| |
THE
ABDUCTION OF MODERNITY
Part 6c: Imperialism
resisted
By Henry C K Liu
Part 1: The race toward barbarism
Part 2: That old time religion
Part 3: Rule of law vs Confucianism
Part 4: Taoism and modernity
Part 5: The Enlightenment and modernity
Part 6a: Imperialism as modernity
Part 6b: Imperialism and fragmentation
Between the epochal Treaty of Berlin
and World War I, the Ottoman state enjoyed a minor
victory against the Greeks in a short 1897-98 war but
suffered additional losses in the 1911-12 Tripolitanian
war with Italy and, more seriously, in the Balkan wars
of 1912-13. In these latter conflicts, the Ottoman
successor states of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia at first
fought against the Ottomans and then among themselves.
In the end, the Ottomans lost the last of their European
possessions except for the coastal plain between Edirne
and the capital city, Istanbul.
In 1879, Otto
von Bismarck formed a military alliance with
Austria-Hungary, to which Italy was added in 1882,
giving it the name Triple Alliance. He also finessed a
concurrent alliance with Russia, the enemy of
Austria-Hungary over the Balkans. Britain then found
itself holding the balance in the global game of balance
of power.
After Bismarck's retirement and the
lapse of the German-Russian alliance, France answered
with a Dual Alliance with Russia in 1894. Britain had
formed an alliance with Japan in 1902 against their
common enemy, Russia. A naval race between Britain and
Germany after 1889 woke Britain up from its historical
preoccupation with French threats and pushed Britain
into the fold of the Dual Alliance in the form of an
Entente Cordiale in 1904, in which Britain recognized
French penetration into Morocco in exchange for French
recognition of British occupation of Egypt.
Having been defeated by Japan in 1904, Russia
settled its differences with Britain with a view to
preserve Russian interests in the Far East, and the
Triple Entente was formed with France, Russia and
Britain. In March 1905, Kaiser William II disembarked
from a German warship in Tangier, where he made a
startling speech in support of Morocco's independence
from France, aiming to split France and Britain. Germany
demanded and managed an international conference on
Morocco in 1906 but failed to dislodge international
support for French claim on Morocco.
The second
Morocco Crisis of 1911 arose out of the dispatch of the
German gunboat Panther to Agadir on July 1. The
ostentatious pretext for this gunboat diplomacy was the
request of German firms in Agadir for protection in the
disorderly state of the country. But inasmuch as there
were no German subjects at Agadir and the port was not
open to Europeans, it was clear that the real motive was
a desire to reopen the whole question to prevent a
further French penetration unless France would negotiate
for a final settlement of the problem.
On
October 4, a convention gave France a de facto
protectorate in Morocco; in return, France pledged
itself most explicitly to observe the principle of open
door. On November 2, it was agreed that the German
Empire should receive two prongs of French territory,
which would bring the Cameroons in touch with the Congo
and Ubangi Rivers at Bonga and Mongumba, respectively,
while Germany surrendered the Duck's Beak in the Lake
Chad region. The only difficulty arose over the German
demand that France transfer to the German Empire its
right of preemption to the Belgian Congo, but with the
assistance of Russia, a formula was found by which any
change in the status of the Congo was reserved to the
decision of the powers signatory of the Berlin African
act of 1885. On November 4, 1911, the Morocco and Congo
conventions were signed in Berlin, a letter from the
German foreign secretary to the French ambassador being
annexed in which Germany recognized a French
protectorate in Morocco.
The settlement was a
great triumph for France, secured by the manifestations
of national solidarity at home and the diplomatic
assistance of Great Britain. Many Frenchmen regretted
the cession of French territory, but Morocco was
certainly far more valuable than the Congo, and above
all the Republic had scored a distinct victory over the
mighty German Empire, which had defeated it in 1870-71.
In Germany there was a corresponding discontent, which
manifested itself in bitter criticisms of the imperial
government's diplomacy and in violent outbursts of
hatred for Great Britain, whose intervention spoiled the
German game.
The land Germany received was
valuable chiefly as the entering wedge for further
penetration of the Belgian Congo. Such designs were
substantiated by a conversation between the French
ambassador in Berlin and the German foreign minister in
the spring of 1914, in which the latter declared that
Belgium was not in a position to develop the Congo
adequately and ought "to give it up". The reverses
sustained in this diplomatic bout with France and Great
Britain were a decisive factor in German consideration
of a world war, for it had been brought home to Berlin
that diplomatically the Triple Entente of France, Russia
and Britain was stronger than the Triple Alliance of
Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Italy, a condition that
only war could correct.
