being deprived of independence in any of these is equivalent to the nation and country being deprived of all its independence.”
He had a terrific negotiator in Ismet Pasha at the Lausanne Conference. The Turks were seeking to have their revolutionary republican nation legitimized, but were simultaneously refusing to make any concessions against their independence.
One of the more amusing anecdotes of the conference – and there were many – would come when the British Lord Kurzon would stand to make demands to the assembled Turkish negotiators.
Ismet Pasha was partially deaf, and would turn his hearing aid off when Kurzon would speak. When Kurzon sat down, he would get up, turn his hearing aid back on, and blissfully repeat the Turkish stance – complete independence, and nothing less.
***
THE FIELD BATTLE OF THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
One half-year earlier… 29 August 1922 – Kütahya Province, Turkey
The Turkish guards were polite to the captured Greek General, Nikolaos Trikoupis.
He had been fed and given and given strong coffee, and allowed to keep his full uniform, rank signia, and decorations on.
The Turks brought him to their commander’s tent, Mustafa Kemal’s.
Kemal smiles and hands Trikoupis a captured Greek telegram.
Trikoupis reads and feels shattered.
He’d been promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Army.
The telegram lines to his headquarters had been cut, and he’d found out about this promotion only after being captured.
The Turks would later semi-ironically name that engagement “The Battle of Dumlupınar” – the "Field Battle of the Commander-in-Chief."
The next day, seeing the Greek disintegration at hand, Kemal would give a clear and crisp order of the day –
“Armies, your first goal is the Mediterranean. Forward!”
Three weeks later, the Greeks would completely evacuate; a month later, the armistice was signed.
***
A TOO-LATE ARREST ORDER
3 years earlier… June 1919 – British Occupation of Istanbul
Following the British tradition, Admiral Calthorpe is going over reports and paperwork.
Transferring authority from the broken and defeated Ottoman Empire to the victorious Allies, the British were now installing loyal police and garrisons, detaining potential troublesome elements, and getting down to the business of Imperial governance – they were, of course, the best in the world at it.
Looking through his list of papers, one name stands out to him –
Mustafa Kemal, Inspector General for Disarmament
Calthorpe scratches his head, thinks.
Kemal… Kemal… where is that name from?
Oh, damn.
Gallipoli. He was the commander at Gallipoli.
Calthrope immediately issues an arrest warrant for Kemal.
It is too late – Kemal had anticipated this, and already melted away from his post in Istanbul – with his best officers and aides.
***
MEN, I AM NOT ORDERING YOU TO ATTACK
4 years earlier… 25 April 1915 – Gal
lipoli, Ottoman Empire
The British forces on the verge of breaking through at the Gallipoli invasion.
The Turks are outnumbered, out of ammunition, nearly beaten.
The young Colonel Kemal gives his order to the 57th –
“Men, I don’t order you to fight, I order you to die! By the time we die, other units and commanders will have up to take our place!”
Nearly 100% of the soldiers of the 57th are wounded or killed.
But the Turks hold.
It is their only major victory in the First World War, and the worst defeat of the British Empire since the loss of the American colonies.
***
YOUNG TURKS
Seven years earlier… 3 July 1908 – Resen, Macedonia, Ottoman Empire
Major Ahmed Niyazi, with only 200 soldiers, declares he is in revolution against the Ottoman Sultan.
At first, the whole thing is laughable.
But then… no one in the army goes to clean up this little band.
Niyazi’s little band just… sits there… in Macedonia… unopposed.
Is there not a single division loyal to the Sultan to go arrest these men?
It wouldn’t even be a battle; arresting them would work.
No one does.
Observing the indifference of their fellow soldiers to the Sultan’s command, the rebellion then spreads like wildfire.
20 days later, Sultan Abdul Hamid II signs over much of his authority to the Young Turk military officers.
They would lead the Ottoman Empire into the disaster of the First World War.
***
A NEW TYPE OF PEACE
260 years earlier… 15 May 1648 – Westphalia, Germany
194 states signed on to the treaty to end the wars.
This “Peace of Westphalia” settled many of the disputes and answered many of the questions that had led to and came out of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe.
Most of these are ephemeral, but one aspect of Westphalia laid the groundwork which eventually led to modern nations – the concept of Westphalian sovereignty.
Before Westphalia, natural geographical borders would often be used to mark lines between nations – the Rhine River, or the Rubicon, or the Alps.
Afterwards, lines on a map became (at least on paper) sacred and binding things, where the rulers of those states could set all the laws inside their territory.
The modern nation state would eventually evolve out of this, replacing something like a “power through a radiating sphere of influence under largely personal rule” with a more legible-ized rational-ized state-based system.
