I come from a village in Punjab that has a memorial gate (not big on cenotaphs here 50-60 years back, so we build a memorial gate on the road that leads to the village - a practise that Sikhs follow from long) in remembrance of ~120 Sikh soldiers that went to World War 1. The stories that elders told me were about how British imperialists manipulated and threatened young Sikhs into signing up to become cannon fodder because they had quotas to be filled for village to village recruitment. Elders also told how British respected Sikh traditions to the hilt, they understood and had good amount of research corpus of the traditions too. This is why you will see in photographs, Sikhs in Turbans and carrying the holy scripture, Guru Granth Sahib on their head leading the procession. One negative effect was that Sikhs being minority, the population decrease especially young ones, had a detrimental effect later on while India was partitioned along religious lines. Sikhs could not save their most fertile and irrigated plains in Sialkot to Sahiwal belt (present day Pakistan) and were forcibly uprooted and forced to give up their own farms. One positive effect was that after partition, the returnees were able to save countless people from organised massacres along religious lines. They organised village defences, provided logistic know-how and were able to arrest quite a grim situation among the chaos.
Sadly, all this literature and memorial diaries are in Punjabi vernacular. Hopefully as new generation grows up, more of these stories will surface in English language. Also, there is marked difference between reporting of same story in Punjabi newspaper and in English newspaper of the same newspaper group: Punjabi newspaper of the same group reports situation more accurately while English newspaper biases it against the Sikhs and even edits direct quotes. So hopefully these stories will surface in either western sources or independent media with correct editing procedure and relevant checks.
> Sadly, all this literature and memorial diaries are in Punjabi vernacular. Hopefully as new generation grows up, more of these stories will surface in English language. Also, there is marked difference between reporting of same story in Punjabi newspaper and in English newspaper of the same newspaper group: Punjabi newspaper of the same group reports situation more accurately while English newspaper biases it against the Sikhs and even edits direct quotes. So hopefully these stories will surface in either western sources or independent media with correct editing procedure and relevant checks.
What is preventing you from doing at least the rough draft? That sounds like a very interesting story, and I'd be willing to pay something to help bring it faithfully to the English language.
(contact me by email if interested, I probably won't be able to reply since HN ratelimits me to what seems like two replies every eight hours or so, and this is #2)
The entire history of Europe is one of constant, vicious and brutal wars. Yes they exported it overseas but IMO WW1 is a continuation of a tradition of continental violence, not colonial violence that came home.
One could argue rather the colonial violence is an export of the European history of war, as Chomsky does in "Year 501"
Agree. A good example is the Mongol empire, which I wasn't familiar with at all (it is barely covered by any european school history book). Dan Carlin made an interesting series of podcasts on the topic [1]. The Mongols barely left any written trace but wiped out entires cities and regions [2].
Dan Carlin is not a historian, he is an entertainer. His podcasts are entertaining fiction, not history.
> The Mongols barely left any written trace but wiped out entires cities and regions [2].
They left tons of written traces - in muscovy russia, in yuan china, in mughal persia, etc. You can't maintain such a large empire consisting of many civilizations without records. Most of it disappeared over the years as the empire broke apart and different empires formed.
Much of the history of the mongol empire is twisted propaganda, like all history. But it's especially so for the mongol empire due to shifting change of nationalistic, ethnic and racial landscape.
Here in the west, the mongol empire is caricatured and hated for racial reasons. In other parts of the world, the mongol empire is admired. In most of the world, it's a bit of both.
Also, most old empires, including the chinese, romans, greeks, indians, mesopotamians, egyptians, etc left very few records relatively speaking.
Europe didn't have any of the large, stable empires like a lot of the rest of the world, i.e. China's various empires, Sassanid Persia, Mughal India, etc.
That's not to say that violence didn't happen, things didn't fall apart -- they sure did -- but compared to Europe they had 200-300 year stretches of relative peace.
I think China might be the outlier here, not Europe. (Thinking of the last 1000 years, say.) India was very fragmented -- the Mughals achieved great extent and then great longevity, but not both at the same time.
After Mongols were gone, Europeans were simply the best at organizing large scale, multi-year wars. Big war is all about logistics. Troops need to be fed constantly.
Thirty Year's War was basically Europeans being religious nuts and solving the issue by fighting until exhaustion. The original reason for the continuous war was long forgotten when everyone was done. In the end Europeans just agreed to hate each others religion and just fight the normal amount.
The years before the first world war had seen no serious, bloody conflicts since the Napoleonic wars. Most of the techniques and technologies used so destructively in WW1 were tested first in the colonies.
More fundamentally, the basic driver of tensions before the first world war was the german desire for colonies, or rather, export markets to allow their continued economic growth.
650,000 casualties in the Franco-Prussian War. The November Uprising 100,000 casualties. Russo-Turkish War 200,000 casualties. Crimean War 800,000 casualties.
I guess I don't know what counts as a serious, bloody conflict.
I think the thing is, the Franco-Prussian war was a limited war with limited goals. The reason why the Napoleonic war stands out as the last war of significance is it was an unlimited war, which reformed europe after it.
I don't think casualty counts are particularly good metrics here - rather, the metric should be the degree to which the civilian population is brought into the war, as victims, soldiers, or workers. In that sense, the colonies had been experiencing 'total' wars in the sense that, europeans rarely distinguished between civilian and enemy forces when putting down insurrection, and rarely had qualms about mass conscription in various forms. Consequently, the casualty numbers and social destruction of the first world war, while extremely unusual for europe, would have been far less unusual in east Africa, or India.
