Imperial Perspectives (Part III)

by Jim Miles

2005

The third part of the Imperial Perspectives series discusses the concept of history and empires through a look at both Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ and Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’. Neither stands up to critical examination, as empires and civilizations are far too intertwined and in continual development to fit either model. From there, from the very first European footsteps on American soul, the American Empire as progeny of the other empires began its unique journey.

III. Roots of Empire End of History

The genesis of the American empire is within the cyclical spiral of all previous ‘western’ empires with roots entwined through the great empires studied by most social studies and cultural geography students. History is not a linear process with distinct entities moving along distinct paths and timelines, nor are there any prophecies or destinies determining their eventual fate other than the lessons that history itself might teach if the politicians and warriors were able students. There is no end of history as postulated by Fukuyama, “What we may be witnessing in not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." [1]

Taken just as the title suggests, the end of history is a naïve concept but is clarified in his introduction to the book that followed the article when he said, “It meant, rather, that there would be no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all of the really big questions had been settled.” [2] In other words, liberal democracy as represented by the achievements of the United States and other nations in their triumph over communism represents the highest form of institutional government available.

If that is true, it is a particularly scary thought, as our current institutions are well underdeveloped and the current failures of the U.N., for many varied reasons including the recalcitrance of the big powers, suggest that there is ample room for improvement of supra-national institutions. The rhetoric of liberal democracy has been used and represented as reasons for empire since the beginning of empires. The underlying thesis that corporate capitalism goes hand in glove as part of liberal democracy is perhaps the largest flaw in the theory as there is nothing liberal nor democratic about the institutions – the World Trade Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund nor the large corporate structures themselves – that govern our current economic life. Many arguments could be presented that parliamentary democracy and capitalism, as forms of governance are not the penultimate developments of human intelligence, not the end of a linear historical development.

Evolutionary Civilizations

History is not cyclical any more than it is linear. There certainly are similarities between societies, but the growth of technology and the advancement of ideals creates changes as empires evolve and grow, making a spiral, an organic growth similar to the double helix of cellular evolution a more apt analogy. Societies and empires do not rise and fall in isolation but are subject to the thousands of influences brought about by the daily interactions of commerce, arts, literature, military, and science with neighbouring and distant peoples. Few if any peoples isolate themselves purposefully and by definition do not become empires, although domestic trade and cultural activities can flourish as they did under the Tokugawa shogunate era in Japan while control was maintained with the traditional hierarchal structure of governing. The “clash of civilizations” is the grand theory postulated by Sam Huntington that tries to explain where the world has come from and where it will continue to go as these entities called civilizations clash with each other. [3]

But history shows that while civilizations, and in particular empires, may be hostile to one another at times, there is also at times a great florescence of culture and technology as the learnings of different cultures are either imposed one on another militarily or are infused through each other by way of commercial and intellectual interactions. Current events shows that civilizations are highly intertwined, with Japanese, Chinese and American culture (which itself is an amalgam of many other cultures, particularly Puritan, African and Hispanic) competing and supplementing and learning from each other in relatively peaceful ways, at least since the Second World War. The Spanish world under Muslim rule is another prime example of this and very relevant to today’s current events. The cultural, scientific and commercial interactions of Christian, Jew, and Muslim can be credited with reviving Europe from its feudalistic manners and providing the fuel for the enlightenment. Taking history back a step further, the areas of the Middle East and into India and China were the location of many developments that our current civilization could not exist without (the wheel, the mathematical concept of ‘0’ come to mind) . Both the ideas of ‘end of history’ and the ‘clash of civilizations’ are misnomers that lead the reader away from the positive interactions of societies and peoples, and at the same time provide some rationale and apologetics for the current American Empire.

Born as Empire

Its very beginning, its very gestation, predicted that America was an empire and would continue to grow and act like an empire, sweeping away all impediments to its enlightened conquest of first the eastern Indian nations, then of the Spanish and French colonies, finally reaching the west coast, burying all the intervening Indians in the path, and buying out the last of the Russian empire on this continent. It is born of the same society as the British Empire, and as its progeny has maintained that empirical drive and as can be seen today, the child is now supporting the empirical parent in the Middle East.

