Review The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity [1]
Hard to escape the last c5000 years of history, and especially the last c500 years?
1/ The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow; 2021; Allen Lane [UK] / Farrar, Straus and Giroux [US].
A/ INTRODUCTION
This is an important and ambitious book, probing the deep history of humankind, back into the Palaeolithic, and wondering above all could there have been a relatively kinder outcome today.
The focus of the book is before recorded history, mainly addresses archaeological and anthropological evidence.
From their survey they muse that the overall outcome today might have been different: 1/ fewer authoritarian governments; 2/ less hierarchy / stratification / inequality; 3/ less “exploitation”; 4/ more personal freedoms etc.
In particular, coming out of the last ice age they speculate we had choices along the way which might have upset the inevitability of the conventional long term narrative of “linear progress”, from hunter-gathering through farming / agriculture through cities / urbanisation to “civilisations”, defined by science / technology, higher income, and literacy / writing etc.
However a close scrutiny of history since the rise of Near East “civilisations” from 4th millennium BCE, then especially over the last c500 years since the Renaissance, offers no obvious instances where relevant agents had “choices” which might have softened the overall collective outcome for humanity
B/ SUMMARY
Contemplating the modern world in the context of humanity’s deeper past the overwhelming confronting reality is how radical has been the effectivetake off of technology informed liberal democratic modernity – and how recent, mostly post WW2 – delivering for large numbers globally historically unparalleled income / health / longevity outcomes, and practical individual freedoms.
However despite the success of the novel liberal democratic model – notwithstanding imperfections – it still applies only to about 13% of the world population, or 37% adding India, Brazil and Indonesia.
This suggests the model is not necessarily easy to adopt.
In wondering how matters might have been different today for global humanity, and taking advantage of the ever growing relevant data sets, the authors focus on investigating conditions in human societies long ago, probing the “dawn” in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic, but arguably evidence from the last 5000 years matters much more for the ancestry of conditions today than the 5000 years before that [into the Neolithic, back to the start of the pivotal shift from hunter gathering to farming], let alone further back to the Palaeolithic, because it is more recent, much more extensive, and in particular offers an evident discernible long thread to conditions in recent times.
Thus, owing it seems to sustained adverse climate shift, large cities [urbanisation] integrated with adjacent large scale irrigation – thence “civilisations”, writing, science and technology – suddenly arose from late 4th millennium BCE in the Near East Fertile Crescent, especially lower Mesopotamia, also Egypt.
It became a radical new political-economic model driven by its fortuitous economic success, bringing forth centralised autocratic government [hence hierarchy / stratification, suited to organising the economic activity] overseen initially by priests then soon kings / emperors demanded for their martial and leadership skills, because the economic fecundity of the cities quickly encouraged warfare, military competition for the scarce suitable sites.
It quickly established a new model – based on competing militant autocracies overseen by priest / ‘church’ assisted ambitious hereditary monarchs and self-interested implicated aristocracies – which has essentially prevailed till today.
Thus, looking at recorded history following the rise of Near East / European “civilisations”, and also China / Asia, striking is how sustained and tenacious have been militant autocracies, and per contra how rare has been even proto-democratic state experience, let alone the dramatic post WW2 break out by liberal democracies.
Autocracy has apparently been the naturalor de facto state of affairs, despite being inherently unstable, violence-prone, and economically sub-optimal, owing mainly to: a/ the genetic lottery for kings and their challengers, and b/ no formal institutional mechanisms for leadership succession, disputes resolution and testing / acknowledging popular consent; c/ mostly ineffective property rights.
Looking closer at history from this long period we see democracy only emerged where:
1/ some dispersed groups of people were encouraged by common adversity / opportunity to co-operate among themselves to address existential challenges, and in so doing uncovered material innovations in technology and culture;
and 2/ they could do this mainly on their own devices, their lands and people not ready prey to intruding covetous autocratic imperial powers, run by hereditary ruling kings and complicit priests.
Classical Greece [7th – 4th C BCE] was the stand out case study, a unique and radical proto-modern experience, for its politics, economy, philosophy and culture [literature and art]. It emerged among peripheral dispersed peoples in some city states [poleis], apparently in response to opportunities provided by a conducive regional political context, after sustained adverse climate shift c1200BC existentially upended large eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age empires, allowing the Greeks to go about their business, freed of intruding imperial overseers.
