The Challenge of Eurocentrism, Global Perspectives, Policy, and Prospects, by Rajani Kannepalli Kanth - PDF

The Challenge of Eurocentrism
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The Challenge of Eurocentrism:
Global Perspectives, Policy,
and Prospects
Edited by
Rajani Kannepalli Kanth
(with the assistance of Amit Basole)
THE CHALLENGE OF EUROCENTRISM: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES, POLICY, AND PROSPECTS
Copyright © Rajani Kannepalli Kanth, 2009.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978–0–230–61227–3
ISBN-10: 0–230–61227–X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rajani Kannepalli Kanth.
The challenge of Eurocentrism : global perspectives, policy, and prospects /
edited by Rajani Kannepalli Kanth.
p. cm.
ISBN 0–230–61227–X
1. Eurocentrism. 2. Civilization, Modern—European influences.
3. Postcolonialism. I. Title.
CB430.R27 2009
909.82—dc22 2008039126
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: May 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
For my Daughters: Antara, Indrina, Malini, and Anjana—
who will live, I hope, in the promise of a Polycentric,
i.e., a De-centered World.
CON T E N T S
List of Figures and Tables ix

Foreword xi
Acknowledgments xxi
Rajani K. Kanth and Eurocentrism: A Critique xxiii
Nick Hostettler
Introduction Challenging Eurocentrism: 45 Theses 1

Part 1 Received Theory, Science, and Eurocentrism

One Eurocentric Roots of the Clash of Civilizations:
A Perspective from the History of Science 9
Arun Bala
Two Mathematics and Eurocentrism 25
George Gheverghese Joseph
Three Official Corruption and Poverty:
A Challenge to the Eurocentric View 45
Ravi Batra
Part 2 Perspectives on Africa, West,

South, and East Asia
Four Pan-African and Afro-Asian Alternatives [to] and
Critiques [of Eurocentrism] 63
Mathew Forstater
Five Economic Development and the Fabrication of
the Middle East as a Eurocentric Project 77
Fırat Demir and Fadhel Kaboub
Six The Phantom of Liberty:
Mo(der)nism and Postcolonial Imaginations in India 97
Rajesh Bhattacharya and Amit Basole
viii Contents
Seven Eurocentrism, Modernity, and

the Postcolonial Predicament in East Asia 121
Kho Tung-Yi
Part 3 Perspectives on the West:

Europe and the Americas
Eight On Cultural Bondage:
From Eurocentrism to Americocentrism 147
Ali A. Mazrui
Nine American Exceptionalism and the Myth of the Frontiers 171
Rajiv Malhotra
Ten What Have the Muslims Ever Done for Us?
Islamic Origins of Western Civilization 217
John M. Hobson
Part 4 Eurocentrism: Policy and Prospects

Eleven Beyond Eurocentrism: The Next Frontier 239
Postface: Eurocentrism—Whither Now? 245

Contributors 249
Index 253
F IGU R E S A N D TA BL E S
Figures
2.1 The “Classical” Eurocentric Trajectory 31

2.2 The “Modified” Eurocentric Trajectory 31
2.3 An Alternative Trajectory for the Period from
Eighth to Fifteenth Centuries 31
9.1 Stereotypes of Civilized and Savage Peoples 202
9.2 Encounters That Shaped National Character 206
Tables
3.1 World Oil Consumption and Price: 1983–2007 48

9.1 History of the Frontiers 209
FOR E WOR D
The Seven Biases of Eurocentrism:

A Diagnostic Introduction
A l i A . M a z ru i
This volume originated as a Festschrift celebration of the Life and Work of

Rajani Kannepalli Kanth, a Special Event held at the Chicago Meetings of
the American Economic Association, in 2007. Many of the contributors
at the event, other than George Joseph, Arun Bala, Ravi Batra, and Nick
Hostettler, made presentations there that are edited and reproduced here.
I consider the event a historic one that generated this book, and I would
hope, the stimulus for the kind of fundamental rethinking that is essential
for our troubled times.
Eurocentrism in the study of world history rests on seven pillars. In other
words, an approach to the study of world history may be described as
“Eurocentric” if it betrays the following biases:
The bias of Euro-heroism: This is a tendency toward giving dispropor-
tionate attention to European and Western achievements in the arts, phi-
losophy, science, technology, and governance. This includes European
voyages of exploration and claims of how certain European adventur-
ers “discovered” Victoria Falls or Mt. Kilimanjaro, or the source of the
Nile—or whether Christopher Columbus discovered America.
In the ancient world there was no such thing as Europe. Europe’s
incorporation of Ancient Greece into its own body politic—and its
hijacking of the achievements of Ancient Greece, Western and Northern
Europe to define themselves to incorporate the miracles of Athens and
Sparta.
Since the end of the cold war there has also been Western triumphalism
and claims about “the end of history” on the side of the West.
The second bias is of Euro-mitigation: This is the tendency for some
textbooks to underplay the sins perpetrated by Europeans and Westerners
across the centuries. Thus, the story of the European settlement of the
xii Ali A. Mazrui
Americas is often told with little discussion about the huge human and
cultural cost—the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans, the
reckless destruction of such f lourishing indigenous civilizations as that of
the Incas, Aztecs and the last days of the Mayas.
The Transatlantic slave trade was a traffic in humans that continued
for several centuries. Yet some textbooks give it a brief mention and
hurry up to deal with less guilt-ridden subjects. And very few text-
books not written by Black authors discuss the Middle Passage—the
cruel method of transporting slaves across the Atlantic that cost so many
lives en route.
There is also some Euro-mitigation in the portrayal of European
empires in Africa and Asia. In earlier years European colonialism used
to be portrayed as a civilizing force in Africa, Asia, and the non-Western
world. Nowadays Western textbooks have got past that civilizing clap-
trap. But the enormous damage which European colonialism has done to
African societies is still grossly understated in books.
Then there is the understating of the faults of individual Western heroes.
The most eloquent voice on liberty in American constitutional history
was Thomas Jefferson. Yet Jefferson owned 200 slaves. He also had an
aesthetic theory about the link between pain and poetry. He argued that
although Black people had suffered enough pain and anguish, Blacks were
incapable of great poetry. And although Abraham Lincoln was antislavery,
he was not pro-racial equality. Almost on the eve of the Civil War, he
was assuring his audiences that his preferred world was not a world where
Blacks voted, or served as jurors, or were allowed to marry whites. Far
from it, Abraham Lincoln assured audiences, spicing his speech with anti-
Black jokes.
Also in the field of Euro-mitigation is the reluctance to discuss white
racism in school textbooks. Sometimes books on world history ignore
racism entirely as a force in modern history—except perhaps when dis-
cussing the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Occasionally the case of
apartheid in South Africa used to be recognized. More absent is the rel-
evance of race in American society or in relations between Whites and
Blacks worldwide in the past 400 years.
The third bias of Eurocentrism is Euro-exclusivity. This is the tendency
to give disproportionate space in textbooks to the Western side of world
history—such as five chapters on the history of Europe through medi-
eval times, the Renaissance, the French Revolution, and the Industrial
Revolution, as compared with the one chapter on India and China com-
bined across two millennia.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has done splendid televi-
sion work. With me as author and storyteller the BBC did a nine-hour
series on Africa (The Africans: A Triple Heritage). With Akbar Ahmed, they
did a six-hour television series on the Muslim world (Living Islam). But
the same BBC is capable of producing twelve-hour television series on
Foreword: Biases of Eurocentrism xiii
Ireland alone, or a multi-episode television drama on The Six Wives of

Henry VIII.
Between Sins of Quality and Sins of Quantity
The fourth, fifth, and sixth biases of Eurocentrism are about how
Eurocentrism affects other cultures. First Eurocentrism shortchanges the
achievements of other peoples and cultures. In discussing Ancient Greece
there is little recognition of how much the Greeks might have owed to
ancient Egyptians—a subject reactivated since the 1980s by the Cornell
University professor, Martin Bernal, with his multivolume study Black
Athena (Contrary to some assumptions, Martin Bernal is not a Black man;
he is a White British Jew, originally a don at Cambridge University in
England). His thesis is that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europeans
rewrote the history of ancient Greece to deny its debt to ancient Egypt
and the Phoenicians. Bernal argues that the reasons for this historical revi-
sionism was Europe’s new racism against Blacks and Jews.
A Eurocentric history of great philosophers may mention Aristotle but
not Avicenna; such a history of great historians may mention Edward
Gibbon and Arnold Toynbee but not Ibn Khaldun; a Eurocentric his-
tory of letters may mention Milton and Wordsworth but not Iqbal and
Rabandranath Tagore.
Almost all Eurocentric histories of religion ignore entirely indigenous
African traditional religions, although these beliefs and values continue
to inf luence millions of people to the present day. Of course, they also
ignore the indigenous religions of Native Americans and other indigenous
peoples from Peru to Papua New Guinea.
The fifth bias of Eurocentrism is even more extreme. It is disparagement
of other countries. If the fourth bias is denying credit to the achievement
of others, this fifth bias apportions disproportionate blame to the sins of
others.
The association of Islam with the sword of conquest has been one
recurrent tendency in Eurocentric accounts. More recently a billion
Muslims have been slandered for the sins of Al-Qaeda. Curiously enough,
sub-Saharan Africa is one part of the world where both Christianity and
Islam have spread—but it was Christianity that spread with the sword
of European imperialism while Islam spread by more peaceful means.
Today most estimates say that Muslims in Africa are more numerous than
Christians. And in Nigeria alone there are more Muslims than in any
Arab country—including Egypt.
While Islam has indeed suffered a lot of disparagement in Eurocentric his-
tory books, indigenous African cultures have suffered even more. Europeans
had for a long time regarded indigenous African cultures as savage and
primitive, and have often exaggerated their weaknesses and ignored their
xiv Ali A. Mazrui
strengths. Indeed, distinguished Western historians have been on record in

recent times saying there is no such thing as African history.
As Hugh Trevor-Roper, then Regius Professor of Modern History at
Oxford University put it in the 1960s
Maybe in the future there will be African history. But at the moment
there is none. There is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The
rest is darkness, and darkness is not a subject of history.
The sixth bias of Eurocentric history is the related sin of marginalizing

other cultures in the quantitative terms of space devoted to them in books,
classrooms and audio-video materials. This is the other side of the coin
of Euro-exclusivity or exclusion. We may count in the number of hours in
a school curriculum, or number of pages in a history book, devoted to
other civilizations. If the space is limited it still is a form of marginaliza-
tion even if that limited space is used to emphasize a few non-Western
achievements.
Shortchanging other cultures is a qualitative sin; marginalizing other
cultures is a quantitative sin (how much space or attention they get). Even
if the qualitative sin is reduced by emphasizing the achievements of other
cultures, the quantitative sin may remain if those cultures are not given
enough space or enough hours.
The seventh bias of the Eurocentric approach is to look at other soci-
eties within a Western paradigm or from a Western perspective. Let us
take Algeria between 1954 and 1962. The Muslim people of Algeria were
fighting the military might of France. France claimed that Algeria was a
province of France and not a colony. Algeria could not therefore get inde-
pendence. These African Muslims decided to take up arms to challenge
this French presumption.
A Eurocentric point of view might say that once France had a great
leader like Charles de Gaulle, statesmanship prevailed. In the face of
strong right-wing opposition in France, de Gaulle granted Algerians their
freedom and graciously recognized the peace of the brave in the Evion
Accords. French democracy could be trusted to find a solution to a colo-
nial problem in the Muslim world.
A less Eurocentric point of view would argue that this was a case of
African Muslims changing the course of European history rather than
France graciously granting independence. By fighting for their freedom
in Algeria, the National Liberation Front of Algerian Nationalists was
creating not only a political crisis in France but a constitutional one. The
Vietnam War never brought the Constitution of the United States crum-
bling to the ground, but the Algerian War did lead to the collapse of the
Fourth Republic of France.
The 1958 crisis did force the French people to call out of retirement
Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle’s condition for taking over was a whole new
Constitution—the Fifth Republic. If the Algerians had not fought for
Foreword: Biases of Eurocentrism xv
their independence, de Gaulle might never have returned to power, the

Fifth Republic never been inaugurated. De Gaulle’s constitution brought
more stability to France and inf luenced French assertiveness. France pulled
out of NATO, delayed British membership of the European Economic
Community, and accelerated French policy of an independent nuclear
deterrent.
By fighting for their independence at home, those Algerian Muslims
precipitated fundamental change in another country abroad—and changed
the course of the history not only of France but also of Western Europe.
We need a paradigm not only of inclusion but also of interaction. And
people interact not only at the level of intention, but also at the level of
unintended impact. Algerians had an unforeseen and decisive impact on
the history of Europeans in the second half of the twentieth century.
Similarly, by fighting for their liberation from the Soviets in the
1980s, the Mujahiddeens in Afghanistan were helping to destroy the
Soviet Union’s imperial will. Empires are maintained partly by the iron
will of the imperial power. The Soviet imperial received a fatal blow in
Afghanistan.
The Afghans accomplished in the 1980s what Hungarians failed to do
in 1956—the Afghans resisted Soviet tanks. The Afghans accomplished
in the 1980s what the Czechs failed to do in 1968—the Afghans expelled
a Soviet invasion. The end of the cold war had many causes. Among the
least acknowledged was the role of the Mujahiddeens in helping to destroy
the Soviet will to hold on to its empire.
A marginalized and technologically underdeveloped Muslim country
such as Afghanistan defeated a superpower, and helped to change the course
of world history. The origins of the collapse of Soviet empires are partly
to be traced to the streets of Kabul and the mountains of Afghanistan.
Western historians are unlikely to acknowledge such an impact to the
Mujahiddeens.
Once again world history should be approached not only as an inclusive
process, but also as an interactive process. Yes, people interact with each
other both at the level of intention and at the level of unintended impact.
Finally, the impact of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau on
the recent history of Portugal. A Eurocentric approach to the story may
claim that Portugal moved rapidly towards giving independence to its
colonies as soon as the fascist political order in Lisbon collapsed in April
1974. An alternative approach is to see the collapse of the fascist political
order in Lisbon as being itself caused by anti-colonial wars in Angola,
Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. By fighting for their independence, the
Africans in Portuguese colonies prepared the ground for the democratiza-
tion and modernization of Portugal in the last quarter of the twentieth
century.
Portugal had until then turned its back on every progressive force and
movement in European history—the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
the Reformation, the French and American revolutions, the industrial
xvi Ali A. Mazrui
revolution. By the last third of the twentieth century Portugal had become
the most backward European nation after Albania. It took African libera-
tion fighters struggling for their independence to shock Portugal out of its
historic lethargy at last.
The anti-colonial wars ended the old order and inaugurated at length
the modernization, democratization and re-Europeanization of Portugal.
Once again Africans had helped to make European history.
Finally, there are Eurocentric biases which are wider than Africa
and Islam, but which inevitably also affect approaches to the study of
Muslim history and African culture. Because Europeans have domi-
nated most branches of science for at least three hundred years, many
paradigms of all other cultures (not just African and Islamic) have been
distorted by European perspectives. Some forms of Eurocentrism are
virtually irreversible, others can be modified. Let us look at these dif-
ferent dimensions.
The Geography of Space and Time
For illustration in this paper, let us focus on the distinction between the
geography of space and the geography of time. The geography of space in
our sense is about continents, oceans, planets and outer space at a given
moment in time.
The geography of time, on the other hand, is about history and its
periodization. Eurocentrism in the geography of space has gone so far that
much of it may be irreversible. On the other hand, the Eurocentrism in
the geography of time may be capable of being rolled back to a certain
extent. Our concepts of “ancient, medieval and modern” may still be
deeply rooted in the paradigm of European history, but we may be able to
struggle out of some of the shackles.
Although there is an Islamic calendar, the triumph of the Gregorian
Christian calendar worldwide is so great that Muslims can no longer
rely on the Hijriyya calendar alone. Great Muslim events like the fall of
Constantinople to the Turks are more likely to be remembered by their
date in the Christian era than their date in the Islamic calendar. But even
when Muslims use dates in the Christian era as boundaries of their his-
tory, they need not of course be bound by European concepts of “ancient,
medieval and modern.”
One debate concerns the issue of whether Islam existed before
the Prophet Muhammad. Were the two older Abrahamic religions
( Judaism and Christianity) themselves Islamic? If there was Islam before
Muhammad, what did Allah mean in the Qur’an when he said to the
Prophet Muhammad and his followers the following?
On this day have I completed for you your religion, and perfected for you my
bounty, and chosen for you Islam as your religion.
Foreword: Biases of Eurocentrism xvii
If there was Islam before the Prophet Muhammad, why does the Islamic
calendar begin with the Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina (the
Hijjra)? If there was Islam before the Prophet Muhammad, why are the
days before his mission deemed to be the era of Jahiliyya (the days of
ignorance)?
However, it is possible for a Muslim to argue that while the Prophet
Muhammad was the last and greatest of the prophets, all the previous
prophets were preaching different stages of the same mission of Islam.
This would include Moses and Jesus as prophets of Islam. Periodization
in Islamic history might therefore include the following rather uneven
epochs:
I Islam before the Prophet Muhammad’s birth

II Islam between the birth of the Prophet Muhammad and the death
of the Fourth Caliph, Ali bin Abi Talib
III The era of the Umayyads
IV The era of the Abbassids
V The era of global consolidation of Islam in Asia and Africa and
decline in Spain
VI The rise of the Ottoman Empire
VII Islam in the shadow of modern European imperialism: Decline
and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
VIII Post-Caliphate Islam: Piety, Patriotism and Petroleum
It is partly in this sense that the geography of time can be revised and can
be made more relevant. Islamic periodization might be made to respond
to the realities of Islamic history and belief.1
On the other hand, the geography of space as bequeathed to the world
by the West’s hegemony may be far less susceptible to modification or
revision. The Eurocentrism in the geography of space may be more obsti-
nate partly because it has been more effectively “universalized.”
Indeed there are aspects of this Eurocentrism which are virtually impos-
sible to correct. To begin with, Europe named the world. She named the
continents such as North and South America, Europe and Antarctica.
Even Africa and Asia have names that, although non-European in origin,
were applied to those landmasses first and foremost by Europeans. Europe
also named the oceans—the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Mediterranean, the
Arctic. Even the “Indian Ocean” could just as easily have been called the
“African Ocean” but for Europe’s fascination with a sea route to India
from the European shores.
Europe timed the world—choosing a little place in Britain called
Greenwich as the basis of a global standard time. Some broadcasting sta-
tions today call it “Universal Time,” but it is a euphemism for Greenwich
Mean Time (GMT).
Europe also positioned the world on the map—making sure that Europe
was above and Africa below. This was not an inevitable law of the cosmos
xviii Ali A. Mazrui
but a convention chosen by Europeans. There was no spectator in outer

space decreeing from which position planet earth was to be viewed.
Europe “christened” the majority of the countries of the world. Perhaps
up to 60% of the members of the United Nations have had either their
names or their national boundaries determined by Europeans. Quite often
both names and borders were indeed Euro-determined.
On top of all this, Europeans have been naming the universe, often with
Euro-classical names. The range includes Venus, Mars, Saturn, Pluto, and
others.
How much of this Eurocentrism of geography is reversible? Although
Muslim scholarship and civilization produced some of the earliest car-
tographers and map-makers of modern history, and some of the earliest
astronomers, the subsequent successes of European science and technol-
ogy have left a more indelible impact on those disciplines. Much of the
Eurocentrism of contemporary geographical knowledge is beyond repair.
Some names of regions which were Europe-centric can in fact be
changed. The term “Near East” (meaning near to Europe) has fallen into
dis-use. The term “Far East” (meaning far from Europe) is becoming
more and more politically incorrect.
The term “Middle East” is more complicated. The word “East” is
“Eurocentric” but the term “Middle” can be objectively defended. The
region which we call Middle East lies astride three ancient continents—
Africa, Asia and to a lesser extent Europe. It is a “middle” by being the
crossroads of three continents. Some people prefer to call the region “West
Asia,” but that would leave out Egypt and the rest of Arab North Africa,
which are normally seen as part of the Middle East.
It is becoming politically incorrect to call the Americas “the New
World” since the Americas have been inhabited by human beings for
about 15,000 years.
It is also becoming politically incorrect to immortalize an old European
mistake by calling the natives of the Americas “Indians.” The name was
originally a case of mistaken identity. Columbus thought he had discovered
India or the Indies. Now in the United States the politically correct name
is increasingly “Native Americans,” and in Canada it is “First Nations.”
Can the United States still be called a Judeo-Christian country? To
many Americans who are neither Christian nor Jew, this description is
both politically and constitutionally incorrect. But is the description also
becoming factually incorrect? Muslims are expected to outnumber Jews in
the United States in this new century. The growth of the Muslim popula-
tion is by larger families, greater immigration and the fastest rate of con-
version of any religion in the United States.
A Conclusion
In the wider world the most successful Semitic religion is Christianity; the
most successful Semitic language is Arabic; the most successful Semitic
Foreword: Biases of Eurocentrism xix
people are the Jews. Where does the United States fit in this triple equa-
tion? How does America relate to these Abrahamic legacies?
If the Christians of America are the most inf luential Christians in the
world, and the Jews of America are the most inf luential Jews in the world,
what is the status of Muslims in America? American Muslims are unlikely
to become the most inf luential Muslims in the world since there are
Muslim nations abroad with large populations and great resources.
What could be unique about Muslims in North America is their oppor-
tunity for bridge-building towards other religions in conditions of a free
society. In the United States Muslims are pre-eminently well placed to
engage in interfaith dialogue with Christians, Jews and others—and con-
struct institutions of interfaith joint action.
The United States may indeed be in the process of becoming less and
less Eurocentric. It is now foreseeable for White Americans to become
a minority of the U.S. population in the course of this twenty-first cen-
tury. The House of Representatives has had its first Muslim members
recently elected, both of them Black. When he was elected to the U.S.
Senate in 2004, Barack Obama was only the fifth Black member of the
U.S. Senate in 200 years. Since then Obama has been elected president
of the United States—making him the first Black occupant of the Oval
Office in the country’s history.
But while Eurocentrism may be declining in the United States demo-
graphically and culturally, the pace of change is till very slow. And in
the rest of the world, Eurocentrism is in any case being replaced by
Americocentrism. The Western world as a whole is still triumphant as a
role model for the rest of the human race—for better or for worse! The
struggle continues.
Note
1. For a future-oriented approach consult Sardar (1987).
Bibliography
Ziauddin Sardar, The Future of Muslim Civilization (London and New York: Mansell, 1987).
AC K NOW L E DGM E N T S
This Book is owed to far more than is usual, given its nature as a Compilation
of Papers. Rather than thank the several, distinguished Contributors indi-
vidually, it were economical, perhaps, to gratefully acknowledge their
work(s), taken together, since their vital labors constitute, virtually, the
entirety of this Volume. Suffice it to say that they are this Book—and its
Contents.
To Phil O’Hara, Mat Forstater, Rajiv Malhotra, Fadhel Kaboub, and
Kathy Hawkins, I owe the feat of organization of my Festschrift at the
AEA Meetings in Chicago, January of 2007, where this Project officially
commenced, in embryo. Their affection for me, in so doing, is a gift I
carry with me still.
To the gracious Ali Mazrui, who attended, and contributed vigorously
to the Festschrift, I can only, even this late after the Event, humbly express
my deep gratitude. The inimitable Ravi Batra joined this Book Project
rather late in the day, and I can only welcome his distinguished participa-
tion. To George Joseph, I owe a rather singular debt: his was the very first
formal Paper on Eurocentrism I had read—and it is one I still commend
to students.
I further owe Laurie Harting, Editor at Palgrave Macmillan a truly
primary debt for seeing merit in this Book Project way ahead of oth-
ers; to Emma Hamilton, Editorial Assistant, for her inordinate kindness
and patience in dealing with my communicative excesses; to Rachel
Tekula, Production Editor, for trenchantly, and generously, simplifying
the hard(er) parts of the publication process for my (inept) digestion; and
to Maran Elancheran and the Newgen Imaging Systems, India, for their
altogether professional, friendly, and wholly “business class” copyediting
and proofing labors.
I must also mention the early and warm assistance of Toby Wahl, for-
mer Editor at Macmillan, whose association with me, and my work, far
predates this volume.
Gratitude is owed to Nancy Nash for her valuable moral support as I
sketched my own ideas on Eurocentrism, whilst a guest at Umass Amherst
Economics Department, in Fall of 2006, as Helen Sheridan Scholar.
I must also profusely thank Dr Amit Basole, of UMass Amherst, who,
whilst a contributor himself, helped look after, on a continuous, patient,
xxii Acknowledgments
and caretaking, basis, all the arduous managerial aspects of this process,
with his usual amiability, courtesy, and dependability, insulating me
from the multitude of, potentially irksome, labors that ever attend such
productions.
I thank my friend Roger Owen for allowing me space at Harvard that
enabled the completion of this work with some measure of institutional
stability.
This book is but a small glimpse of who we are, or have come to be,
under the spell of Eurocentric Modes of Thought, but is also a little
peek at what might lie beyond their blinders. For both kinds of inspira-
tion, a heavy debt of gratitude is owed to the works of a unique set of
visionary, if varied, Pioneers, past and present, who helped me, cumula-
tively, see the Miasma of Euro-Modernism for what it is: memory recalls
W. Wordsworth, O. Goldsmith, T. Carlysle, J. Ruskin, C. Rosetti,
P. Feyerabend, M. K. Gandhi, I. Illich, V. Shiva, C. Merchant, Simone
de Beauvoir, G. Spivak, D. Bohm, J. Krishnamurti, J. Blaut, A. G. Frank,
and I. Wallerstein, amongst an even longer list of worthies, now, unhap-
pily, lost to amnesia.
Finally, I owe the stimulus to this modus of thinking, developing
almost from childhood, to the exemplary, if unfulfilled, life of my late
mother, Kesari Kesavan, the “Last Victorian” in my still fond memory,
who, alas, lived the tragedy of Modernism without being aware of it.
R AJA N I K . K A N T H A N D
EU RO C E N T R ISM: A C R I T IQU E
Nic k Ho s t e t t l e r
Against Eurocentrism: A Transcendent Critique of Modernist Science, Society and

Morals. By Rajani Kanth. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 192pp.
The theory and practice of Modernism swiftly puts paid to the very
possibility of civilization.
Rajani Kanth
Modernity’s political and ethical discourse claims the mantle of civiliza-

tion for the West on the condition it succeeds, or at least appears to suc-
ceed, in containing its own tendencies to barbarism. Its extraordinary
powers need to be divided against one another if they are not to consume
themselves, and the world around them. As the subjects of modernity, we
are the bearers of these opposing tendencies, paying the price of being
enmeshed in an overarching complex of structural contradictions.
Civilisation/barbarism is the defining antinomy of modernity, while
one of its many manifestations is that between rationalisation and mean-
ing. The modernist struggles between Enlightenment and Romanticism
were not the exception, but the rule. Indeed, most important contribu-
tors to the modern tradition have registered these inner tensions: Adam
Smith’s recognition that there could be no civilisation without politi-
cal constraint of the hidden hand; John Stuart Mill’s humanist socialist
response to the aridity of utilitarianism; Durkheim’s ambition for a liberal
reconstitution of the conscience collective in the face of deepening anomie;
Weber’s commitment to the politics of charisma as a counter to the iron
cage; Marx’s appreciation of religion as consolation for dehumanising
capital, and so on.
The practical, political, “resolution” of these difficulties, as Gramsci
understood, is the search for hegemony. To achieve hegemony is to
progress bourgeois cultural revolution whilst securing a kind of recon-
ciliation between the tendencies to civilisation and barbarity. As well as
xxiv Nick Hostettler
“balancing” force and coercion, hegemony is a precarious compromise

formation between the institution of impersonal forms of domination and
the meaning of life. Of course, the quality of the balance between the
two, between capital and law, bureaucracy and reason, on the one hand,
and a sense of ethical social purpose on the other, has always been highly
differential, with some fractions of the population leading richer lives than
others. What is more, these moments, in which the fundamental problems
of modernity appear less pressing, are necessarily unstable: the imperatives
of capital drive a never-ending pursuit of the modern which puts the very
possibility of sociality at risk.
What makes the contemporary condition of postmodernity stand out
are only the intensity of the forces generating violence, anomie, social
dislocation and instability and the equally desperate character of some of
the attempts to reenchant the world. It is easy enough to see both the des-
peration and the contradictions of modernity in the technophilia of some
Islamic radicalism, but the more ordinary utopian desires for a hospitable
modernity are, in the end, no less mired in the same contradictions and
are often no less desperate and wishful.
The horrors of the 14–18 War provoked Rosa Luxemburg into passion-
ate rage against modernity:
Shamed, dishonoured, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus

capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the roles
of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of ethics—as a
roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential breath, devastat-
ing culture and humanity—so it appears in all its hideous nakedness.
(Luxemburg 1916/1970, p. 262)
In our own times, after the experience of subsequent wars and Hitler’s
Fascism, it is no longer the exceptional moments of war that inspire such
language, but the workaday nature of what passes for peace and for civi-
lization. Rajani Kanth’s intellectual life has been devoted to just such a
critique of the civilizing tendencies of modernity. To say that they are
counters to its barbarizing ones is to miss something more troubling: they
are also its vehicles. Modern peace is not the opposite of war, and when it
comes to modernity, civilization is barbarism. An energetic and engaging
writer, Kanth has previously published titles such as Capitalism and Social
Theory and Breaking with the Enlightenment (Kanth 1992, 1997). Always
provocative and illuminating, his work seems in retrospect to have been
moving towards this culmination. Against Eurocentrism presents us with
the grand vision of a mature writer’s uncompromising verdict on modern
life.
Given this background, it is no surprise that this is no ordinary book on
Eurocentrism. While the term is always used for social criticism, there are
degrees and kinds of critique, and when compared to this one, most other
accounts are conspicuously limited. The contrast is akin to that between
Kanth and Eurocentrism: A Critique xxv
immanent and explanatory critique: where most uses of “Eurocentrism”

relate to some or other internal inconsistency of modern society, Kanth
deepens and enlarges the critical scope of the term. Where others are
content to identify distortions of modern society, he uses it to estab-
lish a withering perspective on the institution of modernity as a whole.
Modernity is nothing less than the world forged into being under the
hammer of Eurocentrism. It is also a world which systematically distorts
what it means to be human. Kanth reveals Eurocentric modernity as a
monstrous inversion of human cultural values: the modern as the anti-
culture. His purpose is to inspire its reversal, to lend support to a further
turn of the wheel of history which would place our existence the right
way up once again. What he seeks is the dissolution of civil society, an end
to the ongoing bourgeois cultural revolution on its political, economic
and cultural fronts.
The most important contribution Against Eurocentrism makes to contem-
porary critical theory is to draw modernity, capitalism and civil society
together under the single term: Eurocentrism. It also provides a normative
framework for responding to the ills of the present, offers an explanation
for these ills, and even sheds light on a way of ending them. Here, though,
is a strange twist, for the explanatory and prescriptive parts of his thesis
are curiously modernist in nature. In the end, Kanth’s own account of
alternative, non-modern, culture draws directly on modernist justifica-
tions of its own institutions as solutions to problems of human nature. It is
as if his moral critique absorbed all his critical energies. His guard down,
modernism crept back in.
Against Eurocentrism begins with a statement of the intrinsic values and
essential categories of human cultural existence: the affective-moral per-
sonal bonds of conviviality. With a close affinity to notions of gemein-
schaft, Kanth develops a philosophical-anthropological perspective which
informs the ensuing moral critique:
It is in this domain of non-acquisitive life processes that the needs of

civility and uncoerced reciprocity are sown; it is within the matrix
of these social behaviours that the possibility of civilisation is engen-
dered however unconsciously; and it is in these highly localised,
indeed parochial interactions that the genius of self-directed human
productivity, leashed always to the ordinary norms of ecological
responsibility, first f lourished. (p. 114)
The book then explores the modern as the antagonist of this dimension
of our being. It is a highly personal work which can be read as answering
this question: What is it about the modern that tempts us to reconcile our-
selves with its evils? How is it, even in the face of its horrors, we find our-
selves drawn by the prospect of coming to terms with it? Despite repeated,
unspeakable, disappointments, we remain open to the enticing appeal of
the idea that life has improved and will do so again with time. Of course
xxvi Nick Hostettler
this world is an imperfect one, but only in the sense of being incomplete:
modernity is an unfinished project, and one whose completion we will-
ingly anticipate. We are beguiled by its endlessly sustained promise. More
than anything else, what reconciles us to its ills is its seemingly limitless
capacity to breathe life into the immanent prospect of material and ethi-
cal progress. The modern not only insists that it is redeemable, it even
claims that it is alone amongst forms of life in being the true foundations
of human well being and moral evolution. To put it in terms derived from
Roy Bhaskar’s ethics: the appeal of modernity is that the pulse of freedom
beats more strongly here than elsewhere; in contrast to other forms of life,
the remaining constraints on the realization of freedom within modernity
appear as strictly contingent and unnecessary. The object of humanist
desire is realized modernity. Yet it is an object whose real essence is to be
always approached—endlessly deferred.
Against Eurocentrism reaches deep into an awful paradox: the material
and ethical achievements offered, provided and promised by modernity
and humanism come in forms which make them the very inverse of what
we need as human beings. Drawing on Bhaskar’s work again, we can
read this account of modern accomplishments as being achieved through
dialectic, a process of absenting the very social bonds and constraints that
make the good life possible. Kanth asserts that to f lourish we need, above
all, personal affective bonds of love and care; that we need strong and
stable family and familial ties within which we can be nurtured; that we
need to be enmeshed in mutually affirmative concrete relationships, and
our social practices need to reinforce and strengthen them.
The social is our natural state, a truth that Eurocentrism has hidden
from view in all its intellectual contortions: to contain it is to limit
our own development and thwart the possibility of fulfilment in our
own personalities. (p. 149)
The dialectic of modernity, though, stands in the sharpest possible contrast

to our natural state. This form of cultural “evolution” absents precisely
the kinds of relation we most need. What is more, ethical humanism is
revealed here as the prism through which this dialectical degeneration
appears as its opposite. The tragedy of modern humanism is that it has
succeeded in turning the entire order of human values upside down and
in attaching a positive ethical drive to the corrosion of the moral fabric of
our being.
The positive dimension of cultural existence is not merely given insuf-
ficient consideration within the humanist imaginary: it is absent from it.1
The Eurocentric vision is distinguished from all others in that its ultimate
conception of the human essence is an empty abstraction, a void.2 The
locus of this emptiness is the vision of the social as civil society. Kanth
shows that it is here, on this most peculiar of terrains, that Eurocentrism
expresses its highest values. It is here that Eurocentrism becomes the
Kanth and Eurocentrism: A Critique xxvii
religion of abstract, impersonal relations. The tragedy is of epochal pro-

portions: the vision of civil society is the very antithesis of a culture in
which our species being can be realised; it is the very opposite of the
culture in which our needs can be met. The institution of the humanist
imaginary is unique in that it establishes a fateful and profound contradic-
tion between its own form of society, the nexus of abstract impersonal
relations, and the common essence of all other forms of culture, which
privilege the concrete interpersonal ties of convivial life. Civil society
establishes a depersonalised principle of non-conviviality as its highest
value, and Eurocentric humanism becomes practical anti-humanism.
This is the irrational kernel of the paradox of modern humanism: it
imagines human f lourishing in a distorted and perverted form. Its visions
of moral realisation revolve around a deep black hole, a gaping absence,
the absence of the very conditions necessary for any human f lourishing.
Modernity may be sustained by a promise of human realisation, but it
produces a form of life that ceaselessly undermines any possibility that
such a promise could be fulfilled.
Against this background, Kanth explores the evolution of modernity in
terms of the relentless extirpation of the gemeinschaftlich by the gesell-
schaftlich. He tells this story in an assertoric rather than an argumenta-
tive style. So while its prose and erudition mark it as the product of a
deep immersion in the modern tradition, it does not, as Jonathan Joseph’s
endorsement says, “fall easily into any one category.” There is, for instance,
a sense in which this is literary work, as against a scientific one. Its four
sections are the moments of a narrative: introduction; complication;
dénouement; resolution. Like other narratives it is intended to reveal a
primarily moral truth about our life. It is also the work of an essayist, with
each of its 40 or so short sub-chapters coming as a relatively self-enclosed
essay dealing with an individual problem. Perhaps because of its literary
qualities it has a close affinity with the political genre of the manifesto.
Like the commodities that an earlier manifesto declared would be more
effective than cannonballs in breaching the Great Wall of China, Kanth’s
preferred weapons against the self-confidence of the post-Enlightenment
tradition are not the mannered exchanges of the academic high table, but
morally charged protestations and impassioned denunciations. In keeping
with the widespread sense of frustration with the narrowing horizons of
rationalised debate, Kanth turns to rhetorical devices in order to invest his
thesis with the necessary force.
Materialism, for Kanth, is the guiding ethos of the modern. The first
section of Against Eurocentrism, “Crossing the Rubicon,” advances a histor-
ical explanation for modernism in terms of the emergent value structures
of “materialism” and their progressive institutionalisation. Materialism is
a “philosophy,” an attitude to life. It is, though, wholly negative, inspir-
ing only carelessness and ruthlessness in theory and practice. Under its
inf luence, all nature is gradually subordinated to the most destructive
human impulses: insatiable greed and violence. The overriding project
xxviii Nick Hostettler
of materialism is the dismissal, denial and exclusion of the “spiritual”

dimension of social life: the eradication of care, nurture, love.
As one would expect of an account of modernity, this one is perme-
ated with the twin themes of “rationalisation” and “civil society.” For
Kanth, these are the highest expression of materialism. Indeed, it is under
these two signs that materialism comes into its own. The thinker he most
closely associates with the former is Max Weber, while his account of civil
society is inspired, above all, by Thomas Hobbes.
Though he repudiates the Marx-Weber “debate” as the meaningless
gyrations of the fruitless antinomy of idealism/materialism, Kanth nev-
ertheless declares for Weber. Weber “is closer to reality” in recognising
the world-shaping role of attitudes, ideas, values. Weber’s account of the
Spirit of Capitalism is largely correct: Reform Christianity was the vehicle
of the putative secular rationality that emerged with the Enlightenment
and which informs the ongoing institution of state and market. Standard
histories of the West all refer back to this cultural genius. The familiar tales
of reason, exploration, discovery and the export of civilisation all make
similar points. Where Weberian accounts go awry is not so much factually
or descriptively, though there is some of that of course, but normatively.3
Weber’s equation of instrumental materialism with rationality allows him
to paint the development of capitalism in positive colours, just as he dresses
up bureaucratic forms of domination in the “progressive” garb of technical
efficiency (see Kanth 1992). In fact, the realisation of Eurocentric mate-
rialism has been grounded in the conceit that reason can be meaningfully
severed from social existence. However, it is this abstracted rationality, as
opposed to the concrete, practical reason of other forms of life, that sepa-
rates modernity from the rest. “To dislodge reason from its nest in human
empathy is [a] cardinal, egregious sin of modernism” (p. 91).
Even though he is a less prominent figure here, it is Hobbes’ ref lections
on modernity that stand out as the greatest insights into its real nature.
Hobbes’ political realism was grounded in his state of nature: essentially
asocial individuals driven by desire and fear into mutually antagonistic
relationships. The problem, as Hobbes saw it, was to sufficiently constrain
the war of all against all so that these atomised persons could enjoy some
satisfaction of their desires. Civil society was to be established through the
imposition on the state of nature of a force so fearsome that its laws would
be guaranteed obedience: the modern state. This solution never entailed
any modification or development of human nature, quite the opposite. It
secured the terrain on which this nature could be safely expressed. Once
again, Kanth does not demur—as far as it goes. Once again, his quar-
rel is with Hobbes’ claims for the rationality of the solution. As we shall
see, Hobbes’ view of the problem was significantly incomplete, and his
solution served only to intensify the “materialist reorientation of human
existence.”
The story of modernity is complicated in “The Utopian Impulse: The
Mnemonics of Affective society.” The modern intellectual tradition—its
Kanth and Eurocentrism: A Critique xxix
forms of science, social and political theory—are approached as so many

avatars of the domineering materialist ethos. “All European political tra-
ditions serve only the Modernist project” (p. 49). The struggles between
the different strands of this tradition are nothing less than rival claim-
ants for the mantle of “progress,” itself no more than the illicit claim to
European superiority, the justification of the “white man’s burden” and
the valorisation of social transformation.
Its adherence to the materialist terrain of civil society renders social
science (“the CIA of Western Domination”) “simply the subtle artifice
of legitimation for virtually anything policy makers desire to perpetrate”
(p. 65). Equally, the lexicon of political theory, “liberty,” “democracy,”
“law and order,” is shown to veil the emptiness it generates. “Equality,”
formal and abstract, expresses only distance and lack of warmth; “justice”
is a medium which expunges human virtues; “liberty” is coerced freedom
from ties of conviviality; “law and order” is the institution of (Hobbesian)
anarchy (pp. 75–76).
These traditions have little, if anything, to offer us:
The aborted attempt to “find” [the lost world of nurturance] or rec-

reate it in the arid desert of “civil society,” from More to Marx, is
simply the story of the tragic failure to comprehend the fundamentals
of anthropic life. (p. 82)
The dénouement arrives with “The fatal conceit: elisions of materialism.”

The achievements made under the rubric of progress amount to nothing
less than a litany of catastrophes. The twisted promises of modernity are
fulfilled through consumerism and the “slatternly commodification of all
values” (p. 86). We are now witness to the very climax of a “process of
the radical annihilation of human and social utilities—a rampant ‘culture
of death’ to adopt a telling phrase of ecologist Vandana Shiva—was [. . .]
sacralized as ‘development’ and foisted upon the weak and/or the gullible
the world over” (p. 86). Having long awaited the end of the incomplete
project we have, at last, arrived, but now that we are there we find it is a
far cry from the universal human self-realisation we were led to expect.
“The globalisation of [the modernist European] is complete; his networks,
military and commercial, span the globe: we are prey to the meretricious
gloss of his wares, and the awesome power of his war-machines, and all
species now await his pleasure with trepidation” (p. 92). Yet, we are not
without hope, for despite it all our humanity remains with us and awaits
its restoration—if only we will be guided by genuinely humanist values.
Kanth’s path to a genuine resolution of these troubles comes in the
chapter “On Human Emancipation”: an “archaeology of discontent.”
Here he digs beneath the surface of the modern to disclose what has been
buried. The creation of the twin public realms of modernity has been at
the expense of the private realm of procreation and familial reproduc-
tion, “the humble praxis of the concrete, [. . .] the search for simple means
xxx Nick Hostettler
of subsistence and coexistence based on real anthropic needs” (p. 114).

Fortunately, this subordinate realm still persists, preserved by those at the
margins: women, producers, peasants and such. Here, in what appears to
modernists as the dustbin of history, i.e. the past and the outside, is the
source of an alternative, sustainable, truly human future. The humanist
response to the anti-humanism of modernity must be to preserve and
enhance these repositories of true human culture.
Gesturing to Hobbes, what makes these cultural redoubts so significant
for Kanth is that they embody the only viable solution to the essential
problem of human nature. However, what he gives us is a radical rework-
ing of that problem. For moderns, who accept that greed and violence
are basic human drives, civilisation depends on containing and channel-
ling them into creative, productive, activities. Somewhat surprisingly,
Kanth wholly endorses this, but offers one significant caveat: these are
male drives. Greed and violence are the expressions of male biology, the
peculiar characteristics of a distinctive human subspecies. Premodern
cultural success depends on the adaptive evolution of female institutions
which contain the destructive threats represented by masculinity. By con-
trast, modernism is a catastrophic failure to maintain the defensive dykes
against the f loodwaters of masculinism/materialism. Once established
in independent public spaces, where the female principles of affective
conviviality were fatally weakened, the masculinist assaults on culture
were launched. The result: rationalisation, civil society, Euro-Capitalism.
“European modernity has [. . .] taken the ‘natural’ project of masculinity to
its cultural apotheosis” (p. 103).
With this in mind it becomes clear how Hobbes was both right and
wrong about civil society. He was right in as much as he perceived the
real nature of civil society. He was also right in that the institutionalisa-
tion of the materialist ethos could be grounded in human nature, and that
this would allow this side of our nature to f lourish. However, his solution
was also a non-solution. It was wrong because it was a response to a mis-
formulation of the real problem. Hobbes misled himself because he was
already lost in the depths of this own materialism and blinded to a one-
sided, masculinist, account of human nature. He was unable to see that
while male urges were natural their dominance in human society was not.
His state of nature was not our natural state at all. Despite his concerns
about social breakdown, Hobbes did not appreciate that it was the far
more profound dissolution of the feminine principles of affective, familial,
conviviality that unleashed the anti-cultural principles he sought to con-
tain. The way forward was not to contain them within public structures
wrought from the same substance but to re-submerge them in an enlarged
“private” sphere and the pacifying ether of hearth and home.
This move by Kanth significantly clarifies the philosophical-
anthropological perspective from which he makes his transcendent cri-
tique. The problems of human culture, to the fore in the early chapters, are
now grounded in an account of human biological nature. Although this
Kanth and Eurocentrism: A Critique xxxi
provides a certain alternative to the distortions of modernist civil society,

it nevertheless remains strikingly similar to it and it remains consistent
with the essence of the bulk of modernist humanism. Kanth’s premodern-
ist humanism is also universalist, essentialist, reductivist, and expressivist.
Although his conception of the cultural sphere places a wholly divergent
emphasis on concrete, as opposed to abstract, social relations, he persists in
presenting it as the realm in which we express our biological drives.
In Kanth’s account, culture is founded on a natural antagonism,
suggesting both the real problem of human culture and at the same time
providing the positive feminine principle we need to contain the negative
masculine one. However, the tradition of civil society has continually
played on precisely the same antinomy of positive and negative nature.
Hobbes’ political realism, for instance, certainly appears to present a
monova lent account of human nature, but, as Marx pointed out long
ago, the category of “humanism” always conceals the couplet “human/
inhuman.” The normative language of humanism then plays on the
essence/actuality distinction. In reproducing the same form, Kanth also
reproduces two of the major problems of the modern tradition. Firstly,
he falls into the expressivist, ahistorical, trap of reading contemporary
culture back into nature by misconstruing the sociological and natural
bases of modern gender distinctions. For while it is clearly the case that,
until recently at least, modern distinctions between public and private
have been systematically gendered, with public spaces and their distinctive
rationalities being overwhelming the preserve of (a class of ) men, it is an
unjustifiable leap to cast this in expressivist terms. Secondly, and more
disturbingly, the bifurcation of nature simply inverts the values of the
terms on which gendered (not to mention racialised) exclusions from the
public sphere have long been justified.
Whether grounded in a monovalent or bivalent nature, reductivist-
expressivist anthroplogies radically understate the extent to which our
biology opens up our maturation to cultural mediation. The real problem
we have to confront is that the cultural sphere is precisely not expressive of our
nature—positive, negative or both. Our problem is that our own nature
does not guide us in coming to terms with it. While we are indeed forced,
by our nature, into self-containment strategies, they are not of the kind
either Hobbes or Kanth suggests. The problem of culture is much better
thought of in terms of the philosophical anthropologies implied by the
likes of Freud and Marx, both of whom recognised our cultural poten-
tial to institute structural contradictions in the psychological and sociol-
ogy dimensions of our existence. Nevertheless, our urgent task is indeed
to develop capacities to abolish the specific contradictions instituted by
modernity, for most of the reasons Kanth so eloquently puts forward.
Who would argue the need to engage with him in the collective projects
of building a world, or indeed many worlds, of convivial mutuality?
There is an important sense, then, in which Kanth’s critique of
Eurocentrism is incomplete. He has successfully broadened out the use of
xxxii Nick Hostettler
the term as part of the critique of civil society. However, his strategy is
limited to a form of moral critique which rests too heavily on normative
inversion. This is highly effective, but leaves the categorial forms and con-
tradictions of modern, theoretical humanism, intact. There are, though,
resources available that can help: critical realism and Marxism.
Kanth’s relation to critical realism, especially Bhaskar’s work, is an inter-
esting one. Critical realism does not figure explicitly, aside from some very
brief remarks on the opening page. While Kanth makes no attempt to
interrogate critical realism directly, his work addresses a set of fundamental
questions to it. Where does it stand in relation to rationalism-materialism?
Does it work as a philosophy for contemporary natural and social science?
How is it related to the vision of civil society? To what extent does its eth-
ics remain on modernist terrain? Against Eurocentrism demands two kinds
of response from critical realism: Is the diagnosis of modernism as the con-
tradiction between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft the right one? Is critical
realism complicit with the humanist pursuit of anti-culture?
Given that Kanth’s own work has not been a critique of the categorial
forms of modernist knowledge, critical realism has already made a contri-
bution to the critique of Eurocentric civil society. Realists would surely
be concerned to address the explanatory status of biological reduction-
ism. Summarising the affiliations between critical realism and modernist
humanism is more complicated. (I’ve written, with Alan Norrie, on the
tensions in Bhaskar’s work and on what I see as the relations between
dialectical critical realism and Marx’s critique of political economy. These
tensions could be read as indicating ambiguities within Bhaskar’s oeuvre
on these kinds of questions. See Hostettler and Norrie 2003.)
Unsurprisingly, Bhaskar’s later works, emphasising the spiritual dimen-
sion of our existence, resonate much more strongly with Kanth’s own.
The idea of a socially produced layer of irreality being parasitic on our
ontological reality can be readily f leshed out in terms of the actualities of
gesellschaft being parasitic on the deeper realities of gemeinschaft. Similarly,
Bhaskar’s claims for the immanent possibility of freedom from irreality are
echoed by Kanth:
The possibility of utopia is critically-immanent, and perennially

available to us all, and at virtually no cost, within the freely available
moral economy of affections (not a material economy of collectiv-
ized labours as erstwhile socialism turned out to be). (p. 144)
The relationship with Marx and Marxism is similarly complicated, much

more so than Kanth’s one-sided evaluation of Marx as another modernist
“materialist” would have it. That Marx’s own works grew out of the mod-
ernist materialist-rationalist tradition is clearly the case. Perhaps, given the
dominant materialist milieu, the subsequent emphasis on the “materialism”
side of “historical materialism” or even “dialectical materialism” might
have been predicted and avoided. Similarly, that significant parts of the
Kanth and Eurocentrism: A Critique xxxiii
Marxist tradition have been wedded to Eurocentric humanism is also with-

out doubt. It is also true that there are few panegyrics to Euro-capitalism to
rival Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, but it was never a peon of praise
to some specious Western genius. Capital never embodied human progress
as such. Rather, it unleashed the potential of our species to transform our
world while channeling that power into the destruction of our inner and
outer selves—our organic and inorganic bodies. The development of capital
is the evolution of a profound structural contradiction, the establishment of
a self-destructive culture. Marx, and Marxism, is nothing if not the critique
of this, of the theories, practices and institutions of civil society.
To go back to Hobbes for a moment, the modernist contradiction
between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft was eloquently played out in the
pages of Leviathan. Hobbes pitted his modernist “materialism” against
the logic of Aristotle’s view of social nature and the forms of practical
and moral reasoning that followed from it; he staged the hegemonic
struggle between classical/aristocratic and bourgeois humanisms. For his
part, Marx’s critique of gesellschaft was always rooted in conceptions of
conviviality drawn from Aristotle.4 While his account of the contradic-
tions of modernity is not itself Aristotelian, and while his own sense of
human possibility entailed a radical critique of pre-modern humanism,
his account of the real and moral contradictions of capital are unintel-
ligible without reference back to this heritage.
Terry Eagleton, reviewing Fredric Jameson on Utopia, writes:
The only image of the future is the failure of the present. The prophet
is not a pinstriped clairvoyant who assures us our future is secure,
but a ragged outcast howling in the wilderness who warns us that
unless we change our ways, we are unlikely to have any future at all.
(Eagleton 2006, p. 25)
Rajani Kanth’s Against Eurocentrism, however, is far from being a lone

warning cry. In their Afflicted Powers, Retort, the Bay Area Collective,
develop Luxemburg’s account of the earlier period of modernist war for
our own times (Boal et al. 2005). Not only is peace revealed as no more
than a prelude to further war, the culture of peace itself is “less and less
able to offer its subjects ways to live in the present” (Stallabrass 2006,
p. 93). These dark ref lections on our times provoke determinedly familiar
reactions. Responding to Afflicted Powers, Julian Stallabrass takes Retort,
and by implication Kanth, to task:
Modernity needs to be thought of as a process which produces blood,

filth and war, and, alongside them, their antinomies: ethics, philoso-
phy and the demand for democracy. (p. 106)
C. B. Macpherson also noted how the liberal tradition has two faces, that
turned to the market and speaking the language of political economy, and
xxxiv Nick Hostettler
that looking to human fulfillment and speaking ethics, philosophy and

democracy (Macpherson 1973). Stallabrass, though, is surely right in that
the impact of social movements for real democracy must never be under-
estimated. Popular resistance to the anti-culture has indeed done much to
slow and block the modernist colonization of culture, or to nurture the
roses on briars of the present. Rajani Kanth reminds us of the significance
of this antinomy, of the deep and unbreakable complicity between the
positive and negative sides of modernity. He reminds us how they are its
Janus faces. In so doing he has given us the gift of an uncommonly pas-
sionate and eloquent exploration of the unwarranted claims modernism
makes on behalf of Eurocentrism. He demands we confront our ambiva-
lence to modernity: we have to take it or leave it, with all that entails.
Despite what Kanth says about Marx, there are clear affiliations between
the Marxian tradition and his account of the problems of modernity. It
would be just as wrong to dismiss critical realism as another modernist
materialism. As we struggle to find the right attitude to our present pre-
dicament, we do ourselves no favours if we reject such intellectual riches.
The sentiments of Immanuel Wallerstein’s endorsement are right in saying
that this book “sometimes exaggerates, never misreads.” Rajani Kanth
brings a fundamental problem of our age into full view. Value, law and the
rationality of progressive civil society are all both defining characteristics
of the habitus of the age as well as the sources of its deformities. There is,
though, one-sidedness to this damning portrait, which relies too much
on overturning the hierarchy of values instituted by civil society. This
is, without question, a vitally necessary task, but there are other aspects
of the stories modernity tells about itself which are of equal significance.
Against Eurocentrism does not complete the critique of civil society, but a
more rounded one will always be in debt to it.
Notes
1. See, for instance, Charles Taylor’s recent works on the Imaginary Institution of Modernity. Charles
Taylor, “Modern Social Imaginaries,” Public Culture, vol. 14, no. 1, 2002, pp. 91–124 (p. 91).
2. Slavoj Zizek’s work exactly parallels this in relation to the modern subject. My thanks to Katrina
Palmer for introducing me to this body of work in her unpublished paper, “Slavoj Zizek Meets
Itchy and Scratchy.”
3. See John Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004, as an important piece of historical revisionism.
4. Scott Miekle, Essentialism in The Thought of Karl Marx, London: Duckworth, 1985. In a paper
given to the Marx and Philosophy Society, Miekle describes Marx’s sense of horror at the moral
vacuum he discovered in political economy—the same sense of horror Rajani Kanth expresses
throughout Against Eurocentrism.
Bibliography
Boal, Ian, T. J. Clark, Joseph Matthews, and Michael Watts, Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in
a New Age of War, London: Verso, 2005.
Kanth and Eurocentrism: A Critique xxxv
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other Science Fictions by Fredric Jameson, London: Verso, 2005. London Review of Books, vol. 28,
no. 5, 2006.
Hobson, John, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004.
Hostettler, Nick and A. Norrie, “Are Critical Realist Ethics Foundationalist,” in Justin Cruickshank, ed.,
Critical Realism the Difference It Makes, London: Routledge, 2003.
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———, Breaking with the Enlightenment: Twilight of History and the Rediscovery of Utopia, London:
Humanities Press, 1997.
Luxemburg, Rosa, “The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in German Social Democracy” (1916), in
Mary-Alice Waters, ed., Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970, p. 262.
Macpherson, C. B., Democratic Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Miekle, Scott, Essentialism in the Thought of Karl Marx, London: Duckworth, 1985.
Palmer, Katrina, “Slavoj Zizek Meets Itchy and Scratchy,” unpublished paper.
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Taylor, Charles, “Modern Social Imaginaries,” Public Culture, vol. 14, no. 1, 2002, pp. 91–124.
I N T RODUC T ION
Challenging Eurocentrism: 45 Theses

