–Alexander Hamilton, aide to George Washington and future first Secretary of the US Treasury, in a 1781 letter
You may wonder what Hamilton was trying to get at in the above quote, written in the sixth year of the US Revolutionary War. Let’s look a bit more closely at it.
This is not one of his better-known quotations – outside of college history professors, how many Americans would guess Hamilton had written these words? Even if it is not well known, this quote is important because it captures a noteworthy moment in the development of this key Founding Father’s thought.
And it speaks not only to Americans, or to historians of the Revolutionary War. At this time, it also has something of value for the protestors in Egypt – at least, for those demonstrators who say they want to bring about a change in their country’s internal affairs for the better.
According to scholars John Chester Miller and A. Owen Aldridge, in this 1781 letter, Hamilton demonstrates his understanding that a real victory for the 13 colonies over Britain depended not only on military success (“by gaining battles,” as he put it).
For the armies reporting to George Washington to prematurely seek a decisive test on the battlefield wasn’t statesmanship – it was more like gambling.
Rather, per Hamilton’s observation, the American nation had to realize that true “victory” – that is, attaining the objective of an independent, strong country – consisted of something more than the defeat of the armies of redcoats and Hessian mercenaries sent to North America by King George.
The colonies also had to conquer their own wartime economic difficulties, like inflation – by “introducing order into our finances,” as Hamilton said – and lay the groundwork for a strong future national economy.
Farsighted thinker that he was, Hamilton was trying to focus his contemporaries’ attention on building an America that would be politically and economically independent of the Old World. After independence was achieved, he fleshed this vision out more with his Report on Public Credit and Report on Manufactures.
What’s the relevance of this to Egypt? In Egypt, what we see are many people who spoiling for a fight with the government of President Hosni Mubarak. They have all kinds of ideas on how to “bring [their struggle] to a decisive issue.”
What they don’t have is much of a vision of what will come after.
Mubarak can go, sure, along with all his cronies – but this only addresses the political side of things.
What about the economic question, that Hamilton emphasized? What decisive economic changes will result for the average Egyptian family, if any, under a new government? That’s not an unimportant question, given what we hear about how poor economic prospects for youth are helping fuel the unrest.
What will the protestors do to address that question? What is their plan for “introducing order into [Egypt’s] finances?”
Here’s a Hamiltonian hint for them – how about proposing the enlargement of the Suez Canal, to give Egypt a bigger role in world trade, and shore up the country’s balance sheet by helping it make earn more money from the canal?
As Hamilton might say: “It is not by rioting against their leaders, that the Egyptians are finally to gain their objective. It is by putting themselves in a position to more fully develop their country economically that they shall succeed.”
