Tragedy and Hope
A History of the World in Our Time
By Carroll Quigley
PART ONE
Part One: Introduction: Western Civilization In Its World Setting
Chapter 1: Cultural Evolution in Civilizations
There have always been men who have asked, "Where are we going?" But never, it would seem, have there been so many of them. And surely never before have these myriads of questioners asked their question in such dolorous tones or rephrased their question in such despairing words: "Can man survive?" Even on a less cosmic basis, questioners appear on all sides, seeking "meaning" or "identity," or even, on the most narrowly egocentric basis, "trying to find myself."
One of these persistent questions is typical of the twentieth century rather than of earlier times: Can our way of life survive? Is our civilization doomed to vanish, as did that of the Incas, the Sumerians, and the Romans? From Giovanni Battista Vico in the early eighteenth century to Oswald Spengler in the early twentieth century and Arnold J. Toynbee in our own day, men have been puzzling over the problem whether civilizations have a life cycle and follow a similar pattern of change. From this discussion has emerged a fairly general agreement that men live in separately organized societies, each with its own distinct culture; that some of these societies, having writing and city life, exist on a higher level of culture than the rest, and should be called by the different term "civilizations"; and that these civilizations tend to pass through a common pattern of experience.
From these studies it would seem that civilizations pass through a process of evolution which can be analyzed briefly as follows: each civilization is born in some inexplicable fashion and, after a slow start, enters a period of vigorous expansion, increasing its size and power, both internally and at the expense of its neighbors, until gradually a crisis of organization appears. When this crisis has passed and the civilization has been reorganized, it seems somewhat different. Its vigor and morale have weakened. It becomes stabilized and eventually stagnant. After a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, internal crises again arise. At this point there appears, for the first time, a moral and physical weakness which raises, also for the first time, questions about the civilization's ability to defend itself against external enemies. Racked by internal struggles of a social and constitutional character, weakened by loss of faith in its older ideologies and by the challenge of newer ideas incompatible with its past nature, the civilization grows steadily weaker until it is submerged by outside enemies, and eventually disappears.
When we come to apply this process, even in this rather vague form, to our own civilization, Western Civilization, we can see that certain modifications are needed. Like other civilizations, our civilization began with a period of mixture of cultural elements from other societies, formed these elements into a culture distinctly its own, began to expand with growing rapidity as others had done, and passed from this period of expansion into a period of crisis. But at that point the pattern changed.
In more than a dozen other civilizations the Age of Expansion was followed by an Age of Crisis, and this, in turn, by a period of Universal Empire in which a single political unit ruled the whole extent of the civilization. Western Civilization, on the contrary, did not pass from the Age of Crisis to the Age of Universal Empire, but instead was able to reform itself and entered upon a new period of expansion. Moreover, Western Civilization did this not once, but several times. It was this ability to reform or reorganize itself again and again which made Western Civilization the dominant factor in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century.
As we look at the three ages forming the central portion of the life cycle of a civilization, we can see a common pattern. The Age of Expansion is generally marked by four kinds of expansion: (1) of population, (2) of geographic area, (3) of production, and (4) of knowledge. The expansion of production and the expansion of knowledge give rise to the expansion of population, and the three of these together give rise to the expansion of geographic extent. This geographic expansion is of some importance because it gives the civilization a kind of nuclear structure made up of an older core area (which had existed as part of the civilization even before the period of expansion) and a newer peripheral area (which became part of the civilization only in the period of expansion and later). If we wish, we can make, as an additional refinement, a third, semi-peripheral area between the core area and the fully peripheral area.
These various areas are readily discernible in various civilizations of the past, and have played a vital role in historic change in these civilizations. In Mesopotamian Civilization (6000 B.C.-300 B.C.) the core area was the lower valley of Mesopotamia; the semi-peripheral area was the middle and upper valley, while the peripheral area included the highlands surrounding this valley, and more remote areas like Iran, Syria, and even Anatolia. The core area of Cretan Civilization (3500 B.C.-1100 B.C.) was the island of Crete, while the peripheral area included the Aegean islands and the Balkan coasts. In Classical Civilization the core area was the shores of the Aegean Sea; the semi-peripheral area was the rest of the northern portion of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, while the peripheral area covered the rest of the Mediterranean shores and ultimately Spain, North Africa, and Gaul. In Canaanite Civilization (2200 B.C.-100 B.C.) the core area was the Levant, while the peripheral area was in the western Mediterranean at Tunis, western Sicily, and eastern Spain. The core area of Western Civilization (A.D. 400 to some time in the future) has been the northern half of Italy, France, the extreme western part of Germany, and England; the semi-peripheral area has been central, eastern, and southern Europe and the Iberian peninsula, while the peripheral areas have included North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and some other areas.
This distinction of at least two geographic areas in each civilization is of major importance. The process of expansion, which begins in the core area, also begins to slow up in the core at a time when the peripheral area is still expanding. In consequence, by the latter part of the Age of Expansion, the peripheral areas of a civilization tend to become wealthier and more powerful than the core area. Another way of saying this is that the core passes from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict before the periphery does. Eventually, in most civilizations the rate of expansion begins to decline everywhere.