R aja n i K a n n e pa l l i K a n t h
It is high time, in this Late Era, the High Noon of Modernism, to articulate
a true Cosmology for the Sciences and the Humanities, replacing that
tendentious legacy of Misogyny and Misanthropy bequeathed us by the
European Enlightenment, namely, Modernism.
In that vein, I offer the following Theses, for due consideration, not for
“debate” or “argument,” which is the rather fruitless Modernist Way, but for
serious, sobrietous reflection.
There is no God’s-Eye View of the World: so, all is couched here in the
implicit belief in the Suchness of Things, in the inherent Maybe-ness of
Phenomena, and in their Ineffable Many-Sidedness, Methodological Tenets
of Ancient Jain Philosophy, circa Fifth century BC which, like so much
that is unknown to Modernist audiences, is amongst the World’s foremost
Scientific Traditions.
1. We are, contrary to the ruling precepts of Judeo-Christian
Ideology, Self-realized, and Self-realizing, Animals at all times: notions of
Progress and Regress, thereby, carry no valency [except as purely arbitrary
constructions].
2. Nature has programmed us in many ways: so life on Earth, in its
Cosmic sense, is beyond Anthropic notions of Good and Evil, no matter
how inescapable such judgments might appear to be.
Theorem# A: Men are endowed with the Instinct to Kill, Women with the
Instinct to Nurture, quite regardless of Culturally specified Roles and Responsibilities
that mediate such Drives.
Men and Women constitute therefore Two Distinct Sub-Species, occu-
pying differing Ontic and Epistemic Spaces. Their respective “Cluster of
Traits,” I title the Paradigm of Masculinity and the Paradigm of Femininity.
3. As Hominids, we are endowed with no special tilt toward either Equity or
Justice; recall that Nature, proverbially, is “red in tooth and claw”: and so are we.
4. Our Species-Being is Trans-human, it’s what we share with the broader
genus of Hominids.
2 Rajani Kannepalli Kanth
5. The “Meaning of Life,” if one exists at all, might simply be To Be,

not To Become: and life is only “solitary, nasty, brutish and short”—under
uniquely Modernist Ontology, Epistemology, and Practices.
6. Modernism, was first erected in Europe, whence its synonymity with
Eurocentrism, on the Metaphysical Triad of: (a) a near blind “Faith” in Science,
(b) a self-serving, and Triumphalist, Belief in Progress, and (c) a Philosophy
of rampant Materialism [a Fourth Adjunct would be the readiness to deploy
illimitable Statist Violence to achieve Policy Ends: to cite even the great
Libertarian, J. S. Mill, it’s quite right to “ force people to be free”].
7. Modernist Civil Society is a fateful innovation, set apart from the Two
prior Universal Archetypes: the hoary Natural Society of Tribe, imbued with
the Cooperative Paradigm of Femininity, and the Masculinist Social Frame of
Empire, run through with the eternal Dialectic of War.
It appears, epistemically, when Masculinist Greed overcomes the more mun-
dane Masculinist drives for Power and Domination, subverting, in process, the
complex of Feminine Hospitalities implicit in Familial/Tribal society.
8. Modernism constructs a rabid, Masculinist, “Political Economy of
Interests”—the fount of All putative “Social Contract” notions of Society—
extinguishing wherever possible our Primal, Feminine, “Moral Society of
Affections.”
Theorem# B: It is this Gratuitous Ravagement of the Gratuity of Kinship
and Affinity that lies at the base, and is the Root Cause, of All our Modernist
Alienations.
At its very Zenith, this Path leads us only to our emergent, contem-
porary reality of a Casino Economy, a Video Culture, and a Techno-Fascist
Polity.
Theorem# C: Anthropic Society is based on Reciprocal, Affective Ties, not
“Social Contracts.”
9. Patriarchy, an Anthropic Universal, repeatedly unseats all our naïve Plans
for Amelioration. The best one can do here has already been achieved
historically by Tribal Society: to imprison Men’s murderous impulses within the
healing Matrix of Natural Affinity/Kinship [in effect, the Anthropic Utopia has
always been both Immanent and Pre-achieved: it is in no need of the gratu-
itous Caricature of Modernist Invention].
10. Modernist Utopianism, More to Marx, which has martyred millions
is, at best, a plaintive protest at our uninspiring Anthropic Fate; at worst,
the devious plan of dangerous madmen seeking, as ever, Absolute Power.
11. Indeed, all Modernist Agendas, of the Left or Right, need to be
categorically rejected as specious.
Theorem# D: Men, in their Collective aspect, are not to be trusted with Power,
and Modernist Patriarchs, devoid of many “natural stabili[z]ers,” least of all.
Theorem# E: Indeed, all Modernist Paths, Left or Right, lead only to swift
and sure Perdition.
12. Modernist Ideologies are both banal and destructive: they hold
aloft the barren/dissembling/tendentious slogans of Equality and Freedom,
the better only to ensnare us into serving the greater Glory/Greed of the
Ruling Orders.
Challenging Eurocentrism 3
13. Modernist Nation-States [constructed on the notion of bellum omnia

contra omnes], much as Civil Society, are imposed, Inauthentic Entities, uniquely
European in provenance, and devoid of Anthropic Meaning, that serve only
to deceive and/or Alienate the Subject Orders: they neither correspond to,
nor serve, our Real Anthropic Needs/Natures.
14. Civil Society—the Preeminent Domain of all our Anti-Social drives
and the High Icon of Liberals—is itself held together only by sheer Force,
Economic Dependency, and Propaganda.
Theorem# F: Economics is but the Crown Jewel of the Hegemonic Ideology
of Civil Society, i.e., Modernism. It is a Program that uniquely promotes the
Modernist Agenda, not the “Science” it pretends to be.
15. Democracy, reducing to a mere Voting Rule, is oft the preferred
internal tool for Ruling Strata, when in a State of Equipoise, to Resolve
Differences, wherever possible, without bloodshed. As such, it is far from
being a Modernist invention. But it is a patent fraud as far as Subject Peoples
in Civil Society are concerned, and functions merely as an Ideological
Instrument of Mass-Deception.
Theorem# G: Tribal Formations aim at, and achieve, Consensual, and hence
Convivial, Modes of Existence, far beyond the imagination of Modernism.
16. Modernist Institutions that rule the globe today are uniquely Germanic
in origin: i.e., German Protestantism wedded to Anglo-Saxon Mercantilism. As
Max Weber well understood, Protestant Theology and Capitalist Ideology are
near-identical and homologous.
17. Indeed, as an aside, Northern Europe first annexed the Legal /
Commercial accomplishments of Southern Europe, [the so-called Renaissance],
which was part of a larger Pan-Mediterranean Civilization, itself fertilized by
Egyptian/Indian/Chinese ideas, and next garnered the Ideational/Material
resources of the colonized Non-Europeans [viz., the so-called, Enlightenment/
Industrial Revolution].
The North produced little, but knew How to Appropriate: to this day, that
basic pattern, of a globe under the Domination of Anglo-Saxon institu-
tional Hegemony, has not yet altered.
18. The only instruments that Northern Europe truly perfected, above all
other Anthropic Species, are the mechanisms material to Waging War, and
the means ideological of Defrauding Peoples, that is, Cannon and Chicanery. To
this day, it is these that remain the Twin Bases of their near total Hegemony.
19. As Hominids, i.e., as Mammals, it is not Liberty and Equality we
seek, but Care, Reciprocity, Consideration, Nurturance, and Warmth.
Contra Marx, our Species-being is not expressed in Labor [that, regrettably,
is a uniquely Protestant notion] but in Play and Conviviality, albeit within
the frame of societal and cultural norms. It is this, immanent, “Sympathy
of Life” that Modernism destroys.
20. The Life-or-Death struggles that bestride the world today are now
inevitably between the Mammals and the Reptiles [i.e., between Civilization
and Modernism].
21. Darwin published far too late for Marx to renounce his inescap-
able Judeo-Christian Ideology, carrying idealistic, delusional, and fantastic
notions of “Human Perfectibility.” Unless God, perchance, is an Ape, we are

not molded in His/Her/Its image.
22. Modernism is the ultimate Iron Cage within a Bell Jar: there has been
no societal order on this Planet that demands more Incessant Labors from
the many, and yields us less Leisure and Conviviality than Modernist Civil
Society.
Theorem# H: Universal Egoism [Hegel] breeds only Universal Discontent
[and Existential Despair].
23. Within Modernism, there is no such thing as a meaningful “Social
Science” divorced from the eternal Agendas of Domination and Resistance,
i.e., the perpetual Masculinist struggles between, what Karl Mannheim
termed, Ideology and Utopia.
Theorem# I: Indeed, Modernist Social Science is simply the secular version of
Judeo-Christian Ideology, and is equally Protestant and Monotheistic.
24. Further, this Modus of Science, is neither a necessary nor a suffi-
cient condition for Emancipation from Modernist Grids.
Theorem# J: Anthropic Oppressions are first Felt, and then possibly Acted upon:
they do not require to be Theorized, except as an effete Exercise in Abstraction.
25. The Newtonian, Reductionist, Materialist philosophy undergird-
ing Modernist Science, is both false and obsolete. Matter is not dead and
inert: but conscious, self-aware, and, occasionally, articulate. We, ourselves,
are living Testimony to that.
Indeed, we have moved, within European Thinking, from Deterministic
Physics [1600–1925], via Indeterminist Physics [1925–1995], to Self-Deterministic
Physics [1995–?] today. Regrettably, however, most Modernist Science/
Ideology, Left or Right, is still trapped, somewhat immaturely, in Phase
One of this dramatic Evolution.
26. Modernist Science has long monopolized a species of Instrumental
Knowledge; but there are, and have always been, great Competing Traditions,
ruthlessly suppressed by Modernism, that are now, albeit slowly, reviving
globally.
Aside from Reason, the Human Ape is pre-given both Instinct and
Intuition, even upon rare occasion, Revelation, the latter tapping into
a reservoir of what Jung called, after Vedic Philosophy, the “Collective
Consciousness,” a species of Quantum Interconnectedness: and Modernists
barely know the power of the latter for having neglected/disparaged these
Bountiful Avenues, for centuries.
27. The Fundamental Hominid Condition is Autonomy and Self-Regulation,
not “Liberty” or “Freedom,” which are mere Modernist dissemblings:
Theorem# K: Both Capitalism and Socialism, the Tweedledum and
Tweedledee of Modernist Discourse, deny this Natural Condition, and so are,
sooner or later, Prefigured to Perish.
28. The only meaningful “freedoms” are not freedoms at all, but vital
Anthropic Necessities: Freedom from Want, Fear, and Indignity—and no
Modernist Formation has ever been able, even if/when willing, to guar-
antee those, in practice.
Challenging Eurocentrism 5
29. Civilization, in the sense of the Pacification of Anthropic Existence, is

effected by near invisible Gender Struggles, not Class struggles, which are
Masculinist struggles primarily, if not exclusively, about Power.
Theorem# L: Women, via their Paradigm of Femininity, are the Trustees
Eternal of Anthropic Civilization.
Theorem# M: Stated simply, Women Build inescapably, and incessantly, in
this area: and Men, equally invariably, and uninterruptedly, Destroy.
30. Aside from Gender, and Inter-Tribalist, tensions, Change arises
within Anthropic Society also through the continuous Dialectic of Random
Individual Deviance pitted against the Norms of Group Conformity [similar,
homologously, to unexpected “mutations” in Darwinian Evolutionary
Theory].
31. Theorem# N: It appears almost a Natural Fact that Micro/Individual
behavior is “Free” [i.e., relatively Unpredictable] whilst Macro/Group behavior is
more “Constrained” [Predictable].
32. Being Herd Animals, we follow Totemic Charisma, quite naturally;
and can be led/misled, willy-nilly, as such leadership chooses. [Anthropic
Politics, thereby, is not, necessarily “rational.”]
Theorem# O: Charismatic Leaders, thereby, are oft the Characteristic Tools
of Radical, overarching Anthropic Change, for better or for worse.
33. Yet, despite these Ills/Oppressions of Anthropic Existence, there
appears to be a natural shrewdness [likely a “survival” instinct] to the species
that asserts itself, if only in the last instance, usually forestalling the ever-
cumulating Doomsday Plans of our Totemic Leadership(s).
34. Anthropic Culture is Particularistic, and emphasizes Uniqueness and
Difference; Modernism Standardizes, Universalizes, and Homogenizes,
only as prelude to Conquest and Control.
35. The Provenance of what passes for Morality and Ethics lies in the
Natural, Anthropic Species-Need to rear the vulnerable newborn, safely and
securely, in the torrid war zones that Masculinity creates spontaneously.
36. Given the Natural Role of Women as the very First Natural Care-
givers of Children, they become, in effect, the Original Bearers of all
Human Civility.
Theorem# P: Indeed, Women and Children, together, form the Fundamental,
Constituent, Anthropic Units.
37. Women, Workers, Traditional/Tribal Societies all live in an Implicit or
Explicit Moral Economy and, in varying degree, form the Natural Opposition
to Modernism. They define, now as ever, its enduring Natural Limits.
One might also add that Modernism has functioned, since about the
Sixteenth century as the Colored Man’s, Women’s, Tribals’, and Workers’,
overwhelming Blight, Cross, and Anathema.
38. We f lourish most naturally in Packs and Herds, i.e., in Families and
Tribes [our Natural State], and inevitably, and transparently, rot and decay
in “Civil Society,” succumbing to Anomie and/or Angst, or worse.
39. Theorem# Q: Being Natural Creatures, the more we dwell apart from
Nature, the more Pathologies we adopt and assimilate on a continuing basis.
40. Contrary to many views, it is not the Planet that is endangered by

Modernism: We are. Indeed, if Modernism lasts much longer, it is We who
will be gone, not the Planet. In fact, in terms of Species’ “rise and fall,” we
may well be at the Critical Margins today.
41. Freud, prototypically trapped within the Dialectic of Civil Society, and
in uniquely Modernist fashion, was wholly wrong: our Manifest Discontent
is not with Civilization—but, au contraire, with the pathetic dearth of it in
Modernist Society
42. Religiosity, far from being a Sop or an Opiate, is simply the Collective
Intuition of a larger Cosmology than afforded by the Bleakness of the
Anthropic Prospect, i.e., it is the ultimate Search for Transcendence intrinsic to
our Anthropic Natures. Its Truth value, case by case, is an Open issue: not a
Closed one.
Theorem# R: Religion is the Spontaneous Metaphysics of the Species, and
also the Evolving Repertory of its Natural Ethics.
43. Modernism fears Religion, not for its Reactionary, Delusionary lean-
ings, but for the exact opposite: its Revolutionary/Revelatory potential. In fact,
the Protestant Revolution was uniquely Modernist, i.e., reactionary, seeking
to dull the Moral/Ethical force of hoary, Fundamentalist Christianity,
an impediment to its own Materialist, Misanthropic Ambitions and
Agendas.
44. The Meaning of Anthropic Alienation—a uniquely Modernist
Condition—and, more importantly, its Antidote, must now be abundantly
clear: We need (a) to Relink with our Internal Mammalian/Hominid
Natures [i.e., immerse ourselves within the Affective Values of Kinship, real
or ersatz], and (b) Realign ourselves with /within the Rhythms of External
Nature.
45. If/When we do just this, as iterated in the previous Thesis, rejecting
the Bane of Eurocentric Cosmologies, then it still is/will be, despite its inher-
ently enigmatic nature, both a Bounteous, and Self-Fulfilling Universe,
as the Bushmen and the Aboriginals, and legions of Native Cultures, have
always known.
Note
This Paper was presented in a Special Event at the American Economic Association Meetings,
Chicago, January 4, 2007: “The Challenge of Eurocentrism: A Global Review of Parameters:
Festschrift Celebration of the Life and Work of Rajani Kannepalli Kanth.”
PA RT 1
Received Theory, Science, and Eurocentrism

CH A P T E R ON E
Eurocentric Roots of the Clash of Civilizations:

A Perspective from History of Science
A ru n Ba l a
1. Huntington: Religion and the Clash of Civilizations
In his highly controversial study The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
of World Order the political scientist Samuel Huntington argues that the
end of the cold war, and the ideological conf licts which defined it, por-
tends the return of the more ancient conf licts between the world’s dif-
ferent civilizations that pre-dated the ideological wars of the twentieth
century. He sees civilizations as constituting the broadest cultural group-
ing of people and the widest cultural identities they assume short of that
which separates humanity from other species (Huntington 1996, p. 43).
In attempting to characterize what divides civilizations from each other
Huntington argues that the most important objective element is religion.
According to him the crucial distinction among humans is not their bio-
logical characteristics of physiology, head shape or color, but their cultural
values and beliefs, and institutions and social structures, for “people who
share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each
other” (p. 42). Although Huntington admits that civilizations have no
clear-cut boundaries he maintains that we can at least identify eight major
civilizations in the world today—African, Chinese, Japanese, Indian,
Islamic, Latin American, Orthodox, and Western.
Given his religious basis for the differentiation of civilizations it is not
surprising to see Huntington argue that Western civilization cannot sim-
ply be identified with modern civilization. He repudiates the notion that
the West as a civilization emerged with the birth of modern ideas in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Instead he argues that Western
civilization has its roots in the eighth and ninth centuries, at the time of
the formation of the Holy Roman Empire, and that its distinctive features
can be traced back to that period. It was then and thereafter that the West
10 Arun Bala
acquired its unique identity—its classical legacy, its roots in Christianity

which separated spiritual and temporal authority, its Roman legacy of
respect for the rule of law, its social pluralism with representative bodies,
and finally its individualism. Thus he claims that “the West was the West
long before it was modern” (p. 69).
Nevertheless, the separation of modernity from Western civilization
does not imply that the modern world does not have its genesis in Western
culture. He argues that it is the distinctive features of Western civilization
which pre-existed modernity that enabled the West to modernize before
the Rest. He writes:
These concepts, practices, and institutions . . . are what is Western but

not modern about the West. They are also in a large part the factors
which enabled the West to take the lead in modernizing itself and
the world. (p. 72)
In other words, civilizations outside the West which modernize benefit

from the legacy of the West, although in the process of adopting modern
science, technology, and its associated institutions they do not need to also
assume the values associated with the West in producing them.
Huntington repudiates the view, associated earlier with the political
theorist Francis Fukuyama, that science would impose a uniform horizon
of cultural values across the world. For Fukuyama the logic of science is
the logic of modernity.
We have selected modern natural science as a possible underlying

“mechanism” of directional historical change, because it is the only
large scale social activity that is by consensus cumulative and there-
fore directional. (Fukuyama 1992, p. 80)
As a result Fukuyama is led to prophesize that history will end with the
triumph of liberal capitalism and the market economy because of the
homogenizing effect of science and its technology on all human cultures.
Fukuyama is clearly adopting the nineteenth century notion that science
would displace religion as the central inf luence on politics—an assump-
tion built into the cold war ideological conf lict between scientific social-
ism and liberal capitalist pragmatism.1
However, Huntington sees the end of the twentieth century as reveal-
ing the fallacy of such an assumption, as the march toward the secularism
linked to science came to be reversed with the emergence of political
movements linked with religious identities in many countries of the world
following the end of the cold war. Particularly significant for Huntington
is the fact that the most intensely religious orientations were adopted not
by elderly members of societies but by the young, and not by poorer peas-
ant members but by educated white-collar workers and professionals.
These observations led him to conclude that the major factor that would
Eurocentric Roots of the Clash of Civilizations 11
define conf lict in the emerging era would not be ideology or economics,
but culture and religion. It will be a clash in which the fault lines between
civilizations will become the battle lines of the future.
Huntington also goes on to predict that the major confrontation of the
West will be with the Chinese and Islamic civilizations. He traces it to the
profound differences in the cultural values between the West and those
associated with Islam and Confucian China. He describes these chal-
lenger civilizations as most likely to question the universalist pretensions
of the West (Huntington 1996, pp. 20). Moreover, since these civilizations
are both militarily and economically weaker than the West, he sees the
strong possibility of an association of interests bringing them together in
an “arms for oil” exchange.
2. Amartya Sen: Plurality of Identities and

the Dialogical History of Science
Huntington’s prognosis of intercivilizational relations has received many

critical responses. The diplomat and philosopher Kishore Mahbubani, in
his study The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to
the East, perceives Huntington to accurately describe current world order
when he writes that the West is using international institutions, military
power, and economic resources to maintain its predominance and interests.
However, Mahbubani rejects Huntington’s view that other civilizations
pose a threat to Western values. He argues that all Asian civilizations are
intent on pursuing the path of modernization taken by the West. Moreover,
he notes, since modernization “describes both the physical and the ethical
universe of Western societies” (Mahbubani 2008, p. 2) such a “univer-
salization of the Western dream should therefore represent a moment of
triumph for the West” (ibid., p. 5). Hence, Mahbubani maintains, the clash
predicted by Huntington is not inevitable—it would develop only if the
West chose to pursue its narrow economic and military interests rather
than defend its core values in the new century (pp. 7–8). He writes:
The philosophical West has made enormous contributions to human-

ity. The simple but revolutionary ideals of the equality of man (and
woman) and the dignity of the individual are huge Western gifts
to humanity . . . The philosophical West has also advanced human
knowledge to great heights. Modern science and technology is largely
a Western gift. Virtually all societies have little difficulty drinking
from the deep wells of Western learning and wisdom. But the mate-
rial West is different, driven more by a concern for Western interests
than Western values. (Mahbubani 2008, p. 102)
The historian Wang Gungwu, in his study Bind Us in Time: Nation and
Civilization in Asia, also sees a positive aspect in Huntington’s study since
12 Arun Bala
it steps away from the Eurocentric assumption that Western civilization is

a universal civilization destined to triumph over the rest. He writes:
Western powers today might respond like the Universal Church

and reaffirm that universalism is an absolute good. But less power-
ful civilizations may be encouraged by Huntington to believe that
they might become new princes, with greatly enlarged and elevated
parts to play. In the end, this is what is so stunning about The Clash
of Civilizations: It is not just about the future, but may actually help to
shape it. (Wang 2002, p. 272)
By contrast the Nobel laureate in economics, Amartya Sen, is concerned

that Huntington does not simply describe an inevitable clash of civiliza-
tions in the future, but his prediction may actually generate such a conf lict
as its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Sen argues that Huntington’s predic-
tion does not necessarily follow if we have a proper understanding of
the complex structure of civilizational identities, and how they interact
to produce shared scientific knowledge. According to Sen, Huntington
assumes an oversimplified notion of human identities by ignoring their
multilayered and complex structures. Sen writes:
[W]e are diversely different. The world is frequently taken to be a

collection of religions (or of “civilizations” or “cultures”), ignoring
the other identities that people have and values, involving class, gen-
der, profession, language, science, morals, and politics. (Sen 2006,
p. xvi)
Thus the same individual may share identities across civilizations as when
an African is both Muslim and African. Moreover, Indians can be seen as
having Muslim, Christian, and Hindu identities, but Huntington classi-
fies the whole of India as Hindu. Thus, even what Huntington labels as
diverse civilizations may belong to the same nation. Sen points out that this
renders questionable the analytic framework within which Huntington
operates, and shows why incarcerating people with overlapping identi-
ties within singular religious ones not only diminishes human beings and
cultures but also makes the world more f lammable.2
Sen also appeals to the history of science to demonstrate how civi-
lizations have engaged in a long and fruitful dialogue over time to
produce valuable shared knowledge. It leads him to ask why anyone
should overlook scientific interactions across civilizations as setting an
example for intercivilizational relations by focusing only upon religious
differences:
[T]here is no empirical reason at all why the champions of the Muslim

past, or for that matter the Arabic heritage, have to concentrate specifi-
cally on religious beliefs only, and not also on science and mathematics,
to which Arab and Muslim societies have contributed so much, and

which can also be a part of Muslim or Arab identity. Despite the
importance of this heritage, crude classifications have tended to put
science and mathematics in the basket of “Western science,” leaving
other people to mine their pride in religious depths. (p. 15)
He traces the emphasis on religious identities, and the marginalization of sci-

entific thought, to the “reactive self-understanding” of the colonized mind:
Indeed, the colonized mind is parasitically obsessed with the extra-

neous relation with the colonial powers. While the impact of such
an obsession can take many different forms, that general dependency
can hardly be a good basis for self-understanding . . . the nature of this
“reactive self-perception” has had far-reaching effects on contempo-
rary affairs. This includes . . . the contribution it has made to a dis-
torted reading of the intellectual and scientific history of the world
(including what is quintessentially “Western” and what has mixed
heritage), and the support it has tended to give the growth of reli-
gious fundamentalism and even to international terrorism. (p. 89)
As with his rejection of the singular identity model of individuals and

nations, the repudiation of the singular civilizational model of science
is seen by Sen as subverting Huntington’s prognosis for the future. Sen
seems to think that by going beyond the Eurocentric vision of science as
solely a Western achievement we can subvert Huntington’s notion of an
inevitable clash of civilizations. He makes his argument by appealing to a
dialogical history of science. Such dialogical approaches, that see current
science as inf luenced by premodern scientific traditions from many cul-
tures, have become increasingly prominent since Needham in the 1950s
developed his monumental project Science and Civilization in China that
showed the seminal inf luences of Chinese science and technology on
modern science.3
Nevertheless, Sen’s argument continues to leave open the possibility
of defending a weaker version of Eurocentrism that would be sufficient
to carry through Huntington’s thesis. Huntington could concede that
significant ideas, empirical discoveries, and technologies were appropri-
ated by the West from other civilizations to construct modern science.
He could even recognize that these contributions from the outside were
absolutely indispensable for modern science, and that the West could
not have developed them independently. Nevertheless, these conces-
sions still leave it open for Huntington to argue that it was the core
values in the West, prior to the modern era, which explain why the
West and not any other civilization was receptive to engaging in a
dialogue with the Rest. No other civilization had the requisite values
that permitted and promoted such dialogical engagements to produce
modern science.
14 Arun Bala
3. Ibn Warraq: Constructing a

Eurocentric Defense of the Dialogical West
An argument along these lines has been made by Ibn Warraq in his recent
book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Ibn Warraq
is quite prepared to affirm that the West developed modern science through
a dialogue with other cultures, but claims that it is distinctively unique
values within the West that made such dialogue possible. Moreover, he
goes beyond Huntington to affirm that other civilizations must assimi-
late these core values of the West if they are to modernize and absorb
the discoveries of modern science. Modernization inevitably involves
Westernization—a process which would lead to a clash of civilizations if
it is resisted on cultural or religious grounds.
According to Ibn Warraq the dialogical receptivity of the West to other
cultures, and their ideas, is oddly at variance with the image of the West
painted by the literary intellectual Edward Said. Said maintains that the
West constructed false and deforming images of the Orient to serve its
project of dominating and exploiting, rather than accurately understand-
ing it. Ibn Warraq contests Said’s views. He shows that there are many
instances where Western thinkers were enamored of the East, and very
receptive to ideas from civilizations outside—something even acknowl-
edged and praised by many Eastern thinkers.4 Indeed such Western recep-
tivity far exceeded Eastern interest in Western ideas at the dawn of the
modern era. He explains this difference by arguing that the West carried
from the beginning a framework of values—what he terms the “tutelary
guiding lights” of the West—that made Western thinkers uniquely recep-
tive to ideas from other cultures.
More specifically, Ibn Warraq identifies three key values that he takes
to separate the West from the Rest—rationalism, universalism, and the
capacity for self-criticism. He argues that rationalism has three compo-
nent elements—belief in truth, belief in objective knowledge, and valu-
ing knowledge for the sake of knowledge, all of which can be traced to
its Ancient Greek heritage. Universalism involves belief in the unity of
mankind—a value that makes the West receptive to ideas and customs
of people outside its own culture. He traces this openness to “the Other”
as originating in the Roman concept of universal law. The third value
of self-criticism is taken by him to be the redemptive grace of Western
culture which, despite the many imperialist mistakes and iniquities of the
West, nevertheless allows the West to correct and improve its behavior
and cultural institutions by being receptive to criticisms emanating from
within and outside. Ibn Warraq also argues that other characteristic fea-
tures often identified to distinguish the West from other civilizations can
also be traced to these three tutelary guiding lights.5
Ibn Warraq’s makes his appeal to distinctive European values to explain
the rise of modern science and society, by also invoking the presence of
other values which precluded the rise of science elsewhere—especially in
the Islamic world. He argues that here core values within the civilization
viewed with suspicion the notions of rationalism, universalism, and self-
criticism he associates with the West. He writes:
Under Islam, orthodoxy has always been suspicious of “knowledge

for its own sake.” Unfettered intellectual inquiry is deemed danger-
ous to the faith. Muslims made a distinction between the native or
Islamic sciences and foreign sciences; the former consisted of religion
(Koranic exegesis, the science of hadith, jurisprudence, and scholastic
theology) and language (grammar, lexicography, rhetoric, and lit-
erature). . . . But the study of these foreign sciences was always looked
upon with suspicion and even animosity, which increased in the later
Middle Ages . . . Europe’s relationship with the past, which, with
its twin peaks of Athens and Jerusalem, was to continue to enrich
Western civilization throughout its history. Islamic countries, on the
other hand, totally rejected their past and all the ancient pre-Islamic
glories, from the civilization of the Indus River to the monuments of
Mesopotamia and Egypt, as belonging to a period of ignorance and
barbarism, Jahiliyya. (Ibn Warraq 2007, p. 65)
Hence, according to Ibn Warraq the three tutelary guiding lights of the
West—rationalism, universalism, and self-criticism—were all lacking in
Islam. This, more than anything else, would explain why modern science
did not, and could not, emerge within Islamic civilization.
His approach follows a general strategy adopted in Eurocentric histo-
ries of science where the question “Why did modern science develop in
the West?” is often followed by the second question “Why did modern
science not develop in civilization X?” where “X” may stand for Islamic,
Chinese, Indian, or some other civilization. Consider the answers given
by historian Colin Ronan in his Cambridge Illustrated History of the World’s
Science for the failure of modern science to emerge in Chinese, Indian, or
Islamic civilizations. Let us start with Ronan’s explanation for why mod-
ern science failed to develop in China. At the end of his long discussion of
the discoveries and contributions of China to science Ronan answers the
question “Why did modern science not develop in China?” as follows:
[D]espite the fact that in so many fields Chinese science reached at

a very early date a level of knowledge equal or superior to that of
Europe in 1500, there was no “scientific revolution” in China: the
breakthrough into the era of powerful modern science occurred in
Europe not in the East. Why should this have been? It is plainly
impossible to give a categorical answer to such a question, but it
may in part be connected with . . . [the] close association of science
and the State bureaucracy. In China, the urgent impulse to explora-
tion, to new discovery for its own sake never developed as it did in
Renaissance Europe, and there was no aspiration to break the mould
16 Arun Bala
of existing orthodoxies as inspired men such as Galileo. And one of

the reasons for this must lie with the prevalence of the efficient but
traditional bureaucracy of China, its rules and outlook defined by
Confucius many centuries before. (Ronan 1983, p. 186)
Ronan explains the failure of the Chinese to create modern science by

attributing it to a variety of different causes—the Chinese culture’s pecu-
liar lack of curiosity, the incapacity of the Chinese to value knowledge for
its own sake, Chinese traditional conservatism, and the obstacles created by
Confucian dogmatism. Hence, Ronan is pointing to the absence of at least
two factors in China that Ibn Warraq sees as crucial for the rise of modern
thought in the West—not only did the Chinese not have the rational ori-
entation that motivated the search for knowledge for its own sake, but their
Confucian heritage also hindered their capacity for self-criticism.
Ronan’s judgment for the failure of modern science to develop in India
despite major achievements in certain areas of science, especially math-
ematics, also points to deficiencies in its culture:
In the period before the scientific revolution, Hindu science made a

number of original contributions that were to be importantly devel-
oped in China, in Islam or in Europe. Nevertheless, perhaps because of
the prevailing religious tone of the Indian civilization, it never devel-
oped into a full-f ledged science, and over the past 200 years science in
the Indian subcontinent has had a primarily Western f lavor. (p. 196)
As with China Ronan blames cultural factors for the failure of modern
science to arise in India, but whereas Confucian values are faulted for
the case of China here the cause is traced to Indian religious culture.
Although he is not exactly clear about how Indian religions obstructed
science, he seems to be suggesting that it might have something to do
with their other-worldliness and their skepticism concerning reason as a
path for arriving at the highest knowledge. From the point of view of Ibn
Warraq it would make Indian culture lack two of the tutelary guiding
lights of Western culture rooted in its Greco-Roman heritage—the desire
for knowledge for its own sake, and the capacity for self-criticism.6
Despite his own documentation of the important contributions made
by Arabic science to medieval European science, Ronan ends his discus-
sion of this tradition by proposing another negative diagnosis attributable
to the Islamic religion:
Yet although the early Arabs and the whole Islamic world studied
science and made notable contributions, their achievements came to
an end; they never extended to modern science. Islam extols the
value of revelation above all else: it is the supreme authority . . . There
then developed the attitude of passive acceptance. This attitude was
inevitably inimical to independent scientific thinking, as intellectual
traditionalism won the day. Islam never separated religion and sci-
ence into watertight compartments as we do now, and the torch of
science had to be carried on by others. (p. 240)7
Ronan’s explanation for the failure of modern science to emerge in Arabic

culture imputes that it lacked all the three virtues that made possible its rise
in the West—a commitment to rationality, universality and self- criticism.
This is in complete agreement with Ibn Warraq’s diagnosis.
Clearly Sen’s attempt to argue that we can counter Eurocentric arro-
gance, as well as reactive fundamentalism, by pointing to the fact that sci-
ence developed through a dialogue of civilizations is not quite sufficient
to rebut Huntington’s thesis that we are entering an era of the inevitable
clash of civilizations driven by radically different value systems. Indeed the
growth of modern science through intercultural dialogue could well be
conceded without relinquishing the notion that the motivational, moral,
and epistemological values making this possible are of Western parent-
age. If other civilizations are defined by values not conducive to modern
science, as Ibn Warraq and Ronan suppose, the process of moderniza-
tion would necessarily involve some degree of Westernization—a process
likely to feed both the Western arrogance and reactive fundamentalism
that incite a clash of civilizations.
4. The Dialogical Origins of the Modern West
However, Ibn Warraq’s attempt to trace the core values that led to mod-
ern science into the Greco-Roman heritage of the West is questionable.
We will now proceed to show that the values Ibn Warraq sees as integral
to the rise of modern science are not of Greco-Roman parentage. They
became a part of the West as a result of the integration of some values
associated with Islamic science with other values associated with Chinese
science. This is not often acknowledged because much of the literature on
cross-cultural interactions in the history of modern science, beginning
with Joseph Needham’s documentation of the contributions of Chinese
science and technology, has focused on technological, empirical, and the-
oretical contributions of non-European cultures. But when it comes to
methodological and epistemological aspects there is a tendency to assume
that modern science has its roots in the rationalist, universalist, and self-
critical values of the West—precisely the presumption that informs Ibn
Warraq’s study Defense of the West. As we will see all these three values are
the outcome of dialogical exchanges of the West with other cultures—
especially Muslim and Chinese civilization. This would make it possible
to defend the notion that the history of science offers a counter-argument
to Huntington—an argument that not only includes the technological,
empirical, and theoretical exchanges noted by Sen, but also the normative
dialogue that he fails to emphasize.
18 Arun Bala
Consider the value of rationalism that Ibn Warraq sees as rooted in the
Ancient Greek heritage of the West. He characterizes rationalism as having
three aspects—the belief in truth, the belief in objective knowledge, and
the belief that one should pursue knowledge for its own sake. However, Ibn
Warraq’s identification of Greek rationalism with the rationalism of mod-
ern science is quite dubious. For the Greeks rationalism—apprehending
truth directly, reaching indubitable objective knowledge, and pursuing
such knowledge for its own sake—only applied to the world of ideas. For
Plato such knowledge did not pertain to empirical matters—it was only
ideally exemplified in the world of mathematics, especially geometry. Even
the empiricist Aristotle did not see knowledge of the physical world as pos-
sessing the certainty of mathematical truths, and deemed the application
of mathematics to the world as only giving us approximations to the truth,
and hence neither objective nor certain knowledge.
By contrast the rationalism of modern science goes far beyond the Ancient
Greek views exemplified by either Platonism or Aristotelianism since it
involves the belief that mathematical truths are embodied in the world.
Modern rationalism is the notion Galileo defended when he claimed that
the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics (see Jesseph
2004). It is the belief Newton had when he took his inverse square law
of gravitation to apply to all bodies in the universe with absolute exact-
ness and precision, and not merely as a good approximation. The same
belief drives modern physicists when they assume that quantum mechani-
cal mathematical laws apply with exactness to bodies as tiny as strings and
as large as the expanding universe. The notion of mathematical relations
discovered by reason as exactly, and not just approximately, applicable to
nature was never a part of Greek science. The Egyptian-Greek mathema-
tician Euclid of Alexandria considered his geometrical theorems to apply
without qualification only to ideal mathematical objects, not real physical
objects which cannot be perfect triangles or perfect circles. A few centu-
ries later the Egyptian-Greek astronomer Ptolemy of Alexandria took his
mathematical model of the universe as an attempt to save the phenom-
ena. Both Euclid and Ptolemy also studied optics and, significantly, both
were satisfied to offer a mathematical account of optics that presupposed
a highly implausible physical theory of optics—namely Plato’s extramis-
sion theory which supposes that we see by virtue of a physical emana-
tion from the eyes impinging on objects in a manner that the blind see
by using a stick to contact objects ahead of them. Even Archimedes of
Syracuse, often seen as the archetypal embodiment of Greek rational-
ism, only worked with idealized levers moving on frictionless fulcra and
weightless pulleys.
The notion that mathematical relations with all their exactness could
apply to the real world perceived through the senses only came to be
seen as possible after Ibn al-Haytham’s ray theory of optics became the
dominant paradigm in medieval Europe. Light rays could be seen as trav-
elling in perfect straight lines when unimpeded, and their ref lections and
refractions could be viewed as obeying geometrical laws in all their exact-

ness. Hence, al-Haytham’s theory of optics became the first exemplar in
the history of science where the phenomena of nature could be treated
as perfectly obedient to mathematical laws and relations. Moreover, it
produced a transformation of aesthetic sensibilities in Europe. By mak-
ing possible the revolution of perspectivism in art it made European art-
ists believe that they could pictorially represent the world exactly as it
appears to the senses. By integrating mathematics with sensory experience
al-Haytham also laid the basis for the rationalism associated with modern
science, which Ibn Warraq now projects back onto ancient Greece.8
Consider the concept of universality. Ibn Warraq argues that this is
traceable to the Roman belief in universal law as applicable to everyone.
However, it is difficult to see why the notion of universal law in the
juridical sense for society should ever lead to any belief in universal law as
applicable to the material universe. Indeed the Roman notion of separate
laws for Roman citizens, and for those in the colonies, fitted much better
with the Aristotelian idea that we live in a bifurcated cosmos—a cos-
mos in which bodies grow and dissipate as elements combine to generate
changing phenomena in the sublunary sphere, in contrast to the bodies
that remain unchanged except for performing eternal, cyclical, circular
motions in the superlunary heavens beyond.
Indeed the concept of universal laws of nature that had to be empirically
discovered only emerged after the Arabic philosopher al-Ghazali criticized
the Greek rationalist approach to knowledge. Plato had argued that the
first principles of any science should be rationally discovered and justified,
but Aristotle allowed them to be empirically discovered provided they
could seen as rationally self-evident once apprehended. Ghazali rejected
the notion that the sciences had to begin with self-evident first principles.
He argued that assuming the existence of rationally self-evident first prin-
ciples limited the omnipotence of God. It suggested that God could not
have created a different universe obedient to principles other than the
ones discovered in the existent universe. However, Ghazali argued, God
being omnipotent could have created a world obedient to different first
principles. It led Ghazali to maintain that the regularities of nature we
observe are simply the habits of God. Hence these regularities cannot be
discovered by appeal to reason alone since God could have adopted other
habits. They can only be discovered and justified by empirical observa-
tion. Thus rational self-evidence cannot be the basis for science.
Ghazali’s arguments against Greek rationalism inf luenced European
thinkers. His philosophical views not only liberated European medieval
scholars from dogmatic adherence to out-of-date teachings of Greek sci-
ence, but also encouraged them to explore other ways in which the world
could have been constructed. In exploring such alternative constructions
of the world, their belief in God as an omnipotent creator also led them
to assume that his edicts would extend to the universe as a whole. Hence,
Ghazali’s argument from the omnipotence of God not only led to the
20 Arun Bala
modern idea that the laws of nature are not self-evident first principles
but had to be empirically discovered, but also the modern notion that the
regularities of nature obey universal laws. It is the universalism of natural
law that came to be born with modern science which Ibn Warraq projects
back into juridical Roman law.9
Finally Ibn Warraq sees self-criticism as the redemptive grace of
Western society. It is the ability to follow reason wherever it leads, and
accept legitimate criticism if it can be demonstrated to be well-founded.
It is the idea that knowledge is continually revised and improved through
critical ref lection. Such a notion of progressive knowledge is quite alien
to Ancient Greek and medieval European thought. In Greek rationalism
the self-evident first principles of a science are not open to critical sub-
version; and in medieval Christian theology criticism of the foundational
principles of revelation are not entertained.
Actually the idea of progressive improvement of knowledge through
criticism and revision only became dominant in Europe with the rise of
modern technological culture. The initial impetus for European techno-
logical development came from the f low of Chinese mechanical technol-
ogies into Europe during the medieval period. These technologies appear
to have been inspired by Chinese correlative cosmological views.10 Such
views fostered a tinkering orientation to mechanical systems in order to
see how the behavior of one part would change with changes to other
parts—precisely the trial and error process we generally deploy to improve
technology.
Indeed Francis Bacon’s experimental method can be seen as a system-
atization of Chinese correlative experimentalism. What Bacon did, as the
Chinese did not, was to systematize the tinkering orientation by cre-
ating new contexts never found in nature—torturing nature, as he put
it—in order to discover those invariant correlations that occurred in all
experimental contexts. Thus it was the inspiration provided by the impact
of Chinese technologies, and the experimental tinkering orientation to
mechanical discovery implicitly carried in the technologies transmitted
to Europe, that led Bacon to the ‘discovery of how to discover’—a pro-
cess that set in motion a systematic approach to discovery and innovation
through continual criticism.
Hence the notions of rationalism, universalism, and self-criticism that Ibn
Warraq associates with modern thought, and modern science, developed in
Europe as a result of its dialogical interactions with the sciences of Muslim
and Chinese civilizations—precisely the civilizations Huntington sees as
combining in adversarial relations to confront the West in the future.
5. Eurocentric History and the Clash of Civilizations
We have seen Sen argue that the champions of an Islamic past should
pay more attention to the contributions made by Arabic science and
mathematics rather than focus on religious beliefs. According to Sen, only

the colonized mind’s obsession with its colonial past and its reactive self-
understanding of history leads it to nurture the singular identity that feeds
religious fundamentalism. But by paying attention only to the colonized
mind, Sen ignores the far more pervasive Eurocentrism of the colonizing
mind. Eurocentric history of science, the standard history that pervades
the teaching of the natural sciences, continues to connect modern science
positively with Western cultural values, and negatively with non-Western
ones. This is ultimately what motivates the reactive self-perception of the
colonized mind. Sen does not address this issue because he sees science
and religion as located in two distinct historical compartments, despite the
fact that most historians of modern science adopt the Eurocentric notion
that science is grounded in the cultural and religious values of the West.
However, we have seen that the core values often seen as facilitating
the Western discovery of modern science, and the modernity associated
with it, are also the outcome of dialogical inf luences from Muslim and
Chinese cultures. It happened after the Iberian Peninsula came under the
direct inf luence of Islamic civilization for over seven hundred years, and
Eastern Europe came under the inf luence of Chinese civilization when
parts of Russia fell under Mongol sovereignty for nearly three hundred
years. Hence, for three centuries, before the Moors were expelled from
the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 and the Mongol Tartars from Russia in
1480, the territories of Western Europe were sandwiched between Islamic
inf luences emanating from the West and Chinese inf luences from the East.
In many ways the European Renaissance was more the result of Islamic
and Chinese inf luences which combined in Europe, than the impact of
ancient Greece. Even major figures, such as the archetypal Renaissance
man Leonardo da Vinci, can be seen as ref lecting the dual inf luences of
Islamic and Chinese culture in the interest he shows in both perspectival
painting and mechanical technologies. It was the intercultural exchanges
that took place in Europe which consolidated the values of rationalism,
universalism, and self-criticism which Ibn Warraq treats as perennial to
the West.
We have to conclude that Huntington could not be more wrong when
he supposes that the West was the West before it was modern. Indeed
the West became the West precisely in the process of becoming modern.
Moreover, the two most important inf luences that reshaped the medieval
West into the modern West emanated from Islamic and Chinese civiliza-
tions. It is surely ironical that the origins of modernity in the West, that
formed to a large extent the distinctive identity of the West, is itself the
outcome of a dialogue of the West with precisely those two civilizations
Huntington sees as likely to combine against the West in the future. This
makes his futurological prediction of a clash of civilizations, continuing
a trend from the past obscured by the cold war, highly dubious. Only by
falling under the sway of a Eurocentric history of modernity will we con-
tinue to fuel the notion of an inevitable clash of civilizations.
22 Arun Bala
Notes
Arun Bala is Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto and Visiting
Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
1. However, Fukuyama’s prediction need not be seen as necessarily in contradiction with
Huntington’s prognosis. It is possible to suppose that the end of history may be reached only as
the final outcome of a clash of civilizations.
2. This is also emphasized by Wang:
Not surprisingly, Huntington has some difficulties in showing convincingly how the larger
and mixed populations of Civilizational States can be politically coherent and loyal if their only
common bonds depend on civilizational values. He comes close to defining identities for Asia
(Sinic, Hindu, Islamic and Japanese) in terms of religion, which is unconvincing, especially
as he draws away from this approach in dealing with Western, Latin American, Orthodox
and African identities. In those instances, Huntington seems to assume that three of these
groupings represent different faces of one religion—Christianity—while the potential African
Civilizational State might be torn between Christianity and Islam. (Wang 2002, p. 267)
3. See Needham (1954 and 1956), Bala (2006), Hobson (2004), Joseph (2000), and Saliba (2007).
4. In his Chapter 4, entitled “Indian Orientalists,” Ibn Warraq cites many Indian thinkers who
praised the achievements of early orientalists such as Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Sir Williams
Jones, Anquetil-Duperron, Max Muller, and others associated with the Asiatic Society of
Bengal for translating and bringing to light Indian philosophical, literary and religious texts
that had a significant impact not only on the Bengal Renaissance in India but also the Romantic
movement in Europe.
5. Ibn Warraq writes
Western civilization can, and has been, characterized in several other ways. I think many
of the suggested distinguishing characteristics of the West, such as the separation of spiri-
tual and temporal authority, can be said to derive from one or more of the three golden
threads . . . Politics involves willing and free participation, discussion: in short, rationalism,
dissent, the right to change one’s mind, and the right to oppose and disagree—that is,
self-criticism—without recourse or appeal to divine commands or holy scriptures. Similarly,
another defining feature, the rule of law, the thought that law is central to civilized exis-
tence and its continuation, was derived largely from the Romans. Not only is lawmaking a
supremely human and rational activity, but Roman law was also conceived as possessing a
universal jurisdiction. (Emphasis in original; Ibn Warraq 2007, pp. 57–58)
6. It is significant that such answers also overlook many ideas derived from Indian science which
had an impact on growth of modern science—the decimal place system with zero for numbers,
trigonometric theory and methods, algebraic discoveries, surgical medical techniques, and a
highly developed linguistic theory. Equally significant are Indian atomic theories which were
more sophisticated than developed in the West before modern times. Is it not reasonable to ask
how Indian religions inf luenced the development of these ideas in Indian civilization rather
than simply seeing them as obstacles to the development of modern science? Clearly the nega-
tive version of the question seems important only because the contributions of Indian science
to modern science have not been properly acknowledged.
7. There is some controversy about precisely when Arab science began and then went into decline.
George Sarton (1975) places it between AD 750 and AD 1100. Sabra (1988) sees it to begin in
the middle of the eighth century and continue up to the fifteenth century. But George Saliba
(2007) has criticized the notion that it ever declined—only in contrast to the rapid growth of
modern science in recent times did it seem to go into decline. Nevertheless, the long period of
development of Arabic science exceeds the time of existence of modern science if we date it from
the publication of Copernicus’ heliocentric theory in 1543. Since over this extended epoch it
was the religion of Islam that provided the umbrella under which the science and philosophy
developed in Arabic civilization is it not more reasonable to see what positive role the religion
played in promoting the growth of knowledge? See also Huff (1993) and Hobson (2004).
8. See Bala (2006, Chapter 8 “The Alhazen Optical Revolution”).
9. Ibid., Chapter 11 “Universal Mathematical Laws in a Mechanical Universe.”
10. In contrast to the interpretation we are offering many historians of Chinese science, including
Graham (1989) and Bodde (1991), take for granted the view that the correlative cosmology of
the Chinese constituted an obstacle to the development of Chinese science. They see it as a
redundant theoretical construction which the Chinese ignored when they came to design new
technologies. By contrast we are arguing that Chinese correlative views were crucial to the
methodology of technological experimentalism that made Chinese science so innovative in the
discovery and development of mechanical technologies.
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CH A P T E R T WO
Mathematics and Eurocentrism

G e orge G h e v e rgh e s e Jo s e p h
Introduction
In the 1980s, soon after the publication of the Swann Report, Education for
All (DES 1985), there was a growing recognition that the British school
curriculum suffered from an ethnocentric bias that an increasing num-
ber of teachers found unacceptable in a multicultural Britain. However,
despite some institutional and professional backing even in Mathematics
(ILEA 1985a, 1985b; The Mathematics Association 1988), the attempt
to counter ethnocentrism in the classroom met with resistance by politi-
cians and academics who believed that an important goal of educational
policy was to instill a greater awareness of British culture and history. The
rationale for this position was well expressed by the Secretary of State for
Education, Keith Joseph, on his last day in office (May 20, 1985), when
he addressed the question of the role of education in an ethnically diverse
society:
British history and cultural traditions are, or will become, at least,

part of the cultural heritage of all who live in this country . . . Schools
should be responsible for trying to transmit British culture—enriched
as it has been by so many traditions.
These sentiments have been echoed in an even more strident way by Keith
Joseph’s successors and have now become major planks of government
policy. They inspired the National Curriculum introduced into British
schools aimed at “removing” (some would even say “suppressing”) the
social, linguistic and cultural diversity present in British society.
The argument in favor of bolstering the British cultural tradition is
that it fulfils an integrating and equalizing function. But there is only
a short step from the promotion of British traditions to the fostering of
cultural chauvinism, particularly in view of the resilience of an imperial
26 George Gheverghese Joseph
legacy, which sees in the preservation of “our culture” the fulfillment of

Britain’s “civilizing mission” with respect to the “lesser breeds.” There is,
in fact, a historical continuity between the educational policy that impe-
rial Britain applied in the colonies and the treatment it has meted out in
the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to its “internal colony”
of what was earlier described as the “New Commonwealth immigrants,”
a euphemism for non-white immigrants to Britain.
In both cases, the key to successful integration has been not just the
knowledge of English and of the “British way of life,” but the demotion
of “native” ’ cultural traditions. The labels have changed. We have had
“immigrant education” in the 1950s, then, in succession, “multi-racial
education,” “multi-ethnic education” and, by the mid-1970s, “multi-
cultural education” and today education to promote social cohesion. Yet,
the hidden message has remained the same. In the same way as some native
children were discouraged in Britain’s colonial boarding schools from
speaking their own “local” language, so are the immigrants to Britain
made to understand that the faster they leave their cultural world behind,
the better their prospects for adaptation and more recently the very sur-
vival in this country. And where ethnicity is conf lated with religion as it
is becoming increasingly so today, conformity becomes the order of the
day. In other words, the key to good race relations is still following the
dictum: “when in Rome do as the Romans do.”
In this context it is feared that recent changes in British educational
policy, by its emphasis on one cultural tradition, would reinforce the eth-
nocentrism that has characterized the British curriculum in the past and at
the same time “disempower” students from different ethnic backgrounds,
who are taught that their cultural experience is of little relevance today.
In this process, all students will be deprived of the richness that other cul-
tural traditions bring to Britain.
Are these fears justified? I will answer this question by examining how
the Mathematics curriculum has traditionally been shaped, and the recent
attempts that have been made to develop alternative approaches to the
teaching of Mathematics. I will argue that to appeal to British, or for that
matter Western “traditional” values, as a factor of social cohesion is at
best to foster an illusion, given the racist content of this tradition, forged
as it was in the heyday of imperialism. I will also argue that Mathematics
education in Britain, as presently conceived, shows what we stand to lose
by our ignorance of other traditions. Finally, I will outline an alternative
perspective to mathematical knowledge, which in its guidelines may serve
to inspire similar efforts in other disciplines.
The Imperial Legacy
To connect Mathematics (or Math) education to imperialism may seem

anathema to those who believe that Mathematics is the most universal of all
Mathematics and Eurocentrism 27
disciplines and as such is value-free. In reality, not only has Mathematics in

the Western tradition been a vehicle for hierarchical values but in the case
of British education, Mathematics has compounded both the Eurocentric
biases of the “Western” approach with those congenial to the imperial
experience.
The British Math curriculum, like those of other school subjects, was forged
in the closing decades of the nineteenth century; thus it was steeped in impe-
rial ideology and deeply affected by the needs posed by imperial expansion.
It could certainly be argued that the imperial enterprise produced a greater
“multicultural awareness” both in the schools and in society than we have at
present. It is not unusual, for example, to find in Math texts of the turn of the
last century questions like the following (Colenso 1892, pp. 188):
A rupee contains 16 annas and one anna contains 12 pice. Find in

French money the annual interest at 3.5% on 5217 rupees 3 annas and
6 pice if the exchange rate is 2.63 francs per rupee. (The answer is:
480 francs and 24.5 cents)
But in no way can the presence of this type of questions be construed as

a step toward an authentic cross-cultural perspective. The provision of a
culturally diversified menu of Mathematical examples stemmed from the
need to equip the future imperial officers with the skills and informa-
tion which their service in the colonies required. Thus, it legitimized a
strictly utilitarian view of other populations, which well illustrates the
pitfalls of a simplistic approach to multicultural education, oblivious to
the political realities underlying the production and communication of
culture. Indeed, the textbooks of the imperial era show how justified are
those who insist that incorporating multicultural ideas in the curriculum
is counterproductive, if we fail to address the question of power relations
and racism. For preoccupation with cultural differences can be as divisive
as preoccupation with racial differences.
It was mainly through the history and geography texts, as well as through
juvenile fiction, that imperialist ideology was transmitted to the class-
room (Mackenzie 1984). Its main theme was the beneficial function of the
colonial enterprise for the colonizers and colonized alike. The Europeans
were seen as spreading a hard-won, dynamic civilization among inferior
races that were inherently indolent (partly due to climatic reasons and
partly because of their nature), not fit to rule themselves, and unable to
engage in the type of higher thinking that technological and scientific
progress allegedly require. Typical of this imperial belief, as transmitted
to the classroom, is the following passage taken from a geography text that
was still in use in Britain during the 1950s:
Under the guidance of Europeans, Africa is steadily being opened

up. Doctors and scientists are working to improve the health of the
Africans—missionaries and teachers are educating the people . . . The
single fact remains that the Europeans have brought civilization to

the people of Africa, whose standard of living has, in most cases been
raised by their contact with white people. (Stembridge 1956, p. 347)
The imperial experience prepared the students to consider it unthink-

able that non-Europeans could produce Mathematical knowledge. It
fostered the myth that Mathematics was a civilizing gift that Europe
brought to the colonies, a Promethean spark that in time would enable
the backward natives to penetrate the secrets of science and technology
and enter the modern world.
The prevalence of a Eurocentric bias among scholars is well illustrated
in a review of Indian astronomy by John Playfair, first published in 1789,
but included in an interesting anthology on the history of Indian science
and technology edited by Dharampal (1971, pp. 69–124). Playfair, a math-
ematician of note, carefully examined the evidence regarding early Indian
astronomy. He was struck by the accuracy of the astronomical observa-
tions pertaining to the year 3102 BC, which is the start of the Indian Kali
Yuga era. Such accuracy could be explained either by assuming meticu-
lous direct observations in that year or through using advanced analytical
methods, including integral calculus, to extrapolate back in time. Playfair
chose the first option. His reason for doing so is revealing:
Of such high antiquity, therefore, must we suppose the origin of

this astronomy; we can believe, that all the coincidences which have
been enumerated, are but the effects of chance; or what indeed were
still more wonderful that, some ages ago, there had arisen a Newton
among the Brahmins, to discover the universal principle which con-
nects not only the most distant of space, but the most remote periods
of duration; and a De La Grange, to trace through the immensity of
both, most subtle and complicated operations. (Playfair 1789, quoted
in Dharampal 1971, pp. 118)
It was easier for Playfair to concede the antiquity of the observations

than to grant the sophistication of the mathematical calculations and
astronomical theories, for it would have meant accepting that there could
be in India mathematicians of the stature of Newton and Lagrange.
More often the dismissal of the “native” was forthright. In a well-
known geography textbook of the Edwardian period, still in print in the
1930s, we read, for instance, that:
The natives of Australia . . . were among the most miserable men.

They roamed nearly naked, and were ignorant of everything except
the chase. The explanation of their degraded condition lies in the
arid climate of Australia. Their great poverty led them to practice
vices like cannibalism and the murder of the sick and the helpless.
(Hebertson 1902, pp. 1–2)
As for the African s/he was (typically) described as “an overgrown child,
vain, self-indulgent and fond of idleness,” not indeed, an individual likely
to contribute to any art, far less to mathematical creation.
By creating a “savage” counterpart to the “Western Mind,” the impe-
rial ideology legitimized the “traditional” account of mathematical devel-
opment as a purely European product. As in the case of other equally
pernicious social and intellectual biases, the tendency to trace mathemati-
cal development to an almost exclusively European origin predates and
post-dates the colonial venture. But the impact of colonialism was par-
ticularly pernicious in this regard, for imperial education propagated a
Eurocentric bias not only in the British classroom, but in every class-
room of the Empire. Even after the demise of the Empire, the prejudices
concerning the origins of Mathematics and Science have been especially
difficult to combat, as they are still very functional to the legitimization
of the economic and political supremacy of Western powers in the con-
temporary world. Thus, to this day, students in the British classroom are
offered similar fare to that which was brought to yesterday’s students in
the colonies—an education whose pitfalls are still being felt.
Origins and Nature of Mathematics
A crucial step toward building a multicultural Math curriculum is to dispel

the notion that Mathematics is a purely European creation. Two tactics
have been used to propagate this myth: simple omission—a tactic that is
particularly evident at the lower echelons of the educational process—and
the denial that the Mathematics which was produced outside of Europe fits
the criteria of genuine mathematical activity. The shaping of a Eurocentric
account has in fact gone hand in hand with a definition of Mathematics
which ensures that certain strains of Mathematics cannot be included in
the mathematical tradition.
Omission and Appropriation

Prior to the “Renaissance,” Europe’s acknowledgment of the debt it owed
to Arab Mathematics was fulsome both in words and in deeds. Scholars
from different parts of Europe congregated in Cordoba and Toledo in
search of both ancient and contemporary knowledge. It is reported, for
example, that Gherardo of Cremona (ca. 1114–1187) went to Toledo, after
its recapture by the Christians, in search of Ptolemy’s Almagest, an astro-
nomical text of great importance, produced in Alexandria in the second
century AD. He was so taken by the intellectual activity in the city that he
remained there for twenty years, during which period he translated (from
Arabic into Latin) around eighty manuscripts of Arab science or Greek
classics, which he then took back to his homeland. Gherardo was one of a
number of European scholars, including Plato of Tivoli, Adelard of Bath
and Robert of Chester, who f locked to Spain in search of knowledge. Up

to the end of the sixteenth century, there was virtually a one-way traf-
fic in mathematical knowledge into Europe. By the seventeenth century,
however, the perception concerning the origins of mathematical knowl-
edge had begun to change, due to the operation of a number of forces.
With the European expansion into the American continents, the develop-
ment of the slave trade, and later the imposition of colonial rule in many
parts of the world, the assumption of white superiority became dominant
over a wide range of activities, including the writing of the history of
Mathematics. The rise of nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe and
the consequent search for the roots of European civilization, led to an
obsession with Greece and the myth of Greek culture as the cradle of
all knowledge and values. As Bernal (1987) has shown, in the “Greek
miracle” the Afro-Asiatic roots of Greece were virtually buried.
An account of the production of mathematical knowledge emerged
that followed a purely Eurocentric trajectory (figure 2.1) and ignored or
devalued the contribution of the colonized, despite ample evidence of
significant mathematical developments in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China,
pre-Columbian America, India and the Arab world, showing that
Greek Mathematics owed a great debt to some of these cultures (Friberg
2005, 2007; Gillings 1972; Joseph 2000; Neugebauer 1962). This had
been recognized by the Greeks themselves, beginning with Plato who
reputedly declared that “compared with the Egyptians we are childish
mathematicians.”
According to the classical Eurocentric account, mathematical devel-
opment took place in two distinct areas and two phases, separated by a
period of inactivity that lasted for two thousand years: Greece from about
600 BC to AD 300, and post-Renaissance Europe from the fifteenth cen-
tury to the present. The intervening period of inactivity is still referred
to as the “Dark Ages”—a label forged during the “Enlightenment” that
serves to devalue any cultural accomplishment predating the “rediscovery
of Greek culture” in the fifteenth-century Europe. That this “rediscov-
ery” was made possible by the work of Arab intellectuals, and the cul-
ture thus appropriated was grounded on Egyptian and Arab knowledge,
was not recognized. The very concept of “Renaissance” postulates, in
Mathematics as in other disciplines, a direct continuity between Greece
and “modern Europe.”
In recent years, a grudging recognition of the debt owed by Greece to
earlier civilizations, and the crucial contribution of Arab mathematicians
has led to a revised Eurocentric trajectory (figure 2.2). However, this figure
too ignores the routes through which Hellenistic and Arab Mathematics
entered Europe, and it takes no account of the mathematical knowledge
produced by India, China, and other cultures. Even the texts that do intro-
duce Indian and Chinese Mathematics often confine their discussion to
one or two chapters which may go under the misleading title of “Oriental”
or “Eastern” Mathematics. There is little indication, instead, of how these
Dark Ages DISCOVERY Renaissance EUROPE and HER

GREECE OF GREEK CULTURAL
LEARNING DEPENDENCIES
Figure 2.1 The “classical” Eurocentric trajectory

Source: Joseph 2000.
EGYPT
INDIA (Custodian of Greek learning)
EUROPE and HER

GREECE CULTURAL
Dark Ages DEPENDENCIES
ARABIA (Custodian of Greek learning)

BABYLONIA
Figure 2.2 The “modified” Eurocentric trajectory

Baghdad SOUTHERN
INDIA
ARAB SPAIN
CHINA EMPIRE ARAB EMPIRE
BABYLONIA
EGYPT
Figure 2.3 An alternative trajectory for the period from eighth to fifteenth centuries
cultures contributed to the mainstream development of Mathematics, and

no consideration is given to the historical research on Mathematics that
is currently taking place in these and other “non-Western” regions. In
the history of Mathematics non-European traditions appear as “residual
dumps” that can be ignored without prejudice to the main story. And the
histories of Mathematics still indulge in the misleading practice of nam-
ing mathematical results after Greek and European authors, even when
it is known that these results had already been achieved earlier by non-
European mathematicians. For instance, one of the earliest known dem-
onstration of the Pythagorean result on right-angled triangles is found in
an ancient Chinese text Chou Pei Suan Ching, conservatively dated a few
centuries before Pythagoras. Earlier antecedents of the “Pascal Triangle”
or the “Gregory Series,” or “Horner’s method” are found outside Europe.
Figure 2.3 provides an “alternative trajectory” of mathematical transmis-
sion from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. The cross-transmission that
occurred between different cultural areas, and the critical role of the Arabs
in taking Mathematics westward, are brought out by this figure. They will
not be discussed here; the interested reader may consult Joseph (2000).
Challenging the Eurocentric bias that so far has permeated Math teach-
ing has more than one positive consequence. First, it allows the teacher to
tailor Math education to the students’ experience of their social environ-
ment which, in contemporary Britain, includes different ethnic groups
with their own mathematical heritage. It also provides cultural validation
for minority students who are always being reminded, even if indirectly
by the absence of any reference to it, they have no mathematical tradi-
tion. Thus it can help to counter the entrenched historical devaluation
to which non-white minorities have been traditionally exposed. Finally,
challenging Eurocentrism in Mathematics allows us to achieve a more
holistic approach to Mathematics—one which acknowledges its relation
with a wide range of disciplines that it conventionally ignores (including
art, music, architecture, linguistics and history)—and in the process con-
struct a much needed redefinition of what we understand as “mathemati-
cal thinking.”
One of the most unfortunate aspects of the way in which Mathematics
has developed over time is its remoteness from other areas of knowledge,
even those which are interested in ordering, sequencing, pattern and
color. Much can be learned, for example, from the close association that
existed between the development of Mathematics and that of linguistics
in ancient India, and from the role of spatial intuition in the creation
of African geometric designs. Woven into traditional African material
culture—in the baskets, mats, pots, houses, fishtraps—are many “hidden”
examples of geometrical thinking (Gerdes 1986, 1988a, 1988b; Zaslavsky
1973). The manufacture of these objects reveals a practical knowledge of
the properties of circles, rectangles, cones, pyramids or cylinders, as well
as “deeper theoretical” principles, such as the one relating to the sides of
a right-angled triangle, commonly attributed to the Greek mathemati-
cian, Pythagoras. Unfolding this “hidden” Mathematics poses an intel-
lectual challenge to any mathematician and would encourage a study of
the relation between geometry and material production. This is the mes-
sage that Gerdes (1986) conveyed to a seminar for Mathematics educators,
when he presented the following non-standard problems which (illiterate)
Mozambiquan artisans solve as a matter of course:
— Construct a circle, given only its circumference: a problem encoun-

tered in laying out a circular f loor for a traditional Mozambiquan
house.
— Construct angles that measure 90, 60, or 40 degrees with strips of
straw: a problem in basket weaving.
— Fold an equilateral triangle out of a square: a problem in making
a straw hat. None of these problems are trivial in a mathematical
sense.
The discovery of this hidden but plastic Mathematics would provide

practical and creative examples for the Math class, and stimulate a child’s
imagination and spatial sense. This, however, is impossible if we keep
considering Mathematics a purely theoretical activity, as it has been the
case in the European mathematical and philosophical approach.
Exclusion by Definition
It is not sufficiently recognized that a Eurocentric approach to the his-
tory of Mathematics is intimately connected with what is still the domi-
nant view of Mathematics as a social/historical practice and intellectual
activity. Despite the development of contrary trends in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries—Empiricism, Conventionalism, Behaviorism—
the standard textbook approach generally conceived of Mathematics as a
deductive, a-prioristic system, ideally proceeding from (and providing)
axiomatic foundations and revealing, by the necessary unfolding of its
pure abstract forms, the eternal and universal laws of “the Mind.”
The Indian or Chinese concept of Mathematics is very different. Its aim
is not to build an imposing edifice on a few self-evident axioms, but to
validate a result by any method, including visual demonstrations. Some of
the most impressive works in Indian and Chinese Mathematics (the sum-
mations of complex mathematical series, the use of the “Pascal Triangle”
in solutions of higher order numerical equations, the derivations of infi-
nite series and “proofs” of the so-called Pythagorean theorem) involve the
use of visual demonstrations that are not formulated with reference to any
formal deductive system. Further, the Indian view concerning the nature
of mathematical objects, like numbers, is based on a framework developed
by Indian logicians (and linguists), and differs significantly at the founda-
tional level from the set-theory universe of modern Mathematics.
The view that Mathematics is a system of axiomatic/deductive truths
inherited from the Greeks and enthroned by Descartes and Kant, has been
traditionally associated with a cluster of values that ref lect the social con-
text in which it originated. Prime among them are an idealist rejection
of any practical, material(ist) basis for Mathematics, from which stems the
tendency to view Mathematics as a value-free pursuit, detached from any
social and political concerns; and an elitist perspective that sees math-
ematical work as the exclusive province of a pure, high-minded, nearly
priestly caste, removed from mundane preoccupations and operating in a
superior intellectual sphere.
Non-European mathematical traditions (from Egypt to Mesopotamia,
India, China) have thus often been dismissed on the ground that they are
purely empirical (or computational) and dictated by purely utilitarian aims.
To this day, great care is exercised to project an image of Mathematics
as a purely speculative activity, free from material preoccupations, and
to ensure that it remains the property of an elite. At a conference that I
recently attended it was emphatically stated by one of the participants that
“Mathematics is not learned in the streets.” This brought to my mind the

great eleventh century Islamic scientist, Ibn Sina (or Avicenna, as he was
known in Europe), who declared that he had learned the new (Indian)
arithmetic from a street vegetable vendor. I was also reminded of my own
experience as a young boy in India, when I used to observe street astrolo-
gers performing incredible feats of mental arithmetic, through methods
akin to the so-called Vedic multiplication procedures (Nelson et al. 1993,
pp. 106–116). In the “West,” however, the idea of “pure” Mathematics still
prevails, even though the history of the subject in this century indicates that,
despite its seeming abstraction from social reality, it has found very “practi-
cal” applications indeed: an outstanding example being its usage in nuclear
physics and the development of atomic weaponry. Equally important, even
a cursory look at today’s Math curriculum would show that what is being
taught in the classroom is dictated by very practical social and political
goals that are dismissed with disdain as not being “Mathematics.” It would
be useful at this point in this paper to present a case study of a mathemati-
cal tradition that has been ignored or even devalued by Eurocentric math
historians, namely Indian Mathematics.
Differing Perceptions on Indian Mathematics
In the early part of the second millennium evaluations of Indian

Mathematics or, to be precise, astronomy were generally from Arab com-
mentators. They tended to indicate that Indian science and Mathematics
was independently derived. Some, such as Said Al-Andalusi (c. 1068),
claimed it to be of a high order:
[The Indians] have acquired immense information and reached the

zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars [astronomy]
and the secrets of the skies [astrology] as well as other mathemati-
cal studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples
in their knowledge of medical science and the strengths of various
drugs, the characteristics of compounds, and the peculiarities of sub-
stances. (pp. 11–12)
Others such as Al-Biruni (1030) were more critical. He implied that

Indian Mathematics and astronomy was much like the vast mathematical
literature of the twenty-first century—uneven with a few good quality
research papers and a majority of pedestrian or even error strewn publica-
tions: “I can only compare their mathematical and astronomical literature,
as far as I know it, to a mixture of pear shells and sour dates, or of pearls
and dung, or of costly crystals and common pebbles” (p. 70).
Nevertheless a common element in these early evaluations is the
uniqueness of the development of Indian Mathematics. However by
the nineteenth century and contemporaneous with the establishment
of European colonies in the East, the views of European scholars about

the supposed superiority of European knowledge was developing rac-
ist overtones. Sedillot (1873) asserted that not only was Indian science
indebted to Europe but also that the Indian numbers are an “abbrevi-
ated form” of Roman numbers, that Sanskrit is “muddled” Greek, and
that India had no chronology. Although Sedillot’s assertions were based
on imperfect knowledge and understanding of the nature and scope
of Indian Mathematics, this did not deter him from concluding: “On
one side, there is a perfect language, the language of Homer, approved
by many centuries, by all branches of human cultural knowledge, by
arts brought to high levels of perfection. On the other side, there is [in
India] Tamil with innumerable dialects and that Brahmanic filth which
survived to our day in the environment of the most crude superstitions”
(p. 143).
In a similar vein Bentley (1923) also cast doubt on the chronology of
India by locating Aryabhata and other Indian mathematicians several
centuries later than was actually the case. He was of the opinion that
Brahmins had actively fabricated evidence to locate Indian mathemati-
cians earlier than they existed: “We come now to notice another forgery,
the Brahma Siddhanta Sphuta, the author of which I know. The object of
this forgery was to throw Varaha Mihira, who lived about the time of
Akber, back into antiquity . . . Thus we see how Brahma Gupta, a person
who lived long before Aryabhata and Varaha Mihira, is made to quote
them, for the purpose of throwing them back into antiquity. . . . It proves
most certainly that the Braham Siddhanta cited, or at least a part of it, is
a complete forgery, probably framed, among many other books, during
the last century by a junta of Brahmins, for the purpose of carrying on a
regular systematic imposition” (p. 151).
For the record, the actual dates are Aryabhata born in AD 476, Varamihira
lived around AD 500, Brahmagupta around AD 600, and Akbar around
1550. So it is justifiable to suggest that Bentley’s hypothesis was an indi-
cation of either ignorance or a fabrication based on a Eurocentric history
of science. Nevertheless Bentley’s altered chronology had the effect not
only of lessening the achievements of the Indian Mathematics but also
of making redundant any conjecture of possible transmission of Indian
Mathematics to Europe.
Inadequate understanding of Indian Mathematics was not confined
to run of the mill scholars. More recently Smith (1923/1925), an emi-
nent historian of Mathematics, claimed that, without the introduction
of western civilization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, India
would have stagnated mathematically. He went on to say that: “Not since
Bhaskara (i.e., Bhaskara II, b. 1114) has she produced a single native genius
in this field” (Vol. 1, p. 435).
This inclination to ignore advances in and priority of discovery by
non-European mathematicians persisted until even very recent times. For
example, there is no mention of the work of the Kerala School in Edwards’
text (1979) on the history of the calculus nor in articles on the history
of infinite series by historians of Mathematics such as Abeles (1993) and
Fiegenbaum (1986). A possible reason for such puzzling standards in schol-
arship may have been the rising Eurocentrism that accompanied European
colonization. The rise of nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe and
the consequent search for the roots of European civilization, led to a pre-
occupation with Greece and the myth of Greek culture as the cradle of
all knowledge and values and Europe becoming heir to Greek learning
and values.
However, by the latter half of the twentieth century European scholars,
perhaps released from the powerful inf luences induced by colonization,
had started to analyze the Mathematics of the Kerala School using largely
secondary sources such as Rajagopal and his associates (1952, 1978). The
achievements of the Kerala School and their chronological priority over
similar developments in Europe were now being aired in several Western
publications (Baron 1969; Calinger 1999; Katz 1992, 1995). However
these evaluations are accompanied by a strong defense of the European
claim for the invention of the generalized calculus.
For example, Baron (1969, p. 65) states that: “The fact that the Leibniz-
Newton controversy hinged as much on priority in the development of
certain infinite series as on the generalization of the operational processes
of integration and differentiation and their expression in terms of a spe-
cialized notation does not justify the belief that the [Kerala] development
and use for numerical integration establishes a claim to the invention of the
infinitesimal calculus.” Calinger (1999, p. 28) writes: “Kerala mathemati-
cians lacked a facile notation, a concept of function in trigonometry . . . Did
they nonetheless recognize the importance of inverse trigonometric half
chords beyond computing astronomical tables and detect connections
that Newton and Leibniz saw in creating two early versions of calculus?
Apparently not.”
These comparisons appear to be defending the roles of Leibniz and
Newton as inventors of the generalized infinitesimal calculus. However,
such comparisons may be problematic because the two developments
were founded on different epistemological bases. It is worthwhile stating
here that the initial development of the calculus in seventeenth-century
Europe followed the paradigm of Euclidean geometry in which general-
ization was important and in which the infinite was a difficult issue. On
the other hand, from the fifteenth century onward the Kerala mathema-
ticians employed computational Mathematics with f loating point num-
bers to understand the notion of the infinitesimal and derive infinite
series for certain targeted functions. It is therefore a reasonable presump-
tion that using qualitatively different intellectual tools from different
eras to investigate similar problems are likely to produce qualitatively
different outcomes. Hence, the only sensible way to understand Kerala
Mathematics is to understand it within the epistemology in which it was
developed.
The Hidden Ideology of Mathematical Education
Consider the range of topics covered by elementary school Mathematics.

