Qn: Was imperialism the most important force in shaping the modern world?

NUS HISTORY SOCIETY JOURNAL

HY2245 Empires, Colonies and Imperialism

Book Review Assignment on:

Anthony Pagden, Peoples and Empires: Europeans and the Rest of the World

Qn: Was imperialism the most important force in shaping the modern world?

Why or why not?

“Conquered, we conquer.” says Plautus the playwright in the time of the Roman Republic. How true indeed, for the history of mankind has been fraught with the constant struggle for survival and existence since time immemorial. At the very basic level, imperialism is essentially the struggle of man for survival. To either dominate or perish; conquer or be conquered. Extrapolating the degree of success in this venture to the furthest end would result in empires and imperialism, where the political and social will of the powerful dominates those who lost the struggle. In his book titled ‘Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present’, Anthony Pagden reflects on this struggle between peoples beginning with the empire of Alexander the Great in 336 B.C. to the end of ‘New Imperialism’ in the middle of the twentieth century A.D.. Inevitably, by covering such a vast expense of time, Pagden’s account of the history of empires was brief but concise, focusing on those of Europe in relation to the world. Nonetheless, he manages succinctly to present imperialism as the most important force in shaping the modern world as we know it today, by illustrating its general impact and influences. Central to this claim is that the imperialism and its legacies would continue to resonate through the ages and have a lasting effect on the world. To quote Pagden, “The modern European world remains the heir to both [Greek and Roman] of the civilizations of the ancient world.”[1] The modern world till the present day would eventually come to inherit the civilizations of the West too.

One such legacy of imperialism that the modern world had come to inherit is nationalism. Pagden devoted the last three chapters of his book to address this social phenomenon that has come to shape and define the world we live in today. The nation-state and the citizen, important concepts that will play a vital role in the modern geo-political arena, can trace its roots back to the wave of ‘New Imperialism’, a general wave of Western expansion running from around 1870 to 1914.[2] Whatever territories left to be colonized in the world were quickly done so. Africa was quickly carved up between imperial powers while the British Raj in India was consolidated. Imperialism had become a conduit for rivalries between nations, especially that of the European Imperial powers. In the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, in the face of adversity, Pagden believed that ‘“the empire” or “our empire” came to denote the personality of the entire French nation’, which stood for the unification of disparate local groups into a single political unit.[3]

With imperial rivalries now fuelled by nationalistic sentiments, the idea of nationalism would eventually spread to colonial institutions and its subjects through education, where it became the ‘vision in some postcolonial world’ which would help to ‘mobilize those who might otherwise be prepared to continue to accept the status quo as merely inevitable.’[4] The notion of building a whole new nation from the artificial social construct of the colony, fallacious as it may sound, was campaigned by ‘nationalists’ and well received by the colonized. Colonies gained their independence from their imperial masters in the name of the ‘nation’ that they believed themselves to be part of. The view that imperialism had fuelled nationalism was not unique to Pagden alone. A good example, taught through the course of this module, would be Algeria. In his book ‘France and Algeria: A History of Decolonization and Transformation’, P.C. Naylor explores the reasons behind the struggle for Algerian identity and independence. Imperialistic policies in the territory caused enormous economical and social dislocation of the Algerians in society, forming a European pyramid community with the Pied Noirs at the top of the hierarchy.[5]

The failure grant equal rights and French citizenship to Algerians, together with the two World Wars catalyzed the growth of nationalism and self-governance, which eventually led to the independence of Algeria from France. The same could be said for almost all former colonies of European imperialism. However, had the French government recognized the Algerians as full and equal citizen, Algeria may have remained a département. Even in independence, the close relationship between former colonies and imperialism holds firm. This is clearly illustrated when Algerians voted for independence not “from France” but “in cooperation with France”. The British Empire, though officially dissolved with the return of the Hong Kong to China in 1997, retains itself in the form of the British Commonwealth. As such, imperialism had indeed left its mark on the modern world literally by shaping not only the political borders of existing countries, but also, though unintentionally, unleashed the powerful force of nationalism upon the world we live in today.