It is this decline in the rate of expansion of a civilization which marks its passage from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict. This latter is the most complex, most interesting, and most critical of all the periods of the life cycle of a civilization. It is marked by four chief characteristics: (a) it is a period of declining rate of expansion; (b) it is a period of growing tensions and class conflicts; (c) it is a period of increasingly frequent and increasingly violent imperialist wars; and (d) it is a period of growing irrationality, pessimism, superstitions, and otherworldliness. All these phenomena appear in the core area of a civilization before they appear in more peripheral portions of the society.
The decreasing rate of expansion of the Age of Conflict gives rise to the other characteristics of the age, in part at least. After the long years of the Age of Expansion, people's minds and their social organizations are adjusted to expansion, and it is a very difficult thing to readjust these to a decreasing rate of expansion. Social classes and political units within the civilization try to compensate for the slowing of expansion through normal growth by the use of violence against other social classes or against other political units. From this come class struggles and imperialist wars. The outcomes of these struggles within the civilization are not of vital significance for the future of the civilization itself. What would be of such significance would be the reorganization of the structure of the civilization so that the process of normal growth would be resumed. Because such a reorganization requires the removal of the causes of the civilization's decline, the triumph of one social class over another or of one political unit over another, within the civilization, will not usually have any major influence on the causes of the decline, and will not (except by accident) result in such a reorganization of structure as will give rise to a new period of expansion. Indeed, the class struggles and imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict will probably serve to increase the speed of the civilization's decline because they dissipate capital and divert wealth and energies from productive to nonproductive activities.
In most civilizations the long-drawn agony of the Age of Conflict finally ends in a new period, the Age of the Universal Empire. As a result of the imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict, the number of political units in the civilization are reduced by conquest. Eventually one emerges triumphant. When this occurs we have one political unit for the whole civilization. Just at the core area passes from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict earlier than the peripheral areas, sometimes the core area is conquered by a single state before the whole civilization is conquered by the Universal Empire. When this occurs the core empire is generally a semi-peripheral state, while the Universal Empire is generally a peripheral state. Thus, Mesopotamia's core was conquered by semi-peripheral Babylonia about 1700 B.C., while the whole of Mesopotamian civilization was conquered by more peripheral Assyria about 7 2 5 H.C. (replaced by fully peripheral Persia about 525 B.C.). In Classical Civilization the core area was conquered by semi-peripheral Macedonia about 336 B.C., while the whole civilization was conquered by peripheral Rome about 146 B.C. In other civilizations the Universal Empire has consistently been a peripheral state even when there was no earlier conquest of the core area by a semi-peripheral state. In Mayan Civilization (1000 B.C.-A.D. 1550) the core area was apparently in Yucatan and Guatemala, but the Universal Empire of the Aztecs centered in the peripheral highlands of central Mexico. In Andean Civilization (1500 B.C.-A.D. 1600) the core areas were on the lower slopes and valleys of the central and northern Andes, but the Universal Empire of the Incas centered in the highest Andes, a peripheral area. The Canaanite Civilization (2200 B.C.-146 B.C.) had its core area in the Levant, but its Universal Empire, the Punic Empire, centered at Carthage in the western Mediterranean. If we turn to the Far East we see no less than three civilizations. Of these the earliest, Sinic Civilization, rose in the valley of the Yellow River after 2000 B.C., culminated in the Chin and Han empires after 200 B.C., and was largely destroyed by Ural-Altaic invaders after A.D. 400. From this Sinic Civilization, in the same way in which Classical Civilization emerged from Cretan Civilization or Western Civilization emerged from Classical Civilization, there emerged two other civilizations: (a) Chinese Civilization, which began about A.D. 400, culminated in the Manchu Empire after 1644, and was disrupted by European invaders in the period 1790-1930, and (b) Japanese Civilization, which began about the time of Christ, culminated in the Tokugawa Empire after 1600, and may have been completely disrupted by invaders from Western Civilization in the century following 1853.
In India, as in China, two civilizations have followed one another. Although we know relatively little about the earlier of the two, the later (as in China) culminated in a Universal Empire ruled by an alien and peripheral people. Indic Civilization, which began about 3500 B.C., was destroyed by Aryan invaders about 1700 B.C. Hindu Civilization, which emerged from Indic Civilization about 1700 B.C., culminated in the Mogul Empire and was destroyed by invaders from Western Civilization in the period 1500-1900.
Turning to the extremely complicated area of the Near East, we can see a similar pattern. Islamic Civilization, which began about A.D. 500, culminated in the Ottoman Empire in the period 1300-1600 and has been in the process of being destroyed by invaders from Western Civilization since about 1750.
Expressed in this way, these patterns in the life cycles of various civilizations may seem confused. But if we tabulate them, the pattern emerges with some simplicity.