There might be legitimate reasons for teaching social arithmetic, numer-
acy skills, measures, ratios and proportion, variation and percentages.
There are, however, no strong mathematical justification for including
percentages in the curriculum. Percentages are taught for practical pur-
poses, for example in order to inculcate in the students the skills required
for servicing the commercial and financial sectors.
That the Mathematics curriculum is not above social and political con-
cerns is evident at more than one level. Questions referring to stocks and
shares, which were common in school Mathematics of the 1950s and
1960s, served to habituate children to view the language of financial
capital, long before the majority of the students could have any experi-
ence of it. Similarly, the bath-filling questions of even earlier decades
presented as the norm the physical environment of the upper classes, and
dismissed the reality of the many children who did not have this facility
in their homes. Practical concerns are also evident in the debate about
the uses of classroom Mathematics found in discussions on the national
curriculum in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom.
This debate is reminiscent of the one that took place in England about
a hundred and fifty years ago among industrialists and educators on the
goals of mass education. At that time there were the “industrial” lobby,
who emphatically stressed that education should serve the needs of indus-
try and commerce; the “public education” lobby who wanted education
to contribute to the development of the “whole” individual, and bolster
democratic citizenship; there was finally the academic (“old humanist”)
lobby, who argued that school subjects should be studied for their own
sake, and that knowledge should be an end in itself. Later, when science
was introduced into English education around the middle of the nine-
teenth century, there was a move, led by educationists like Dawes and
Mosley, to devise a curriculum based upon the experience and knowl-
edge that students derive from everyday life. This approach, described as
the “science of common things” involved teaching science through com-
mon everyday problems: cottage ventilation, personal hygiene, family
nutrition and gardening. This approach was consistent with the “public
education” perspective, although it made concessions to other lobbies,
emphasizing (for the benefit of the humanist) the objective of raising
“them (students) into the scale of thinking beings” (Layton 1973, p. 189),
and (for the benefit of the industrialist) the vocational usefulness of sci-
entific knowledge.
The “science of common things” lost. The reasons why it did are
interesting from our viewpoint today. One reason implied, though not
necessarily stated, was that by giving to the masses a practical scientific
knowledge which the upper classes might not possess, education would
subvert the existing social order. Liberal educators also argued that a
curriculum selected because of its utility to a particular social group (in

this case the working class) would ghettoize the students and discour-
age them from moving beyond their immediate environment Third,
modern science and its industrial applications were thought to be better
served by the application of Mathematics to scientific problems, espe-
cially physics. The Mathematics of science was presented as the antithe-
sis of the “science of common things” because of its supposedly universal
abstractions.
There are close parallels between the nineteenth-century debate on
the science curriculum and today’s deliberations on Math teaching.
When a teacher is asked today why Mathematics should be a core sub-
ject, the answers ring a familiar note. We hear the humanist argument
that Mathematics offers a rigorous training in the process of “reasoning”
that it cultivates logical and critical thinking and problem solving abili-
ties, despite justifiable skepticism on the part of many who are directly
involved in the teaching of Mathematics. We then have the analogue of
the “industrial” lobby argument: the primary purpose of mathematical
education is to deliver skilled manpower to the workplace.
This is something the Math class is apparently failing to accomplish,
if we credit the frequent complaints on the part of British politicians
and entrepreneurs. Finally, we are again told that mathematical educa-
tion contributes to the formation of the “whole” individual, and that it is
indispensable for citizens who are expected to make informed judgments
on various aspects of their society on the basis, among other things, of sta-
tistics and other quantitative indicators. This approach is consistent with
the idea of science education promoted by Dawes and Mosley and might
be described as the “mathematics of common things.”
An important question arises when we examine these three perspec-
tives: what does each imply about the relationship between Mathematics
and society? The academic/humanist approach does not acknowledge any
social dimension in the study of Mathematics. The utilitarian/“industrial”
approach recognizes a one-way relationship between Mathematics and
the outside world—Mathematics as an input into training for specific
skills and expertise. Both approaches, which have deeply inf luenced the
Mathematics curriculum of Britain, see Mathematics as free of social con-
siderations and values. The third approach allows for a more dynamic rela-
tionship between Mathematics and society; it takes into account different
constituencies and the specific cultural interests of the learner. However,
if we define too narrowly the constituency to whom Mathematics is
addressed, then we may have a curriculum that marginalizes the students,
and devalues both the content and context of the Mathematics taught. One
way of safeguarding against this danger is to emphasize both the practical
use of Mathematics and its relevance to the development of a universal
language and discipline. It is here that a historical approach could be help-
ful, and this is precisely what a non-Eurocentric, multicultural, anti-racist
approach to Mathematics attempts to do.
The Objectives of Multicultural/Antiracist Mathematics
In 1987, at the Annual Conservative Party Conference, Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher stated: “Children who need to count and multiply are
being taught antiracist Mathematics, whatever that may be.”
Thatcher’s puzzlement was shared by many, including a number of
teachers. Multicultural/Anti-Racist (MC/AR) Mathematics was per-
ceived as a strange and incongruous subject to be added to an already over
laden Math syllabus, rather than as an approach that permeated all topics
in the syllabus. This confusion was present in the Section entitled Ethnic
and Cultural Diversity (paragraph 10.18−10.23) of the National Curriculum
Report (DES 1988) entitled Mathematics for Ages 5 to I6:
It is sometimes suggested that the multi-cultural complexion of

society demands a “multi-cultural” approach to mathematics, with
children being introduced to different number systems, foreign cur-
rencies and non-European measuring and counting devices. We are
concerned that undue emphasis on multi-cultural mathematics, in
these terms, could confuse young children. Whilst it is right to make
clear to children that mathematics is the product of a diversity of
cultures, priority must be given to ensuring that they have knowl-
edge, understanding and skills which they will need for adult life and
employment in Britain in the twenty-first century. We believe that
most parents would share this view.
And again:
Many of those who argue for a multicultural approach to the math-

ematics curriculum do so on the basis that such an approach is nec-
essary to raise the self-esteem of ethnic minority cultures and to
improve the understanding and respect between races. We believe
that this attitude is misconceived and patronizing. . . .
These quotations from the National Curriculum Document summa-

rize well the attitudes and misconceptions that existed about MC/AR
Mathematics. What was missing in this view of MC/AR Mathematics
as irrelevant, peripheral, patronizing to “minorities,” and pedagogically
ineffectual, was an understanding of the general objectives of and condi-
tions for learning Mathematics.
An important purpose of learning Mathematics is to acquire a new lan-
guage with its rules of operation, opening a whole range of possibilities for
the articulation of our experiences and apprehension of the surrounding
world—an acquisition that necessarily depends on the students’ ability to
connect Mathematics with other aspects of their reality, and their con-
viction that this is a knowledge in whose production they too are daily
involved.
MC/AR Mathematics provides a strategy for making Mathematics

more accessible and less anxiety arousing among a wider public. As it is
all too well-known, as presently taught, Mathematics fails to reach the
vast majority of students; and even for those who expect to make it part
of their higher education, it causes more anxiety than any other subject.
This is because it is often taught as a sequence of disconnected skills, in
isolation from real world applications and abstracted from its historical
roots.
By contrast MC/AR Mathematics involves five overlapping objectives:
(i) Drawing on the student’s experience as a resource: Abstract concepts are

presented in a concrete form through examples that are familiar to the
class. In a class with children from Hindu and Sikh households, the rangoli
patterns used to decorate traditional homes on festive days can serve as a
useful introduction to different geometrical notions of patterns, symmetry,
transformations and equivalence. For children from an Islamic or Jewish
background, time measurements involving the principle of constructing
calendars and demarcation of eras, including the role of lunar calendars,
could be developed from a few questions regarding the religious practices
of these groups. An ability to convert from one system to another would
not only be a useful arithmetic exercise, it would also help to appreciate
the diversity of the local environment. Students would understand, for
example, why their Chinese and Jewish neighbors do not celebrate their
New Year’s Day on January 1.
(ii) Recognizing different cultural heritages: It is important that students
understand the development of Mathematics as a truly global endeavor
that evolved through centuries of cross-fertilization between differ-
ent cultures. Students should learn for instance that our number system
grew out of the work of mathematicians from the Indian subcontinent
about 2,000 years ago and was transmitted by the Arabs to Europe in
the twelfth century. Manipulations and representations of plus and minus
quantities, the distinction between real and imaginary numbers and the
concepts of zero and infinity excited the imagination of Indian, Mayan,
Chinese and Italian mathematicians. We owe the foundations of algebra
(an Arabic word) and the development of trigonometry to non-European
civilizations. This international dimension must be stressed in the teach-
ing of Mathematics. We are not suggesting that learning Mathematics
must involve a detailed historical investigation, even though the “History
of Arab mathematics,” or “Egyptian arithmetic,” or “Calculus before
Newton” could make interesting projects. Instead, a cultural and histori-
cal perspective on Mathematics could take two forms:
(1) Math teachers should have a fund of interesting stories on
the origin and development of various topics in Mathematics,
emphasizing its practical origins and reinforcing the view that
Mathematics is a universal activity which, however, always takes a
specific cultural form. The source for such materials are not only
the standard histories of Mathematics but the growing literature on

non-European traditions examined for example in Ascher (1991)
and Katz (2007).
(2) New approaches to curriculum development can be usefully
introduced into the senior Mathematics classroom. These involve
using the original texts in which a problem and its solution first
appeared. For instance a student who is introduced for the first
time to non-Euclidean geometry will profit by a study of selec-
tions from the original texts of, say, the thirteenth-century Arab
mathematician, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and the seventeenth-century
Italian mathematician, Saacheri, whose unsuccessful attempts to
prove Euclid’s “Parallel Postulate” were important signposts in the
discovery of non-Euclidean geometry. It would also help the stu-
dents to understand, at least in broad outlines, the social context in
which these mathematical works were produced and the practical
implications of the specific problems tackled.
(iii) Developing knowledge and empathy with cultures others than one’s own:
A math teacher has a role to play in fostering mutual understanding and
respect in societies where different cultures live side by side. Not only
should teachers draw on the experiences and highlight the historical heri-
tage of different students, they should also create opportunities for them
to learn about customs and cultures other than their own. A judicious
use of names of members of different ethnic groups, encouraging the
publication of texts that acknowledge the existence of other mensuration
systems, different calendars and monetary systems are obviously impor-
tant ways of providing a non-Eurocentric dimension to classroom work.
It might also be advisable to stress the cultural contribution of nations that
have received negative comments from the media. For instance, men-
tioning the historical contribution of Persian mathematicians like Omar
Khayyam and Jamshid al-Kashi could counter the stigmatization of Iran
in the public eye in recent years.
(iv) To combat racism: A number of reports, including the Swann Report
and the report of the Lawrence Enquiry, have highlighted the consider-
able level of racism that exist in both British society and British schools.
Here too the Math teacher must be sensitive to the ways in which racism
enters the classroom and can be countered. A publication entitled Everyone
Counts (1985a) provided the following checkpoints of how Mathematics
material can be biased or insensitive to racial minorities:
● using examples that make reference to very selectively chosen
“lifestyles.”
● perpetuating stereotypes that devalue certain ethnic groups, for
example, the stereotype of the child from African-Caribbean

descent as presumably “less good” in Math than the Asian child;
or the stereotype image of African counting systems, prior to
the coming of the Europeans, as a “primitive systems” fit for the
needs of a “simple society.” This ignores that the Ishango Bone
from Zaire is the earliest recorded attempt to construct a lunar cal-

endar; it also ignores the ingenious arithmetic of the Yoruba with
its “subtraction principle” (see Joseph 2000; Nelson et al. 1993).
● being ignorant or insensitive to the social position of minority
groups in society, as if the existence of racial discrimination and
the nature of power relations within the wider society were of no
concern in a Math class.
A “MC/AR approach” to teaching Mathematics involves answering the

following questions:
● What are the mathematical objectives for introducing a certain

topic?
● What is the best approach for achieving these objectives from the
point of view of teaching and learning?
Is there any MC/AR lesson to be drawn from the topic? If so what are the
resources required?
Most important, an MC/AR approach involves a sustained effort to
empower students to believe that Mathematics is within their reach, and is
an activity to which their ancestors, communities and cultures have been
active contributors. The consequences of the sense of confusion and intim-
idation which students from all backgrounds experience when confronted
with a discipline whose cultural matrix seems irreducibly “other” have yet
to be fully realized. They are already dramatically evident in the high rates
of dropouts from Math classes at all levels. By contrast, there are reports of
keen participation when the class takes place in a “context of inclusion.”
Conclusion
It would be wrong to view the failure of the MC/AR approach to

Mathematics and science as a victory for the Eurocentrists. All that it has
done is to emphasize the need to concentrate our minds on examining the
following pertinent questions that generally tend to be swept under the
carpet. Indeed, each of these questions deserve a separate paper.
(i) Why are Non-Western mathematical traditions generally neglected

in Western histories of Mathematics?
(ii) Why is there such difficulty for new evidence on Non-Western
Mathematics to become accepted and then percolate into standard
texts?
(iii) Why is there a tendency to assume that the “holy grail” of objec-
tivity and balance has to be guarded jealously by Western historians
of Mathematics against “biased opinions” and “special pleading”
of non-Westerners?
(iv) What explains the tunnel vision of those Western historians of

Mathematics who tend to apply different standards of evidence
when they are considering Non-Western contributions to scien-
tific knowledge?
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CH A P T E R T H R E E
Official Corruption and Poverty:

A Challenge to the Eurocentric View
R av i Bat r a
A vast literature exists on the causes and cures for global poverty. The
Eurocentric view is that poverty occurs when an economy lacks cap-
ital, new technology, education, managerial ability, and work ethic to
build factories and farms. The purpose of my paper is to challenge this
view and argue that poverty, anywhere and everywhere, is mostly, if not
exclusively, the result of official corruption. Nobody wants to live in
misery and in general people want to work hard to improve their liv-
ing standard. However, dominant groups in society may expropriate the
fruit of people’s efforts for personal gain, leading to large-scale poverty.
For instance, the United States does not lack capital, new technology,
education, entrepreneurship, and the work ethic; yet almost 39 million
Americans lived below the poverty line in 2008, while an equal number
were hard pressed to maintain their lifestyle. The only reason was official
corruption, whereby laws are passed to favor business interests in return
for junkets and campaign cash. These laws in turn generate falling real
wages, while profits and CEO wages sky-rocket.
Poverty and financial turmoil are global problems today; they aff lict
every continent and the vast majority of nations. It is well known that
corruption breeds poverty in the third world and even in the galloping
economies of India and China.1 What is surprising is that rising poverty
in some advanced economies especially the United States also arises from
governmental depravity. Similarly, the main cause of U.S. financial melt-
down that started in 2007, especially in the housing market, also derives
from official malfeasance. Although my arguments have global applica-
tion, my main focus is on the U.S. economy and society.
In spite of the surge in global economic growth since the early 1980s,
poverty, destitution, and occasionally hunger continue to devastate a vast
area of the world. Even in America, supposedly the richest nation, the vast
46 Ravi Batra
majority of people live from paycheck to paycheck. People, along with

their government, are saddled with debt.
American society as a whole practically saves nothing; the household
rate of saving has varied from zero to negative in recent years. Almost
39 million Americans, an all-time record, live below the poverty line.
As many as 45 million have no health insurance. Nearly five million are
homeless; an equal number go hungry everyday.
Real wages have been falling for almost three-fourths of the labor force
ever since 1973, and even those who have lucrative jobs are buried deep
under debt. Their autos, homes, appliances, and furniture are mostly
pawned to banks (see Batra 2007 for the substantiation of these facts).
However, the traditional measure of the living standard, the per-capita
gross domestic product (GDP), that is, real GDP per person, which has
been growing all through U.S. history, reveals a remarkably different pic-
ture. When the average real wage falls for almost 75% of the workforce,
no amount of statistical skullduggery can produce a rising living stan-
dard for that nation. Yet, the Eurocentric view, as represented by major
macro-texts, insists that American society has grown more prosperous
since the 1970s. This contradicts logic and commonsense. Oscar Wilde,
the celebrated playwright, once said, “The well-bred contradict other
people. The wise contradict themselves.” There is a logical contradiction
between the view that the American living standard has been rising since
the early 1970s while the real wage has plummeted for the vast majority
of Americans.
The poverty in America exists amidst plenty, at a time when the aver-
age American worker, empowered by computers, is the most productive
ever. Just 1% of the population owns as much as 40% of wealth, while
almost half the households have practically zero savings. The productivity
surge should have banished destitution a long time ago; instead, poverty
and deprivation get worse every year, with over a million joining the
poverty roster annually (Batra 2007; also see Batra 2005).
The Fundamental Cause of Poverty
Eurocentric economists like to attribute poverty to a variety of superficial

traits such as the absence of capital, inefficient technology, poor educa-
tion, lack of free trade, monopolized markets, and lazy workforce, among
others. All these are just symptoms of poverty, not its fundamental cause.
The one fundamental cause of poverty, here and everywhere, is official
corruption. Government malfeasance breeds cronyism, incompetence
and other parasites that accompany destitution. Monopolized markets, for
instance, do create poverty, but the presence of such markets itself ref lects
official malfeasance.
First, let us define corruption, which occurs whenever there is dishon-
esty, bribery or a lack of integrity on the part of an individual. Government
Official Corruption and Poverty 47
corruption, however, has a broader meaning. In a democratic setting, any

policy that makes the rich richer while hurting the poor and the middle
class may be called corrupt. This is because the rich beneficiaries of such
policies make payoffs to government officials in the form of large cam-
paign contributions, bribes, junkets and gifts. In general, when officials
misuse political power for personal gain, there is corruption. This notion
actually applies to both democratic and non-democratic societies.
Let us examine the case of the oil industry in the United States. Gasoline
is a necessary good and is vital for transportation; its price has been sky-
rocketing since 2003, reaching an all-time high of $4 per gallon in July
2008, while its producers have earned giant profits that normally appear
in industries with vast monopoly power. Oil companies can raise prices at
will, at least up to a point. That is why many nations have antitrust laws to
prevent corporate mergers and collusion that ultimately create monopo-
listic industries. The U.S. government should have strictly enforced the
antitrust laws in the 1990s when as many as 2,600 mergers occurred in
the oil sector. The government shirked its responsibility and politicians
kowtowed to business interests in return for campaign donations for their
reelection. This was a clear case of official corruption that created pov-
erty not just for the poor and the middle class in the United States but
all over the world. For the high price of oil hurts the masses around the
globe. This is one example of how corruption breeds poverty (Batra 2007,
Chapters 3 and 10).
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the government agency
responsible for antitrust action, argues that high gasoline prices arise
from monopolistic practices of OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries) and soaring oil demand from India and China, so
that the rising shortage of oil is generating rocketing gasoline price. This
sounds palpable, except that it is false. There is plentiful oil in the world
today. Higher demand, of course, generates a price rise. But if supply rises
simultaneously, there should be little rise in price. Oil supply has kept
pace with rising demand since the early 1980s, and the oil price averaged
about $25 per barrel between 1980 and 2000. But since 2003, with oil
supply still matching the growing demand, the price surged above $100
per barrel in early 2008. What happened? The oil industry became an
oligopoly, or big oil firms became regional monopolies by the end of the
1990s. Petrol demand from both India and China has been climbing since
1980, yet during the 1980s and the 1990s, the very period when OPEC
produced a larger share of world’s oil output than since 2000, the oil price
remained stable. Now that OPEC’s importance to control the price has
declined, the FTC blames the oil-price surge on the petroleum cartel.
According to the FTC, U.S. gasoline price is related to the world price
for crude oil, which is partly determined by OPEC and partly by inter-
national demand and supply conditions. The sudden and sharp rise in
American gasoline prices since 2003 has resulted from a sharp jump in the
price of crude, which in turn arises from vast increases in crude demand
48 Ravi Batra
Table 3.1 World oil consumption and price: 1983–2007
Year Consumption WTI Price*
1983 58.8 32
1984 59.8 30
1985 60.0 28
1986 61.8 28
1987 63.1 18
1988 65.0 17
1989 66.0 17
1990 66.7 22
1991 67.2 27
1992 67.5 19
1993 67.6 20
1994 68.9 14
1995 70.0 18
1996 71.6 20
1997 73.3 26
1998 75.7 18
1999 76.7 12
2000 76.7 26
2001 77.4 26
2002 78.0 20
2003 79.6 32
2004 82.3 33
2005 83.7 43
2006 84.8 62
2007 85.5 92
Note: * WTI: West Texas Intermediate

Source: Energy Information Administration, eia.gov, 2008.
from China, India, as well as the United States. So the FTC goes on to
conclude that the global surge in gasoline prices is the result of galloping
oil demand from India and China as well as the monopoly power of the
OPEC cartel.
However, the FTC itself realizes that history contradicts its main prem-
ise, as it admits: “Throughout most of the 1990s, however, crude prices
remained relatively stable, suggesting that crude producers increased pro-
duction to meet increased demand” (FTC 2005, p. 6). These two lines say
it all. They contradict the FTC’s findings, because they say that increased
demand need not cause a rise in price if supply goes up at the same time.
Table 3.1 presented above shows that global oil demand has been rising
ever since 1983, yet the price of WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude
oil was fairly stable between 1983 and 2002 and began to soar after 2003.
In fact, the price fell to as low as $12 in 1999 even though oil demand
went up that year. The table reveals that there is not a single year when
consumption fell. But consumption cannot rise without a rise in supply.
Rising demand alone is not enough to raise consumption; supply has to
increase as well. So the crucial point is this: why is rising demand as well
as supply raising price today and not in the past? The answer clearly is that
the oil market has changed drastically. The price is now set in New York
by NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange) and not in Saudi Arabia.
Even Lord Browne of Madingly, the former chief executive of British
Petroleum, has readily admitted: “There has been no shortage and in
fact inventories of crude oil and products have continued to rise” (Hope
2006, p. 46).
So there is no oil shortage anywhere on earth. In fact, oil inventories
have continued to rise around the world. In 1973, and then from 1980
to 1982, there indeed were shortages, which were ref lected in long and
time-consuming gas lines; oil inventories also shrank in OECD countries
at the time; but not lately. Have you seen any gas lines in recent years? I
haven’t. In 1973 I would indeed wait for up to an hour to get 10 gallons of
gas, but not today. So why is the government (FTC) blaming the oil price
jump on demand increases from India and China? The answer is official
corruption. In fact, FTC’s main purpose for offering a 165-page report
was to defend Big Oil’s giant profits:
Profits play necessary and important roles in a well-functioning market

economy. Recent oil company profits are high but have varied widely
over time, over industry segments, and among firms. Profits compen-
sate owners of capital for the use of the funds they have invested in a
firm. Profits also compensate firms for taking risks, such as the risks
in the oil industry that war or terrorism may destroy crude produc-
tion assets or that new environmental requirements may require sub-
stantial new refinery capital investments. (FTC 2005, p. 15)
This passage is a bad joke on those who have to pay today’s giant prices. Has
the Bush Administration ever asked anybody, let alone an oil corporation,
to better the environment? Oil profits do f luctuate over time, but oil com-
panies rarely lose money. In 2007, Exxon-Mobil alone earned $42 billion in
profits, while the five major companies raked in almost $125 billion.
What is the real cause of expensive oil and gasoline? In two words,
“supergreed” and corruption. Everyone has some greed, but few have
such extraordinary avarice that they abuse their financial and political
muscle to deprive people of the basic necessities of life. That is what the
oil tycoons and the corrupt government they sponsor are doing.
Let’s see what has taken place in the oil industry since the early 1990s.
The General Accounting Office, a bipartisan government agency, issued a
vehement report in May 2004, concluding that 2,600 firms had merged in
the oil industry in the early 1990s (Consumeraffairs.com 2004). Such an
orgy of mergers could not but spawn regional monopolies in that sector,
which is now dominated by just five companies—Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-
Texaco, Royal Dutch Shell, Conoco-Phillips, and British Petroleum-
Amoco-Arco. Their names say it all. Every one of them has been formed
through the merger of very rich firms. Their clout is so great that even
50 Ravi Batra
now, in spite of record-breaking profits, they enjoy $18 billion in govern-

ment subsidies and tax breaks for the purpose of mineral exploration.
They have purchased independent oil concerns and closed thousands of
petrol stations; with gasoline pumps gone from your neighborhood, the
remaining gas stations charge whatever price the consumer will bear. And
the consumers pay the giant price in silence, because the government and the
media have brain-washed them that rising oil demand from India and China
is to blame for soaring gasoline. Once gasoline stations are closed, there is lit-
tle competition left to limit the price-gouging ability of the five companies.
Ten years ago, around 1999, there were six petrol pumps within 2 miles
of my neighborhood. Now there are only three, of which one is actually
owned by a grocery store, Tom Thumb. But for the competition provided
by that store, gasoline would be even pricier in our neighborhood.
In retaliation for mega oil mergers in the 1990s, the government show-
ered them with subsidies and tax breaks. This is nothing but official corrup-
tion. All this was done in the name of securing energy independence from
foreign oil. Where is that independence? The United States now imports
the largest amount of oil and petrol in its history. Expensive gasoline, of
course, adds to poverty. Thus corruption breeds American poverty.
The government’s failure to seriously enforce its antitrust laws suggests
that the officials are inf luenced by all those millions that the oil industry has
donated over the years to politicians for their election and reelection. Such
tolerance for company collusion in energy and other industries hurts the
U.S. economy as well as the rest of the world. It germinates, among other
things, a culture of corruption and a vast increase in wage-productivity gap,
whose terrible consequences are not fully realized by experts and will be
examined shortly. The resulting global imbalances could, and most likely
will, cause a major recession in the globe by the end of the decade.
Finally, the myth of exploding demand from Asia as the primary cause
of the oil price explosion evaporated in thin air, when the oil price col-
lapsed in a matter of weeks in mid-2008. Now everyone could see that
it was speculation supported by a monopolistic industry that had sent oil
into the stratosphere. The oil price tumbled from a high of $147 per barrel
in July to less than $50 in the month of December.
Regressive Taxation
Another area in which corruption has devastated the lot of the poor and the
middle class is the U.S. tax policy since the early 1980s, when the revenue
system was totally transformed to benefit the wealthy in the name of solv-
ing economic problems or raising the public’s living standard. According
to Adam Smith, taxes should be imposed primarily on the well-to-do,
as in, those who can afford to pay them. Thus the tax burden should be
light on the poor and the middle class relative to that on the rich. This is
the time-honored rule of progressive taxation, and in its absence, there is
direct as well as indirect increase in poverty. The direct increase should be

obvious, because higher taxes can deprive the poor of the basic necessities
of food, housing, clothing, transportation, health care and education.
However, there is an indirect effect as well, as regressive taxation,
the opposite of the progressive one, trims consumer demand and hence
economic growth, because no producer likes to expand business and
hence investment unless goods and services can be sold in the market. In
fact, falling consumer demand, other things remaining the same, usually
leads to business retrenchment and a fall in investment. When the gov-
ernment resorts to regressive taxation, it engages in legalized corrup-
tion, because its purpose is cater to the aff luent in return for campaign
contributions.
The tax system has become regressive ever since the Reagan admin-
istration arrived in 1981, when the top-bracket income tax rate fell from
70% to as low as 28%. As a result, when the budget deficit jumped, in
order to balance its books the government did not raise the income tax
back; rather it raised excise taxes; it also raised the Social Security and
the self-employment tax substantially under the pretext of guaranteeing
Social Security pensions thirty to forty years in the future. The idea was
to create a surplus in the Social Security trust fund to meet the pension
needs of future retirees. But, of course, government officials and advis-
ers knew that the enhanced revenues would be used up in financing the
federal deficit that had soared to the highest level in U.S. peace-time
history—up to 6% of GDP. This was outright fraud that has continued
ever since 1983, when the new Social Security legislation was enacted.
How much cash does the trust fund have today? Practically zero. Some
$2 trillion has been gobbled up by elected federal officials to pay for the
income tax cuts that raised the federal deficit. All the trust fund mainly
has are the IOUs from an indebted government—special bonds that are
worthless in the bond market. This is not just massive corruption but also
massive fraud, which continues unabated. The burden of payroll taxes falls
primarily on the poor and the middleclass, whereas the income-tax burden
unduly falls on the aff luent. For the first time in American annals, taxes
were raised on the poor and lowered for the wealthy. This monumental
shift in tax policy was highly regressive, and aggravated poverty. It had
two deleterious effects. First, the indigent faced an onerous tax burden,
and poverty rolls climbed; second, since the poor spend almost all their
income, whereas the wealthy save a substantial portion, demand growth
fell as a result of the massive transfer of the tax burden. The demand for
goods and services failed to grow as fast as before. So GDP growth tum-
bled. U.S. GDP grew by over 4% per year from 1950 to 1970; since 1980,
in spite of the productivity-enhancing computer revolution, it has grown
at a 3% rate. The first decade of the new millennium has seen even lower
growth. So bad is the economic blight of official corruption that even the
inf lation and OPEC-scourged 1970s enjoyed higher growth—at 3.3% per
year. Paltry growth also aggravates poverty.
52 Ravi Batra
The Sinking Minimum Wage
Perhaps the biggest cause of rising American poverty is the relentless

decline in the real minimum wage since 1969. The Republicans and many
Eurocentric economists argue that the unemployment rate rises with a
rise in the minimum wage. If this is true, why was the jobless rate only
3.5% in 1969, when the minimum wage in terms of purchasing power, or
2008 prices, peaked at $9 per hour? In other words, the highest minimum
wage generated the lowest unemployment rate in the modern American
chronicle. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that from 1950 to 2007
employment went up each and every time the minimum wage rose in
money terms (Batra 2005, Chapter 8). The minimum wage in 2008 was a
pitiful $5.85 per hour, with almost 39 million Americans subsisting below
the poverty line.
The decline in the real minimum-wage is by far the biggest cause
of exploding poverty in America. But unmitigated globalization is
not far behind. The U.S. Department of Labor divides workers in two
categories—supervisory and non-supervisory. The supervisory workers
are the managers, the heads of various departments or groups in an enter-
prise. They comprise about 20% to 25% of employees; the other 75% or
more are included in the category of non-supervisory or production work-
ers. According to the Economic Report of the President, an annual publica-
tion of the government, the real wage of the production worker has been
falling since 1980. The fall actually began in 1973, but the 1970s should
be excluded from our discussion because the decade was distorted by the
OPEC cartel. During the 1980s the oil price fell sharply and then stabilized
in the 1990s. But the production worker continued to see a decline in the
real wage. This was then a policy-induced fall, as compared to the 1970s
wage debacle, which was engineered by OPEC’s monopoly power.
In 1979, at the end of the 1970s, real weekly earnings for the produc-
tion worker stood at $299, and, in spite of falling oil prices, plummeted
to $267 by the end of the 1980s, when the Reagan Revolution was in full
bloom. Real earnings continued to sink in the 1990s, and began to rise
from 1995 on only after the government altered its measure of the cost of
living. Even then they stood at $280 at the end of 2007, well below the
1979 figure. While production workers saw a drop in real wages, their
tax burden, thanks to regressive taxation, soared. No wonder, the United
States had the highest number of the poor in 2008 in its history.
Globalization
The fall in the production wage occurred in the backdrop of soaring

international trade, which also caused a big jump in America’s trade
deficit. As a result, manufacturing jobs began to vanish in the United
States; those so laid off then had to switch to service industries. New
entrants to the labor market also relied on services for employment.

Thus, first the real wage fell in manufacturing because of soaring import
competition, then it fell in services because of excess labor supply to that
sector. This way the real wage fell for the entire category of production
workers.
Today the Eurocentric economic profession has found religion in free
trade, which was first advocated by a British businessman named David
Ricardo in 1815. But as late as 1941, two well known economists, Paul
Samuelson and Wolfgang Stolper, prophesied that free trade between
advanced and developing nations would reduce real wages and increase
profits in the United States (Stolper and Samuelson 1941). Samuelson went
on to win a Nobel Prize for his writings.
The Stolper-Samuelson theorem, which was an immediate success, is an
integral part of the modern theory of international trade. Every free trader
knows about it, but still thinks that the real-wage debacle experienced by
the production worker since 1980, and as early as 1973, is not the result
of soaring foreign commerce. Economists are extremely shy of claiming
success in a renowned forecast that came true. Milton Friedman, another
Nobel laureate and a champion of free trade, argues that a theory should
be judged through its forecasting ability. However, he would not want
to apply his criterion to the successful forecast of the Stolper-Samuelson
theorem that said way in advance that the tariff removal will lower the
real wage in a country like the United States. This is the Eurocentric view
of globalization and it contradicts the logic of its authors.
Rather than free trade, modern economists including the current
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke blame computers for the fall in the U.S.
real-wage debacle. In a coauthored text, he writes, “Computerization is
another development that has in many cases increased the productivity of
more skilled workers while squeezing out those without the education or
training to use the new tool effectively” (Abel and Bernanke 1995, 89).
This is how the chairman explains why the unskilled worker has suf-
fered a real-wage decline. But he fails to realize the absurdity of his argu-
ment, which implies that up to 80% of American labor force is unskilled.
Production workers constitute over three-fourths of the work force, and
since their average wage has plummeted, Bernanke’s logic tells us that the
vast majority of Americans are unskilled.
Of all the excuses made by the acolytes of free trade, attributing pov-
erty to technological advances or automation completely defies common
sense. Automation has been raising productivity in the United States ever
since the birth of the American republic in 1789, and real wages went up
decade after decade for all the workers. New technology never reduced
the U.S. real wage until 1970. How can we now blame it for the wage
blight?
When free trade occurs among nations with similar wages, they all ben-
efit. But when it occurs among high-wage and low-wage nations, workers
in the rich nations suffer. The suffering takes place in various forms. In
54 Ravi Batra
some, such as the United States, the real wage has actually declined. In
others, such as Canada, Australia, and Germany, the real wage has not
kept pace with rising productivity.
The Rising Wage Gap
In sum, there are four main reasons behind rising poverty in the United
States—the high price of oil, regressive taxation, globalization and, above
all, the low minimum wage. They all ref lect official corruption, because
they are all the product of new laws that have made the rich richer. Now
I will show that they also generate global imbalances and could hurtle us
into an economic disaster in the near future.
Official corruption seeds instability, because it raises what may
be called the wage gap, which is a measure of the difference between
employee productivity and the real wage. Believe me or not, the main
cause of the current economic crisis that began in 2007 is the vast gap that
has emerged between labor productivity and the real wage over the past
thirty years. This statement comes as a surprise to many people, because
they focus on the more familiar and visible macro economic variables
such as consumer spending, business investment, corporate profits, share
prices, inf lation and interest rates and above all the housing meltdown
aff licting our economy today. However, my thesis is that productivity
and wages are more fundamental than all the factors just mentioned.
Here is why. The following also explains the business cycle over the past
three decades.
Economic balance and a healthy economy require that
Supply = Demand
Here supply and demand refer to the provision of goods and services in
the entire economy.
The main source of supply is: Productivity

The main source of demand are: People’s Real Wages
Because of investment and new technology, productivity rises over time,

so that demand will grow as fast as supply only if
Productivity growth = Real wage growth
But the U.S. real wage (the purchasing power of the average salary) has
been stagnant or even falling, so that in the absence of other changes,
over time
Supply > Demand

Demand can also be raised artificially through government and consumer

borrowing. Rising debt is the only way then left to maintain supply-
demand balance. This has been happening in America for the past thirty
years, since 1980. When
Productivity growth = Growth of the real wage plus debt

Supply = Demand
Thus over the past three decades, with the real wage growth nearing zero,
U.S. demand-supply balance has been maintained through ever-present
budget deficits and soaring consumer debt and housing debt. The Fed
chairmen, first Alan Greenspan and now Ben Bernanke, made sure that
interest rates remained low to lure more and more people into borrowing.
The banks also lent a helping hand in this process and extended credit reck-
lessly. If they had not done so, there would have been overproduction and
hence growing joblessness. Thus the main arteries of the economy—the
Fed, the government, and the banks—all participated to postpone over-
production and unemployment. So by now the potential problem is huge.
The Debt Crisis
Productivity rises almost every year; so, with wages stagnant, the demand-
supply balance requires that the debt rises every year as well. But this is
impossible, because eventually borrowers run out of good collateral. For
a while banks accept bad collateral, which eventually backfires, because
debtors default and inf lict mounting losses on lenders. That process started
in early 2007 and continued in 2008.
The Share Market Crisis
When the demand-supply balance is maintained not by wage growth but

by debt growth, profits rise sharply as the entire fruit of rising productivity
goes to producers. So share price bubbles are born. The bubbles burst when
debt growth slows and debt-supported profits vanish. This happened in the
1920s, and the stock market bubble punctured in 1929, when consumer
debt failed to grow. This also happened between 1982 and 2000, the year
of the government budget surplus. As the surplus arrived, debt growth
slowed, and the share market bubble of the past two decades burst open.
The Housing Bubble
When the share market crashes, the Fed is forced into a panicky interest-
rate cut to prevent a depression. This is what happened from 2001 to
2003 which in turn created the housing bubble, which also had to burst
56 Ravi Batra
open once debt-growth slowed in 2007. The credit crunch was then
inevitable.
The Oil Price Rise
Profit growth is huge relative to opportunities available for business

investment; since business expansion, because of paltry consumer demand
growth, is insufficient to absorb the bulging profit, money seeks specu-
lative avenues; this way oil hedge funds were born that began raising
the price of oil even in a slowing economy. Some of these funds were
and are sponsored by the oil companies themselves. Thus, the wage-gap
hypothesis explains almost everything that the U.S. economy has faced
since 1980.
Why are we sinking in a sea of debt? Because as the real wage trailed
productivity, and demand growth trailed supply growth to threaten over-
production and joblessness, the government followed what is euphemisti-
cally called expansionary monetary and fiscal policy. This policy is better
called debt creation policy. Government spending soared, income tax
rates sank, interest rates fell periodically to lure more and more people
into borrowing, 0% financing created even more debt, and Eurocentric
economists convinced us that our economy was based on sound funda-
mentals. (Greenspan, once, exclaimed, “This is the best economy I have
seen in 50 years” [Batra 2005, p. 103].) Then profits surged, and so did
share prices. But profits and share markets were supported by debt, which
had to grow exponentially because productivity outpaced the real wage
every year. The moment debt growth slowed, as in 2000 because of the
budget surplus, the stock market crashed.
Greenspan’s panicky response to the crash spawned the housing bubble.
Interest rates now sank so low that people bought houses they could not
really afford; they borrowed money on their home equity, even inf lated
their incomes. The banks looked the other way and encouraged the
process, because their CEOs earned huge commissions and fees. They
accepted bad collateral. A time came the borrowers could not pay their
monthly mortgages, thanks again to Greenspan who began raising interest
rates in 2004. Banks, all over the world, lost billions in 2008, and a credit
crisis ensued. That is where things stood at the time of this writing.
The government is again repeating the folly of the past three decades,
and not addressing the problem of the growing wage gap. Tax rebates
were legislated in 2008 to swell the budget deficit; interest rates also
plummeted to encourage further borrowing. The same old medicine—
the same old band-aid approach. This time, however, even the band-aid
will not help. The public has used up its good collateral. There is little
home equity left for the borrowers; and banks, chastened by mega losses,
will not lend on bad collateral. So the debt creation policy will fail in the
current economic milieu.
My Forecasts
I am a strict believer in Milton Friedman’s dictum, namely, the accuracy

of a theory lies in its forecasting prowess. Since about 2003, using the
wage-gap hypothesis and some cycles, I have made the following forecasts
that appeared in books or newspapers:
1. Oil prices will rise or stay high until 2010—even after a recession
starts toward the end of the decade. They will crash around 2010
(Batra 1999, 2007).
2. The housing bubble will start to burst in 2007 and continue in that
direction at least until 2009.
3. The stock market will fall by the end of 2007 and crash in late 2008
or early 2009.
4. The dollar will collapse by the end of the decade.
5. Inf lation will heat up gradually and then fall sharply in early 2010s.
6. Gold will sky rocket but then crash in the next decade.
7. An unprecedented movement will appear by 2009 to start a revolu-
tion against the rule of wealthy lobbyists in politics. The revolution
will lead to a new golden age in the next decade.2
There are many other forecasts as well, but these should give us an idea
of where we are heading. Their timing, of course, could vary by plus or
minus six months. They have all, if I may say so, come true and tell us
that more bad times are coming. Even the revolutionary movement has
taken shape under the leadership of a charismatic leader, Barack Obama.
The Future of Poverty
Even though the near future seems to be dark, I feel that that our distant
future is very bright—nay effulgent. Owing to space considerations, I
will be brief here. My latest work, The New Golden Age: The Coming
Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos, partly derives
from my research in the 1970s, when I wrote two books in which I made
the following forecasts:
● The ayatollahs would take over Iran in 1979 and then rule for a
while.
● The Soviet Communism would vanish by the end of the century.
● The United States would be entangled in a major fight with funda-
mentalist Islam starting around 2000.
I used a variety of economic and historical cycles to make my case.

According to an economic cycle, we are now in the midst of an inf la-
tionary period where real estate, oil prices, and gold first zoom and then
58 Ravi Batra
collapse. Amazingly, such a cycle has occurred every third decade in

American history, with the 1970s being the last such decade.
As regards the political cycle, I have used my late teacher’s theory to
argue that nations pass through three eras (Sarkar 1967). Some times the
military dominates society, sometimes the intellectuals including priests,
and some times the wealthy. This political cycle concludes that the age of
money is about to end in America, India, and Europe. This cycle also pre-
dicts that China, where the rule of money or of wealthy landlords ended
in 1949, is about to move into its own golden age. History dictates that the
rule of the wealthy always ends in a social revolution culminating in a golden age.
This is the basis of my prediction that we are about to move into a period
of major economic chaos and poverty that will wake up people to over-
throw the rule of money in society in a ballot-box revolution. Then will
come a golden age of peace, prosperity, and ethical values.
Notes
1. For instance, a World Bank report (2001) summarizes the current view about corruption and
poverty in developing economies:
The burden of petty corruption falls disproportionately on poor people. . . . For those without
money and connections, petty corruption in public health or policy services can have debili-
tating consequences. Corruption affects the lives of poor people through many other channels
as well. It biases government spending away from socially valuable goods, such as education. It
diverts public resources from infrastructure investments that could benefit poor people, such
as health clinics, and tends to increase public spending on capital-intensive investments and
offer opportunities for kickbacks, such as defense contracts. (World Bank 2001, p. 201)
This observation from the World Bank offers great insight into the linkage between corruption
and poverty in a developing country, except that it also describes many government practices
in the United States as well. This quote also appears in Chetwynd, Chetwynd, and Spector
(2003). Another useful volume about the corruption-poverty linkage is the collection of essays
by Heidenheimer and Johnston (2002).
2. Most of these forecasts appeared in Batra (1999, 2007), and in DiMartino (2006).
Bibliography
Andrew, Abel and Ben Bernanke, Macroeconomics, New York: Addison Wesley, 1995.
Batra, Ravi, The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism, London: Macmillan, 1978.
———, Muslim Civilization and the Crisis in Iran, Dallas, TX: Liberty Press, 1980.
———, The Crash of the Millennium, New York: Harmony Books, 1999.
———, Greenspan’s Fraud: How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy, New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
———, The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos,
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Chetwynd, Eric, Frances Chetwynd, and Bertram Spector, “Corruption and Poverty: A Review of
Recent Literature,” manuscript, Management Systems International, January 2003.
Consumer Affairs, “Oil Mergers Blamed for Higher Prices,” Consumeaffairs.com, April 2, 2004.
DiMartino, Danielle, “Blaming it on Greenspan, Batra Says Ex-Fed Chief Created Housing Bubble,
Trade Deficit,” The Dallas Morning News, April 19, 2006.
Economic Report of the President, Washington, DC, 2008.
Federal Trade Commission, The Dynamic of Supply, Demand and Competition, ftc.gov, July 2005.
Heidenheimer, Arnold and Michael Johnston, eds., Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts, New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002.
Hope, Christopher, “BP Chief Blames Oil Price Ramping,” The Telegraph, April 26, 2006.
Samuleson, Paul and Wolfgong Stolper, “Protection and Real Wages,” Review of Economic Studies,
June 1941.
Sarkar, Prabhat R., Human Society, Part 2, Denver CO.: Renaissance Universal Press, 1967.
World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
PA RT 2
Perspectives on Africa, West, South,

and East Asia
CH A P T E R FOU R
Pan-African and Afro-Asian Alternatives [to] and

Critiques [of Eurocentrism]
M at h e w F or s tat e r
we can do anything together

almost if not enough beyond that
the repudiated cancel of the if we would have forgot
genesis in special shoes
revelating out your eyes in ripped rhythms
we refusing to drown
manning our newspaper sailboats and on down
the river of given slipping our slivers
silver slipped the beat conga down
mountain lion lapping sun in with a wet tongue
runs the warm in to swarm on the wet there
get there by the any possible means possible
means no retreating but the onward march lions
onward through eons the ions the slipped silver neon
the cry on onward lions
march! search!
reaching with butter tongues warm wet
reach!
the search resurging resurfacing facing up and out
the cloud eye percussed percussioned the cushioned
i on a rush f lashed f lush royal curses foiled
fell a rash hush over roll red rover
lashed out lassoed about
swashbuckled brick red without pouting
smashed south a whitewash
found dark inside a mouth
found dark found dark
somewhere in the kitchen children
switching wilderness to match the tenderness of this green and blue
64 Mathew Forstater
In the winter/spring of 1983, at age twenty-one, I formally converted

to Buddhism and also enrolled in my first semester of college courses at
Temple University in Philadelphia. The emphasis with the Buddhism for
me at this point was on the practice rather than the theory, but the practice
motivated me to study Buddhist philosophy. At Temple, I took Math,
English, Studio Art (Drawing), and a course entitled, “An Introduction
to the Black Aesthetic” offered by the Department of Pan-African Studies
and taught by the internationally acclaimed poet, Sonia Sanchez. The class
with “The Professor” led me to other courses offered by the Department
of Pan-African Studies, the name of which was changed in 1985 to African
American Studies, my undergraduate major. My studies of Buddhism and
Black Studies were not separate, but rather the concepts of each were con-
tinuously overlapping, complementing one another in many ways and on
multiple levels.
Afro-Orientalism, Pan-Africanism, and Africalogy:

Black Studies at Temple University in the 1970s and 1980s
Black Studies formally arose in the 1960s as a result of student activ-

ism and community struggle. Of course, in retrospect many works
from before that time can be said to be part of that tradition, one going
back hundreds and even thousands of years (Adams 1977; Crouchett
1971). The first department of Black Studies was created in 1969 at San
Francisco State University, the result of student and community protest,
and at Temple a similar struggle led to the creation of the Afro-Asian
Institute in 1971, which became the Department of Pan-African Studies
in 1975 (Tran 1987b, p. 1; Mazama 2005). Sonia Sanchez had been one
of the original faculty members in Black Studies at San Francisco State,
and she was part of Pan-African Studies at Temple, where she arrived
in 1977. Her course, “Introduction to the Black Aesthetic,” followed
somewhat in the tradition of Addison Gayle, Jr. (1971) and Hoyt Fuller
(1968), but definitely with Sanchez’s own style and f lavor. Black Fire
(1968), the famous collection edited by Imamu Amiri Baraka [LeRoi
Jones] and Larry Neal, was the textbook, along with many articles and
plenty of poetry.
Anyone who has seen or heard Sonia Sanchez perform her poetry
will understand when I say that her performances in class had the same
spirit and energy (see, e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-_
eEhTXo4I&feature=related). Cecil Conteen Gray, in his 2001 book,
Afrocentric Thought and Praxis, wrote of Sanchez’s 1995 collection of poems,
Wounded in the House of a Friend that “the entire work is a “wordwater-
fall” of powerful, freeing, prophetic nommo” (Gray, p. 128, n34). Sanchez
herself exhibited nommo, the transformative power of word/sound, in the
classroom, as she does in her everyday life. The musical and oral traditions
of African peoples are ones that have always been as vital to life as eating,
Pan-African and Afro-Asian Alternatives 65
sleeping, and breathing. Eurocentric compartmentalization and catego-

rization of various aspects of experience so as to separate them from one
another suppress recognition of the interrelatedness and interconnected-
ness of all phenomena. This has been used in part to permit rationalization
of the oppression of peoples and destruction of cultures different from
one’s own (Ani 1994).
The musical and oral traditions of Continental and Diasporan Africans
are integrated into every aspect of daily life, including work, education,
healing ceremonies, rituals, entertainment, festivals, politics, celebra-
tions, and games. One must try to imagine no separation between music,
dance, and poetry—all the arts—between those arts and life and religion
and politics, no separation, the whole connected experience of Life (and
death and life and . . .). This is most difficult and near impossible for those
brought up on the idea of ‘a place for everything and everything in its
place.’
Ashenafi Kebede informs us that the Shona verb kunzwa and the
Ethiopian mesmat both mean “to hear” but are also used to indicate “to
perceive by touch, sight or hearing; to understand; to feel” (Kebede
1982). Sound, word, voice, cry, call, chant, are vibration and creation,
an affirmation of life. Kebede continues that, “music helps us pass into
other realms of consciousness. The heightened feeling enhanced by
musical experience is aligned with spirituality and the world in which
things are no longer subject to time and space.” James G. Spady refers
to this transcendence when writing that “these are the timeless people.
Timeless Places. Untimed Spaces. Our voice does not begin with a whis-
per ushering in some military band. That voice does not enter an ear. It
explodes a lobe. It is the hushed volcano searing its way through space.”
Not only the ecstatic joy of time transcended, but also the dread and
pain of this particular moment in time was expressed by Sanchez as part
of the whole of the African experience integral to understanding Black
culture and history. But the Blues never becomes hopeless, there always
remains a stubborn optimism even in the midst of deepest despair.
Nommo can be expressed in numerous ways: Coltrane’s sax, speeches
of Dr. King and Malcolm X, poetry of Jayne Cortez, children singing
while clapping hands or playing jump rope, a friend telling a story or a
joke—or insulting you (ranking, the dozens). Meaning may be expressed
not only, or even primarily, through the literal definitions of words, but
their very sound. The spoken word’s inseparability from music, dance,
drama, costume ref lects the multifaceted, collaborative character of the
oral tradition. Jessica Hagedorn describes the concept she has for the
poetry reading as “an extravaganza of voices and moving bodies playing
instruments that would hypnotize an audience numbed by the pomp and
circumstance of academia, forgetting that the origins of poetry are oral
and physical” (Hagedorn 1981, p. 140).
Sanchez was also living and teaching Black Feminism and African
Womanism before there were the names (Collins 1990; Hudson-
66 Mathew Forstater
Weems 1993; Dove 1998). This was part of the larger message of the
course that throughout continental and diasporan African cultural pro-
duction was the unity of politics and culture. Not only that Enslaved
Africans communicated messages of resistance through song or African
Americans naming a jazz or reggae song for Garvey or Malcolm, but
the very energy communicated by the music itself is liberatory and
transformative.
The next semester I saw the Pan African Studies Department offered
a course on “Mass Communications and the Third World,” taught by
a Professor Tran Van Dinh. The course description sounded good so I
signed up. Turned out Tran was Vietnamese professor who had been very
involved in the struggle against colonialism back to the early postwar
period as a staff officer of the Vietnam Liberation (later, People’s) Army
(Tran 1970, 1987a). Since then he had been a participant in the Bandung
Conference of 1955 and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) from its
inception, as well as a diplomat who eventually emigrated to the United
States and was an active scholar, artist, and political rebel. At first I won-
dered about his “fit” in a Pan-African Studies Department, but soon
began to understand.
In his course, as in his Independence, Liberation, Revolution: An Approach to
the Understanding of the Third World, Tran begins by stating that his “meth-
odology is rooted in the concrete reality of being born into and raised in
a family of Confucian-Buddhist scholars in Vietnam”:
I am therefore a recipient of the original Vietnamese culture, of the syn-

thesized Indian and Chinese religions and philosophies that penetrated
the Vietnamese society even before the Christian era. (1987b, p. 6)
He goes on to lay out some of the tools that his approach utilizes, including
the “Confucian Sino-Vietnamese concept of the ‘rectification of names’,”
Buddhist philosophy, Taoism, the Vietnamese Tinh/Ly (feeling/reason or
emotion/logic) distinction, and Marxian theoretical analysis (especially
the Marxist notion of alienation). This allows Tran to clear the table of the
preconceptions and assumptions of the Eurocentric worldview, including
those that support both idealism and vulgar materialism.
“A major blind-spot of Marxism—in particular European Marxism—
concerns the base-superstructure dichotomy,” Tran writes. Much better
for Tran is the more “cultural” conception of the base-superstructure
relation put forward by Amilcar Cabral, the African Marxist who led
the PAIGC (Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and the Cape
Verde Islands), and who was assassinated by the Portuguese (Cabral 1979).
Tran was also an explicit proponent of the work of the underappreci-
ated Canadian Marxist communications scholar, Dallas W. Smythe, with
whom he also worked closely for a number of years (Smythe 1981, 1987).
In addition to being reminiscent of Raymond Williams’ discussion of
ideology and consciousness in his Marxism and Literature (1977), Smythe’s
theoretical stance may be said to have the f lavor of Vygotsky (1962) and
Voloshinov (1973), and anticipated the turn toward nondogmatic, anti-
essentialist and non-determinist forms of historical materialism.
Tran calls the base, “forming structures,” and refers to superstructure as
“transforming structures” (1987b, p. 20). The traditional presentation of
base/superstructure is ahistorical and unrealistic (p. 13, n1). Tran argues
that relative primacy of the economic base in Europe is a result in part
of strong theistic religious traditions. In African and Chinese cultures, in
contrast, ideology arises out of the materiality of daily life and the sym-
bolic world is concrete:
The concretization of symbols is manifest in four major cultural tools

which still form the bases for the cultural expression of all peoples
in the Third World, if not all humankind. They are: the mask, the
drum, music, and poetry. The interrelations between them are very
close and their functions are often interchangeable. Collectively, they
constitute channels through which a human being, totally immersed
in the FS [forming structures] and TS [transforming structures] of the
community communicate with his or her social or spiritual environ-
ments. To a Westerner, a mask is a work of art. To an African, it is a
“necessary ritual instrument or cult object . . .” Through the mask, as
well as through the drum, through music and poetry, an Asian and
particularly an African relates him or herself to the society of the living
and the dead . . . Among oppressed peoples, in particular the Blacks in
the United States, music has been and continues to be the expression
of their insuppressible freedom, their spiritual integrity, their cultural
identity. (1987b, p. 23)
Tran takes the position that Pan-Africanism is the “most enduring and
contains more progressive ideologies within it” than any of the other
“Pan” (or other third world) movements, and clearly for him the spirit
of Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement came directly out of
Pan-Africanism (p. 36). African America plays a crucial and important
role in the Pan-African movement, where it also finds its most militant
expression:
The historical contribution of the Black struggle in the United States

