Aquinas on globalism/trade, and immigration/nationalism

[Wutang]

Aquinas contra globalism

In Book Two, Chapter 3 of his little work De Regno (or On Kingship ), Thomas Aquinas addresses matters of trade and its effect on the mate...

edwardfeser.blogspot.com

On the necessity of a moderate but not excessive amount trade/business:

There are two ways in which an abundance of foodstuffs can be supplied to a city. The first we have already mentioned, where the soil is so fertile that it amply provides for all the necessities of human life. The second is by trade, through which the necessaries of life are brought to the town in sufficient quantity from different places.

It is quite clear that the first means is better. The more dignified a thing is, the more self-sufficient it is, since whatever needs another’s help is by that fact proven to be deficient. Now the city which is supplied by the surrounding country with all its vital needs is more self-sufficient than another which must obtain those supplies by trade. A city therefore which has an abundance of food from its own territory is more dignified than one which is provisioned through trade.

It seems that self-sufficiency is also safer, for the import of supplies and the access of merchants can easily be prevented whether owing to wars or to the many hazards of the sea, and thus the city may be overcome through lack of food.

Sounds pretty close to the sort of economic nationalism that's popular in our part of the web contra globalism. Recall all talk this year about how the pandemic has exposed our medical supply chains' reliance on China

On limiting immigration:

When any foreigners wished to be admitted entirely to their fellowship… a certain order was observed. For they were not at once admitted to citizenship: just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations, as the Philosopher says (Polit. iii, 1). The reason for this was that if foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of a nation as soon as they settled down in its midst, many dangers might occur, since the foreigners not yet having the common good firmly at heart might attempt something hurtful to the people.

The principle here is that becoming part of a nation is, again, not merely a matter of entering into the population of some geographical territory. It also involves making one’s own the common history, laws, mores, and culture of that nation – joining the extended family, as it were. Until that happens with an incoming population, it cannot, in Aquinas’s view, be sure to have the nation’s “common good firmly at heart.”