From this table a most extraordinary fact emerges. Of approximately twenty civilizations which have existed in all of human history, we have listed sixteen. Of these sixteen, twelve, possibly fourteen, are already dead or dying, their cultures destroyed by outsiders able to come in with sufficient power to disrupt the civilization, destroy its established modes of thought and action, and eventually wipe it out. Of these twelve dead or dying cultures, six have been destroyed by Europeans bearing the culture of Western Civilization. When we consider the untold numbers of other societies, simpler than civilizations, which Western Civilization has destroyed or is now destroying, societies such as the Hottentots, the Iroquois, the Tasmanians, the Navahos, the Caribs, and countless others, the full frightening power of Western Civilization becomes obvious.
Universal Final Their
Civilization Its Dates Empire Invasion Dates
Mesopotamian 6000 B.C.- Assyrian/ Greeks 335 B.C.- 300 B.C.
300 B.C. Persianญ 725-333 B.C.
Egyptian 5500 B. C.- Egyptian Greeks 334 B. C.- 300 B. C.
300 B. C.
Cretan 3500 B. C.- Minoan- Dorian 1200 B. C.- 1000 B. C.
1150 B. C. Mycenaean Greeks
Indic 3500 B. C. - Harappa? Aryans 1800 B. C.-
1700 B. C. 1600 B. C.
Canaanite 2200 B. C. - Punic Romans 264 B. C. - 146 B. C.
100 B. C.
Sinic 2000 B. C. - Chin/ Ural-Altaic A. D. 200 - 500
A. D. 400 Han
Hittite 1800 - Hittite Indo- 1200 B. C. - A. D. 1000
1150 European
Classical 1150 B. C. - Roman Germanic A. D. 350 - 600
A. D. 500
Andean 1500 B. C. - Inca Europeans 1534
A. D. 1600
Mayan 1000 B. C. - Aztec Europeans 1519
A. D. 1550
Hindu 1800 B. C. - Mogul Europeans 1500 - 1900
A. D. 1900
Chinese 400 - Manchu Europeans 1790 - 1930
1930
Japanese 850 B. C. - ? Tokugawa Europeans 1853 -
Islamic 500 B. C. - ? Ottoman Europeans 1750 -
Western 350 - ? United States ? Future ? ?
Orthodox 350 - ? Soviet Future ? ?
One cause, although by no means the chief cause, of the ability of Western Civilization to destroy other cultures rests on the fact that it has been expanding for a long time. This fact, in turn, rests on another condition to which we have already alluded, the fact that Western Civilization has passed through three periods of expansion, has entered into an Age of Conflict three times, each time has had its core area conquered almost completely by a single political unit, but has failed to go on to the Age of the Universal Empire because from the confusion of the Age of Conflict there emerged each time a new organization of society capable of expanding by its own organizational powers, with the result that the four phenomena characteristic of the Age of Conflict (decreasing rate of expansion, class conflicts, imperialist wars, irrationality) were gradually replaced once again by the four kinds of expansion typical of an Age of Expansion (demographic, geographic, production, knowledge). From a narrowly technical point of view, this shift from an Age of Conflict to an Age of Expansion is marked by a resumption of the investment of capital and the accumulation of capital on a large scale, just as the earlier shift from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict was marked by a decreasing rate of investment and eventually by a decreasing rate of accumulation of capital.
Western Civilization began, as all civilizations do, in a period of cultural mixture. In this particular case it was a mixture resulting from the barbarian invasions which destroyed Classical Civilization in the period 350-700. By creating a new culture from the various elements offered from the barbarian tribes, the Roman world, the Saracen world, and above all the Jewish world (Christianity), Western Civilization became a new society.
This society became a civilization when it became organized, in the period 700-970, so that there was accumulation of capital and the beginnings of the investment of this capital in new methods of production. These new methods are associated with a change from infantry forces to mounted warriors in defense, from manpower (and thus slavery) to animal power in energy use, from the scratch plow and two-field, fallow agricultural technology of Mediterranean Europe to the eight-oxen, gang plow and three-field system of the Germanic peoples, and from the centralized, state-centered political orientation of the Roman world to the decentralized, private-power feudal network of the medieval world. In the new system a small number of men, equipped and trained to fight, received dues and services from the overwhelming majority of men who were expected to till the soil. From this inequitable but effective defensive system emerged an inequitable distribution of political power and, in turn, an inequitable distribution of the social economic income. This, in time, resulted in an accumulation of capital, which, by giving rise to demand for luxury goods of remote origin, began to shift the whole economic emphasis of the society from its earlier organization in self-sufficient agrarian units (manors) to commercial interchange, economic specialization, and, by the thirteenth century, to an entirely new pattern of society with towns, a bourgeois class, spreading literacy, growing freedom of alternative social choices, and new, often disturbing, thoughts.
From all this came the first period of expansion of Western Civilization, covering the years 970-1270. At the end of this period, the organization of society was becoming a petrified collection of vested interests, investment was decreasing, and the rate of expansion was beginning to fall. Accordingly, Western Civilization, for the first time, entered upon the Age of Conflict. This period, the time of the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, the great heresies, and severe class conflicts, lasted from about 1270 to 1420. By the end of it, efforts were arising from England and Burgundy to conquer the eve of Western Civilization. But, just at that moment, a new Age of Expansion, using a new organization of society which circumvented the old vested interests of the feudal-manorial system, began.
