What has this pragmatic, partial discrimination done to men? The answer is mixed: Japanese men have enjoyed a sense of sexual privilege and superiority, which sometimes emerges on jam-packed subway trains, where anonymity protects.43 On the other hand, Japanese men help out in domains conventionally linked to women. Here, at the very beginning of Tokugawa (1610), is a merchant instructing his son on his duties:
With your own hands kindle the fire under the stove, for breakfast and dinner, damping the embers afterwards…. Going out behind the house, collect all the bits and pieces of rubbish: small lengths of rope should be cut up for mixing in cement…fragments of wood or broken bamboo, even as small as half an inch, should be stored, cleaned, and used as fuel for watch-fires…when buying things for the first time…go out and buy for yourself. Buy at the cheapest rates, and make careful note of the prices. Afterwards…you will know whether the articles [the servant] brings are too expensive or not…. Housekeeping may be said to be a matter of firewood, charcoal, and oil…. No matter what his calling, if a man does not take these troubles upon himself, he can never run a household successfully.44
“No matter what his calling…” This was a merchant talking, giving expression to antique, primary virtues. Japanese male children, in other words, were spoiled and yet not spoiled.
Economic development and political transformation have changed the details, but the values remain. Schooling today is highly competitive; examinations are scenes of combat. As cities have grown, commuting to work is a long travail. Fathers see much less of home and children, but that has only enhanced the role and responsibilities of women. Also soured many of them on the alleged joys of marriage. Women now attend universities with the men, get advanced degrees, seek executive careers. They still bump against the glass ceiling, and they remain shy, even tongue-tied, in the presence of men. But many are ready to give up on family to concentrate on career. In a society where male commuters have little time for wife and children, single women do not want for attention. Muslims would say, I told you so.
When I visited Japan in 1991 and was received to dinner, the hostess, if grandmotherly, would decline to dine with the men, but she served. If younger, she ate with us, and the children too. In an Arab house some years earlier, the women prepared the meal, but did not serve or even appear; the host received and served his guests. Two worlds.
There remains a common thread: Japanese society also has its testosteronic bravado and taste for violence. Japan has a long history of wars of aggression and oppression, all of them justified by national necessity. Nothing has done more to propel Japan. Nothing has done so much to set it back.
25
Empire and After
European overseas empire began in the fifteenth century with the Atlantic islands (Canaries, Madeiras) and pieces of North Africa, and more or less ended in the second half of the twentieth. Five hundred years of dominion, a long time. And yet, for all of colonialism’s enormous effects, it was a passing phenomenon in the larger sweep of world history. Pomp and pride on the one side, humiliations on the other—all are gone. Not forgotten; the memories remain. Yet the losses are reparable; the gains are savable; the tasks and opportunities lie ahead.
Empire, imperialism; colony, colonialism; the terms need definition.* Imperialism is the system (“principle or spirit”) and pursuit of empire—the dominion of one country over others. Empires arose as states arose, one stronger than another. Given this long pedigree and the link of empire to military conquest and diplomatic enterprise, to status, power, and wealth, “empire” and “imperialism” have been (once were) proud words. Thus the last gasp of King George V in January 1936: “How is the Empire?”
To note that empires go back to the dawn of history may seem a truism, but in fact it is no trivial assertion. Some insist, for example, that imperialism, which peaked around the end of the nineteenth century, is somehow an invention or by-product of modern capitalism—in Lenin’s words, “the highest stage of capitalism.” Building on this, they argue that empire was necessary (indispensable) to the prosperity and survival of modern capitalism. The tenacity of this belief can be measured by a copious literature averring that imperialism aimed above all at material gain, even where it manifestly cost and lost.1
History belies such intrinsic links to capitalism. Consider the ancient empires of Egypt, China, Assyria, Persia, Rome, etc.; or, in modern times, the late, unlamented Communist-Socialist empire of the Soviet Union. That so much ink has been spilled on this issue reflects the need to discredit the imperialists and capitalists by way of encouraging resistance and revolution. They’re in it for the money—what can be worse? Meanwhile bad definitions and explanations lead to bad conclusions.
Colonialism is imperialism writ dark: “For many it implies unjust social asymmetries, human abuses, and moral imperatives, which call for acts of resistance, demands for justice, and struggles for liberation.”2 The word “colony” started innocently enough: in the ancient world it meant a place of distant settlement—the Phoenician colony of Carthage or the Greek colonies in Italy. But settlement, we now know, implies some kind of displacement (nothing is so scarce as empty land), hence cannot be good or virtuous, at least not for the victims; so that settlement as system (colonialism) is clearly bad. In recent discourse, colonialism has broadened to denote “any economically or politically dependent condition,” whether or not it leads to displacement of the native population.3 This pejorative quality has led modern critics of foreign (Western) dominion to prefer colonialism to the older term of imperialism. Colonialism sounds worse.