China at the east rim of Eurasia has long remained an inherently unstable, often violent, inward, dualistic monolith, a Han core later wrestling northern non-Han tribes. The militant, culture thin tribes north twice prevailed [Mongols c1279 and Manchu, c1640], but each time joined, adapted to the monolith, moved into the Chinese house. So China has remained a traditional under-performing inherently sub-optimal autocracy for millennia, achieving only some islands of relative calm and prosperity [eg early 6th C Sui dynasty, early 7th C Tang dynasty, and periods of the 11th C Song dynasty] in otherwise mostly a sea of strife. In a long history there were never even brushes with proto-democracy.
At the west end of Eurasia liberal democracy did slowly, finally arise from among a clutch of countries / states, especially England, also early Mediaeval ‘Italy’ and later the Netherlands, but slowly and painfully
What seems important is that, unlike in China, a number of competing [if shifting] independent political entities emerged and that while the history was chronically violent the competition was eventually “constructive” in terms of advancing their economies and knowledge.
The sustained common thread in the long problematic gestation of “Western civilisation” [especially since the 16th Renaissance]was, has been, the very “un-Western” identity-biased reactionary behaviour [compounded especially of hereditary [birth] status, nationalism, religion, also imperialist racist exploitation] resisting violently the practical emergence of identity blind “Western” values/ ideals.
The emphatic post WW2 consolidation of technology informed affluent liberal democracy – only 75 years so far – offers a dramatic contrast with the millennia since large cities arose. A feature now has been its spread beyond Europe, to others regions globally, especially in east Asia, to the extent that identity-blind “Western” liberal values [cf free and fair elections, governance, individual human rights etc] are now recognised globally, like Newton’s Laws having universal relevance, as expressed especially through the charters of the UN and many other international bodies.
That reformist “Western” values did eventually, finally emerge, gain real traction in the wake of WW2, bears some analogy to how cautious mammals survived the long reign [over 130my, c200-66.0my] of the dominant dinosaurs, then prospered afteranasteroid defined the K-Pg boundary. Thus did the WW1/WW2 “asteroid” soundly cauterise long reigning reactionary politics in Europe [also Japan], allowing “Western” values tofinally take root, in the West then also especially beyond.
The authors wonder could matters have been different [better?] today.
But the post WW2 break out by liberal democracy may be even more fortuitous than it appears.
Thus given England’s pivotal pioneering role in nurturing liberal democracy [cf its Mediaeval proto-democratic behaviour, from the Saxon / Viking / Celtic 10th C through the Norman 13th C, to charters and parliaments, thence to it launching modern parliamentary party politics in the early 18th C after sidelining its monarchy in the 17th C] it’s hard not to see how the absence of the protective English Channel would have considerably altered the course of European history, like facilitating much easier engagement by France and Spain with England.
Secondly, the recent history of Europe would surely have been quite different if Nazi Germany had chosen not to invade Russia in June 1941.
Overall, in the face of all the relevant evidence it’s hard to take seriously the authors’ contention that past state actors had available “choices” such that the world today could be much different, like freer and less “stratified”, and still just as well off economically and technologically. This leaves their hopes perhaps more as wishful thinking, drawing on evidence selected and arranged to fit preconceptions?
C/ WORLD TODAY
A visiting Martian, with no immediate access to relevant available history, would soon observe two broadly different ways of life among global states in themodern world, a radical dichotomy:
1/ Liberal democratic states [more or less, with local variations] in Europe, North America, some states in east Asia and outliers like Australia and New Zealand, with conditions are marked by:
a/ emphatic comparative economic “success”: high per capita income; superior health / longevity; generally competitive private markets; private property; effective rule of law; and the economies supervised / regulated by governments, trying to keep competition fair and in accord with the “rules”.
b/ comparative political “success”: eg comparatively high personal freedoms; effective representative democratic legislative bodies; full franchise voting participation.
2/ Assorted other “states”, near all experiencing various degrees of comparative “failure” in terms of economic success, social violence, low effective personal freedoms, autocratic governments.
The group includes two notable large states [PR China and Russia], both subject to “revolutions” in the 20th C which steered both abruptly away from liberal reform, instead reinstalled vigorous autocratic traditional nationalism, if under the guise of an ideology imported [ironically] from West Europe.