The German Drang nach
Osten (drive to the east) policy spurred the
Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908.
The assassination of the grand duke of Austria, the heir
to the Hapsburgs, in Sarajevo, the capital of Austrian
Bosnia, precipitated World War I. The balance-of-power
doctrine, maintained through alliances, that had
stabilized Europe through imperialistic conquests
outside of Europe had led to a power vacuum from the
collapse of the Ottoman Dominion that threw European
powers into a global conflict in trying to fill it. The
pressure from Russia and Britain and France limited the
Ottoman option and caused it to join the Central Powers
in World War I.
The Drang nach Osten
policy also manifested itself in the financing of
the Baghdad Railroad. One of the most important
strategic resources fought over in the Great War was the
Near Eastern Railroad. Under the German-Turkish
alliance, it was called the Berlin-Baghdad Railroad.
Later, when the railroad came under French control, the
slogans were "Bordeaux to Baghdad" and "Calais to
Cairo". Great Britain favored "London to Baghdad".
The route followed by the Near Eastern Railroad
had been of great strategic importance for centuries, in
part because it allowed access to the raw-material
resources of the region. The Near Eastern Railroad,
along with the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Suez
Canal, were intended as modern versions of the great
trade routes of the Middle Ages. The old caravan routes
that had linked East and Near East were now extended
directly into Western Europe by rail and to the
Mediterranean Sea by canal. Westerners took great
advantages of their new access to the Near East via the
railroad during and after World War I. Allied troops
were sent into the region in great numbers. Missionaries
expanded their numbers and their projects. Americans in
particular were able to exploit this new opportunity
because their country had not suffered the devastations
of the Great War and their wealth had increased greatly
because of it.
The outbreak of war in 1914
between two grand coalitions - Britain, France and
Russia against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy -
doomed the Ottoman Dominion. Majority sentiment among
the Ottoman elite probably favored a British alliance,
but that was not an available option. Britain already
had gained Cyprus and Egypt; thus the road to India was
well guarded. In any event, Britain and France were not
able to reconcile a potential Ottoman ally's claims for
territorial integrity with their Russian ally's demands
for Ottoman lands, especially the waterways connecting
the Black and Aegean seas. Ottoman statesmen well
understood that neutrality was not a possibility since
it would have made partition by the winning coalition
inevitable. And so, yielding to the historical
anti-British, anti-French and anti-Russian sentiments
among the Young Turk elites who had seized power during
the Balkan wars crisis, the Ottomans entered the war on
what turned out to be the losing side.
During
the multi-front, four-year war, the Ottoman world
endured truly horrendous casualties through battles and
disease, and the massacre of its population by the enemy
military. As the war ended, British and French troops
were in victorious occupation of Anatolian and Arab
provinces, as well as the capital city itself. During
the war, the two European powers had prepared the
Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 to partition the Arab
provinces of the Ottoman Dominion between them. The
Sykes-Picot agreement was a secret understanding
concluded in May 1916, during World War I, between Great
Britain and France, with the assent of Russia, for the
dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.
The
agreement, taking its name from its negotiators, Sir
Mark Sykes of Britain and Georges Picot of France,
spelled out the division of Ottoman Syria, Iraq, Lebanon
and Palestine into various French and
British-administered areas. The agreement conflicted
with pledges already given by the British to the
Hashemite leader Hussein ibn Ali, Sharif of Mecca, who
was persuaded to lead an Arab revolt in the Hejaz
against the Ottoman rulers on the understanding that the
Arabs would eventually receive much of the territory
won. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Paris Peace
Conference and the Cairo Conference were genres of
political dominance of the European imperialist powers,
which shifted borders and annexed territories, inventing
dependency through mandates and protectorates. The
British had persuaded the Arabs to rise up against the
Ottoman rulers. The British high commissioner in Egypt,
Sir Henry McMahon, corresponded with the Sharif of
Mecca, promising an independent Arab state in return for
fighting the Ottomans. Unaware of the secret Sykes-Picot
agreement, the Sharif of Mecca initiated a revolt
against Ottoman rule in 1916 with the help of the
British.
This secret agreement was proof of
British duplicity. The Arabs learned about the agreement
only in 1917, when the new Soviet Union published it.