Germany started WW1 with the ambition to make it a limited war, with limited goals. Quickly subduing France, and breaking Russia. Most people on either side thought it was going to be a short war.
It evolved differently though.
As for the second part, take the Franco-Prussian war then, and it's consequences for France, it was massive. Besides the war that went quite badly, a massive uprising happened in Paris (the Commune), under siege from both Germans and Loyalists forces. Starvation was rampant, civilian impact massive, and the final death toll quite important.
The 19th century in Europe was characterized by nationalisms, unifications of countries in blood, and liberation of a few (Greece or Serbia for ex.), again in blood.
I think you're disregarding history, in the name of your argument.
Franco-Prussian War happened in 1870, 45 years earlier than WWI.
There was a surprising period of peace in Europe in the late XIX century where for 40 years there was relative peace. That probably work towards the specifics of WWI (war involving almost everyone in Europe, in a very short timespan, with no clear objective for anyone)
The Seven Years' War killed a million people. Napoleonic Wars 5 million. The Balkan Wars 150,000 (note I'm counting deaths, not casualties). Crimean War 400,000 and the Franco-Prussian War perhaps 200,000.
World War I itself saw the deaths of over 10 million people. The Russian Civil War half that and World War II quadruple that. These numbers are not 10x anything seen since the Napoleonic Wars, they are 100x.
The experience of the long 19th century was that wars would be short, decisive, localized in scope, and fairly bloodless. The Balkan Wars and the wars of Italian and German unification were not exceptions to this rule. The American Civil War and Boer Wars were exceptions, but discounted because they weren't European wars. The Crimean War was a partial exception (it was long and indecisive, but still fairly localized and fairly bloodless for the ambitions of the powers involved). The leaders were wholly unprepared for the long, bloody stalemate that would characterize World War I, or the incessant civil wars and wars of ideology that would characterize the wars between World War I and World War II.
> The American Civil War and Boer Wars were exceptions, but discounted because they weren't European wars
Russo-Japanese War as well. More recent than the US Civil War and gave some early examples as to what WWI would look like, but generally considered to be irrelevant since it wasn't a European War and was generally localized to the far, far east.
Indeed, discounting the American civil war seems to be the crucial step for making the 19th C look safe. While obviously not physically in Europe, it was the closest fore-taste of what determined modern states could do to each other.
But contrary to TFA's claims, colonial wars were also "short, decisive, localized", maybe all 10 times smaller again (unless my googling fails me).
> The experience of the long 19th century was that wars would be short, decisive, localized in scope, and fairly bloodless.
At the risk of writing a 1,000 word reply...for the past 2 decades there's been a growing body of academic research using archival documents from military archives (captured by the Soviet Union after WW2 and unknown to scholars until the 1990s), that politicians and generals didn't actually believe in the "short-war illusion" and they were actually fully prepared for the long, bloody stalemate that happened.
Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers is a popular book containing much of this new research.
Some examples from this kind of research:
Prussian General & Chancellor von Caprivi warned that war against France alone would be "tenacious and protracted."
Field Marshal von der Goltz publicly warned that "future wars would be long drawn-out affairs involving nations and not just cabinets."
In 1890 the architect of the Franco-Prussian War warned parliament that caution the nation that the next European conflict would most likely be a "Seven or Thirty Years' War."
The quartermaster-general of the German army warned "We cannot expect quick, decisive victories." The war of the future instead would feature "a tedious and bloody crawling forward step-by-step," that is, "siege-style" warfare.
Field Marshall von Haenseler also warned that one could not simply "carry off the armed forces of a great power [France] like a cat in a sack."
The German General Chief of Staff believed the coming war "will be a peoples' war, one which would not be concluded by a single decisive battle," but which would deteriorate into a "long and protracted struggle." The future war could not be terminated until "the peoples' energy had been entirely broken"; even if victorious, the German people would emerge from such a struggle "exhausted in the extreme."
The German Imperial Navy office wrote "It is not possible to discern why the war should last only nine months.... In order to avoid arriving at deceptive perceptions, one should, on the basis of available information, base planning on a war of perhaps 1 1/2 years."
The Prussian Statistics Office (who had to figure out how to feed the nation during the coming war) calculated a scenario for "a war of 2 or even 2 1/2 to 3 years."
In 1912 Field Marshall Ludendorff wrote any war would be "a long-drawn out campaign with numerous difficult, long-lasting battles, before we can defeat [even] one of our adversaries."
The General Staff's Third Section (Intelligence) continued to speak of the war of the future in terms of a "peoples' war," of a "protracted struggle," and of a "long-lasting campaign."
German Major Haushofer (the future "father" of geopolitics) believed the coming war would last "at least 3 years".
Falkenhayn told his old regiment the coming war would last "at least one-and-one-half years."
German Chancellor Hollweg believed that any action against Serbia "can lead to a world war".
According to this line of research, the short-term war illusion still existed but in a different (worse) guise. The generals and politicans knew (or strongly believed) the coming war would be anything but short, decisive, localised, and bloodless. But they couldn't see any alternative.
They realised that there was no viable alternative to a desperate HOPE of a short war, short of admitting that war itself was no longer feasible.
