History 122 at Northern used to be, not Western Civilization, but
World Civilization. I number of years ago, the "common course
numbering" project forced us to change our course title. But this
didn't really mean much overall change to the course. Even when the
course was "world civilization, I focused mostly on a relative small
part of the world. Most of the course dealt in one way or another
with European history.
This was not just a Marmorstein idosyncrisy. Most recent world civilization courses focus more on Europe than on any other part of the world--and with good reason. During the last 400 years the world has been increasingly moving toward one great world civilization, a civilization that does include contributions from many different societies. But by far the most important factors in this emerging world civilization had their birth-place in Europe, and, for better or for worse, Europeans and European civilization have dominated modern world.
You can see the dominance of European's on every continent.
THE AMERICAS
The Americas are a pretty good example of European ability to
dominate. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, European
powers carved up America for themselves. They brought with
them their languages: English, French, Spanish, and Portugese.
Since language is the prime carrier of culture, the dominance of
European languages meant the introduction of all sorts of European
cultural characteristics as well.
Europeans brought with them their religion. Christiainity,
was, of course, born in the Middle East, but it was European varieties
of Christianity that spread most in the New World--Roman Catholicism,
and the various Protestant sects arising in the various European
countries during the Reformation.
The political institutions established in the New World likewise
were based mostly on European rather than native models. New
World governmental systems are based on the ideas of Locke or
Rousseau or (eventually in some instances) figures like on Karl
Marx.
Europeans brought their technology, their agricultural methods, even
their fashions to America And, most of all, they brought
themselves: the great majority of today's New World inhabitants
have at least some European ancestry.
AFRICA
In Africa too, European influence has been dominant in the modern
period.
It was not always that way. Europeans had little contact with
Sub-Saharan Africa little before 1600. But after 1600, contact
between Europeans and Africans increased at a dramatic pace. Both
Europeans and Africans were both eager for trade. Europe had much
that Africans wanted. European manufactured goods were
particularly attractive--especially European firearms. But what
did Africans have to offer in exchange? Plenty!
Africans had gold to offer, ivory to offer, diamonds to offer--and
something even more valuable than gold, ivory or diamonds! They
had people to offer, people to sell as slaves.
Now the slave trade not new in Africa. Africans had sold other
Africans into slavery for centuries. But increased trade
with Europe meant a dramatic increase in the slave trade: ultimately,
ten million people sold into slavery.
European contact also increased the instability of Africa, and the
introduction of European-style weapons made the conflicts in Africa
worse than they had been earlier. And as conflict increased, it
become increasingly diffiicult for the Europeans to do business in
Africa. So what did they do? In the late19th century, the
obvious solution was simply to take over the continent
themselves. Eventually (by around 1914), almost all of Africa had
been taken over by one European power or another.
As Europeans took over politically, they brought with them their
languages, their religious beliefs, their litertature, their
technology: all sorts of things. Eventually, in the last half of the
20th century, the African nations gained their independence. But
European influence remain. European languages are still often the
official languages of many African countries. On the religious front,
Christianity battles it out with Islam. In any case, the ability of
Europeans to annex an entire continent (even if only for a relatively
brief time) is a good example of European ability to dominate in the
modern world.
[You might find interesting the
Wikipedia article on the Scramble for
Africa.]
AUSTRALIA
Australia, too, is an example of European influence. Here, we
have a whole continent taken over as a colony of one European power,
Britain. The British Captain Cook claimed the continent for
Britain in 1780. Today, the native population a small minority,
and English-speakers (if you can call Aussie
English, mate) dominate the continent.
[The Australian Culture and Recreation portal has some great Australia information, including stories on the colonization of Australia. See the Australian Stories Index. You might like, for instance some of the stories about convict women, women like Esther Abrahams who went from being a convict to the governor's wife!]
ANTARCTICA
What's left? Antarctic? Well, that's dominated by penguins and ice. But in so far as people go, it's again Europeans that have explored the region and claimed it for their own.
ASIA
And then there's one more continent: the largest of all, Asia--and
here too Europeans
have had a sizeable impact. And, in many ways, it's surprising
that they did have that impact. I'll give two examples, India and
China.