The agreement deprived the Arabs of the right to rule
their newly-won territories. Most of the Middle East
came under British and French control. The vision of a
free and united Arab realm had been an illusion
perpetrated by Western imperialism. The Sykes-Picot
Agreement set scenes for a century of border conflicts
that continue today. The Paris Peace Conference in 1919
legitimized imperialist partitions. Britain was
entrusted with mandatory powers for Iraq and Palestine,
while Syria and Lebanon came under the French mandate.
Under Article 22, the League of Nations stated:
"Territories inhabited by peoples unable to stand
themselves would be entrusted to advanced nations until
such time as the local population can handle matters."
As the war ended, Britain and France both sent
troops to enforce their claims and peace conferences
subsequently confirmed this wartime division. Palestine
was the exception, becoming part of the British zone and
not, as was originally planned, an international zone.
Britain thus obtained much of present-day Iraq, Israel,
Palestine and Jordan, while France took the Syrian and
Lebanese lands - both remaining in control until after
World War II.
Britain merged the Ottoman
provinces Baghdad, Basra and Mosul into a new state of
Iraq, inhabited by three different groups of people:
Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds. Under British rule, the new
Iraqis were subjected to more taxes than under Ottoman
rule. Nationalist revolt rose against the new British
rulers in 1920.
To crush the Iraqi
national-liberation movement, Winston Churchill, as
secretary of state for war, introduced new military
tactics with massive bombing of villages as the original
"shock and awe" doctrine, revived eight decades later by
the US military. Churchill ordered the use of mustard
gas, stating: "I do not understand the squeamishness
about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using
poison gas against uncivilized tribes." Churchill argued
that the usage of gas was a "scientific expedient" and
it "should not be prevented by the prejudices of those
who do not think clearly". Whole villages were bombed
and gassed. There was wholesale slaughter of civilians.
Men, women and children fleeing from villages were
machine-gunned by low-flying planes. The Royal Air Force
routinely bombed and used poison gas against the Kurd,
Sunni and Shi'ite tribes without discrimination.
In 1911, Italy and France were in competition
over Libya. Fearful that France might attack the Ottoman
Empire and seize Libya, the Italians attacked first.
They defeated the Ottomans and, through a peace treaty,
obtained the Dodacanese Islands and Libya from the
Ottomans. Encouraged by this development, the new states
of Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro attacked the
Ottomans, hoping to gain all of the Ottoman provinces in
the north of Greece, Thrace, and the southern European
coast of the Black Sea. They easily defeated the
Ottomans and drove them back, almost to the very edge of
Europe.
The Second Balkan War erupted just two
years later (1913) when Greece, Serbia and Montenegro
disapproved of the amount of territory that Bulgaria had
annexed. Joined by the Ottomans, these three powers
managed to roll back Bulgarian territorial gains. This
was the last military victory in Ottoman history. It is
a strange note in history that this last defeat and
triumph for the Ottomans would precipitate a situation
that would snowball into World War I. The Ottoman
territories that fell into European hands precipitated a
crisis among European powers that would eventually lead
directly to that great conflict.
As a result of
World War I and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the
Ottomans lost all their territory in Syria, Palestine,
Arabia and Mesopotamia. The European powers fought one
another in Africa and the Middle East by encouraging
revolution among the peoples there. The victorious
Allied Powers - the United States, France and Britain -
parceled out parts of the once-vast Ottoman Empire and
its resources among themselves according to various
treaties. The US received the governorship of the
capital city Istanbul (Constantinople), France received
Syria, and Great Britain got much of Anatolia, ie the
newly-established Republic of Turkey. Correspondingly,
Turkey and its ally during World War I, Germany,
suffered territorial and strategic losses.
In
1922, Ottoman rule officially came to an end when Turkey
was declared a republic. While the Ottomans were
suffering from defeats in Europe, internally they were
faced with revolution by liberal nationalists who wished
to adopt a Western style of government. These
nationalists called themselves the "Young Turks", and in
the early 1920s they began an open revolt against the
Ottoman government. The goal of the revolution was to
modernize and Westernize Turkey, and the primary
theoretician of that change was Mustafa Kemal, who is
known in Turkish history as Ataturk ("Father of the
Turks").
As president of Turkey from 1922-28,
Ataturk introduced a series of legislative reforms that
adopted European legal systems and civil codes and thus
overthrew both the Shariah and the kanun. He
legislated against Arabic script and converted Turkish
writing to the European Roman script. He legislated
against the Arabic call to prayer and eliminated the
caliphate and all the mystical Sufi orders of Islam.