The heart of the liberal democratic model – compared with long running traditional centralist autocracies – is deliberately, constructively, harnessing theskills and self-interested aspirations / ambitions of freely associating individuals, employed by or owning businesses, operating in competitive mostly private markets, but, crucially:
1/ subject to effective rule of law [including enforced property rights], the markets supervised / regulated by competent governments to keep competition fair, to police infractions of the rules.
2/ governments are in turn “supervised” by the “people”, their consent expressed through laborious democratic institutional processes.
The model has been radically successful but in practice is always effectively sub-optimal, imperfect, not least because:
a/ There are always malefactors in all societies at all time, to steal, to try to skirt or bend the Rules, since tomb robbing in old Egypt. It includes individuals, gangs, corporations, and some agents now state sponsored.
b/ Economic and technical change are inherent in the model, hence is constant shift in employment structures, from which there will always be casualties.
c/ Inequality is an issue, even a problem. Some degree of hierarchy / stratification is inevitable in the economic processes, though it’s long been even more evident in most traditional societies? Especially „civilisations“.
d/ Liberal democracy does not run itself, needs, importantly, citizens prepared for it, through education, socialisation, training, starting with family, community. It needs and open minded tolerant mind-set, commited to the model, and does not work where cultural „soil“ is hostile, a major reason the model has failed to take root yet in much of the world.
Note that a successful private liberal market economy is crucial to effective expression of individual freedoms:
i/ it is the main venue for facilitating expressing freedom: of expression [cf the media], movement, association, job choice etc
ii/ private property is crucial to exercising individual freedom, for funding life activities, family, work and play.
In its absence: a/ individuals have far less effective freedom, are much more dependent on the state, hence on decisions by bureaucrats; and b/ the economic outcomes for the state are well below optimal.
A crucial overarching principle is that all citizens are equal before the law, the institutional democratic / government processes being identity neutral, ie oblivious to birth status, nation, race / ethnicity, religion, gender.
The visitor might wonder why the gap between the two groups but would not know:
- that in terms of economic, political, health / longevity and science / technology outcomes, the liberal democratic model – notwithstanding internal debate and dissent – is by far the most radical outcome in human history.
- But that the success of the liberal democracies is very recent historically, only clearly evident since WW2, only about 75 years ago, whereas recorded history, say since the emergence of large cities, goes back near 5000 years, and anatomically modern humans [AMH] have been around over 100,000 years.
- The gestation of effective practical liberal democracy was long and painful.
- The success of liberal democracy in states depends much on conducive cultural “soil”, that most of the states struggling with social, economic and political outcomes do prioritise promotion of traditional loyalties, identities like birth rank / status; / nation / tribe; religion, and also gender.
D/ THE JOURNEY: Why the “take off” by homo sapiens now?
Based on fossil evidence, especially from Africa, primate species Homo / Australopithecus have been evident / evolving for at least say 5 million years, but the “take off” by AMH occurred only during the last 50-100ky, ie during the last 1-2% of this long time interval.
A pattern of successive ice ages began c40my ago, during the Eocene epoch, but intensifying near the end of the Pliocene epoch, during the subsequent Quaternary period’s Pleistocene epoch [2.58mya – c11,700y], evident in approximately 13 interglacial periods over the last 1 million years.
The “take off” finally occurred during last of these ice ages, from c50kya, during the Upper Paleolithic period, where evidence of “progress” in homo cognitive skills / behaviour is now widely established, especially in abundant “ice age art” [well known in Mediterranean Europe, in France and Spain, but also now known in Asia [Indonesia] and possibly Colombia], and also in burials.
Why not a take off after the previous ice age, during previous interglacial period, c 120kya? Presumably AMH were in some way not quite “advanced” enough.
Note there is speculation that the compressed succession of Pleistocene ice ages may have helped eventually provoke or “force” advances in homo life enduring / survival capabilities, these repeated major adverse climate shifts stressing, challenging group survival.
E/ THE JOURNEY: Human nature?
Human nature is focussed above all on survival, meaning competition for 1/ food and shelter, and associated resources and lands; and 2/ women, among the males.
Importantly overlaid on these circumstances there emerged by at least the Palaeolithic an important spiritual dimension, appetite, especially as species homo became aware of his mortality and as he tried to make sense of, adapt to his fickle natural circumstances, especially like weather and climate, also tectonic activity, like volcanoes and earthquakes.