Between France and Germany, over 3 million soldiers were deployed and 44,000 Germans and 138,000 French soldiers died.
There was also the Crimean War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War from 1853-1856, in which all sides mobilized over a million soldiers and suffered 750,000 losses and casualties (including deaths from disease).
Finally, although not in Europe, the American Civil War of 1861-1865 was a foretaste of what industrialize warfare looked like with artillery, trenches, railroads and telegraphs, as well as the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure as a way to destroy the enemies' ability to continue to wage a war.
There was plenty of important conflicts in Europe between WW1 and the Napoleonic wars, not on the same scale, but it was hardly peaceful. Europe was undergoing major structural changes with the advent of nationalisms.
And the causes of war are a lot more complicated than just Germany looking for export markets and colonies. It might be one of many causes (or rather consequences of other factors), but it's hardly the basic driver.
Indeed, just in the decade or so before the guns of august, there were a whole series of wars throughout the Balkans, as the Ottoman Empire started to unravel, that primed the tinderbox and led to the events of Sarajevo. Given a few more years, it's almost inevitable that nationalist movements would have fractured and busted apart the Austro-Hungarians and their uneasy multicultural coalition, given the frightening incompetence of most of their leadership.
The reunification of Italy always seems to get swept under the rug as well.
I'd add that there was nothing in nature specific to ww1. These mass, all-in, full conscription wars have happened all over the XIX since the Napoleonic wars. What was new was the exponential improvement in technology that had devastating effects, which ww2 surpassed with an order of magnitude (burning an entire country to the ground rather than a few battlefields).
The gradual increase in horror and devastation between the great european wars has really been a story of technological advances more than anything else.
The difference was the the theatre of war wasn't the battlefield, but the entire economy in general. Germany lost WW1 because they ran out of money first, while the allied powers could have kept the meat grinder churning for another 2-3 years with US intervention.
With industrialization, the results on the battlefield didn't really have much to do with the outcome of the conflict. Direct conflict between major powers from circa-1860 onward was about destroying the enemy's economy and political system or destroying the enemy utterly. The pursuit of decisive military victory was defeated time and time again, with the exception of the atomic bomb, and even that is arguable.
> The first world war marked the moment when legacies of imperialism in Asia and Africa returned home, exploding into self-destructive carnage in Europe
I don't understand how the WW 1 is supposed to be the legacy of colonialism. From what I've read, WW 1 was caused by the local opposition between power blocks in Europe. Also the article spend way too much lines saying nothing of import on its subject; it seems more a political piece regarding #currentEvents than anything else.
> entire populations as culturally incompatible with white western peoples
Well, perhaps there are some culture that doesn't seem compatible with Western culture, for example regarding personal freedom (of religion, of mariage, of sexuality), on the place of women in society.
> Well, perhaps there are some culture that doesn't seem compatible with Western culture, for example regarding personal freedom (of religion, of mariage, of sexuality), on the place of women in society.
At the time of colonization, women in the West didn't have the vote, and in much of the British empire the prohibition on homosexuality came with the colonizers and their missionaries, not as a result of local prejudice.
WW2 was very much colonialist - Germany having failed to colonise Africa was going to colonise Asia by subjugating the Slavic peoples in the same way the other colonial powers had subjugated their colonies.
The horrors of modern warfare seemed new and surprising to the Europeans.
But the brutality wasn't all that different from what was happening in colonial outposts like Namibia, South Africa, India, Russia, Ireland and countless other places.
The snobbery and denial of the European powers also missed the reality of modern total warfare that was demonstrated in the US Civil War. The old guard was focused on elan and napoleonic era stuff, and dismissed the American experience.
Short version, think of it like this: The European powers had a ton of capital and resources garnered through colonial exploitation of Africa and Asia which was basically fuel burned through in massive bonfire of destruction that was the First World War -- anything left over went into the Second World War leaving the US as the dominant power for the latter half of the 20th century.
I did not got this from the article. From what I read, it was more:
- In order to have local stability (following industrial revolution and regime changes), Western countries need an exterior outlet, for access to exclusive markets, natural ressources and space to put excess/unwanted popultation.
- To be able to colonize, Western countries needed an ideology to justify it: thus white superiority, nationalism and jingoistic propaganda.
- Then there was an ideology in place in all countries, which explain the war, not capital and ressources.
Of course it's how I understand the article, I might be wrong.
One reason for WW1 is Germany wanted to be a colonial power, quickly, didnt have much success except in Africa on the back of a couple of genocides, then they got themselves into a naval race with Britain that they couldnt win. Sort of a violent imperial ambition coming to a boiling point.
According to many, WWI was in many ways about the colonial powers fighting about access to the colonization game. Germany had little to no colonial reach abroad, and wanted in. That's what drove some of the desperation -- the economic stakes were very high.
I mean, this analysis of WWI was what was taught to me in grade school. (It's also similar to the analysis of WWI that Lenin gave in "Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism")
Claims that remembrance day doesn't honour them, hasn't he even watched the ceremony? 30 or 40 commonwealth wreathes are laid, all the countries are named on TV, and it's mid-ceremony, not at the end.
I stopped there in the article, as he obviously had an agenda that is completely at odds with reality.
Such a shame the Guardian didn't even do basic editorial checking on the article.
What the article actually says: "These colonial subjects remain marginal in popular histories of the war. They also go largely uncommemorated by the hallowed rituals of Remembrance Day."
Largely, not entirely.