Ataturk was the first to theorize and put into
practice the secularization of the Islamic state and
society. Nothing like it had ever happened in the whole
of Islamic history. Efforts to emulate this
secularization, however, have by and large been
unsuccessful in other Islamic states.
In Arabia
and Anatolia, new states under European protection
emerged from the Ottoman wreckage. After a prolonged
struggle, the Saudi state defeated its many rivals in
the Arabian Peninsula, including the Hashemites of
Mecca, finally forming the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in
1932. As World War I approached its end, Ottoman
resistance forces had formed in various areas,
concentrating in the Anatolian provinces that had
provided the bulk of Ottoman troops. In the ensuing
months and years, as Great Power claims to the Arab
provinces of the empire were implemented, general
strategies of Ottoman resistance against foreign
occupation transmuted into ones for the liberation of
Anatolia only. Fighting and defeating the invading Greek
forces that claimed western and northern Anatolia for
Greece, the resistance leaders gradually redefined their
struggle as a Turkish one, for the liberation of a
Turkish homeland in Anatolia.
The concentration
of significant Ottoman-cum-Turkish forces in Anatolia
meant that any British and French occupation would be
very costly. The emerging Turkish leadership, in
recognition of pragmatic reality for its part, was
willing to negotiate on certain issues vital to Great
Power interests, such as repayment of outstanding
Ottoman debts, the question of the waterways connecting
the Black and Aegean seas, and renunciation of claims to
the former Arab provinces. In the end, the Great Powers
and the Turkish nationalists agreed to terminate the
Ottoman Empire. The sultanate ceased to exist in 1922,
and the Ottoman caliphate ended in 1923.
The end
of Ottomanism left the former Ottoman territories with a
century of endless war and widespread poverty even with
the discovery in the region of the richest resource of
the modern era - oil. The carnage continues today.
The New Imperialism
The Victorian Era
marks the maturing of Western modernity, considered the
height of the industrial revolution in Britain and the
apex of the British Empire, defined as the years from
1837 to 1901. The Victorian period was personified by
Her Majesty Queen Victoria's rule in this period. She
abhorred all modern devices, including the telephone,
which was invented by Alexander Bell in 1876, the year
she became Empress of India. The age was a clash between
the widespread cultivation of an outward appearance of
dignity and restraint and the widespread presence of
deplorable social phenomena, including prostitution,
child labor, and having an economy based to a large
extent on the exploitation of the working classes at
home and the "inferior peoples" of the colonies. Charles
Dickens' modernity contrasted sharply with Rudyard
Kipling's modernity.
The term "New Imperialism"
refers to an era of colonial expansion spanning the late
19th and early 20th centuries, between the
Franco-Prussian War and World War I (1871-1914). The
term "imperialism" was a new word in the mid-19th
century. According to the Oxford English
Dictionary, it was first recorded in 1858 to
describe Pax Britannica. At that time,
imperialism was regarded as a new phenomenon deserving
of a new word to describe it. Moreover, according to the
Oxford English Dictionary, in 19th-century
England "imperialism" was generally used only to
describe British policies. However, soon after the
invention of the term, "imperialism" was used
retroactively in reference to policies of the Roman
Empire to justify the legitimacy of British hegemony.
In the 20th century, the term has been used to
describe the policies of both the Soviet Union
(socialist imperialism) and the US, although
analytically these differed greatly from each other and
from 19th-century imperialism. Furthermore, the term has
been expanded to apply, in general, to any historical
instance of the aggrandizement of a greater power at the
expense of lesser powers. Consequently, historians today
refer to European imperialism after the Franco-Prussian
War as the "New Imperialism". Of late, the term "empire"
has been revived by some, including self-proclaimed
Marxists, in a positive light as a preferred universal
institution to impose global peace and order.
Between 1871 and 1914, there was a renewed drive
for economic and physical expansion among the world's
more powerful nation-states, including those outside
Western Europe, such as Japan and the US. During this
period, Europe added 20 percent of the Earth's land area
(nearly 23 million square kilometers) to its collection
of overseas colonial possessions and almost all of the
world's non-white population. As it had not yet been
formally or informally occupied by the Western powers,
Africa became the primary target, although expansion
also took place in other areas, notably the East Asian
seaboard and Southeast Asian islands, where the US and
Japan laid claim to territory. Contemporary English
writers variously described the New Imperialism as "the
Era of Empire for Empire's Sake", "the Great Adventure",
and "the Scramble for Africa".