European imperialism (colonialism)—I shall use the two terms interchangeably—goes back to the Middle Ages, to the Drang nach Osten (push to the east) of Teutons conquering Slavic lands, to the invasions by Norsemen of England and Normandy and by the English of Ireland, to the reconquista in Spain.4 Much of this expansion took the form of absorption. The conquerors melted into the indigenous population, to the point of effacing their own identity, or swallowed the conquered. (The tests are intermarriage, language, and personal names.)* Thus the Normans defeated the Anglo-Saxons (1066 and after), who had earlier chased out the Romans and subdued the native Britons (a Celtic people who had themselves conquered the native inhabitants), driving many of the Celtic speakers before them into Wales and across the Channel into what came to be known as Brittany. To this day speakers of Breton can listen to radio broadcasts in Welsh and understand much of what is said.†
The whole island of Britain, in other words, is a palimpsest of successive invasions and seizures, most of which have blurred into a unitary society; although some members of the conquered Welsh and Scots populations still dream of earlier independence and distinctive identity. One can find similar foci of grievance in the Basque country of Spain (but less in that of France), in Catalonia and Corsica, in the debris of the old Habsburg and Romanov empires; and the current tragedy of Bosnia reminds us that memories of defeat and conquest do last, or can be reawakened and manipulated, and that life is short but revenge long. The Turks defeated the Serbs at Kossovo in 1389; the Turks have long forgotten, but the Serbs have made reversal of this defeat the lodestone of their national aspirations.
One can continue around the world. Over long centuries, the Chinese drove to the south, subjugating and absorbing non-Han peoples. The Japanese conquered their “home” islands from the Ainu, reducing them to a relic in the far north. The Burmese migrated from their original home in Mongolia and gave their name to a land far to the south, absorbing most of the natives but leaving a number of peoples to fight with to the present day. The Arabs burst out of the desert into the Fertile Crescent, then swept across North Africa, converting most of their subjects to Islam. They carved out Muslim states, and their language became the common definer of these diverse populations. (As of 1998, the only official language in once-French Algeria will be Arabic.) As a result, our Eurocentric term Middle East extends to the African shores of the Atlantic.
Clear
ly, the common view of imperialism as a Western invention and monopoly visited on non-European peoples is wrong. * Yet that is what most people think of as imperialism. To be sure, something different happened when Europeans sailed or rode around the world and subdued strange tribes and nations by means of superior weapons and knowledge. These far places and peoples were culturally, geographically, and physically distant. Whereas earlier conquests were next door and implied absorption or assimilation, these strange lands were viewed as prizes, as fields of opportunity—not as components, but as annexes. The native population? A lesser breed—usable, improvable, but not potentially European. The mother country did not envisage a fusion of old and new, though this could and did happen, as in Spanish America and in Portuguese colonies in both the New and Old worlds.† Sport tells the story. In 1898, a British governor in West Africa had two cricket pitches built, one for Europeans, the other for natives. When the two teams sportingly played each other, these games became racial contests; and when the African side began to win, the competition had to be discontinued.5 We have come a long way since then: less colonial pride and more colonial losses.
The annexation and exploitation of these distant lands took many forms. For the Spaniards, the heart of the matter was treasure. Their empire consisted of veins of ore linked to local and regional supply lines of labor, food, and manufactures, and to sea lines stretching back to Europe. The Portuguese in Asia, on the other hand, worked in lands inhabited by much larger and, for them, unconquerable populations. They had to build on small, defensible holdings such as Goa—points of presence—and radiate from there, buying, selling, and extorting protection money from local merchants.**
The Dutch and English sought trade, although commerce often led to intervention in local quarrels and land takings. Government and security cost money, for men of war and men at arms. But territory could be turned into privilege and monopoly, and the costs of governance could be shifted to both the home country and the subject population. Besides, the proconsuls in the field had their own agenda; the Spanish were not the only conquistadores.
Once installed, Dutch and British aimed at managed cultivation, going well beyond what nature provided. Empire is a story of botanical enterprise, moving crops to soils and climes of opportunity: sugar starting in the Indian Ocean and working round the globe to the Caribbean islands; tea transplanted from China to India and Ceylon (India tea vs. China tea); rubber seeds smuggled from Brazil and planted in Malaya; cinchona (source of quinine) from South America to St. Helena to Java; oleaginous plants from the New World to West Africa; coffee here, cocoa there. Here the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew on the banks of the Thames, a princess’s hobby to start with, played a leading role—a model of science and commerce conjoined. All of this was more profitable and durable than pillage or extraction, though obviously no one objected to treasure trove—over the centuries, diamonds in India and South Africa, gold in Australia and Africa, oil in Burma and the East Indies.
Private and special interests got in the way of rational, prudent intentions. The merchants themselves sought trade, not territory as such. They would have done business with the devil if it meant profits. But they did not want to be robbed or bullied by native dealers or officials, who saw all traders as potential prey. So when Europeans ran into trouble, they called on their home governments for help.
Governments typically pitched in. To be sure, their starchy, largely incompetent representatives, selected more for family and political connections than for merit, adored form and protocol. * (The biographies of these stuffed shirts make one wonder how the British ever built and held an empire. But a few exceptional individuals could make up for a horde of placemen, the more so as genteel favorites were only too happy to leave the work to their subordinates.) These wellborn officials often resented the traders as crass and rude, greedy and importunate. Too bad. Businessmen were only too ready to go “outside channels” and appeal directly to London or Paris, where money counted.