India
European dominance in places like Australia, Africa and the Americas
not so surprising. European dominance of India, however, is
another
matter. In the days prior to European involvement, India had
developed
an impressive, attractive, and exceedingly stable civilization of its
own,
a civilization that would seem unlikely to change.
And, for a long time, Europeans had very little contact with India
and very little influence on India. But that began to change
around 1600. About that time, contact with Europeans began to
increase dramatically, and, once again, the primary reason was trade.
England, for instance, began to get involved in Indian affairs clear back in the time of Queen Elizabeth. She chartered the EAST INDIA COMPANY, making them the only British company with the right to trade in India.
This trade was quite lucrative: but there was a potential
problem. India
was somewhat unstable. There was a great potential for conflict
between the ruling Moslem ruling minority and the majority Hindu
population. Because of the frequent
violence, the British government sent forces to protect the EIC trading
outposts.
In the Bengal region, the man in charge was Robert Clive. He had
at his disposal 800 English soldier and 2,000 native mercenaries.
Friction with the Bengal government eventually led to war. The
Bengal army was probably 50,000 strong. Yet Clive and his forces
won! This essentially left the British East India Co. in charge
of the Bengal province. But this wasn't the end of it!
Another British
East India unit under Charles Napier took over in the Sind and
Punjab--and
soon all India was under the control--not of Great Britain--but of one
British company, the East India Co.
Naturally enough, EIC officials used thier position to make money, and there was considerable corruption. Clive (on trial) when asked about his excesses said that he was "astonished at his moderation". Napier admitted he and the others had been rascals, but he talked about "A very advantageous useful, humane, piece of rascality."
But this humane rascality aroused considerable opposition within
India itself. There was a great rebellion in 1857 (the Sepoy
rebellion). The Sepoys were Moslem mercenaries employed by the
British, but, resentful of their treatment, they launched a rebellion:
and more than a rebellion. The committed horrible attrocities
against the wives and children of Europeans--perhaps a kind of
terrorism here designed to make the British leave. It didn't
work. The British came back, exacted their revenge (sometimes
carelessly harming the innocent). Then the British
government took control of India directly: Queen Victoria took a new
title: empress of India.
Once in control, the British began making all sorts of changes in
India. They felt they had a duty to do so. In fact,
Europeans in general during this period felt what is sometimes called
"The White Man's Burden," the responsibility of Europeans to spread
their superior way of doing things to the rest of the world.
Rudyard Kipling expressed the idea of the "White Man's Burden" in
his poem of that name [Note: it's
hard to read the tone here. Kipling captures the idea well, but
it's not clear to what extent he is expressing his own sentiments and
to what extent he is critical]:
The White Man's Buren (Rudyard Kipling, 1899)
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought
wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Today's students are so indoctrinated with
multicultaralism and cultural relativism, that it is hard for us to
understand people so convinced of their duty to impose their superior
culture on others. But a glance at India shows why the British in
India felt they had such a burden.
First of all, the British felt a responsibility
to change the religious beliefs and practices of the people of
India, to win them away from Hinduism. Now the Hindu tradition
produced some impressive things, things I talk about extensively in my
Civ I class. But what the British typically saw of the Hindu
religion seemed to be a preposterous and often horrible supersition.
Hindu polytheism, it's belief in many gods, seemed a thing of the
distant past, a superstition to be done away with. Customs like
temple prostitution likewise seemed to cry out for change, as did the
blood thirsty worship of the goddess Kali. Who in their right
mind wouldn't want the "thugees" (a cult which waylaid, robbed, and
murdered travellers) eliminated?
And then there's the Juggernaut. Wikipedia says this:
During the British colonial era, Christian
missionaries promulgated a fallacy that Hindu
devotees of Krishna were lunatic fanatics who threw themselves under
the wheels of these chariots in order to attain salvation.
But was it really a fallacy? If not, yet another reason for
change.
Marriages in India were arranged by one's parents, often when was was very young. Arranged marriage? Not so good, said Europeans--something they had themselves left behind. Futher, while Europeans were moving toward greater equality for women, India proved a society where women were anything but equal. The Hindu Code of Manu says, "A husband must be constantly worshipped as a God by a faithful wife. Day and Night women must be kept in dependence by the males of their families."