The defeat of
Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo in 1815 led to a
continental order decidedly favorable to Britain's
interests, known as the Concert of Europe. Austria was a
barrier to the expansion of unified Italian and German
nation-states until after the Crimean War, forcing other
potential imperial powers to concentrate on continental
concerns rather than overseas trade. Britain, an island
nation with a longstanding tradition of naval and
maritime superiority, however, could afford the luxury
of encouraging commercial ties with overseas markets.
Between the Congress of Vienna (after the defeat
of Napoleon) and the Franco-Prussian War, Britain reaped
the benefits of being the world's sole industrial
nation. If political conditions in a particular overseas
markets were stable enough, Britain could control its
market for industrial goods through free trade alone
without having to resort to formal rule or mercantilism.
Britain was even supplying half the needs in
manufactured goods of such nations as Germany, France,
Belgium and the US. In this sense, the movement toward
aggressive international rivalry, the movement toward
formal empire and imperialist competition, had its roots
in the breakdown of Pax Britannica.
The
decline of Pax Britannica after the
Franco-Prussian War was made possible by changes in the
European and world economies and in the continental
balance of power, the breakdown of the Concert of Europe
and the consequent establishment of nation-states in
Germany and Italy. These developments rendered global
imperialist competition feasible, in spite of Britain's
centuries of long-established naval and maritime
superiority. As unification of Germany by the Prussian
Garrison State went forward, contending capitalist
powers were thus ready to compete with Britain over
stakes in overseas markets. The aggressive chauvinism of
Napoleon III and the relative political stability of
France under the Third Republic also rendered France
more capable of challenging Britain's global
preeminence. Germany, Italy and France were simply no
longer as embroiled in European concerns and domestic
disputes as they had been before the Franco-Prussian
War. The dispute shifted to the non-Western world and
led to World War I, which gravely wounded the British
and put an end to the Prussian state. World War II was
precipitated by the competition between Japan and the US
to fill the vacuum left by the decline of the British
Empire in Asia.
Banks, through the finance of
industry, were able to exert a great deal of control
over the British economy, politics and policy. During
the period of unregulated cutthroat competition of the
mid-Victorian era, as nations saw the advantage of
expansion, private producers also became aware of the
advantages of consolidation, in the forms of larger
corporations, through mergers and alliances of separate
firms, such as mass production, lobbying power, and
efficient union-busting. Size was recognized as a base
for power. To create and operate such industrial cartels
required larger sums than the manufacturer could
ordinarily provide, resulting in a new capitalist stage
of development. Concurrently, the need to break up old
superstates to prevent their revitalization as
formidable competitors took on universal recognition.
By the 1870s, London financial houses had
achieved an unprecedented control of industry,
contributing to an increasing concerns among elite
policymakers regarding British protection of overseas
investments - particularly those in foreign governments'
securities and debt and in foreign-government-backed
development enterprises such as railroads and strategic
canals. The huge expansion of these investments after
about 1860 and with the economic and political
instability of many areas of high investment, calls upon
the government for protection became increasingly
pronounced. After service sector of the economy
(banking, insurance, rail transportation and shipping)
became more prominent at the expense of manufacturing,
the influence of London's financial interest began
rising precipitously. The financial sector had an effect
the decisions taken by Britain's disproportionately
aristocratic bureaucrats and parliamentarians.
Late-Victorian politicians, most of whom were
stockholders, "shared a common culture with the
financial class", observed historian Bernard Porter.
Colonialism became a recognized solution to the need to
expand markets, increase opportunities for investors,
and ensure the supply of raw material. Cecil Rhodes, one
of the great figures of England's colonization of
Africa, recognized the importance of overseas expansion
for maintaining peace at home.
The Panic of 1873
caused a long depression that did not recover until
1896. It had a number of causes and was itself an
important cause of New Imperialism. A major financial
reversal began in Europe from excessive financing on
huge overseas projects that could not generate profits
in time to service the huge debt to provided the high
returns that invested were led to expect.
The
crisis reached the US in the autumn of 1873. The signal
event was the failure of Jay Cooke and Co, the country's
preeminent investment banking concern. The firm had
handled most of the government's Civil War bonds at
great profit and was the principal backer of the
Northern Pacific Railroad by raising US$100 million from
the investing public. The financing of the fantastic
expansion of railroads was analogous to the excess
financing of telecommunication of recent years. The
difference was then the US did not have a central bank
to bail out the failing banks. The Federal Reserve did
not come into existence until 1913.
Cooke's fall
touched off broad repercussions that engulfed the entire
nation. The New York Stock Exchange closed for 10 days.