And this isn't a question of blunt fact which can be rebutted by pointing at the presence of the various Commonwealth High Commissioners during the ceremony itself, but a question of meaning and salience.
There definitely is a faction of people who tie remembrance to militarism to ethnic whiteness, and as part of that they will whitewash the role of non-white people in the wars.
The quality of content in the Guardian has dropped precipitously in the last few years. I count myself a liberal, but so much of their content is unbearably partisan...
In recent time there has been more acknowledgement of the role the commonwealth nations played in the conflict. However, that's not part of the popular narrative of WW1, and is given cursory treatment in most histories.
The article is well worth reading in its entirety.
> However, that's not part of the popular narrative of WW1
That's just nonsense. The involvement and sacrifice of Commonwealth troops has always been a significant part of the history and memorial of WW1. In fact, there's a strong argument that WW1 gave some Commonwealth countries a casting role on the world stage that they lacked prior to the war.
What isn't often acknowledged is that WW1 was a racist endeavour as this article is stating. And that's primarily because it's a ridiculous assertion. Race had nothing to do with it.
> In recent time there has been more acknowledgement of the role the commonwealth nations played in the conflict. However, that's not part of the popular narrative of WW1, and is given cursory treatment in most histories.
In the second paragraph of Wikipedia's article on the Gallipoli campaign, it says:
> The campaign is often considered to be the beginning of Australian and New Zealand national consciousness; 25 April, the anniversary of the landings, is known as "ANZAC Day", the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in the two countries, surpassing Remembrance Day (Armistice Day).
It's impossible to talk about the Mesopotamian campaign without referring to the Indian troops; it's impossible to talk about Gallipoli without reference to ANZAC. It is possible to omit the Canadians' role in the Western Front, however, but that's because their role is minor in relative terms to the American, British, French, and German components, so a short summary could omit them.
It might also be given cursory treatment for the simple reason that it was "marginal".
Take France (since i'm french), one of the big users of overseas and colonial troops, the article lists 500k colonial conscripts. Except we had 8 millions conscripts, and 1 million and a half dead soldiers. While their sacrifice mattered and was not honored enough, it's hard to focus on their specific plights, in the end, they represented ~6% of soldiers, and ~6% of casualties.
I'm not even talking about the destruction wrecked in northern france.
As always, people feel more about things closer to them, especially when they experienced directly it.
>, in the end, they represented ~6% of soldiers, and ~6% of casualties.
And 0% of the stakes. Germany wasn't attacking their home, and the Treaty of Versailles often made their position worse. And I'm not even talking about the destruction wrecked on their homes by whatever imperialist mean they became a colony.
[Colonial subjects] also go largely uncommemorated by the hallowed rituals of Remembrance Day.
Here is the BBC recording, the first hour or so is preamble before the ceremony.
The last post finished at about 1:04:00 and the commonwealth countries start laying their wreathes at 1:11:10, straight after the Royal family and the UK political party heads:
It's a recorded fact they were included significantly in the Remembrance Day rituals. You can go and see all the previous years too.
David Dimbleby even says "And now the high commissioners of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India who played such a huge part in both world wars. 3 million soldiers and laborers from across the empire and the commonwealth served in the first world war, in the 2nd world war 5 million men and women.". It then carries on with the wreath laying of all the other commonwealth countries, all of which are named.
A good and timely article. I do feel that in Britain today as the generation that was personally involved in the war die out the "remembrance" necessarily transmutes to mythology, and some of the mythology is extremely harmful. Are we remembering some at the cost of others?
Not to mention using it as a pretext to fuel the kind of nationalism that drove both wars and colonialism in the first place.
I hadn't realised that the bombing in Iraq was done by the same controversial "Bomber" Harris!
Or, if we take the broader view and step outside the European theatre, is the war actually really past? There's still gunfire across the Sykes-Picot line.
Interesting read, but I want to raise some objections:
1) I don't like that one keep talking about the whole west as one unit and tainting everybody. It creates a simplified picture of oppressor and the oppressed.
It should not be forgotten that this is primarily about the major powers of Europe. Not every European country was a major power. Europe is full of smaller countries, which often had little say in this matter. Ireland e.g. has a brutal history of oppression by the British. It is not like whites were nice to each other and only cruel to others.
Big colonial powers have a different view of people. I remember reading about polar expeditions, naturally since I am Norwegian. It is hard to not notice the stark difference between how Norwegians treated Inuit people and how the British treated them. The British were full of contempt for the natives of the polar regions. They viewed them as backwards and as having nothing useful to teach them. The British assumed British sense of civilization, property law etc was universal. When an Inuit took an object belonging to a British expedition member they brutally flogged him as punishment for "stealing". Never mind that the concept of ownership was entirely different to the Inuit.
Norwegian polar explorers in contrast eagerly learned from the natives how they used their dogs and how they dressed for the cold. It is a probably the chief reason why Amundsen would beat Scott to the pole. Amundsen did not deal with the different culture of the Inuit by assuming superiority and doling out cruel punishment to anyone not following his moral code. Instead they used trickery, making the Inuit believe that if they went into their storage room, they could blow up.
I am not writing this primarily to make my fellow Norwegians look amazing. But it is easier to contrast with cultures you actually know. Anyway we were kind of dicks to our indigenous people, the Sami, but to point out that European culture varied greatly. Saying the west did this and that, is a bit like our own homogenization of Africa, as if it is just one country.