This new Age of Expansion, frequently called the period of commercial capitalism, lasted from about 1440 to about 1680. The real impetus to economic expansion during the period came from efforts to obtain profits by the interchange of goods, especially semi-luxury or luxury goods, over long distances. In time, this system of commercial capitalism became petrified into a structure of vested interests in which profits were sought by imposing restrictions on the production or interchange of goods rather than by encouraging these activities. This new vested-interest structure, usually called mercantilism, became such a burden on economic activities that the rate of expansion of economic life declined and even gave rise to a period of economic decline in the decades immediately following 1690. The class struggles and imperialist wars engendered by this Age of Conflict are sometimes called the Second Hundred Years' War. The wars continued until 1815, and the class struggles even later. As a result of the former, France by 1810 had conquered most of the eve of Western Civilization. But here, just as had occurred in 1420 when England had also conquered part of the core of the civilization toward the latter portion of an Age of Conflict, the victory was made meaningless because a new period of expansion began. Just as commercial capitalism had circumvented the petrified institution of the feudal-manorial system (chivalry) after 1440, so industrial capitalism circumvented the petrified institution of commercial capitalism (mercantilism) after 1820.
The new Age of Expansion which made Napoleon's military-political victory of 1810 impossible to maintain had begun in England long before. It appeared as the Agricultural Revolution about 1725 and as the Industrial Revolution about 1775, but it did not get started as a great burst of expansion until after 1820. Once started, it moved forward with an impetus such as the world had never seen before, and it looked as if Western Civilization might cover the whole globe. The dates of this third Age of Expansion might be fixed at 1770-1929, following upon the second Age of Conflict of 1690-1815. The social organization which was at the center of this new development might be called "industrial capitalism." In the course of the last decade of the nineteenth century, it began to become a structure of vested interests to which we might give the name "monopoly capitalism." As early, perhaps, as 1890, certain aspects of a new Age of Conflict, the third in Western Civilization, began to appear, especially in the core area, with a revival of imperialism, of class struggle, of violent warfare, and of irrationalities.
By 1930 it was clear that Western Civilization was again in an Age of Conflict; by 1942 a semi-peripheral state, Germany, had conquered much of the core of the civilization. That effort was defeated by calling into the fray a peripheral state (the United States) and another, outside civilization (the Soviet society). It is not yet clear whether Western Civilization will continue along the path marked by so many earlier civilizations, or whether it will be able to reorganize itself sufficiently to enter upon a new, fourth, Age of Expansion. If the former occurs, this Age of Conflict will undoubtedly continue with the fourfold characteristics of class struggle, war, irrationality, and declining progress. In this case, we shall undoubtedly get a Universal Empire in which the United States will rule most of Western Civilization. This will be followed, as in other civilizations, by a period of decay and ultimately, as the civilization grows weaker, by invasions and the total destruction of Western culture. On the other hand, if Western Civilization is able to reorganize itself and enters upon a fourth Age of Expansion, the ability of Western Civilization to survive and go on to increasing prosperity and power will be bright. Leaving aside this hypothetical future, it would appear thus that Western Civilization, in approximately fifteen hundred years, has passed through eight periods, thus:
1. Mixture 350-700
2. Gestation, 700-970
3A. First Expansion, 970-1270
4A. First Conflict, 1270-1440
Core Empire: England, 1420
3B. Second Expansion, 1440-1690
4B. Second Conflict, 1690-1815
Core Empire: France, 1810
3C. Third Expansion, 1770-1929
4C. Third Conflict, 1893-
Core Empire: Germany, 1942
The two possibilities which lie in the future can be listed as follows:
Reorganization Continuation of the Process
3D. Fourth Expansion, 1944- 5. Universal Empire (the United States)
6. Decay
7. Invasion (end of the civilization)
From the list of civilizations previously given, it becomes somewhat easier to see how Western Civilization was able to destroy (or is still destroying) the cultures of six other civilizations. In each of these six cases the victim civilization had already passed the period of Universal Empire and was deep in the Age of Decay. In such a situation Western Civilization played a role as invader similar to that played by the Germanic tribes in Classical Civilization, by the Dorians in Cretan Civilization, by the Greeks in Mesopotamian or Egyptian Civilization, by the Romans in Canaanite Civilization, or by the Ayrans in Indic Civilization. The Westerners who burst in upon the Aztecs in 1519, on the Incas in 1534, on the Mogul Empire in the eighteenth century, on the Manchu Empire after 1790, on the Ottoman Empire after 1774, and on the Tokugawa Empire after 1853 were performing the same role as the Visigoths and the other barbarian tribes to the Roman Empire after 377. In each case, the results of the collision of two civilizations, one in the Age of Expansion and the other in the Age of Decay, was a foregone conclusion. Expansion would destroy Decay.
