Book Review

BEWARE The British East India Company! Toward an Alliance Between the USA, Russia, China, and India to Finally Defeat the British Empire

By William Wertz

Self-published. Available on Amazon Kindle $9.99; Paperback 361 pages $15.00

In 2007, the late economist and eight-time candidate for U.S. President Lyndon LaRouche proposed the formation of a four-power alliance between the U.S., Russia, India and China to bring into existence a New Bretton Woods credit and economic system as a replacement for the bankrupt British Empire’s monetary system. LaRouche emphasized that the British Empire was not then, and never had been, an empire of the British people. Rather, it was an imperial monetarist empire with its origins in the British East India Company, and a lineage that traced directly back to the tax-farming system of ancient Babylon.

Most, then and now, would find LaRouche’s proposal strange because they lack an understanding of the origin and characteristics of the British Empire and the unique characteristics of its polar opposite: the American system. Nor do they know the history of the common fight of those four powers, both together and individually, against Anglo-Dutch monetarism—nor the influence of the American system on their common history.

William Wertz’s new book provides them with the vital context to understand the beauty and viability of LaRouche’s proposal and the immediate necessity of its implementation.

Wertz is well-situated to write such a book. He was a close personal collaborator of LaRouche for almost 50 years, and his cellmate when both were unjustly incarcerated. Wertz has authored many historical studies, and is deeply knowledgeable of the underlying dynamics of history. He is the primary translator and editor of four volumes of English translations of the works of Friedrich Schiller, and of a single volume of English translations of the works of Nicholas of Cusa.

Understanding the absolute distinction between Anglo-Dutch imperial monetarism and the American system is crucial to understanding the origins and solutions to today’s global problems. In his introduction, Wertz presents a sweeping overview of the philosophical fight and crucial differences between the idea of the sovereign nation-state, rooted in the ideas of human creativity of Cusa and Leibniz, and the Anglo-Dutch imperial system.

It was the former which inspired the principles of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution. This will come as a surprise to readers who have been schooled in the false, but pervasive myth that America arose from a mere dispute about taxes with its British mother, and adopted the “man as animal” philosophy of Aristotle, Locke, Hume and Adam Smith. Wertz makes the unassailable case, as did LaRouche, that this disagreement is at the heart of the current global crisis.

“The fact that the United States of America is currently under the control of the Anglo-Dutch imperial system should not be seen as irreversible,” Wertz writes, “Throughout its history, the U.S. has experienced a number of long periods in which it was taken over by the Anglo-Dutch system, only to revert to its Constitutional American system purpose once again, as was the case under Lincoln during the Civil War, and under Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.

“Such a reversion to the American System of political economy can only take place today, however, if the Anglo-Dutch imperial system is correctly viewed as distinct from the American System of political economy, and all people of good will endeavor to remove this Anglo-Dutch albatross from their collective neck. However, it is only possible to accomplish this reverse paradigm shift, which is the prerequisite for world peace and a just new world economic system, if political leaders and individual human beings rise above the level of sense certainty and rational logic characteristic of man as a mere animal, to the level of creative reason in harmony with the Logos as reflective of man’s true nature.”

Wertz provides the reader with ample material to back up this point. He devotes a full chapter each to the history of the emergence of the sovereign nation-state from Cusa onward, to the development and the species characteristics of the American System, and to the species characteristics of the Anglo-Dutch Empire. His focus here is on the underlying philosophical principles which are often overlooked in most histories.

With that foundation laid, the reader is ready for a detailed exploration of the little-known history of the fight between the Anglo-Dutch Empire and the American System. While some of the major events might be familiar to readers, such as the British Opium Wars against China, or the British East India Company’s takeover of India, much of the detail, and its connection with the American Revolution, will be new to most. Of special interest is the frequent collaboration against the British Empire among the four powers over the past two centuries. For example, Russia’s Czarina Catherine the Great organized the League of Armed Neutrality in support of the American Revolution, and Czar Alexander II deployed Russian naval vessels to New York and San Francisco in support of Lincoln’s Union during our Civil War. Many will be surprised to learn of Czar Paul I’s plans for militarily defeat of the British East India Company in India. Russian troops were on their way when the British organized Paul’s assassination.

The alliance among Russia, China, the U.S. and a reluctant and desperate Britain in World War II is recalled in detail, featuring Franklin Roosevelt’s collaboration with Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek against Winston Churchill’s plan to rebuild the British Empire after the war. As recounted by his son Elliott (in As He Saw It), FDR repeatedly warned Churchill that the U.S. was not fighting the war to preserve the British, or any other Empire. In this respect, Russia and China were better allies of the U.S. than His Majesty’s first minister.

Of particular relevance to LaRouche’s four-power proposal is Wertz’s account of the influence of American system economists in Russia, China and India during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, as well as in Germany and Japan. LaRouche often emphasized that the conflicts that led to World Wars I and II were organized by the British to prevent collaboration among the U.S., Germany, Russia, China and Japan against imperial control over Asia, and for American System economic development in Asia, Africa and America. Wertz gives us the history to fill out this point.  

The four-power alliance that LaRouche proposed has not yet come about. Instead, the British Empire, largely through its influence over Wall Street and the Obama, and now Biden, administrations, steered U.S. policy toward bailing out the collapsed monetarist system by doubling down on free trade. Britain, through its influence on the U.S. foreign policy and intelligence establishment, also intervened to instigate conflict among the four powers. The continuation of the Bush-British wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the confrontation between NATO and Russia in Ukraine, and the rising tensions between the U.S. and China, are among the consequences.

The free-trade and endless war policy created such hardships for the American people that they revolted in 2016 when they elected Donald Trump, who promised to end free trade and endless wars, and to pursue fair-trade deals with every sovereign nation, especially the four powers.

After Trump’s election, there was hope for a four-power agreement, as he pursued such relations with China, Russia, India and other nations. But the British unleashed such massive attacks against him that his efforts were largely thwarted.

Those attacks continue to this day. The strategy was laid out in 2018 in a report from the UK’s House of Lords titled, “UK Policy in a Shifting World Order,” which stated that the Empire could survive one Trump administration, but not a second. The escalating efforts to “Get Trump” that continue to this day, are aimed to prevent a pro-American administration coming to power under Trump, that has the knowledge and power to outflank the Anglo-Dutch monetarist Empire and bring about the alliance that LaRouche proposed. 

The effort to bring about this four-power alliance has been hampered by a lack of understanding—especially among Americans, but also among the populations and policy-makers of other nations—of the true nature of the American system, the British Empire, and the common history of the four nations. But the necessity and the prospects for LaRouche’s four-power alliance today are greater than ever. Wertz’s new book is a valuable contribution to that effort.