2) We must know our history to not repeat it. I DO think it is a problem that we often try to sugarcoat our past. However we should also keep perspective. Too often people get into this pattern of thinking as if the past brutality of European colonial powers is inherent in being white. That is just as racist as claiming jews are inherently money grubbing bankers and africans are lazy. Europeans are as much product of their history and upbringing as everybody else, and has the same potential for change. Nor is everybody the same. While Europeans enslaved people, there was also Europeans fighting hard against slavery. Emancipation developed further and quicker in Europe than in many other parts of the world. E.g. slavery was ended by Europeans before it was in the Arab world. I don't think that points to white superiority, but simply is a way of pointing out that every civilization is a mix of different values and ideas, both good and bad. The good can triumph over the bad.
We should however recognize that the struggles many countries face around the world is partly of our making. However we cannot take full responsibility. Africa or India would not be as modern rich or developed today as by magic if Europeans had never set their feet on shore. All of these areas were hundreds of years behind Europe in technological development. What Europe could have done is treating them better. But that does not make Europeans uniquely bad. The powerful have always through history had a tendency to exploit the weaker ones.
> I don't like that one keep talking about the whole west as one unit and tainting everybody
Best refrain from reading the Guardian, it's what they do best. Despite the fact that nobody alive today had anything to do at all with the horrors from our colonial pasts.
> Africa or India would not be as modern rich or developed today as by magic if Europeans had never set their feet on shore
Do you have some references that back this up? I don't dispute it, just curious.
No we don't have anything to do with it. But perception of our history is a strong driver of modern behaviour. This article is really about how we think about the world today, WW1 is just a proxy for that. And the world wars are still an important part of national identity.
> Best refrain from reading the Guardian, it's what they do best. Despite the fact that nobody alive today had anything to do at all with the horrors from our colonial pasts.
I don't think their writing is bad. My issue is not so much what they write, but rather how a lot of people end up interpreting it. Many will use such writing to vilify whites. OTOH there are plenty of whites who uses any writing about say coloreds to do the same. People in general are eager to create simplified narratives and blame the other guys.
> Do you have some references that back this up? I don't dispute it, just curious.
I would say it is a logical conclusion from reading history. India and Africa was already progressing at a certain pace and was several hundred years behind Europe in development.
What has been observed through most of history is that most countries progress by importing ideas from other rather than by inventing it themselves.
Africa e.g. has very little coastline and rivers relative to landmass. That makes water based transport mostly inaccessible. Labor specialization and mass production relies on that. Industrialization was thus highly unlikely to occur in Africa spontaneously. Adam Smith remarked this over 300 years ago.
The founder of modern Singapore remarked that the most important technology for their development was air condition. India, Africa, South East Asia etc are simply too hot places. It gives a lot more diseases, makes it harder to work and think. There are limits to how much heat the human body can dissipate. Cold climates are thus more practical for working as long as you have suitable means of providing heating.
Until the invention of air condition, the southern states of the US were far more backwards. Air condition led to a surge in people moving south.
In short India, Africa etc had a lot of natural barriers to development which meant they were always going to be far behind Europe. European invasion gave a way of leapfrogging many of these disadvantages.
Thank you for teaching us a valuable lesson. And thank you for bringing "civilization" to India. We have learnt our lessons well from our white Masters. We Indian slaves are forever in your debt. I am sure there will be more lessons to learn.. for all of us..
You have a very eurocentric view of technological advancement.
The technologies that bootstraped the European civilization come from the fertile crescent, aka middle east. Not only that, but what is eaten in Europe are mostly plants and animals that are not endemic to Europe. Take that away and you would have a continent full of people spending all their time trying to feed themselves, without time to innovate and with a lower population.
The European Reinassance is 99% of the time misattributed. The real causes were:
- the introduction of paper to Europe (as an alternative to parchments, made from animal skin)
- the introduction of a new numeral system
- the acceptance of secular thought
- the Latin translations of the 12th century
- the scientific method
None of those fundamental prerequisites are European merit. And yet it is hardly ever mentioned because it does not justify a messed up perspective of the world where one group of people "civilized" the rest of the world.
Before St Thomas Aquinas reformed the church through philosophy, scientific research would be considered heresy and could get you killed. St Thomas Aquinas studied from St Albert Magnus, from Latin translations made in Spain after the fall of the Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain).
Copernicus developed his theories by studying the Alphonsine tables, compilation of observations made by ancient astronomers. The Alphonsine tables were also Latin translations made in Spain.
Take away the Alphonsine tables and modern numerals and you've got no Copernicus, no Galileo, no Newton. Take away paper or secularism and you get nothing at all.
Europe continued the work of fallen civilizations, did not figure it out everything from scratch.
This line of reasoning is silly. I suppose all technology comes from Homo Australopithecus since they were the first to bang two rocks together, and they were the true origin of the Renaissance?
I'm all for acknowledging eurocentrism, but this euro-bashing is ridiculous. If these "prerequisites" were all that were needed to kickstart the Renaissance, why did it not occur in the middle east, for instance, where all of these elements were also present?
Because the Mongols destroyed them after they refused to pay tribute.
Knowledge is passed generation to generation, and if you interrupt that, it's hard to recover from. Mongols destroyed everything, including libraries and killed most scholars.
That void was filled with tribes that were not secular.