Credit dried up, foreclosures skyrocketed, banks failed
and factories closed, costing massive unemployment
overnight, without help from any government safety net.
Most of the major railroads failed and transportation
came to a standstill.
The post-Civil War period
was one of frenetic, unregulated growth with the
government playing no role in regulating against abuses.
More than any other single event, the extreme
overbuilding of the nation's railroad system laid the
groundwork of the Panic and a long depression that
followed. In addition to the ruined fortunes of many
Americans, the Panic of 1873 caused bitter antagonism
between workers and the leaders of finance and industry.
This tension would erupt into the labor unrest and
populist protests that marked the following decades.
In Britain, powerful industrial lobbies and
government leaders concluded that profits fell because
too many manufactures and too much capital were chasing
too few consumers in the domestic market. Overseas
markets, whether in colonial areas or in nominally
sovereign, pre-industrial states outside Western Europe,
a greater profit premium awaits surplus British capital.
These leaders also demanded an end to free trade and a
return to mercantilist-style protectionism. The
combination pointed to the need for empire. The
manufacturers and their bankers were eager for new
destinations for exports and pushed the government to
secure captive markets in Africa, the Ottoman Dominion
and Asia.
Among the new conditions, more
markedly evident in Britain, the forerunner of Europe's
industrial states, were the long-term effects of the
severe "Long Depression" of 1873-96, which had followed
15 years of great economic instability. Business after
1873 in practically every industry suffered from lengthy
periods of low and falling profit rates and price
deflation. The continental powers' abandonment of free
trade shrank the European market. Business and
government leaders, such as King Leopold II of Belgium,
concluded that protected overseas colonial markets would
solve the problems of overcapacity, low prices and
over-accumulation of surplus capital caused by shrinking
continental markets.
The economy of France was
as well devastated during the Long Depression. In losing
the Franco-Prussian War, France had been forced to pay
substantial reparation payments to Prussia. The nation
was also torn by civil struggle between socialists and
republicans. The victorious republicans remained very
unstable after taking back Paris in 1871. The French
government ended free trade and began to pursue
colonization as a way to increase its power and aid the
French economy.
British imperialism suddenly
found itself faced with serious competition. The Long
Depression had bred long-standing fears regarding
economic decline and the emergent strength of trade
unionism and socialism in every European nation and
plunged Europe into an era of aggressive national
rivalry. Newly industrializing nation-states such as
Prussia and Austria felt compelled to secure colonies as
a matter of survival. German imperialists argued that
Britain's world-power position gave the British unfair
advantages on international markets, thus limiting
Germany's economic growth and threatening its security.
Many European statesmen and industrialists
wanted to accelerate the process of colonialism,
securing colonies even before their economies needed
them. Their reasoning was that markets might soon become
glutted, and a nation's economic survival depend on its
being able to offload its surplus products elsewhere.
British reactionaries hence concluded that formal policy
for imperialism was necessary for Britain because of the
relative decline of the British share of the world's
export trade and the rise of German, US and French
economic competition. Continental political developments
in the late 19th century also rendered such imperialist
competition feasible. Trade, instead of an exchange of
comparative advantage, because a device of national
security. When the current US president, George W Bush,
declared that trade is an issue of national security, he
was in essence harking back to 19th-century imperialism.
Like the other states of continental Europe,
Russia was working hard to industrialize as rapidly as
possible. While the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 was a
stunning defeat, this embarrassment only cause the
Russian leaders to push harder on their
industrialization drive. British Conservatives in
particular feared that Russia would continue to expand
southward into Ottoman territory and acquire a port on
the Mediterranean or even Constantinople, a long-touted
goal of Russian foreign policy and Orthodoxy.
These fears became especially pronounced after
the 1869 completion of the Suez Canal, prompting the
official rationale behind Benjamin Disraeli's purchase
of the waterway. The close proximity of the czar's
territorially expanding empire in Central Asia to India
also terrified Lord Curzon, thus triggering the British
wars of expansion in Afghanistan. Cecil Rhodes advocated
the prospect of a "Cape to Cairo" empire, which would
link by rail the extrinsically important canal to the
intrinsically mineral-and-diamond-rich south, from a
strategic standpoint. Though hampered by German conquest
of Tanganyika until the end of World War I, Rhodes
lobbied on behalf of such a sprawling East African
empire. Until the Entente Cordiale, the British
leadership was long very concerned that Britain was
extremely vulnerable to a land attack on her colonies
combined with a naval assault by Russia's ally France.