[and the Caribbean] to the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist move-
ments in the Third World and to Pan-Africanism has been generally
misunderstood, downgraded, and ignored. This has led to the erro-
neous conclusion that it was the emergence of independent African
nation-states that ignited the Black uprisings in the U.S. in the 1960s.
Kwame Nkrumah, himself a college student in the U.S., recognized
that the opposite was true . . . The Pan-African Movement has its
beginnings in the liberation struggle of African Americans. (Tran
1987b, p. 42)
68 Mathew Forstater
The mutual inf luences f lowing between Asia, Africa, and the Americas run
in multiple directions, as will be seen, but Tran’s “fit” in the Department
of Pan-African Studies is no more curious than Richard Wright’s or Adam
Clayton Powell’s attendance at the Bandung Conference of 1955.
By the mid-1980s, Pan-African Studies at Temple had been under con-
stant attack for many years, resulting in a decline in faculty and resources,
although the Pan-African Studies Community Education Program
(PASCEP, which continues today) had over one thousand community
members enrolled in its courses (Mazama 2005; Tran 1987b, p. 1). In 1984,
Molefi Kete Asante, the founder of Afrocentricity, was hired at Temple
to chair the department, the name of which was changed to African
American Studies in 1985. Asante, the editor of the Journal of Black Studies,
began hiring faculty trained in African-centered research and pedagogy
and the critique of Eurocentrism. Among the hires over the next ten
years—by which time Temple was offering an M.A. and the world’s first
Ph.D. in Black Studies—were C. Tsehloane Keto, Kariamu Welsh-Asante,
James Ravell and Thelma Ravell-Pinto, Theophile Obengo, Abu Abarry,
Ama Mazama, and more. In addition to Tran and Sonia Sanchez, Alfred
Moleah, Peter Rigby, and Odeyo Ayaga were in or associated with the
department and continued to offer courses for different periods of time.
Asante was the heart and soul of the department and the driving force
that brought Temple recognition as the premier Department of African
American Studies. His work is well known and his contributions have been
widely examined, but many others have also contributed to the develop-
ment of the African-centered approach, including Asante’s colleagues and
students at Temple (C. T. Keto, Cecil Gray) and Marimba Ani [a. k. a.
Dona Richards] of Hunter College. There is also considerable diversity
among African-centered perspectives, and while the terms Afrocentric,
African-centered, and Africentric may be new, there were those who
worked—and lived—in the general framework before there existed those
names. It is important to note that despite the perception among some
that the move from Pan-African Studies to African American Studies
represented a sharp break, my own experience was of significant overlap,
obvious—and more subtle—continuities, and interesting complementari-
ties. There may have been some change in emphases, but as is often the
case the differences in the two periods at Temple were more apparent to
the faculty members than the students.
One of the important contributions of the Afrocentric approach regards
the analysis of ideology. African-centered scholars criticize Eurocentrism
first and foremost for presenting the specific as universal, which is the
definition of ideology (in the pejorative sense). Courses on “Literature,”
“History,” “Philosophy,” and so on, historically include only European
authors and traditions, and as such should be called “European Literature,”
“European History,” “European Philosophy.” The particular (European)
is put forward as universal. On the other hand, courses that dealt with
African and African-American authors and topics, when offered at all,
are called “African-American Literature,” “Black History,” “African

Philosophy,” and so on, and are not presented as having universal signifi-
cance or messages.
Another important African-centered contribution has therefore been
to correct spurious scholarship. Afrocentric scholars began doing the work
of refuting false claims such as that Africa has no history, and that African
peoples were/are “primitive,” “backward,” “uncivilized,” and so forth.
Since Ancient Egypt and other Nile Valley civilizations were taken out of
Africa and put in the “Middle East” (i.e., Western Asia), and their inf lu-
ence on Ancient Greece downplayed or dismissed, Afrocentric scholars,
following Diop (1974), began doing the work of re-discovering Africa’s
past. This was also true for the Diaspora, where peoples of African descent
were said to have made little or no contributions.
In the face of both ideological and institutional racisms, the notion of
“race” itself had to be deconstructed and many African-centered scholars
were at the forefront pioneering the analysis of racism and the intersec-
tions of race, class, and gender. Afrocentric scholars anticipated many of
the insights of interpretive social science and critical theory, for example
arguing against scientism and demonstrating the impossibility of value-
free or objective knowledge.
Another emphasis of the Afrocentric approach concerned repairing
the relationship between the Diaspora and the Continent. The seamless
connections between African Continental and Diasporan traditions in
the arts, culture, philosophy, religion, and so on, were rediscovered and
demonstrated (see, e.g., Thompson 1983). Despite the attempt to destroy
African traditions, they continued to thrive in the Diaspora.
Again, while some may have viewed the two versions of the
department—Afro-Asian/Pan-African and Afrocentric—as at odds, for me
at the time it was the best of both worlds, and much more f lowingly con-
sistent than might appear on the surface. Anti-colonialism and anti-racism
were pillars of both liberatory nationalism and “third world” Marxism, was
what connected Nkrumah, Richard Wright, Cheikh Anta Diop, Walter
Rodney, Samir Amin, Paul Robeson, Fanon, C. L. R. James, Ngugi,
W. E. B. Du Bois, Aime Cesaire, and others together in a seamless tapestry
of resistance. Is there any greater symbol of such a stance than Bandung?
At the same time as I was immersed in Black Studies, I had begun
practicing Buddhism, and my interpretations of each were inf luenced by
one another. Exploring the connections—between Africa and the African
diaspora, between Asia and Africa, between Buddhism and Black Studies.
“Two, but Not Two”: Dependent Origination,

Human Revolution, and Happiness in This World
From the very beginning, my introduction to Buddhism connected to

Africa and Black Studies. It was my jazz saxophone teacher, Bobby Zankel,
70 Mathew Forstater
who played with Cecil Taylor, who first taught me to chant Nam Myoho
Renge Kyo. Zankel would later marry Molefi Asante’s administrative
assistant, the poet Sekai Zankel, who also practices Buddhism. One of the
first things I learned is that there are many denominations of Buddhism,
some as different from one another as Buddhism is from Christianity or
other religions. I joined the SGI (Soka Gakkai International), an interna-
tional lay organization of Nichiren Buddhists. SGI-USA, the organiza-
tion in the United States, has many more African American members
than most Buddhist denominations, and a higher percentage of Black
members than African Americans as a proportion of the U.S. population
(Hammond and Machacek 1999). There are also many Asian-American
members, and not only Japanese, but Thai, Chinese, Korean, Malaysian,
and others.
Nichiren Buddhism is in the Lotus Sutra tradition, part of the
Mahayana Buddhist tradition that moved from India to China to Korea
and Japan and around the world, and that is associated with the names of
Buddhist scholars or founders and leaders of Lotus Sutra Buddhist sects
such as Nagarjuna, Kumarajiva, T’ien Tai (or Chih-I), Miao-lo, Dengyo,
Nichiren, Makiguchi, Toda, and Ikeda.
There are two main messages of the Lotus Sutra. First, in the Lotus
Sutra Shakyamuni (Siddhartha or Gautama) stated that all persons without
distinction possess the Buddha nature or enlightened life-condition as a
potential in their life. This was a radically egalitarian position directed
against the caste system, oppression of women, and any other form of
hierarchy. The second message was that Shakyamuni stated that the story
goes that he attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree at some certain
age and that was the start of Buddhism. He said that is wrong, “Buddha”
simply means life itself and has existed from the far distant past, everyone
has Buddha in their life, and Buddhahood is not a point it is an ongoing
process, a process of self-reformation toward a life filled with abundant
compassion and service for others (Bodhisattva practice). The lotus sym-
bolizes, among other things, the simultaneity of cause and effect, since it
seeds and f lowers at the same time.
A fundamental concept of the Lotus Sutra tradition, and many other
Buddhist traditions is the principle of dependent origination, sometimes
called conditioned genesis, creative becoming, creative co-origination,
or the interrelatedness or social nature of reality (see Jacobson 1983).
Dependent origination means that nothing exists in isolation, but it goes
beyond even the view that all phenomena are interrelated. Against atom-
ism, reductionism, and mechanistic determinism, this holistic view echoes
the “ecological” view put forward by, among others, Lappe and Callicott
(1991): “organisms are not only mutually related and interdependent; they
are also mutually defining” (Lappe and Callicott 1991, p. 247). In terms
of society and social relations, dependent origination “means a world of
mutual assistance and support, a world in which all people respect all oth-
ers” (Galtung and Ikeda 1995, pp. 31–32).
Dependent origination has points of contact with Tran’s rejection of

base/superstructure discussed earlier, and also resonates with African
worldviews:
dependent origination . . . teaches that all phenomena produce effects

as a result of interaction between internal and external causes, is
known as both the dual-cause and the multiple-cause theory. It is
no mere mechanistic determinism, where a single cause produces a
single effect in the physical world. Rather, it is a comprehensive doc-
trine that, while encompassing the principle of the chain of cause and
effect, in the end asserts the importance of the relationship among
multiple external causes. Since effects arise from the interaction
among multiple external causes and between internal and external
causes, it follows that these relationships are endowed with a degree
of freedom. In this sense, the Buddhist principle of dependent origi-
nation may be said to have something in common with Heisenberg’s
uncertainty principle . . . A Buddhist theory of knowledge of this sort
brims with philosophical import and substance that appear to tran-
scend the mechanistic worldview based on the reductionist approach.
(Ikeda 1998, pp. 68–69)
Another fundamental concept of the Lotus Sutra tradition, and that relates
to the issues raised by dependent origination, is the concept of funi, a con-
traction of funi nini, “two, but not two,” and nini funi, “not two, but two.”
This is different than other Eastern and new age notions of “oneness” and
is much closer to a kind of dialectical internal relation that rejects Cartesian
and other Western (and even some Eastern) dichotomies and dualisms,
whether oppositional or separate. It can be thought of as “two in appear-
ance but fundamentally inseparable and mutually defining.” Two of many
different funi concepts that are of interest here are esho funi and shiki shin funi.
Esho is a contraction of Eho, or life, and shoho, or environment. Life and the
environment in which it exists are in one sense “two,” of course; I know I
am a distinct being and that everything that lies outside my skin is not “me”
in the way that everything within my skin—my bones and guts and blood
and internal organs, as well as my heart and mind and spirit, constitutes my
“self.” But there is another sense in which my life—both physically and
spiritually—and my environment—both natural and social—are insepara-
bly and mutually related. I can catch a cold by breathing in the air from out-
side my body that has germs; I can affect my environment, including other
people, and my environment affects me. As Lappe and Callicott put it:
A species is thus “internally related” to its habitat . . . determined by

its network of relationships . . . a species is the intersection of a multi-
plicity of strands in the web of life. It is not only located in its con-
text or related to its context; it is literally constituted by its context.
(Lappe and Callicott 1991)
72 Mathew Forstater
Shiki shin funi means that “spirit and matter are two, but not two” (and “not
two, but two”). There is no pure spirit, with no material aspect, and there
is no pure matter that has no spiritual dimension. All phenomena have
both spiritual and material aspects, although like life and its environment,
spirit and matter are distinct and distinguishable aspects of a single reality.
A single coin has both a head and a tail, each identifiable on their own,
but both part of the single coin. Erring in either direction would be mis-
leading, in other words extreme versions of both materialism and idealism
are missing something vitally important. To view phenomena in such a
balanced manner is characteristic of the “middle way” of Buddhism:
The Mystic law in which we believe is the eternal middle way, the
way which transcends the extremes of two one-sided and oppos-
ing views. Buddhism expounds the principle of “oneness of body
and mind [or spirit and matter],” explaining that the two seemingly
distinct phenomena, the physical and spiritual aspects of life, are two
integral phases of the same entity. It encompasses, integrates and
transcends both spiritualism and materialism. (Ikeda 1985, p. 126)
The connections between the Buddhist and African worldviews, and their
contrast with European traditions, became clearer as I became a student
of Black Studies and a practitioner of Buddhism. “Buddhism and the
Akan religion share the belief . . . that death is not the opposite of life but
that death is a continuation of life” (Hakutani 2006, p. 186; cf. Ani 1994,
pp. 206–207). As Bob Kaufman, the late, great, African American Buddhist
poet of the Beat generation wrote: “When I die, I won’t stay Dead” (1965,
p. 30). Sonia Sanchez, in her “Love Poem” for Tupac, writes:
the old ones

say we don’t
die we are
just passing
through into
another space.
Toward a Bandung Epistemology
In Bandung . . . was the first unity meeting in centuries of Black peo-

ple. And once you study what happened at the Bandung conference,
and the results of the Bandung conference, it actually serves as a model
for the same procedure you and I can use to get our problems solved.
Malcolm X
Think about it: Gandhi’s commitments were largely formed in his

African experience; King was inf luenced by Gandhi, and the Civil
Rights movement in the U.S. inf luenced the ANC and the anti-
apartheid struggle. Of course, at the same time, young members of the
Black Power movement were inspired by the African liberation move-
ments and the works of their leaders—Nkrumah, Lumumba, Cabral,
Nyerere—themselves inspired by the Movement (Cleaver 1998, p. 12).
Recall the impact visiting Asia and Africa had on Malcolm X, and
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s identification with the Vietnamese people in
his later years.
Recently a book of Native Son author Richard Wright’s haiku has
been published. Sonia Sanchez does “blues haiku” as well as tanka
and other Asian poetic forms. Coltrane paid homage to Asian culture
and philosophy—the musical connections are significant. Tran was at
Bandung, so were Richard Wright and Adam Clayton Powell. One
European observer was puzzled by Powell’s attendance and behavior:
“present in Bandung . . . was the American Negro Congressman Adam
Clayton Powell: . . . distributing cigars to all and sundry, with or without
provocation” ( Jansen 1966, p. 187). But Richard Wright understood:
“The astounding aspect of Congressman Powell’s appearance at Bandung
was that he felt the call, felt its meaning . . .” (Wright 1956, pp. 178–179).
Du Bois wrote extensively on Asia, and would have been at Bandung
except that he, like Paul Robeson, was denied a visa to attend by U.S.
officials (Mullen and Watson 2005).
Whether it is Larry Neal referring to “the frame of reference based
on the humanism of the Bandung world” when writing about Amiri
Baraka (Neal 1966), or Ikeda (2001, p. 152) adopting Bandung’s prin-
ciples as his own (“For the people of the Third World, the conscience
of all Asian and African peoples is beautifully crystalized in the prin-
ciples laid down in the first Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung,
Indonesia . . . These five principles of peace are much more than relics of
the past”), the Bandung spirit became a unifying symbol that continues
to inspire hope to this day.
Some, however, have argued that with the end of formal political colo-
nization of most Asian and African nations and the “triumph of capi-
talism,” “it is no longer clear what overcoming Western power actually
means” (Scott 1999, p. 14; see also, Persaud 2003; Prashad 2006):
with the weakening of the cognitive political vocabularies of nation

and socialism in which oppositional Third World futures were artic-
ulated, it is no longer clear how alternatives are to be thought, much
less defended. In short, there is now a fundamental crisis in the Third
World in which the very coherence of the modern-secular project—
with its assurance of progressive social-economic development, with
its dependence upon the organizational form of the nation-state,
with its sense of privilege of representative democracy and competi-
tive elections, and so on—can no longer be taken for granted. (Scott
1999, pp. 14–15)
74 Mathew Forstater
But the problem is that while the critique of neoliberalism is fairly well
developed, as are even the critiques of Eurocentric epistemological and
methodological foundations, what is necessary is to develop the positive
alternatives that will take their place. These alternatives themselves must
be based on new epistemological grounds. The proposition being made
here is that such a “Bandung episteme” can be fashioned out of the kind
of Afro-Asian conceptual frameworks explored above.
One of the key implications of those teachers who have been liv-
ing examples of how to go about doing this important work—whether
Sanchez, Tran, Asante and the other Afrocentric scholars, or Ikeda—is
that there are no purely political-economic solutions, on the one hand,
nor is there any purely spiritual path out of our present predicaments.
Political changes brought about by people who are suffering from the
same three poisons of greed, hate, and ignorance as those whom they have
replaced will have no hope for success, while those who make the same
mistake “upside-down” by seeking some kind of other-worldly spiritual
salvation, ignoring the principles that “faith equals daily life” and “this
world is the ultimate reality,” will likewise fail in their efforts.
What is necessary, then, is a true twenty-first-century Bandung mid-
dle way between idealism and vulgar materialism. Such an alternative
will never be possible based on traditional Eurocentric groundings, but
requires the kind of understandings provided by such African and Asian
concepts such as nommo, dependent origination, nini funi, and the like. In
other words, we cannot change reality without understanding it, and our
vision of reality has been poisoned by Eurocentric hegemony, to the point
that even our criticisms of Eurocentrism have remained stuck within that
worldview, as have our attempts to craft alternatives.
It is time to get down to the necessary hard work of building a Bandung
world on Afro-Asian principles. Our hope for success itself can be derived
from Afro-Asian lessons:
Even if the night is bad, morning will come. (Fulani proverb)

Winter always turns to spring. ( Japanese Buddhist saying)
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CH A P T E R F I V E
Economic Development and the Fabrication of the

Middle East as a Eurocentric Project
F i r at D e m i r a n d Fa dh e l K a b ou b
1. Introduction
Economists deserve a fair share of the blame for their contribution to

Eurocentrism. Joseph Schumpeter’s classic History of Economic Analysis
(1954) taught generations of economists that there was a “Great Gap”
in the development of economic thought between ancient Greece and
the European Renaissance. During the “Dark Ages,” he argued, there
was nothing of significant intellectual contribution worth studying.
Schumpeter and his followers have completely ignored the contribu-
tions made to economics by Al-Ghazali, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Taimiyah, Ibn
Qayyim, Abu Yousuf, and Ibn Sina, among many others. Several decades
later, the so-called Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is still
struggling with the socioeconomic consequences of Eurocentrism.
Mainstream economics (i.e., neoclassical) focuses on uncovering the
universal laws of economic behavior that apply regardless of time and
space. Such laws, however, happen to be impregnated with Eurocentric
notions of “economic rationality” and modernity. As such, neoclassi-
cal economics asserts that people everywhere are essentially the same,
and therefore all that needs to be done is to help them (willingly or
unwillingly) discover the rational way of organizing their economies.
The Orientalist paradigm, however, takes the position that MENA’s
culture and people are special and different. Accordingly, the Middle
Eastern culture including the dominant religion (i.e., Islam) creates
major impediments not only to economic development, and the rise of
capitalism and free enterprise, but also to the spread of democracy, and
civil society. It is these two approaches to MENA that have dominated
the economic analysis of the region and have driven the policy agenda
for decades.
78 Fırat Demir and Fadhel Kaboub
The recent revival of writings on MENA coincides with the rise of a

new wave of wars from within and outside the region. The strategic impor-
tance of the region combined with the old attitudes of anti-Islamism and
Orientalism led to a series of publications in Economics, as in other fields,
to explain the apparent backwardness and underdevelopment of the region.
However, the old Orientalist habits of thought and Eurocentric methods
engulfed most of the findings of those studies and did very little to further
our understanding of development and underdevelopment in the region.
The list of the so-called factors of underdevelopment is long but can be
summarized as: (a) lack of Western style institutions such as the legal code,
and cultural barriers inf luenced by Islam; (b) state-oriented inward look-
ing economic policies; (c) lack of “integration” with the world economy;
(d) chilling investment climate and political instability; and (e) capital mar-
ket imperfections, low levels of human capital, high population growth,
and low productivity.
In this paper, we review the growth and development experience of the
MENA countries with a special attention to the institutional and histori-
cal roots of underdevelopment in the region. We argue that there is a gen-
eral lack of historical analysis of the current problems in the region not the
least any study of the effect of Eurocentric modes of institution building.
This, we believe, not only creates the wrong impression that the existing
barriers to development are ahistorical, but also shadows any analysis of
the intra- and interregional interactions, including the colonial and the
most recent postcolonial periods. The paper concludes with an alternative
agenda to undo the stronghold of Eurocentrism in the region.
2. Eurocentrism and the Fabrication of

MENA as a Regional Unit
We define Eurocentrism as the presumption that Western European

(and North American) social standards and values (which are assumed
to be unique to Europe) are the only accepted means for evaluating the
performance of other societies simply by virtue of being more “mod-
ern,” “enlightened,” “civilized,” and “superior.” Eurocentrism is a spe-
cial case of Ethnocentrism, but of all the ethnocentric habits of thought
Eurocentrism has been by far the most dominant one since the eighteenth
century. This mode of thinking has permeated cultures across the world,
the various academic disciplines in the social sciences, and inevitably legal
and political institutions. Being Eurocentric does not necessarily mean
that one is from the West, in fact the gravest form of Eurocentrism is the
one adopted by the modern states and their elites in the so-called East or
Orient. Indigenous Eurocentrism in the Orient, we argue, is the ultimate suc-
cess of the Eurocentric project and was mostly achieved through coercive
intrusion by colonial powers (and by domestic elites), and was later trans-
ferred to the deeply Eurocentric postcolonial authorities that continued
Economic Development and the Middle East 79
the modernist agenda either with a capitalist or socialist f lavor. In fact, one
of the most cited justifications for colonialism has been to bring civiliza-
tion, modernity, and progress to the colonized world. As a result, more
than half a century after the end of colonialism the Eurocentric habits of
thought continue to be entrenched in the conventional wisdom:
We have been taught . . . that there exists an entity called the West
and that one can think of this West as a society and civilization inde-
pendent of and in opposition to other societies and civilizations [i.e.,
the East]. Many of us even grew up believing that this West has
[an autonomous] genealogy according to which ancient Greek begat
Rome, Rome begat Christian Europe, Christian Europe begat the
Renaissance, the Renaissance the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment
political democracy and the industrial revolution. Industry, crossed
with democracy, in turn yielded the United States embodying the
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . . [That is] mis-
leading, first, because it turns history into a moral success story, a
race in time in which each [Western] runner of the race passes on
the torch of liberty to the next relay. History is thus converted into
a tale about the furtherance of virtue, about how the virtuous [i.e.,
the West] win out over the bad guys [the East]. (Wolf 1982, cited in
Hobson 2004, p. 1)
Thus, Eurocentrism denies the contribution of non-Western societies to

the collective achievements of human kind by teaching that “the history
of Europe covers the essential history of civilization” (Du Bois 1946, p. 148).
As pointed out by Frank (1998, p. 9), the myth of European exceptional-
ism encompasses a number of basic arguments: “(i) social development
is caused by characteristics which are internal to society, (ii) the histori-
cal development of society is either an evolutionary process or a gradual
decline. These arguments allow Orientalists to establish their dichoto-
mous ideal types of Western society whose inner essence unfolds in a
dynamic process towards democratic industrialism” (Turner 1986, p. 81).
Accordingly, as argued by Max Weber, the Occident is characterized by a
unique combination of rationality and activism (Hodgson 1993, p. 86).
Wallerstein (1996) identifies five ways in which social sciences express
their Eurocentric bias: (i) a historiography that claims European scien-
tific superiority over other cultures; (ii) the parochialism of its universal-
ism claiming that made-in-Europe science has discovered the “laws of
motion” of both nature and society, and that such laws are valid across
time and space; (iii) its assumptions that the “West” is uniquely and espe-
cially “civilized”; (iv) its Orientalism (as defined in the works of Anouar
Abdel-Malek and Edward Said); and (v) its attempts to impose the theory
of progress (Wallerstein 1996, p. 1).
As a result, proponents of both capitalism and socialism, which Kanth
(1997) described as “the twin faces of Janus,” often fell into the traps
of Eurocentric ideology. Accordingly, the Left often neglects “to ref lect
on exactly how much of Marxism is infected with similar notions”
(Kanth 1997, p. 90). The best known example is probably Marx with his
Eurocentric imagination of the “Orient where civilization was too low and the
territorial extent too vast to call into life voluntary association” (Marx 1853). In
contrast, the Occident was characterized by voluntary association that led
to the development of private enterprise.
The period between 1700 and 1850 clearly dates the rise of Eurocentrism
as a fundamental construct of the “West” as a superior society blessed with
all possible virtues and moral values that the “East” lacked. Needless to
say that the geographic references to “East” and “West” in their modernist
meanings are precisely the construct of the same Eurocentric imaginary.
The MENA region itself is a Eurocentric fabrication aimed at essential-
izing the region and its people. As Halliday explains:
We should long ago have resisted the temptation to see the region as
a single, integrated political or socio-economic whole [. . .]. One of
the besetting distortions of the region, replicated by Western stereo-
typing and local ideology alike, is that the region’s politics and his-
tory can be explained by timeless cultural features, a Middle Eastern
“essence” or an “Islamic mindset.” (Halliday 1999, p. 4)
For our analysis, therefore, first we need to clarify what the MENA
region is, and its usefulness as a unit of analysis. Like most of the develop-
ing world, the MENA region was more of a product of strategic factors
from the European point of view than anything else. As Lewis and Wigen
(1997, p. 37) exposed, geographically speaking seeing Europe and Asia as
parts of a single continent would have been a more accurate classification
but would fall short of granting Europe the superiority that “Western
Europeans” believed it deserved. By fabricating a seemingly scientific con-
tinental division between Europe and Asia, Western scholars managed to
strengthen the notion of a cultural dichotomy between these two regions.
Moreover, starting from the beginning the Middle East was not a region
defined by cultural, historical, or geographical units but by strategic mili-
tary needs. In fact, the term itself was the brainchild of the military theo-
rist Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1902 to refer to the region neighboring the
Persian Gulf (Lewis and Wigen 1997, p. 65). Furthermore, if the Middle
East is in the middle from the perspective of Western Europe (and North
America) then which region and countries lie in the Near East?
The most visible sign of a lack of structural basis for the fabrication of
such a unit of analysis is the continuing confusion regarding the borders
of this region. A quick look at the current social sciences literature reveals
a lack of consensus on which countries to include in this region. The list
ranges from all North Africa, some Central Asia (such as Afghanistan),
Persian Gulf (i.e., Iran, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar), Asia Minor (Turkey),
Mediterranean island(s) (Malta but not Cyprus for some unknown
reason), and Eastern Mediterranean (Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria).

It is common practice to exclude Cyprus and Malta from the classifica-
tion although (according to the geographical and historical justifications
used for other countries) they are part of the region. The same problem
applies to the exclusion of Armenia and Azerbaijan from the list. Another
visible sign of the absurdity of using MENA as a unit of analysis and the
apparent difficulty of using it for comparative research is the presence of
multiple classifications. To give an example, it is common to classify the
countries in the region based on: oil rich/oil poor; labor rich—oil rich
(Iran, Iraq)/labor poor—oil rich (Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia); labor
rich–oil poor (Egypt, Turkey); oil poor–limited natural resource (Israel,
Tunisia, West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon); natural resource poor
states (Sudan, Yemen); NICs (Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia); industrialized
(Israel) countries (i.e., Richards and Waterbury 1996). Despite this mul-
tiplicity, still no one questions the usefulness of classifying all these coun-
tries in one group despite different economic, historical, cultural and
geographical mappings. The fabricated mapping of the region has long
been internalized by the region itself. In addition to the imagined exis-
tence of the region as a unit of analysis, the region also took for granted
the basic tenets of modernity as defined in Europe.
As discussed by Kanth (1997) and Hobson (2004), equating Westerniz-
ation with modernity presupposes geographical and cultural uniqueness
and superiority of Western Europe over the rest of the world. Despite
the presence of a growing body of research documenting and challeng-
ing the claim that democracy, individualism, secularism, market society
and in general modernity started in Europe and is an end product of
European culture, the intellectuals, academicians, the military and policy
makers continue to impose an imagined version of modernity on their
populations.
3. Eurocentrism and Economic Development in MENA
The Eurocentric modes of analyzing the East through economic, cultural,

and geographical determinism have a long history both on the left and
right side of the economics literature. According to a majority of writ-
ings from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the Orientalists did
not reach a stage to have private property, which was (and still is) seen as
one of the root causes of their underdevelopment. In fact, “the absence of
landed property is indeed the key to the whole of the East. Therein lies
its political and religious history” (Engels 1853; Marx 1853). According to
this view, since private property is the foundation of capitalism, the East
remained in a subservient position to the West (Kuran 2004).
Max Weber (1905) was probably one of the most prominent initial
perpetrators of the Eurocentric claim that the cultural traits of the Islamic
dynasties of the Abbasids, Mamluks, and Ottomans were less conducive to

the development of the rational, predictable, and evolving legal structures
that are required for the emergence of rational capitalism. He argued that
the legal and political institutions of the Muslim world produced deficien-
cies that could not guarantee property rights whereas Europe was able to
do so and therefore bring about the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
When we look at the contemporary tales of underdevelopment in MENA,
it is still a common practice to explain the lagged performance of the
region for the last two centuries with the legacy of cultural and religious
institutions and traits. On the basis of World Values Survey data, Guiso,
Sapienza, and Zingales (2002) claimed that Islam is negatively correlated
“with attitudes that are conducive to growth,” and that compared to the
other major religions, Muslims are the anti-market. Barro and McCleary
(2002), however, find no empirical evidence for a link between religion
and national macroeconomic performance. Their motivation for this line
of research in economics is driven by a belief that religiosity enhances
certain traits such as thrift, honesty, hard work, and openness to strangers,
all of which according to neoclassical theory promote productivity and
economic growth. Similarly, a recent empirical study by Marcus Noland
(2003) refutes the Eurocentric assertion that Islam presents an impedi-
ment to economic growth. Likewise, using a cluster analysis with sixty-
two countries and forty-four indicators of economic institutions, Pryor
(2007) shows that Islam as a religion has relatively little inf luence on the
economic institutions, the economic system, or the economic and social
performance of a country
Nevertheless, Kuran (2004) continues to blame (a) the Islamic waq f
or trusts that locked capital into a dysfunctional institution, (b) Islamic
inheritance law, which dispersed inheritance among multiple heirs, and
(c) the individualism of Islamic law as preventing decentralized capi-
tal accumulation and the rise of private enterprise and civil society à la
Europe. He further argues that “the commonness of autocratic rule in the
region stands, then, among the continuing legacies of traditional Islamic
law” (Kuran 2004, p. 87). In contrast, “in the West many social services
came to be provided by self-governing and, hence, more f lexible orga-
nizations. Also, the West had a greater variety of organizational forms, which
allowed more experimentation in the delivery of services” (Kuran 2004,
p. 81, emphasis added). Likewise, Landes (1969) firmly denies that Muslim
“culture” can permit any technological initiative. He further argues that
“if we learn anything from the history of economic development it is that
culture makes all the difference” (1998, p. 516). According to Landes, only
Western culture is blessed with the core prerequisites for success: “work,
thrift, honesty, patience, tenacity” (Landes 1998, p. 523). According to
this view, MENA’s economic decline and its current political and social
backwardness are due to the very nature of the Islamic culture that pre-
vented the development of the pillars of the free market and democratic
institutions.
Moreover, since political transition to democracy is seen as a stage in

the development from authoritarian governments that are endemic and
indigenous to the Orientals, the colonial experience is generally viewed
as a positive contribution, as the first seed of enlightenment in the region
(Marx 1953; Booth and Seligman 1994). For example, Paldam (1998,
p. 177) argues that “Many of these countries [in Africa and Islamic/Arab
world] experienced a period of colonization by a European power, which
effectively ended the traditional pattern, and instilled the ideal of some
type of democracy.”
Yet, in fact “all attempts [. . .] to invoke pre-Modern seminal traits in the
Occident can be shown to fail under close historical analysis, once other
societies begin to be known as intimately as the Occident” (Hodgson
1993, p. 86). Moreover, as Inalcik (1969) emphasized, Islamic society and
law “shaped themselves from the very first in accordance with the ideas
and aims of a rising merchant class” (Inalcik 1969, p. 101). Furthermore,
such reductionist generalization of European development experience
ignores the centralized and state-led development examples of European
states such as Germany. The same is true for the conf licting portrayal of
the region with two opposite poles, communalism on one side and indi-
vidualism on the other. Besides, the same individualism was often used
to explain European exceptionalism and success vis-à-vis the rest of the
world. In addition, the lagging performance of the region vis-à-vis Europe
came far too recently on a historical scale to be pinned on the inf luence
of religious (or cultural) institutions. Therefore, any attempt to explain
the decline in economic performance of the region after the eighteenth
century with the religious/cultural factors or institutions should also be
able to explain how the same institutions could create the opposite results
prior to that date.
Looking through non-Eurocentric lenses, the economic history of
MENA is anything but static and can be characterized by several cycles
of growth and accumulation. The region enjoyed higher levels of eco-
nomic development and prosperity compared to its counterparts in
Europe. The overall urbanization rate, for example, was much higher
than Europe. Paris, for instance, had 125,000 inhabitants compared to
Cairo with 450,000 or Istanbul with 700,000 around 1500 (Bairoch 1997,
pp. 517–537). Even more surprising to the Eurocentric perceptions, in
the sixteenth and seventeenth century, a city like Kayseri in Anatolia
with a population of 33,000 was within the same order of magnitude as
Amsterdam and Barcelona (Faroqhi 1987, p. 43).
Historically, the MENA region was a thriving center of trade both
originating within the region and as a crossroads for trade routes between
Europe, East Asia, and Southern Africa. The Muslim contribution to sci-
ence and technology during the European dark ages ranges from surgical
medical instruments and pharmaceutical products to the development of
mathematics, algebra, trigonometry, optics, architecture, and astronomy.
The MENA region was a thriving civilization leading the way in the
development of sciences, arts, and culture. However, the shift in the bal-
ance of power between MENA and Europe over the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and Europe’s subsequent industrialization instituted
a new pattern of trade, that which manufactures exports from Europe in
return for primary products and raw materials and led to the subsequent
decline and decimation of existing manufacturing and crafts produc-
tion that the region had enjoyed. During this period, any attempt by the
region to industrialize was forcefully prevented (most notably by Britain
and France) such as the industrialization efforts by Muhammad Ali in
Egypt (Issawi 1966, p. 363). This not only significantly shifted the pattern
of production and trade, but also served to disrupt intra-regional trade
in agriculture and manufactured goods, which had expanded under the
consolidation of the region under the Ottoman rule (Owen 1993).
Furthermore, the often repeated Eurocentric claim that modern global-
ization began in 1500 with the European Enlightenment and geographi-
cal discoveries has been aptly challenged by Hobson (2004) who argued
that the “East” had a well established global economy at least since 500
which he called the “oriental globalization” stretching from North Africa
and Middle East to China, India and Korea in the East and Polynesia in
the South. Hobson explains that the level of scientific and technological
progress that took place in the “East” allowed for revolutionary improve-
ments in productivity, specialization, transportation, commerce, and
overall quality of life. Hobson’s work shows that China had undergone an
early industrial revolution in the steel industry centuries before Europe.
The Arabs in the Middle East had almost absolute control over interna-
tional trade by controlling the major trade routes stretching from Spain
and Arabia to China and India. The claim that capitalism was strictly an
invention of the European Enlightenment is also challenged by the fact
that financial institutions, international clearing unions, credit, monetary
contracts, and a very elaborate taxation system was already in place in the
oriental global economy centuries before Adam Smith began to imagine
what a capitalist system would look like.
In retrospect, the fabrication of classless Eastern (i.e., Ottoman) despo-
tism as an antithesis to European monarchy was a product of European
identity formation, especially given the presence of a vibrant merchant
class, numerous and well-established religious nonprofit foundations and
occupational interest groups in the form of guilds throughout MENA
(Faroqhi 2004, p. 591; Islamoglu-Inan 2004, p. 3; Inalcik 2005, p. 83).
In this respect, the heavy emphasis on the geographical determinants of
sociopolitical structures served two purposes. On the one hand, it gave
the theory the halo of scientific correctness, and on the other hand, it
helped reassure the distinctness of Europe from Asia. The famous though
completely discredited Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) theory of
Marx and Engels was a product of this line of thinking.
The AMP theory encompassed the assumption of Oriental Despotism,
which is defined as a centralized strong state (i.e., the despot) with no
vertical linkages to society through intermediate social classes with

the agrarian base located at the bottom. This has important implica-
tions for the reinterpretation of the past as well as the present and future.
Accordingly, the absence of any civil society and the lack of any pressure
group or class to limit the absolute authority of the state are the defin-
ing characteristics of the non-European states in the East. The current
research in economics and political science continues to use the so-called
common sociopolitical roots of oriental despotism in explaining the rela-
tive underdevelopment of the region. Accordingly, repressive political
(i.e., military and state bureaucracy) and cultural (i.e., Islamic) institu-
tions legitimize the oppressive nature of the state that is itself a product
of the historical and geographical forces. This line of analysis also serves
multiple purposes for the current political order and for the Western con-
sciousness. First, it helps free the Western world from any responsibility
in the underdevelopment and the continuation of oppressive authoritar-
ian regimes in the region. This narrative skips over the role of colonial
powers in the erection of dictatorships in the region, Second, this helps
justify Western interventions in the region to bring the famous trinity
of “development, democracy and human rights.” Accordingly, Western
colonial interventions take the form of a progressive force to eradicate
suppressive sociopolitical forces and liberate local populace from indig-
enous barriers that slow the development process. Therefore, the substi-
tution of the Despotic state with a more humane colonial state was not a
regressive development. Also, when the replacement was done through
local allies, this was still a better choice than the despotic indigenous state
structure (Islamoglu-Inan 2004).
4. Formation of Independent States with

Jacobinist Institution Building
Upon independence, the newly formed states in the region continued the
colonial habits of thought in their organization of the state apparatus. Most
notably they took for granted the European explanation of the reasons
behind the region’s backwardness and tried to imitate European success
by reshaping themselves after the European image. Moreover, the new
rulers took it as one of their major targets to civilize the natives during
the nation building process. During this period, the Westernization of the
“East” (without adopting the institutions or economic foundations) took
the form of forced cultural changes such as dress codes, changing alphabet
(in the Turkish case), measurement system, closing religious NGOs and
sects, and such. The forced Westernization went to such extreme that in
Turkey, for instance, traditional classical music was banned from radio
broadcast from 1934 to 1936. And, Article 222 of the Turkish Penal Code
based on a law dating back to 1925 made it compulsory to wear a hat and
required prison terms for those who violate it. To this day, the elites still
continue to see the realities of their countries through the distorted lens
of the European enlightenment.
1. The Formation of Centralized State

The state-led economic policies in the region were first introduced by
colonial governments in an effort to enforce the direct colonial control
over resources, and through the introduction of colonial law and order.
The top-down colonial policies have sterilized socioeconomic participa-
tion, eliminated any form of active political discourse, and instilled a cul-
ture of inaction from the part of the population. Consequently, the concept
of governance inherited by postcolonial governments became synony-
mous with the role played by colonial authorities, but with a nationalist
agenda aimed at modernizing the economy and “catching-up” with the
West. The catching up process has been shaped by the Weberian hypoth-
esis; therefore policies were introduced to secularize society in order to
enhance capitalist development.
Accordingly, the state elites who were mostly former soldiers all
agreed on the need for a strong centralized authoritarian state. As a result,
despite the diversity in economic performance and resource endowments
in the region, a characteristic shared by virtually all countries (including
Turkey and Israel) regardless of professed ideology (i.e., socialist, repub-
lican, monarchy etc.) was until very recently (i.e., late 1980s) that they
had a large public sector that led the development process (Richards and
Waterbury 1996).
Also one needs to take into account the fear of neocolonialism on the
behalf of postcolonial states such as Egypt, Algeria and Libya given that the
former colonial powers had a profound interest in continuing their previ-
ous hegemony through the economic arena rather than by direct military
confrontation. For example, regarding the independence of Egypt and the
Suez problem, Tignor (1987, p. 486) argued that “webs of economic con-
nections would keep Egypt in the British orbit” even after British forces
were withdrawn from the canal base.
In this respect, the still bitter memories of the destruction of local indus-
trial development by the colonial powers also contributed to the policy
choice in favor of heavy industry based state-led growth model. Using the
public sector as the engine of growth and development, the majority of
the states also experienced the usual sequencing in terms of development
models, going through an Import Substitution Industrialization (accom-
panied by land reform) which would be disrupted (usually following an
economic and/or political crisis, such as Egypt 1967, 1974; Tunisia 1969;
Turkey 1980) and be replaced by an outward oriented development model
where the role of state is minimized through domestic and external lib-
eralization programs.
During the ISI period the state had the responsibility for infrastructural
buildup, educational and health services, industrialization and societal
transformation while engaging in a mixed relationship with the private

sector. Despite the presence of a generally hostile attitude (by the state
bureaucracy), the private sector in most countries benefited largely from
intermediate products supplied by the state enterprises at discounted
prices or from other subsidies in the form of directed credits or foreign
exchange. As elsewhere, one of the characteristics of the ISI era was that
during this period the accumulation process became highly dependent on
politics rather than markets. Entrepreneurs relied on the state bureaucracy
and the subsidies it provided, rather than exploiting the opportunities cre-
ated by the market itself. The political and economic environment thus
created opportunities for wide-ranging rent-seeking behavior within the
business community, as businesses competed for the special set of incen-
tives provided by the state.
2. Development Bottlenecks1
In addition to the distortions created in the economy from a centralized,
highly inefficient, untransparent, unaccountable, and mostly corrupt state
structure, there are other problems that limit economic growth and develop-
ment in the region (Dahi and Demir 2008). In particular, one of the most
visible effects of Eurocentric ideology is in the field of human capital forma-
tion. The disproportionate weight on higher education instead of primary
and secondary was a byproduct of the distorted perception of modernity
through positivist lenses in the region. The newly independent states put
greater emphasis on higher education for two reasons: One was the urgent
need for a cadre of state bureaucracy loyal to the ideals and establishment ide-
ology of the state. Given that a majority of educated class and military elites
were perished during decades of wars, the new states started with a very low
human capital base. The second reason, we think, was the belief that Western
military and economic success resulted from the presence of a highly skilled
technical labor force, which was interpreted as more engineers.
Regarding the first reason, following political independence the major-
ity of MENA countries faced a daunting task to educate their popula-
tion. For example, adult illiteracy around independence was 70% in Syria,
85% in Algeria, Iraq, and Libya, 90% in Sudan, 53% in Kuwait, 45% in
Lebanon (Ghonemy 1998). The colonial powers had established paral-
lel systems of education and significant discrimination in education that
left the majority of population, especially in rural areas, with dilapidated
and low quality (if any) public schools while the urban elites and sectors
friendly to colonial powers enjoyed high quality educational establish-
ments whose quality resembled those in Europe. For example, French
authorities in Algeria allocated 20% of public expenditure on education to
Muslims who were 90% of the population while the British allocated only
1.5% of the total budget on health and education combined in 1891 in
Egypt. At the time of independence in 1951, Libya had only two citizens
with university degrees (Ghonemy 1998).
Since the postindependence period the MENA countries have invested

a high proportion of their GDP towards education and health, and have
made remarkable gains on both accounts. Illiteracy has dropped from 60%
in 1980 to about 43% in mid-1990s while school enrollment at all levels
went up from 31 million to 56 million during the same period (UNDP
2003). However there is still widespread illiteracy among youth and adults
and even higher illiteracy rates among women and the rural poor, which
suggests that the performances could have been better if governments had
been willing to allocate a larger share of their budgets to education.
The second reason, a side effect of the industrialization attempts by
the MENA countries was a reallocation of resources towards higher edu-
cation, which typically have lower social rates of return than primary
education. The result has been the oddity of large numbers of unem-
ployed highly educated workers together with large numbers of illiterate
adults and youth (Richards and Waterbury 1996). In the case of Egypt,
for instance, despite an illiteracy rate of around 50% more than 100,000
university graduates enter the job market every year (Weaver 1995 quoted
in Lubeck 1998, p. 303).
3. Sociopolitical Conflicts and the Revival of Oriental Despotism

The region has been plagued with ongoing sociopolitical conf licts start-
ing from the final years of the Ottoman Empire and erection of colonial
regimes. Having borders drawn based on politics by the colonial powers
rather than historical, cultural or ethnic backgrounds or on social consen-
sus led to subsequent ethnic and religious civil conf licts (for a list of these
conf licts, see Elbadawi 2005, pp. 306–307).
In addition, from 1948 until today the Middle East has witnessed four
wars between Israel and several of its Arab neighbors, three wars with
Western countries, the second longest conventional war in the twenti-
eth century (Iran-Iraq War), the full occupation of Iraq and Palestine,
and partial occupation of Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria, extended periods of
economic sanctions on Syria, Iraq, Sudan, and Libya, and dozens of coups
d’états instigated from within and outside the region. The persistence of
ethnic, religious, and sociopolitical conf licts, continuous wars and mili-
tary occupations helped strengthen authoritarian state structures and did
not provide a stable environment for development. In this respect, the
artificial mapping of the region with sovereign borders overlapping with
different ethnic and religious groups with different historical and cultural
backgrounds further fed into the authoritarian state structure with the
excuse that the survival of the unity of the country is dependent on the
suppression of popular demands by different groups.
On the other hand, the survival of these mostly autocratic regimes
required distribution of economic rents to a wider group of supporters
including labor aristocracy, landowners as well as peasantry. In this respect,
what is common in the region is that a continuous f low of revenues
(e.g., from oil rents) has helped postpone economic and political reforms
(excluding Turkey and to some extent Israel). Furthermore, the formation
of pro-establishment interest group coalitions helped create support among
the public for the survival of the existing regimes. In Arab countries, the
political and economic programs of authoritarian populist regimes were
designated as Arab nationalism and Arab socialism. The authoritarian pop-
ulist Arab regimes as well as Turkish military governments acknowledged
workers and peasants as central components of their regimes’ survival. Land
reform programs (despite their limited coverage) were often used as tools
to increase legitimacy of the regimes (i.e., in Egypt, Syria, Iraq Algeria,
and Turkey). Increasing social spending on education and other services as
well as increasing government employment might have encouraged society
to tolerate undemocratic rule and human rights violations.
These processes and conf licts have had a direct impact on state structure
and overall trajectory of development, as well as development strategies
and choices available at any given period in time. First of all the Oriental
Despot became a reality with a strong centralized state that stayed in
power through the use of its military, bureaucratic and legal arms. The
suppression of popular demands, ethnic/religious conf licts became the
norm across the region. As a result the state structure is organized around
a small state elite and the military establishment surrounded by a group of
labor aristocracy, dependent private businesses and peasantry. The pres-
ence of internal and external threats to the survival of the regimes that
are established without a social consensus on a landscape divided by arti-
ficial borders, did not create a stable environment for growth. Instead,
the original sin of Eurocentrism and European colonialism that created
artificial satellite states in the region, resulted in ever growing barriers for
stability and development.
As a result (or on the pretext) of civil conf licts the mostly authoritarian
regimes have devoted a sizable portion of their budgets to military spend-
ing. Average military expenditures to GDP ratio in the region was 6.6%
between 1990 and 2004 with a maximum of 21.8% in Kuwait and minimum
of 1.8% in Tunisia (the overall average was 5.5% in 2003). Comparatively,
the averages were 1.4%, 0.5%, 2.5%, and 1.6% in Argentina, Mexico,
Malaysia, and Hungary for the same period (SIPRI). Such high military
spending creates a substantial potential for peace dividend in the region
(Rodrik, Fischer, and Tuma 1993; Carkoglu, Eder, and Kirisci 1998).
4. The New Game in Town: Neoliberalism

As discussed in the previous sections, the Eurocentric and Orientalist state
ideology that defines itself based on the imagined other in the form of back-
ward, undeveloped, uncivilized and un-intellectual religious masses that
comprise most of the populace, required suppression of populist demands
and any opposition to the top-down nature of economic and political deci-
sion making. As a result, the whole process of structural shifts has been
accomplished under military rule in all countries in the region. This

includes the initial creation and formation of nation states under the image
of European states and institutions, as well as the final demise of the state-
led growth model towards an outward oriented free market model based
on the neoliberal economic design. For the last two decades all economic
transitions to a free market model with a liberalized domestic market and a
decentralized state have been achieved under dictatorships with a total ban
on any popular resistance from labor unions, universities and other interest
groups (e.g., Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco since the early 1980s).
Therefore, the same top-down nature of policy implementation is true
even more so today when almost all the countries in the region follow
policy advices from outside the region to imitate the Western success in
development. The most common signs of this are as follows: the attempts
to reorganize the state structure to reverse economic nationalism, industri-
ally biased state development, and anti-imperialist rhetoric that will open
the door for privatizing state enterprises that were seen as the symbols of
postcolonial independence. Globalization and integration to the modern
world this time means an unquestioning acceptance of the neoliberal eco-
nomic policies. A recent example of unconditional surrender of domestic
economic decision making to Western based institutions and unelected
technocrats, is the appointment of Kemal Dervis, then vice president of
World Bank, as the economy minister in the aftermath of the most serious
economic crisis in the history of the Turkish republic in 2001.
Thus, two endemic aspects of the liberalization and the accompa nying
structural adjustment programs have contributed to the increasing author-
itarianism and un-democratization of the countries in the region; the first
one is the nature of the implementation of these programs as have been
elsewhere: and what we call as “technocratization” of the economic life by
which we refer to the increasing independent autonomous institutional
units that are in charge of economic decision making in the public sphere.
More and more responsibilities of the democratically elected governments
have been transferred to these nontransparent units while increasing the
autonomy of the already existing ones. This development, despite the
textbook rhetoric of eliminating corruption, and populist decision mak-
ing, has increased the already existing epidemic of non-transparency and
unaccountability in the public sphere while increasing insecurity among
people in society. The second development has been the collapse of the
public sector finance at the same time with downsizing of the state activi-
ties in the market. Lack of any form of social safety nets has left the soci-
ety without any means to provide their basic needs and has further led to
increasing social tensions and instability. After all, the issues seemed to be
much too important for the “voters to be left to decide for themselves.”
In terms of the past performance, in contrast to the neoliberal rhetoric
that identifies free markets as a precursor of free societies, the economic
liberalization and deregulation programs have not removed the state from
the market or eliminated prof ligate public subsidies. “Its major impact has
been to concentrate public funds into different, but fewer hands. The state
has turned resources away from agriculture, industry and the underlying
problems of training and employment. It now subsidizes financiers instead
of factories, speculators instead of schools” (Mitchell 1999, p. 31, also see
Yeldan 2006; Demir 2004).
Furthermore, despite the implementation of comprehensive trade and
financial liberalization programs along the neoliberal paradigm includ-
ing tariff reductions, privatization, tax breaks and eased restrictions on
foreign ownership, as well as establishment of free trade zones and other
incentives to encourage Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), capital f lows
to the region remain minimal. The region’s share of FDI fell to 0.7% in
2000 from 2.5% in 1980 (Hirata et al. 2004). On the other hand, income
inequality and poverty rates have increased since the implementation of
the neoliberal reform policies (Ali and Elbadawi 2002; Fergany 1998).
In retrospect, poverty reduction has been one of the top priorities of the
newly independent states and as a result, the region enjoyed the lowest
incidence of poverty and income inequality of any region in the devel-
oping world (Adams and Page 2003). The driving force in this was not
only the need to create a support base for the new regimes among the
population but also the bitter memories of the colonial era. People saw
a connection between the advance of European colonialism and the rise
of underdevelopment and poverty in most developing countries (Davis
2001, p. 14). Even natural disasters such as “drought and famine gave
foreign creditors, allied with indigenous money lenders and compradors,
new opportunities to tighten control over local rural economies through
debt or outright expropriation. Pauperized countryside likewise provided
rich harvests of cheap plantation labor as well as missionary converts and
orphans to be raised in faith” (Davis 2001, p. 91). Therefore, it was no
surprise that the postcolonial states, either because of a pragmatic realiza-
tion of the conditions of regime survival or genuine desire for overcom-
ing underdevelopment, aimed at restoring economic independence while
eliminating poverty. However, the slow growth coupled with neoliberal
reforms, which have scaled back the role of the state, have also reversed
the trend of declining inequality (Ali and Elbadawi 2002; Fergany 1998).
5. Reform from Within
Together with the repressed popular demands from the general popula-
tion, as well as from different ethnic and religious groups, the biggest
obstacle to reform in the region is the conf lict between the elites and
their interpretation of Western modernity and the local populace who
feel that they must be vigilant and protect themselves against outside
forces that historically dominated the region. The resistance is also against
the distorted version of modernity imposed by the ruling elites. In this
respect, the so-called traditionalist masses versus modernist state elites
dichotomy did actually result from the weakening of the communica-

tion channels between the state and the people through either colonial
states or Eurocentric postcolonial ones; rather than from the absence of
civil society or from the regressive nature of Eastern cultures or religion
(Islamoglu-Inan 2004). The reorganization of state structure away from
social and indigenous institutions (on the pretext that they are regres-
sive, archaic and non-Western/non-modern) toward Western-based ones
with increased undemocratic decision making (through courts, military
establishment, state bureaucracy, etc.) undermined the political authority
of the ruling elites and state bureaucracy. Increasing poverty, and con-
centration of wealth in the hands of a few and widespread corruption
further widened this gap. As a result, the last century of the Ottomans
witnessed hundreds of peasant revolts motivated by economic as well as
political estrangement of the large sections of the society. As a result,
society started seeing the current rulers and the forced Westernization as a
rupture from the idealized past and took a defensive position to the newly
implemented institutions and state structure. Thus, as the rulers saw their
salvation in the adoption of Western culture and institutions (that they
regarded as precursors of civilization and development), the society started
appearing as an obstacle to be overcome. Social engineering took the
form of modernist bureaucrat versus traditionalist backward society that
needed to be civilized.
This had significant ramifications throughout the last three centuries in
all segments of society. On the one hand, the elites saw their easterner-ness
as a handicap limiting their achievement of full potential and therefore did
everything to erase any sign of this eastern-ness. On the other hand, the
society became traditionalist seeing the new institutions as the root cause
of all evil, not to mention the forced unification and separation of the
geographical landscape. The continuing Western support for local dicta-
tors and the ongoing military conf licts such as the second Iraq War on the
pretext of bringing democracy also made many suspicious of real interests
of former colonial powers. In retrospect, the elites’ internalized habit of
looking at their own societies through the distorted Eurocentric lenses
perpetuate the old problems in a vicious cycle and limit any chance of
reconciliation with the general public. In the case of Turkey, for example,
despite the presence of overwhelming data suggesting economic condi-
tions as the primary concern of general public, the army continues to pin
point fundamentalist threat as the top priority. This also enables the elites
and the military across the region to consolidate their power in all realms
of economic and political life while eliminating any public opposition.
Given this background, the rise of ultra religious, ethnic as well as
nationalistic parties may partly be explained by: (a) the historical dichot-
omy between the state elites and the society, especially given the latest
developments in the Middle East where the state elites and the military
supported the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan while not intervening
in the human tragedy in Palestine; (b) the growing income inequality;
(c) the continuing presence of autocratic regimes supported by the major

powers under the pretext of securing the f low of oil to the developed
countries markets; (d) the low rates of economic growth and the lack of
new employment opportunities combined with high population growth;
and (e) loose social consensus and forced unification/separation of the
peoples of the region in artificial national borders.
The solutions to the current problems require structural changes involv-
ing the revival of civil society, which has become increasingly vocal in its
criticism of the current regimes. The ability of state elites to retain their
control depends on their ability to negotiate new terms for mutual exis-
tence with these opposition forces. The role of civil society is also crucial in
curtailing rampant corruption which currently puts the region at the bot-
tom of the transparency index. Furthermore, the definition of backward-
ness according to Eurocentric notions of Islam and the Middle East needs
to be changed. This opens the door for alternative explanations for the low
level of development in the region. And finally, Arab states need to increase
cooperation and perhaps develop a regional union similar to the European
Union. This would limit the intra-regional conf licts, increase cooperation
and can prevent the use of national conf licts as a tool for power by local
rulers. This would also transform the citizenship definition from ethnic-
based to citizenship-based which may help solve ethnic conf licts.
6. Conclusion
The development trajectory of the MENA region that we have described

above bears witness to the following Eurocentric traits: (1) an artificial
fabrication of a heterogeneous geographic, cultural, ethnic, and religious
entity into a single homogeneous unit defined as the Other, the non-
West, the Rest, the East, the Near East, the Orient, the Middle East, and
eventually MENA; (2) a systematic denial of the contributions made by
non-Western civilizations to science, culture, and humanity; (3) a system-
atic representation of the inherent backwardness of the region based on a
cultural and religious heritage that prevents the emergence of civil society,
and capitalistic and democratic institutions; (4) a justifiable colonization in
the name of bringing civilization, modernity, democracy, and prosperity
to the region; (5) a state-led modernization strategy by authoritarian post-
colonial governments coupled with the creation of an elite bourgeoisie to
perpetuate a top-down political and economic domination of the indig-
enous population; and (6) a continuous backing of dictatorship regimes by
the West to the detriment of the local population despite all the rhetoric
about democracy and freedom.
This paper argued that Eurocentric thought was not just the product
of the European political Right but rather also a doctrine endorsed by
the Left. It was the perpetuation of the myth that the Islamic culture was
non-conducive to the development of property rights that has eventually
stalled the process of growth, and continues to prevent the contemporary

MENA region from reaching a level of economic development. The paper
argued, however, that the major explanations of underdevelopment spec-
ulated in the economic literature have ignored the important institutional
legacy of colonization which had dismantled the preexisting political,
legal, cultural, and economic institutional fabric of a thriving civilization,
and had replaced it by a centralized and rigid colonial structure, which
was then reproduced by nondemocratic postcolonial governments, and
most recently through aggressive neoliberal policies.
Undoing nearly three centuries of Eurocentric habits of thought is no
easy task, but the paper nonetheless proposed an alternative agenda for
economic reform, namely an inclusive and decentralized political system
in which a vibrant civil society plays a vital role in the economic and
political future of the region. Most importantly, however, undoing the
stronghold of Eurocentrism requires an internal conscious recognition of
what Eurocentrism has done to the region. Thus, recognizing that the
region’s culture and diversity is not a burden that needs to be cleansed is a
crucial step in reviving the region’s sense of self-confidence. And finally,
once it is recognized that the region’s diverse culture is a common asset
rather than a liability, increased economic cooperation and integration
within the region becomes the most viable strategy for economic prosper-
ity, equity, and social justice. It is this ultimate battle against Eurocentric
ideology that will determine the economic success of the MENA region.
Notes
The authors would like to thank Omar S. Dahi, Rajani Kanth, Sohrab Behdad, Amit Basole, Philip
A. O’Hara, Rana Odeh, and Aymen Kaboub for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. The
paper also benefited from great conversations with all conference participants. The usual disclaimer
applies.
1. This section is partly based on Dahi and Demir (2008).
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CH A P T E R SI X
The Phantom of Liberty: Mo(der)nism and

Postcolonial Imaginations in India
R aj e s h B h at tac h a rya a n d A m i t Ba s ol e
1. Introduction
On May 31, 2003, Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, two of the
greatest living European philosophers at that time, issued a joint dec-
laration, in some European newspapers. It was entitled “After the War:
The Rebirth of Europe.” The context was the political protests in vari-
ous European cities against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on the one hand
and the support of various European leaders (Tony Blair, Vaclav Havel,
and Silvio Berlusconi among others) to the U.S. aggression on the other
hand. It called upon “European peoples” to recognize and celebrate “four
distinctively European achievements: the separation of church and state, the
faith in the power of politics and a relatively benign state to ameliorate
the impact of capitalism, the ethos of solidarity in the struggle for social
justice, and the high esteem accorded to international law and the rights
of the individual” (Heffernan 2005, p. 573). This document was mainly
written by Habermas and only endorsed by Derrida. However, in a con-
versation with Giovanna Borradori on the September 11 attacks and global
terrorism, Derrida made the following statement:
I say this without any Eurocentrism . . . But I persist in using this

name “Europe,” even if in quotation marks, because, in the long and
patient deconstruction required for the transformation to come, the
experience Europe inaugurated at the time of the Enlightenment in
the relationship between the political and the theological or, rather,
the religious, though still uneven, unfulfilled, relative, and complex,
will have left in European political space absolutely original marks
with regard to religious doctrine . . . Such marks can be found neither
in the Arab world nor in the Muslim world, nor in the Far East, nor
98 Rajesh Bhattacharya and Amit Basole
even . . . in American democracy, in what in fact governs not the prin-

ciples but the predominant reality of American political culture.1
We used to know Derrida as a postmodernist par excellence, one who

would militate against any “centrism,” who waged a war against hierarchy
of categories and championed the notion of “difference” over “hierarchy.”
It is remarkable to see the same Derrida, when faced with the “clash of civ-
ilizations,” returning to the European Enlightenment for a solution. There
is not even a hint that the other civilization locked in the clash has anything
to offer in terms of a desirable international and social order. Not only
that, the solution explicitly recognizes the values intrinsic to the European
Enlightenment and finds them totally absent in Islamic civilizations.
We choose to begin with this remarkable statement because it forces
us to revisit the issue of Eurocentrism with a new urgency around a new
question—why does Eurocentrism persist? But Europe is not the social forma-
tion wherein we search for an answer to this question. We grant and accept
that all societies are ethnocentric. Rather, we turn to non-Europe, in our
case, postcolonial India, to listen to the murmurs of a deep “fear” that
forecloses any open encounter of the (post)colonized with their own non-
European worldviews. In undertaking this project, we are emboldened
by the example of Kanth (1997, 2005) who has delivered a comprehensive
and uncompromising verdict on the philosophy of modernism and in par-
ticular on its proclivity to convince us of its own emancipatory potential.
We find that we cling to Eurocentric discourses, even when we recognize
them as such, for fear of losing any vision of a “free,” emancipated future.
Progressive thinkers refuse to step out of Eurocentric terrains because they
fear that all social projects of emancipation—poverty eradication, human
rights, fight against tyranny, exploitation and hierarchy, and secularism—
would lose the ally of the oppressed, namely, science and rationality that are
self-proclaimed virtues of European modernist thought. We argue that
this “fear” was significant in shaping India’s development experience and
India’s social experiments after decolonization. Gandhi’s non-Eurocentric
model for postcolonial India was shunted by the modernist Nehru who,
with all his best intentions, thought that Gandhi’s morality would be an
obstacle in devising a social order that liberates people from poverty and
oppression. It continues to shape reactions to present day political con-
troversies. We also argue that contemporary Indian social scientists suffer
from the same “fear,” even when they militate against colonial “power-
knowledge” and even when they are faced with historical opportunities
of paradigmatic shifts. This paper is an interrogation of that fear, a turn-
around and a brazen stare into the fear that stalks us.
2. The Silent Coup and Freedom at Midnight
India’s independence was marked by a peculiar conjuncture of events;

while the transfer of power from Britain to India was in its final phase of
The Phantom of Liberty 99
negotiation, internally there was a silent coup by which the modernists

took control over the nation-making of India. The Indian struggle for
independence was animated to a significant degree by the Gandhian dis-
course on local economic autonomy and decentralized democracy. In the
Gandhian vision, the village was the basis of both a self-sufficient econ-
omy (based on simple tools, artisanal production and frugal consumption)
and political autonomy (the panchayati raj, i.e., local self-governance at the
village level). Thus Gandhi notes:
My idea of Village Swaraj is that it is a complete republic, independent

of its neighbors for its own vital wants, and yet interdependent for
many others in which dependence is necessary. (Gandhi 1962, p. 31)
And again,
Independence must begin at the bottom. Thus every village will be

a republic or Panchayat having full powers. It follow, therefore, that
every village has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its affairs
even to the extent of defending itself against the whole world. (p. 69)
One does not have to subscribe to the Gandhian worldview in order to

appreciate his vision of a moral society that emphasizes frugality over
unbridled lust and acquisitiveness, self-sufficiency over anarchy of mar-
kets in a capitalist profit-making economy, and political autonomy over
techno-bureaucratic control. One only needs to understand the ethics
of Ahimsa (non-violence) at work in his ideal society—in his rejection
of the violent interventions of “industrialism” in ecology, culture and
reproductive processes of social life. It is this morality that drew mil-
lions to every call of Gandhi in India’s struggle for independence. The
negation of the Gandhian vision, in independent India, thus constitutes
a betrayal of the Indian masses, just as capitalism betrayed the masses that
stormed the Bastille. The panchayati raj was negated by a strongly cen-
tralized Indian federalism and a regime of administration by “experts”
and bureaucrats. The local self-sufficient economy was negated by the
rational centralized planning exercise in which resource allocation and
distribution on a national scale was done by fiat. Local self-sufficiency was
systematically destroyed to make way for national markets and national
f lows of resources, labor and money. The nation, and not the village, was
the unit of Soviet-style planning models adopted by independent India
under Nehru. In short, the modernists rejected the Gandhian vision of a
communitarian society with economically self-sufficient “village repub-
lics” and decentralized governance in favor of a secular, liberal democracy
riding on fast economic growth through large-scale industrialization and
urbanization.2
The entire debate on whether modernization in the European style was
a desirable or possible course for India to take was rather quickly moved
from the political to the scientific-bureaucratic terrain of planning led
by the famous Indian Statistical Institute. As Chatterjee (1993, p. 202)

notes, the struggle between the Nehruvian and the Gandhian notion
of economic development or “the debate on the need for industrializa-
tion . . . was politically resolved by successfully constituting planning as a
domain outside ‘the squabbles and conf licts of politics.’ ” This was aided
greatly by the birth of the new field of Development Economics. The
pioneers of this discipline, Arthur Lewis (1954), Ragnar Nurkse (1953)
and Albert Hirschmann (1958) saw modernization (or capitalist accumu-
lation and industrialization) as the only viable solution for achieving rapid
alleviation of poverty. Rostow’s (1960) “Stages of Economic Growth”
stated more openly and crudely what was an unstated assumption behind
most early development planning—that salvation for the poor nations lay
in mimicking the West. The depoliticization of this debate and its dis-
placement onto the techno-bureaucratic terrain of “developmentalism”3
meant nothing less than dissolution of the anti-Eurocentric moments of
anticolonial resistance movements. We see this as the decisive victory
of Eurocentrism wherein the independent nation-state legitimized and
defined itself on a notion of social and economic development singularly
informed by Eurocentric discourses. An appropriate symbol for this is
perhaps the resignation from the pre-independence National Planning
Commission (NPC) of J. C. Kumarappa, the sole Gandhian voice on the
commission, who questioned the authority of the NPC to discuss plans
for industrialization and eventually dropped out after “virtually every
other member had disagreed with his views.” 4
Gandhi differed with modernists such as Nehru not only on the mean-
ing of economic development but also on the nature of the future Indian
state. The debate of the Constituent Assembly of India, on the eve of
the adoption of the Constitution of Independent India brought into high
relief, in the political domain, the central conf lict between the Gandhian
view of the village or community as the fundamental unit of Indian polity
and the liberal, European view of the individual as the fundamental unit.
Ridiculing the complaint leveled by some Gandhians that the draft consti-
tution had no place for the “ancient polity of India,” Dr. B. R. Ambedkar,
the author of the constitution commented on India’s villages:
That they [the Indian villages] have survived through all vicissitudes
maybe a fact. But mere survival has no value . . . I hold that these
village republics have been the ruination of India . . . What is the vil-
lage but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness
and communalism? I am glad that the Draft Constitution has dis-
carded the village and adopted the individual as its unit. (quoted in
Dharampal 1962/2000, pp. 25–26)
We have quoted Ambedkar at such length because as the writer of inde-

pendent India’s constitution his voice carried great weight and further-
more, coming as he did from the lowest caste in society (he was himself a
dalit 5 or an “untouchable”) his view of the village as a den of oppression

carries moral force. Ambedkar was captivated by liberal modernist dis-
course (he was John Dewey’s student at Columbia University) because of
its emancipatory potential. His caste position forced him to challenge the
ethicality of the Gandhian village community. Gandhi’s vision of inde-
pendent India’s polity emphasized decentralization of power to the vil-
lage panchayats.6 This, Ambedkar feared, would only strengthen the local
structures of hierarchy within which dalits had suffered for generations.
This contradiction, symbolized by the many (and at times bitter) interac-
tions between Gandhi and Ambedkar, is still fundamentally unresolved
and the allegation of strengthening local hierarchies is frequently leveled
on communitarian thinkers today.
Thus in the modernist view, as secular, liberal, and feminist critics
remind us, the community is the domain of un-freedom, a site of caste
and gender oppression, class exploitation, and poverty. The individuated
modern (urban) civil society is, if not the domain of freedom, at least a
step in the right direction. At the other extreme, for Gandhi, the com-
munity is the domain of freedom while the modern “free” individual is
a slave to the capitalist and the market. The Gandhians have pointed out
that the laborer in capitalism is degraded and alienated; his creativity as an
artisan is destroyed and he becomes an appendage to the machine; bour-
geois civil society is the space where private property and accumulation
are glorified and rewarded, as a result of which capitalism leads to massive
ecological destruction, poverty and inequality worldwide.
It is thus a confrontation between two sets of truth-claims. A priori
there is no reason why the choice between the individual and the com-
munity is a predestined one. But the teleology of Eurocentric history,
wherein Europe’s transition from community to civil society (through
the agency of capital), is simultaneously universalized as well as cast as
progress (“as it happened in Europe, so it will elsewhere, and a good thing
too!”) makes the choice predestined. While recognizing that the commu-
nity harbors many kinds of exploitative social relationships, we pose the
following question: if it took centuries to reform capitalism—to end slav-
ery and colonial empires, to sensitize the capitalist society to race, gender
and class—the process is still ongoing— then why could a communitarian
society modeled on Gandhi’s village republics not be similarly reformed,
democratized and sensitized to prevailing hierarchies?
3. The Ally of the Oppressed
The nation-making of India was thus firmly anchored in modernist

Eurocentric discourses. The social engineering designed to end poverty,
achieve growth and end social oppression of various types established and
reconfirmed European modernity as the “ally of the oppressed.” The
Gandhian opposition in time petered out. This led to an imperialism of
categories and a loss of language—other languages, other’s languages.

