empire

For this blog, I’m going back to 1835 British India. For people who’ve ever wondered why English has become the defacto language-of-the- world-you-are-expected-to-know, here is the sort of thinking that enabled that development. Sir Thomas Macaulay was appointed President of the Indian Committee of Public Instruction in 1835 by the liberal colonial administration of Governor General Lord Bentinck. At that time there were two factions in British colonial administration the Orientalists–who looked on South-Asian culture with a sort of condescending respect even though they misunderstood it all the time–and the liberal reformists–who wanted to bring Indian culture out of the “dark ages” and teach western learning.  Macaulay is definitely from the latter. In his ‘Minute on Indian Education’ of 1835 he denounces the teaching of Sanskrit and Arabic in Indian education and promotes English and European culture–obviously with the attitude that European culture is superior. Actually the commonly held view by both Orientalists and reformers was that many of the nonwhite areas of the world–Egypt, China, India, Persia–were once “great” cultures but had dwindled to inferior cesspools of backwater superstition.

However, Macaulay takes this view one step further in proclaiming many times that Arabic and Sanskrit languages and literature do not hold anything that was even previously “great.” To him, any learning of these languages is a waste of time because there is no science or rational thought within the literature. He goes so far as to say, “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” It is very easy for us to dismiss Macaulay, since he is so blatantly xenophobic, but his thoughts reek of a similar attitude found today in the West. It’s the attitude that the West is built on Science. That our philosophies, political and otherwise, are built on some sort of inherent truth and reason while other cultures are built on superstitious religion. Of course, this is a load of poppycock. One doesn’t need to look far to find instances of Western prejudice that resulted in philosophies, politics, and science that were later proven to be false when the trends changed.

 Macaulay also goes beyond this outlandish claim of superiority and argues for the practical uses of teaching Indians English. He does have a point that the language of the ruling class in the East was English so if an Indian wanted to move up in society, learning English would be the most helpful. But of course why exactly was that? Because the British dominated the East during this time period. There just seems to be something fishy about a people going into an area, taking it over, and then saying, “hmmmm, it would be more practical for them to learn English since we took the place over and refuse to learn their language…” Oh well. I suppose this is all water under the bridge. Macaulay does make a very accurate prediction that as the language of the ruling class of many areas of the world, English would “likely become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East.” He was right. Of course they needed a little help from America to make this happen.   

George Orwell–born in 1904 and author of such famous books as 1984 and Animal Farm–despite being an imperial workhorse in Burma for some years still remained fairly clear-headed. His book Why I Write makes some surprisingly accurate predications on the future stance of British government and social policy. I was struck by how accurate when I read a little blurb in The Wallstreet Journal this morning about an Oxford University study which found that there is no longer a ‘culture elite’. That is to say that they found that most people, in the UK and a few other countries, consume only popular culture regardless of social status. However, they did find that based on people’s education, some still had more omnivorous cultural tastes and might actually go to an opera every once in awhile. Of course, some people do go to operas to make themselves feel cultured, and then go home quickly to catch the last Survivor episode. Orwell observed this cultural normalization earlier in the 20th century, “To an increasing extent the rich and the poor read the same books, and they also see the same films and listen to the same radio programmes.” (p. 43) Orwell described this cultural change as a natural byproduct of capitalism and democracy. Of course, he did not look at this capitalism as necessarily good. In fact, he describes capitalism as a weak system, too weak to combat the totalitarianism of communism and Hitler. Even as he wrote certain passages in his book he complained of the bombs from the Luftwaffe. The beating of Hitler was of tantamount importance in this book, written at a time when the winning of the war was very far from certain.  Orwell feels that Britain must inevitably progress to a different level of politics if the war is to be won and fascism vanquished. He ridicules both leftists and rich capitalists, while advocating for a sort of hybrid between socialism and capitalism. 