Pagden brilliantly deals with the issue of racism in the modern world[6], a topic that most readings on Imperialism did not cover. Much of the racism experienced by the modern world has its roots in Imperialism. Social Darwinism, a highly recognized and prevalent ideology in Imperial Europe of the enlightenment, heavily influenced the idea of the ‘civilizing’ mission that ‘New Imperialism’ had campaigned in the nineteenth century. That the subject races were backwards compared to European society compelled the Imperialist powers that be to embark on this ‘White Man’s Burden’, as termed by Rudyard Kipling.[7] Without a question, this distinction between ‘white’ and ‘blacks’, Caucasians and Chinese, Jews and Arabs, has its origins from this phase of European Imperialism. To put this subject of racism in a bigger perspective and discussion, much of the conflicts and issues of the modern world today are very much a legacy of racism caused by Imperialism. For example, the terrible civil war between the Hutus and Tutsis in former Belgian Congo is a direct result of the segregation between races, the idea that one was dominant over the other during Belgium’s colonial rule. Pagden has thus illustrated a very important point in how Imperialism had shaped the modern world today.

The demographic and cultural distribution of the modern world is very much a legacy of imperialism. That many of the cultures of the modern world are based on assimilation and hybridization of migratory cultures is clear for all to see. In his introduction, Pagden, drawing from the views of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, suggests that human history ‘began in movement, in restlessness, in the quest for new resources, the search for more hospitable climates, and the insatiable desire for possession.’ Empires, as mentioned in my earlier paragraph, are established with the magnification of this struggle for survival in the process of this movement. Pagden believes that since the Roman Empire, the word ‘empire’ was used to describe government over vast territories.[8] As had the Greeks and Romans conquered and brought a huge diversity of peoples under a single entity of administration, the British and other European empires too ruled over many throughout the globe by the end of the nineteenth century. With imperialism, migration of the ‘subject’ peoples within the empire was made very much easier, as compared to when these territories were independent states under separate governments with strict border controls. Different ethnicities with different cultures, traditions and history suddenly find themselves under the same administration and law, sharing the same rights and owing their allegiance to the same sovereign rulers. Imperialism had broken down traditional borders, physical and social, which had been the dam against the tide of migration, through enhanced communication and transportation networks, transplanting peoples throughout the world with the lure of wealth and riches beyond their dreams. Slavery, which was part and parcel of early Imperialism, also contributed to this demographic and cultural mix. Pagden writes in his chapter on slavery, that ‘the European demand for slaves effectively transformed what had been a local commercial practice into the greatest forced migration in human history.’[9] Millions of slaves were shipped into Europe and the America by the Atlantic Slave trade, giving birth to black communities in these continents in the modern world.

In the book ‘The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico’ Lesley Byrd Simpson talks about how the Spanish had tried to colonize the ‘New World’ that Columbus had discovered in 1492, sending many settlers from Spain, many of whom were ‘the choicest collection of riffraff ever brought together: ex-soldiers, broken noblemen, adventurers, criminals, and convicts.’[10] At the same time, the indigenous Indians of the New World, the Caribs and the Guarani to name a few, were collectivized and simply became ‘native Indians’. Together, this assimilation of previously separate peoples under the Encomienda system fused ethnicities together and created a new ‘race’, that of immigration and assimilation. The same could be the said for the rest of the European empires. The ‘Algerian’, ‘Australian’, ‘Brazilian’ and the ‘Singaporean’, together with their ‘cultures’ are just a few examples of this creation of new identities and races in the modern world. Marc Ferro’s Colonization: A Global History also talks about the creation of a ‘new race of societies’ in America such as the Creole, the Anglo-Indians, the Pieds-noirs and the Arabs, Boers and the Indo-Chinese[11], all of which came into existence as a result of Imperialism. Just as Pagden had believed, ‘probably all cultures of all the races of the world have been the creations of prolonged periods of migration.’[12]

Along with Imperialism, came the spread of ideas and knowledge from the European enlightenment, such as nationalism, universal manhood suffrage as well as liberty, as covered in the earlier paragraphs. But perhaps the one with the most far-reaching influences in the modern has to be the spread of Christianity and the Word. Modern imperialism had been characterized as a mission of salvation, to save the pagans they came to colonize through conversion, thus the rise in missionary activities by Christian orders such as the Jesuits and the Franciscans. The very act of dividing the world between the Portuguese and the Spanish in 1493 via a Papal Bull by the Pope Alexander VI effectively endorsed the sovereignty of Christendom over the entire world. According to Pagden’s book, ancient Emperors of the Roman and Greek Empire claimed divinity to legitimize their rule. Under the Christian rulers and Constantine’s conversion, Pagden states that Christianity had effectively become the empire’s most valuable ally.[13] By ‘perpetuating’ the Roman Empire through the Holy Roman Empire and her Emperors, it established Christianity as the dominant faith beginning in Europe, and thus ‘accompanied the expanding European Empires until their final demise in the middle of the twentieth century.’[14] This serves to explain why Brazil and the Philippines as well as many former colonies of empires are pre-dominantly Catholic, and also the emergence of Christianity as a global religion in the modern world, to be rivaled only by the traditional enemy, Islam.