Observing the rise of trade unionism, socialism,
and other protest movements during an era of mass
society in both Europe and later North America, the
elite in particular was able to use imperial jingoism to
coopt the support of the impoverished industrial working
class. Riding the sentiments of the late-19th-century
Romantic Age, imperialism either inculcated the masses
with, or realized their own tendencies toward,
"glorious" neo-aristocratic virtues and helped instill
broad nationalist sentiments. In an age of mass media,
every citizen became deeply patriotic during even minor
wars. A good example of this was the Spanish-American
War of 1898 fought for control of Cuba and the
Philippines as enterprises of "manifest destiny".
Europe's elites also found advantage in
formalizing overseas expansion: mammoth monopolies
wanted imperial protection of overseas investments
against competition and political unrest, bureaucrats
wanted more posts, military officers desired the easy
glory of colonial wars, and the waning landed gentry
wanted formal titles for their untitled siblings. Many
of the common people also clamored for colonies. This
was especially true in Germany, where the leader, Otto
von Bismarck, firmly disliked colonies and saw them as
burdensome and useless. The people of Germany thought
differently and demanded colonial expansion to match
that of the other European states. By the end of
Bismarck's time in office he was forced to concede to
the people and annexed some small islands in the South
Pacific. He was dismissed by the new Kaiser Wilhelm II,
who responded to the people's demands by risking German
security in attempts to gain colonies in Africa.
J A Hobson and later Lenin linked the problem of
shrinking continental markets driving European capital
overseas to an inequitable distribution of wealth in
industrial Europe. Lenin contended that the wages of
workers did not represent enough purchasing power to
absorb the vast amount of capital accumulated during the
Second Industrial Revolution. A fundamental
maldistribution of purchasing power during the great
industrial expansion of the post-World War I era might
have been the Second Great Depression's main
contributing factor.
Hobson concluded that
finance was manipulating events to its own profit, but
often against broader national interests. Second, any
such statistics only obscure the fact that formal
African control of tropical Africa had strategic
implications in an era of feasible inter-capitalist
competition, particularly for Britain, which was under
intense economic and thus political pressure to secure
lucrative markets such as India, China and Latin
America.
After the revolution, feudalism
dissipated in France, with a qualitative change in the
organization of the productive forces brought about by
capitalism. In the communist Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, the state, armed with a socialist vision
based on theory, had to combat a working feudalism
without the benefit of an alternative model besides
capitalism. The productive relations of
industrialization were not at odds with the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Industrialization was carried out
without capitalism. Socialist industrialization worked
in the early decades of the Soviet experience. The
Soviet economic collapse in the 1980s was caused by the
US-induced arms race where under capitalism, profit from
private defense contractors recharged the US economy,
while in the USSR, the arms race merely drained
resources from the socialist economy.
Just as
industrial capitalism had replaced mercantilism and
commercial capitalism in the 18th century, finance
capitalism supplanted industrial capitalism in the late
19th century. A new form of neo-imperialism emerged in
which direct political control becomes less necessary.
Today, what is needed to ensure US control are local
governments friendly to US economic domination through
global finance.
The relationship of Christianity
to the modern world has been very complicated. Often
Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox leaders and their
separate congregations have resisted the modern emphasis
on individualism, rationalism, and democracy. They have
insisted on the authority of traditional structures,
liturgies, and beliefs. The major Protestant groups
emerged in an atmosphere in which "tradition" was blamed
for many abuses in the church. Although in this sense
they opened the way for modern ideas in the church,
Martin Luther, John Calvin and others were socially
conservative. The most radical wings of the major
Protestant groups (eg Huldreich Zwingli's Puritans) were
the most critical of the authority of tradition, of
traditional liturgy, sacramental theology, and
ecclesiastical institutions (eg, bishops). The
relationship of the Puritans to the middle-class
political and social revolutions of the 17th-19th
centuries has been much debated, but that some
relationship existed between them is undeniable.
The virtues and failures of modernity are
beginning to come into focus for social scientists,
philosophers and theologians in a postmodern era.
"Advances" in medicine, science, transportation, and
political relationships are coupled with serious
ecological, social, and religious problems: pollution,
alienation, medical costs and ethics, care for elderly
people, crises of religious belief and overt
paganization of society. What is liberating for one
person or group is a tragedy for another. Within the
Christian Church, democratization of leadership may
constitute an advance over the tyranny of bishops or
elders for some, yet lead to weak leadership and
confusion for others. For four centuries Protestants
perceived their rejection of images, liturgy and
sacraments as a liberation from superstition and
idolatry, yet this rejection of sacrament and liturgy is
perceived by many in the 21st century as having left
spiritual worship devoid of symbols - pale, lifeless and
alienating.