I think that's wholly simplistic. What about regions who beat off the Mongols, such as the Mameluks? Or people who weren't that affected, like the Ottomans.
For that matter, I'd be interested in your theory as to why the Ottoman empire failed to develop any intellectual tradition of note, while Europe was soaring.
Russians greatly suffered under the mongols but eventually became a superpower. China lost half its population but rebounded pretty quickly.
Edit: "Mongols destroyed libraries" afaik, they destroyed the library of Baghdad but that's about it.
Also, the Mongols were not the only ones to destroy libraries. Iirc the library of Cordoba, the biggest and most advanced of its time, was burned down by the Caliph because it was deemed too un-islamic.
I am talking about the Siege of Baghdad (1258). You are talking about a period of time after the death of Kublai Khan (1294) where the Mongols were already divided into smaller regions.
Anyways, if you want to be a eurocentric revisionist, continue doing so. I don't care.
If you study the Latin translations of the 12th century you will see how significant part of the Reinassance could be attributed to previous civilizations.
Yeah, I understood you were talking about the Siege of Baghdad. If you think that the destruction of a single city is the reason for the middle east lagging behind the west over several centuries, then I reiterate what I said before, you have an extremely simplistic view of history. I don't consider myself particularly eurocentric, but you seem to be a middle eastern chauvinist. Projection, maybe?
Where did I deny that Europeans built on previous advances by other people? It's obvious they didn't exist in a vacuum. But europeans were the first to systematize the production and diffusion of knowledge. In a sense they invented what you could call the mass intellectual tradition.
I think you are reading things between the lines which are not there.
It was never my intention to suggest that Europeans are inherently superior to others and that we have some unique ability of innovations.
Of course European advancements were built on advancements of those who came before us. Just as Chinese advancement today is built on advancements made by the west earlier.
I am merely stating a fact: European civilization was significantly ahead of the competition. And those innovations could not easily have been made elsewhere for cultural and geographic reasons:
1) Europe went through major paradigm shifts with1 the renaissance and enlightenment which was in large part possible in Europe because it was a divided continent. Many great thinkers lived on the borders between countries so they could flee to another one as soon as their ideas got unpopular with the rulers. Such a mechanism was not possible in other advance civilizations such as China, which was a big monolith. New ideas in such societies could easily be squashed.
Single rulers could easily retard progress for decades. Consider e.g. how one of the Chinese emperors forbid all sea travel and burned the fleet. The whole of Europe could never suffer such a profound setback because it had no single ruler. Any European nation engaging in such stupid policies would quickly learn of the stupidity of that as competing nations would race past them.
Europe represented a sort of semi-free market of ideas, which did not exist elsewhere to the same degree.
2) Europe had a clear advantage in geography. Using water wheels for power generation and rivers and canals for goods transport was significantly easier in Europe than China, India, Egypt etc where the waterflow varies too much through the year.
The first factories relied on inanimate power from waterwheels which was not easily constructed elsewhere in the world.
Later steam engines relied on cheap transport of large bulks of coal and ore. Britain e.g. had a geology that allowed building canals to mines to transport large bulk loads of coal cheaply. Outside of Europe there was limited possibility to do this.
I could go on, but there were simply a large number of factors that favored Europe. Hence European supremacy was not merely a fluke, and the other nations could not by random occurrence have leapfrogged Europe. The modern world relied on being brought to the rest of the world from Europe, unless it was going to happen much much later.
It does not mean what European did was morally right. It just means one should not delude oneself into thinking that without Europe all the other nations would be prosperous today.
I don't think your parent claimed that all good things were originally made in Europe. It seems pretty clear to me that Europe was technologically more advanced than the rest of the world during colonial times. Without superior (military) technology they wouldn't have been able to oppress half the world.
No, but most nations have progressed faster technologically by being invaded or influenced by other more advance nations. Without the roman empire, Britain, France, Spain, Germany etc would have taken far longer to modernize.
I not saying this as a moral statement, merely as an observation of how the world works. We don't need to like something to be true.
Of course we can strive for a better less violent way of doing things, which I think we are doing in the world we live in today. We are spreading ideas and technology through trade primarily rather than war. It is not always fair trade, but it beats colonization.
I don't think that either, but you're not making a very good argument. To counter that European influence was important for the development of former colonies you say that foreign influence was crucial to the development of Europe. To me that sounds like you support the idea that outside influence can be of critical importance.
A few observations and thoughts after reading the article:
1. The European's ideas of racial superiority may have directly led the deaths of millions of soldiers from the machine guns. The colonial powers, had experience with and new just how devastating the machine gun when they used it against the indigenous peoples of their colonies. However, many commanders felt that it would not be that effective against well-trained European soldiers. That proved to be a huge mistake and millions of young infantry paid the price as their commanding officers sent them in mass assaults against machine guns.
2. More than any change of heart due to morals, it was the economic and manpower losses of WWI and WWII that made the European powers unable to hold onto their colonies. For example the British had faced unrest in India before, for example the Sepoy rebellion. However, they were able to brutally crush the rebellions and maintain their hold on power. However, in the aftermath of WWII, the British had neither the resolve, the manpower, or the money to continue to try to hold onto India in opposition to the independence movement. Without these World Wars, there is a good chance that India would still be a British colony.