Women in India are expected to be faithful to their husbands--even
after husband is dead. In some cases, a widow simply goes into
permanent mourning. In others, she is under pressure to become
"sati," pure. When here husband's body is burned, a woman proves
her fidelity by joining him on the funeral pyre--burned alive.
And if she does not to so voluntarily, well, she will have brothers or
uncles who will help her prove her purity. Both the practice of
burning widows and the widow herself are called "sati."
Sati may have been (as many today claim) relatively rare, but it
existed in India, and still goes on from time to time. Again, a
reason for change.
Another feature of Indian society the British found objectionable
was infanticide. Unwanted babies, particularly girl babies, were simply
killed.
In our own society, we regard killing of babies as the most horrible of
crimes (or at least we did until 1973). But Indian society does
did not. Why? Largely because of belief in karma and
reincarnation.
Hinduism teaches that this life not all there is--you come back
in another form, according to your Karma. If you are good, you'll
come back as something better--a member of the Kshatriya
or Brahman castes perhaps. If you do evil you come back as
something worse, perhaps as a woman or--or if you're particularly bad,
a history professor.
The result of this is that Hindus have a very different attitudes to
all sorts of things than that which prevails in the West, and
particularly a different attitude toward suffering: In the West,
one feels an obligation to help those suffering. In
India, one may not be so quick to help--because you know why they are
suffering. No
point in interfering with karma!
And that's probably why the British felt they had to step in.
Poverty, disease, and suffering were so wide spread in India, and the
Indian people themselves didn't seem to want to do anything about it.
Well, the British did make changes.
1. The created a fine civil service, often recruiting local
talent to manage better governmental affairs in India.
2. They suppressed the Thugees, Sati, and infanticide and tried
to spread Christianity (usually not very successfully).
3. They built roads and railroad, doing everything they could to
improve transportation and communication.
4. They established fine schools and provided better medical care
then ever before accessible.
But despite the fact that much of what they did seemed good, the
British were resented! India wanted independence--and some of
those *most* trained in European ways were the most zealous for
independence. Why? They were taught and accepted European
ideas on the importance of nationalism and democracy. It's
Important to note that leaders of
modern India are almost always European in education and outlook (e.g.,
Gandhi who was an Oxford educated lawyer!).
India finally won its independence in 1947. But even in
independence, European influence is still extensive. India today
has a parliamentary
govt. like Britain. The main languages of India? Hindi--and
English!
So even in this huge country, a place where one might think there would
be little European influence, one can see the dominance, or at least
the
importance, of Europeans and European ideas.
China
And then there's China.
Like India, China had an ancient civilization, a civilization of
which the Chinese could just be proud. For much of human history,
China was one of the most, if not the most, advanced civilizations of
the face of the earth. The Chinese invented silk, paper,
printing, gunpoweder, china--even spaghetti! One would
hardly think that this very impressive civilization would change in a
major way because of the Europeans--and, for a long time, there was
very little European influence on China.
China did not have much incentive for trade with the Europeans--and,
for a long time, the deliberately kept European influence out.
The Chinese called the Europeans "ocean devils"--because they came over
the ocean, and because they behaved like devils. Not
surprisingly, the Chinese government allowed the Eruopeans access to a
single Chinese port--Canton--trying to keep European influence to a
minimum.
But these Ocean Devils were clever devils. They wanted to
trade with China. They wanted access to Chinese tea, porceline,
silk, etc. But what could they offer in exchange? Well,
they found something. Something the Chinese would want more
of. And more of. And more of. They started importing
Opium. The British East India Company in particularly began
bringing large amounts of Opium into China.
The Chinese government, naturally enough, tried to stop them,
seizing and destroying opium at Canton. The British decided to
force the Chinese to allow the sale of Opium and went to war--the first
Opium War (1839-1842). The British win (an indication once again
of European strength), and force the Chines to cede to them the port of
Hong Kong. They force them to allow opium imports--and to pay for
the opium they had earlier seized and destroyed.
Worse, the Opium War made clear to other countries the weakness of
China--and soon, they, too, were pushing the Chinese around.