Other worldviews were slowly erased in education, health, law, admin-
istration, and policy space. Over time other worldviews have become
inaccessible to us, shaped as we are, in and through institutions of moder-
nity. We observe that emancipatory or progressive ideas in order to be
recognized as being such must speak in the language of liberal or radi-
cal European social theory. Non-European emancipatory discourses can
only fall short of “true emancipation” at best, or are a threat to the latter
at worst. The Gandhian political project may be unique—and may be
recognized and admired as such—in promoting a certain morality val-
ued by the majority of human beings (e.g., ahimsa or nonviolence). Yet
his strident criticism of Western civilization, including modern science,
medicine and education disqualify Gandhi as a relevant political thinker
in the modern political culture. We would rather tolerate the violence
of capitalism which, the telos of modernity tells us, will produce its own
“grave-diggers,” the working class, rather than put our faith in supposedly
timeless, unchanging Gandhian communities.7
Yet, the violence of modernity (particularly economic development)
and predatory capital has led to numerous and multiplying acts of resis-
tance to this Eurocentric project. Communities have thrown themselves
against capital to resist dispossession and environmental degradation. In
recent decades, modernity has come under criticism in both its home-
land and in post-colonies. Concerns with livelihood and environment
have made us go back to Gandhi such that “inside every thinking Indian,
there is a Gandhian and a Marxist struggling for supremacy” (Guha 2001,
p. 6). The resurgence of community against capital all over the world has
reinstated the debate between Gandhi and Nehru in contemporary times.
In the economic sphere, large-scale exclusion of the laboring population
from the capitalist miracle has shattered the image of modernity as the ally
of the oppressed. The continued sabotage of sovereignty of third world
countries not only by richer nation-states, but also by supra-national bod-
ies such as World Bank, IMF, WTO, and so on have cast doubt over the
liberal intentions of modernity.
But as in 1947, the fear of non-Eurocentric discourses stops us from
articulating a counter-hegemonic position against capital grounded in
the community. Contemporary debates clearly betray this fear. Consider
the arguments of Sarkar (2000) and Nanda (2002, 2003) that a cri-
tique of Eurocentrism or of “Enlightenment rationalism” unwittingly
strengthens the forces of religious fundamentalism. In the context of
the rise of the Hindu fundamentalist Right in Indian politics, many
are apprehensive about a possible Fascist movement in India. Parallels
have been identified between the rise of Fascism in Europe and the
rise of Hindutva8 in India. To challenge Enlightenment philosophy and
to claim a non-Eurocentric history for Indian subalterns in the given
context is perceived to be dangerous because it might lead to a kind of
indigenism uncomfortably close to the chauvinistic claims of the Hindu
Right.9 Critiques of Enlightenment rationality are seen to undermine

secularism in the fight against religious fundamentalism, since secular-
ism is understood to be a unique Enlightenment legacy. Local culture
and history is deemed irrelevant in addressing a contemporary social
and political problem. Thus the fact that South Asia is home to numer-
ous indigenous traditions (such as sufism and bhakti) some of which had
historically diffused the tensions created by organized Hinduism and
Islam, and in the process created a syncretic, pluralistic faith, counts
for very little in this formulation.10 In his reply to Sarkar, Chakrabarty
(2000) laments this loss:
It is true that the experience of fascism has left a certain trauma

in leftist intellectuals in the West. They have ceded to the fascists
all moments of poetry, mysticism and the religious and the mys-
terious in the construction of political sentiments and communi-
ties (however transient and inoperative). Romanticism now only
reminds them of Nazis. Ours are cultures rich in these elements.
Gandhi, Tagore and a host of other nationalists have shown by their
examples what tremendous creative energies these elements could
unleash in us when mobilized for the purpose of fabricating new
forms of life. It would be sad if we ceded this entire heritage to the
Hindu extremists out of a fear that our romanticism must be the
same as whatever the Europeans produced under that name in their
histories, and that our present blunders, whatever these are, must
be the same as theirs in the past. What, indeed, could be a greater
instance of submission to a Eurocentric imagination than that fear?
(Chakrabarty 2000, p. 277)
Noting that recent scholarship in the Subaltern Studies school has

tended to challenge “Enlightenment rationalism” and Eurocentrism, and
has valorized “the community,” Sarkar (2000) comments on the “shared
discursive space” between this position and the rhetoric of the Hindu
Right:
. . . the Hindu right often attacks the secular, liberal nation-state as a

Western importation, precisely the burden of much late-Subaltern
argument: suggesting affinities that are hopefully, still distasteful, yet
difficult to repudiate within the parameters of an anti-Enlightenment
discourse grounded in notions of community. (p. 313)
But does a critique of Eurocentrism automatically bring us closer to

the forces of reaction and fundamentalism? We think not. For exam-
ple, Gandhian philosophy can certainly be described as “an anti-
Enlightenment discourse grounded in notions of community,” and
although in Sarkar’s estimation it therefore automatically shares discur-
sive space with Hindu fundamentalism, Gandhi himself was as much an
object of criticism of the Hindu right (and indeed was assassinated by a

member of the Hindu right) as of the Left. Further Gandhi’s philoso-
phy of the community as a site of resistance against modernity drew as
much upon what Rudolph and Rudolph (2006) have called the “Other
West” (Ruskin, Carlyle, Carpenter, Thoreau, and Tolstoy) as it did
upon Gandhi’s own reading of Indian history and Indian texts. Thus
Gandhi found allies in the West sympathetic to his own project, as it
were on his own terms.
Sarkar (2000) is understandably skeptical of a critique of a homogenized
notion of “Western colonial power/knowledge” and “Enlightenment
rationalism” and of the uncritical valorization of “the community” that
leads to a blindness to class, caste and gender, all of which form persistent
and important structures of oppression within communities. He articu-
lates his fear thus:
Culturalism rejects the importance of class and class struggle, while

notions of civil, democratic, feminist and liberal individual rights—
many of them indubitably derived from certain Enlightenment
traditions—get delegitimized by a repudiation of the Enlightenment
as a bloc. (p. 318)
These are exactly the concerns of Nanda (2003) who advances a similar
though more general criticism of “postmodern intellectuals “who uphold
left-wing political ideals, but who have lost all confidence in the classic left-
wing cultural ideals of scientific reason, modernity and the Enlightenment”
(p. 1, emphasis in the original). Here we see clearly the fear that rejection
of Eurocentric social categories or worldview is counter-productive to
the emancipation of the oppressed; in part because alien categories can
break up traditional hierarchies (such as those based on caste or gender)
in a way that is politically explosive. Point taken. But in her eagerness to
demonstrate the links between Hindu fascism, neo-Gandhism, and post-
colonial/postmodern scholarship Nanda overlooks their many important
distinctions. The unspoken assumption is always that truly empancipa-
tory or liberatory potential is carried only by modern science, and only a
movement toward liberal, secular democracy of the Western kind can be
considered progress. As Nanda (2003) forcefully asserts, “Skeptical reason,
institutionalized by modern science, is the standpoint epistemology of the
oppressed” (p. xiii, emphasis in the original). And further, “it is time it
[modern science] was recognized, once again, as an ally of social justice,
peace and advancement all around the world” (p. 267). Nanda points to
the numerous instances of empowerment of oppressed groups utilizing
Western notions of rights, democracy and equality before the law.11 Thus
her strongest weapon is her assertion that this liberal, scientific utopia is
desired by the very subaltern and oppressed peoples, in whose name calls
for decolonization and respect for all knowledge traditions are put forth by
“fashionable” postmodern and postcolonial intellectuals. In other words,
the battle against Eurocentrism is basically an elite concern; the masses simply want
more Euro-modernity.
Although we agree with Nanda (2002, p. 217) that the “underdog”
need not always “reject [modern science] as alien and undesirable” we
also observe that confrontations and contestations between “Science”
and “Tradition” are allowed within the modernist frame, only so long
as the ultimate victory of Science is assured. We do not deny that left-
liberal political categories are useful in constructing resistance to oppres-
sion in many forms. Specifically, within the European institutions that
we carry as a colonial legacy these categories offer certain empowering
possibilities. These European categories will clash with other, local non-
European categories in the complex space of postcolonial experience.
Categories can and should clash but outcomes should not be predestined
if one wishes to eschew epistemic violence. Within the Eurocentric
social discourses, however, only one outcome is sensible or desirable,
even permitted—the subaltern’s acceptance of European modernity. The
rejection of European modernity by the subaltern is deemed unaccept-
able and the acceptance of non-Eurocentric rationality by the modernist
is not even a possibility worthy of consideration. This epistemic position
is imperial/colonial.
Rather than demand “epistemic purity” (whether European or indig-
enous) from political emancipation projects, we emphasize the need to
break the hegemonic hold of Eurocentric liberal and radical thought
as the sole credible mode of thought available to us. We are led to this
position partly by the observation that the response of the “underdog”
is unlikely to be reducible to such simple binaries as acceptance or rejec-
tion of “Western values” or “the legacy of the Enlightenment.” We have
already seen above that the Gandhian communitarian model was as much
“Eastern” as it was inf luenced by the “Other West.” But the point can also
be illustrated by Nanda’s own example of B. R. Ambedkar and his use of
Eurocentric rationality in fighting caste. Nanda (2002, p. 217) notes that
“Ambedkar and his dalit followers challenged the brahminical knowledge
about the natural world not in the name of their own dalit caste myths
and origin stories, but in the name of scientifically obtained objective
truth.” Yet Ambedkar’s most prominent act of rebellion, the celebration
of which still today draws millions of dalits from all over India, is his con-
version to Buddhism. Thus Ambedkar found his exit from the oppression
of tradition, not only in the liberalism of John Dewey but equally so in
a 2,500-year-old religious, anti-caste movement. Nanda understands this
act as Ambedkar’s conversion to “reason and scientific method” based
on his being able to “hybridize” John Dewey’s ideas on scientific temper
with the Buddha’s teachings. But she admits that indigenous anti-caste
movements and numerous heterodox anti-Vedic schools also played a part
in inf luencing Ambedkar. The reliance on Buddhist and other non-brah-
min philosophies by dalit leaders is for Nanda (2003, p. 192), “an attempt
to find a cultural homologue for materialist and skeptical traditions in
India’s minority, non-Vedic traditions.” Why can the same acts not be
read as drawing upon European ideas to the extent that they strengthen
indigenous sources of resistance? Or is this merely a matter of semantics?
We think not.
Nanda (2003) recognizes the postcolonial condition of hybridity, typi-
fied here by Gandhi and Ambedkar, but feels that postmodernist theo-
rists have wrongly adopted a “celebratory stance toward hybridity as the
politics of emancipation” (p. 178). An uncritical valorization of hybridity
is wrong in her opinion because it sees no problem with say a farmer’s
adoption of high-yield seeds and chemical fertilizer and the same farmer’s
deeply hierarchical and patriarchal worldview. Thus she is led to her con-
clusion: “It is the incompleteness of the project of Enlightenment, rather than an
excess of it, that explains India’s turn to reactionary modernism” (p. 43, emphasis
in the original). How can we then explain the fact that France, which—
more than any other European nation—took secularism to its height
by legally separating the state from religion in public life, at the same
time, denied this separation in Algeria and instead relied on the most
conservative religious discourses in colonial administration? How can we
make sense of John Stuart Mill when he ruled out the colonized from the
land of liberty—claiming they were as yet not fit for liberty?12 Was it not
hybridization on part of the enlightened Europe—that is, a reactionary
modernism of Europe, a modernism that was always and already reaction-
ary? Was Enlightenment incomplete in Europe too, then?13
An important caveat is in order here. Our project is not a mere “celebra-
tion of hybridity,” that Nanda scornfully attributes to the postmodernist
movement. We are not content ascribing the label “alternative modernity”
to the phenomenon of high-tech agriculture mixed in with caste and gen-
der oppression. We do not argue for a challenge to Eurocentrism merely
to assert postcolonial identity, difference or agency. We rather ask that
political emancipation projects that do not speak in the language of liberal
and radical European thought ought not to be automatically suspect for that
reason alone. Ultimately, as regards challenging Eurocentrism, Nanda’s
anxiety stems from the belief that “treating rationality and knowledge
as completely constructed by culture puts culture beyond a reasoned cri-
tique” (Nanda 2002, p. 216). Thus in showing Eurocentric rationalism to
be parochialism masquerading as universalism14 Nanda is afraid that we
might strengthen the notion of a “Hindu rationality” which can conve-
niently justify all manner of oppression. But as the existence of numerous
anti-caste and religious tolerance movements which not only contributed
to religious tolerance between different religious communities, but also
advanced other emancipatory demands, such as the demand for more
equality between women and men (in case of bhakti) shows, treating ratio-
nality as a cultural phenomenon does not put culture beyond critique. To
assert this is to overlook thousands of years of liberation struggles against
all manner of oppression, that predate nineteenth-century European lib-
eral and radical thought.
4. The Pashchimikrit and the Bahishkrit
Paradoxically, we cling to Eurocentric discourses even at a time when

local politics and local communities have risen to unprecedented promi-
nence in the Indian political space shattering previous strangleholds of
both Westernized and indigenous elites. We argue that this phenom-
enon (which we describe in more detail shortly) opens up a historical
opportunity for the development of genuine non-traditional, non-modern
alternatives.
Development in India began with big-bang industrialization in the
first two decades after independence. This regime of economic plan-
ning, inspired by Soviet five-year planning models, was buttressed by the
absolute dominance of Indian politics by the Indian National Congress.
Khilnani (1999) notes that the Congress Party15 was able to rule India
unchallenged for the first two decades after independence because of an
“unbeatable” coalition that it forged between “commercial and industrial
capitalists, rural landlords, and the bureaucratic and managerial elite (in
the later decades, newly enriched farmers and unionized public-sector
workers . . .)” (p. 79). These were social groups which had either been
brought into existence with colonial rule or had greatly benefited from
it. They constituted the pashchimikrit samaj (Westernized society) whose
vision of a future society was largely based upon the European experience
and whose liberal and radical sections (such as the intelligentsia) drank
deeply from the internal critiques of Europe’s modernity. The pashchi-
mikrit samaj was aff licted with the “imperialism of categories” and saw
Indian society largely through Western eyes (Sahasrabudhey 1991).
This development model came to be challenged by late 1960s, when
economists were dismayed to find that two decades of rapid growth had
not ended material deprivations of India’s majority. Dandekar and Rath’s
(1971) pioneering study on poverty showed that economic development
in India in the 1960s did not benefit the poorest 40% of the population at
all, despite the high rate of growth of national income in the first three
five-year plans. As disillusionment with the planning model set in, start-
ing with the 1980s and picking up pace since the reforms of 1991, the
Indian economy was restructured along neoliberal lines and the transition
from “a closed to an open” economy is still ongoing.16 Despite a decade
or more of reforms, however, a general picture of poverty and exclusion
prevails. The poverty rate still stands at 30% (albeit reduced from 50% in
the 1970s) and the Gini coefficient measuring inequality has actually risen
from 28–29 to 35–36 (rural and urban respectively).17 Even today, only
about 27 million people—7 to 8 per cent of the workforce—are employed
in the organized sector, that is, public sector and organized private sec-
tor. The rest of the non-agricultural workforce earns its livelihood in the
urban and rural informal sectors with low incomes and precarious condi-
tions of employment unprotected by laws and social security provisions.
What is obvious is that even when industry increased its share of national
income, it did not support a correspondingly larger population. Rather,

agriculture, with a decreasing share of national income, has to harbor a
more than proportionate burden of population. At the same time that it
provides secure, protected jobs at a decent salary to only 7%–8% of popu-
lation, the development of the modern economy led to the displacement
of 25–50 millions since 1951 (Murickan et al. 2003). Between 1950 and
1991, only 25% of displaced people have been rehabilitated, leaving aside
questions regarding what constitutes adequate compensation. During the
same time, 30%–50% of common property resources have been depleted.
Jodha (1991) claims that traditional common property resource manage-
ment had collapsed in 90% of the villages he surveyed. In short, expand-
ing capitalism breaks down traditional economies, yet cannot provide
livelihoods for the people thus displaced from their traditional sources of
subsistence.
The vast majority of small and marginal peasants, tribals, rural land-
less laborers, as well as the urban unorganized workers (street vendors,
casual workers, sweat shop workers, etc.) are victims of dispossession
resulting from capitalist accumulation. Dispossessed, disentitled or oth-
erwise diminished, these groups found themselves excluded from mean-
ingful participation in society—both due to the lack of adequate income
opportunities in the high-productivity modern economy and the absence
of a social welfare system for such a large section of the population.
This history of dispossession and economic exclusion traces a continu-
ity across both regimes and creates—as its own historical product—the
bahishkrit samaj (ostracized society). The bahishkrit samaj is neither rural nor
traditional—that is, it is not a preindustrial, precapitalist residue. Rather
it is the victim of dispossession that accompanies capitalist growth and as
such is to be found everywhere (in the countryside and in the cities, in
agriculture, in industry and in services) as the historical product of mod-
ern capitalist development. The “jobless” growth of the modern economy
sucks up natural resources at an accelerated rate, yet modern technology is
becoming more and more labor-saving. As a result the modern economy
requires an ever more share of natural resources and an ever-shrinking
part of the global workforce, which means that a burgeoning “surplus”
labor force must subsist on a dwindling resource base. Modern capitalism
creates its own huge wasteland—a seething mass of “excluded” poor with
inadequate resources to sustain life. This great social divide is eloquently
captured in the pashchimikrit—bahishkrit distinction—which we owe to
Sahasrabudhey (1991)—where the binary opposite of “Westernized” is
not “Indian,” but rather, “ostracized or excluded.”
The Eurocentric economic model leads not only to a minority of “ben-
eficiaries of development” and a huge mass of “refugees of development”—
the pashchimikrit and bahishkrit in the economic sense—but also different
modes of organization of life in the pashchimikrit and bahishkrit samaj. While
the pashchimikrit samaj valorizes private acquisition and accumulation,
bahishkrit samaj sustains itself on a “culture of sharing.” Yet the latter is
denigrated as a culture of poverty, rather than a culture of convivial non-

violent survival. The former is still hegemonic as a culture of progress, in
the sense that it is a way out of poverty, even though it has threatened the
survival and livelihood of majority of mankind. Thus the pashchimikrit-
bahishkrit distinction is as much cultural, even epistemic, as economic.
Kumarappa’s resignation from the National Planning Commission was
the exit of the first bahishkrit from the nation-making of India, even before
India became independent.
Paradoxically, despite the economic exclusion and cultural domination,
the bahishkrit samaj is more and more visible in the political sphere. By
any criterion, Indian democracy has f lourished and almost every major
social, cultural, and economic issue in India is represented in mainstream
Indian political space via political parties. Caste, class, religion, language,
ethnicity, autonomy—all these issues are prominently present in the con-
temporary Indian polity. In this sense, there has been an Indianization of
Indian politics over time, such that issues more specific to the “local” are
politically dominant compared to the universal European categories like
secularization, modernization, development and socialist planning which
ruled for the first 25 years of Indian independence. More and more people
are voting and participating in the broader electoral processes in India in
the recent times. Moreover, more and more people from the oppressed
and marginalized social groups are voting. Rural participation exceeds
urban, hence by extension, poorer sections of Indian society are voting in
greater numbers than the richer.18 At the national level, participation of
women, dalits, and adivasis (indigenous peoples) has increased. Palshikar
and Kumar (2004) conclude that “if we are comparing the present situation
with the one that obtained till the 1970s, then it may be accurate to argue
that social deprivation is no more an obstacle for electoral participation”
(p. 5414). In a similar vein Nayyar (1998) discusses the radical disjuncture
between economics and politics in India today pulling the population in
opposite directions. In the sphere of economic life, more and more people
are excluded from the benefits of economic growth under the neoliberal
regime, yet the same marginalized groups are included in the political
processes of electoral democracy. “The rich dominate the economy now
more than earlier, but the poor have a strong voice in the polity more than
earlier. And there is a mismatch” (Suri 2004, p. 5405).
Even, outside the electoral sphere, the bahishkrit is visibly engaged in a
direct confrontation with the state as well as private capital. Both violent
and non-violent local resistances to development projects have garnered
more and more attention. Starting with the Chipko and Narmada struggles
in the 1970s and 1980s to the myriad struggles in Kalinganagar (against
POSCO-India), Plachimada (against Coca Cola), Singur and Nandigram
(against the Government of West Bengal), and so on, all have brought
home the point that development is a politically negotiated process.19 No
longer can a later-day Nehru with sanguinity and confidence, ask his citi-
zens to suffer “in the interest of the country.”20 Radical challenges in the
form of people’s movements have emerged against the prevailing models

of development. These non-party political movements have encompassed
a gamut of social issues ranging from class and caste based struggles to
local control of local resources and have involved sections of Indian soci-
ety that have traditionally been excluded in formal politics (tribals, dalits,
women, small peasants, informal sector workers).
And yet, despite the manifold multiplication of such indigenous resis-
tances, Indian social scientists and philosophers have not seized on the
opportunity to construct non-Eurocentric categories and discourses. It is
to this problem that we now turn.
5. Order of Discourse and the Rarefaction of Knowledge
In a recent article, Basu (2007) has argued in the context of the controversy
over the acquisition of farmlands for industrialization in India that dis-
placement of farming populations for industrial project is an act of “primi-
tive accumulation” by global capital. He believes that the global calculus
of capital can only be countered by the concrete and the locally embed-
ded values of communities. By communities, we mean groups of people
who populate a distinct “life-space” in the society and even as members
of the broader society, have another identity which is a product of sharing
and surviving on a certain resource base and community infrastructure
and network. These communities can be traditional (forest dwellers and
tribal groups) as well as contemporary (the informal waste recyclers, street
hawkers and slum communities in metropolises). The ethics of the local—
as we understand it in the Gandhian tradition—is the ethics of survival,
conservation and reproduction which provides an alternative to global
capital’s logic of expansion, transformation and accumulation. Yet, can we
expect this call for a return to the local to snowball into a major epistemic
overhaul—the inauguration of a new episteme—non-modernist, yet pro-
gressive and emancipatory and drawing on different sources of wisdom
and life-experience? Can we argue for “situated knowledge” which “takes
into account local knowledge and practice—how denizens perceive and
interpret their world,” and recognizes that “[t]heory constructed from
below produces different futures than theory constructed from above”?
(Rudolph 2005, p. 17). We argue that retrieving the non-European local
discourses, traditions and world views might help us pluralize the space
of knowledge.
Modeled as it is on Euro-modernist institutions, the Indian educa-
tional system either relegates alternative non-modernist philosophies to
the margins or restricts them to special areas of study. Further, the inter-
national Academy, with its system of rewards and punishments makes
non-European discourses unavailable or un-remunerative. We argue that
the institutional infrastructure of Eurocentric knowledge production may
make certain non-European critical traditions simply inaccessible to the
social scientists working on the postcolonial experience. Chakrabarty

(2000) recognizes this loss of language:
Faced with the task of analyzing development or social practices in

modern India, few if any Indian social scientists or social scientists
of India would argue seriously with, say the thirteenth century logi-
cian Gangesa or with the grammarian and linguistic philosopher
Bartrihari . . . Sad though it is, one result of European colonial rule
in South Asia is that the intellectual traditions once unbroken and
alive in Sanskrit, Persian or Arabic are now only matters of historical
research. . . . And yet past European thinkers and their categories are
never quite dead for us in the same way. (pp. 5–6)
Interestingly, Chakrabarty also talks about the constructed nature of the

“European intellectual tradition,” pointing out how work by Martin
Bernal (1991) and Samir Amin (1989) has problematized the very idea
of an unbroken tradition from classical Greece to Renaissance or early-
Enlightenment Europe. The “appropriation” of classical Greek scholars
was, if anything, the defining feature of the intellectual revival of Europe
in the fourteenth–seventeenth centuries. Aristotle was 1,500 years and
three civilizations (Greek, Roman, and Islamic) removed from Bacon.
Could it seriously be argued that scholars such as Bhartrihari, Ibn Khaldun,
or Abul Fazl, are hopelessly removed from our circumstance and that we
are unable to engage with them, if the very European Enlightenment that
we cling to was built upon a similar intellectual adventure?
We have argued that in part it is the fear of being labeled “reactionary,”
“nativist,” “cultural nationalist,” or even “fascist” that makes us hesitant.
Within the confines of European radical and critical thought we are safe
from such allegations. But if we step outside, we are deserting the only
reliable ally we have in the battle against exploitation, poverty and oppres-
sion. But that is not the only reason. Even protests against Eurocentrism,
in so far as they are lodged in the global academic institutions—which are
shaped and dominated by European theoretical traditions—are subjected
to a “discursive price of admission.”21 Even the resistance to Eurocentrism
has to be based on Western texts in order to be intelligible to the reviewers
and referees of international publishing circuits. Can we hope to publish in
an international journal an article that refers primarily to vernacular texts,
the majority of which might never be translated into major European lan-
guages? Even if it gets published, the author will surely be criticized for citing
obscure texts. Yet there is a sustained articulation of challenges to European
modernity in many vernacular texts—in bad print and cheap jackets—
published by small local Third World publishing houses. The “unavailabil-
ity” of alternative non-European discourses ref lects a materiality inherent
in the discursive practices and institutions of global academia—a materiality
that has the effect of screening out a large set of articulations, utterances,
statements and cries as “non-serious,” “non-scientific” knowledge.
Of course the status of Science in modernist thought has been sub-

jected to trenchant critique by philosophers in the European tradition
(e.g., Husserl, Heidegger, and Foucault) as well as outside it (e.g., Ashis
Nandy and Rajani Kanth).22 One cannot overemphasize the point that
hegemony of official Science undermines the democracy of knowledge
itself. In this spirit, our project is to draw attention to the fact that knowl-
edge, rather than being scarce and held by experts, is much more abundant
in society and much more democratically held than widely believed. It
is produced at many social sites, the academia and the laboratory being
just some of them. And the increasing prominence of the bahishkrit samaj
should provoke an examination of its knowledge and should be converted
into a sustained critique of Eurocentrism as well as the development of
non-Eurocentric emancipatory visions for society.
Thus we emphasize that ours is not a call to replace the hegemony
of Eurocentrism and “modern” Science with the authority of “tra-
dition” or the holy cow of the “community.” Instead we argue for
epistemic humility and plurality of knowledge. The political assertion
of the bahishkrit samaj has unveiled reserves of alternative knowledges,
epistemes—which cannot be strictly classified according to the tra-
ditional/modern binary, but ref lect a hybridization motivated by the
struggle for livelihood in the face of predatory capital.23 Even more
interestingly, some of these movements have directly confronted both,
the Eurocentric nature of the planning and the neoliberal development
models, as well as traditional knowledge hierarchies. In a recent article
Sangvai (2007) notes that the challenge for the new social movements
“has been to counter the new paradigm of modernism and development
by proposing alternatives that are not ‘archaic or traditional’ but rather
rely greatly on local cultures, initiatives and knowledge as key driving
forces.” And again,
The conventional development model is established on the notion

that there exists only one linear knowledge base. The new con-
sciousness questions its supremacy and validity itself . . . The apprecia-
tion of plurality of knowledge, of every community and group, based
on certain criterion, is replacing the hegemonic concept of “knowl-
edge”. Limiting the vast spectrum of knowledge due to the colonial
or brahminical approach, we are deprived of a rich and varied world
of knowledge, expressions and production processes that common
people developed. (p. 115)
6. Protean Power and Instrumentalization of the “Local”
Power shifts continually to accommodate resistance and old language

of resistance may become new means of exercising power. So observe
that since the 1990s and into this century proponents of the neoliberal
agenda such as the World Bank and USAID have been prominently
pushing the idea of participatory development and of the importance
of indigenous knowledge.24 The “new development economics” would
seem to have learned its lessons from failure of technocratic, state-based
approaches. It speaks in a language similar to that employed by radical
anti-Eurocentric critics. Indigenous or traditional knowledge of the sort
that Sangvai (2007) alludes to has already found its own comfortable
niche in development discourse. Mainstream thinking on sustainable
development has acknowledged that “poor-people’s knowledge” (to use
the title of a 2004 World Bank publication), should play an essential
role in their own development. The rhetoric of participatory, sustain-
able development based on indigenous knowledge, has proved entirely
consistent with neoliberal macroeconomic policy with its emphasis on
fiscal austerity, roll-back of the State’s welfare activity and a devolution
of responsibility (but often not resources) to local government and small
communities. The Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Amendments to
Indian Constitution are landmark events toward promoting the panchayati
system of governance.25 Is this turn toward local self-government under
neoliberalism a genuine move to decentralize power or yet another way
to trim the powers of the state against capital and the giving up of
all pretence of the state’s promise of radical economic uplift; a failure
masked as radical democratization?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, at the same time that these concepts have
become widely prevalent, they have been purged of any radical edge
they may possess. Thus indigenous knowledge is often conceptualized
not as a non-Eurocentric vision of a future society free of oppression
and injustice but rather as a reservoir of solutions or “box of tools” to
be drawn upon as needed for the realization of the original modernist
goals of development and transformation of third world societies. Local
knowledge can be a force for radical transformation and for mounting
a locally grounded challenge to the new imperialism, as Basu, Sangvai,
and many others have argued. But for this, the apolitical and techno-
centric category of indigenous knowledge needs to be replaced by a
more politically useful category. Knowledge is not merely a collection of
technical fixes or production methods; knowledge belongs to a world-
view that is itself the product of a particular social organization, a par-
ticular type of society, a culture, a history, an ecology. Thus for example,
when we valorize “local knowledge” or “traditional knowledge” only as
far as it relates to say the sustainable use of forest produce, and ignore the
knowledge produced by the same community about social organization,
about role of markets, or norms of consumption, commodification of
resources etc., we slide from a sociopolitical to a technical understand-
ing of knowledge. A fuller consideration of the merits and demerits of
indigenous knowledge discourse in challenging Eurocentrism is outside
the scope of this article. We simply hope to have provided some initial
comments in this direction.
7. Conclusion
In this paper we have put forward a few arguments to explain the endur-
ing hegemony of Eurocentric political and social thought. An important
achievement of Eurocentric social theory has been to monopolize the posi-
tion of ally of the oppressed, that is, the uniquely progressive role in the
struggle against exploitation, injustice and poverty. As a result critical think-
ers cling to modernist thought, even when they recognize its Eurocentric
premises, for fear of losing any vision of a free, emancipated future. We
argue that this fear was significant in shaping India’s development experi-
ence and India’s social experiments after decolonization. The imperialism
of liberal-radical European ideas has erased, deformed, denigrated or writ-
ten off other emancipatory projects embedded in heterogeneous local dis-
courses and philosophies. In independent India, the Gandhian vision of a
moral economy and a democratic society suffered similar fate in its struggle
against European models of economic development. While the modern-
ist project of development has increasingly come under attack due to its
failure in delivering a decent standard of life for people in the developing
world, the loss of language resulting from the erasure of local discourses
has forced/persuaded postcolonial scholars to argue that alternative non-
Eurocentric discourses may be irretrievably lost to us. Instead we argue
that it is the institutional infrastructure of the Academy that reproduces
and sustains the domination of Western texts resulting in what has been
called the imperialism of categories. We argue, moreover, that academic
elitism leads scholars to overlook the essential plurality of knowledge—the
fact that knowledge is produced at many social sites, the Academy being
just one among many other such sites. People, in, and through living, pro-
duce alternatives, counter-discourses. In order to chisel out categories of
thought that do justice to our lived experience, that is, in order to reclaim
a plurality of languages for ourselves, we need to use this “social” archive
of alternatives to European modernity. That is why a return to the “local”
is so important for fabricating any alternative to Eurocentric thoughts and
to counter the elitism of social thought. We end with a cautionary note
that even local discourses are being appropriated and their radical potential
subverted by the high institutions of modernity in the name of decentral-
ization, globalization and inclusion.
Before we conclude, a confession is in order. Throughout this paper, we
have engaged in the art and politics of representation—in talking about
“Europe” and “non-Europe,” as if there is only one of each type, as if one
can talk about a “Europe” and a “non-Europe,” as if the terms themselves
do not carry the marks of discursive violence. We acknowledge that in
doing so we become complicit in the violence. In defense, we have this to
say. We are contesting the hegemonic representation of modern Europe as
the apostle of liberty. In this we are building solidarity with those tradi-
tions within Europe which have contested this representation and continue
to do so. There is nothing uniquely non-European about communitarian
ethics or a pluralistic worldview that recognizes the values of the “local.”

We have cited several Western texts in presenting and substantiating our
anti-Eurocentric views—texts which speak for “Europe’s own other”—
though we have not clearly traced our intellectual debt to those traditions.
This is partly due to the constraints of space and partly because we wanted
to emphasize the urgent need to revisit the traditions of local discourses
within postcolonial India. That is why we have suppressed the irrepress-
ible plurality that inheres in the figure of Europe, not to deny it, but to
take the gaze away from Europe—a plural Europe, notwithstanding—
toward a plural India. In doing so, we believe, we also contribute toward
counter-hegemonic struggles within Europe, against a totalizing figure of
“Europe.” In assailing this figure of Europe, we are slaying the Phantom
of Liberty that stalks the pluralist multitude in Europe as elsewhere.
We also have to make a second confession. We have militated against
Eurocentrism, yet we have not clearly stated whether the community or
the local is free from ethnocentrism of its own kind. We admit that human
beings will perhaps always be ethnocentric. In arguing for the “local” and
the “plural”—that is, a radical heterogeneity of worldviews and discourses—
we hope to weaken the power and violence of ethnocentrisms. After all
ethnocentrism in its benign form is simply the limit of our knowledge—
something that we are unable to transcend, a view of life that is necessarily
bounded. When we come across other cultures, we ought to approach them
with wonder and a poetic craving for the unknown. We become judgmen-
tal only when we extrapolate ourselves beyond our natural limits, beyond
the ethical boundaries of our collective and individual identities.
Finally, when we envision a new social order based on a multitude of
communities, we do not posit a new utopia, we do not claim that the
community is the domain of Freedom. In fact, we share with the critics
of community many of their apprehensions. Rather we posit a different
terrain of emancipatory struggles. The emancipatory discourses in such
a social order will work within an institutional framework based on the
episteme of plurality and “embedded/situated” knowledge rather than on
the epistemic foundation of universalism and homogeneity. This will also
help undermine tendencies toward fascism and aggressive social chauvin-
isms of different colors so endemic in modernism.
Notes
The authors wish to thank Sunil Sahasrabudhey and Pranab Basu for their insightful comments on
an earlier draft of the essay.
1. The interview is available online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/derrida/derrida911.
html. Last accessed on December 3, 2008.
2. For a discussion of the Gandhi-Nehru debate on economic development see Rudolph and
Rudolph (2006) and Khilnani (1999).
3. Developmentalism: An ideology premised on the “need to develop” in societies represented as
inadequate and lacking in some a priori criteria.
4. Chatterjee (1993, pp. 200–210). Other than Kumarappa, the NPC consisted of 4 capitalists,
5 scientists, 3 economists, and 2 political figures (Nehru and the labor leader N. M. Joshi).
Chatterjee locates the necessity for displacing development planning into the “expert,” techno-
cratic domain in the foreseen need for forms of expropriation of subsistence producers associ-
ated with primitive accumulation “which could not be legitimized through the representative
processes of politics.” For a more celebratory account of the heady early days of planning and
the prestige given to the tribe of economists see Byres (1998).
5. Dalits—The word means “oppressed” and refers to the lowest position in the Hindu caste hier-
archy, those outside the caste system, the “untouchables.” Historically dalits have performed
occupations deemed unclean by caste Hindus, such as working with leather, cleaning garbage
and human refuse, etc. Even today dalits (also known as the schedules castes) are severely
underprivileged segments of Indian society.
6. Gandhi however visualized panchayats as annually elected bodies, not as the traditional council
of village elders. Moreover, Gandhi himself was a sort of anarchist when it came to individual-
ity. He was for least governance by the state and even argued that majority opinion is not always
the correct way to go. See http://www.calpeacepower.org/0201/gandhi_anarchist.htm. Last
accessed on December 3, 2008.
7. We react differently to historical transformation in societies within the Euro-modernist dis-
courses. For example, when Michel Foucault supported the Iranian revolution of 1979 as a
radical challenge to European modernity, his comments were taken as “miscalculations” or
“follies.” They were considered aberrant writings by an otherwise great philosopher in the
European tradition. It was simply Foucault’s “Iran mistake,” a temporary and rare slippage of a
great European mind. On the other hand contemporary China’s turn to capitalism is not con-
sidered a disaster of the same order as Iran’s turn to Islamism as the former is still an experiment
within modernity, even though the turn away from socialistic principles to capitalist wage-
slavery is disastrous for the laboring population and a regress of the highest order.
8. Hindutva (“Hindu-ness”) is the ideology of a nationalist, Hindu-chauvnist political movement
in India, ideologically committed to the idea of a Hindu nation, via a highly selective reading
of India’s syncretic civilizational history. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) that governed from
1999 to 2004 is part of the Hindutva movement.
9. There are grounds for this fear that we share with Sarkar and Nanda. For example in the name
of non-Eurocentric history, a purely Vedic heritage has been claimed for the pre-Vedic Indus/
Harappa Civilization of South Asia in order to demonstrate that Vedic culture is completely
indigenous to the sub-continent. Thapar (2002, p. 12) notes: “The notion that the Vedic cul-
ture and language had a genesis within the Indian subcontinent goes back to the politically-
motivated Hindutva literature of the 1920s and 1930s. The intention was to insist that the
Hindus alone, as lineal descendants of the Aryans, were indigenous, whereas the Muslims and
Christians were alien.”
10. Bhakti: Flourishing in the twelfth–seventeenth centuries, the bhakti (devotion) movement was
a movement that challenged religious institutions such as caste and ritual and instead empha-
sized direct union of human and divine via love. Chaitanya, Kabir, Namdev, Meera Bai are
some prominent bhakti thinkers, many coming from the lower castes of society. Sufism is the
mystical tradition of Islam. In South Asia Sufis such as Nizamuddin Auliya, Amir Khusro,
Moinuddin Chisti, and Kabir played an important role in creating a syncretic faith with ele-
ments of Hinduism and Islam.
11. Thus we might note: Is it not true that the historically oppressed lower castes in India have
managed to emerge as a major political force at the national level through representative politi-
cal parties, state affirmative actions and parliamentary democracy? Is it not true that social
reforms like abolition of child marriage are no longer the agenda of liberal, “Westernized”
intelligentsia but finds their leaders among lower caste women in remote villages where strict-
est patriarchal customs still prevail? Is it not true that Western discourses on homosexuality
have enabled support groups and civil society organizations to fight for the rights of gays and
lesbians? Finally, is it not true that Western Marxism has helped create in India a powerful
working class and one of the biggest Communist parties in the world?
12. “Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when man-
kind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is
nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate
as to find one.” (Mill 1975, pp. 15–16, cited in Mehta 1999, p. 70)
13. Nanda’s preferred “alternative hybridity” combines “a modernist appropriation of rationalist
and naturalistic traditions” (typified in her opinion by Ambedkar). Thus hybridity is allowed
only in so far as it does not depart from modernist rationalism and naturalism. But why, we
wonder, should rationalism itself be restricted to its modernist avatar? Would a hybrid politics
taking Buddha’s anti-caste rationalism and the Sufi or Bhakti philosophy of love be unaccept-
able simply because it fails to pay homage to the Enlightenment?
14. This point has been stressed by several authors including Amin (1989), Wallerstien (1997),
Dussel (2000), and Kanth (2005).
15. The Indian National Congress, also known as the Congress party, a leading political party in
India, founded in 1885. It played a prominent role in India’s independence struggle under the
leadership of Tilak, Gandhi, Subhas Bose and Nehru and after independence ruled unchal-
lenged under the Prime Minister-ship of Jawaharlal Nehru for nearly thirty years.
16. Import duties and tariffs have been substantially lowered or eliminated, stock markets opened
to foreign investors, the industrial licensing system dismantled (see Rao and Dutt 2006 for one
account).
17. Rao and Dutt (2006). Other indicators show this as well. The average Indian family today is
absorbing 115 kg less per year of food-grains than in 1991; average calorie intake has fallen from
already low levels, and since data show that urban calorie intake has risen, it is rural absorption
that has fallen much more than the average (Patnaik 2007, p. 3134).
18. According to Palshikar and Kumar (2004), 61% rural and semi-urban versus 53% urban in 1999
and 60% dalit as compared to 56% upper-castes in 2004.
19. The Chipko movement (lit. “to stick” in Hindi) began in 1973 in the Uttarakhand region of
India and was composed of female peasants who acted to prevent deforestation and to reclaim
traditional forest rights threatened by the contractor system of the state Forest Department. The
“Save the Narmada” movement has agitated against the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam
and for tribal rights in Western India since the 1980s. The other examples cited, are more recent
struggles mostly against displacement due to proposed industrial projects. Except the anti-Coca
Cola agitation in Plachimada which was related to ground-water depletion.
20. “If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country.”—Jawaharlal Nehru, speak-
ing to villagers who were to be displaced by the Hirakud Dam, 1948, quoted in Roy (1999).
21. Mowitt (2001, pp. 11–12) talks of the “discursive and institutional infrastructure of the critique
of Eurocentrism” and why failure to take that into account may lead to “simply more and better
Eurocentrism.”
22. Husserl observed that official Science “relegated ‘life-world’ i.e.[,] the lived world, to the infe-
rior status of domain of ‘non-serious’ knowledge, or subjective knowledge incapable of produc-
ing truths. Foucault, similarly, was not against Science, but against the hegemony of Science and
called rather for ‘the union of erudite knowledge and local memories.’ ” In Peet (2005, p. 131).
23. There is a rapidly growing literature on concrete application of indigenous/traditional knowl-
edge in present-day contexts, usually combining insights from “modern science” See for
example, Warren, Slikkerveer, and Brokensha (1995) and Sillitoe, Bikker, and Pottier (2002).
The focus is on technical solutions such as artificial reef management by local communities in
coastal fisheries (Kurien 2007), or restoring control of indigenous populations over extraction
of rubber from the Brazilian Amazon based on traditional techniques adapted to modern export
markets (Hall 2007). The later in particular is an interesting example of a bahishkrit indigenous
community relying on its own adapted knowledge base to challenge large-scale deforestation
undertaken for industrial meat production. Thus the “technical fixes” are often embedded in
the context of a political struggle over who has control of resources and whose knowledge counts
as legitimate. It is to this knowledge politics that we wish to draw attention.
24. See for example two recent reports, Woytek, Shroff-Mehta, and Mohan (2004) “Indigenous
Knowledge: Local Pathways to Global Development” and Finger and Shuler (2004) “Poor
People’s Knowledge: Promoting Intellectual Property in Developing Countries,” both issued
under the auspices of the World Bank.
25. Part IX, “The Panchayats” of the Seventy-third Amendment provides for independent elec-
tions and finance commissions for panchayats and for one third of the seats to be reserved for
women. But early attempts to implement Gandhian-style local government ran into resistance
from ministers reluctant to relinquish power as well as from unenthusiastic bureaucrats. See
Rudolph and Rudolph (2006). Several states, however, had activated panchayati raj to greater or
lesser extent, e.g., West Bengal and Kerala.
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CH A P T E R SE V E N
Eurocentrism, Modernity, and the

Postcolonial Predicament in East Asia
K ho Tu ng -Yi
1. Introduction
This paper consists of a preliminary inquiry into the nature and symp-
toms of Eurocentrism in East Asia. My examination of Eurocentrism will
include a scrutiny of the meanings of terms such as “postcolonial” and
“development,” which when invoked, either separately or in tandem with
reference to East Asia, conjures up the notion of liberation and the auton-
omous self-determination of the region. The term “postcolonial develop-
ment,” in other words, when used with regard to East Asia, evokes at the
outset, the idea of a progressive political process for the formerly colonized
nations of the region.
Yet I will argue, with reference to what passes for East Asian “develop-
ment,” that such phenomena can neither be associated with the auton-
omy of sovereign entities, nor considered to be infused with the potential
for political liberation. To be sure, the “development” being referred to
has been emptied of all meanings other than the strictly economistic.
Moreover, since contemporary East Asian “development” is indefeasibly
of Euro-American ideological and material provenance, I would argue
that it is little more than a perpetuation of the longstanding North-South
(West/East) colonial encounter, which entails relations that are skewed by
the usual asymmetries of power—notwithstanding the emerging impor-
tance, in absolute terms, of East Asia in the world order.
I would argue that many in East Asia (and elsewhere) today fail to
see the oppressive nature of such “development” and instead celebrate
it because “Eurocentrism” has, over the past five centuries, evolved into
becoming the fount of consciousness in the world. The paradox involved
in the fact that Eurocentrism should now serve as the basis for the domi-
nant consciousness paradigm in our age of globalization is striking, not
122 Kho Tung-Yi
least because globalization is within popular discourse, cast as a process

emphasizing the interdependence of the political, economic and cultural
dimensions of humanity. Yet, as will soon be apparent, it is in the nature
of Eurocentrism that its critique is so fraught with paradoxes.
“Eurocentrism” is used here as a term that refers, but is not restricted,
to a particular ethnocentric way of apprehending the world. Yet, par-
adoxically (again), it is an ethnocentrism that betrays its own ethno-
particularities by way of its claims to universality. The litany of such
claims of universalism ranges from the presidential, as in George W’s
hubris-laden assertion that, “The liberty we prize is not America’s gift
to the world; it is God’s gift to humanity,” to the more mundane, such
as the unilinear, yet near-ubiquitous developmentalist argument which
attributes poverty in the global South to its failure to replicate and
develop the modern (and hence, rational) socio-political, and economic
institutions of the global North. In either case, Eurocentrism is invoked
in the tendency to subject the rest of humanity to the historical experi-
ence of Euro-America.
But herein lurks the possibility for another paradox, for just who is
“the rest of humanity?” Is Euro-American experience and Eurocentrism
the preserve of specific racial, cultural, and geographical categories? The
answers to these questions are revealing of still a further irony which
bespeaks the nature of Eurocentrism: while it might have begun as a
consciousness provincially rooted in Euro-American cultural historicity,
its preponderance today renders such racially, culturally and territorially
bounded conceptions of its inf luence obsolete.
Indeed, now that the teleological conception of history has, largely by
dint of force (via colonialism), gained currency among Euro-America’s
Other, Eurocentrism has, quite consistent with its claims, become uni-
versal. Accordingly, its origins today are neither restricted to the peoples
nor to the spatialities of Euro-America but can be found everywhere
around the globe, indeed, spawning the much touted phenomenon of
“globalization,” albeit one that is clearly at odds with the culturally
diverse and interdependent version offered by its proponents. The fact
that so many East Asians embrace “development” with such little aware-
ness of the Eurocentric prejudices that underpin it, is a measure of the
pervasiveness of Eurocentric consciousness that has come to dominate
the region.
Hence, far from signifying “liberation,” the Eurocentric oubliette to
which much of East Asia is confined in its single-minded quest for “devel-
opment” can be said to be tantamount to the ultimate colonization, for
the capture of minds implied by such “abstract” psychological and cultural
subjugation is more difficult to diagnose, let alone expunge, than are the
overt predations of more time-honored forms of colonialism.
The goal of this essay is therefore to provide a general and introductory
account of the symptoms of Eurocentricism which have taken hold in
postcolonial East Asia. It is important to point out that the aim of taking
Eurocentrism and East Asia 123
Eurocentrism to task is made intractable by its ubiquity, one whose extent

pervades the very categories of knowledge we are deploying to critique it.
Although this challenge will become readily apparent, it is one for which
no clear-cut solution exists. The best one can do, it seems, is to resolve to
conscientiously and ref lexively interrogate the knowledge categories one
invokes to apprehend the world. It is in this spirit of inquiry, one that is
simultaneously ref lexive, hermeneutic, dialectical and dialogical, that I
will strive to engage in the following.
Given that Eurocentrism is subjected to a variety of interpretations,
the first part of this essay will attempt to tease out its operative features.
For this purpose, I will continue in the inquisitional manner that I have
alluded to in the passages above. In other words, I will clarify what the
phenomenon of Eurocentrism is, not so much by defining it, but by iden-
tifying it within a web of meanings and phenomena. Since our under-
standing of the subject will naturally also be enhanced by dispensing with
what it is not, I will also discuss common perceptions of Eurocentrism,
which in my opinion, fail to grasp its foundational characteristics and that,
consequently, render it the epistemological and ontological challenge it is
today.
Section III consists of an effort to identify how Eurocentrism operates
in East Asia, and to convey a sense of the degree to which Eurocentric
consciousness has taken hold. For this purpose, it is instructive to exam-
ine East Asia’s Confucian revival, an episode featuring a “cultural-values”
discourse in which East Asia’s impressive capitalist modernization in the
latter half of the twentieth century was being attributed to “Confucian/
Asian values.” The Confucian revival was an enterprise that was ardently
promoted by certain East Asian political leaders and intellectuals begin-
ning in the 1980s. Despite this episode bearing the hallmarks of a certain
cultural triumphalism, I contend that this display of East Asian national-
istic (regionalistic?) exuberance disguises and actually represents a form
of Eurocentric colonization so thorough it has passed unbeknownst to
its proponents. This episode is instructive on two levels. First, it demon-
strates the extreme cultural and psychological violence that is inf licted
upon the victims of colonialism. To be sure, it is a violence that is so
complete it renders the life-world of the colonizer the only possible milieu
for the colonized. Secondly, insofar as this is the case, the colonized, who
is now no longer aware of alternatives, begins to frame his “resistance”
unconsciously in terms of the language bequeathed him/her by the colo-
nizer, giving rise to what Wallerstein (1997) memorably describes as a
form of “Eurocentric anti-Eurocentrism.”
In the concluding section, I will return to re-evaluate the notion of
postcolonial development as an enterprise of political liberation. The pur-
pose here is to point out that confronting and transcending Eurocentrism
is imperative to the process of an authentic de-colonization. I will con-
clude by offering suggestions as to how this process, which is necessarily
intellectual and political, might proceed henceforward.
124 Kho Tung-Yi
2. The Charge of Eurocentrism
As indicated above, and exemplified by the papers in this Volume, what

is considered to constitute Eurocentrism is subject to considerable variety.
It seems that what it is made out to be is contingent on one’s awareness
of Western inf luence in the everyday life-world of the non-West. And
because the inf luence exercised by the West over the non-West has been
profound and wide-ranging, interpretations of Eurocentrism abound that
extend from the superficial and ethereal to the material and concrete. Yet
efforts to confront Eurocentrism are only possible if one knows or recog-
nizes what it is, so my purpose here is to try to identify it.
1. As “Superficial Cultural Subordination”

In apprehending Eurocentrism, some, for instance, might refer to the
near-universal adoption of Western dress codes, others to the voracious
consumption worldwide of popular Western cultural artifacts (as sym-
bolized by Hollywood and MTV), and still others, to the global shift
toward Western fast-food and dietary patterns. While these are undoubt-
edly manifestations of a Eurocentered consciousness in the non-West that
deserve ref lection, critique and possibly renunciation, I would argue that
they exemplify superficial symptoms of Eurocentrism which barely begin
to scratch at the surface of the phenomenon. Indeed, while the preponder-
ance of these Western lifestyle symbols in the non-West rightly constitute
an indictment of Eurocentrism, one has to ask what political consequences
their repudiation, even elimination, may bring forth.
By way of a response, it would seem important to note that Eurocentrism
of this nature ought to be recognized as a symptom (rather than a cause)
of deeper and more enduring conditions, most important of which is the
political hegemony the West has established over the globe in the past five
centuries. Hence, because the currency given to Hollywood, MTV and
other such Western cultural symbols is merely a metaphor for and indeed,
a function of the political monopoly the West exercises over the non-West,
a renunciation of such cultural artifacts without an analogous dismantling
of the power structures that hold together the edifice of Western political
dominance cannot amount to more than symbolic posturing.
In other words, while Eurocentrism may be understood, quite correctly,
as the pervasiveness and consumption of Western cultural objects whose
preponderance occurs at the expense, via effacement, of native cultural
products, it is an understanding that is inadequate since it fails to take issue
with the structures that sustain Western political dominance. The enthu-
siasm in the everyday life-world of the non-West for Western cultural
products is certainly an outcome of Eurocentrism, yet it is but one aspect
of its many facets. More to the point, an understanding of Eurocentrism
that hinges primarily on Western cultural domination in the realm of
fashion, dietary practices, popular culture, and in the many other arenas of
similarly mundane social activities in the non-West, does not suffice since
it merely addresses “surface” (as opposed to “deep”) cultural phenomena
and accordingly, fails to account for why such Eurocentric proclivities
exist in the first place. The phenomenon of Eurocentrism undoubtedly
heaves with deeper meaning.
2. As EuroAmerican Ethnocentrism
One could also regard Eurocentrism simply as an instance of ethnocentric
parochialism on the part of Euro-Americans in their encounters with the
non-West. Ethnocentrism is the inherent human tendency to look at the
world from one’s cultural perspective, which causes one, invariably, to
gain a skewed reading of things. When conceived of as such, Eurocentrism
is considered no differently from other ethnocentrisms since it is normal,
inevitable, and in fact, revealing of the inherent limits of being human.
Such a view, however, is f lawed in a crucial way since no other ethno-
centrism in history has enjoyed such widespread currency nor been able
bring to life, its ideas or visions into a global reality in any comparable
way. Eurocentrism’s success in this regard should largely be attributed to
its (spurious) claim to universality, which entails not only the implicit
assumption that Euro-American civilization represents the apotheosis
of human civilization, but that it should rightly be the telos and fate of
humankind universally.
As a matter of fact, it is Eurocentrism’s self-claim to universality which
confers upon it the (dubious) legitimacy for its expansionary ambitions.
On the other hand, it is this very same claim which negates it as an innoc-
uous ethnocentrism that is limited by the characteristic shortcomings
of cultural bias and myopia. This paradox moves us toward an under-
standing of Eurocentrism at two levels: first, in claiming universal rel-
evance, Eurocentrism is evidently not an ethnocentrism but a refusal to
acknowledge, indeed, it is the very denial of, EuroAmerican ethnocentric
tendencies. Second, due to the global material transformations that such
universalizing tendencies produce, Eurocentrism is not just ideational; it
is also material. I will elaborate on this in a moment.
3. As Erroneous and Distorted Historiography

Then there are others who understand as Eurocentrism, the tendency to
inf late the civilizational achievements of the West—namely, its being first
past the post of modernity and the attainment of its vast wealth and global
power—by accounting for them as the result of the inherent qualities of
the West. Those who seek to disavow Eurocentrism of this kind regard it as
problematic particularly because of the skewed historiography it produces.
Nonetheless, attempts to explain Western dominance and supremacy in
terms of inherent European qualities have a considerable history, dating
126 Kho Tung-Yi
back to the nineteenth century (European) invention of History itself.1

Nonetheless, the explanations deployed have varied over time. Blaut
(2000) highlights four of these factors, none of which is mutually exclu-
sive but often invoked in combination with the rest. They are (p. 1):
1. Religion: The notion that Europeans by way of their Judeo-Christian

traditions worship the one true God who in turn guides and blesses
them.
2. Race: The belief that White people are superior to people of other
races.
3. Environment: The natural environment of Europe is better and
more favorable than in other parts of the world.
4. Culture: European culture is innately progressive and infused with
the creative/enterprising spirit.
These explanations, whether taken individually or in combination, con-

tinue to enjoy popular acceptance since they constitute the basis of European
historical scholarship. I wish here not to elaborate on them but to high-
light that in the process of invoking them to account for the naturalness
of its superiority, the West is concomitantly failing to acknowledge non-
Western contributions to its supposed civilizational accomplishments.
Hence, in short, this interpretation of Eurocentrism sees as its charac-
teristic feature the inf lated, self-referential claims about the “innateness”
of “Western” achievements, to the neglect of non-Western contributions.2
Blaut, whose understanding of Eurocentrism appears to be of this variety,
regards it as “a unique set of beliefs . . . because it is the intellectual and
scholarly rationale for one of the most powerful social interests of the
European elite” (1993, p. 10).
Blaut proceeds to clarify “powerful social interests” to mean “European
colonialism,” which (ibid.) “has been a necessary and very important basis
for the continued development of Europe and the continued power of
Europe’s elite.” He adds (ibid.), “For this reason, the development of a
body of Eurocentric beliefs, justifying and assisting Europe’s colonial
activities, has been, and still is, of very great importance. Eurocentrism is
quite simply the colonizer’s model of the world.”
Insofar as Blaut and those working within this understanding of
Eurocentrism are dispensing with the mythology of Europe’s innate supe-
riority and in the process, attempting to restore truth to history, their
scholarly efforts are imperative, timely and commendable. Yet I contend
that such an understanding of Eurocentrism and confrontation with it
suffers a serious shortcoming since it accepts, implicitly, the assumption of
Euro-American civilization (i.e., Modernity) as the apotheosis of human-
ity’s crowning achievement. That is, such a view seems first to accept
the Eurocentric claim of the superiority of Western civilization before it
rebuts, for their omissions and distortions, the explanations that are offered
as the basis of that superiority. This form of anti-Eurocentrism, to restate
matters somewhat differently, is tantamount to accepting EuroAmerica’s

boast about the supremacy of its civilizational accomplishments before
demanding that the non-West be duly recognized for its contributions to
those achievements. What this perspective invariably suffers is the unten-
able contradiction of accepting Eurocentrism before “repudiating” it.
It is apparent that Eurocentrism prevails when the supposed virtues of
“Western civilization” (which in the conceit of the Eurocentric popular
consciousness I am critiquing, is often thought synonymous with “civi-
lization”) are not examined, but instead merely assumed worthy of their
designation as the ultimate fate of all humanity. Eurocentrism, in the
deepest sense, is implicated in the act of acquiescing to Eurocentered val-
ues of judgment without awareness of the culturally-tinted nature of those
values. This refines our understanding of Eurocentrism further, since it
suggests that a more complete appraisal of what it is would have to include
consideration of the criteria by which human progress is judged; in par-
ticular, it would have to inquire why it is that Euro-American civiliza-
tion is so widely accepted as the cultural archetype for human progress.
Similarly, one has to ask what accredits Euro-American experience with
the legitimacy to serve as the template for the evolution of the rest of the
world, and why, despite these uncertainties, we find the latter conducting
its affairs seemingly in unconscious obeisance to it.
4. As Modernity
To colonize is to establish contact with new countries in order to benefit
from their total range of resources, to develop these resources for the
benefit of the national interest and at the same time to bring to the native
peoples the intellectual, social, scientific, moral, cultural, literary, com-
mercial and industrial benefits of which they are deprived and which are
the prerogative of the superior races. To colonize, therefore, is to establish
an advanced form of civilization in a new country in order to achieve the
twin aims we have just mentioned.
From a French Outline of Colonial Legislation and Economics, 1912.