The empire encompasses all facets of American life, the genocide of the indigenous people, the ecocide of the environment, the removal of resources from the hinterland to the heartland with the hinterland becoming more and more global in reach as the decades pass, the push of corporations towards a free market globe when these institutions are neither free nor democratic within themselves but become another empire unto themselves beyond the grasp of nations. It is accomplished with the interweaving of rhetoric, bombast, justifications and apologetics for the betterment of the world, for the liberation or peoples, for the spread of democracy, yet does not spend any regard looking at the peoples that have been crushed, the environments that are being destroyed, and the servitude that it still requires of those within the empire to feed wealth back to the centre, the heartland.

It is a nebulous heartland, centred more in law and rules and regulations and class standards rather than in a geographic place. It rides on the back of the military-industrial giants who create the space, both geographically and ideally, for the establishment of empirical rule in all areas where resources and markets can be found, obtained, and created: “The primary goals of U.S. imperialism have always been to open up investment opportunities to U.S. corporations and to allow such corporations to gain preferential access to crucial natural resources.” [4] Since the beginning, the nascent empire acted consistently with its ongoing history.

Discovering America

The actions of Columbus in decimating the Arawaks of the Caribbean, of Cortez against the Aztec, and the actions of Pizzaro against the Incas made the actions of the first white settlers to the North American mainland – ignoring the failed Viking explorations and the temporary fishing stations established in more northern waters – seem somewhat routine. That none of these people were truly explorers and discoverers except from the myopic eurocentirc viewpoint has played a large part in the amnesia of history as it is written today, an amnesia that conveniently forgets these slaughters or still writes them off as a superior civilization taking its natural place over an inferior uncivilized people. As argued by the Pilgrims in New England, the Indians had not subdued the land, giving them only a natural right, but not a civil right as interpreted by law.

The Bible also came in handy in a self-serving manner using references that excused the disenfranchisement of the natives as it allowed “the heathen for thine inheritance” and allowed violence against “they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation”. [5] The first successful colony at Jamestown continued the tone for the rest of the empirical drive across North America when the settlers, looking for revenge when some of their own joined the Indians in order to survive, “fell upon an Indian settlement, killed fifteen or sixteen Indians, burned the houses, cut down the corn growing around the village, took the queen of the tribe and her children into boats, then ended up throwing the children overboard “and shoteinge owtt their Braynes in the water.”” [6]

When King Charles I gave a proprietary charter (essentially meaning a private fiefdom) to Lord Baltimore, the denigrating and condescending attitude of Christian European was obvious in the wording. The natives were described as “savages having no knowledge of the Divine Being” and the colonists were given the right “(if God shall grant it) to vanquish and captivate them, and the Captives to put to Death, or, according to their Discretion, to save, and to do all other and singular the Things which appertain, or have been accustomed to appertain unto the Authority and Office of a Captain-General of an Army.” [7] Straight from the beginning the American colonies imported the attitudes and methods of the British Empire – claim the land, eradicate the natives, use the army.

These actions were repeated time and again across the continent, the underlying factor “was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property.” [8] This drive for personal property, personal wealth of all kinds, leads to the establishment of a plutocracy rather than a democracy.

Notes

[1] Fukuyama, Francis. “The End of History” , The National Interest, Summer, 1989. reproduced in http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm
[2] The introduction to The End of History
[3] Huntington, Samuel, “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs. New York. Volume 72, No. 3, Summer 1993.
[4] Foster, John Bellamy, and McChesney, Robert W. Pox Americana – Exposing the American Empire. Monthly Review Press, New York, 2004. p. 9.
[5] Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States 1492 – Present. Perennial, (HarperCollins) New York, 2003. p.14.
[6] Ibid, p. 12.
[7] The Charter of Maryland : 1632
[8] Zinn, ibid, p.16

© Jim Miles. Used with permission.