Eventually, they divided China up into "spheres of
influence." Russia, Britain, France, German--and
Japan--each had a sphere where they took control. Within each
sphere, the Chinese ceded control of trade and some aspects of the
judicial system. Court cases involving Europeans were in the
jurisdiction of European courts, not Chinese courts. Further, the
Chinese had to put up with things like being excluded from places
within their own country! The old story was that one park
had a sign: no dogs or Chinese. A good story, and one I told for
years--but it's apparently wrong. There were restrictions.
The park was reserved for foreigners and dogs weren't allowed, but it
wasn't the one sentence thing we'd heard about for years equating the
Chinese with dogs. Oh, well.
Here' Bruce Lee and
the "No Dogs or Chinese" sign.
In China, as elsewhere, the Europeans felt that the "White Man's
Burden" obligated them to help make changes--sometimes with good
reason. The Manchu government was corrupt and often
ineffective. Customs like child marriage, footbinding, and the
widespread practice of infanticide all seemed to call out for
change. And the Europeans did make changes. Christian
missionaries introduced their faith to China, while at the same time
setting up schools, schools which exposed many of the Chinese to
European ideas on all sorts of things. And European ideas did
spread--not always in the fashion Europeans might have wished!
In 1851, for instance, a man named Hong Xiuquan (Hung in many
texts), started what is called the Taiping rebellion. Hong embraced
many of the missionairies ideas--and went beyond them in his
enthusiasm. Hong believed that he was the "younger brother of
Jesus," called by God to establish the Great Peace (Taiping)--the
millenial kingdom. And Hong soon won hundreds of thousands of
devoted followers. The Taipings were able to take control of much
of China (1851-1864), and, in the areas they got control, they made all
sorts of changes.
They eliminated footbinding, witchcraft, and the use of alcohol,
tobacco, and opium. They destroyed temples of the old gods.
Women among the Taipings had higher status than elsewhere in China,
often assuming positions of authority.
Eventually, the Taiping Rebellion was put down by the Manchus--with
the help of the Europeans. But ultimately the rebellion cost
perhaps 20 million lives--some experts say 50 million or even
more! It's not easy to deal with radical change!
Some Chinese wanted to rid themselves of all European influence, and
this led to the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. But China was only able
to throw off European control by, in some ways, adopting European ideas
and making them their own.
Typical is Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. Sun-Yat-Sen was a Christian
convert who went on to receive western-style medical training.
Eventually, using the slogan "Nationalism, Democracy, Livelihood" he
created a movement strong enough to create for China a government based
on European notions of what a government should be like--the Chinese
Republic. After Sun Yet-Sen's death, leadership of the Republic
fell to his also-westward-looking brother-in-low, Chiang Kai
Shek.
Ultimately, however, it was not democratic ideas that dominated
China, but a different set of European ideas, the ideas of the German
writer Karl Marx. The leader of the Communist movement in China
was Mao Tse-Tung. Mao managed to take over China in 1949, and he
set about to remake the country along Marxist lines.
In 1949, Mao launched the "Great Leap Forward," an attempt to change
the Chinese economy. This involved the construction of everything
from roads to hydro-electric dams. It also involved the
collectivization of agriculture. The result? Too much
change, too quickly--and probably 25,000,000 dead.
Mao worked to transform China in other ways--not just the
economy. From 1966-1969 he backed the "Cultural Revolution," a
movement aimed at getting rid of the "four olds," old ideology,
old thought, old habits, old customs. Millions of young people
joined the Red Guard--and dedicated themselves to wanton destruction of
anything even vaguely associated with old Chinese trations. More
than 1,000,000 leaders (incuding especially teachers) were jailed,
beaten, and (usually) killed.
Obviously, a tremendously costly transformation!
But, in the end, China emerged an extraordinarily powerful
nation--no longer a nation that can be pushed around by others.
In fact, it is very likely China that will be doing the pushing in very
short order. In his "Werner von Braun" song, Tom Lehrer has the former
Nazi singing, "In German and English I know how to count down--and I'm
learning Chinese," says Werner von Braun. Well, some of us,
perhaps might think about learning Chinese as well--for all sorts of
different reasons. The Chinese are a very formidible player in
world affairs, and they may become more formidable yet. The era
of European dominance is probably over: but the next stage of human
history is likely to be the story of how two European influenced
societies (China and America) work things about between themselves--or
how they don't work them out.