One European great power was not a signer of the treaty and thus did not adopt these internal conceptions of a state – the Ottoman Empire.
***
ROXELANA, IMPERIAL CONSORT
115 years earlier… A.D. 1533 – Istanbul, Ottoman Empire
Suleiman I, “Suleiman the Magnificent,” was the type of ruler who wrote and re-wrote tradition.
The Ottoman Empire became the most powerful nation in Europe – and perhaps the world – under his rule. He re-wrote and modernized the law and the military, was personally engaged as an artist and scholar, and oversaw much simultaneous expansion and artful consolidation.
To a man like that, what is law?
He had already broken one critical Ottoman family tradition: he had more than one child with his favorite concubine, Roxelana.
He now broke the 200-year taboo against marrying a concubine.
Roxelana would take her place next to Suleiman as “Hürrem Sultan” – their descendants would take the throne; the monarchs of the Ottoman Empire would now be mixed-blood Eastern European and Oghuz Turk.
***
THE FALL; THE RISE
80 years earlier… 29 May 1453 – Constantinople, Byzantium
The 21-year old Sultan, Mehmed II, was at the gates.
It looked like their forces might break through this morning.
We call it the “Byzantine Empire” today to simplify things, but they still called themselves Romani – Greek-speaking Romans, yes, but nevertheless they saw themselves as the heirs of Augustus.
And after this morning, the Roman Empire would finally be no more.
Mehmed II had earlier offered the Byzantines their lives, if they would surrender.
Emperor Constantine XI, in history’s last moment of that famous Roman ferocious defiance, replies –
“To surrender the city to you is beyond my authority or anyone else's who lives in it, for all of us, after taking the mutual decision, shall die out of free will without sparing our lives.”
As Mehmed’s forces breached the walls and streamed into the city, Constantine XI took off his imperial ornaments, his robes, his purple cloak.
He borrowed a plain soldier’s uniform from one of his guards and dressed himself, unwilling to become a trophy to the conqueror.
And then, he took a plain soldier’s sword, and lead his household guard into a final suicide charge against the conquering invaders.
For three days, the Ottoman forces were allowed to pillage and loot one of the riches cities in the world.
But on the third day, in a gesture that would be imitated by later Sultans, Mehmed II announced that all residents would be under his protection and may keep their profession and religion.
The Ottoman State had become the Ottoman Empire.
***
WESTWARDS
468 years earlier… A.D. 985 – Steppe lands near modern-day Kazakhstan
Chief Seljuk withdrew to his own own camp.
The schism meant they were exiled from the “Oghuz,” the community and alliance of the nine Turkic tribes.
It would be unsafe to linger.
Seljuk calls a war counsel.
He invited ideas: should we stay and hope? Should we pursue diplomacy? Should we leave? If so, what direction?
One advisor, his name lost to time, suggests moving west to the more fertile lands.
There is debate among the advisors – certainly, they might face enemies to the west… but their horse archers were skilled and their people were hardy.
Seljuk makes his decision and nods.
“Yes. We will go west.”
And so – the Seljuk Turks went west.
***
TEMPORAL CONTROL #5: THE INTERSUBJECTIVE
After the defeat and occupation of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, Mustafa Kemal faced almost impossible odds.
The Turkish War of Independence meant leading an under-equipped, under-modernized, already devastated internal force against well-funded victorious occupiers.
The diplomacy in the aftermath of the First World War was also terrifically difficult – ensuring the British or French didn’t get a toe-hold in modern Turkey and that the nation could develop on its own lines took incredibly deft negotiation.
And then, building the actual country domestically also had the deck stacked against him. Turkey’s institutions were many centuries old, and many of them were corrupt and defective. The Ottoman Empire had people of many different bloodlines, heritages, and languages who didn’t form into a cohesive whole.
The old ruling family, the Sultanate, had conceived of themselves as of the House of Osman and emphatically not as part of the general population.
These are the challenges that Mustafa Kemal had to navigate in building Turkey into a modern nation.
How did he do it?
He had a natural genius for organization, administration, open-mindedness, spotting talented people, seeing trends, efficiency, and bold strokes of action – but this, alone, was not enough.
All of this was necessary, yes, but one thing more – he managed the intersubjective better than just about anyone in history.
***
THE WORD INTERSUBJECTIVE
My writings on history tend to be rather long and detailed. In this chapter, I wanted to set up the core backstory of the Turkish Republic – some of the rel
evant details across some 1,200 years of history.
My two hopes are that (1) the reading is interesting and pleasurable and enjoyable for you, but also that (2) you get some immensely practical gains from it.
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