In the course of its various expansions Western Civilization has collided with only one civilization which was not already in the stage of decay. This exception was its half-brother, so to speak, the civilization now represented by the Soviet Empire. It is not clear what stage this "Orthodox" Civilization is in, but it clearly is not in its stage of decay. It would appear that Orthodox Civilization began as a period of mixture (500-1300) and is now in its second period of expansion. The first period of expansion, covering 1500-1900, had just begun to change into an Age of Conflict (1900-1920) when the vested interests of the society were wiped away by the defeat at the hands of Germany in 1917 and replaced by a new organization of society which gave rise to a second Age of Expansion (since 1921). During much of the last four hundred years culminating in the twentieth century, the fringes of Asia have been occupied by a semicircle of old dying civilizations (Islamic, Hindu, Chinese, Japanese). These have been under pressure from Western Civilization coming in from the oceans and from Orthodox Civilization pushing outward from the heart of the Eurasian land mass. The Oceanic pressure began with Vasco da Gama in India in 1498, culminated aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay in 1945, and still continued with the Anglo-French attack on Suez in 1956. The Russian pressure from the continental heartland was applied to the inner frontiers of China, Iran, and Turkey from the seventeenth century to the present. Much of the world's history in the twentieth century has arisen from the interactions of these three factors (the continental heartland of Russian power, the shattered cultures of the Buffer Fringe of Asia, and the oceanic powers of Western Civilization).
Chapter 2: Cultural Diffusion in Western Civilization
We have said that the culture of a civilization is created in its core area originally and moves outward into peripheral areas which thus become part of the civilization. This movement of cultural elements is called "diffusion" by students of the subject. It is noteworthy that material elements of a culture, such as tools, weapons, vehicles, and such, diffuse more readily and thus more rapidly than do the nonmaterial elements such as ideas, art forms, religious outlook, or patterns of social behavior. For this reason the peripheral portions of a civilization (such as Assyria in Mesopotamian Civilization, Rome or Spain in Classical Civilization, and the United States or Australia in Western Civilization) tend to have a somewhat cruder and more material culture than the core area of the same civilization.
Material elements of a culture also diffuse beyond the boundaries of a civilization into other societies, and do so much more readily than the nonmaterial elements of the culture. For this reason the nonmaterial and spiritual elements of a culture are what give it its distinctive character rather than its tools and weapons which can be so easily exported to entirely different societies. Thus, the distinctive character of Western Civilization rests on its Christian heritage, its scientific outlook, its humanitarian elements, and its distinctive point of view in regard to the rights of the individual and respect for women rather than in such material things as firearms, tractors, plumbing fixtures, or skyscrapers, all of which are exportable commodities.
The export of material elements in a culture, across its peripheral areas and beyond, to the peoples of totally different societies has strange results. As elements of material culture move from core to periphery inside a civilization, they tend, in the long run, to strengthen the periphery at the expense of the core because the core is more hampered in the use of material innovations by the strength of past vested interests and because the core devotes a much greater part of its wealth and energy to nonmaterial culture. Thus, such aspects of the Industrial Revolution as automobiles and radios are European rather than American inventions, but have been developed and utilized to a far greater extent in America because this area was not hampered in their use by surviving elements of feudalism, of church domination, of rigid class distinctions (for example, in education), or by widespread attention to music, poetry, art, or religion such as we find in Europe. A similar contrast can be seen in Classical Civilization between Greek and Roman or in Mesopotamian Civilization between Sumerian and Assyrian or in Mayan Civilization between Mayan and Aztec.
The diffusion of culture elements beyond the boundaries of one society into the culture of another society presents quite a different case. The boundaries between societies present relatively little hindrance to the diffusion of material elements, and relatively greater hindrance to the diffusion of nonmaterial elements. Indeed, it is this fact which determines the boundary of the society, for, if the nonmaterial elements also diffused, the new area into which they flowed would be a peripheral portion of the old society rather than a part of a quite different society.
The diffusion of material elements from one society to another has a complex effect on the importing society. In the short run it is usually benefitted by the importation, but in the long run it is frequently disorganized and weakened. When white men first came to North America, material elements from Western Civilization spread rapidly among the different Indian tribes. The Plains Indians, for example, were weak and impoverished before 1543, but in that year the horse began to diffuse northward from the Spaniards in Mexico. Within a century the Plains Indians were raised to a much higher standard of living (because of ability to hunt buffalo from horseback) and were immensely strengthened in their ability to resist Americans coming westward across the continent. In the meantime, the trans-Appalachian Indians who had been very powerful in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries began to receive firearms, steel traps, measles, and eventually whiskey from the French and later the English by way of the St. Lawrence. These greatly weakened the woods Indians of the trans-Appalachian area and ultimately weakened the Plains Indians of the trans-Mississippi area, because measles and whiskey were devastating and demoralizing and because the use of traps and guns by certain tribes made them dependent on whites for supplies at the same time that they allowed them to put great physical pressure on the more remote tribes which had not yet received guns or traps. Any united front of reds against whites was impossible, and the Indians were disrupted, demoralized, and destroyed. In general, importation of an element of material culture from one society to another is helpful to the importing society in the long run only if it is (a) productive, (b) can be made within the society itself, and (c) can be fitted into the nonmaterial culture of the importing society without demoralizing it. The destructive impact of Western Civilization upon so many other societies rests on its ability to demoralize their ideological and spiritual culture as much as its ability to destroy them in a material sense with firearms.