H/ THE JOURNEY: Hunter-gather bands
The humankind social-political model for millions of years was hunter-gathering, in small bands and tribes, nomadic within regional locales.
Evidence for how this model worked comes from palaeontology and archaeology, and also from anthropological research on relevant groups surviving into modern times.
There’s much evidence hunter-gathering was not all that peaceful and “democratic”, was relatively violent, within and between bands. Also there would have been little personal freedom, analogous to choices available today for many in affluent liberal democracies.
People then were part of small communities with clear gender roles for a start, the women mainly assigned to breeding, child care, food gathering and preparation, with little formal role politically.
Competition was likely inherent, within and also between bands, and especially among / between males, for authority and women.
I/ THE JOURNEY: Why the big gap [c5000y] from farming / agriculture to big cities?
Farming / agriculture emerged in the Levant region of the Fertile Crescent [in today’s Syria, SW Turkey] after the Last Glacial Maximum [LGM, c 20kya] and, in particular, in the wake of the comparatively sudden end of the Younger Dryas cool period [which had interrupted warming after the LGM for c1200y], around c9500-9700BC.
There some hunter-gatherers started to establish small settlements / villages / small towns, started small scale farming, to domesticate grasses and other plants, and to herd / domesticate animals like sheep and goats, undertaking pastoral activity.
Some groups were near the coast, allowing access also to sea and shore food.
Many likely continued hunting and foraging alongside the settled activities.
And some also started to investigate irrigation where conditions suited.
But the big puzzle then is why it took approximately another 5000 years before large cities emerged. Why not in another 1000 years, or 10,000 years?
This suggests that something happened to provoke, impel, force the change, and that something approximately mid 4th millennium BCE [c3500ya] was almost certainly sustained [100s of years?] adverse climate change [cold and dry, aridification] at the end of the Holocene Climate Optimum [HCO], especially in lower Mesopotamia [on the Twin Rivers] and Egypt [on the Nile], there feeling the end of the African Humid Period, c16-5.5kya, the drying of the Sahara.
In both cases much larger settlements than before [cities] emerged comparatively quickly alongside, integrated with large scale river-based irrigation.
The lower Mesopotamia location, near the Persian Gulf, came with rich fertile soils [from long fluvial deposition], responsive to irrigation, and also allowed access to food from the nearby marshes and sea.
J/ THE JOURNEY: Big cities – radical new model, “take off” heralding first “civilisations”
There was a marked step difference between small scale farming alongside settlements [numbering 1000s of people?] and the big cities [c50-100k?] / urbanisation which heralded a radical new society model, in multiple dimensions.
1/ Economy
The big cities, starting almost certainly with Uruk [hence ‘Iraq’], arose alongside large scale river based irrigation [a long familiar technology but on small scale] to oversee, integrate with the now large scale food production activity.
This required organisation and direction of the workforce, and storage / distribution of the produce.
Also growing artisan activity in the cities in turn provided various goods like: 1/ those used in food production; 2/ consumer goods, textiles, pottery, jewellery etc; 3/ weapons. Metal working technology [launching the Bronze Age] was a key associated innovation.
Note this was mainly a centralised command economy model, with a minor role for private markets which would become important much later.
2/ Politics
The new economic imperative demanded, suited, major central administration and organisation, so brought forth a centralised autocratic / authoritarian political-economic model, meaning hierarchy / stratification and limited personal freedoms.
It also seems priests had important executive duties initially but kings quickly emerged – especially because of demand for martial services [fighting] – and in turn, before long, emperors, like Sargon of Akkad.
Thus the economic fecundity of the cities encouraged warfare, military competition for them, exacerbated because the number of attractive riverside irrigation sites would have been scarce.
3/ Religion
Religion became important, reflecting a big popular demand for the tempting proposition of possible advantageous supernatural engagement, through acceptance of, belief in divine agents, various providential deities, especially given:
a/ offering explanations for fickle nature: climate / weather, also tectonic activity, volcanoes and earthquakes, which their societies had existential exposure to.
They were dependent on rainfall far away to feed the big rivers, but that could mean too much water [floods] or too little [drought], and also include storms.
b/ the obvious ubiquitous appeal of an after-life;
These beliefs were reflected tangibly in the large resources applied to religious purposes, especially to temples, and in Egypt to the elaborate expensive tombs for the religion infatuated pharaohs.