The struggle to modernize has
preoccupied Chinese leaders for more than a century. The
ominous prospect of dismemberment precipitated reform
movements in China by 1898, five decades after the Opium
War of 1841. Limited modernization efforts had been
gathering pace decades earlier, taking shape in the form
of a "Self-Strengthening Movement" in reaction to the
Anglo-French occupation of Peking in 1860. The movement
was inspired by a slogan conceived by scholar Wei Yuan:
"Learn the superior barbarian techniques with which to
repel the Barbarians." The movement concentrated on
military modernization. Most progressive Chinese at that
time felt that China had little to learn from the West.
The Self-Strengthening Movement was proved
ineffective in the defeat by Japan in 1895. Building
momentum after the defeat by France in 1885 and
solidified after the Japanese defeat, Chinese scholars
and officials determined that a thorough institutional
reform was necessary. The brilliant constitutional
monarchist reformer Kang Yu-wei (1858-1927) and his
student Liang Qi-chao (1873-1929) urged reforms along
the lines of the Meiji Restoration of Japan and the
Westernization of Russia by Peter the Great. The aim was
not complete Westernization, but "Chinese learning as
fundamentals, Western learning for practical
application", as described by the scholar-official Zhang
Zi-dong. The failure of Kang's "Hundred Days" Reform of
1898 led to reactionary sponsorship of the xenophobic
Boxer uprising, which ended with an eight-power invasion
of China. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), a Western-trained
medical doctor and a Christian, led a revolutionary
movement to overthrow the last dynastic government in
Chinese history. The revolution succeeded in 1911,
adopting a Western-style republic.
In the 1911
bourgeois revolution, China had a face-lift in
government structure, but the social structure built up
over four millennia continued untouched. The influx of
Western ideas began with the translation of the Bible
and religious tracts in the pre-Opium-War period that
ended in 1841. The unequal treaties that resulted from
the Opium War and subsequent Western military invasions,
opened China to unrestricted Christian missionary
invasion.
Of the 795 titles translated by
Protestant missionaries between 1810 and 1867, 86
percent were on Christianity and only 6 percent were on
the humanities and science. Chinese progressives then
became convinced that a cultural revolution was
necessary to modernize China. Those who had studied in
Japan, Europe, the US and the USSR returned home in the
mid-1910s to promote a New Cultural Movement, and an
intellectual revolution that culminated in the patriotic
May Fourth Student Movement. The spirit of the age was
dominated by a fervent opposition to traditionalism and
Confucianism, and religious superstition, except
Christianity, which was mistakenly viewed as a
"scientific" religion. Most progressives embraced total
Westernization with an embrace of Western science and
democracy within the context of the naive understanding
of these terms. That movement soon split according the
separate foreign experience of the returned students and
activists. Hu Shih, a student of John Dewey's
pragmatism, advocated an evolutionary approach to
modernization, while Chen Du-xiu and Li Da-chao
advocated Marxist class struggles.
The evolution
from agricultural feudalism to capitalism in the
non-Western world had been captured by Western
imperialism for the benefit of the West. This in turn
distorted and retarded the evolution of capitalism into
socialism in the whole world, both in the capitalistic
core and the exploited periphery.
In China, the
traditional social stratification of four main classes -
literati-scholars, farming peasants, artisans and
merchants - crumbled in the face of two emerging group
under Western imperialism: the compradors and the
militarists who, as the new rich and the new powerful,
dominated a Chinese society systemically impoverished by
Western imperialism. These two classes could not
possibly revive Chinese civilization because
compradorism works for foreign interests and militarism
is fundamentally destructive to civilization.
It
is an undeniable fact that the Communist Party of China,
despite inevitable false starts and costly social
experimentation, has evolved as the only
social/political institution able to resist Western
imperialism and its policy of dismemberment. The Party
transformed the Chinese peasant from a passive member of
an inert entity into an activist member of the state. As
long as the Party adheres to its mission of representing
the interest and welfare of the peasants that constitute
85 percent of the population, and focus on a march
toward modernity with Chinese characteristics, it will
avoid the fate of other modernization movements before
it. The lesson for the non-Western world is that true
modernity must carry a healthy dose of indigenous
characteristics.
Henry C K Liu is
chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for information
on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