When one society is destroyed by the impact of another society, the people are left in a debris of cultural elements derived from their own shattered culture as well as from the invading culture. These elements generally provide the instruments for fulfilling the material needs of these people, but they cannot be organized into a functioning society because of the lack of an ideology and spiritual cohesive. Such people either perish or are incorporated as individuals and small groups into some other culture, whose ideology they adopt for themselves and, above all, for their children. In some cases, however, the people left with the debris of a shattered culture are able to reintegrate the cultural elements into a new society and a new culture. They are able to do this because they obtain a new nonmaterial culture and thus a new ideology and morale which serve as a cohesive for the scattered elements of past culture they have at hand. Such a new ideology may be imported or may be indigenous, but in either case it becomes sufficiently integrated with the necessary elements of material culture to form a functioning whole and thus a new society. It is by some such process as this that all new societies, and thus all new civilizations, have been born. In this way, Classical Civilization was born from the wreckage of Cretan Civilization in the period 1150 B.C.� B.C., and Western Civilization was born from the wreckage of Classical Civilization in the period A.D. 350�. It is possible that new civilizations may be born in the debris from the civilizations wrecked by Western Civilization on the fringes of Asia. In this wreckage is debris from Islamic, Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese civilizations. lt would appear at the present time that new civilizations may be in the throes of birth in Japan, possibly in China, less likely in India, and dubiously in Turkey or Indonesia. The birth of a powerful civilization at any or several of these points would be of primary significance in world history, since it would serve as a counterbalance to the expansion of Soviet Civilization on the land mass of Eurasia.
Turning from a hypothetical future to a historical past, we can trace the diffusion of cultural elements within Western Civilization from its core area across peripheral areas and outward to other societies. Some of these elements are sufficiently important to command a more detailed examination.
Among the elements of the Western tradition which have diffused only very slowly or not at all are a closely related nexus of ideas at the basis of Western ideology. These include Christianity, the scientific outlook, humanitarianism, and the idea of the unique value and rights of the individual. But from this nexus of ideas have sprung a number of elements of material culture of which the most noteworthy are associated with technology. These have diffused readily, even to other societies. This ability of Western technology to emigrate and the inability of the scientific outlook, with which such technology is fairly closely associated, to do so have created an anomalous situation: societies such as Soviet Russia which have, because of lack of the tradition of scientific method, shown little inventiveness in technology are nevertheless able to threaten Western Civilization by the use, on a gigantic scale, of a technology almost entirely imported from Western Civilization. A similar situation may well develop in any new civilizations which come into existence on the fringes of Asia.
The most important parts of Western technology can be listed under four headings:
1. Ability to kill: development of weapons
2. Ability to preserve life: development of sanitation and medical services
3. Ability to produce both food and industrial goods
4. Improvements in transportation and communications
We have already spoken of the diffusion of Western firearms. The impact which these have had on peripheral areas and other societies, from Cortez's invasion of Mexico, in 1519 to the use of the first atom bomb on Japan in 1945, is obvious. Less obvious, but in the long run of much greater significance, is the ability of Western Civilization to conquer disease and to postpone death hy sanitation and medical advances. These advances began in the core of Western Civilization before 1500 but have exercised their full impact only since about 1750 with the advent of vaccination, the conquest of plague, and the steady advance in saving lives through the discovery of antisepsis in the nineteenth century and of the antibiotics in the twentieth century. These discoveries and techniques have diffused outward from the core of Western Civilization and have resulted in a fall in the death rate in western Europe and America almost immediately, in southern Europe and eastern Europe somewhat later, and in Asia only in the period since 1900. The world-shaking significance of this diffusion will be discussed in a moment.
Western Civilization's conquest of the techniques of production are so outstanding that they have been honored by the term "revolution" in all history books concerned with the subject. The conquest of the problem of producing food, known as the Agricultural Revolution, began in England as long ago as the early eighteenth century, say about 1725. The conquest of the problem of producing manufactured goods, known as the Industrial Revolution, also began in England, about fifty years after the Agricultural Revolution, say about 1775. The relationship of these two "revolutions" to each other and to the "revolution" in sanitation and public health and the differing rates at which these three "revolutions" diffused is of the greatest importance for understanding both the history of Western Civilization and its impact on other societies.
