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Blaut makes an early statement: ‘The belief that finally
peters down to us is that the West has some unique historical
advantage, some special quality which gives it permanent
superiority over the others’. Such a view was built up and
aided by an industry of unselfconscious writing and
representation, some sympathetic, some vitriolic. Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe teaches Friday to call him Master and in one stroke,
polarises the world into civilised and primitive. Crusoe’s
imaginings of the savagery of the inhabitants of the place he
finds himself shipwrecked have continued to date in the
cinematic representation of Tom Hanks in The Castaway or
much earlier in The Blue Lagoon and many other films one
may not care to remember. It is amazing how shipwreck (or
airplane disasters in modern times) remained a favourite theme
in European texts which helpfully allowed the European to be an
adventurer/discoverer venturing into the unknown. More
seriously, Marx’s (in)famous papers on British rule in India
discovers colonialism to be the ‘unconscious tool of history
in bringing about . . . revolution.’ Said’s Culture and
Imperialism has gives us a veritable list of novels, opera,
and other cultural artifacts which define the pattern of
relationships between the Western world and its overseas
territories. Connecting Conrad and Jane Austen with this
enterprise, Said holds them culpable of depicting native peoples
as ‘marginally visible’ and ‘people without History’.
Blaut points out
that the enterprise of creating public opinion, consciously or
not, begins early. In school, one is taught about inventions and
discoveries, all of which are linked to the West. The best books
are written in the West which we must read; we follow western
atlases and our view of the sizes of countries depends upon
these; we may now give credit for many of history’s marvels to
the East, but all the systems of the world — Democracy,
Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Modern State, Industry, Stock Markets,
the concept of Freedom — naturally come from the West.
This gives us a model of a ‘two-sector world’, one with an
Inside and an Outside.
This trajectory of
ideas is called ‘the diffusionist world model’ by Blaut.
Such a thinking was based on several ‘myths’ or claims: that
all non-European regions were empty of people which allowed
Europeans to settle down without displacing anybody; that people
of the new world were nomadic and mobile and had no concept of
private property enabling the Europeans to own and occupy
property with equanimity; and that these people were also
intellectually bereft and decadent allowing the Europeans to
partake in the mission civilisatrice. ‘The only way in
which the non-European world can progress and change for the
better is by the diffusion of ideas from Europe or by the spread
of Europeans themselves who become bearers of these new and
innovative ideas’, writes Blaut explaining that the selective
rise of Europe took place owing to precisely such
justifications. Europe happily compensates itself by taking away
plantation products, minerals, labour and so on, realising all
the while that nothing can really make up for the gift of
civilisation. In other words, colonialism legitimises itself by
perpetuating the belief that it gives more than it receives.
Not so long ago, I
was reading Paul Johnson’s statement about the end of slavery
—that ‘great turning point in the story of humanity’ —and
the historic role that the British played in its abolition. I
was amazed that in the spirit of flaunting British honour and
integrity, Johnson completely glosses over the British
imperative in beginning slavery, one which they can hardly be
‘proud’ of. Johnson also shows how Africa faces a ‘future
of poverty and tyranny’ owing to British withdrawal.
Independence came to Africa at least one generation too soon, he
wails. But what of Singapore, we might ask, which was ‘entirely
created’ by the British and which has done well for itself? It
is to counter such reactionary ideology which still prevails
that Blaut’s book must be read. The age of empire may be by no
means over!
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CENTURIES
ago, a ‘reality’ was constructed: that there was a centre and
thus a periphery. The Centre was propped up by its innovativeness,
advancement, adulthood and scientific temper whereas its other, by
default, acquired connotations of imitativeness, sluggishness,
childhood and sorcery. The Centre led and the Periphery lagged.
Unfortunately, this view has endured. Needless to say, the West is
the centre to the rest of the world because the belief systems it
engendered during the Enlightenment phase created permanent
divisions between the West and the rest. Such are the concerns of
Blaut in The Colonizer’s Model of the World.