Orwell’s future England: “It will not be doctrinaire, nor even logical. It will abolish the House of Lords, but quite probably will not abolish the Monarchy. It will leave anachronisms and loose ends everywhere, the judge in his ridiculous horse-hair wig and the lion and the unicorn on the soldier’s cap-buttons. It will not set up any explicit class dictatorship. It will group itself round the Old Labour Party and its mass following will be in the trade unions, but it will draw into it most of the middle class and many of the younger sons of the bourgeoisie. Most of its directing brains will come from the new indeterminate class of skilled workers, technical experts, airmen, scientists, architects and journalists, the people who feel at home in the radio and ferro-concrete age. But it will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word. Political parties with different names will still exist, revolutionary sects will still be publishing their newspapers and making as little impression as ever. It will disestablish the Church, but will not persecute religion. It will retain a vague reverence for the Christian moral code, and from time to time will refer to England as ‘a Christian country’…It will show a power of assimilating the past which will shock foreign observers and sometimes make them doubt whether any revolution has happened.” (p. 83-84)   

When I read this passage I was struck by what an accurate prediction of modern England this really is. Orwell also points out that if WWII did not break Britain in the end it would be the catalyst for this revolution-less revolution. He aptly points out that “war is the greatest of all agents of change.” (p.71)  

It makes me wonder who Orwell really was. Who were his friends? What sort of information was he privy to? Maybe I’m over-suspicious. After all, he did work in British administration, albeit in lowly positions, any thinking person could have seen the trends in political and social thinking. The tendencies and qualities of bureaucrats speak mountains about the system they work for. 

Which, additionally, makes me wonder about America and what it will be like after the next war–which we are at the beginning of–is over. North American Union? New currency? Of course, we don’t have the same traditional cultural ideals that Britain had. Americans have always been more open to change and the only cultural trait that Americans have in common is the pursuit of money. Somehow I don’t think this bodes well for the future revolution-less revolution of the U.S.A.   

Empire, a word that gets bounced around quite a bit in reference to corporations, popularity, and nation states. Ok, so what is an empire after all? For me, the word empire makes me think of stodgy Brits in red costumes (hehe, I mean uniforms) talking about the “white man’s burden.” So obviously, looking back in history we have the Roman empire, the Muslim empire, the Greeks, the British, etc. etc. etc. All of these examples of empires have military conquest at their center, yet, seem to have more factors involved than mere conquest. Would Rome be considered an empire if they had merely taken some lands? Rather we see a sort of cultural hegemony where conquested territories had local puppet rulers who worked with Roman administrators and basically conformed to Roman culture. People spoke Latin and Greek and generally tried to “do as the Romans do” because it enabled one to better climb the social ladder. Thus, there seems to be more involved with being an empire than mere conquest and rule. Read the rest of this entry »

Mercenaries are nothing new in history. Irish warriors hired themselves out in the Middle Ages and William of Hesse-Kassel made a fortune hiring out German Mercenaries in the 18th century. However, the situation we find today is different than these two historic examples. Today, mercenaries are paid large salaries by private companies who, although they have close relationships with governments, are not actually government organizations themselves. This provides a much different scenario than individuals hiring themselves out to governments (the Irish) or a Prince hiring out his own military to other governments (Hesse-Kassel). I would say this privatized military more closely resembles activities of private European companies in colonization such as the East India Company. The East India Company was given a state sanctioned monopoly by the British crown in 1600 and although made up of private shareholders still contained many government officials in its members. The East India Company started out just trading but employed armies and eventually took over most of what we now know as India, even employing a Sepoy Army made up of Indians to help in this endeavor.