Agricultural activities, which provide the chief food supply of all civilizations, drain the nutritive elements from the soil. Unless these elements are replaced, the productivity of the soil will be reduced to a dangerously low level. In the medieval and early modern period of European history, these nutritive elements, especially nitrogen, were replaced through the action of the weather by leaving the land fallow either one year in three or even every second year. This had the effect of reducing the arable land by half or one-third. The Agricultural Revolution was an immense step forward, since it replaced the year of fallowing with a leguminous crop whose roots increased the supply of nitrogen in the soil by capturing this gas from the air and fixing it in the soil in a form usable by plant life. Since the leguminous crop which replaced the fallow year of the older agricultural cycle was generally a crop like alfalfa, clover, or sainfoin which provided feed for cattle, this Agricultural Revolution not only increased the nitrogen content of the soil for subsequent crops of grain but also increased the number and quality of farm animals, thus increasing the supply of meat and animal products for food, and also increasing the fertility of the soil by increasing the supply of animal manure for fertilizers. The net result of the whole Agricultural Revolution was an increase in both the quantity and the quality of food. Fewer men were able to produce so much more food that many men were released from the burden of producing it and could devote their attention to other activities, such as government, education, science, or business. It has been said that in 1700 the agricultural labor of twenty persons was required in order to produce enough food for twenty-one persons, while in some areas, by 1900, three persons could produce enough food for twenty-one persons, thus releasing seventeen persons for nonagricultural activities.
This Agricultural Revolution which began in England before 1725 reached France after 1800, but did not reach Germany or northern Italy until after 1830. As late as 1900 it had hardly spread at all into Spain, southern Italy and Sicily, the Balkans, or eastern Europe generally. In Germany, about 1840, this Agricultural Revolution was given a new boost forward by the introduction of the use of chemical fertilizers, and received another boost in the United States after 1880 by the introduction of farm machinery which reduced the need for human labor. These same two areas, with contributions from some other countries, gave another considerable boost to agricultural output after 1900 by the introduction of new seeds and better crops through seed selection and hybridization.
These great agricultural advances after 1725 made possible the advances in industrial production after 1775 by providing the food and thus the labor for the growth of the factory system and the rise of industrial cities. Improvements in sanitation and medical services after 1775 contributed to the same end by reducing the death rate and by making it possible for large numbers of persons to live in cities without the danger of epidemics.
The "Transportation Revolution" also contributed its share to making the modern world. This contribution began, slowly enough, about 1750, with the construction of canals and the building of turnpikes by the new methods of road construction devised by John L. McAdam ("macadamized" roads). Coal came by canal and food by the new roads to the new industrial cities after 1800. After 1825 both were greatly improved by the growth of a network of railroads, while communications were speeded by the use of the telegraph (after 1837) and the cable (after 1850). This "conquest of distance" was unbelievably accelerated in the twentieth century by the use of internal-combustion engines in automobiles, aircraft, and ships and by the advent of telephones and radio communications. The chief result of this tremendous speeding up of communications and transportation was that all parts of the world were brought closer together, and the impact of European culture on the non-European world was greatly intensified. This impact was made even more overwhelming by the fact that the Transportation Revolution spread outward from Europe extremely rapidly, diffusing almost as rapidly as the spread of European weapons, somewhat more rapidly than the spread of European sanitation and medical services, and much more rapidly than the spread of European industrialism, European agricultural techniques, or European ideology. As we shall see in a moment, many of the problems which the world faced at the middle of the twentieth century were rooted in the fact that these different aspects of the European way of life spread outward into the non-European world at such different speeds that the non-European world obtained them in an entirely different order from that in which Europe had obtained them.
One example of this difference can be seen in the fact that in Europe the Industrial Revolution generally took place before the Transportation Revolution, but in the non-European world this sequence was reversed.
This means that Europe was able to produce its own iron, steel, and copper to build its own railroads and telegraph wires, but the non-European world could construct these things only by obtaining the necessary industrial materials from Europe and thus becoming the debtor of Europe. The speed with which the Transportation Revolution spread out from Europe can be seen in the fact that in Europe the railroad began before 1830, the telegraph before 1840, the automobile about 1890, and the wireless about 1900. The transcontinental railroad in the United States opened in 1869; by 1900 the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Cape-to-Cairo railroad were under full construction, and the Berlin-to-Baghdad enterprise was just beginning. By that same date�0桰ndia, the Balkans, China, and Japan were being covered with a network of railroads, although none of these areas, at that date, was sufficiently developed in an industrial sense to provide itself with the steel or copper to construct or to maintain such a network. Later stages in the Transportation Revolution, such as automobiles or radios, spread even more rapidly and were being used to cross the deserts of the Sahara or of Arabia within a generation of their advent in Europe.
Another important example of this situation can be seen in the fact that in Europe the Agricultural Revolution began before the Industrial Revolution. Because of this, Europe was able to increase its output of food and thus the supply of labor necessary for industrialization. But in the non-European world (except North America) the effort to industrialize generally began before there had been any notable success in obtaining a more productive agricultural system. As a result, the increased supply of food (and thus of labor) needed for the growth of industrial cities in the non-European world has generally been obtained, not from increased output of food so much as from a reduction of the peasants' share of the food produced. In the Soviet Union, especially, the high speed of industrialization in the period 1926-1940 was achieved by a merciless oppression of the rural community in which millions of peasants lost their lives. The effort to copy this Soviet method in Communist China in the 1950'5 brought that area to the verge of disaster.
The most important example of such differential diffusion rates of two European developments appears in the difference between the spread of the food-producing revolution and the spread of the revolution in sanitation and medical services. This difference became of such worldshaking consequences by the middle of the twentieth century that we must spend considerable time examining it.