3. The reason that "white" people oppressed so many others was not because they were necessarily intrinsically more immoral, but simply that they had much more power than the others.The examples of the Armenian genocide and the Rape of Nanking from WWI and WWII respectively by people that would not be considered "white" illustrates the sad state of human affairs in that the strong will tend to oppress the weak. This has been going on long before any notion of "whiteness" and will likely go on in the future whatever the status of "whiteness".
4. The post WWII peace in Western Europe was probably due more to the overwhelming superiority of the United States and the Soviet Union vis-a-vis the European powers than of any awakening. Whereas in WWI and WWII, the European powers could imagine beating their neighbors and taking their territory, after WWII, they knew that aggression against their neighbors would lead to a conflict with either the United States or the Soviet Union and they had no hope of winning.
I agree, I don't think Europeans have been worse than others would have been, we simply had the means to do it. However I find it problematic that so much of the brutality gets swept under the rug.
E.g. it is typical of political propaganda how Stalins starvation of millions of Ukrainians is used to disparage socialism. However it is far less known that Britain starved quite a lot more people in India, often in the name of capitalism. Food was shipped out at gunpoint to foreign markets while people starved to death on the grounds that markets should not be disrupted.
There is also the belittling of other people, through ignorance of our own past. E.g. the Chinese with Mao is presented as somehow more barbaric and brutal. The US presents itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy despite slaughtering the native population and enslaving millions of blacks.
I don't think westerners are inherently worse than anybody else. I just dislike the smugness in particular by great powers such as the Britain and the US, who present themselves as these big civilizing forces.
This is never talked about by politicians. People from my city don't even know about this anymore. Those traumatic events and the force conscription from the two world wars were precursor to Quebec separatist movement. I guess it was the same elsewhere in the colonies.
I take exception to your characterisation of the army as British, however, as it was unquestionably federal Canadian troops. The British were not involved. I also take exception to the idea that it is not talked about. The difference in feeling between English Canadians and French Canadians towards the war was well covered by my (English) Canadian education, particularly in the context of conscription.
[EDIT: Not that conscription was terribly popular in English Canada either, merely more justified to "help the mother country." French Canadians generally did not feel any connection to Britain and wanted to stay out of it.]
It also looks to me Belgium is forgotten, isn't it? It's mostly Britain, France and Germany remembered in Europe (The US is more associated with WW2 I think).
As a school child in the UK when learning about the world wars we took a trip directly to belgium, not france. We visited flanders fields in ypres, and menin gate. We were taught a great deal about belgian involvement, and most of the impression I got very much included belgium as central to the fighting. Of course, that might be a UK perspective, given we got into the war as a result of german invasion of belgium, but also the incredibly famous poem 'flanders fields' and the symbol of the poppy from belgian fields suggests to me that this understanding continues into adulthood for most people here.
For reference, we barely covered world war 2 at all. The latest thing I recall learning about in history at school was the weimar republic and the leadup to world war 2, but they didn't attempt to teach what actually happened dring the course of the fighting. (presumably because it was far too complicated and all over the world to paint a consistent picture to schoolchildren) - It was mainly about the political situation in germany such as the beer hall putsch and communist bavarian uprising.
It also has to be said I am relatively young and a lot of this occured around 12 years ago so older people may have a different picture from their schooling, but I have seen nothing that leads me to believe that - older people tend to have great respect for these things as well.
> It also looks to me Belgium is forgotten, isn't it?
I think a lot of people in the UK are well aware of the Menin Gate at Ypres and their Last Post ceremony. There are so many places and incidents in history that they can't all be remembered with equal vigour. Some will be less prominent than others, it doesn't necessary mean they are forgotten.
The article lost me a little there. I think there as enough wars in the 19th century in Europe (Franco-Prussian, Crimea... [0]) so that using 'long peace' is a bit of a stretch
Mishra argues from a perspective aligned with the Marxist-socialists we have all heard before.
WTF, it is too simplistic to assert that the West (yes, I capitalised it) opted to rely on a racial caste system and colonies to support liberal democracy for Whites. Also, I point to ethnic groups in the Far East who saw themselves as master races, civilised above all others in the world. These others did plenty of looting and colonizing too.
Instead, think of the USA Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Cold War, and the coming WW3 as a contest: liberal democracy / represrntative government versus monarchies, autocracies, and oligarchies.
That is just wrong. Just take WW2, you have dictatorships on both sides (e.g Germany and USSR) and democracies on both sides (eg. the US and Finland). In WW1 you have monarchies on both sides and various levels of representative governments on both sides. In the cold war you have monarchies on the same side as democracies, and dictatorships and oligarchies on both sides.
> Instead, think of the USA Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Cold War, and the coming WW3 as a contest: liberal democracy / representative government versus monarchies, autocracies, and oligarchies.
To talk to this frame is to talk to support the rhetoric which has led to destruction of many countries in the name of liberating them while at the same time supporting other regimes practicing exactly what they are supposed to be condemning. It's a bullshit rhetorical tactic that no one believes anymore.
The imperialism you speak of is alive and well and that's why it's the target of condemnation. When it's no longer practiced you can bring up the old canards of whataboutism to justify it as nothing out of the ordinary historically.
It doesn’t take much brain cells to conclude Europe was supported at expense of rest of the planet. It’s failing in today’s economy for exactly the same reason. Globalization and current economic systems transfers wealth by merit instead of force. Many right wing conmen are reminiscing a past that will never be possible as there will never be colonies again
Anyone can prop their GDP by borrowing and making their children under debt. Also, anyone can get rich by looting their neighbors. That's exactly what happened in colonial times. And former is underway. So not sure what you are on about?