Besides, officials had their own care for promotions and enrichment. Empire drew such types, men who did not want to spend their lives as magistrate in some bucolic home county, men of pride and power and, if we are to believe the reports, men sometimes drawn by the sexual ambiguities and freedoms of an interracial, anomic world. These were not healthful climes, and many an official died early; they drank like fish, and alcohol is a poison. But vigorous, mettlesome men think themselves immortal. Meanwhile they spoke of “duty” and “improvement”—a “call” to higher things.6
Higher things included conquest, “dominion over palm and pine.” The sages in the Colonial Office might try to leash agents abroad, but it took months for instructions to arrive, plenty of time for the fait accompli. “Peccavi [I have sinned],” wrote Sir Charles Napier to his superiors in London—a one-word pun to soften his disobedience in taking Sindh in 1842 in the face of explicit orders to the contrary. So over the centuries, bit by bit and bite by bite, the British, for example, found themselves picking up large and small pieces of territory: the whole of India, much of Burma, Canada all the way to the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, plus watering holes and refueling stations, strategic power points, refuges along the major trade routes and on the periphery of great markets (thus Gibraltar, Malta, St. Helena, Capetown, Bombay, Singapore, Hong Kong, Aden). Such places paid their cost and made a string of pearls around the globe. Some of them were prizes of imperial ambition; others, of mercantile interest. But at bottom, all of them were the reward of superior power.*
In the old days, students of world (or European) history learned of “Old” and “New” empires. The old were the territories taken from about 1500 to 1800: the American dominions of Spain, the English and French holdings in North America, the Portuguese, Dutch, and British grabs in the Indian Ocean. Then, around the turn to the nineteenth century, almost all of the American portions of these “old empires” broke away from the mother country. For many in Europe, these losses proved the folly of the whole enterprise: was ever so much wasted by so many on so few? As a result, we were taught, the appetite for colonies abated. For a century after 1763 (Treaty of Paris between Britain and France), imperialism was said to be marking time.
British domestic politics gave substance to this chronology. The Whigs, ever practical, called the whole business a mistake, money thrown away on uncivilized, ungrateful, disloyal subjects (George Washington and company)—“shrewd, artful, and cunning people.”7 Some even advocated freeing colonies that had not asked for independence.
But of course not. Something so clearly the expression of power was not going to stop just as the Industrial Revolution was empowering Europeans and enhancing their ability to survive in once fatal environments. To the contrary, imperialism was very busy during these decades, as the French Algerian venture (1830), the British occupation of India and advances in Burma, the Russian conquests in Siberia and the Caucasus, and the American expansion westward—among others—all showed. It was the historians who had a blind spot; that, and a doctrinaire notion that empire had to wait for the call of a mature (fading?) capitalism.
This call, we were taught, explained the “New Imperialism.” Beginning in the late 1860s, the growing indocility of the proletariat at home turned covetous eyes toward exploitable workers abroad. Africa in particular, but also pieces of Asia and Pacific islands, became targets of opportunity for all the major European nations. Among them, Germany, which belatedly decided that it could not be a world power without overseas possessions. When the dust had settled, all of Africa lay under one or another European government. The only exceptions: Liberia, an American project for returning blacks to their home; and Ethiopia, which the Italians tried to grab and failed.
This “New Imperialism” differed from the Old. It too was supposedly based on rational, material interest, but in fact these late acquisitions promised little. To be sure, some of the lands did contain potentially valuable resources, but these treasures were generally unknown at the time of a
nnexation. Much of the land-grabbing was strategic (cf. Cape to Cairo) or preemptive (better mine than yours). Subsequent discoveries were happy surprises and sometimes so changed the incentives as to provoke new fighting for control. Thus southern African gold mines drew a flood of rough-and-ready prospectors to the Transvaal, spawned disputes with the Afrikaner authorities, brought Britain into the quarrel, and led to the Boer War.
Radical and skeptical observers denounced this late land grab as, first, the product of capitalist greed, and then of need—a prior condition of European prosperity. The first was partly true. Greed now had free play—not necessarily capitalist greed, but simple human greed. Thanks to repeating rifles and machine guns, grabbing and killing were now easy—so easy that European brutes rejoiced at massacring natives like game birds and called them “brutes.” (For so-called gentlemen, hunting was a school for brutality and cowardice. It still is.) Here is the young Winston Churchill, anticipating the imminent battle of Omdurman, revenge for Gordon at Khartum: “…a good moment to live,” he wrote, and: “Of course we should win. Of course we should mow them down.” And: “Nothing like the battle of Omdurman will ever be seen again. It was the last link in the long chain of those spectacular conflicts whose vivid and majestic splendour has done so much to invest war with glamour.” Native peoples soon learned to disappoint their conquerors by giving up too quickly. No killing; no medals and promotions.8
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor Page 50