4/ Writing / literacy
Writing seems to have emerged in the big cities from around 2750 BCE, ie about half a millennium after big cities arrived, and apparently provoked in the first instance by it facilitating the business of the new city-states, especially administration of the economy, as well as religion and politics.
It obviously proved a radical and far reaching innovation:
a/ in the present time dimension it facilitated various purposes: administrative, economic, scientific, cultural.
Thus it allowed issuing orders, keeping lists and records etc [eg names, agreements, re produce / property / personal relationships]; eventually reflection on science, philosophy, history etc; and writing texts, stories etc, for religious and secular purposes.
b/ but also especially it allowed for storing, accumulating knowledge for communicationto future generations.
So beyond the practical demands from administration and the economy, writing quickly served major science and cultural purposes, mainly for the state initially, but later among private people, groups.
5/ Science / technology
These vital subjects were advanced alongside the political and economic activity, and included maths, astronomy, metal working, and technical engineering innovations.
Over the long term future ongoing technical innovation became a crucial facilitator of economic success, underwriter of productivity growth.
6/ Education
Education emerged to train workers [religious and secular], eventually through schools, universities etc., helping to prepare citizens for their roles. Early schools in the Fertile Crescent trained scribes for the laborious task of writing cuneiform tablets.
K/ THE JOURNEY: Big cities – militant, competing kings & complicit priests, dominant model for next 5000y?
The new political-economic model was a radical shift, proved very productive economically [as long as the climate was favourable], throwing off a large economic surplus, unexpectedly, fortuitously.
Politics quickly adapted to these radical economic circumstances, the big economic surplus soon applied especially to temples and palaces, and above all to armies.
Thus warfare quickly became endemic among /between the various “states” as ambitious self-interested kings / emperors fought – competed – to protect / defend their domains, and often to seek to acquire others.
Thus beyond overseeing economic and religious activity, with the close if subordinate support of priests, a king’s primary role was military, as a soldier.
In broad terms competing militant autocracies overseen by hereditary monarchs soon became the dominant political model for nigh on the next 5000 years, common and tenacious historically, alongside some remaining hunter-gatherers, and also nomadic / pastoral peoples [clans, tribes etc], some of whom proved historically important, if transiently, like the 13th C Mongols.
Demonstrably too this militant autocracy model was inherently unstable, came with almost chronic warfare, prone to violence at the macro and micro level, owing to:
1/ the genetic lottery in all hereditary regimes; among rulers and the population of potential opportunistic challengers [“loved of the distracted multitude”]: especially within royal families, among implicated aristocracies, and generals.
This lottery is highlighted by the many past “successful” autocrats still famous [or infamous] today, some from now long ago: cf Sargon, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Robert Clive, Napoleon, Hitler.
Far less well known are the many incompetent people who acceded to inherited roles far beyond their capabilities or interest.
2/ no formal orderly institutional mechanisms for: a/ leadership succession; b/ disputes resolution; c/ facilitating expression of popular opinion, especially consent re major policy issues.
Hence there was chronic brawling over succession and chronic revolts by disaffected populace, as well as chronic violent competition for lands, resources, on a micro [banditry] and macro level [kings etc].
L/ THE JOURNEY: Democracy a rare experience
Democracy or proto-democracy was historically a rare, mostly absent experience in Europe and the Near East across near 5 millennia after the arrival of large cities / “civilisations”.
The obvious [unique?] case study is Classical Greece where radical free thinking proto-modern behaviour emerged after c650 BCE, among dispersed peoples in some poleis [city states], apparently in response to opportunities provided by a conducive regional political context.
Thus sustained adverse climate shift c1200BC [a ‘climate asteroid’] existentially upended large eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age empires, allowing the dispersed Greeks to go about their business, freed of intruding imperial overseers. In doing this the Greek city-states over 100s of years established a buoyant maritime trading economy, including a network of “colonies” up and down the Mediterranean.
But also emerging security threats, especially from the Achaemenid Persians, encouraged the devising of formal collective democratic arrangements [an early expression of the social contract], to seek popular consent for collective “state” action, to consult adult male citizens, for them to participate politically, in particular in return for their service as hoplites [citizen soldiers] when the need arose for everyone’s mutual benefit, given the decentralised state could not afford a standing army.