In Europe the Agricultural Revolution which served to increase the supply of food began at least fifty years before the beginnings of the revolution in sanitation and medical services which decreased the number of deaths and thus increased the number of the population. The two dates for these two beginnings might be put roughly at 1725 and 1775. As a result of this difference, Europe generally had sufficient food to feed its increased population. When the population reached a point where Europe itself could no longer feed its own people (say about 1850), the outlying areas of the European and non-European worlds were so eager to be industrialized (or to obtain railroads) that Europe was able to obtain non-European food in exchange for European industrial products. This sequence of events was a very happy combination for Europe. But the sequence of events in tile non-European world was quite different and much less happy. Not only did the non-European world get industrialization before it got the revolution in food production; it also got the revolution in sanitation and medical services before it got a sufficient increase in food to take care of the resulting increase in population. As a result, the demographic explosion which began in northwestern Europe early in the nineteenth century spread outward to eastern Europe and to Asia with increasingly unhappy consequences as it spread. The result was to create the greatest social problem of the twentieth-century world.
Most stable and primitive societies, such as the American Indians before 1492 or medieval Europe, have no great population problem because the birthrate is balanced by the death rate. In such societies both of these are high, the population is stable, and the major portion of that population is young (below eighteen years of age). This kind of society (frequently called Population Type A) is what existed in Europe in the medieval period (say about 1400) or even in part of the early modern period (say about 1700). As a result of the increased supply of food in Europe after 1725, and of men's increased ability to save lives because of advances in sanitation and medicine after 1775, the death rate began to fall, the birthrate remained high, the population began to increase, and the number of older persons in the society increased. This gave rise to what we have called the demographic explosion (or Population Type B). As a result of it, the population of Europe (beginning in western Europe) increased in the nineteenth century, and the major portion of that population was in the prime of life (ages eighteen to forty-five), the arms-bearing years for men and the childbearing years for women.
At this point the demographic cycle of an expanding population goes into a third stage (Population Type C) in which the birthrate also begins to fall. The reasons for this fall in the birthrate have never been explained in a satisfactory way, but, as a consequence of it, there appears a new demographic condition marked by a falling birthrate, a low death rate, and a stabilizing and aging population whose major part is in the mature years from thirty to sixty. As the population gets older because of the decrease in births and the increase in expectation of life, a larger and larger part of the population has passed the years of hearing children or bearing arms. This causes the birthrate to decline even more rapidly, and eventually gives a population so old that the death rate begins to rise again because of the great increase in deaths from old age or from the casualties of inevitable senility. Accordingly, the society passes into a fourth stage of the demographic cycle (Population Type D). This stage is marked by a declining birthrate, a rising death rate, a decreasing population, and a population in which the major part is over fifty years of age.
It must be confessed that the nature of the fourth stage of this demographic cycle is based on theoretical considerations rather than on empirical observation, because even western Europe, where the cycle is most advanced, has not yet reached this fourth stage. However, it seems quite likely that it will pass into such a stage by the year 2000, and already the increasing number of older persons has given rise to new problems and to a new science called geriatrics both in western Europe and in the eastern United States.
As we have said, Europe has already experienced the first three stages of this demographic cycle as a result of the Agricultural Revolution after 1725 and the Sanitation-Medical Revolution after 1775. As these two revolutions have diffused outward from western Europe to more peripheral areas of the world (the lifesaving revolution passing the food-producing revolution in the process), these more remote areas have entered, one by one, upon the demographic cycle. This means that the demographic explosion (Population Type B) has moved outward from western Europe to Central Europe to eastern Europe and finally to Asia and Africa. By the middle of the twentieth century, India was fully in the grasp of the demographic explosion, with its population shooting upward at a rate of about 5 million a year, while Japan's population rose from 55 million in 1920 to 94 million in 1960. A fine example of the working of this process can be seen in Ceylon where in 1920 the birthrate was 40 per thousand and the death rate was 32 per thousand, but in 1950 the birthrate was still at 40 while the death rate had fallen to 12. Before we examine the impact of this development on world history in the twentieth century let us look at two brief tables which will clarify this process.
The demographic cycle may be divided into four stages which we have designated by the first four letters of the alphabet. These four stages can be distinguished in respect to four traits: the birthrate, the death rate, the number of the population, and its age distribution. The nature of the four stages in these four respects can be seen in the following table:
The Demographic Cycle
Stage A B C D
Birthrate High High Falling Low
Death rate High Falling Low Rising
Numbers Stable Rising Stable Falling
Age Many young Many in prime Many Middle-aged Many old
Distribution (Below 18) (18-45) (Over 30) (Over 50)
The consequences of this demographic cycle (and the resulting demographic explosion) as it diffuses outward from western Europe to more peripheral areas of the world may be gathered from the following table which sets out the chronology of this movement in the four areas of western Europe, central Europe, eastern Europe, and Asia:
Diffusion of the Demographic Cycle
Areas
Western Central Eastern
Dates Europe Europe Europe Asia
1700 A A A A
1800 B A A A
_______
1850 B | B A A
|________________
1900 C B | B A
|________________
1950 C C B | B
|____________
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