(quoted in Tipton 1998, p. 251)
The discussion thus far has revealed understandings of Eurocentrism

to be multi-layered as well as multi-faceted. This is not unexpected, for
Eurocentrism, I hope to have shown, is a complex phenomenon which per-
meates all dimensions of reality at every level of sophistication. And insofar
as this is the case, each of the above interpretations is valid in its own right.
Yet I have, for the purpose of attaining a thorough understanding of
Eurocentrism, probed and sought to elucidate its deeper manifestations.
In the process, what has stood out consistently as enduring features of
Eurocentrism have been its claim of universality, its monopoly of knowl-
edge categories, its license to deem, then prescribe the things of beauty and
128 Kho Tung-Yi
truth, and basically, to define the raison d’etre of human existence—all

this, despite its being only one cultural perspective among many.
What this directs us to is a thoroughgoing inquisition of the underly-
ing system of values according to which lived human experiences, within
and across cultures, are validated and assigned importance. What has to
be examined, in other words, is the entire apparatus that has called for the
rationalization of the world and conferred upon us the present knowledge
categories by which we understand it. The apparatus in question, it seems,
is that of Modernity, since it is on its back that the celebrated accomplish-
ments of Europe ultimately came to be signified, in the smug delusions of
Fukuyama (1992), as “the end of history.”
Indeed, critically, it was Europe’s status as Modernity’s forerunner
which afforded it the self-conferred right to appropriate the spatial and
temporal dimensions of social reality. The appropriation of space has
occurred historically by colonial conquests and the subsequent tasks of
cartography, but perhaps more crucially, the appropriation of temporality,
which pertains to the right to calibrate time, is what has made an issue
of History, bracketing Europeans inside it while simultaneously leaving
non-Europeans outside, “without” it.
Europe’s claim of History on the basis of the “intellectual, social, sci-
entific, moral, cultural” and other such prerogatives of its civilization
(see opening passage) was, in other words, crucial to instituting within
mainstream consciousness the binary oppositions of tradition/modernity,
primitive/civilized, third world/first world, developing/developed, and
South/North, each of which bring to the fore the contrast between the
contemptible and the desirable, the non-West and the West, respectively.
It is just such a juxtaposition of the progressiveness of the West on
the one hand, with the stagnation of the non-West on the other, which
has designated Western civilization as the terminus of human progress
universally. After all, one might argue—as liberals do—that it is only
time that separates the non-West from the West, tradition from moder-
nity, and the primitive from the civilized. As the argument goes, these
binary opposites are sustained only by time lags: indeed, it is only a mat-
ter of time before even the “developing” become “developed”; before
peoples without History enter into, and eventually reach “the end” of it.
In other words, it is Europe’s colonization of the temporal dimension and
its appropriation of History in the course of becoming Modern, which
has consolidated its claim of universalism. This claim in turn has rendered
Europe’s historical trajectory the archetypal template for the non-West by
subjecting them to the Eurocentric teleology of human progress.
It is apparent from the foregoing that no interpretation of Eurocentrism
would suffice without reference to Modernity, since the latter is the repos-
itory that provides us with the values by which we evaluate the cultural,
political and economic arenas of our contemporary life-world. Moreover,
given that Modernity, a product of the eighteenth-century European
Enlightenment, has bequeathed us, foremost as ideological slogans, the
nation-state, individualism, citizenship, nationalism, democracy, liberty,

justice, fraternity, equality, socialism/communism, and of course, capi-
talism, it would seem safe to say that virtually all of us have in one way
or other, fallen under its sway; in turn, inevitably, capitulating to some
dimension of Eurocentrism.
In other words, a comprehensive account of Eurocentrism, I contend, is
one that lays bare the homology between Modernity and Eurocentrism. For
insofar as Eurocentrism has been the defining characteristic, indeed, the sin
qua non of Modernity that furnishes Euro-America with the self-conferred
right to carve up the world both temporally and spatially in its own image,
Eurocentrism is Modernity—and vice versa. A repudiation of Eurocentrism
cannot be sustained without at least an inquisition of Modernity. It is incon-
ceivable to speak of Eurocentrism without reference to Modernity, just as it
is quite impossible to refer to Modernity without invoking Eurocentrism.
The one is necessarily implicated when speaking about the other.
This revelation is important because it entails a number of conse-
quences. Firstly, insofar as the homology drawn between Modernity and
Eurocentrism correctly depicts the former as a historically and cultur-
ally specific phenomenon, it restores to Modernity a sense of history and
culture, with their accompanying correlates of time and place. This re-
localization of Modernity to its temporal and spatial origins entails pro-
found philosophical implications for the non-West since it immediately
expunges from the aura of Modernity its pretensions of universalism and
the Eurocentric teleology of progress that has been so central to it. That
is to say, because Modernity is an historical phenomenon unique to a
particular culture, its pursuit by (imposition upon) the non-West cannot
signify “development” in any authentic or autonomous sense but instead
should be seen as an attempt to imitate, and so, reify a particular alien (i.e.,
Western) cultural experience. The fact that Modernity continues not to
be seen as such, but as a seemingly ahistorical and acultural (hence, dis-
embodied, value-neutral and universal) process signifying “development”
reveals just the magnitude of the challenge that Eurocentrism poses.
Secondly, understanding Eurocentrism as Modernity provides us with
an insight into the possible locations where Eurocentrism may be found.
For just as Modernity, whose peripatetic and trans-national existence in
the present age of globalization belies the cultural and historical circum-
stances of its beginnings, Eurocentrism can, despite its origination from
the lairs of Euro-America, reside and f lourish elsewhere. The expansion-
ary ambitions of Global Capital today, after all, have demonstrated that
even if Eurocentrism were to break away from its moorings in Euro-
America, it will continue to persist. Euro-American agency, in other
words, is irrelevant to the perpetuation of Eurocentrism, since agency can
be sought (or more aptly, bought) elsewhere. I will attempt to demonstrate
this in the following section, where what has transpired as a result of the
economic successes of postcolonial East Asia and modern China, appear to
lend support to this assertion.
130 Kho Tung-Yi
The persistence of Eurocentrism, furthermore, is revealing of the tre-

mendous difficulties that beset the task of those, particularly in the non-
West, hoping to repudiate it. Since its perpetuation is not dependent on
the agency of those deriving from its formative cultures, nor is its demise
assured with the denouement of Euro-American hegemony, the sustenance
and nourishment of Eurocentrism by recent converts to the Modernist faith
outside the physical territories of Euro-America are only too real. Once
again, I will draw upon the example provided by East Asia where, owing
to the totalizing nature of Eurocentric consciousness, that which purport-
edly resists Eurocentrism is itself, paradoxically, rendered Eurocentric.
Finally, I offer here a few comments in defense of the present concep-
tion of Eurocentrism. An interpretation which draws upon Eurocentrism’s
homology with Modernity includes, encompasses, and most crucially,
explains the interpretations highlighted previously. For instance, while
the global preponderance of Western dress codes is indeed symptomatic of
Eurocentrism, the interpretation of Eurocentrism-as-Modernity favored
here is able to explain such symptoms as the result of the imposition of
Modernity via the long history of Western colonization. In other words,
this comprehensiveness is a result of an interpretation of Eurocentrism that
strives to restore historicity to it; an interpretation permitting not only an
understanding of surface appearances, but their root causes as well.
Analogously, because Eurocentrism is being here equated with
Modernity, its critique incorporates a diverse range of perspectives on
social injustices that stem from modern life. The critique of Eurocentrism
therefore not only includes critiques that derive from the perspectives of
class, gender and race; it adds a further dimension owing to its vantage-
point outside the vestibule of Modernity. This, of course, is not to suggest
that social injustices do not exist outside Modernity, but merely to clar-
ify that insofar as such oppressions pertain to and emerge from modern
societies, the critique of Eurocentrism is implicitly also a critique of the
Modernity that spawns them.
Naturally, this then raises the question about the possibility of alter-
native modernities. Indeed, are there modernities which are non-
Eurocentric? I now turn to examine the case of East Asia where this issue
has generated much interest and intellectual vitality in the wake of its rapid
modernization.
3. The Challenge to Eurocentrism?:

Confucius and East Asian Development
1. East Asia’s Confucian Resurrection: Origins and Significations
In their outward appearance these East Asian nouveaux riches are

Westernized. Yet behind this façade the people of these countries
pursue a way of life that remains essentially Oriental. They prefer to

eat oriental food, observe lunar-calendar-based national festivities,
place the family in the center of their social and economic relation-
ships, practice ancestor worship, emphasize frugality in life, main-
tain a strong devotion to education, and accept Confucianism as the
essence of their common culture. (Tai 1989, p. 2)
The countries I have in mind here are, of course, the successful capi-
talist ones in the region: Japan, the so-called Four Little Dragons—
South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore—and, increasingly,
at least some of the countries of ASEAN besides Singapore. Their
economic successes have powerfully impressed themselves on the
consciousness of people everywhere. The same economic successes
have induced both social scientists and politicians in other parts of
the world to speak of an “East Asian developmental model.” . . . It is
my contention that these countries are sufficiently distinct, as com-
pared with the West, that one is entitled to speak of them as a “sec-
ond case” of capitalist modernity. (Berger 1988, p. 4)
The quotes above reveal that “cultural identity” became an issue of central
concern with the unprecedented economic development of East Asia in
the latter half of the twentieth century. In particular, because the dynamic
East Asian economies—Japan, along with the “four little Dragons” of
South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—were thought to com-
prise of a Sinitic sphere of inf luence, the thesis of an “East Asian devel-
opmental model” was broached. According to Dirlik (1995), the thesis
first originated from scholars in the West such as Roderick MacFarquhar,
Herman Kahn, Peter Berger, Roy Hof heinz and Kent Calder, and Ezra
Vogel, before it was, in many cases, opportunistically appropriated by
politicians and intellectuals in the East, who with state largesse, proceeded
in its propagation. Naturally, those who accepted such a thesis generally
considered the question of “alternative modernities” to be rhetorical.
Furthermore, because “the cultural setting of Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore has been to a considerable extent
shaped by Chinese experiences, which have been, in turn, heavily inf lu-
enced by Confucianism” (Tai 1989, p. 6) the “East Asian developmental
model” was one in which the former served as its defining cultural motif.
Confucianism, in other words, was being credited as the chief cultural
repository furnishing the values that made East Asia’s scintillating eco-
nomic development possible. Confucianism, which had for much of the
twentieth century been disparaged by the West and non-West alike for
hindering Modern (both socialist and capitalist) social formations in the
Orient, was now being resuscitated and celebrated for supposedly providing
the cultural ingredients for successful East Asian economic development.3
Clearly, these evaluations of Confucianism can hardly be more paradox-
ical: whereas since the late nineteenth century, attainment of modernity
132 Kho Tung-Yi
was thought by all to involve overcoming the Confucian tradition; by the

end of the late twentieth century, in the age of global capitalism, successful
modernization was being understood to mean association with it.
2. East Asia’s Confucianist Modernity

The contrast in the reception of Confucianism between the two periods
is perhaps suggestive of the ideological role it was made to serve. I will
return to the issue of ideology in a moment. For now, attention should be
paid to the fact that the East Asian developmental experience of the mid to
late twentieth century was thought of not only as an alternative to Western
modernity, but by virtue of its supposed Confucian heritage, conceived to
be a modernity that was distinctly non-Eurocentric. In fact, Confucianism
was seized upon by the region’s autocratic leaders, most prominently,
Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, and in the guise of “Asian values,” used as a
means to justify, by differentiating, East Asian norms of governance vis-à-
vis those of Western liberal democracies. The Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) even rescinded its erstwhile anti-Confucianist posture to resuscitate
Confucius and usher him into the party’s ideological fold.
The motivation of these political leaders to affirm the connection
between Confucianism and Modernity, as Bell and Hahm (2003) point out,
was not merely to highlight their respective country’s economic successes,
but to underscore the notion that the political and economic institutions of
their supposedly Confucian-inspired (hence, “non-Eurocentric”) moder-
nity were in many ways, superior to that of the West. This sentiment, which
has been expressed on several occasions by members of the region’s political
and intellectual establishment, is palpable in the following quotes:
The heart of Confucianism lies in “the emphasis on the people and

virtue” which is different from capitalism that “lays emphasis on
wealth or money and belittles morality.” It is also different from
Communism which “stresses material and shortchanges the people.”
Both capitalism and Communism have their own base and both
deviate from their own root. They do not have an optimistic future.
Only the Chinese culture is indeed able to work for the well-being
and space of the people and promote the world to a state where har-
mony, equality and justice prevail.
Chen Li-fu, Senior Adviser to the President of
Taiwan, and Hou Chi-ming, Professor at Colgate University,
United States, in 1989. (quoted in Tipton 1998, p. 407)
As this (Confucian) culture better suits the needs of the future, it will
thrive particularly well in the next century and will replace modern
and contemporary Western culture.
Ma Zhenduo (1994, p. 5), Philosophical Research Institute of
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Hence, not only was East Asian modernity claimed to be different

from that of the Euro-American variety, it was thought to contain
the necessary qualities to surpass it as well. Moreover, because it was
framed in an “East-against-West,” “us-versus-them” rhetoric, East
Asian modernity was, via its supposedly Confucian characteristics,
conspicuously being cast as a challenge to Euro-American (and hence,
Eurocentric) hegemony. In other words, in the way it was formu-
lated, East Asian modernity was not only non-Eurocentric; it was self-
consciously anti-Eurocentric.
3. Ideology and Dynamics of the Confucian Revival

The Master said, “The common people can be made to follow a path
but not to understand it.”
Confucius, The Analects, VIII. 9
The political ideal, much less the practice, of formal, de jure “democ-
racy” is relatively new in East Asia. No such political regime had existed
in the region prior to the twentieth century. Instead, perhaps owing to
the strictures of the Confucian tradition, autocratic forms of government
have tended to prevail in East Asia historically. They have persisted as the
norm till this day. For such reasons, one would be forgiven for regarding
the Confucian revival simply as an attempt to justify and perpetuate the
authoritarianism of some of the region’s more autocratic regimes (such
as Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party in Singapore, and the CCP in
China), while simultaneously curbing the further expansion of liberal-
democratic political processes (Tamney and Chiang 2002). Of course, the
issue of “ ideology” resurfaces when such an instrumentalist account of
Confucianism is offered.
One is indeed unable to ignore the role “ideology” has played in the
Confucian revival, for the latter seems to have been, above all things, an
exercise in ideological manipulation. As such, while readers may have
noticed no mention of the philosophical aspects of Confucianism in the
present discourse, they should bear in mind that this omission is not the
result of an oversight but rather, a ref lection of precisely how incidental
a role Confucian philosophy played in East Asia’s Confucian revival. The
establishment of “Confucian Ethics” into the religious education curricu-
lum in Singapore’s secondary schools in the early 1980s, for instance, was
motivated not so much by a yearning for the wisdom of the venerable sage
as by the government’s concern about the onslaught of Western cultural
values on the young as a consequence of capitalist modernization. The
values of individualism and materialism, and their concomitant effects
of self-centeredness, self-gratification, avarice, and nihilism etc., were
thought not only to be detrimental to Singaporean society, but perhaps
more important for the government, to its continued capacity to maintain
social control.
134 Kho Tung-Yi
At any rate, concern about such matters prompted government lead-

ers to react swiftly. In 1980, Premier Lee urged Singaporeans to develop
“team spirit” in its national culture: “We can build up this team spirit, this
esprit de corps, where every individual gives of his best for the team. The
team, the nation, in turn, takes care of the individual, fairly and equitably.
The art of government is the art of building up this team spirit” (quoted
in Bellows 1989, p. 215).
Some two years later, in February 1982, Lee was proclaiming the impor-
tance of cultivating Confucian values in children (Shee 1987, p. 987). This
was followed, within the same month, by Deputy Prime Minister and
Minister for Education, Goh Keng Swee’s announcement that Confucian
Ethics would be offered as part of the newly introduced religious educa-
tion program in secondary schools.
This brief account of the Singapore government’s remarkable attempt
to insert Confucianism into the popular consciousness cannot empha-
size sufficiently, the considerable role that it played in propagating
Confucianism both nationally and throughout East Asia. State patronage,
after all, did not just end with Confucianism making its way into the
national school curriculum in 1982. As Lee Kuan Yew has acknowledged
in a recent (2007) speech, official patronage extended to the establish-
ment the following year (1983), of the Institute of East Asian Philosophies
(IEAP) whose designated purpose was the re-interpretation and propaga-
tion of Confucianism.4 Given the state’s largesse, it is little wonder that the
Institute quickly developed into a center of congregation for Confucian
scholars from the world over. This correspondingly led to the emergence
of Singapore as the region’s (and quite probably, the globe’s) most fer-
vent proponent of Confucianism, which is astounding considering that
the subject had hardly been considered worthy of public discussion just a
few years before.
At any rate, Singapore’s efforts to promulgate “Asian values” in the
form of Confucianism soon began to have an impact on the other Chinese
societies in East Asia. Dirlik (1995, p. 239) points out that, “By the mid-
eighties, a Confucian formation was visible as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
the People’s Republic of China (PRC) quickly emerged as sites in an
expanding network of conferences on modernization and Confucian and/
or East Asian culture.” Moreover, in 1984, on the “2535th birthday” of
Confucius, the China Confucian Foundation was established in the PRC
where Confucianism had for much of the past few decades, been offi-
cially maligned, expunged, and consigned to the ignominious “feudal”
past. Three years later, in 1987, as an example that bespeaks Singapore’s
importance in the Confucian revival, the Singapore Institute of East Asian
Philosophies jointly sponsored with the China Confucian Foundation,
the Sixth Conference on Confucianism in the PRC. Yet the most explicit
testimony to Singapore’s inf luence in the Confucian enterprise was still
to come. In October 1994, as Leys (1997, pp. xv–xvi) has observed, “The
Communist authorities in Peking sponsored a huge symposium to celebrate
the 2545th anniversary of Confucius birth. The main guest speaker was
the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew. He was invited
apparently because his hosts wished to learn from him the magic recipe
(supposedly found in Confucius) for marrying authoritarian politics with
capitalist prosperity.”
4. Confucianism, Globalization, and Postcolonialism

Owing to space constraints, our discussion of the Confucian revival has
been limited exclusively to Singapore, and to a lesser extent, China (and
then, only insofar as its experiences derived from the evangelical activities
of the former). Apart from my earlier note about the proliferation of con-
ferences on Confucianism, little has been said about how it played out in
the other Chinese societies of East Asia, that is, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Even less has been said about how the Confucian revival manifested in
Korea and Japan.5
Nonetheless, I would contend this selective emphasis to be justified
since Singapore’s autocratic leaders have frequently f launted and often been
recognized for their bravado in standing up to the West (see Kemenade
1997 quote subsequently). Because of its apparent belligerence, Singapore
serves aptly as an example of how East Asia has framed its challenge to the
overall domination of Euro-America (and hence, Eurocentrism). After
all, it is generally accepted that Singapore was the chief protagonist in
the Confucian revival. And it has, accordingly, been prominent in dif-
ferentiating between what is supposedly a modernity that is Confucian-
inspired from one that is spawned of a Euro-American/Protestant ethic.
In the same vein, while not challenging (in fact, obsequiously accepting)
the larger social, economic and political structures of Euro-American
domination, it was also Singapore which had most vociferously asserted,
under the cryptic slogan of “Asian values,” the emergent modern East
Asian consciousness as a counterpoint to the cultural hegemony of Euro-
America.6
It is with sympathy to such a view that Kemenade (1997, p. 378) writes,
“Confucianism has become the antidote to Western evangelism, which
attempts to impose liberal democracy and human rights as a universal
political philosophy . . . Singapore has taken the lead in the regional cam-
paign for Asian (Confucianist) values and against decadent Western values.
Articles appear regularly in the International Herald Tribune and academic
magazines written by ethnic-Chinese and ethnic-Indian Singaporeans
who confidently present the West, especially the United States, with a
series of warnings to put their own house in order before sending American
government officials to Asia’s capitals with a long list of demands, telling
them how to run their countries.”
Similarly, China’s deployment of Confucianism to battle Western
domination in more recent times is equally noteworthy, if not simply
important, because of its fast growing inf luence in the global political and
136 Kho Tung-Yi
economic order. As Kemenade (ibid.) has observed, “China is fighting the

same battle in the diplomatic-political arena that Singapore is fighting in
the press, using Confucianist phraseology such as order, discipline, and
the prevalence of the collective good over individual good in order to
reject Western interference in domestic affairs and Western universalism
in the field of human rights.”
In short, my emphasis on Singapore and China in the Confucian
revival stems from their similarly self-conscious and explicit efforts to cast
Confucianism as a project challenging Euro-American hegemony. Yet, for
all this talk about challenging Euro-American power, a central concern of
this paper demands that one asks if it actually amounts to that. In other words,
can we truly claim “Confucianist” East Asian development to represent
a genuine resistance to Euro-American (hence, Eurocentric) hegemony?
How, at the very least, are we able to reconcile so-called Confucian-led
East Asian development with what we know about Eurocentrism?
The motivations of these two East Asian nations to so vigorously par-
take of the reconstruction and revival of Confucianism have been noted
above. Shaped by the political and cultural challenges that have resulted
from these nations’ integration into Capitalist modernity, these motiva-
tions have essentially revolved around three overt considerations: (i) the
wish to cultivate, as Lee says, “a team spirit,” (ii) the wish to legitimize
the authoritarianism of the prevailing political regimes while simulta-
neously repudiating the paternalistic interference of the West in domestic
political affairs, and (iii) the desire to mitigate the onslaught of supposedly
decadent Western values. Given that these are mundane concerns about
sovereignty which would call forth the attention of any self-respecting
anti-colonialist, one would, certainly on the face of it, be prone to agree,
along with its proponents, that the East Asian Confucian revival consti-
tutes a serious challenge to Eurocentrism. At least, there appears little
reason to doubt the anti-colonizing and anti-Eurocentric credentials of
the Confucian revival.
But there is more than meets the eye, for the explicit motivations that
have energized both Singapore and China in reviving Confucianism
bespeak a deeper, underlying impulse that reaches the heart of concerns
about “cultural identity” in the context of globalization. It is the exami-
nation of this impulse, I suggest, which will help us better evaluate the
anti-Eurocentric claims, and correspondingly, the liberatory potential of
East Asian development.
Accordingly, it might be fitting to note that in its assertion of its cul-
tural uniqueness under the rubric of “Asian values,” the East Asian revival
of Confucianism had the additional appeal, to those concerned, of serving
as an affirmative ideology of collective cultural identity. This account is
appealing for it makes much sense of Singapore’s fervor as well as China’s
zeal in the Confucian revival. Each has after all, been striving to articu-
late and to assert its sense of self hood within the context of a globalized
Euro-American modernity. It has taken on a frantic urgency in the case of
Singapore, as is befitting a young postcolonial nation with little of either

“history” or “culture” to speak of, apart from that grafted upon it by its
colonial masters. Similarly, China, too, has been in the throes of reinvent-
ing itself and been forced to entertain questions of its “identity” after the
debacle of its Socialist experience.
The circumstances surrounding China’s participation in the Confucian
revival, however, are intriguing. For unlike Singapore, instead of having
a shortage of “culture,” it has “suffered” an excess, of which the more
than 2,500-year-old venerable Confucian tradition lies at its heart. Yet it
is precisely this “cultural surplus” which, since the progressive, nationalist
May Fourth Movement (1919), has been blamed for China’s stagnation
and subsequent defeat by the West. With Confucianism being seen in this
light, no effort was spared to extirpate it root and branch and to replace in
its stead, the “superior” science, technology, and the cultural and political
institutions of the West.
Under the Communists, the desire to expunge Confucianism contin-
ued, even escalated. The following is a description of the vandalism that
was perpetrated against it during the Cultural Revolution: “Inspired by
the revolutionary spirit of Chairman Mao, Red Guards descended on
Qufu, the birthplace of the Master in the eastern province of Shandong,
which for them meant the ‘resting place of the stinking corpse of
Confucius.’ . . . Mao’s storm troopers destroyed every commemorative col-
umn, statue, and piece of furniture that was not too large or massive for
their crowbars, and battering rams, laying waste to temple interiors and
palaces alike”7 (Kemenade 1997, p. 373).
Naturally, it is a striking paradox that China, which had spent most of
the twentieth century trying to eradicate its Confucian legacy, should now
so conscientiously attempt to revive it. It is at least as ironical that in the
process, it should, as the cradle of Confucian civilization, seek Singapore’s
counsel on how to proceed! Perhaps more than anything, these develop-
ments reveal the thoroughly ideological nature of the Confucian revival.
But be that as it may, the task then demands that we explain why East
Asia’s ideological concerns vis-à-vis “cultural identity” manifested at the
time they did, and not at any other. In other words, while we now under-
stand the Confucian revival to have emerged as an ideological concern,
what gave cause for the concern to arise in the first place?
It appears reasonable to infer that the timing of the Confucian revival
had to do with East Asia’s success in the context of capitalist Modernity,
resulting thus in its empowerment and increasing prominence within the
prevailing structure of global power relations. This in turn called forth an
explanation, which in the context of East Asia’s newfound power, granted
East Asians with the somewhat unprecedented freedom and opportunity
to provide.
It was therefore in this altered global environment that Confucianism
was revived and offered up as the explanation for East Asia’s astound-
ing economic development. Indeed, Confucianism served as East Asia’s
138 Kho Tung-Yi
analogue to Europe’s Protestant ethic: just as Weber (1992/1930) had

credited the latter for Europe’s rise vis-à-vis Capitalism, the advocates
of the Confucian revival were similarly seeking culturalist explanations
to celebrate East Asian exceptionalism. Confucius therefore became the
motif of East Asia’s triumphant resurgence.
Moreover, given that Confucianism (with Daoism) was singled out by
Weber (1951) and castigated for being an obstacle to the Orient’s develop-
ment of Capitalism,8 it hardly seems coincidental that East Asians were
now crediting it for their success. The reconciliation of East Asian capital-
ist success with Weber’s formulation appears evidently self-conscious. In
fact, it would not be amiss to regard it as East Asia’s gloating repudiation
of Weber’s Eurocentrism, for it is the diametric juxtaposition of East Asia’s
Confucianism vis-à-vis Weber’s Protestantism which casts, rather deceiv-
ingly, I believe, the Confucian revival as an anti-Eurocentric enterprise.
Following from these observations about the timing of East Asia’s grap-
pling with concerns of cultural identity, I would suggest that the intensity
to which the “Confucian/Asian values” thesis was asserted, was in turn,
correlated with the degree to which East Asian elites felt culturally defi-
cient in relation to the West, and as such, challenged by “Western values.”
I have attempted to show this to be the case for Singapore and China,
both of which appear thoroughly worked over by Euro-American moder-
nity,9 and which in consequence, have been the most zealous participants
in the Confucian revival.
5. Confucian/East Asian Modernity:

A Postcolonial Antidote to Eurocentrism?
So what, after all, are we to make of East Asia’s postcolonial development
and its subsequent attainment of modernity? Can we argue that it repre-
sents liberation from its colonial past, that it is a genuinely post-colonial
situation of autonomous well-being?
It is apparent from the above that Confucianism might well have had
nothing to do as an ingredient for the developmental success of East Asia.
On the contrary, as explained above, it was the very success of East Asia in
a changing global economic landscape that granted it a “voice” to assert
its concerns of “cultural identity,” allowing therefore, East Asian expres-
sions of difference, uniqueness, and autonomy. When elaborated in terms
of an ideology of Confucianism, this presented East Asian modernity not
only as an alternative to Euro-American modernity, but as a repudiation
of Eurocentrism as well.
Although the presentation of Confucian/East Asian Modernity as anti-
Eurocentric might seem plausible on the face of it, it is in fact deeply
problematic. What is today considered to be East Asian development, after
all, is its successful incorporation into, and participation in the globalized
structures of Capitalist modernity, structures revealed earlier (in Part II)
to be themselves infused with Eurocentrism. Besides, the need to empha-

size “cultural difference” in the form of Confucianism in East Asia is
itself an implicit acknowledgement that such differences—in this case, the
nuances of East Asian culture—had hitherto not been recognized in the
milieu of Capitalist modernity. Indeed, it is an indictment of the total-
izing Eurocentric milieu that is Modernity. The claim of Confucian/East
Asian modernity as anti-Eurocentric is thus undercut.
Hence, to be sure, Confucian/East Asian modernity is not an alterna-
tive to Euro-American modernity but verily, a part of it. In the wake
of East Asia’s resurging prominence in the context of globalization,
Confucianism was revived as an ideology to meet East Asian concerns
about “cultural identity.” Consequently, the “Confucian/Asian values”
discourse was granted an audience partly because of East Asia’s newfound
power, and partly because capitalist modernity, by virtue of its globaliza-
tion, had now to accommodate the diverse variety of cultures with which
it engaged. For these reasons, the thesis of “Confucian values” contribut-
ing to East Asian development is dubious.
And even if we should seriously consider the “Confucian ethic” as
an analogue to Weber’s Protestant spirit in the development of capital-
ist modernity, we are confronted with difficulties owing to contempo-
rary reformulations/distortions of Confucianism. As Dirlik (1995, p. 266)
has put it: “. . . Confucianism has been reconstructed, beyond recogni-
tion to any hypothetical Confucian of the past, in accordance with the
demands of contemporary East Asian capitalism. It is this articulation of
Confucianism to modernization—in this case, capitalist modernization—
that is the characteristic of the new discourse on Confucianism.”
It follows that the thesis of Confucian/East Asian development as a
mode of resistance to Euro-American (and Eurocentric) hegemony, if
true, cannot be but an effete, superficial form of resistance. For instead
of objecting to the values that give rise to, and sustain Euro-American
power, the Confucian revival has sought to articulate, as Dirlik (ibid.)
says, “Confucianism to capitalist modernization.” In other words, the
Confucian revival does not question the Eurocentrism implicit in the
theory of modernization but rather conceptualizes East Asia’s progress in
terms of it. Still, to express this in terms of Weber’s formulation about the
origins of capitalism, it is tantamount to asserting an essentialized set of
“Confucian values” as being on par with “Protestant values” in its com-
patibility with capitalism, without rejecting Weber’s implicit proposition
about the superiority of capitalism in the first place. The proponents of
the Confucian revival are therefore not disputing Weber’s more-serious
Eurocentric prioritization of capitalism as a progressive social system,
but merely his less-serious Eurocentric diagnosis of Confucianism as an
obstacle to it. This is what I described previously (In the subsection “As
Erroneous and Distorted Historiography”) as “the contradiction of accepting
Eurocentrism before ‘repudiating’ it,” or in Wallerstein’s (1997) terms, an
instance of “Eurocentric anti-Eurocentrism.”
140 Kho Tung-Yi
Nevertheless, there is yet a further irony in the Confucian revival.

Said (1978) had originally conceptualized Orientalism (i.e., an instance
of Eurocentrism when applied to the Orient) as the reductionist cul-
tural construction of Asia by Europeans. It is important to note then,
that Eurocentrism in the sense that Said meant it has been implicated
in this episode, too. The reconstruction of Confucianism in the East
Asian Confucian revival has necessarily resorted to the same essentialized
notions that had been the target of Said’s critique. What is now different,
paradoxically, is that the reductionist cultural constructions of Asians are
being perpetrated by the Asian themselves. As Dirlik (1995, p. 273) mem-
orably puts its, “The admission of East Asia to Global Capitalism has been
accompanied not by the repudiation of, but, in the self-Orientalization of
the “Orientals” themselves, by the apotheosis of, Orientalism.”
It seems reasonable to conclude then, that East Asian development does
not consist of the liberatory potential to facilitate its emancipation from
Euro-American (and hence, Eurocentric) hegemony. On the contrary, the
evidence appears to suggest that its participation in modernist develop-
ment has reinforced the very scourge of Eurocentrism by way of a sur-
reptitious psychological and cultural colonization. So complete has been
this colonization that, in the terms employed by Dirlik (ibid.) and Said
(1978) mentioned before, Orientals have become Orientalized without
necessarily being cognizant of it, or of the violence inf licted upon them in
the process. Such are the pernicious effects of psychological and cultural
modes of subjugation.
What is more, as East Asia has progressed along the trajectory of
Euro-American modernization, it has unwittingly become an agent of
Eurocentrism. Indeed, insofar as East Asia has become a new center of power
within global Capitalist Modernity, Eurocentrism can be thought of as
having found another site of residence and propagation, with the implica-
tion that its sustenance, as I have indicated, would no longer necessitate
Euro-American agency. And it is not without irony either, that as East Asia
becomes Eurocentrism’s latest advocate, however unwittingly, the cycle of
Modernist oppression would have come full circle, with the formerly colo-
nized now playing the role of colonizer.
4. Conclusion
I had begun by expressing my interest in inquiring about the autonomy

of postcolonial East Asia whose economic development in the latter half
of the twentieth century, had attracted the approbation of the world.
It should be evident by now that neither “postcolonial” nor “develop-
ment,” without rigorous qualification, can be said to accurately ref lect
the political standing of contemporary East Asia. By virtue of having been
“overcome by Modernity,” to use the memorable phrase of Harootunian
(2000), “postcolonial” in the case of East Asia can hardly be interpreted
to mean “past,” or “after” colonialism, for the colonialism persists. Such is

the postcolonial predicament of East Asia today.
The autonomy of East Asia, correspondingly, is dubious for it is ensnared
in the throes of perhaps the most pernicious form of colonial oppression
qua the cultural and psychological aspects of Eurocentrism.
There is no wish here to diminish the brutality of more explicit forms
of colonialism. Yet cultural colonization is particularly deadly because it is
“abstract” and “intangible,” having to do with the ways in which we look,
think, feel, and evaluate the world around us, making it immeasurably less
amenable to diagnosis, much less confrontation, than are more explicit
forms of colonization. In its impulse to impose Euro-American historical
experience as the teleological fate of all humanity, Eurocentric coloniza-
tion forecloses alternative ways of looking, thinking, feeling, and being,
thus dispensing with the diversity of cultural perspectives so integral to
the survival of humanity today. This has been exemplified in the case
of East Asia, where the totalizing presence of a Eurocentric conscious-
ness has inevitably rendered even East Asia’s “challenge” to Eurocentrism,
Eurocentric.
What then, to do? There is little question that the repudiation of
Eurocentrism appears insurmountable. By virtue of its ubiquity and its
appropriation of our categories of knowledge, one is inevitably caught
employing its terms of discourse. (I must confess to this myself, in my
binary juxtaposition of the West with the non-West, Europe, with its
Other, but that likely underscores the magnitude of the challenge that
confronts us!) Yet the very real threat that Eurocentrism poses to the
continued existence of humanity demands that we at least try to negate it.
Perhaps as a start, we can do this by reviving and celebrating everywhere,
outside the strictures of Modernity, the local traditions and cultures that
it so reviles. As Adorno and Horkheimer (1972, p. 3) have remarked,
“The fully enlightened world radiates disaster triumphant.” We should
take heed and act, or otherwise would have only ourselves to blame if
humanity does not survive itself.
Notes
1. See Wesseling (2001) and also Hung (2003).

2. See for instance, Hobson (2004), and his piece in this volume (chapter ten). Also, Gunder Frank
(1998).
3. Although European sentiment for Confucius had bordered on approbation pre- and early
Enlightenment, the contempt shown toward him as the Enlightenment played out, especially
from the late eighteenth century onward, is well known. See Hung (2003) for an historical
account of Europe’s vacillation between Sinophobism and Sinophilism. Modern Europe’s dis-
dain for Confucius, which persisted into and through the twentieth century, is most famously
captured in Weber’s ([1921] 1951) The Religion of China: Confucian and Taoism. See Dirlik (1995)
for an intriguing historical account of the political economy of the East Asian Confucian
revival.
4. The speech is available online at: http://app.sprinter.gov.sg/data/pr/20070619989.htm. Accessed
June 21, 2008.
142 Kho Tung-Yi
5. One seems to have good reason to believe, based on an observation of contemporary trends, that
it did not go as far in either country as it had in the Chinese societies of East Asia.
6. Kemenade (1997) has reported of Singapore’s erstwhile minister of information and culture,
George Yeo, speaking of “the rebirth of a common East Asian consciousness” which he antici-
pated would develop to become a “cultural renaissance of historical significance.”
7. For another account of this incident, see Wang (2002).
8. When contrasting Confucianism with the Protestant ethic, Weber wrote: “The Chinese lacked
the central, religiously determined, and rational method of life which came from within and
which was characteristic of the classical puritan. For the latter, economic success was not an
ultimate goal . . . but was a means [for serving God . . . The Confucian] gentleman was ‘not a tool’;
that is, in his adjustment to the world and his self-perfection he was an end unto himself, not a
means for any functional end. This core of Confucian ethics rejected training in economics for
the pursuit of profit . . . Confucian rationalism meant rational adjustment to the world; Puritan
rationalism meant rational mastery of the world” (quoted in Tai 1989, p. 9).
9. Kemenade (1997, p. 370) concurs, particularly about the Westernization of Chinese in East
Asia. In fact, he argues that, “In their outward behavior as well as in numerous other respects,
the Chinese are the most Westernized people in Asia. . . . Other great Asian peoples—such as
the Indians, Japanese, and Indonesians—still wear traditional Eastern attire at least part of the
time, greet each other in an Eastern way—bowing, with folded hands—whereas the Chinese use
the Western handshake and, since the mid-1980s, wear only Western clothing . . . Young people
know nothing about their traditional culture, never watch a Peking opera, and are completely
absorbed in Western pop culture and Western literature, which is channeled into China via
Hong Kong and Taiwan. Their idols are Western soccer players and movie stars, and their ideal
is to emigrate to the West.” Perhaps that is why, for the reasons I have highlighted above, the
Confucian revival was carried the furthest in the Chinese societies of East Asia.
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Bellows, T. J. “Bridging Tradition and Modernization: The Singapore Bureaucracy,” in H. C. Tai, ed.,
Confucianism and Economic Development, Washington, DC: Washington Institute Press, 1989.
Berger, P. L. “An East Asian Development Model,” in P. L. Berger and H. H. Hsiao, eds., In Search
of an East Asian Developmental Model, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1989.
Blaut, J. M. Eight Eurocentric Historians, New York: Guildford Press, 2000.
——— The Colonizer’s Model of the World, New York: Guildford Press, 1993.
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Fukuyama, F. The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Avon Books, 1992.
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1998.
Harootunian, H. Overcome by Modernity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Hegel, G. W. F. G. W. F Hegel: Einleitung in die Geschichteder Philosophie, Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
1956.
Hobson, J. M. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
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Hung, H. F “Orientalist Knowledge and Social Theories: China and the European Conceptions
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pp. 254–280.
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Ma, Z. “Ruxue zai shijie wenhua de diwei” (The Position of Confucianism in the Coming World
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On Sacred Grounds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
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PA RT 3
Perspectives on the West: Europe and

the Americas
CH A P T E R EIGH T
On Cultural Bondage: From Eurocentrism to

Americocentrism
A l i A . M a z ru i
A Yugoslav from Montenegro once taught an African from Mombasa,

Kenya, at Oxford University. Among the lessons which the professor from
Montenegro taught the young African was a simple proposition:
THE SINS OF THE POWERFUL ACQUIRE SOME OF THE PRESTIGE OF

POWER.
The Yugoslav was John Plamenatz who was at the time a distinguished
fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and who later became a professor of
political theory at Oxford.1 The student was Ali Mazrui.
In that simple proposition John Plamenatz captured the importance of
power in universalizing the culture of the powerful. Even the very vices of
Western culture are acquiring worldwide prestige. Muslim societies that
once refrained from alcohol are now manifesting increasing alcoholism.
Chinese elites are capitulating to Kentucky Fried Chicken and MacDonald
hamburgers.2 And Mahatma Gandhi’s country has decided to go nuclear.
Western civilization is a pretender to the status of universal validity.
Yet there are three forces that contradict that claim. One force is within
the West itself. This is the force of historical relativism. What was valid
in the West at the beginning of the twentieth century is not necessarily
valid in the West at the beginning of the twenty-first century. If validity is
changeable in the West itself from generation to generation, how can the
claim to universalism be sustained?
Another challenge to the West’s claim to universalism is not histori-
cal but cross-cultural. This latter challenge is the old nemesis of cultural
relativism. We may even reverse the order of the challenge to Western
universalism—the cross-cultural challenge first and the historical chal-
lenge second.
148 Ali A. Mazrui
Two of the organizing concepts of this essay are therefore, first, cultural
relativism (differences in values between societies) and historical relativ-
ism (differences in values between historical epochs). One of our theses
in this essay is that the moral distance between the West and Islam or
between Africa and the West is narrower than often assumed. Another of
our theses is that what are regarded as medieval aspects of African culture
or Islamic culture may have been shared by Western culture in relatively
recent times. In other words, the historical distance between African and
Islamic values, on once side, and Western values, on the other, may not be
as great as many have assumed.
But in addition to historical and cultural relativism, there is relativism
in practice, or comparative empirical performance. Is Western practice at
variance with Western doctrine? Indeed, are Western standards better ful-
filled by other societies than by the West? In some respects, is either Africa
or Islam ahead of the West by Western standards themselves? Is there a
difference between the European model of Westernism, on one side, and
the American model, on the other!
But let us first explore globalization before we return to the three areas
of relativity—historical, cultural and empirical.
What Is Globalization?
What is “globalization?” It consists of processes which lead toward global

interdependence and increasing rapidity of exchange across vast distances.
The word “globalization” is itself quite new, but the actual processes
toward global interdependence and exchange started centuries ago.3
Four forces have been major engines behind globalization across time.
These have been religion, technology, economy, and empire. These have
not necessarily acted separately, but have often reinforced each other. For
example, the globalization of Christianity started with the conversion of
Emperor Constantine I of Rome in 313 CE.4 The religious conversion
of the head of an empire started the process under which Christianity
became the dominant religion not only of Europe but also of many other
societies thousands of miles from where the religion started.
The globalization of Islam began not with converting a ready-made
empire, but with building an empire almost from scratch. The Umayyads
and Abbasides put together bits of other people’s empires (e.g., former
Byzantine Egypt and former Zoroastrian Persia) and created a whole new
civilization.
Voyages of exploration were another major stage in the process of glob-
alization. Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus in the fifteenth
century opened up a whole new chapter in the history of globalization.
Economy and empire were the major motives. There followed the migra-
tion of people symbolized by the Mayf lower. The migration of the Pilgrim
Fathers was in part a response to religious and economic imperatives.
On Cultural Bondage 149
Demographic globalization reached its height in the Americas with the

inf lux of millions of people from other hemispheres. In time the pop-
ulation of the United States became a microcosm of the population of
the world—with immigrants from every society on earth. The stage was
being set for a future American imperium—the eventual emergence of
Pax Americana and Americocentrism.
The industrial revolution in Europe from the eighteenth century
onward was another major chapter in the history of globalization. A mar-
riage between technology and economics resulted in levels of productivity
previously unknown in the annals of man. Europe’s prosperity whetted its
appetite for new worlds to conquer. The Atlantic slave trade was acceler-
ated, moving millions of Africans from one part of the world to another.5
The slave trade was another European contribution to the future might of
the United States. Europe’s appetite also went imperial on a global scale.
The British built the largest and most far-f lung colonial empire in human
experience. Most of it lasted until the end of World War II.6
The two world wars were themselves manifestations of globalization.
The twentieth century is the only century which has witnessed globalized
warfare—one from 1914 to 1918 and the other from 1939 to 1945. The
cold war was another manifestation of globalization (1948–1989)—because
it was power-rivalry on a global scale between two alliances, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact.7 The United
States and the Soviet Union became superpowers. Western Europe
declined. While the two world wars were militarily the most destructive
empirically, the cold war was the most dangerous potentially. The cold
war carried the seeds of planetary annihilation in the nuclear field.8
The final historical stage of globalization came when the indus-
trial revolution was mated with the new information revolution.
Interdependence and exchange became dramatically computerized. The
most powerful single country by this time was clearly the United States.
Pax Americana mobilized three of the four engines of globalization—
technology, economy and empire.9 Pax Americana in the second half
of the twentieth century did not directly seek to promote a particular
religion—but it did help to promote secularism and the ideology of sepa-
rating church from state. On balance, the impact of Americanization has
probably been harmful to religious values worldwide—whether intended
or not. Americanized Hindu youth, Americanized Buddhist teenagers or
Americanized Muslim youngsters are far less likely to be devout to their
faiths than non-Americanized ones. Americocentrism was becoming an
alternative to religion.
Between Hegemony and Homogeny
This brings us to the twin-concepts of homogenization and

hegemonization—however ugly the words may be! One of the consequences
150 Ali A. Mazrui
of globalization is that we are getting to be more and more alike across the
world every decade. Homogenization is increasing similarity.
The second accompanying characteristic of globalization is hegemonization—
the paradoxical concentration of power in a particular country or in a par-
ticular civilization. While “homogenization” is the process of expanding
homogeneity, “hegemonization” is the emergence and consolidation of
the hegemonic center.
With globalization there have been increasing similarities between and
among the societies of the world. But this trend has been accompanied
by disproportionate global power among a few countries. Culturally the
world first got Europeanized; and then it slowly became Americanized.
By the twenty-first century people dress more alike all over the world
than they did at the end of the nineteenth century (Homogenization). But
the dress code that is getting globalized is overwhelmingly the Western
dress code (Hegemonization). Indeed, the man’s suit (European) has become
almost universalized in all parts of the world. And the jeans’ revolution
(American) has captured the youth dress culture of half the globe.10
By the twenty-first century the human race is closer to having world
languages than it was in the nineteenth century, if by a world language
we mean one which has at least 300 million speakers, has been adopted
by at least ten countries as a national language, has spread to at least two
continents as a major language, and is widely used in four continents for
special purposes (Homogenization).
However, when we examine the languages which have been globalized,
they are disproportionately European—especially English and French,
and to lesser extent, Spanish (Hegemonization).11 The British Empire was
the first to spread the English language. The American imperium later
took over the dissemination of English.
Arabic is putting forward a strong claim as a world language, but partly
because of the globalization of Islam and the role of Arabic as a language
of Islamic ritual.
By the twenty-first century we are closer to a world economy than we have
ever been before in human history. A sneeze in Hong Kong, and certainly a
cough in Tokyo can send shock waves around the globe (Homogenization).
And yet the powers that control this world economy are dispropor-
tionately Western. They are the G-7: The United States, Japan, Germany,
Britain, France, Canada, and Italy in that order of economic muscle
(Hegemonization). The United States led the way as a producer and con-
sumer, and as a source of capital and technology.
By the twenty-first century the Internet has given us instant access
to both information and mutual communication across large distances
(Homogenization). However, the nerve center of the global Internet system
is still located in the United States and has residual links in the United
States Federal Government (Hegemonization).12
The educational systems in the twenty-first century are getting more
and more similar across the world—with comparable term-units and
semesters, and increasing professorial similarities, and similarity in course

content (Homogenization).
But the role-models behind this dramatic academic convergence have
been the educational models first of Europe and later of the United States,
which have attracted both emulators and imitators (Hegemonization).
The ideological systems of the world in the twenty-first century
are also converging as market economies seem to emerge triumphant.
Liberalization is being widely embraced, either spontaneously or under
duress. Anwar Sadat in Egypt opened the gates of infitah, and even the
People’s Republic of China has adopted a kind of market Marxism. India
is in danger of traversing the distance from Mahatma Gandhi to Mahatma
Keynes (Homogenization). The economic supremacy of the United States
and the European Union was at last genuinely challenged.
However, the people who are orchestrating and sometimes enforc-
ing marketization, liberalization and privatization are still Western
economic gurus—reinforced by the power of the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, the United States, and the European
Union. Indeed, Europe is the mother of all modern ideologies, good
and evil—liberalism, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, fascism, Nazism
and others. The most triumphant by the end of the twentieth cen-
tury has been Euro-liberal capitalism (market ideologies) (Hegemonic
Homogenization). The most inf luential champion of market ideologies
was now the United States.
Islam: Victim or Victor?
At the moment the Muslim world is a net loser from both homogenization
and hegemonization. However, will Islam one day gain from homogeni-
zation? Only if Muslim values penetrate the global pool. Can people share
Muslim values without sharing the Muslim religion?
For example many U.S. Muslims find themselves sharing social values
with Republicans in the United States:
● in favour of prayer at school

● against easy abortion
● against too much homosexual permissiveness
● in favour of family values and stable marriages.13
One can be in agreement with Islamic values without being a Muslim. Indeed,
the United States after World War I brief ly agreed with the Muslim value
against alcohol—and passed the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment in
1919 outlawing alcohol (consult Coffey 1975 and Kerr 1985).
But not enough Americans were convinced. More than a decade
later (after Al Capone’s adventures) the Twenty-First Constitutional
Amendment was passed in 1933 allowing alcohol (Coffey 1975, p. 315).
152 Ali A. Mazrui
Will Muslim values in the twenty-first century once again gain favor in
the United States?
There was a time in history when the Muslim presence in the Western
world once carried great intellectual and scientific inf luence. These were
the days when Arabic words like algebra and zero entered Western scientific
lexicons.14 To the present day the West calculates with Arabic numerals.
One of the remarkable things about the twentieth century is that it
has combined the cultural Westernization of the Muslim world, on the
one hand, and the more recent demographic Islamization of the Western
world, on the other. The foundations for the cultural Westernization of
the Muslim world were laid by Europe mainly in the first half of the
twentieth century. The foundations of the demographic Islamization of
the Western world are being laid by both Europe and America in the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century. Let us take each of these two phases of
Euro-Islamic interaction in turn.
In the first half of the century, the West had colonized more than two
thirds of the Muslim world—from Kano to Karachi, from Cairo to Kuala
Lumpur, from Dakar to Jakarta. The first half of the twentieth century
also witnessed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the more complete
de-Islamization of the European state-system. The aftermath included the
abolition of the Caliphate as the symbolic center of Islamic authority.
The ummah became more fragmented than ever and became even more
receptive to Western cultural penetration.
Other forces which facilitated the cultural Westernization of the
Muslim world included the replacement of Islamic and Qur’anic schools
with Western style schools; the increasing use of European languages in
major Muslim countries; the impact of the Western media upon distri-
bution of news, information and entertainment, ranging from maga-
zines, cinema, television, and video, to the new universe of computers.15
Homogenization was responding to the forces of hegemonization. Finally,
there has been the omnipresent Western technology—which carries with
it not only new skills but also new values. The net result has indeed been
a form of globalization of aspects of culture. However, this has been a
Eurocentric and Americocentric brand of globalization. An aspect of
Western culture is eventually embraced by other cultures—and masquer-
ades as universal. European colonialism was replaced by an informal cul-
tural American hegemony.
The globalization of two pieces of Eurocentric world culture may tell
the story of things to come: the Western Christian calendar, especially
the Gregorian calendar, and the worldwide dress code for men, which we
mentioned earlier.
Many countries in Africa and Asia have adopted wholesale the Western
Christian calendar as their own. They celebrate their independence day
according to the Christian calendar, and write their own history accord-
ing to Gregorian years, using distinctions such as before or after Christ.
Some Muslim countries even recognize Sunday as the day of rest instead
of Friday. In some cultures, the entire Islamic historiography has been

reperiodized according to the Christian calendar instead of the Hijjra.
The march of history had itself become Eurocentric.
From the second half of the twentieth century, both Muslim migration
to the West and conversions to Islam within the West have been consoli-
dating a new human Islamic presence. In Europe as a whole, there are now
twenty million Muslims, ten million of whom are in Western Europe.16
This figure excludes the Muslims of the Republic of Turkey, who number
some fifty million. There are new mosques from Munich to Marseilles.17
The United States has 6 million Muslims, including two Muslim members
of the House of Representatives for the first time in 200 years.
Paradoxically, the cultural Westernization of the Muslim world is one of
the causes behind the demographic Islamization of the West. The cultural
Westernization of Muslims contributed to the “brain drain” that lured
Muslim professionals and experts from their homes in Muslim countries
to jobs and educational institutions in North America and the European
Union. The old formal empires of the West have unleashed demographic
counterpenetration. Some of the most qualified Muslims in the world
have been attracted to professional positions in Europe or North America.
It is in that sense that the cultural Westernization of the Muslim world in
the first half of the twentieth century was part of the preparation for the
demographic Islamization of the West in the second half of the twentieth
century. France at last had Muslim women on the cabinet. Britain had
Muslims in the House of Lords, both male and female.
But not by any means are all Muslim migrants to the West highly
qualified. The legacy of Western colonialism also facilitated the migration
of less-qualified Muslims from places like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan,
Senegal, and Algeria into Britain and France—again post-colonial demo-
graphic counterpenetration. There have also been occasions when, in
need of cheap labor, the West has deliberately encouraged immigration
of less-qualified Muslims—as in the case of the importation of Turkish
workers into the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s and 1970s
(see Stowasser 2002, pp. 52–71).
As another manifestation of the demographic Islamization of the
Western world, there are now over one thousand mosques and Qur’anic
centers in the United States alone, as well as professional associations for
Muslim engineers, Muslim social scientists and Muslim educators. As we
indicated, there are over six million American Muslims—and the number
is rising impressively.18 Muslims now probably outnumber Jews in the
United States since the end of the twentieth century.19 Islam is currently
the fastest growing religion in North America. Barack Hussein Obama is
the son of a Muslim, who has now captured the White House.
In France, Islam has the second-highest number of adherents;
Catholicism has the most followers. In Britain, some Muslims are experi-
menting with their own Islamic parliament, and others are demanding
state subsidies for Muslim schools. The Federal Republic of Germany is
154 Ali A. Mazrui
realizing that importing Turkish workers in the 1970s was also an invita-
tion to the muezzin and the minaret to establish themselves in German
cities. Australia has discovered that it is a neighbor to the country with
the largest Muslim population in the world (Indonesia). Australia has also
discovered an Islamic presence in its own body-politic.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the three Abrahamic creeds of world
history. In the twentieth century, the Western world is often described
as a Judeo-Christian civilization, thus linking the West to two of those
Abrahamic faiths. But if Muslims already outnumber Jews in countries
such as the United States, perhaps Islam is replacing Judaism as the second
most important Abrahamic religion after Christianity. Numerically, Islam
in time may overshadow Judaism in much of the West, regardless of future
immigration policies.
The question has thus arisen about how Islam is to be treated in Western
classrooms, textbooks and media as Islam becomes a more integral part
of Western society. In the Muslim world, education has got substantially
Westernized. Is it now the turn of education in the West to become par-
tially Islamized?
The Euro-Islamic story of interpenetration continues to unfold. It
now overlaps with Americo-Islamic interaction. Is this a new threshold
for globalization? Or is it just another manifestation of the postcolonial
condition in world history? In fact, it may be both.
The counterpenetration by Islam and Muslims into Western civiliza-
tion will not in itself end Western hegemonization. But an Islamic presence
in the Western World on a significant scale may begin to reverse at long
last the wheels of cultural homogenization. Values will begin to mix, tastes
compete, perspectives intermingle, as a new moral calculus evolves on
the world scene. Eurocentrism and Americocentrism continue to be huge
bazaars of ideas and values.
Empirical Relativism and Moral Performance
Let us now return to the three forms of relativity with which we began—
historical, cultural and empirical. Hegemonic and homogenizing as
Western culture has been, it has not been without its contradictions and
serious shortfalls. Its claim to universalism has been up against the relativ-
ity of history (temporal), of culture (cross-cultural) and of implementation (the
logic of consistency). Let us begin with this third area of relativity—the
tests of empiricism and performance.
Empirical relativism has two aspects. One aspect concerns whether
in practice Western civilization lives up to its own standards. The other
aspect concerns situations in which Western ethical standards are better
implemented by other civilizations than by the West itself.
When a famous Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence pronounces
that “all men are created equal” and then the founders build an economy
in America based on slavery, that is a case of Western culture failing by

its own standards.
On the other hand, if during the same historical period we study econ-
omies without either slavery or caste among the Kikuyu in East Africa
or the Tiv in West Africa, we are observing societies which were more
egalitarian than the liberal West.
The Western Christian ethic of the minimization of violence has repeat-
edly been honored by Westerners more in the breach than the observance.
In the past century Christians have killed more people than have followers
of any other religion in any single century. Many of the millions of vic-
tims of Christian violence in the two world wars were themselves fellow
Christians—though the Holocaust against the Jews and the Gypsies stand
out as special cases of genocide perpetrated by Westerners in otherwise
Christian nations.
If minimization of violence is part of Christian ethics, it is a standard
which has not only been violated by the West. It has also been better
implemented by other cultures in history. In the first half of the twenti-
eth century India produced Mohandas Gandhi who led one of the most
remarkable nonviolent anticolonial movements ever witnessed. Westerners
themselves saw Gandhi’s message as the nearest approximation of the
Christian ethic of the first half of the twentieth century.20
Mahatma Gandhi’s India gave birth to new principles of passive resis-
tance and satyagraha. Yet Gandhi himself said that it may be through
the Black people that the unadulterated message of soul force and passive
resistance might be realized (see Kapur 1992, pp. 89–90). If Gandhi was
right, this would be one more illustration when the culture which gives
birth to an ethic is not necessarily the culture that fulfills the ethic.
The Nobel Committee for Peace in Oslo seems to have shared some of
Gandhi’s optimism about the soul force of the Black people. Africans and
people of African descent who have won the Nobel Prize for Peace since
the middle of the twentieth century have included Ralph Bunche (1950),
Albert Luthuli (1960), Martin Luther King Jr. (1964), Anwar Sadat (1978)
Desmond Tutu (1984), Nelson Mandela (1993), Kofi Annan (2001), and
Wangari Maathai (2004). Neither Mahatma Gandhi himself nor any of his
compatriots in India ever won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Was Mahatma
Gandhi vindicated that the so-called Negro was going to be the best
exemplar of soul force? Was this a case of African culture being empiri-
cally more Gandhian than Indian culture?
In reality Black people have been at least as violent as anything ever
perpetrated by Indians. What is distinctive about Africans is their short
memory of hate.
Jomo Kenyatta was unjustly imprisoned by the British colonial authori-
ties over charges of founding the Mau Mau movement. A British gover-
nor also denounced him as “a leader into darkness and death” 21 And yet
when Jomo Kenyatta was released he not only forgave the white settlers,
but turned the whole country toward a basic pro-Western orientation to
156 Ali A. Mazrui
which it has remained committed ever since. Kenyatta even published a