It proved famously successful, though success later [early 5th C BCE] went to Athens head when they stumbled into to the self inflicted calamity of the Peloponnese Wars.
Thirdly the Greek success was enabled by another proto-modern breakthrough, the practical recognition that their gods were basically projections of their own human lives and therefore no use as intervening spiritual agents to be accommodated and importuned, that ultimately their “fate” was mostly in their hands.
Alongside, off the back of, sustained economic success the Greeks achieved pioneering knowledge advances in philosophy, maths, practical science and technology, history, literature, much of which still resonates today, but also drawing importantly on some cultural outcomes from the nearby older Empires, especially re maths, writing, literature and art.
The Greek achievement was transmitted ahead via the Roman Republic/ Empire, later helped too by Islamic states helping to preserve and pass on texts.
The eventual radical West Europe outcome also seems influenced by the quasi-democratic political practise of the Germanic and Norse tribes, who eventually invaded Britain, and the Vikings Normandy.
Both groups were relatively dispersed, protected by their peripheral forests from predatory outsiders [as the Roman general Varus found out] and unaccustomed to submitting to imperial overseers.
Both seemed inclined to proto-feudal political models, in terms of a chief’s relations with attendant warriors, such that the chief either delivered or risked his job, a mindset which fitted later proto-capitalist behaviour.
The emergence of proto-capitalism [cities / towns / villages, artisan industry and literacy] in West Europe from around 1000CE paralleled the rise of Classical Greece, again occurring opportunistically in the wake of failed overarching centralised states, among the trading communal city states in proto-Italy, over half a millennium after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
This foreshadowed later feudal arrangements in early Mediaeval Europe, where nobles / barons “contracted” with the monarch, again involving an important military purpose, embodied in the 1215 Magna Carta in England [and subsequent charters], also the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath in Scotland.
M/ THE JOURNEY: China, case study for “tenacious autocracy”
China was condemned largely by geography and its emergent post Neolithic / Bronze Age ethnic/racial mix to appear early as an isolated monolith, at the far east [Pacific] end of Eurasia, long remaining an inherently unstable, often violent, sluggish, inward, dualistic monolith: ie a Han core later wrestling northern non-Han tribes.
Thus the peripheral militant, culture shy tribes north aggravated the instability and twice prevailed [Mongols c1279 and Manchu, c1640], but each time joined, adapted to the monolith, moved into the Chinese house, adapting to its culture and ‘civilisation’, though usually reminding the Han centre who had won.
So China has remained a traditional under-performing inherently sub-optimal autocracy for millennia, managing some islands of relative calm and prosperity [eg early 6th C Sui dynasty, early 7th C Tang dynasty, and periods of the 11th C Song dynasty] in a timeline that is otherwise mostly a sea of strife.
Ithas never escaped the destructive competition of a violent centralised inward looking autocracy, economically regressive [more about tribute from foreigners than trade], prone to the genetic lottery in all dynasties, henceto destructive competition among capable ambitious militant leaders, inside and outside the tent. It also wasted large resources on projects like the “Great” Wall, and imperial personal excess.
Consequently its history is marked by occasional “successful” leaders pulling the shaky ship together for a time until again “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” and it succumbs once more to periods of unrest, sometimes long, hungry and bloody.
In a long history there were never even brushes with proto-democracy, the radical rule of law and evidence based competitive private market economics that informs liberal modernity.
N/ THE JOURNEY: long painful gestation of “Western” liberal democracy, last c500y
At the west end of Eurasia liberal democracy did slowly, finally arise from among a clutch of countries / states.
What seems important is that, unlike in China, a number of competing if shifting independent political entities emerged and that while the history was chronically violent the competition was eventually “constructive” in terms of advancing their economies and knowledge.
However a common thread in the long turbulent gestation of WC was, has been, the very “un-Western” identity-promoting reactionary behaviour, resisting violently, the practical emergence of Western values/ ideals, compounded of nationalism, religion [the Christian Church resisting secular reform] and later imperialist racist exploitation.
Glimmers of secular reform arrived in the Italian Renaissance, starting with emergence of trading city states from the 11th C [cf Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, Florence, Venice], but were swallowed in the 16th C by reactionary politics, when the French armies arrived [starting with Charles VIII], invited in.
