In the winter of 1822–3, Hegel gave a series of lectures at the University of Berlin. The subject was the philosophy of history, which for him meant the onward march of spirit, or reason – and for the German seer this ongoing process had one highly specific implication: the absorption by ‘the West’ of the non-Western world, which he thought was thoroughly stagnant. The Muslim East had made no advance since the caliphate, while India and China were ‘static nations’ in which there could never be anything that could be called ‘progress to something else’. The conclusion was obvious: ‘It is the necessary fate of Asiatic Empires to be subjugated to the Europeans; and China will, some day or other, be obliged to have to submit to this fate.’

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