TOUGH TO ARGUE AGAINST ANGLOFICATION...:

Imperialism Reclaimed (Robert Skidelsky, 3/23/11, Project Syndicate)

[I]n the 1980’s, a revisionist history came along. It wasn’t just that distance lends a certain enchantment to any view. The West – mainly the Anglo-American part of it – had recovered some of its pride and nerve under US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. And there was the growing evidence of post-colonial regimes’ failure, violence, and corruption, especially in Africa.

But the decisive event for the revisionists was the collapse of the Soviet empire, which not only left the United States top dog globally, but also seemed, to the more philosophically minded, to vindicate Western civilization and values against all other civilizations and values. With the European Union extending its frontiers to embrace many ex-communist states, the West became again, if briefly, the embodiment of universal reason, obliged and equipped to spread its values to the still-benighted parts of the world. Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man testified to this sense of triumph and historical duty.

Such a conjuncture set the stage for a new wave of imperialism (though the reluctance to use the word remained). In doing so, it was bound to affect interpretations of the old imperialism, which was now extolled for spreading economic progress, the rule of law, and science and technology to countries that would never have benefited from them otherwise.

Foremost among the new generation of revisionist historians was Niall Ferguson of Harvard University, whose television series, based on his new book Civilization: The West and the Rest, has just started showing in Britain. In its first episode, Ferguson appears amid the splendid monuments of China’s Ming Dynasty, which, in the fifteenth century, was undoubtedly the greatest civilization of the day, with its naval expeditions reaching the coasts of Africa. After that, it was all downhill for China (and “the Rest”) and all uphill for the West.

Ferguson snazzily summarizes the reasons for this reversal in six “killer apps”: competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society, and the work ethic. Against such tools – unique products of Western civilization – the rest had no chance. From such a perspective, imperialism, old and new, has been a beneficent influence, because it has been the means of spreading these “apps” to the rest of the world, thereby enabling them to enjoy the fruits of progress hitherto confined to a few Western countries.

...as even the Arabs embrace it.

Posted by oj at April 3, 2011 4:42 PM
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