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Lawrence of Arabia has been a household name in the West, right up there with Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and perhaps even Peter O’Toole. In the late 20th century this was largely due to the latters portrayal of Lawrence in the 1962 film. This romantic portrayal shows Lawrence dressed as a bedouin dashing around on horseback showing the evil Germans and Turks who’s boss. However, the fame and romanticism surrounding T.E. Lawrence and the Arab revolt of WWI is due to an even earlier spread of propaganda.
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It’s a no-brainer that India is currently in the midst of a large economic boom. However, not very long ago She was suffering. The South Asian economy had been a center of economic activity since ancient times. When European companies arrived on the scene in the 17th and 18th century they attempted to insert themselves into a booming textile and spice trade. South Asian port cities exported spices, foods, and textiles to Asia and the West, some even say that in the mid 18th century 1/4 of all the worlds textiles were provided by South Asia.
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Iraq, a nation since 1920, war-torn, conflict-ridden, plagued by despotic rulers, and western political and economic aspirations. The area we now know as Iraq is also the site of many ancient civilizations. Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, and Arabians all built their monuments and cities in this area. A little overwhelmed with my self-driven project to find out more about the history of this “nation” I’ve read almost too much. Now I’m faced with the fact that I wrote a blog that is 3 single-spaced pages. Don’t worry I cut the lot and will not bore you with the whole thing. Do people really care about what the Persians called their Iraq province or when the Mongols sacked Baghdad? Well, perhaps a few people care, but I think my blog is already long enough for most of your TV-addled attention spans.

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British history is filled with intrepid adventurers who took off to foreign climes in search of wealth, fame, and freedom from British conventions. While many of these adventurers did tend to look on “natives” with a more sympathetic eye than Brits at home, prejudice and British patriotism still played a large role in their actions. Gertrude Bell is one such famous British adventurer. While her role is unusual because she was a woman, her actions and sentiments are not really much different from her male counterparts. At least not so far as I can see.
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So, I was browsing digg.com when I came upon a delightful article on how the ancient Vedic texts mention nothing of caste that one is born into. I thought this would be an interesting addition to my earlier article, “Caste, Simplified?” Regarding the formation of caste by the British and their Indian collaborators. I don’t really know anything about Vedic texts or Sanskrit, so I can’t corroborate, but I thought it was extremely interesting and the author seems pretty knowledgeable of the language and translation.

Somanatha, an ancient South-Asian city whose temple was allegedly raided by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026, became a rallying point for the British and later, Hindu Nationalists. The British ignored Hindu sources from the time period which made no mention of Ghazni’s raid. Rather, they relied solely on Muslim chronicles trying to legitimate their ruler’s power and legitimacy. In fact, they deliberately mistranslated these chronicles which wrote about various raids simply as war against a neighbouring kingdom–whether Muslim, Hindu, or Jain–and turned these commonplace raids into jihads, or holy wars against infidels. In reality, South Asia around this medieval time period was very diverse, fractured amongst many kingdoms. There was no Hindu/Muslim animosity. Rather Hindus and Muslims lived and worked together quite peacefully. The temple at Somanath around the time of Ghazni’s raid even had a dedication inscription by a local Muslim merchant in both Arabic and Sanskrit. To find the cause of the raid one must look at politics instead of religion.

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We often hear the old adage that History repeats itself. Many people, when they hear I graduated with a B.A. in History make some comment like “oh that is such a wonderful degree…we need to teach people not to repeat history…won’t we ever learn!” Now they could just be being nice as the other school of people say something lame like, “oh history, what’ll you do with that, teach?” Well, not that there isn’t anything to be learned from history, obviously there is. However, when you look closely at any situation, much less an historical one, you are boggled by details. Details, that in essence, make every situation unique and defy simple explanation. Well, considering this I’ve found a slew of famous British historians who’ve stated it clearly, History doesn’t repeat itself. Although there may be similar trends and strategies, expect the unexpected. Every situation must be faced with a fresh perspective. Instead of trying to force the past into the mold of the present we must learn, point blank, what can happen. One revolution is never the same as another, nor one war ever the same as another. However, the way opinions and propagandas can be mobilized is very similar even if the mold is different. So, is there really any significance to saying that history doesn’t repeat itself, exactly? Well, probably not, seems like a little bit of academic mind barfing to me.

Alright, I’ve heard so many misconceptions on this subject that I thought it deserved a little blog…

The caste system of India is looked on by many as a primitive leftover from the ancient past of India, oppressive, backwards, and needing reform. I’ve read a few news articles lately regarding how the current south-asian tech boom is slowly changing the rigidity of the caste system as companies prefer hiring based on ability rather than caste. Now, I’m not really going to go into that issue, sure all cultures are in a state of constant change, albeit some faster than others. However, the caste system itself–as we understand it–is a product of change. Particularly change wrought by the colonial system.

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