The early 16th C Reformation [seeking relaxation of the Church’s central hand in Rome]was soon swallowed by the religious [civil] wars of the Counter Reformation, in 16th and 17th C, as the Church and sympathetic secular rulers fought back, violently, devastating much of today’s Germany.
The global European Exploration Age, begun by Portuguese in late 15th C, soon mushroomed into competitive offshore imperialism: predatory extractive endeavour by the then major European powers [Spain / Portugal, England, Netherlands], especially in the Americas, Asia and Africa; reflected above all in the Americas by industrial scale slavery [around an improbable 10m trafficked across the Atlantic] and slave staffed plantations, mines etc.
The 18th C Enlightenment [evident especially in France, Netherlands, England and Scotland] was swallowed by the 1789-1815 French Revolution / French Wars. Thus the reformist initiation of the French Revolution, part inspired by the French Enlightenment [les Philosophes] wasfast swallowed by very un-“Enlightened” nationalistic French tyranny, responding to violent reactionary support for Louis XVI from his royal neighbours after he thoughtlessly condoned, sanctioned their interference. So France was soon at war and after an initial stumble found itself keen and successful, heralding c20 years of age-old Continental warfare, mostly orchestrated by Napoleon, only now the participants were much better armed than before, the conflict that much deadlier
Likewise, in flagrant breech of its founding principles, the lauded promising “Enlightened” 1780s American Revolution was swallowed by vile traditional “anti-Western” identity abuse: 4m slaves by c1860. The North pressing to keep the Union triggered a calamitous Civil War which still left the race problem alive, when slavery was subsequently repackaged for another century.
Finally – fatefully, ironically, like an exercise in karma – the competing European imperialists brought their nationalistic rivalry back home and inflicted the unnecessary calamitous WW1 on themselves, which by sad improbable chance then spawned the tragic Russian Revolution, robbing Russia of a likely easier path to liberal modernity, for it was not a “reformist” revolution, rather a reactionary revolving back to a neo-Tsarist autocracy / dictatorship.
Post WW1 financial mismanagement by the major powers brought about the calamitous Depression, which – far worse than the shocking economic dislocation – allowed Hitler and his Nazi Party to gain power. The Nazi vote at the May 1928 elections was only 2.6% [winning 12 seats of 491; 18.3% Sep. 1930 [107/577] and 37.3% July 1932 [230/608].
WW2, including the frightful Japanese chapter, then conspired to deprive China also from a realistic chance at liberal modernity when Mao’s “Communist” forces [the ideological template imported, ironically, from Europe] prevailed late 1949 over a depleted KMT.
But like in 1917 Russia the “Revolution” returned China to a traditional neo-Han nationalistic autocracy which today still remains at war with the modern world, and more so through the recent authoritarian swerve away from Deng’s ersatz capitalism [markets reform borrowed from the successful West].
Thus was the gestation of the practical implementation of Western values a long hard road.
O/ THE JOURNEY: post WW2 break out of “Western” liberal democracy
The emphatic post WW2 consolidation of technology informed affluent liberal democracy – only 75 years so far – offers a dramatic contrast with the millennia since large cities arose.
A striking feature has been its spread beyond Europe, to others regions globally, especially in east Asia, to the extent that “Western” liberal values / principles [cf free and fair elections, governance, individual human rights] are now recognised globally – at least de facto – as, like Newton’s Laws, having universalist applicability, expressed especially through the UN and related international bodies.
In Europe democracy finally took root in Germany after the war, and then across East Europe after the neo-Tsarist Soviet Union imploded at the end of the 1980s, undoing its post WW2 imperialist intrusion there.
But the most dramatic and informative experience has been in east Asia where effective democracy has succeeded in a region culturally and geographically far from Europe and one lacking any meaningful expression of the model its long documented history.
This outcome was quicker in a Japan traumatised by its wartime devastation, the 1945 nuclear denouement finishing wars they started with invasion of Manchuria Sep. 1931; extended July 1937 [China] and Dec. 1941 {US et al].
South Korea’s journey was much longer, more problematic, as a remnant from the Soviet union sponsored Korean War then not sloughing off military rule till the 6th Republic from 1987.
Taiwan’s path was obviously complicated by hostility from the PR China but its 1971 ejection from the UN [replaced by PRC] stimulated deliberate and now successful embrace of effective democracy.
Democracy has also made progress elsewhere in Asia, notably in India [in the wake of decolonialisation] and Indonesia.
Aethelwulf 