book entitled Suffering without Bitterness (Kenyatta 1968).
Ian Smith, the white settler leader of Rhodesia, unilaterally declared
independence in 1965 and unleashed a civil war on Rhodesia. Thousands
of people, mainly Black, died in the country as a result of policies pursued
by Ian Smith. Yet when the war ended in 1980 Ian Smith and his cohorts
were not subjected to a Nuremberg-style trial. On the contrary, Ian Smith
was himself a member of parliament in a Black-ruled Zimbabwe, busy
criticizing the post-Smith Black leaders of Zimbabwe as incompetent and
dishonest. Where else but in Africa could such tolerance occur?22
The Nigerian civil war (1967–1970) was the most highly publicized
civil conf lict in postcolonial African history. When the war was coming
to an end, many people feared that there would be a bloodbath in the
defeated eastern region. The Vatican was worried that cities like Enugu
and Onitcha, strongholds of Catholicism, would be monuments of devas-
tation and blood-letting.
None of these expectations occurred. Nigerians—seldom among
the most disciplined of Africans—discovered in 1970 some remarkable
resources of self-restraint. There were no triumphant reprisals against the
vanquished Biafrans; there were no vengeful trials of “traitors.”23
We have also witnessed the phenomenon of Nelson Mandela. He lost
twenty-seven of the best years of his life in prison under the laws of the
apartheid regime. Yet when he was released he not only emphasized the
policy of reconciliation—he often went beyond the call of duty. On one
occasion before he became president White men were fasting unto death
after being convicted of terrorist offences by their own white govern-
ment. Nelson Mandela went out of his way to beg them to eat and thus
spare their own lives.
When Mandela became president in 1994 it was surely enough that
his government would leave the architects of apartheid unmolested. Yet
Nelson Mandela went out of his way to pay a social call and have tea with
the unrepentant widow of Hendrik F. Verwoed, the supreme architect
of the worst forms of apartheid, who shaped the whole racist order from
1958 to 1966. Mandela was having tea with the family of Verwoed.24
Was Mahatma Gandhi correct, after all, that his torch of soul force
(satyagraha) might find its brightest manifestations among Black people?
Empirical relativism was at work again.
In the history of civilizations there are occasions when the image in
the mirror is more real that the object it ref lects. Black Gandhians such
as Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, and, in a unique sense, Nelson
Mandela have sometimes ref lected Gandhian soul force more brightly
than Gandhians in India. Part of the explanation lies in the soul of African
culture itself—with all its capacity for rapid forgiveness.25
It is a positive modification of “the Picture of Dorian Gray.” In Oscar
Wilde’s novel, the picture of Dorian Gray is a truer ref lection of the man’s
decrepit body and lost soul than the man himself. The decomposition of
Dorian’s body and soul is transferred from Dorian himself to his picture.
The picture is more real than the man.
In the case of Gandhism, it is not the decomposition of the soul but its
elevation that is transferred from India to the Black experience. In the past
100 years both Indian culture and African culture have, in any case, been
guilty of far less blood-letting than the West. Christian minimization of
violence has been observed more by non-Christians than by ostensible
followers of the Cross. Empirical relativism continues its contradictions.
But Western claims to universalism are challenged not just by the forces
of empirical contradictions. They are, as we indicated, also challenged by
the relativism of history and the relativism of culture. Let us now elabo-
rate on these two areas of history and culture.
Between Cultural and Historical Relativism
If under cultural relativism, cultures differ across space (from society to

society), under historical relativism cultures differ across time—from
epoch to epoch or age to age. In Western society pre-marital sex was
strongly disapproved of until after World War II. In the nineteenth cen-
tury it was even punishable. Today sex before marriage is widely practiced
in the West with parental consent. This is historical relativism.26
Are laws against gays and lesbians a violation of human rights? Today
half the Western world says “yes.” Yet homosexuality between males was
a crime in Great Britain until the 1960s—though lesbianism was not out-
lawed. Now both male and female homosexuality between consenting
adults is permitted in most of the Western World. Indeed, a majority of
Americans and Europeans would say today that laws against homosexual
sexuality are a violation of the rights of gays and lesbians.27 This is his-
torical relativism. On the other hand, in most of the rest of the world
homosexuality is still illegal in varying degrees. We are confronting a
clash between historical relativism in the West and geo-cultural relativ-
ism in the third world. In Africa the two extremes on homosexuality are
the neighboring countries of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Zimbabwe’s
President Mugabe is a personal crusader against homosexuality. South
Africa, on the other hand, has legalized it.28
Almost everywhere in the Western World except the U.S. capital pun-
ishment has been abolished. The United States is increasing the number of
capital offenses for the time being. But it is almost certain that capital pun-
ishment even in the United States will one day be regarded as a violation
of human rights. This would be historical relativism within the Western
civilization. In Africa South Africa has tried to lead the way against the
death penalty. Has it outlived its rational utility?
Sometimes cultural relativism and historical relativism converge. This
is especially true when Muslim and African countries want to revive legal
systems which go back many centuries. Such countries attempt to reenact
158 Ali A. Mazrui
the past in modern conditions. Sudan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are among
the examples where cultural and historical relativism converge.
Can you have polygyny or polygamy by consent? In the United States
the term “pro-choice” is reserved for the issue of whether a woman wants
a baby or not. In the Muslim world and in Africa a woman’s right to
choose may include her choice to marry a man who already has another
wife. “I would rather share this man than not have him at all.” At least
one of Moshood Abiola’s multiple wives in Nigeria had a Western Ph.D.,
a measure of polygamy by consent.
In the West a woman may choose to become a mistress of a married
man but she is not allowed to marry the same man and have equal rights
as a second wife. That is cultural relativism in sexual mores.
Are human rights sometimes trapped between the sacredness of art ver-
sus the sacredness of religion? As the West has got more and more secular,
it has looked for new abodes of sacredness.
By the late twentieth century the freedom of the artist was more sacred
to Westerners than respect for religion. Hence the clash that occurred
from 1988 onward between the Western world and the Muslim world in
relation to Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses.
The book makes fun of the Holy Scripture of Muslims, the Qur’an—
suggesting that perhaps the verses were fake or inspired by the Devil. The
novel strongly suggests that the prophet Muhammad was a fraud and not a
very intelligent one at that. The book puts women bearing the names of the
Prophet Muhammad’s wives in a whore-house—prostitutes called Hafsa,
Aisha, Khadija, the historic names of the prophet’s wives. The names of the
prophet’s wives were supposed to be aphrodisiac for sexual excitement.
Iran issued a fatwa or legal judgment accusing Rushdie of a capital reli-
gious offense and sentenced him to death in absentia. Iran was the only
one of some fifty Muslim countries to pass the death penalty on Rushdie.
But there were popular Muslim demonstrations against Rushdie from
Kaduna to Karachi.29
Rushdie had to spend at least a decade in cautious hiding. The bad news
was that a number of airlines refused at times to have him as a passenger
because he was a security risk.
The good news, on the other hand, was that he became a millionaire
several times over from the book and related products. He became more
wealthy but less secure.
Westerners have argued that as a novelist Rushdie had a right to write
anything he wanted. This was open-ended Eurocentrism. However,
Muslims from Lamu to Lahore have argued that he had no right to hold
up for obscenity and ridicule some of the most sacred things in Islam. The
sacredness of the artist has been in collision with the sacredness of religion
over Salman Rushdie’s novel. The West’s claim to universalism sometimes
extends from Western values to Western custodial claim to the defense of
those values. Even if Western values are universal, is Western practice an
implementation of those values?
One of the more remarkable coincidences of the year 2000 concerns

how democracy collided with two people with similar sounding names
(Haydar/Haider)—one a Syrian and the other Austrian, one liberal and
the other extreme right-wing, one a writer and the other an activist and
politician.
In Austria Dr. Jorg Haider was deputy governor of Carinthia and chair
of the neo-Nazi FPO party that joined the government coalition in the
year 2000. The coalition was the outcome of electoral democratic forces in
Austria. And yet pro-Democracy fellow members of the European Union
turned against the government of Austria and tried to squeeze Haider’s
party out of the democratically elected governing coalition. Was democ-
racy fighting against democracy in the European Union over the Austrian
question? Certainly most members of the European Union have decided
that there is a limit to freedom of political participation (see Pelinka 2005,
pp. 80–82, and also Buhr 2007).
The other Haydar is Haydar, the Syrian, who published in Cyprus in
1983 a novel entitled Banquet of Seaweed. Lebanon republished the novel
in 1992 without any earth tremors. In November 1999 Egypt’s Ministry
of Culture followed suit. It published the volume among the major works
of modern Arabic literature. There was delayed reaction—until El-Shaab,
a pro-Islamist newspaper, published extracts ostensibly insulting to the
Prophet Muhammad and Islam.30
Was the Syrian Haydar as much of a threat to the fundamentals of his
own Arab civilization as the Austrian Haider had been to his own European
civilization? When individuals threaten the fabric of civilization, should
democracy give way? If Arab and Islamic civilizations are threatened by
a Syrian Haydar, should democracy be subordinated to higher values? If
Western civilization is threatened by the Austrian Haider, should Austrian
democracy be subordinated to European civilization?
In reality both Islam and the West have put limits to freedom of expres-
sion and indeed to democratic outcomes. Over Austria the European
Union had decided that the values of Western civilization were more
important than the outcomes of Austrian democracy. Should the novel
Banquet of Seaweed be judged by the standards of Islamic civilization or
by the criteria of democracy? The dilemma was crucial but remained
unresolved.
Empirical Relativism and Comparative Censorship
The third area of relativism is once again empirical. How do cultures behave
in practice? Our discussion has already entered the arena of Western civil
liberties. In what sense is the cultural distance between the West, Africa,
and Islam narrower than often assumed? One compelling illustration con-
cerns the issue of censorship and the implementation of values. Here we
are again dealing with empirical relativism.
160 Ali A. Mazrui
A book may be censored because of the moral repugnance of its con-

tents. Most Muslim countries and some African ones have banned Salman
Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, because they viewed it as blasphemous
and morally repugnant.
Alternatively, a book may be censored or banned because of the moral
“repugnance” of its author. St. Martin’s Press was going to publish in 1996
a book entitled Goebbels, Mastermind of the Third Reich. Enormous inter-
national pressure was put on St. Martin’s Press to withdraw the book.
Most of the pressure came from people who could not possibly have read
the manuscript of that particular book. The moral objection was to the
author of the book, David Irving, who was viewed as an anti-Semitic
revisionist historian of the Holocaust. In the case of the particular book
on Goebbels, it was probably the singer (David Irving) rather than the
song (Mastermind of the Third Reich) which finally made St. Martin’s
Press change its mind and withdraw the book (Caravajal 1996). David
Irving has since been legally condemned in Britain as anti-Semitic and
Holocaust-denier.
But a book may also be censored or banned out of fear of its
consequences—the equivalent of “clear and present danger.” When India
gave this kind of explanation for banning Rushdie’s Satanic Verses—that
the book would inf lame religious passions—the West was less than sym-
pathetic. Certainly Rushdie’s publishers paid no attention to prior warn-
ings from India before publication that the book was inf lammatory. The
publication of the book even in faraway London did result in loss of life in
civil disturbances in Bombay and Karachi in 1989.
In contrast, distinguished Western publishers have been known to care
enough about the safety of their own staff to make that the reason for
rejecting a manuscript. One prominent case is Cambridge University
Press’s rejection of the book, Fields of Wheat, Rivers of Blood by Anastasia
Karakasidou. The book was about ethnicity in the Greek province of
Macedonia. Cambridge’s rejection was directly and frankly linked to its
fear for the safety of its staff members in Greece (Lyall 1996).
If Viking Penguin Inc., the publishers of The Satanic Verses, had cared as
much about South Asian lives as Cambridge University Press cared about
its own staff in Greece, the cost in blood of The Satanic Verses would have
been reduced. The issue here is still empirical relativism. Does Western prac-
tice meet Western standards?
Let us now turn more closely to comparative methods of censorship as an
aspect of empirical relativism. Censorship in Muslim countries is often
crude, and is done by governments, by Mullahs and imams, and more
recently by militant Islamic movements. Censorship in the West, on the
other hand, is more polished and more decentralized. It is done by adver-
tisers for commercial television, by subscribers to the Public Broadcasting
System, by ethnic pressure groups and interest groups, by editors, by pub-
lishers and by other controllers of means of communication. In Europe it
is sometimes also done by governments.
The law in the United States protects opinion better than almost any-
where else in the world. In 1986 my television series The Africans: A Triple
Heritage was threatened with legal action by Kaiser Aluminum because I
had described the company’s terms for the construction of the Akosombo
Dam in Ghana as exploitative. Both my own personal lawyer and the
lawyers for Public Broadcasting System (PBS) were unanimous in their
opinion that Kaiser Aluminum did not stand a chance under American
law. We called Kaiser’s bluff, showed the offending sequence, and Kaiser
Aluminum did nothing.
The threat to free speech in the United States does not come from the
law and the Constitution but from nongovernmental forces. The same
PBS which was invulnerable before the law on the issue of free speech
capitulated to other forces when I metaphorically described Karl Marx as
“the last of the Great Jewish prophets.” The earlier British version of my
television series had included that phrase. The American version unilater-
ally deleted it out of fear of offending Jewish Americans. I was never asked
for permission to delete. Ironically many viewers in Israel saw the British
version complete with the controversial metaphor.
What PBS had done was a case of decentralized censorship. The laws of the
United States granted me freedom of speech and freedom of opinion—but
censorship in the country is perpetrated by editors, financial benefac-
tors, and inf luential pressure groups. It is a special kind of empirical
relativism.
On one issue of censorship the relevant PBS producing station did con-
sult me. WETA, the PBS station in Washington, DC, was unhappy that I
had not injected enough negativism in my portrayal of Libya’s Muammar
Qaddafy in a sequence of about three minutes. I was first asked if I would
agree to change my commentary and talk more about “terrorism.” When
I refused to change my commentary, WETA suggested that we changed
the pictures instead—deleting one sequence that appeared to humanize
Qaddafy (the Libyan leader visiting a hospital) and substituting a picture
of Rome airport after a terrorist attack (which would re-demonize the
Libyan leader).
After much debate I managed to save the positive humanizing hospital
scene, but surrendered to the addition of a negative scene of Rome airport
after a terrorist attack. My agreement was on condition that neither I nor
the written caption implied that Libya was responsible for the bomb. But
ideally WETA would have preferred to delete the sequence about Libya
altogether.
Two years later I was invited to Libya after the Arabic version of my tele-
vision series was shown there. It turned out that WETA had more in com-
mon with the censors in Libya than either realized. Although the Libyans
seemed pleased with my television series as a whole, the three-minute
sequence about Muammar Qaddafy had been deleted from the version
shown in Tripoli. If WETA had regarded the sequences as too sympa-
thetic to Qaddafy, perhaps the Libyans decided they were not sympathetic
162 Ali A. Mazrui
enough. And since the Libyans were not in a position to negotiate with
me about whether to change the commentary or add to the pictures, they
decided to delete the sequence altogether.
In the United States the sequence about Qaddafy had also offended
Lynne Cheney, who was at the time chair of the National Endowment for
the Humanities. The sequence was a major reason why she demanded the
removal of the name of the Endowment from the television credits at the
end of the series. Much later, after she stepped down as chair, she demanded
the abolition of the National Endowment for the Humanities itself alto-
gether. She cited as one of her reasons my own television series, The Africans:
A Triple Heritage, using it as an example of the type of objectionable liberal
projects which the Endowment had tended to fund (Cheney 1995).
Another illustration of decentralized censorship and empirical relativ-
ism that has affected my own work involved my book Cultural Forces in
World Politics. Originally it was to be published by Westview Press in
Colorado. They were about to go to press when they declared that they
wanted to delete three chapters. One chapter discussed The Satanic Verses
as a case of cultural treason; another chapter compared the Palestinian
intifadah with the Chinese students’ rebellion in Tiananmen Square in
Beijing, China, in 1989; and the third objectionable chapter compared the
apartheid doctrine of separate homelands for Blacks and Whites in South
Africa with the Zionist doctrine of separate States for Jews and Arabs.
Clearly the Westview Press wanted to censor those three chapters
because they were the most politically sensitive in the American context.
I suspected that I would have similar problems with most other major
U.S. publishers with regard to those three chapters. I therefore relied more
exclusively on my British publishers in London, James Currey, and on the
American offshoot of another British publisher, Heinemann Educational
Books. My book was published by those two in 1990.
This is the positive side of decentralized censorship in the West. At least
with regard to books, what is under the threat of censorship by one pub-
lisher may be acceptable by another. Or what is almost unpublishable in the
United States may be easily publishable in Britain or the Netherlands.
With national television the choices are more restricted even in the
West. Many points of view are condemned to national silence on the tele-
vision screen. The West does not meet its own democratic standards.
What conclusion do we draw from all this? The essential point being
made is that strictly on the issue of free speech, the cultural difference
between Western culture and Islamic culture may not be as wide as often
assumed. In both civilizations only a few points of view have national
access to the media and the publishing world. In both civilizations only a
few points of view have national access to the media and the publishing
world. In both civilizations there is marginalization by exclusion from the
center. But there is one big difference. Censorship in Muslim societies
tends to be more centralized, often done by the state, though there are
also restrictions on free speech imposed by Mullahs and Imams and mili-
tant religious movements.
In the United States, on the other hand, there is no centralized politi-

cal censorship by governmental or judicial institutions. Censorship is far
more decentralized and is exercised by non-governmental social forces
and institutions.
The Relativity of History
Let us now return to the issue of historical relativism between the West
and the world of Islam. Popular images of Islamic values in the West
tend to regard those values as “medieval” and hopelessly anachronistic. In
reality most Muslim societies are at worst decades rather than centuries
behind the West—and in some respects Islamic culture is more humane
than Western culture.
The gender question in Muslim countries is still rather troubling. But
again the historical distance between the West and Islam may be in terms
of decades rather than centuries. In almost all Western countries apart
from New Zealand women did not get the vote until the twentieth cen-
tury. Great Britain extended the vote to women in two stages—1918
and 1928. The United States enfranchised women with a constitutional
amendment in 1920. Switzerland did not give women the vote at the
national level until 1971—long after Muslim women had been voting in
Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Indonesia.31
British wives earned the right to own independent property in 1870.
Muslim wives had always done so. Indeed, Islam is probably the only
major religion that was founded by a businessman who was in commer-
cial partnership with his wife, Khadija. What we are dealing with here
is the practical implementation of values. Even if Western values were
universal, is Western practice compatible with the values? Is the West the
best embodiment of its own values? Empirical relativism reveals glaring
Western contradictions.
The United States, the largest and most inf luential Western nation, has
never had a female president or head of government. France has never
had a woman president either, or Italy a woman prime minister. On the
other hand, both the second and third Muslim societies in population
(Pakistan and Bangladesh) have had women prime ministers more than
once each. Pakistan has had Benazir Bhutto twice as prime minister and
Bangladesh has had Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Rahman Wajed con-
secutively in power. Indonesia has had a female vice president—Megawati
Sukarnoputri. Benazir Bhutto was killed when she was campaigning for a
third term to head a government.
Turkey, another Muslim country, has also had a woman prime
minister—Tansu Ciller. Turkey is a Muslim society that inaugurated a sec-
ular state as recently as the 1920s, but has already produced a woman chief
executive. The United States has been a secular state for 200—and has still
not produced a woman president, in spite of Hillary Clinton’s impressive
campaign against Barack Obama.
164 Ali A. Mazrui
Conclusion
In this essay we started from the premise that “THE SINS OF THE POWER-
FUL ACQUIRE SOME OF THE PRESTIGE OF POWER.” The West has become
powerful over the past five to six centuries. Western culture and civi-
lization became inf luential, and attracted widespread imitation and
emulation. Western hegemony precipitated widespread homogenization of
values, styles and institutions. Much of the world became westernized,
first in the image of Europe (Eurocentrism) and later in the image of the
United States (Americocentrism).
The Westernization of the world has been part and parcel of the phe-
nomenon which we have come to refer to as “GLOBALIZATION.” The
economic meaning of “globalization” refers to the expansion of world
economic interdependence under Western control. The informational
meaning of “globalization” refers to the triumph of the computer, the
Internet and Information Superhighway. The United States has led the
war in the information revolution. The comprehensive meaning of “glo-
balization” refers to all the forces which have been leading the world
toward a global village. Globalization in this third sense has meant the
villagization of the world.
In the economic and informational meaning of globalization, the West
has been the primary engine of global change. Since World War II the
United States especially has led the way. However, in the comprehensive
meaning of globalization (leading toward the global village) some other
civilizations have been equally crucial at other stages of history.
The West’s triumph in the last two or three centuries has led to the
claim that Western civilization has universal validity. Such a claim faces
three challenges—the challenge of historical relativism (what was valid in
the West a hundred years ago is not necessarily valid today), the challenge
of cultural relativism (what is valid in the West may not be valid in other
cultures and civilizations) and the challenge of empirical relativism (not only
does the West fail to meet its own ethical standards, but those standards
are sometimes better fulfilled by other cultures than by the West).
In comparison with the West this essay has used mainly illustrations
from Islam and Africa (two overlapping civilizations), with some impor-
tant lessons from India’s Mahatma Gandhi.
We can conclude that, in distribution, Western civilization is the most
globalized in history. It was triggered by Europe [Eurocentrism] and
expanded by America [Americo-centrism]. No other civilization in the
annals of the human race has touched so many individual members of
that race, or so many societies in the world. But global distribution is
not the same thing as universal validity. After all, Marxism was once
globally distributed to almost a third of the population of the world.
That did not give Marxism “a third of universal validity.” Indeed, we
now know that Marxism and communism have shrunk in distribution
almost overnight.
If there is a universal ethical standard in the world, we have not yet dis-
covered it. It is certainly not the Western ethical standard—otherwise the
United States would not be wondering whether the death penalty is moral
or not. Nor would racism still be prevalent in the Western world.
This essay continues to assume that human history is a search for the
Universal. The United States and Europe have not found it—but the West
as a whole has certainly taken us a step or two toward it. The West has also
helped to create the conditions not only for life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, but also conditions for the pursuit of the Universal for genera-
tions to come.
If the vices of the powerful acquire some of the prestige of power, what
about the virtues of the mighty? The United States is the first Western
country to elect a Black person to supreme political power. Will this
American virtue be imitated by the British to produce a Black prime min-
ister, or by the French to produce a Black president, or by the Germans
to produce a Black chancellor? Let us hope the virtues of the mighty will
this time command as much imitation as the old vices.
Appendix
EUROPEAN EMPIRES AMERICAN IMPERIUM

I. Territorial Occupation Hegemonic Control
(e.g., Pax Britannica) (e.g., Pax Americana)
II. Polycentric Imperialism Unicentric Imperialism
(London, Paris, Brussels, Lisbon, (Washington, DC)
etc.)
III. Imperial Competition Imperial Monopoly
(e.g., The scramble for Africa) (single superpower)
U.S. worries about China’s
countervailing potential
IV. Multilingual Expansion Monolingual Spread
(English, French, Portuguese, etc.) (American English on the
rise)
V. Language Transfer through Formal Language Transfer through
Schools Informal Impact:
(state and missionary schools) (a) Demonstration effect
(b) Foreign aid and trade
(c) The media
(d) Cinema, song, and
entertainment
VI. Governance with Economy of Governance through Massive
Force Military Force
VII. Imperialism as a Monopoly-stage Imperialism as a Monopoly-
of Warfare (Pax Britannica) stage of Weapons of Mass
Destruction (Pax Americana)
166 Ali A. Mazrui
VIII. Southern Vulnerability alongside North-South Reciprocal

Northern Security (London and Vulnerability (Washington
Paris were militarily safe from and New York are no longer
anticolonial wars) safe from Southern terroristic
retaliation)
IX. Imperial Legitimation by the Imperial Legitimation by the
Yardstick of Comparative Yardstick of Comparative
Standards of “Civilization” Standards of “Democracy”
X. European Sovereignty in the American Power in the
Colonies Carried Accountability Dependencies Carries Legal
for Colonial Welfare Impunity
XI. Eurocentric International Americocentric World
Economy Economy
XII. Engine of the Forces of Engine of the Forces of
Westernization (political, Globalization (political,
economic, technological, and economic, electronic, and
cultural) informational)
XIII. At their worst European empires At its worst the American
were empires of racism Imperium is an empire of
cultural aggression
Notes
This paper draws from the author’s previous writings about the Western world’s cultural hegemony
in modern history. It has an appendix brief ly comparing Western European colonialism with the
new American Imperium.
1. A collection of essays by some former students of Plamenatz that may be consulted is Miller and
Siedentop (1983). Significant works by Plamenatz include Plamenatz (1938, 1958, 1960).
2. Per capita consumption of meat in the developing world has doubled from 1987 to 2007, with
an impact on the environment; see Bittman (2007).
3. Brief overviews of globalization may be found in Scholte (2005); Osterhammel and Petersson
(2005); and Steger (2003).
4. For a discussion of the impact of Constantine on Christianity, see Coleman (1914).
5. A comprehensive analysis of the slave trade may be found in Inikori and Engerman (1992).
6. For a history of the British Empire, see Marshall (2001).
7. For treatments of the cold war, consult, for instance, Bogle (2001) and Gavin (2001).
8. This was a real possibility during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962; for some updated accounts
of the crisis, see, for example, Eubank (2000), Blight and Welch (1989).
9. For a discussion of the relationship between power and Pax Americana, consult, for example,
Fakiolas, Efstathios, and Tassos (2007).
10. Jeans are even worn by youth in places such as Pakistan that are rife with anti-Americanism, as
pointed out by Ahmad (2007). Iranians have resisted wearing neckties, even if they wear coat
jackets or suits.
11. A report in The Economist (December 20, 1986) entitled “The New English Empire,” pp. 127–131,
describes the dominance of the English language. For a fascinating history of the world’s lan-
guages, see Ostler (2005), and for a comparative study of English and French, also see Wardhaugh
(1987).
12. This has more recently become a disputed issue; see Drissel (2006).
13. Indeed, the Bush administration encouraged collaboration between the Christian Right and
the Islamic bloc at the UN on social issues; see Lynch (2002). Prior to 9/11, many Muslims
supported the Republican Party; see Rose (2001).
14. For details on the Islamic contribution to scientific knowledge, consult Stanton (1990),
pp. 103–119.
15. Relatedly, see Shayegan (1997).
16. Islam in Europe has attracted a lot of scholarly and journalistic attention; see, for example,
Kepel (2004); Goody (2004); Pauly (2004); and Ramadan (2004). Shorter portraits, including
statistics, may be found in Douthat (2005) and Leiken (2005). For two comparative studies on
Muslims in the US and Europe, consult, for example, Malik (2004) and Cesari (2004).
17. Mosques and other symbols of Islam in Europe have caused friction; see reports such as Perlez
(2007) on a mosque in London; Lander (2006) on a mosque in Germany; and Malik (2005) for
a general report.
18. Numbers of Muslims in the United States vary. According to one study conducted by
Professor Ihsan Bagby of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina (as part of a larger
study of American congregations called “Faith Communities Today,” coordinated by Hartford
Seminary’s Hartford Institute for Religious Research), there are approximately 6 million
Muslims in the United States with over 2 million of these being regularly participating adult
attendees at the more than 1,209 mosques/masjids in the United States. (The full report is
available at http://www.cair-net.org/mosquereport/, accessed April 19, 2004.) The television
program Frontline points out that, “The estimated 5–7 million Muslims in the U.S. include
both immigrants and those born in America (three-quarters of whom are African Americans).”
“Portraits of Ordinary Muslims: United States” Frontline. Aired on PBS Television on May 9,
2002. Retrieved on May 1, 2004, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/
muslims/portraits/us.html.
19. According to a National Jewish Population Survey in 2000–2001, 5.2 million Jews live in the
United States, a drop of 300,000 from 1990; see Luo (2006).
20. Related analyses may be found in Moniz (1996) and Ellsberg (1991).
21. This was the appellation given to Kenyatta by British Governor Sir Patrick Renison, accord-
ing to the Kenyan Ministry of External Affairs. Retrieved December 28, 2005 from http://
www.mfa.go.ke/kenyatta.html.
22. Relatedly, see Parsons (1988); also see De Waal (1981).
23. On the Biafra War, consult Ekwe-Ekwe (1990); Schwab (1971); and Cervenka (1971).
24. On Mandela’s meeting with Mrs. Verwoerd, see Sampson (1999), p. 514.
25. For an article recommending the African experience of forgiveness for the Middle East, see the
op-ed piece by Mathabene (2002), p. 21.
26. Changing attitudes to sex in the United States can be seen in, for example, D’Emilio and
Freedman (1988); Allyn (2000); and White (2000).
27. Leading human rights publications now routinely survey the state of laws against gays and les-
bians. See, for example, Human Rights Watch, World Report 2002, pp. 602–608. Inglehart and
Norris (2003) have argued that a country’s treatment of homosexuals is indicative of its level
of tolerance, and that the differences between the Islamic world and the West on this issue and
gender rights mark the dividing line between Islam and the West.
28. South Africa’s constitution is the first in the world to protect the rights of homosexuals, as
Massoud (2003, p. 301) points out.
29. This case is discussed in detail in Mazrui (1990).
30. On the reaction, see the report by Sachs (2000).
31. For a chronology of female suffrage, consult Hannan, Auchterloine, and Holden (2000),
pp. 339–340.
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CH A P T E R N I N E
American Exceptionalism and

the Myth of the Frontiers
R aj i v M a l ho t r a
The Myth of the Frontier is our oldest and most characteristic myth,
expressed in a body of literature, folklore, ritual, historiography, and
polemics produced over a period of three centuries. According to
this mythic-historiography, the conquest of the wilderness and the
subjugation or displacement of the Native Americans who originally
inhabited it have been the means to our achievement of a national
identity, a democratic polity, an ever-expanding economy, and a
phenomenally dynamic and “progressive” civilization. The original
ideological task of the Myth was to explain and justify the estab-
lishment of the American colonies; but as the colonies expanded
and developed, the Myth was called on to account for our rapid
economic growth, our emergence as a powerful nation-state, and
our distinctively American approach to the socially and culturally
disruptive processes of modernization.
Slotkin 1998, p. 10
The Making of a Supernation
A popular misconception, even among many intellectuals, is that

Americans have no deep history or any particular culture. It is thought
that Americans are a “young country” with no historical or cultural bag-
gage. A consequence of this is that American thought may sometimes
present itself as culturally neutral, without a Eurocentric or America-
centric bias. Hence it is seen as being free from the historical and cul-
tural contexts with which other nations’ thinking gets interpreted. The
American voice has thus seemed more universal than others because of
this perceived freedom from past contexts.
172 Rajiv Malhotra
Indeed, American public leaders emphatically insist on the uniqueness

of America based on its historical trajectory. But this view betrays a lack of
understanding about the very intense and prolonged traumas that shaped
the United States. The United States is the result of a special combina-
tion of history and geography. Its founding cultural capital, with race and
Christianity as the strongest components, was brought from Europe, and
this sense of various European pasts provided a starting point for identity
building. But the factor that made the critical departure from European
culture was America’s geography, inhabited by natives who were very dif-
ferent from Europeans. It was the geographical disconnect from Europe,
and hence separation from the European historical identities, that helped
form American character amidst clashes with various non-European civi-
lizations. On the one hand Americans brought and retained their histori-
cal identities of European pasts, which were amplified by mythmakers.
On the other hand, the vulnerability and geographical isolation across the
ocean was intensified by encounters with the radically different cultures of
Native Americans. This tension between historical continuity and geographi-
cal discontinuity mutated the various European identities. Over time these
coalesced into something uniquely American. White settlers believed that
their destiny and authority to expand their land occupation was God’s
will and grand plan for Earth. From the early 1600s until the late-1800s,
the entire land mass of what is now called the United States was occupied
under such a presumed mandate from God. Blacks were brought over
from Africa and made into slaves in order to till the land—and to fuel the
huge agrarian economy that created early America’s wealth. God’s civiliz-
ing teleology was used as justification for horrendous acts.
Against this unique background, Americans produced a system of val-
ues in order to perceive themselves as an extraordinary people. Many
American historians have referred to this as “American exceptionalism”:
America’s self-ordained right to step out of the restrictions of morality,
ethics and even law that bound everyone else, and apply its own rules to
deal with others. This exceptionalism was developed in the context of
the Frontier, and depended on the characterization of Native American
“others.” The land mass that was the target of takeover at a given time
became known as the Frontier; hence the Frontier was always expanding
and shifting to new opportunities for takeover. All sorts of stories were
reported and fabricated about what existed in this frontier.
Courageous men, called frontiersmen, who ventured forth brought back
bounty along with exotic and heroic tales of the inhabitants there. Many
frontiersmen saw the native inhabitants of America as savages. Defined in
this way, savages were dangerous and had to be captured and controlled.
Even as the frontiersmen were violently subduing the natives, intellectu-
als and policymakers debated whether the Native Americans could. Many
believed that by converting them to Christianity they could accomplish
this task, while others asserted that the Native Americans could not achieve
social parity with the new settlers even if they became Christians.
American Exceptionalism 173
Once the land mass had been taken over, the Frontier was declared
“closed” by the Census Bureau after 1890 because there was no further
land left. In 1893 historian Fredrick Jackson Turner advanced what would
become known as “The Turner Thesis,” which said that every generation
of Americans was more individualistic and democratic than the last because
of its interaction with the Frontier. Then president Teddy Roosevelt, who
was well aware of Turner’s thesis, successfully convinced Americans that
the Frontier had to expand overseas. Roosevelt oversaw a huge buildup in
the U.S. Navy, which led to the invasions of the Philippines and Central
America. Manifest Destiny had gone global—as it continues to do to
this day. Thus the geopolitical events we are witnessing today are not an
anomaly but are the continuation of a very old American trajectory.
The metaphor of the Frontier has sustained itself in the national culture
and is invoked in popular entertainment, advertising, political rhetoric
and in Americans’ sense of being a uniquely exceptional people. This
collectivity of thought has been referred to in academic literature as the
“American Myth of the Frontier.” However, Turner and his followers
(including politicians, academics, and artists) focused only on the positive
aspects of the Frontier in forming the American character and setting the
United States on the road to becoming a superpower. Looking at America
from a different perspective, we can also identify the darker aspects of the
Myth of the Frontier. We can see how the descriptions and justifications
that first developed for dealing with Native American tribes have become
so deeply entwined in the national Myth that they shape American poli-
cies to this day. Although “the other” has changed his location, his race,
and his cultural identity, he may find his role in the American Myth to be
not so different from the role played by Native Americans.
Besides being a physical place that shifted and expanded over time,
the Frontier is also a mythic space. It represents that which is to be
conquered/controlled, including such things as the Space Frontier, the
Science Frontier, and the New Age Spiritual Frontier. Each of these has
its specialized frontiersmen who venture out as opportunistic adventurers
in unchartered territory, to become hardcore experts at understanding
the mysterious “wilderness” waiting to be captured, and to return home
as heroes of American Civilization. This is the quintessential American
entrepreneurial spirit that fuels its enormous creativity as a nation.
The Frontier is not only external but also internal, that is, located phys-
ically inside the space controlled by Civilization. These internal frontiers
are the threats from within that must be vigorously suppressed in order to
prevent chaos. In the early days the American Pilgrims were very tough
and unforgiving on policing discipline internally within their settlements.
Subsequently the Black slaves became the internal threats. Later on the
internal frontiers consisted of Chinese laborers within America, the freed
Blacks in the Jim Crow era, Asian immigrants, and Japanese interned
during World War II. Today’s internal threats include gays, polygamists,
Muslim Americans, illegal immigrants, among others.
174 Rajiv Malhotra
While the frontiersmen represent American Civilization, the others

(uncivilized/savages) consist of both those who are deemed harmlessly
exotic and others who are dangerous. These two kinds have been seen as
“noble savages” and “dangerous savages,” respectively. While the polyg-
amists in Texas today might be benign and exotic “noble savages,” the
outspoken American Muslims are monitored as “dangerous.” Many insti-
tutional mechanisms have evolved to support the frontiersmen in deal-
ing with various kinds of savages—ranging from co-opting the savages
to serve as functionaries of civilization, taming them into “civilized”
American citizens, and containing them in prisons and shelters.
America evolves as these threats get assimilated and domesticated, or
controlled and suppressed, or obliterated by genocide. Each such encoun-
ter produces a new and upgraded version of American civilization. Thus
the early settlers called themselves “English” and referred to the “savages”
as Indians. But once the settlements also had non-English Europeans
(i.e., Germans, etc.) the “us” became known as Christians and the other
side was called Heathens. Then came the era in which many Native
Americans got converted to Christianity, so this Christian/Heathen dis-
course was replaced by the notion of White/Non-White people. At first
only Protestants were considered White, and the Irish had to resort to
violence to be allowed to join White labor unions. The book, How the
Irish Became White, by Noel Ignatiev describes this process (Ignatiev 1996).
Once the civic religion had expanded from Protestantism to include
Catholics as well, Jews were still left out, and they had to fight their way
into Whiteness—as described in the book, How Jews Became White Folks
and what that says about Race in America, by Karen Brodkin (Brodkin 1999).
Each frontier encounter has thus expanded not only the physical territory
but also amended the Myth to include more people as insiders.
This article, however, shall focus primarily on the early formation of the
Frontier Myth in encounters with Native Americans, and then summarize
at the end the implications as the Frontier continued to expand further.
Myth of Savages and Heroic Frontiersmen
Americans not only have a deep and positive sense of history but are
particularly invested in their own special place in the world. There is no need
for the national myth to be explicitly stated as such and, in fact, leaving
it implicit or denying its very existence in everyday discourse gives it
greater efficacy. America’s core myth is embedded in its deep culture and
enshrined in its institutions of power.
The American Myth is a collection of stories and cherished presuppo-
sitions living in the collective memory that has been filtered and edited
by various mythmakers since the early 1600s. Because of its persistent
usage, it has acquired the power of shaping an important part of American
character. Embedded within the Myth are ideological concepts, along
with values and beliefs that can be found in its literature, film and art.
Collectively, they shape America’s public policy. Much of the Myth has
been distilled into symbols, icons, clichés, customs, rituals, parades, f lags,
ceremonies, museums, codified language, and mythic symbolism that
Americans assume implicitly and understand subconsciously.
For a myth to be robust it must subsume or whitewash over hard facts
that are disturbing, that would demystify many beliefs, and that would
lead to sociopolitical disorder. There have been serious crises of Myth in
American history when a combination of forces undermined the Myth’s
legitimacy in the popular mind. But in all such cases the Myth was
restored, after being refurbished for a new era into a more powerful myth
than before. Myths such as the Frontier myth we are about to explore
have given America a tremendous sense of purpose and have channeled its
energies for a long time.
Myths play a vital role in intercivilizational encounters. The people
the Americans encountered did not often have powerful, world-altering,
grand myths of their own. Even in the early decades when the Native
Americans had a relative parity of fighting capability, they had no grand
narrative of their own that could give them unity and a grand purpose to
fight the settlers. Their counter-myths lacked the organizing power of the
American myths. Their existence thus became fitted into the American
narrative rather than having legitimacy as a separate counterforce.
Founding of America, the City upon a Hill
Key among the myths brought by Puritans from Europe was the notion
of being a “chosen people” with special backing from God. This was
adapted in America and shaped the common identities of Americans.
The City upon a Hill and Garden of Eden were two primary images with
which Americans identified themselves early on (Dunn 1997).1 Later
these evolved into more robust myths of the Frontier and Manifest Destiny.
The idea of America as the unique and hence privileged City upon a
Hill has become “interwoven throughout our history and our foreign
policy,” writes Duke University professor Gerald Wilson. The City upon
a Hill image surfaces frequently in speeches by many presidents including
John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt,
Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. Reagan found
it an instant crowd pleaser. “I’ve spoken of the Shining City all my politi-
cal life,” he said in his farewell address.
In the early colonial period the “unsettled” parts of America (i.e., the
areas not yet conquered from the natives) were seen as satanic wilder-
ness, and this wilderness represented temptation, threat and adversity.
This space outside the White territories was called the Frontier. John
Mather (in 1693) suggested that going through this wilderness was a nec-
essary stage that God expected them to pass through in order to reach
176 Rajiv Malhotra
the Promised Land. This meant that America was destined to become the
Paradise but that it required their effort. This included the sacred mission
to “capture” the wilderness and “tame” its natives. Only then would it
be the Garden of Eden. The pragmatic and enterprising spirit that is the
hallmark of America’s achievements is linked to this belief.
The wilderness was both a threat and an opportunity. Henry Nash
Smith’s seminal book, titled Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and
Myth, is one of the most thoughtful and detailed studies of America’s deep
cultural history. One of the very important ideas of America, he explains,
has been the tremendous opportunity offered by a “vacant” continent—
an unspoiled Eden for God’s chosen people. The American Myth has
consisted of the Eden/Frontier pair. Eden is the space belonging to “us,”
and the Frontier represents the satanic wilderness inhabited by “others.”
The mission entrusted to Americans is to constantly expand Eden (or its
secular equivalent, Civilization) by taking over the Frontier. This Myth
helped to generate cohesiveness among the settlers by projecting varying
degrees of “otherness” onto the Native Americans, who were seen as a
part and parcel of the wilderness. The Eden myth gradually evolved in
the popular American mind so that it projected all evil externally. Henry
Nash Smith writes that even after the American land mass was taken over
by Europeans, they continued to blame “outsiders” for evil inf luences.
Americans had a sense of self-righteousness about their actions:
Neither American [White] man nor the American continent con-

tained, under this interpretation, any radical defect or principle of
evil. But other men and other continents . . . were by implication
unfortunate or wicked. This suggestion was strengthened by the ten-
dency to account for any evil which threatened the garden empire
by ascribing it to alien intrusion. Since evil could not conceivably
originate within the walls of the garden, it must by logical necessity
come from without . (Smith 1950, p. 187)
At each stage of the evolution of this national Myth there has been the
notion of “progress” through “savage wars” which are required to redeem
the American spirit, and to reinforce the struggle. And every man—
provided he was White—was equally fit for this struggle, and a true rep-
resentative of civilization. This made Americans the exceptional people
and different from Europeans.
The landscape of the Frontier Myth is partitioned by a moral demarca-
tion separating civilization and wilderness. The Frontier has been both a
geographical place and a mythic space populated by various fantasies. Its
myths were about Native American Indians as savages, Blacks as inferior,
White men as heroes, White women in need of being rescued from sav-
ages (and non-White women to be similarly rescued from their savage
males), the Frontier as Americans’ right and responsibility to conquer,
Manifest Destiny as their destiny to defeat others. The story of America
thus became mythologized as the struggle of the “civilized” dwellers of

Eden against the “savages” of the wild Frontier.
Mutations of the Myth
The Myth mutated from its Christian base to include an Enlightenment

base over time. Between 1795 and 1830 the agrarian expansion was very
successfully accomplished, and the Christian-eschatological substructure
of the original Frontier Myth was overlaid with a more secular ideol-
ogy. This and the subsequent rapid industrialization of America by 1870
fueled American mythmaking about the success of an exceptional people
(Slotkin 1998, p. 17).
In each stage the basic blocks of America’s core Myth have been the
same:
1. We are the foremost among good and righteous people.

2. There is danger and darkness on the other side.
3. A frontier exists that has to be won and captured for the sake of
civilization.
4. Any cost would be acceptable and all methods are okay including
“savage wars.” The myth of regenerating civilization through vio-
lence is a key organizing principle.
5. Civilization’s innocence is represented as White women in the cap-
tivity of savages. The rescue of these women is the hallmark of mas-
culine heroism, especially if it is done violently.
6. Ultimately, Good always prevails over Evil and this happy ending
reinforces the Myth.
The Frontier Myth has served as a principle for nation-building. And its
building blocks have been powerfully reinforced by popular history writ-
ing. Once a genre of historical writing (and later movies) gained currency
and became entrenched, it supplied the conventions that popular writers
and others have followed in order to have their works accepted easily. So
powerful is this Myth that it has captured the imaginations of Americans
for the past few centuries, and it continues to serve progressives and con-
servatives, politicians across the spectrum, popular culture scriptwriters,
historians, military strategists, and designers of children’s games. Thus the
cycle of mythmaking has perpetuated itself (Slotkin 1998, p. 4).
Americans are proud and nostalgic when they are constantly reminded
of their history in terms of this Frontier Myth. It idolizes the national hero
who is tough, capable, a team player and confrontational. Ronald Reagan
evoked the images of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood to explain his
aggressive “cowboy” foreign policies to the American public. Many intel-
lectuals may have thought him shallow, but he resonated with Americans,
and they loved him.
178 Rajiv Malhotra
The Manifest Destiny of an Exceptional People
The term Manifest Destiny was coined in 1845 both to rationalize America’s
thirst for expansion in the prior several decades and to defend America’s
claim to new territories that were further west of the original colonies:
. . . the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess

the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the
development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self
government entrusted to us. It is a right such as that of the tree to
the space or air and the earth, suitable for the full expansion of its
principle and destiny of growth. (O’Sullivan 1845)
This was an imaginative metaphor that validated an already existing and

violent aspect of America’s history and Americans’ self-image as the world’s
extraordinary people. The term Manifest Destiny was quickly adopted by
U.S. congressmen in their debates to justify three territorial conquests: the
forced annexation of Texas from Mexico in 1845, the negotiated annex-
ation of Oregon from England in 1846 and the war with Mexico which
resulted in the annexation of much of the southwest in 1848. Although
this was initially a Democratic Party ideal, the Whigs (who later became
the Republicans) also supported it.
The idea of acting on God’s behalf naturally included the importance
of fighting evil. Henry Nash Smith writes that the Manifest Destiny
myth helps Americans understand “the image of themselves which
many—perhaps most—Americans of the present day cherish, an image
that defines what Americans think of their past, and therefore what they
propose to make of themselves in the future” (Smith 1950, Preface).
By 1849, Manifest Destiny became synonymous with seizing land
from the natives, and this greed fed the frontier mentality. The settlers’
attempts to forcibly occupy Native American lands by brutal means were
commonly explained by prominent leaders as acts that were necessary
against “savages.” This theorizing was done by elitist intellectuals but it
also had broad support from the lower classes of European settlers because
more land became available for them to share. Accounts of the native
tribes’ counter attacks and atrocities were highlighted, and such accounts
are still used in history textbooks and national monuments to remove guilt
about White expansion.2 The City upon a Hill and Manifest Destiny were
powerful narratives that provided the logic for expansion by marking the
natives as the barbarous and expendable.
The expansion westward also became a popular theme of American litera-
ture, infecting both liberals and conservatives. Walt Whitman, a liberal who
is seen by many Americans as their national poet, was fascinated by America’s
Manifest Destiny and his poems often glamorized the westward expansion.3
In the preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), Whitman explained
that “United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” He fantasized
a nation that was expanding endlessly to include Central America and the
Caribbean, and wrote in a newspaper article that “ ‘manifest destiny’ certainly
points to the speedy annexation of Cuba by the United States.”
Encounter with Native Americans
Christianity, Enlightenment ideas, and greed often colluded to produce

a result that annihilated the natives and built up America into a superna-
tion. These three forces are summarized below:
Biblical Myths
● Lieven explains that the biblical myths were a driving force for set-
tlers from the very beginning: “The Old Testament gave the set-
tlers . . . both a language and a theological framework in which to
describe and justify their dispossession of the land’s native inhabi-
tants” (Lieven 2004, p. 101).
● Long before the term Manifest Destiny was explicitly proposed, the
English Protestant reinterpretation of millennium theology was brought
over to America and it claimed America as having a special place in God’s
plan.4 The United States became seen as the key agent in bringing the
millennial prophecy to fruition. Protestant ministers of the nineteenth
century used it to fire up nationalism leading to the notion that was later
named Manifest Destiny. America’s special status in the Divine Plan was
also accepted among many Christian experts in Europe.5
● The Puritans initially had high hopes of converting the Indians,
and their zealotry made them assume that Indians would happily
abandon their own customs and religion to accept Christianity and
White “civilized” life. (This is analogous to the American certainty
that Iraqis would welcome the U.S. military as liberators and would
enthusiastically embrace American ways.)
● Disillusion followed when the Native Americans rejected religious
and cultural conversions, and fought wars to protect their traditions
and lands. When they rejected the “true” religion of Christianity,
they began to be seen with venom and hatred as agents of the devil,
and at the very least as a stumbling block to civilizational progress
(Slotkin 2000, pp. 18, 66 and 522).
● Horsman explains that “the Indians by the latter years of the sev-
enteenth century were despised because they have tried to remain
Indian and had shown little desire to become Christian gentlemen.
The Indians could therefore be thrown off the land, mistreated, or
slaughtered, because in rejecting the opportunities offered to them
they had shown that they were sunk deep in irredeemable savagery”
(Horsman 1981, p. 105). See also Roy Harvey Pearce, Savagism and
Civilization: A Study of the Indian in the American Mind (Pearce 1967),
180 Rajiv Malhotra
Robert Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American

Indian from Columbus to the Present (Berkhofer 1978), and Richard
Drinnon, Facing West: The metaphysics of Indian hating and Empire
Building (Drinnon 1997).
● Nevertheless many die-hard missionaries argued in a more nuanced
way that the Native Americans could be redeemed, and they continued
to be hopeful of saving them from their own cultures and religions.
This process was only made easier when accompanied by the stresses of
defeat and displacement from native lands (Deloria 1988, pp. 101–124).
Enlightenment Thought
● Just as the early leaders of the seventeenth century had seen the
natives as targets for religious conversion, the leaders of revolutionary
America in the 1770s and later saw them as targets for their notion
of civilization. They believed that if the Native Americans could be
civilized by accepting the White settlers’ way of life then they could
be accommodated in the vast country being “explored.”
● Enlightenment ideas from Europe brought the notion that man could
progress infinitely, and that all mankind belonged to the same spe-
cies6 and hence every race was capable of improvement.
● Thus the “savagery” of Native Americans was a temporary stage in
their “evolution” and they could be eventually improved through
European civilization. Enlightened and liberal Americans such as
Jefferson formulated arguments and policies regarding the natives in
which they tried to “civilize” and “settle” them.
● While seemingly benign, this argument provided a convenient rhet-
oric to later justify “savage war” against the Native Americans—
involving their ethnic cleansing from state after state of the union
while simultaneously claiming that this was in their best interests.
Greed
● Individual and corporate greed to seize lands was especially prevalent
in the frontier. Ambitious White settlers looking for “empty” land to
settle and farm kept encountering different native tribes who were
already the owners and users of the land.
● The frontier was a “safety-valve” for the economic needs of the White
population, providing endless vistas of “unsettled” land presumed to
be waiting there to be taken. Thus poor White immigrants (like the
Irish, etc.) could find opportunities away from cities and hence not
cause social unrest.
● After the Civil War, the Native American tribes were in the way
of coast-to-coast railroad building, which was undertaken partly to
open up lucrative trade with China and India.
● It was profitable to see the Native Americans as merciless savages,
both by Christian and Enlightenment standards.
● A whole host of “news” accounts, popular literature, and illustrations
and images constantly reinforced this point by emphasizing atrocities
by natives.
● When there was no immediate goal to capture lands, the east coast
metropolitan attitudes toward Native Americans (as “noble sav-
ages”) were often positive or at least neutral. Some urban intel-
lectuals decried the violence of the White settlers in the frontier
and even acknowledged that the Native Americans were fighting
to protect their lands and people. One sees many examples of inter-
est in the native way of life and praises for their culture. In the end
this sympathy proved transitory and ineffective in preventing their
extinction.
Such was the conf lict between the selfish need to expand westward and
various positive ideologies that expounded America’s mission to build a
new and just civilization. I suggest a four-phase framework to explain the
development of policies toward Native Americans—a framework which
may be useful in exploring later examples of American policy, up to
the present day. These phases were not strictly chronological, but this
framework helps understand the process by which the “dangerous sav-
age” Native Americans were exterminated, the benign “noble savages”
were domesticated in reservations to be raised as children, and eventually
the native peoples were turned into an ornament glorified in museums.
This framework traces the role played by the discourse among the intel-
lectuals, the political leadership, and public opinion. I will also examine
how institutional power was systematically deployed in a legalistic man-
ner as per the rhetoric of “due process,” but cleverly designed to exclude
the Native Americans and preserve White privilege. The four phases
were as follows:
I. Theorizing about “noble savages” and “merciless savages” dur-

ing early expansion.
II. Guilt management while committing genocide.
III. Indians as children to be “raised” in reservations.
IV. Academic research to support museumizing and digestion.
Phase I: Theorizing the Savage in Early Expansion
In early America, Christianity played a key role in forming the identity of

the settlers and in justifying the brutalities against Native Americans once
they refused to convert. But upon Independence, the generation known
as the Founding Fathers of America was very much inf luenced by the
Enlightenment.
182 Rajiv Malhotra
The “Merciless Savage”

The Protestant Ethic that became the American ethos included a strong
streak of Puritan hatred of many aspects of Native life such as their reli-
gions, mysticism, dancing, singing, and reveling. While it is easy to
point out differences between Christianity and the Enlightenment, the
Enlightenment can be seen as a child and a product of Puritanism. Indeed
according to Max Weber himself, “Both Puritanism and Enlightenment
made contributions to ‘the specific and peculiar rationalism of Western
culture’ . . . with Enlightenment being the surprising but true child, ‘the
laughing heir’ of Puritanism” (Drinnon 1997, p. 102). The Enlightenment
supposedly freed Europeans from the constraints imposed by Christianity
and claimed to have achieved an innate sense of human equality and dig-
nity. However, while removing explicit dependency on God, many bibli-
cal assumptions remained a core part of its framework.7
There were important and nuanced differences. For the Puritans, the
Native Americans who refused to become Christian were servants of the
Devil. For the Founding Fathers, the native was the face of irrational-
ity and unreason: “Like the Puritan, Jefferson regarded the Indian cul-
ture as a form of evil or folly.” If he chose not to become Christian and
“civilized” then he was “a madman or a fool who refused to enter the
encompassing world of reason and order” (Drinnon 1997, p. 102). This
would justify removing him from the civilized space. From either point
of view the conclusion was that the native was a savage whose culture and
religion made him merciless, cruel, irrational and incorrigible. “. . . From
the Indian point of view the end result was pretty much the same: death,
f light, or cultural castration . . .” (Drinnon 1997, p. 102).
Thus while Jefferson was no Puritan, and openly rejected Christian
superstitions,8 his attempt to “rationalize” the world in an Enlightenment
mode was just as fanatical. For the enlightened leaders of American inde-
pendence as well as for the Puritans among them, the Native American
was chief ly important “not for what he was in and of himself, but rather
for what he showed civilized men they were not and must not become”
(Drinnon 1997, p. 102). The Native American was “the other” against
whom America’s self hood was constructed.
Similarly for Nathaniel Hawthorne in the 1800s, native rituals like the
dance were associated with devilish ritual, and with dark thoughts of the
mind. In this suspicion of native religion this great post-enlightenment
American writer was in agreement with puritanical demonization of it
(Slotkin 2000, p. 476).
Enlightenment rhetoric was based on the “rights of man” and even
this limited egalitarianism conf licted with the pragmatic demands of land
grabbing. This was resolved in the minds of many American intellectu-
als including Jefferson by classifying White farmers as more evolved than
the Native Americans who were mapped as “hunter gatherers.” Jefferson
wrote in the 1780s that “proofs of genius given by the Indians of North
America place them on a level with the Whites in the same uncultivated
state” (Horsman 1981, p. 108). The prescription for “cultivating” the

Native Americans to make them “civilized” included forcing them to
adopt private property which men farmed (whereas Native American
men traditionally hunted and women did the farming); teaching native
women spinning and weaving; and adopting Christian education. This
social engineering devastated Indian communities.
The aspects of native achievements that met White norms—such as
agricultural settlements, commercial activity and sophisticated social
organizations—were conveniently ignored when passing judgment on
whether they were civilized. This was to justify denying them the human
rights enjoyed by Whites by showing that they still needed to become
civilized. Indeed there is extensive but rarely aired evidence of manipula-
tion and hypocritical “double-speak” by Jefferson and other enlightened
thinkers—constantly urging the Indian tribes to “civilize” and “settle
down” while maneuvering to usurp their lands through engineered debts
and force (Horsman 1981, p. 106; see also Fairchild 1928).
The “Noble Savage”

The Enlightenment also included a romantic urge to look beyond Europe
for utopian and “unspoiled” regions. In the debate about the nature of the
Native American not all saw him as a merciless savage. There was even
the idea of the native as a noble savage who could be used to contrast
against the vices of a decadent Europe. This became a popular stereotype.
When certain European writers portrayed life in America as degenerate
and associated this with natives, Americans such as Jefferson vigorously
defended the native character as a part of defending the country. Native
Americans had become “our” Indians for many patriotic and patronizing
Americans (see Gerbi 1973 and Horsman 1981, p. 106).
Some Americans clearly realized that the prevailing genocide and
destruction of native tribes would be judged harshly by history. George
Washington’s secretary of war, Henry Knox, wrote in 1793 that, “if our
modes of population and war destroy the tribes,” American conduct
would be matched with the Spaniard atrocities in Mexico and Peru, and
this would undermine the American claim to moral superiority over
Spaniards (Knopf 1960, p. 165).
The general White population who were rapidly expanding their lands
by encountering the Native Americans on a day-to-day basis rejected such
Enlightenment thought of civilizing them. Natives were regarded as hea-
then and violent savages. But East Coast intellectuals wrote idealistically
and with detachment, because there were no Native Americans left for
them to “deal with,” most eastern tribes having been displaced and dis-
banded by the 1800s. But Whites on the frontier were fighting Native
Americans for their lands and this fueled hatred toward them (Horsman
1981, p. 111). Even though there were multiple voices, the Whites con-
trolled the ultimate outcome of such debates and hence the fate of the
natives, because the Native Americans were simply not self-represented.
184 Rajiv Malhotra
The phrase “merciless Indian Savages” is used to describe the Native

Americans in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. Drinnon
notes that this was consistent with earlier Christian explicit condemnations
of the Native Americans as heathen, animalistic and sub-human (Drinnon
1997, p. 99). Even though every other phrase in this vital American
document—literally the country’s birth certificate—was debated and
repeatedly revised before signing, this one phrase was not debated or
changed from the first draft to the final version. Everyone simply agreed
with it! To this day there is reluctance and ambiguity about admitting the
role of top Enlightenment intellectuals as well as Christianity in denigrat-
ing native cultures and religions, and thus paving the pathway for their
genocide. In studies of the Declaration of Independence the exclusion of
Blacks from the process is often noted, because Black scholars have now
become a strong and independent voice. But Drinnon points out that the
demonization of Native Americans is even today rarely discussed in schol-
arly or popular studies of that famous document (Drinnon 1997, p. 102).
Phase II: Guilt Management while Committing Genocide
The greatest episodes of ethnic cleansing and genocide of Native

Americans occurred in the period following independence that was domi-
nated by Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Before Andrew Jackson’s
presidency (and the massive “removal,” i.e., ethnic cleansing, of Native
Americans) there was some debate between the Enlightenment view of
the native as an innately equal human being who could be improved
(if only he wanted to be), and the opposing side which considered him
inherently a savage beast. But by Jackson’s time the debate was faltering:
Even those who considered Native Americans as equal human beings had
completely internalized the portrayals of their culture and religions as
debasing and cruel and in need of Christianizing and/or civilizing.
This new consensus about Native American culture/character provided
considerable leverage to those who considered the Native Americans
an expendable obstruction in the path of America’s destined expansion.
These arguments were reinforced by a variety of scientific and intellectual
arguments, from phrenology to Hegel’s philosophy of History. This intel-
lectual construction about Native Americans paved the way for their sub-
sequent removal with President Andrew Jackson’s enthusiastic support. It
culminated as a major victory for supremacist ideas which had long been
part of America’s deep culture.
There were several levels at which the “Indian Removal,” that is, eth-
nic cleansing and the resulting genocide, was justified and carried out:
1. Biblical and Enlightenment based intellectual justifications

2. Anecdotal data of atrocities committed by the Natives
3. Good Cops and Bad Cops
4. Institutional and legalistic manipulations

5. Displacement for their own good
In each of these levels, the Native Americans were outsiders, non-players

in the intellectual-political-moral game that sealed their fate. They could
fight tactical battles bravely, but they were not even participants in the
discourse.
1. Biblical and Enlightenment-based Intellectual Justifications

Besides personal success and wealth, the Americans of the 1700s and 1800s
also wanted a clean religious conscience. To resolve this dilemma, the
Myth blamed the “savages” for the violence even when it was committed
by White Americans (Horsman 1981, p. 210). Slotkin and many others
explain that this charge is “better understood as an act of psychological
projection that made the Indians scapegoats for the morally troubling side
of American expansion: the myth of ‘savage war’ became a basic ideo-
logical convention of a culture that was itself incredibly devoted to the
extermination or expropriation of the Indians and the kidnapping and
enslavement of black Africans” (Slotkin 2000, p. 12).
Stephenson sees the inf luence of two important authorities that shaped
the sustained genocidal attack on the Native Americans in a manner that
absolved White Americans of their personal sense of guilt: one is bib-
lical authority and the other is Common Law based on European and
Enlightenment underpinnings (Stephanson 1995, p. 25).
In Genesis, God promises Isaac that he will make his children multiply
and give the countries of the earth to them, and in Psalms God offers his
people “the heathen for the inheritance, and uttermost parts of the earth for
their possession,” in order that the faithful biblical people should crush the
heathen into “pieces like a potter’s vessel.” This message was understood
by many deeply religious Americans to be a sanction “to possess, multiply
and fructify at the expense of the heathens” (ibid.). Indeed, there is little
doubt that Jackson and others often saw themselves in Old Testament terms
as an instrument of an avenging God (Drinnon 1997, p. 108). According to
earlier Christian missionaries, “Whites were God’s means for the salvation
or destruction of the Indians” (Slotkin 2000, p. 99).
This mindset persisted in the American deep culture two centuries after
the Puritans arrived. The inf luential eastern newspaper editor Sullivan
coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny” in 1845, and also wrote: “History
was a providential plan whose end was to be played out in the especially
designed space of America. . . . The Cause of Humanity was identical with
that of the United States, and that cause was destined to cease only when
every man in the world should be finally and triumphantly redeemed”
(Stephanson 1995, p. 40).
Advocates of common law believed that there was an obligation to
cultivate the earth because it is man’s nature to improve nature, where
186 Rajiv Malhotra
“improving” meant subduing the wilderness. And Native American cul-

ture clearly failed to do that, hence their possession of the land did not
amount to proper use of it. Thus they could have no legal title to the land,
at least not title that American law would have to respect and protect: “In
vulgar form this argument boiled down to the dual proposition that Indians
were hunters and gatherers and that the land was therefore empty, a ‘waste’
there for the taking.” Plentiful evidence that they were preexisting settlers was
completely ignored (Stephanson 1995, p. 25). As the Governor of Georgia
said blatantly in the 1830s, treaties with Native Americans “were expedi-
ents by which the ignorant, intractable, and savage people were induced to
yielded up what civilized people had a right to possess” (p. 26).
The land was far too precious to remain “undeveloped” with the Native
Americans. A factor that worked against their chances of survival was the
difficulty in Christianizing and assimilating Native tribes as appendages
to the White settlements. Native ways of life were too closely linked with
their ancestral lands, and with their religions and belief systems. Another
factor was that various “scientific” theories circulating from the 1830s
onward indicated that Native Americans were doomed because of innate
inferiority, that they were succumbing to the superior White race, and
that this was for the larger good of humanity. Indian removal and mas-
sacres were not seen as such but as the result of the Laws of God, destiny,
and nature (Horsman 1981, pp. 189–206).
2. Anecdotal Data of Atrocities Urging “Savage Wars”