According to Pagden, Imperialism drives the expansion of its empires, cumulating to the establishment of a New World Order in the modern world, as had the ancient Roman and Greek Empire had done. He had rightly believed that the ‘elision of knowledge and understanding of power, of merging science and exploration with domination and settlement’[15] would bring the rise of the West in the world. Indeed, P.E. Russell writes in the book aptly titled ‘The European Opportunity’, attribute the domination of Western Powers over the world to the technological breakthroughs and advancements, beginning with Prince Henry the Navigator[16], who sponsored much navigation down the coast of Africa, battling against superstitions which will result in the discovery of the New World in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. As covered in the lectures, the improvements in maritime technology such as the incorporation of Arab lateen sails and invention of cartographical and navigational instruments such as the Astrolabe and Sextant, and the most important of all, gunpowder, allowed the expansion of European empires which brings forth the establishment of a new world order under the West. Just as the Romans established its own world order, the ‘Pax Romana’ in the Mediterranean,[17] the Portuguese and Spanish, and later the Dutch and British, collectively as ‘The West’ would colonize the world and establish its own form of World order, termed the Modern World System by Immanuel Wallerstein[18], where the colonies functioned as a peripheral state to provide natural resources and labor to the political and economical core states. Post independence, these ex-colonies would retain the form of governance and institutions left by the Imperial Powers, with the hegemony of the world order still retained by the West, now the First World. Without a doubt, imperialism had shaped the world as it is today.

There is a saying in Latin, ‘Respice, adspice, prospice’. Indeed, one must examine the past, present and future of imperialism to assess its influence in shaping the modern world as it is today, and in this Pagden has done well, giving many examples, dating from antiquity to the 19th century. Looking at the lessons of the Greek and Roman Empires, Pagden had concluded that empires by default always “fell prey to the limitlessness of its own ambitions.” Such ambitions drive constant expansionistic policies of the empire’s boundaries and thus the establishment of the world order it created. Essentially Pagden addresses the question by implicitly stating that empires establish world orders, thus bringing many changes to the world in the process. Essentially whatever that will shape the modern world would have to effect change on a mass scale, and to this end imperialism and empires achieved great success. Therefore in conclusion, Pagden has shown that imperialism was the most important force in shaping the modern world, coherent with the broader perspective of Imperialism as a whole.

Endnotes

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[1] Anthony Pagden, Peoples And Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present (New York: Random House Inc, 2001), p. 41.

[2] Anthony Esler, The Human Venture: A Global History Since 1500 Vol. II Fifth Edition (New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2004), p. 566.

[3] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. 132.

[4] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. 158.

[5] P.C. Naylor, France and Algeria: A History of Decolonization and Transformation, p. 7.

[6] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. 131 – 152.

[7] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. 139.

[8] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. xxii.

[9] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. 104.

[10] Lesley Byrd Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 7.

[11] Marc Ferro, Colonization: A Global History (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 104 -162.

[12] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. xix.

[13] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. 62.

[14] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. 63.

[15] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. 126 – 128.

[16] P.E. Russell, “Prince Henry the Navigator”, in The European Opportunity (ed) Felipe Fernández-Armesto, p. 100 – 129.

[17] Pagden, Peoples And Empires, p. 26 – 27.

[18] Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (New York: Academic Press, 1974-), in Esler, The Human Venture, p. 469.

Bibliography

Esler, Anthony. The Human Venture: A Global History Since 1500 Vol. II Fifth Edition. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2004.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto. The European Opportunity.

Ferro, Marc, Colonization: A Global History. London: Routledge, 1997.

Naylor, P.C. France and Algeria: A History of Decolonization and Transformation.

Pagden, Anthony. Peoples And Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present. New York: Random House Inc, 2001.

Simpson, Lesley Byrd. The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press.