How do you explain the fact that many European countries who had marginal or no colonial empires are among the richest countries in the world today? (Germany, Sweden, etc.)
That's easy. Concentration of looted wealth in a region and regional internal trade with barriers for external entities. Why do you think there are so many voices against WTO? It challenges the status quo built by force.
Most wealth in most European nations depends on local production and expertise.
Why is e.g. the Norwegian fisherman richer than the Bangladeshi fisherman? It is not because he gets more money for each fish he sells.
It is because the usage of modern fishing vessels and technology allows him to fish a lot more fish. In Norway we tried to give Bangladeshi fishermen modern Norwegian fishing vessels in the 70s. If failed because they do not have the skill and infrastructure to maintain and support a modern fishing fleet.
Value lies in better both superior equipment and the knowledge of how to use it effectively. That advantage exists in Europe regardless of whether Europe gets to exploit other nations or not.
Even in colonial times, most economic activity happened locally. Tobacco, sugar and spice does not grow the core of the economy. What mattered most was intensified farming locally. The usage inanimate power, labor specialization and cheaper transport to increase production of food, clothes, tools, furniture, housing etc.
Even without actually exploiting the colonies Europeans would have benefited hugely from the maritime explorations. New crops such as potatoes benefited European agriculture greatly.
Some people seem to somehow wish that us Europeans are furious that we don't have colonies anymore and that we are deeply nostalgic about it. Now I am not from a European country that had colonies, but I think it is pretty universal in Europe that, people are not missing the colonies.
European are happy about where we are today. We are fighting less among each other than ever before. A continent of violence and become a continent of peace.
Europe tops pretty much all worlds statistics on happiness, health, well-being and prosperity.
I have no problems with the right wingers in Europe being angry about us not dominating the rest of the world. Let them be angry, it only brings me schadenfreude.
Besides I don't think Europeans honestly care that much about it. I see American fretting much more about the position in the world. They are afraid of not being number ONE anymore. I think most of us Europeans have long accepted that reality.
IMHO Europe's future is brighter than most other places. Global climate change will affect us much less than the rest. Unlike Asia, we don't have the same demographic time bomb. China, Korea and Japan will suffer major setbacks as their populations gray far too quickly.
The middle east will be screwed when the world no longer runs on oil.
I am hoping for a better future for Africa, but it will take a VERY long time for Africa to catch up with Europe.
The US has a pretty bright future as well I think, but it will likely suffer a lot from political polarization and economic inequality and social problems. Yet the US has been through the same so much of its history.
India will be a lot better off than today, but most Indians have a very long time to go to get anywhere near European levels of prosperity. That could take another 60-100 years.
I am not against a prosperous Europe. Neither do I believe in living in the past. Simply stating the facts that Europe’s wealth is because of world looting. And it would be better that everyone understands where money comes from. Everyday that passes results in less exploitation
I largely agree with what you said. But either of us don’t understand how large complex systems change
There's this strange hint of Europe doing better than everyone else in your message. I assure you, that won't be the case.
> Simply stating the facts that Europe’s wealth is because of world looting
I'd like to see some sources for those "facts". What exactly happened? Europeans came into Africa and Asia and stole all the factories, leaving Africans and Asians to revert back to agricultural societies?
Or Europeans went to Africa, Asia, and the Americas and extracted as much of the natural resources as possible at the expense of the indigenous populations and without a thought to the future sustainability of the lands. Some examples that spring to mind:
* Spanish silver mining in the Americas. 150,000 tonnes of silver were extracted between 1500-1800 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_silver_trade_from_the_1...). It isn't hard to understand who benefited from that silver, Spain or the South American colonies.
* African slave trade which exported 10-15 million people from Africa. In 1850, Africa had about 50 million people when it should have had closer to 100 million, when accounting for lack of reproduction, if it weren't for the slave trade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Africa#Atl...)
> Europeans came into Africa and Asia and stole all the factories, leaving Africans and Asians to revert back to agricultural societies?
How about actively passing laws to make sure that the colonies could not survive without the mother country by restricting trade. Maybe start reading about these colonial times a bit more. What you find may surprise you
"This is also why whiteness, first turned into a religion during the economic and social uncertainty that preceded the violence of 1914, is the world’s most dangerous cult today."
Please don't post unsubstantive comments, especially on flameprone topics.
In particular, it isn't good to cherry-pick the most provocative thing from an article and drop it in here as a drive-by. That usually guarantees a flamewar.
An article that makes such a bold, radical, and racially charged assertion hardly seems to be a good starting point for avoiding a flame-war, let alone starting a productive discussion.
In the same article, writing about Peterson's friendship with Charles Joseph, a Kwakwaka'wakw sculptor, Pankaj Mishra shared the following insight with the world:
"Peterson may seem the latest in a long line of eggheads pretentiously but harmlessly romancing the noble savage."
Sadly, all this literature and memorial diaries are in Punjabi vernacular. Hopefully as new generation grows up, more of these stories will surface in English language. Also, there is marked difference between reporting of same story in Punjabi newspaper and in English newspaper of the same newspaper group: Punjabi newspaper of the same group reports situation more accurately while English newspaper biases it against the Sikhs and even edits direct quotes. So hopefully these stories will surface in either western sources or independent media with correct editing procedure and relevant checks.