Herodotus, India, and More

A Tribute

Ryan Floyd

Dec 20, 2023

Charles Hill took life and ideas seriously and encouraged me to do the same. He taught me in Yale’s freshman program in the classics and later grand strategy between 1999- 2003. In his hands, historians like Thucydides and philosophers like Rousseau and Burke helped us understand our current world and weren’t just old authors. He told stories about the ways great books provided insight into the world from his own experience in China, Vietnam, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. The world of knowledge seemed so grand when I visited him during office hours and gazed at the books on the wall relating to so many different topics, such as Venetian trade, Confucius, and John Milton. He gave support to my dreams that I, too, even as a young man, could have a life that combined thought and action.

Hill liked Herodotus, and so did I. The ancient Greek historian traveled around the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions and described the ways societies organized themselves. On the one hand, he noted that custom was the king of all: Each region’s particular history, culture, and stories helped dictate their paths, and any observer should know these idiosyncrasies to understand a place. On the other hand, the ancient author noted that freedom was a great thing in its own right—that a clever viewer could evaluate a society against an absolute scale. Hill seemed to be weaving these ideas together in his own life. I wanted to do the same.

Charles Hill helped give shape and clarity to my great adventure abroad. In my college dorm room, I decided I would work in India after graduation. I asked a handful of professors for advice. Most responded with confused looks and raised eyebrows because Yale graduates generally went to New York or followed some pre-grad-school route. Charles Hill recognized the allure India held for me: leaving the I-95 corridor, reading old texts along the way, and learning new skills. I planned to use my $300 savings to buy used books for my journey. I wanted Charles Hill's recommendations of those "classics" I had missed while at Yale. He suggested Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and a series of books about Indian history, culture, and tradition. In all, these books took up half the space in my suitcase.

I always enjoyed when Charles Hill began a sentence, "Most people don’t realize that..." As students, we heard it frequently. Following themes from Don Quixote and Plato’s cave, he liked to note that the world often veered off course and an astute observer could see the reality that everyone else missed. Before my Indian journey, Hill recommended that I learn one of the sub-continent's languages. He noted that most people learn languages the wrong way, with material from 45-minute classes that doesn’t get absorbed. (So much for my German and Spanish classes at Yale!) Rather than working with the common language-coaching companies, Hill recommended either evangelical or Mormon churches or local cultural institutes founded by immigrants to the United States who wanted to preserve culture from their home countries. Each wanted to teach people the right way, albeit with different incentives. I liked this unusual advice, and I think it is indicative of the tips students received from Hill over the years. I enrolled in the India School in Bethesda, Maryland, where I took Hindi classes for sixteen hours a week all summer before moving to Mumbai in 2003.

I channeled my inner Charles Hill and Herodotus when I worked for an Indian industrial business in Mumbai. While commuting on the packed, local bus standing up, I read books like Kautilya’s Arthashastra, the Indian work of strategy, without worrying about how strange I may have looked. I haggled for my mangoes and okra in Hindi. I crisscrossed the country by overnight train for my job of selling Indian grapes and pomegranates abroad, and I listened to ghazal and classical Indian ragas and in the evening while cooking dal.

I stayed in touch with Charles Hill after I graduated from college. I would show up to meetings with a yellow notepad and prepared questions like, "What's the best way to learn as an adult?" [Answer: Keep reading widely]; or, "Should I read secondary sources about great books?" [Answer: Sure, go for it.] I appreciate that he took my naive questions seriously and provided advice.

After my time in India, I was fortunate to get a job as my own version of Herodotus. I seek investments in different parts of the world where custom is king on the one hand. And on the other hand, I try to evaluate where a country lies on the absolute scale of governance and legitimacy, just as we discussed in different ways in 2003.

A Tribute to Charles Hill (1936-2021)

This document is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase any securities or investment advisory services. I am the Portfolio Manager of Barca Capital, LLC, but the views I express are my own not necessarily those of my firm.