Chapter 7
The Founding Fathers integrated numerous positive elements of Chinese civilization, ranging from agriculture and architecture to Confucian moral and political philosophy, into the American fabric as they built the foundations of their fledgling nation. As one of the most stableand successful civilizations at the time, China offered social, economic, and cultural precedents that were distinct from the founders’ European heritage. Confucian moral philosophy and the civil service system became especially influential in the development of American democracy.
The Founding Fathers and other prominent Americans leveraged Chinese agricultural and industrial practices to strengthen the nation’s domestic economy. Letters and other records indicate that Franklin had obtained rhubarb seeds, and that Washington and Jefferson had experimented with Chinese flowers on their personal estates. Franklin also introduced soybeans from China into Savannah, Georgia, in 1765. In addition, Franklin expressed great interest in Chinese industrial technologies such as milling, heating, shipbuilding, and papermaking. Franklin and fellow statesman Benjamin Rush promoted silk-making, or sericulture, in North America. Similarly, Jefferson borrowed elements from Chinese designs in his efforts to create a new style of architecture. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris were inspired by literature on the Grand Canal of China. These Chinese technologies would eventually aid in the construction of the Erie Canal and spur the development of New York City.
Furthermore, the Founding Fathers frequently drew from Confucian philosophies in their efforts to construct a new political framework for their young nation. Many prominent colonists, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas Paine, John Bartram, and Jedidiah Morse, demonstrated their respect for Confucian moral philosophy and attempted to incorporate its principles into American culture. For instance, Franklin published excerpts adopted from Morals of Confucius in his widely circulated Pennsylvania Gazette to promote Confucian moral thinking in the colonies, and later cited Confucius as a role model. Jefferson, who himself had drawn comparisons to Confucius, regarded the philosopher’s example of the “Chinese Prince” to be an ideal ruler.
In a similar vein, Thomas Paine listed Confucius with Jesus and the Greek philosophers as the world’s greatest moral teachers in his “Age of Reason, 1791–1792.” In his American Universal Geography, Jedidiah Morse cited The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean, two of the four classic Confucian works. Morse extolled these two classics as “the most excellent precepts of wisdom and virtue, expressed with the greatest eloquence, elegance and precision.” John Bartram, a distinguished colonial botanist, wrote a paper, Life and Character of the Chinese Philosopher Confucius, to introduce Confucius to his readers, describing the philosopher as “a character so truly virtuous.”
The Founding Fathers also looked to China for an alternative set of political frameworks as they sought to distance themselves from European aristocratic traditions. In his 1796, Farewell Address, President Washington advised his fellow citizens that
Europe has a primary set of interests which to us have none or a very remote interest…. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise for us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics…. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course.
Jefferson echoed Washington in expressing “the desirability of Chinese isolation and of the need to place an ocean of fire between us and the old world.”1
Confucian ideals played a particularly important role in the formation of the American political system. Noah Webster, regarded as the father of American scholarship and education, had once remarked that Confucian principles were one of the most influential forces in developing the U.S. Constitution. The Confucian civil service system also offered a political framework in which social advancement was based on ability and scholarship rather than genealogy. One beneficiary of this system was Alexander Hamilton, a foreign-born and illegitimate son who would come to be “something of a symbol of meritocracy, of throwing off European class distinction.”2 Hamilton’ s life offered an “extraordinary objective lesson in social mobility.”3
The borrowing of positive elements from Chinese civilization helped create a pattern of integrating elements from other cultures into American culture. Today, as has been the case over the last several centuries, America is an ethnic melting pot in which citizens of all backgrounds consume intellectual concepts and technological products with various cultural roots. Americans have since embraced many Chinese cultural elements, such as the meritocratic way as the main means of selecting public employees. This cross-cultural pollination began, in large part, with the Founding Fathers in the formative days of the new nation.
NOTES
1. Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 246.
2. Cokie Roberts, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 190.
3. Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin, 2004), 345.