CIVILIZATION
A NEW HISTORY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
ROGER OSBORNE
PIMLICO 2007
PART 3
Chapter 1: In the Beginning: Prehistory and Illiterate Societies
Chapter 2: A Torrent of Words: Change and Custom in Classical Greece
Chapter 3: The Birth of Abstraction: Plato, Aristotle and the Rational Mind
Chapter 4: The Universal Civilization: Rome and the Barbarians
Chapter 5: Augustine’s Vision of Christianity: From Rebel Sect to Universal Faith
Chapter 6: Religion as Civilization: The Establishment of Western Christendom
Chapter 7: Another Way of Living: The Medieval Town and Communal Life
Chapter 8: Art as Civilization: Wealth, Power and Innovation in the Italian Renaissance
Chapter 9: The Search for the Christian Life: The European Reformation as a New Beginning
Chapter 10: Kings, Armies and Nations: The Rise of the Military State
Chapter 11: Us and Them: Colonization and Slavery
Chapter 12: The Rational Individual: Theory and Practice in Making Society
Chapter 13: Enlightenment and Revolution: Politics and Reason in France and America
Chapter 14: Industrialization and Nationalism: British Dominance and the Ideology of Freedom
Chapter 15: From Rural Colonies to Industrial Continent: The Making of Modern America
Chapter 16: Towards The Abyss: Technology, Ideology, Apocalypse
The second half of the 19th century brought improvements in the lives of many Europeans. Science-based technology began to make life easier, safer and healthier; the spread of industrialization brought more prosperity; political change led to greater rights and freedoms; and intellectual advances seemed to promise an even better future for humanity. Yet in the 20th century all these advances counted for nothing, as millions were slaughtered in catastrophic mechanized war. Any remaining hopes of the inevitability of human progress were then extinguished by the unimaginable truth of the genocide of Europe’s Jews.
The outbreak of war in a period of optimistic prosperity seems to defy our understanding of history. Surely wars are fought over scarce resources, or to gain political rights, or in defence of territories. The decades before the First World War show us that none of this is true. Instead it is quite possible for the citizens of prosperous nations to convince themselves that they must go to war with others for almost entirely illusory reasons. The following pages indicate some of those reasons; they also demonstrate that events in history are not bound by universal laws of cause and effect, but simply arise out of unpredictable circumstance. The world wars of the twentieth century had their roots in everything that happened before. In this chapter I will trace just some of those roots, beginning with the application of scientific reasoning to all aspects of human society.
- Belief in progress went hand in hand with the belief in European superiority. Industrialization gave France, Belgium, Germany and Italy the military technology to overwhelm any resistance to their overseas ambitions.
- In 1884 Bismark held a conference in Berlin to try to regulate the ‘scramble for Africa’. By 1914 there were a few independent countries, but otherwise the whole world was annexed by the industrial powers of Europe, the United States and Japan.
- Late 19th century colonization did not merely mean occupation and economic exploitation of indigenous peoples, it brought the whole world into one trading system, whose rules and conditions were dictated by the industrialists and bankers of Europe and the United States, having a devastating effect on societies elsewhere.
- It has been estimated that 60 million people died of famine in India, China and Brazil between 1876 and 1902, the high point of colonial activity. Other genocides appeared to have no cause beyond savagery and sport.
- As trade turned to conquest, the prestige of empire was grasped by small groups of men – military leaders, politicians, journalists, self-promoters – as an antidote to national decline and, subsequently, as part of a new world order.
- The haphazard trading network of the early empires had, by the mid-nineteenth century, turned into a vision of a new world where everything could be controlled from the cabinet offices and boardrooms of Europe.
- It was not just merchants and politicians who wanted empires. Missionaries claimed the world for Christ, Social Darwinists stressed the manifest destiny of the superior white peoples ruling inferior brown and black, while explorers romanticized their personal ambition into parables of man pitted against nature.
- The populations of Britain and France gained nothing from their empires. A few people profited mightily. The rest would have been better off without empire at all.
- The military planners convinced everyone that the nation in peacetime must be ready for war, starting arms races. The main European powers increased their military spending. Democratic governments had to justify increased spending by referring to foreign threats – panics and war scares were common.
- Regimes in Germany and Austria became convinced that war would be inevitable and that delay would favour their enemies. On 28 July 1914 Austria, using the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as a pretext, declared war. By 5 August 1914 all of the major European powers were officially at war.
- The civilian population and its institutions were made subservient to the war and to the military establishment.
- In the previous four centuries western Europeans believed they were making the world a better place, and that they themselves were the evidence of such progress.
- The First World War provided overwhelming and shattering evidence that progress was an illusion.
- This war was not against, nor provoked by, ‘savages’ who needed to be taught a lesson, and in whose defeat all Europeans could rejoice. This had been a war between apparently civilized nations.
- Industrial capitalism and constitutional government had failed to prevent war; indeed, the products of industry had hugely multiplied the numbers of casualties.
- The glorification of military successes abroad, rivalry between nations turning to bitter hatred, the desire for revenge for past humiliations, glamorisation of the military life, vast spending on huge armies and state-of-the-art weapons all contributed to a culture that saw war as an acceptable activity for nation states to pursue.
Chapter 17: The End of Civilization. Depression, Extremism and Genocide in Europe, America and Asia