There was an overabundant supply of popularly accepted stories and
images on the savagery and brutality of the Native Americans that justi-
fied harsh treatment toward them (similar to many of today’s ethnogra-
phies and reports about India and Africa). These atrocity stories served
as “anecdotal data” that reinforced the theories about Native American
savagery. Their repetition by popular as well as scholarly writers was suffi-
cient to block debate on substantive issues of the Indian’s own rights, as we
shall see. It is crucial to note that both in the theoretical set up as well as
in the anecdotal data-gathering, no effort was made to cross-examine the
American point of view. The Enlightenment and biblical theories were
never challenged nor declared problematic to the same extent as native
culture and religion were questioned. (This bias survives in the form of
today’s privileged position given to Western social theories in the acad-
emy.) Furthermore, the brutalities of settlers and missionaries were never
highlighted on par with Indian actions. There were no reverse gazing
native scholars looking at White culture to counterbalance the discourse.
The earlier romantic image of the Native American as a “noble sav-
age” lingered on in the 1800s. Even as their White brethren were eradi-
cating the Native Americans, important American writers, such as
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, and
James Fennimore Cooper, continued to portray the native as a tragic
and somewhat noble figure although with some rough and savage edges.
These writings had a sense of tragedy based on a sense of inevitability—
nature had predestined the Indian for destruction in the face of “progress”
(Fussel 1965). This was a more humane portrayal than the beastly savage
image, but it did not prevent their extermination, nor did it attempt to fix
blame on Manifest Destiny or Enlightenment thought.
Offsetting this high literary image of the native as a complex, tragic
figure, there were a much larger number of cheaper books and pamphlets
that were popular among White readers. This best-selling “Indian atrocity
literature” chronicled the captivity of various Whites, especially women
and children, at the hand of Native Americans on the frontier. Today, we
would say that they portrayed the Native Americans as egregious human
rights violators and stereotyped their religion and culture as being the cul-
prits. Many of these sensationalized stories were one-sided exaggerations
of actual incidents and many others were outright lies. Their main appli-
cation was to provide an excuse for usurping Indian lands (Brands 2005,
p. 170 and Slotkin 2000, p. 97). Popular stories and theater productions in
the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries commonly showed
“pure” White maidens and peaceful White men being captured by fierce
and atrocious Native American raiders, and heroic White men rescuing the
beautiful women from the ugly men. Richard Slotkin explains that “The
great and continued popularity of these narratives, the uses to which they
were put, and the nature of the symbolism employed in them, are evidence
that the captivity narratives constitute the first coherent myth-literature
developed in America for American audiences” (Slotkin 2000, p. 95).
The “captivity narrative” was among the most popular form of American
adventure story in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America. “The
hero of the captivity narrative is typically a White woman or a Christian
minister who is captured by Natives during a ‘savage war.’ The captive
symbolizes the values of Christianity and civilization that are imperiled
in the wilderness by the non-Christian savage. This is the ‘Myth of the
Frontier in which the triumph of civilization over savagery is symbolized
by the hunter/warrior’s rescue of the White woman held captives by sav-
ages’ ” (Slotkin 2000, p. 15).
The native religions were regarded as witchcraft. Sometimes, women
who were captured and rescued, if they showed any strange behavior,
were tried as witches. The idea conveyed was that close association with
the non-Christian and their evil, devilish religion had turned a good
Christian into a witch, i.e.[,] a pagan. Such a person was given sympathy
and de-programmed by a Pastor, unlike other witches who were tried and
punished. (This is eerily similar to the de-programming of Christians who
join eastern religions and cults today.) But more importantly, the reputa-
tion of the Native Americans and their “evil religion” was reinforced
because of the narratives of these psychologically ill women who in a sense
“converted” to native religion and then came back to Christianity to tell
the tale. “Confessions” were often obtained to show that the woman in
188 Rajiv Malhotra
question had taken up a Native American god for worship. In the 1700s,
this thinking about the corrupting nature of native religion and captivity
became a great cause for brutality and savagery against the natives (Slotkin
2000, pp. 138–140, 142 and 144–145).
3. Good Cops and Bad Cops

The landscape of the Frontier Myth is partitioned by a moral demarcation
separating civilization from the wilderness, a civilizational euphemism
derived in order to distinguish civilized Whites as distinct from uncivi-
lized non-Whites. The real issue of course was greed for land and the
need to dominate others, but these had to be justified in order to quiet the
grumblings of the conscience.
Although the white Americans . . . wanted personal success and

wealth, they also wanted a clear conscience. If the United States was
to remain in the minds of its people a nation divinely ordained for
great deeds, then the fault for the suffering inf licted in the rise to
power and prosperity had to lie elsewhere. White Americans could
rest easier and the sufferings of other races could be blamed on the
racial weakness rather than on whites’ relentless search for wealth and
power. (Horsman 1981, p. 210)
Right from the beginning of an independent America, a paradox existed

between the Enlightenment view of natives—as innately equal humans
beings who, given proper training, could be civilized—and the opposing
view, that considered them subhuman “beasts.” Thomas Jefferson lauded
Indians as noble and unspoiled, yet was ambivalent about their position
and fate. He saw their extinction as tragic, yet during both terms of his
presidency tens of thousands of Indians were forcibly relocated from their
native habitats to reservations west of the Mississippi River. This double-
faced strategy played out consistently throughout the early era of America’s
nationhood.
The historian Richard Drinnon gives several graphic illustrations of
how American literature of the period provided justifications for ignoring
the natives’ rights.9 The literature often acknowledged that the other side
had a case in its favor, but the debate never got serious and simply served
to assuage the American conscience.
In many of these tales, there was a sympathetic figure who tried to
make the case for the Indians. This is a historical version of the urban,
“liberal” White “good cop” who feels “pity” and objects to the unfair
demonology and the killings of natives by an unsophisticated but cou-
rageous frontiersman, the “bad cop.” This fictional spokesman for the
Enlightenment may express shock; he may suggest that humane values
and fairness in battle should not be forgotten; he may also raise uncom-
fortable questions about the natives’ inherent right to control their own
lands. Thus both meta-level issues and issues about the specific methods
used by the frontiersman could potentially be raised in the storyline.
The classic device in these stories to end the debate with a clear con-
science now comes to the forefront. The frontiersman (often the hero
of the tale) shows the liberal reader extensive evidence of the personal
threats and danger he lives with every day. He may show the graves of
family members and tell tales of natives’ atrocities against Whites, espe-
cially women and children, and also, if possible, against other natives. At
this point the “good cop” in the Frontier Myth backs off and reluctantly
concedes that he, like other educated White consumers of these stories,
“should not be so quick to judge” the frontiersmen, who seem to have
ample justification for their violent behavior. After all, these frontiersmen
know the native culture best. Moreover they are clearly victims of the
savages’ threats and actions.10 (We can see a modern parallel when this
assumption of objectivity and “expertise” about native cultures is attrib-
uted to today’s Area Studies experts in the American academy.)
Once the savagery of the native is proved in this manner, the discussion
is closed. The substantive issues of White greed and aggression, and the
natives’ inherent human rights to defend their sacred sites and families,
and the huge imbalance between White and native atrocities, are never
discussed. Drinnon writes, “Yes, the reader was asked to ref lect, is it not
too easy to be virtuous at a distance?” The White liberal conscience was
thus convinced not to “forgive merciless savages when we ourselves have
not suffered . . . at their hands” (Drinnon 1997, p. 127).
There was often a very interesting good cop/bad cop partner-
ship between the government and frontiersmen (Drinnon 1997, 483n).
Andrew Jackson’s excesses against the natives (as “bad cop”) were greeted
with public criticism by other top officials (the “good cop”). John Quincy
Adams was asked to investigate Jackson’s actions. He produced a white
paper in which he avoided dealing with substantive issues, such as gather-
ing data on White militias’ atrocities and the White communities’ thirst
for land. The debate was easily shifted by simply raising the bogey of
“civilization in danger” from savage attacks by natives. This approach
eliminated any serious analysis and soul-searching. Adams was not acting
in isolation but relying on the writing of important Enlightenment think-
ers. This “switch the debate” approach has always had support from the
American establishment, sometimes fairly explicitly. All former American
presidents alive at the time endorsed Adams. Thomas Jefferson felt that by
linking the usurpation and ethnic-cleansing of native lands by the United
States to their inherent savagery, the white paper was a triumph of logic,
and would help “maintain in Europe a correct opinion of our political
morality” (Drinnon 1997, p. 111). The good cops conceded the debate and
violence was justified and approbated by powerful government officials.
Even those who did not indulge directly in this sort of atrocity litera-
ture were heavily inf luenced by the projected attitudes. Most Americans
simply assumed that the “uncivilized” Native American was doomed for
190 Rajiv Malhotra
extinction, given the relentless march of civilization. This idea had perme-
ated literature about the natives for over 200 years (Horsman 1981, p. 191).
The framework created by Christian theology and Enlightenment notions
of progress and history became the assumed truth about the natives’ inevi-
table fate. It is in the context of such high theory formulation by leading
intellectuals of the day that the lower-level atrocity literature served as
“field data” gathered by other Whites and had its real impact. The control
of theory, institutions and publication mechanisms by Whites also defined
what kind of data never got collected, documented, and highlighted.
It is essential to note that both in the theoretical set up as well as in
the anecdotal data-gathering, no effort was made to interrogate and prob-
lematize the White point of view. Enlightenment and biblical theories, in
which non-White inferiority and native savagery were framed, were never
challenged or seen as problematic, while native culture and religion were
criticized and demonized. Further, the brutalities of settlers and missionar-
ies were never highlighted as data points on par with Indians’ actions even
in cases where the Indians’ actions were in direct retaliation against Whites’
brutalities. There was, historically, no reverse gazing, no Native scholars
looking at White culture to counterbalance the discourse.11
4. Institutional and Legalistic Manipulations

Dispossessing Native Americans of their land would not be easy because
the U.S. government had written treaties with the tribes granting them
rights to their own lands. The desired goal of taking over lands was
accomplished in a systematic and legalistic way. Powerful institutions at
the state and federal levels, in which the Native Americans themselves
had little or no say, were involved. Over many decades several legal means
were adopted:
● Doctrine of Discovery—the legal basis for capturing land: The original
legal justification for the occupation of the American continent was
affirmed in the landmark court case of 1823, Johnson v. McIntosh (Kades
2001). Chief Justice John Marshall confirmed that Christian European
nations had assumed “ultimate dominion” over the lands of America
during the “Age of Discovery.” After having been “discovered,” the
Indians had lost “their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent
nations,” and only retained a right of “occupancy” in their lands.”
Steve Newcombe remarks, “In other words, Indian nations were sub-
ject to the ultimate authority of the first nation of Christendom to
claim possession of a given region of Indian lands” (Newcomb n. d.).
This has been called the Doctrine of Discovery. The origins of this
doctrine go back to the Pope, who in the fifteenth century directed
Portugal’s King to “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and
subdue” all those who the King’s men saw as “pagans . . . and other
enemies of Christ.” The Pope’s directive was to “reduce their persons
to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate . . . their possessions,

and goods, and to convert them to . . . [Christian] use and profit . . . ”
This Doctrine was later reinforced by a later Pope to legitimize
Christopher Columbus’ conquests. European nations upheld and
implemented this Doctrine as the legal and moral basis for colonial-
ism (Brands 2005, p. 310). Marshall’s 1823 decision reestablished that
principle in American law.
● Contesting “Who speaks for the Indians”: When the land belonging to
the various tribes was to be demarked, Whites raised disputes about
the fitness of various Native American spokespersons. They claimed
that those who were savvy about Western ways, who thought stra-
tegically and had leadership skills, who were literate, and who laid
claim to territorial boundaries were not the “real” Indians. They
were too “Westernized” and hence illegitimate. In other words,
Whites wanted the benign or incompetent or unconfident Indian
to represent the tribes. Thus Jackson claimed that issues of territorial
boundaries were not “real” Indian issues because: “In this matter the
Indians—I mean the real Indians, the natives of the forest—
are little concerned. It is a stratagem only acted upon by the design-
ing half-breeds and renegade white men who have taken refuge in
their country” (Brands 2005, p. 310). These issues were especially
raised in the context of potential disputes between tribes to further
weaken the legitimacy of hard-bargaining spokespersons. Thus only
the claims of the naïve and the pliable were considered legitimate.
Quite often, since the tribes were devastated, uprooted and disori-
ented, their cohesiveness and leadership was under duress. In this
vulnerability, one leader or splinter group could be induced to sign
a treaty giving up an entire tribe’s land. Once signed, there was no
appeal (e.g., the Treaty of New Echota made it possible to remove
the entire Cherokee tribe—even though historians agree that it was
signed by a splinter group within the tribe).
● Federal treaties with native tribes attacked by states: This convenient f lexi-
bility of the law meant that treaties made when the Native Americans
were strong and prepared to fight could later be abandoned when
they were weakened. Those treaties signed by the U.S. Federal gov-
ernment that did not suit could be nullified using complex argu-
ments about States rights and Federal rights. Even where the Native
Americans had “civilized” themselves, the Whites started legal fights
by arguing that states rights were being compromised by federal trea-
ties with the tribes. Thus, this became a legal tussle about the rights of
Whites argued between competing White institutions, while ignor-
ing Native American rights.
● Tribal identity attacked by substituting individual property for tribal rights:
State governments sought to remove collective tribal rights by
substitut ing individual rights for Native Americans. Besides void-
ing the effect of the federal treaties with tribes, this also had the
192 Rajiv Malhotra
effect of breaking up group cohesion among the natives, because

tribal identities and social capital was the fabric of their societies.12
Moreover, before the Civil War these individual rights were framed
as belonging to “free citizens of color,” a status better than Black
slaves but below that of Whites. Enlightenment thinkers in President
John Quincy Adams’ 1825 Cabinet hoped that the “civilized” natives
(i.e., those who gave up their traditional ways and adopted Western
ways) could be given individual lots of land and live along with
Whites in the states where they already lived. But privately, even a
Cabinet member who publicly attacked the ruthlessness involved in
White Americans’ expansion expressed the view that “it was impos-
sible to civilize Indians . . . it was not in their nature. He believed they
would be destined to extinction . . . he did not think them as a race,
worth preserving. He considered them as essentially inferior to the
Anglo-Saxon raise which were now taking their place on this con-
tinent . . . and their disappearance from the human family will be no
great loss the world” (Horsman 1981, p. 198).
● Elimination of natives’ individual land ownership: But after taking away
their group rights and substituting some form of individual prop-
erty, Whites squeezed further. Some states like Georgia successfully
pressured Congress to help eliminate not only tribal land but also
individual land ownership by Native Americans within their state
(Horsman 1981, p. 196).
● Merging tribes into one big tribe under the Union: Under pressure from
rebellious states on this serious matter, the federal government’s
Cabinet was divided and ended up promoting unrealistic options, such
as that Native Americans should be “removed” but that they should
be “brought into civilization and incorporated into the Union” by
combining the various tribes into one big tribe and moved to a sepa-
rate territory far away.
● Fair exchange of eastern land for western land: The federal government
endorsed the policy of taking native lands in the east in exchange for
lands in the west, but insisted that this could be done only by vol-
untary consent of the tribes. These ideas about re-engineering and
moving the tribes were proposed as a sop to the conscience of the
Whites, with little regard to the trauma and human suffering of such
a huge move. It also ignored the fact that the new lands were almost
always of lesser value. Even the Native Americans lucky enough to
be relocated to petroleum-rich land in Oklahoma would later have
a hard time holding on to it when the value of the land under their
feet became known. As Horsman notes, Indian Removal was not
an effort to civilize them under more favorable circumstances even
though that was how the Jacksonians justified the measure afterward.
It was a blatant act to enable the Whites to occupy all the lands they
wanted east of the Mississippi River (Horsman 1981, p. 199).
● Confusing debates to seem fair-minded: All through this, White Americans
debated with each other over what to do with the natives and what
rationale to use to make sure the process was (or would at least
appeared to be) righteous, fair-minded and based on the rule of law.
Brands and other historians have noted that this was a characteristic
approach: using a series of confusing and contradictory manipula-
tions to impose conditions of despair and then using these adversities
as excuses for further damage (Brands 2005). Even those voices in
government who opposed the forcible removal of Native Americans
tended to ultimately go along with political and legal choices that
enabled Whites to have more rights. Pessimism about the natives’
ability to survive as a race and as cultures became self-fulfilling.
5. Displacement for Their Own Good

Policies to grab Indian lands would often be couched in language that
seemed to indicate humanitarian concern for the well-being of the Native
Americans and a condescending spirit of compromise. For instance, the
initial argument for Indian removal was positioned as a way for them to
retain their “wild life” by moving further away from White settlements.
The wide open spaces on the other side of the Mississippi were believed to
be more “conducive to the Indian way of life” even though it meant forc-
ibly uprooting entire tribes and communities from their ancestral lands
and transplanting them to regions where their old farming technology
didn’t always work.
Upon Andrew Jackson’s election as president in 1828, the debates ended,
and forced removal of the native tribes became a hard reality. Excerpts
from several of Jackson’s annual speeches to Congress over the years tell a
remarkable story of the dulling of the collective conscience through the
use of the hypocritical claim that whatever was being done was in the best
interests of the Native Americans. Here are some highlights:
● In his first annual address in 1829, President Jackson laid out his pol-
icy for relocating Native Americans to territories hundreds of miles
away from their lands, calling this an act of “sympathy” to save them
from catastrophe.13 To avert “this calamity,” and to protect America’s
sense of “national honor” and “humanity,” Jackson’s policy became
the law known as the U.S. Indian Removal Act.
● In his second annual message to Congress, President Jackson blatantly
supported further actions in the name of civilization defeating the
uncivilized.14 He used the inexorable march of destiny to provide
philosophical consolation to those whose conscience was troubled.15
● Yet another important argument he gave was that the Native Americans
had themselves invaded America in the distant past and had extermi-
nated (mythical) older civilizations that had once f lourished there.16
● In his fourth annual message to Congress, President Jackson described
how native uprisings were put down by heroic White soldiers, but
omitted mentioning that he had refused to implement the U.S.
Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the Native Americans, thereby
194 Rajiv Malhotra
making a mockery of the U.S. law when it did not suit the interests
of the deep White culture.17
● In his fifth annual message to Congress, President Jackson rational-
ized the inevitability of the extermination of native tribes.18
The prevailing hypocrisy in dealing with Native Americans was not lost
on Alexis De Tocqueville, the famous European observer of nineteenth-
century America. While de Tocqueville admired many things about
America, he could not help saying sarcastically about the treatment of
natives: “It is impossible to destroy men with more respect to the laws of
humanity” (de Tocqueville 1966, p. 30).
Phase III: Indians as Children “Protected”

in Reservations
Once the “merciless savage” had been uprooted to a contained area away
from his land, laws and customs, he could then be “managed” and raised
as a child. His savage religion could be replaced with superior Christianity.
This was the culmination of an Enlightenment idea that saw non-Whites
as racial and cultural children. Jefferson, who did not seem to consider
Native Americans as racially inferior (unlike Blacks), nevertheless believed
that their backward religion and culture made them incapable of decision-
making in the same autonomous way that White adults could.19
In 1831, the Supreme Court had already declared that all Native American
tribes were a dependent nation, thereby allowing them to be categorized
as “subjects or wards.” Thus, the long prevalent Enlightenment view of
non-Whites as backward “children” needing to be tutored by Whites was
given a new legal basis, “thus nullifying the supposedly universal right to
consent to one’s own government” (Stephanson 1995, p. 26).
Several notable Americans who admitted that Native Americans had been
harmed by White expansion now openly proposed that the only option to
enable the natives to flourish was to put them under the direct protection
of “the Anglo-Saxons.” The self-congratulatory argument was that enslave-
ment and protection had allowed Blacks to grow their population in America
while the Indians had declined in number (Horsman 1981, p. 203)!
A few isolated voices challenged the notion of the Native Americans
being inferior especially if they were educated and Christianized. In
other words, their backward condition was not permanent, but like chil-
dren, given time and a chance to learn “true religion” they could be
redeemed. Congressmen testified that “there were many individuals of
several tribes . . . who were as intelligent as nine tenths of the members
of [Congress]” (Horsman 1981, p. 204). Others pointed out that it was
“preposterous to conclude that a whole nation of people were destitute of
the ability to improve themselves” (ibid.). But while defending some spe-
cific Native Americans as individuals, even such liberal Americans were
unwilling to stand up for Native American cultures or for their collective

identities. One Congressman was brutally honest and insightful in his rare
assessment that “it was natural that Americans should look for the causes
of Indian disappearance among the Indians rather than among the whites,
but this was a false search” (ibid.).
Ultimately, the very few true friends the Native Americans had in
positions of power and public inf luence were simply overwhelmed and
exhausted by the pervasive demonizing of the Native Americans in news
reports and popular literature. Any rare episode of natives’ defensive resis-
tance against the taking of their lands was exaggerated over and over again
to condemn them as savages.
Attempts by non-Whites to unite were particularly targeted as evil. One
watershed event in this regard took place in the early 1840s when escaping
Black slaves joined hands with Indian tribes in Florida to attack Whites set-
tled on captured lands. The conf lict was especially threatening as an alli-
ance of the colored races versus the Whites: Wilderness threatening Eden.
The well-popularized image of the native as a brutal savage was revived
by a Congressman who dramatically held up a spear-point that he claimed
was removed from the body of a child, and who then called for the exter-
mination of the Native Americans because they had proved once again that
“they are demons, not men. They have the human form but not the human
heart.” Public figures who expressed sympathy for the Native Americans
were silenced by telling them that this sympathy was misplaced because
the colored races were attacking White Christians. Senator Thomas Hart
Benton used atrocity literature testimonies in Congress and campaigned
to overrule the land rights of natives and build a railroad corridor to the
Pacific coast for the purpose of trade with India (Horsman 1981, p. 204).
Because of the popular demonology of Native Americans and pseudo-
scientific research to show their innate inferiority, ironically enough,
the only defenders remaining were missionaries claiming that although
Native Americans were presently savages they could be rescued by con-
verting them to Christianity. Further physical genocide could be pre-
vented by completing the cultural genocide. Sadly, freedom loving
Americans explained away their genocide of Native Americans as the
natives’ inability to adapt to civilization: “As American hopes of creat-
ing a policy based on Enlightenment ideas of human equality failed, and
as it relentlessly drove the Indians from all areas desired by the whites,
Americans transferred their own failure to the Indians and condemned
the Indians racially” (Horsman 1981, p. 207).
Phase IV: Academic Research and

the Museumizing of Indian Culture
Even as the Native Americans were being killed, relocated, and systemati-
cally subjected to conditions of genocide, there was considerable interest in
196 Rajiv Malhotra
governmental and private circles for documenting and preserving impor-

tant aspects of the culture in museums and books. This was sometimes fired
by the quest for knowledge or reputation via authorship. Often the motiva-
tion was money through “ownership” of soft and hard knowledge in the
form of traveling exhibits. Former frontiersmen who had made their mark
as “Indian fighters,” along with missionaries and officials who ruled over
the defeated natives, jumped on the latest bandwagon to document, paint
and later photograph various aspects of Native American life, including lan-
guages. Thus a famous Indian-fighting general wrote to a famous Indian
Office administrator, urging him to collect such materials for the sake of
history, before the tribes entirely disappeared. Often there were only one or
two surviving members left of the great tribes (Drinnon 1997, p. 194).
Field agents and missionaries who were collecting data on Native
American languages and vocabularies were urged to be especially atten-
tive to any “last man of his tribe—to get from him the words [of his
language]. Such a man may be looked upon as a connecting link between
time and eternity, as to all that regards his people; and which, if it be lost
all that relates to his tribe is gone forever” (Drinnon 1997, p. 192).
Writers, painters, Indian fighters, administrators, philanthropists, and
missionaries all got into this act. They knew that lining up the right part-
nerships with the right “Indian experts” to produce these books, illustra-
tions, and traveling exhibits could be immensely profitable, and would
make reputations as sought after “experts.”
One such famous author teamed up with an Indian fighter/administra-
tor and urged a well-known painter of scenes from Native American life,
urging him to join up in illustrating a forthcoming work on native history:
“(If you) . . . join us, we shall have in our hands a complete monopoly;
no other work can compete with that which we could make.”
And this could lead to “immense profit” (Drinnon 1997, pp. 194–195).
This book went on to become the definitive nineteenth-century his-
tory of the Native Americans, the multivolume McKenney and Hall’s
History of the Indian Tribes of North America, bringing the authors money
and glory.
This is an important lesson to draw as it remains quite true today:
Interest shown in any ethnic group by well-paid American academics
is not necessarily due to genuine altruism and deep sympathy with that
group. Ultimately the goal in many cases is to gain approval and valida-
tion in the form of job appointments, research grants, promotions and
an ego-boosting collection of students—that is, validation not from the
humans being studied, but from one’s own peer group and from the prevail-
ing establishment. The deep culture has created institutional mechanisms
of peer-review, funding, tenure, censure and promotions that all schol-
ars must live with. Independent scholarly research, especially on cultures
of non-Whites, is unlikely to happen unless American scholars’ work is
scrutinized and the framework seriously challenged from outside, that is,
by scholars of the “other” culture being studied or American intellectuals
outside the academy.
Scholarly histories of the Native Americans also portrayed their bar-

barity and savagery to the fullest extent possible. They were depicted as
“fierce, rapacious and untamable” (Hall 1978, p. 104); also “we find the
Indian, when seeking revenge . . . becomes processed of an insatiate and
insane thirst for blood, which impels him to feed his passion, not only
to the carnage of the helpless of the human race, but even by slaughter
of domestic animals” (Hall 1978, p. 112). It was also common in schol-
arly works, as well as in the popular literature, to dehumanize Native
Americans by comparing them physically and culturally with animals—
wolves, snakes and vultures were the tropes used, explicitly or implicitly
(Drinnon 1997, p. 197). Sometimes an individual’s criminal acts were not
blamed on the individual’s character—as would be the case for a White
person committing the same crime—but rather his culture and religion
were blamed as “savage.” Thus we have this scholarly expression of sym-
pathy for the Indian’s low moral development: “. . . he has never been
taught those lessons of humanity which have, under the guidance of civi-
lization and Christianity, stripped war of its more appalling horrors, and
without which we should be no less savage than the Indians” (Hall 1978,
pp. 201–202). The end result was that he must be “cured” of his religion
and culture or else be destroyed.
A crucially important factor in reinforcing this message was the lack
of balance in gathering and presenting opposing data or having voices
from the other side that would evaluate the values and power structures
linked to Whiteness or Christianity as important factors in the conf lict.
The atrocity literature did not document the greater savagery and the
many unprovoked attacks and systematic massacres committed by White
Christians against the Native Americans.
Drinnon notes dryly that it is unclear what the Native Americans them-
selves thought of this great interest that was being shown in the dying tribes,
cultures, religions and languages by many of the same people who were
directly and indirectly responsible for their extinction. However the data
collectors were powerful and the native informants, translators and inter-
preters had little choice and provided whatever the various scholars sought.
It is likely that this scholarly “recording” and “museumizing” of the
Native American, while simultaneously carrying out popular denigration,
missionary conversions and gradual genocide among them, helped assuage
the American conscience. By showing that Americans were appreciating
and memorializing the Native Americans—albeit as objects of the “dead
past” to be gazed at—it legitimized the sense of the historical “inevitabil-
ity” and destined “melting-away” of the Native American, absolving the
predator culture of any culpability.
Another method to shield the self-image from these unsavory aspects
of America’s past is to not talk about it. Popular works on American his-
tory often block negatives—both of the Western intellectual tradition’s
“soft power” attacks on others as well as of America’s hard power actions.
James Loewen explains: “Most historians were males from privileged
White families. They wrote with blinders on. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
198 Rajiv Malhotra
found himself able to write an entire book on the presidency of Andrew

Jackson without ever mentioning perhaps the foremost issue Jackson
dealt with as president: the removal of Indians from the Southeast.
What’s more, Schlesinger’s book won the Pulitzer prize” (Loewen 1996,
p. 273)!20 While many of today’s best American historians (including
those quoted in this chapter) are more forthright and do critique the
Christian and Enlightenment lapses of the past, this knowledge of the
dark side is still debated mainly in closed academic circles, and does not
loom large in the public understanding of America. Indeed Americans
are understandably uncomfortable when this dark history is presented.
This mythic self-righteousness hides the extended genocide of Native
Americans in the basement of America’s collective memory in order to
prevent guilt. This helps to preserve the deep culture, whose many benign
and truly admirable characteristics get highlighted. But unfortunately, it
also prevents Americans from learning from this experience and examin-
ing the particular strains in their collective mythology and national char-
acter that caused these tragedies and that continue to manifest in their
dealings with non-European, non-Christian cultures. Native Americans,
as living and vibrant cultures, religions and peoples, are almost extinct.
But their memories are preserved in museums, and their names live on as
automobile models, team names, commercial brands, place names, and so
on. Individuals and groups among them appear to prosper as “civilized”
and “exotic” casino operators, who are part and parcel of the American
landscape rather than a challenge to it.
In sharp contrast there is a large White guilt toward Blacks, primarily
because, unlike Native Americans, Blacks live in the mainstream in large
numbers, have a group identity, and have become mobilized as a voice that
will not go away. Very importantly, Black scholars have also developed a ster-
ling intellectual tradition that reverses the gaze on White culture, and have
tried to challenge White frameworks by adopting Afro-centric frameworks.
The Failure of Discourse
American attitudes toward the Native Americans were complex. Internal

conf licts among inf luential Americans remained and pro-native voices
definitely existed throughout this long saga. BUT NATIVE AMERICANS
WERE NEVER IN CONTROL OVER THE DISCOURSE CONCERNING THEM, AND
BOTH SIDES TO THESE DEBATES WERE WHITES. Whites for one plan would
argue against Whites for another plan concerning the plight of the Native
Americans. There is an important lesson here when “area studies” disci-
plines about non-Western nations are being controlled by American insti-
tutions and driven by its deep culture’s worldview.
There were many periods in which the Native Americans, represented
by their White supporters, seemed to be well protected and temporar-
ily secure. The pendulum swings back and forth many times during this
300 year encounter, but Native Americans continually slip in their share
of the land, their rights, and ultimately their very survival. Along the
way, there were important stories of their defense by Whites as well as
betrayals and dishonesty. While the Whites always had a clear Manifest
Destiny, the Native Americans did not have a comparable myth of their
own destiny to take over the earth. This meant that even those Whites
who supported the Native Americans did so in the context of their own
(superior) place in Manifest Destiny.
Native Americans did not control the discourse because of a lack of
their own grand narrative in which to theorize about the Whites collec-
tively (i.e., a deep cultural strategic advantage for the White Americans).
They also lost control over the discourse because White institutions, intel-
lectuals, media and writers ran the show. Since Whites controlled all three
layers—deep culture, institutions of power, and pop culture—this made
Native Americans vulnerable to cultural genocide that was followed by
their physical ethnic cleansing.
It is indeed a sad ending. The Native Americans have slowly been repo-
sitioned with great sympathy. The ideological stance and iconography
about them has turned into a positive image of the “cult of the Indian,”
now that he was only present in museums and ceased to be a threat. The
old Frontier has been captured already and the boundaries have moved to
new frontiers. Native American culture is now a trophy to adorn main-
stream America. From its original positioning as grotesque and savage it is
now beautiful and “American.”
Hypocrisy as National Character
Importantly, throughout the debates on what to do about the “savage,”

there took place an intellectual game the purpose of which was to show
that a fair and equitable due process was being carried out. The best aca-
demic minds in America produced (and continue to produce) devastat-
ing negative knowledge about others while seeming to be liberal and to
engage in honest academic discussions. In light of this pattern, Marimba
Ani, a Black scholar of White culture, provides a provocative but cogent
framework to interpret White culture, suggesting that hypocrisy is an
essential element of its success. She explains European/American culture
includes moral statements whose primary purpose is image projection and
political benefits. This is the same competence that is found in American
advertising, public relations and salesmanship:
Within the nature of European/American culture there exists a

statement of value or of “moral” behavior that has no meaning for
the members of that culture. I call this the “rhetorical ethic”; . . . The
European mind is a political one and for this reason constantly aware
of the political effect of words and images as they are used for the
200 Rajiv Malhotra
purposes of manipulation. By “political” I mean to indicate an ego

that consistently experiences people as others; as representatives
of interests defined differently and, therefore, as conf licting with
this “ego.” The individual is concerned, therefore, with the way in
which his verbal expression and the image he projects can inf luence
the behavior of those to whom he relates . . . This is what is “deeply
rooted” in the American mind—the psychology of “public rela-
tions,” “salesmanship,” and political strategy. (Ani n. d.)
According to Ani, Americans have a deep talent to project moral values in a

manner that appears altruistic and thereby hides their own vested interests:
Because they exported (“sold”) this altruistic image so successfully,

they have had to project themselves as adhering to this “ideal”; simi-
larly, the projection of themselves or their motives in this way has
been essential to the successful imposition of this “ethic” on others.
The basic principle . . . . is that the major contributing factor
to the success of American nationalism has been its projec-
tion as disinterested internationalism. (Ani n. d.)
Americans honestly believe that their actions are intended for others’ good.
In this way, they have fallen victim to their own myth.
Lessons from the Native American Experience
The wars against the Native Americans were concluded in the 1890s, but
deep patterns remain in the American culture which distinguish it from
other Eurocentric cultures. We have examined seventeenth-, eighteenth-,
and nineteenth-century ways of dealing with the native “other,” which
began with European roots in biblical and Enlightenment thinking. We
have traced how both these sources were used to frame the idea of the
“other” as savage or noble, dangerous or childlike, depending on which
model best suited the requirements of personal greed or national expan-
sion. We have seen how well-meaning people who spoke up for the natives
were marginalized, and we have noted that the Native Americans were
the losers in part because they lacked a grand unifying myth that could
help them participate in the discourse that justified their destruction. In
the following section, we will apply the same insights to an examination
of the period of American domination on a global scale, which still con-
tinues in spite of recent setbacks.
Civilization’s Aesthetics, Morality, and Reason
Myths are the organizing principles shared by a people to give mean-

ing to their collective memories and to bring coherence to their present
experiences and future expectations. Myths are not necessarily false, and
the functional power and effect of a myth is determined by people’s belief
in it and not the extent to which it is “true.” Myths are built by selec-
tively picking and choosing parts of the truth that fit and help empower
the myth while ignoring or whitewashing parts that don’t. A myth con-
textualizes the motifs it borrows into a coherent picture for the intended
audience.
Biblical myths are filled with motifs that show the chaotic wilder-
ness as Satanic, and Eden as the realm of Order. The struggle between
Good and Evil is a battle between Order and Chaos. Centuries later, the
Enlightenment movement in Europe removed the dependency on explicit
theological references to God and Satan, but the underlying implicit prem-
ises have remained the same. Eden was replaced by the secular notion of
Civilization. The Enlightenment considered Civilization to be orderly
and standing in opposition to uncivilized societies that were character-
ized by Chaos. Cultural ambiguity and uncertainty are markers of Chaos
whereas Order is characterized with normative, decisive, canonized rules
and predictability. The West, as Hegel pronounced, was uniquely endowed
to lead the rest toward Civilization. Those who were not following the
West on this caravan were destined to perish—the Native Americans,
Hegel wrote, were thus meant to suffer genocide, just as the Africans were
suited for slavery.
A variety of stereotypes were constructed and associated with depicting
these “savages” revolving around the biblical idea of chaos—such as inco-
herence, evil, socially irresponsibility, irrationality, and sometimes sexual
promiscuity. All these attributes are power-laden images. They serve as
code words that can devastate when applied, because they bring forth
powerful knots of energy hidden in the collective subconscious.
A key approach to evaluating other cultures was based on White
Americans’ criteria of beauty and aesthetics. The “savage” others were
depicted as ugly and their deities and symbols were considered grotesque.
The other’s aesthetics was also seen as a barometer of his morality. God
made good people beautiful, and conversely, beautiful people must be
good. Ideas of aesthetics are controlled by the dominant culture of the
time, and this culture likes to project itself as the image of goodness.
While images of Jesus in art in the early centuries showed him to be dark-
skinned, since the Italian Renaissance he acquired White phenotypes.
Only in the early twentieth century was he first painted as blonde with
blue eyes. Besides aesthetics and morality, the third dimension of this
framework was about truth. The “savages” lacked rationality. Civilized
people—who were good in looks and morals—had Reason. The triad of
beauty-goodness-truth became commonly applied in the discourse about
non-White peoples (figure 9.1).
Once any one or two out of the triad of attributes could be asserted
concerning a given “savage,” then all three evaluations automatically
applied: Grotesque deities and filth in the society signified immoral
people who lacked reason. Poverty implied lack of rationality because
202 Rajiv Malhotra
Civilized Savage
Beautiful
Ugly
Immoral Irrational
Moral Truthful
Figure 9.1 Stereotypes of civilized and savage peoples
rationality results in progress; hence poverty was correlated with lack of

morality, and thus the poor need to be “saved” from their immoral native
culture.
Kantian Eurocentrism
The three ideas—aesthetics, morality and truth—have been inter-linked in

Western thought. One finds numerous instances where a judgment about
one is superimposed to implicate another aspect of that culture. That this
was an “enlightened” view held by some of the greatest liberal thinkers of
the West is illustrated by Kant’s writings about Asians and Africans in this
regard. Kant, like many other European Enlightenment thinkers, exerted
considerable inf luence upon American intellectuals and leaders.
Although Kant had little or nothing to say about Native Americans, he
was offended by the non-European aesthetics of the Chinese:
What trif ling grotesqueries the courtesies and studied complements

of the Chinese contain! Even their paintings are grotesque and por-
tray strange and unnatural figures such as are encountered nowhere
in the world. (Eze 1997, p. 55)
He also attacked Asian Indians based on their art and aesthetics, which he
found to be grotesque:
The Indians have a dominating taste for the grotesque, of the sort
that falls into the adventurous. Their religion consists of grotes-
queries. Idols of monstrous form, the priceless tooth of the mighty
monkey Hanuman, the unnatural atonements of the fakirs (heathen
mendicant friars) and so forth are in this taste. (ibid.)
Because of such a horrible state of aesthetics in their religion it was natural

to find them oppressing their women, he explained. While the European
had transformed relations between the sexes to go beyond the physical
animal drive and toward higher levels of morality, charm and decorous-
ness, the same was not true of Orientals: Kant wrote:
Since he has no concept of the morally beautiful which can be united

with this impulse [of sex], he loses even the worth of the sensuous
enjoyment, and his harem is a constant source of unrest. He thrives
on all sorts of amorous grotesqueries . . . he makes use of very unjust
and often loathsome means. Hence there a woman is always in a
prison, whether she may be (unmarried) or have a barbaric, good-
for-nothing and always suspicious husband. (p. 57)
To strengthen his case that Indians were aesthetically and morally deprived
savages, he used whatever he had heard or read of sati to his full advan-
tage. He made sati seem like a normative practice that could be used as
the basis for making sweeping conclusions: “The despotic sacrifice of the
wives in the very same funeral pyre that consumes the corpse of husband
is a hideous excess” (p. 55).
While sharing prevailing views about Black “ugliness” and White
“beauty,” Kant again extended aesthetics into moral judgments of Africa,
and wrote: “The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises
above the trifling” (Eze 1997, p. 55). Kant believed, along with a number of
other Enlightenment scholars, that “all Negroes stink” (Eze 1997, p. 46).
“Immoral Potatoes” and Other Savages
Similarly, aesthetics were applied by the “enlightened” continent of Europe

to make many irrational judgments. For instance, the potato had been
first developed by Native Americans in South America but was rejected
by Europeans for its bad aesthetics and for its association as a product
of the “savages.” Many European thinkers argued that its odd geometry
lacked symmetry, thereby suggesting that it was linked to evil, because
God made the “good” food symmetrically shaped. The threat of a mas-
sive famine across Europe that could have killed as much as half its entire
population finally forced farmers in Europe to grow potatoes as a high-
yielding source of nutrition. The European sense of aesthetics considered
beauty to be symmetry and an odd shaped potato to be ugly, and then
linked this ugliness to evil and immorality, because God would not intend
for us to eat ugly food, and hence they declared it a “dangerous” food.
Potato’s reputation was also associated with the Native Americans from
whom Europeans had obtained it, and who had by then been declared evil
and uncivilized people—so the potato was also guilty by association.
In its deep layers of myth, the Inquisition in Europe was about Order
(usually imagined as masculine) becoming threatened by the feminine
aesthetics of the pagan faiths, which were seen as chaotic and hence
linked to evil. All sorts of stories were made up about their evil practices
204 Rajiv Malhotra
which, naturally, had to be seen as inspired by Satan. Rule books were

written and officially sanctioned to provide the normative, orderly
mechanisms for proving the guilt of those accused of such practices.
This lasted several for centuries and spread to virtually every corner
of Europe, killing tens of millions of women accused of witchcraft.
Contrary to their claims of respect for individuality, Europeans were
most intolerant of the women priests of native religions because they
were declared a threat to Order.
When I first arrived in the U.S. corporate scene in the 1970s, manage-
ment training seminars emphasized certain normative body language: A
strong handshake makes you seem confident and reliable; a limp hand-
shake is seen by White culture as a sign of weakness and lack of moral cer-
tainty. Eye contact with confidence (almost to the point of aggressiveness
but just the right level), yet balanced with a smile, shows being nice but in
control. And so on. The notion of “power lunch” and “power breakfast”
entered corporate culture, along with a series of bestseller books with
titles explaining what “real men” do and don’t. Soon women followed
with titles like “real women” do X and not Y.
Cultural biases in aesthetics are important to understand. Lawyers
advise their clients appearing in court to dress formally and wear their
hair in a clean “orderly” appearance, because that is the aesthetics cor-
related with being moral and truthful. Images of the “savage” look, on
the other hand, are routinely used by media and by opponents to depict
someone as a crook or immoral or dangerous. This is ironic when one
considers that many of the crooks and criminals—such as the leaders of
Enron, WorldCom, among others—have the perfectly orderly aesthetics.
Neither aesthetics nor their superb intellects (i.e., Reason) kept them from
being immoral!
Frontier Encounters with Other Civilizations
Black scholars have explained how racist ideas about Blacks’ aesthetics
were linked to being evil and irrational, and hence in need to be con-
trolled by the forces of goodness and truth which were identifiable by
good (White) looks. In the 1930s, when Adorno criticized Whites for
defining jazz as Black music, the prevailing White dominated discourse
did view jazz as “primitive and perhaps even dangerous, its refinement
best left to whites. . . .” (Steinman 2005, pp. 115–137). Record companies
forced Black groups to adopt Frontier names like “The Jungle Band” and
“Chocolate Dandies,” and were given labels like “Ethiopian Nightmare.”
Mainstream critics described jazz as degenerate and something to be wary
of. Later, in the 1950s, when Elvis crossed the line and appropriated Black
music for White audiences, on the one hand it was seen as White (and
thus civilized) by his fans, and on the other hand the orthodoxy declared
it an invasion by the forces of Chaos. The Frontier threatened to take
over Civilization. Elvis’ records were publicly destroyed and burnt and
many governmental inquiries were ordered to find out ways of stopping
this menace from attacking the realm of Order. Eventually, the threat
of Chaos disappeared when jazz, rock, and other Black genres got cap-
tured and turned into an “orderly” product of the music industry. Adorno
explained capitalism’s appropriation of Black music into “commodities”
and “confusing parodies” that were “manufactured by the fashion indus-
try” (Steinman 2005, pp. 115–137).
When Americans decided to capture territories from Mexico, the
Mexicans were depicted as “savages” lacking aesthetics not only in their
looks but also in their grotesque symbols and art. These images were
seen as a sign of their immorality and wickedness. Hence, there emerged
the images of dangerous “banditos” which were further extrapolated as
proof of their lack of reason. Naturally, White civilization had to conquer
such devilish peoples. Today’s debates against Mexican immigration and
America’s domestic policies that prejudice against Hispanic Americans are
not explicitly racist. But scholars of race point out the underlying images
and myths present in the discourse that involve one or more of the trio: lack
of aesthetics, moral deficiency, and inferior reasoning. Thus there is implicit
racism that is subtly codified. For instance, while cigarettes have become
“civilized” as Wall Street capitalism, drugs belong to the darker races—
marijuana to Mexicans, heroin to Blacks, peyote to Native Americans, and
so we see the “War on Drugs” is a mythic war between Order and Chaos.
It is interesting to see how consistently the logic of these myths has been
used time and time again in dealing with non-Western civilizations since
first contact. The chronology of encounters that helped shape America’s
deep culture is shown in figure 9.2.
The three boxes in figure 9.2 represent three eras, which are roughly
as follows:
● In the first era, the early settlers were on the defensive in an isolated
strange land, and the myth was for a positive build up for hope and
ethical actions.
● In the second era, expansion over the land mass became important.
This entailed violent encounters with Native Americans and Mexicans
for land. Slavery of Blacks was required to make the agricultural land
productive and hence valuable. The Myth was constantly adapted
to justify all this in the name of civilization. The corpus of frontier
literature about the “savages” was vastly expanded and constantly fed
by missionaries, fiction writers, theatrical productions, journalists,
academic scholars, and political rhetoric.
● Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Manifest Destiny idea
was again adapted to take America across the oceans because the land
mass had been taken over already. This overseas expansion involved
violence against Filipinos, Caribbean peoples, Hispanics, Chinese (as
laborers), Japanese (interned) and Vietnamese, among others.
206 Rajiv Malhotra
[4] Caribbean [5]

[1] [3] Philippines
Isolation Native Mexican [7]
& Americans
Vietnam
Frontier
(External Frontiers)
City
on a Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny
Hill (Overseas)
(Land)
[6] [8] [9]

Europe
[2] Black Slavery Chinese Japanese Jim Crow
(Internal Frontier) Workers Internment Racism
(Internal)
Figure 9.2 Encounters that shaped national character
Atrocity Literature as a Genre21
In each instance there was extensive literature developed and dissemi-

nated about the atrocities committed by the “savage” cultures. More gen-
erally, the literature showed them to have frontier-like attributes of chaos,
lack of morality, lack of aesthetics, and certainly the lack of rationality
that was required to be civilized. In each case such literature got deployed
to argue in favor of invasions and containment of those people, often
with claims that it would be in their own best interests. One cannot help
being reminded of the way Iraq was instantly demonized by the media,
including CNN and other liberal media, the moment the U.S. authorities
started to debate the merits of waging war.22 Pop media images served as
the fifth column to support the case for invasion. A little later, the noble
and oppressed Iraqi people, yearning to breathe free, were demonized
when they failed to greet the American invaders with enough enthusiasm.
Current debates about the future course of the United States in Iraq make
heavy use of both sets of myth.
Each of these historical encounters was prolonged, intense and excep-
tionally violent. What is particularly relevant to note is the critical role of
popular and academic literature as weaponry in the form of denigration
and demonology of the other culture in every single encounter. Once a
given people could be deemed “dangerous savages” then it was considered
okay and even mandatory to wage “savage war” against them, because this
war was for Order against Chaos. Both the academy and media dished out
images of “savagery” about the non-White cultures that America encoun-
tered. The systematic approach was repeated and the process became more
sophisticated each time.
As a result of America’s superiority complex, there has developed a
genre of American literature that is known as “atrocity literature.” Over
the past four centuries a corpus of academic and fictional writings that
have been adapted into Broadway plays and Hollywood movies have
portrayed American encounters with other cultures—such as Native
Americans, Blacks, Mexicans, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Haitians,
Cubans, Vietnamese, and now Muslims—reinforcing the idea that the
rest of the world is inferior to America and must be won over to its ways
for their own good, no less. Only then can John Wayne fade peaceably
into the sunset on his horse.
“Atrocity literature” was integral to portraying other cultures’ strange-
ness and exotica by emphasizing the dangers it posed. The phenomenon
may be brief ly stated as follows:
● The mythmaking consisted of painting a vivid picture of the “other”
as being “dangerously savage”—a people who were a threat to
innocent God-fearing Christian folks. The imagery sometimes sug-
gested that the biblical Eden (now home to Americans) was being
violated and threatened by evil savages from the Frontier—the
collective rest of the non-Christian, uncivilized world. Often this
image of the “savage” was created by making associations. They
were typically depicted in scenes of “idol worshipping” replete with
grotesque and sundry divinities, as opposed to the one true God of
the Christian Americans. These “others” were packaged to appear
“primitive”—lacking in morals and ethics, “prone to violence,”
whatever it would take to make them appear monstrous and threat-
ening. This trio—lack of aesthetics, lack of morality, and lack of
rationality—became a fixture that is found over and over again in
“atrocity literature.”
● Historians have described how narratives about dangerous non-
westerners were formulated to incite support for violence against any-
one who could be portrayed as “savages.” When conf licts erupted,
the good Americans were depicted as responding legitimately and
dutifully to the actions of “savages.” Thus American brutalities were
depicted as pre-emptive strikes against potentially threatening “sav-
ages” and seen as justified and reasonable measures.
● The “savage” cultures were also shown to victimize their own
women and children hence making the violent civilizing mission of
the Americans seem to be in the best interest of the “savage” societies
at large.
● This kind of “atrocity literature” became a major genre that gave
intellectual sustenance to the doctrine of America’s Manifest Destiny.
In turn, Manifest Destiny fed even more of such literature.
● This genre thrives on half-truths, on selecting items from here and
there, and stitching themes together into a narrative that then plays on
the readers’ psyche with pre-conceived stereotypes. The literature seeks
to create a sense of heightened urgency in dealing with “savagery.”
● The other cultures portrayed in this way may or may not have com-
mitted the alleged atrocities attributed to them. The truth, in all
probability, is not one-sided. Typically, the bad behavior on the other
208 Rajiv Malhotra
side is exaggerated and sensationalized in order to make an ideologi-

cal point, not to unveil the truth.
● Americans are spared blame for their violent actions which are por-
trayed as being just and unavoidable—a “necessary evil” when deal-
ing with an uncivilized and threatening world.
● Once established in the popular mind, “atrocity literature” was often
used to justify the harsh subjugation of the people in the Frontier
because they did not deserve to be treated like “civilized” people. In
many instances this led to genocide (Native Americans) or large-scale
violence (the Vietnam War).
● These mechanisms are important to study because they are not only
in the past.
Many scholars have naively participated in producing such “atrocity litera-

ture” either without realizing it, or without taking into consideration how
the material would eventually be used. For example, Professor Dunning
at Columbia University produced a large quantity of such “atrocity litera-
ture” aimed at Blacks in the early twentieth century. His writings helped
justify the Ku Klux Klan’s ideology and buttressed White racial attitudes
toward Blacks as inferior. These depictions would not get corrected until
the civil rights movement and social reforms of the 1960s.
Once a target culture was branded and marked in this way, it became
the recipient of all sorts of untoward allegations. It became impossible
for the leaders of any such branded culture to try to defend themselves
against the false charges and depictions. Anyone engaged in this criticism
of America would be immediately put on to the list of suspected “dan-
gerous savages” and stigmatized. The normal rules of providing evidence
and the right to fair representation would be superseded by the swarm of
negative allegations. The means justified the ends: Civilization had to be
saved at any cost, and the applications of increasing amounts of violence
proved effective; in fact, the more the better.
Evolution of Myth
Table 9.1 summarizes how the Myth evolved in each stage of American
history. It shows how the “us” was defined and evolved over time—
from Puritans to Englishmen to Christians to White, and so forth. The
Frontier was both a geographical location in any given period and also
a set of alien cultures to combat, including both those located outside
the Frontier and various “internal others” such as slaves, former slaves,
defeated Native Americans, non-White populations acquired by annex-
ation, and immigrants.
In the following diagram, the two columns on the rationalization
show both kinds: the overtly selfish reasons cited such as expanding com-
merce or bringing “security” from dangerous savages; and the pretence of
Table 9.1 History of the Frontiers
Rationales Used for Expansion
Stage of the Myth Definition of Who Is “Us” Geographic and Cultural Frontiers Selfish Rationales Self-Righteous Myth American Counterculture Responses
Colonial Period a) Fellow countrymen from Geographic: East coast occupied by Commercial Manifesting Romanticism of Native
a European nation Native Americans expansion and Christianity on Americans as “noble savages”;
b) Christians Cultural: Native Americans outside security of the Earth via “City on seeing free Blacks as exemplars
c) Whites and African slaves inside colonies a Hill” imagery
North American White American citizens of Geographic: Westward and Commercial Manifest Destiny: Enlightenment, anti-slavery, and
Expansion a newly invented nation southward and military American “Progress” theories
and European Cultural: Indigenous people and expansion exceptionalism
Immigration Spanish speaking Whites outside; across North spreading
African slaves inside America Civilization
Overseas Expansion Whitened American Geographic: Central America, Military- Globalizing Transcendentalism; Black pop
and Non-European citizens of a massive Philippines, Vietnam, etc. Industrial freedom, culture and music; drugs; Asian
Immigration continent and economy Cultural: Heathens overseas; superpower commerce, inspired counterculture; civil
Immigrant labor internally democracy rights and antiwar movements
Current Frontiers Multiethnic power pyramid Geographic: China, India, Pan-Islam Global “Flat World” Postmodern pop culture
Cultural: Non-European externally superpower meritocracy
and Immigrants internally
210 Rajiv Malhotra
altruism to “save” humanity, or make “progress” or “civilize” others in

the name of God or Providence or History.
The final column shows that there has always existed a counterculture
of protest within America, similar to the hippies of the 1960s. But these
served as Good Cops who would get overruled by the Bad Cops or get
convinced by them and join them, or would simply die out and fade away
in defeat. This is sobering evidence of the challenges facing the small
intellectual voice today that is truly attempting sweeping changes.
The Power of Myth
Salman Rushdie calls a myth “the family album or storehouse of a cul-

ture’s childhood, containing [its] . . . future, codified as tales that are both
poems and oracles” (Rushdie 2000, p. 83). Culture is an enactment of
myth, and the two support and nourish each other. In order to understand
a specific culture one must know the myths which serve as the implied
context for experience. Naturally, myths are not static but evolve and
compete with other myths in a mythic space. They must be adaptable to
new imperatives. Hence the plasticity and elasticity of competing myths
will determine which ones dominate by providing greater coherence and
thereby surviving as the most viable and robust. Bruce Lincoln explains
how myths are constantly reshaped by narrators and audiences:
Myths are not snapshot representations of stable taxonomies and hier-

archies . . . Rather, the relation between social order and the stories told
about it is much looser and—as a result—considerably more dynamic,
for this loose fit creates possibilities for rival narrators, who modify
aspects of the established order as depicted in prior variants, with con-
sequences that can be far-reaching if and when audiences come to per-
ceive these innovative representations as reality. (Lincoln 1999, p. 150)
In intercivilizational competitive situations, understanding the other side’s

myths become a critical factor in one’s ability to negotiate for domina-
tion or collaboration. The mythic representation of the other side drives
one’s ability to engage that side, and this can become a powerful weapon
or a cataclysmic liability. For instance, the Aztec ruler, Montezuma,
lost his entire kingdom to the Spanish conquistador, Cortez, because
Montezuma’s own myth made him imagine Cortez to be a mythic god.
Cortez’s Eurocentric myth did not bestow a similar prestige and glory
upon Montezuma. On the contrary, the cunning Cortez played his role
as per Montezuma’s mythic expectations. A very tiny and vastly out-
numbered ragtag army of Cortez killed Montezuma in the cruelest man-
ner, in the watershed event that led Europeans to conquer the vast South
American kingdoms. One might say that Europe had the more effective
myth in this clash of civilizational myths.
Similarly, the British in India mastered the study of India’s myths for
the purpose of colonial manipulation, and this was the explicit motive
for starting Indology in British universities—and now a major reason for
U.S.-based South Asian Studies. The British spun myths of their own
superiority that were installed in the minds of ambitious Indians. But
Indians had no representation system of the British in Indian epistemic
and mythic terms. The mythic battle was won by the British.
Given the mythic and functional power of modern science, a myth
may masquerade as historical fact with reinforcement from major schol-
ars, institutions and media. Levi-Strauss remarked that “in our own
societies history has replaced mythology and fulfils the same func-
tion . . .” (Levi-Strauss n. d., pp. 42–43). Often the strategy to be cred-
ible involves approximating the truth sufficiently to be seen as truth.
The lie that is closest to the truth is the most dangerous lie. For instance,
J. M. Blaut explains that moderate racism is, today, a more serious prob-
lem in the world of scholars than is classical racism, because it is mainly
an implicit theory (Blaut 1993, p. 65). Thus a myth may remain partly
submerged in the subconscious in order to stay below the radar of criti-
cal inquiry. The West does not want to recognize its own narratives as
myths, but as logos/reason, while depicting worldviews of all others as
myths. Derrida wrote, “The white man takes his own mythology . . . for
the universal form of that he must still wish to call Reason” (Derrida
1982, p. 213).
J. M. Blaut wrote that American mythic superiority “seems to be rooted
in an implicit theory that combines a belief that Christian peoples make
history with a belief that White peoples make history, the whole becom-
ing a theory that it is natural for Europeans to innovate and progress
and for non-Europeans to remain stagnant and unchanging (‘traditional’),
until, like Sleeping Beauty, they are awakened by the Prince. This view
still, in the main, prevails, although racism has been discarded and non-
Europe is no longer considered to have been absolutely stagnant and tra-
ditional” (Blaut 1993, p. 6). He goes on to write:
Eurocentrism is the colonizer’s model of the world in a very literal

sense: it is not merely a set of beliefs, a bundle of beliefs. It has evolved,
through time, into a very finely sculpted model, a structured whole;
in fact a single theory; in fact a super theory, a general framework for
many smaller theories, historical, geographical, psychological, socio-
logical, and philosophical. (Blaut 1993, pp. 10–11)
Besides helping to defeat the other cultures, the dominant culture’s myths
also serve as master-narratives into which others can be appropriated,
often in ways that make it seem very attractive to the others. The captured
“others” get mapped into mythic roles assigned to them in inferior posi-
tions, their knowledge gets mapped as belonging to the dominant culture,
and their symbols become ornaments, as Native American symbolism has
212 Rajiv Malhotra
been used. Robert Young explains the Enlightenment support for such
mythic appropriation:
Hegel articulates a philosophical structure of the appropriation of the

other as a form of knowledge which uncannily simulates the project
of nineteenth-century imperialism; the construction of knowledge
which all operate through forms of expropriation and incorpo-
ration of the other mimics at a conceptual level the geographical
and economic absorption of the non-European world by the West.
Marxism’s standing Hegel on his head may have reversed his ideal-
ism, but it did not change the mode of operation of a conceptual sys-
tem which remains collusively Eurocentric . . . The appropriation of
the other as a form of knowledge within a totalizing system can thus
be set alongside the history (if not the project) of European imperial-
ism, and the constitution of the other as “other” alongside racism and
sexism. (Young 1990, pp. 3–4)
Notes
1. John Winthrop made his famous sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” while on a ship to
America in which he said the famous line, “wee must consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon
a Hill . . .”
2. This trend started much earlier. Colony officials and opinion makers portrayed the Indians as
barbarous, and adopted a policy of genocide and deceit. 1n 1624, for example, more than 200
Indians who had signed a peace treaty with the Colony were served poisoned wine and killed.
3. “In his earliest notebooks, Whitman was already piecing together a vision of the United States as
a live organism, stretching from one coast to another . . . He was particularly interested in learn-
ing about the parts of the country he had never seen, and compiled notes on the f lora, fauna,
and natural features of each state. See “The Global Imaginary in Whitman’s Writing” at http://
humwww.ucsc.edu/gruesz/global.htm, accessed April 8, 2006.
4. There were at least three precursors to this notion from earlier Christian history: (1) The
Book of Revelations, written in the first century after Jesus had mapped the Jewish apocalypse
onto Christian history, good/evil becoming Christ/Antichrist, etc. (2) St. Augustine (fourth
century) replaced this with a more sophisticated philosophy of the fight between City of God
(i.e., the Christian Church) and City of Man (i.e., all non-Christians who were declared to be
ruled by Satan), and this ruled mainstream Christianity until the seventeenth century. (3) By
1600 European science had become very confident of explaining nature through empiricism
and hence undermined Augustine’s notion of nature as the evil domain of the Devil which had
to be avoided with the new notion that nature could be captured by man. The seventeenth-
century Anglican theologian, Joseph Mead, reinterpreted the Book of Revelation and devel-
oped what spread as a revived and reinterpreted apocalyptic millenarianism. This was also
exported to America.
5. For instance, Samuel H. Cox, a leading Presbyterian minister of the 1840s, told an audience in
England that, “in America, the state of society is without parallel in universal history . . . I really
believe that God has got America within anchorage, and that upon that arena, He intends to
display his prodigies for the millennium.” [Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edition (1993), vol-
ume 17, p. 408.]
6. However, Voltaire and major intellectual works of the enlightenment doubted this, and thought
that Africans were a new species. See Eze (1997, p. 91).
7. Secularism’s link to Christianity has been widely described. See: “Eschatology,” in “The New
Encyclopedia Britannica,” Vol. 17. pp. 401–408. Eliade’s deconstruction of modern Marxism
as a Judeo-Christian myth is also very interesting. (Eliade 1957, pp. 196–207)
8. Even going so far as to edit and truncate the Bible to among other things, remove references to
the Divinity of Jesus and his miracles.
9. Based on the stories found in works of famous American writers like James Paulding author of
“Westward Ho” which became a rallying cry for frontier America in the 1800s. Other writers
using this device include Timothy Flint.
10. See Drinnon (1997, pp. 126–127 and 156–157) for examples of such changes of heart in White
conscience keepers confronted with atrocity data.
11. Indeed to this day all over America there are many memorials and annual commemorations for
Whites killed in “battle” with the Indians, but few indeed for countless the Native American
patriots who were killed fighting for their lands and way of life.
12. “In 1816 Governor McMinn of Tennessee indicated . . . [that] the federal government should
eliminate all general Indian claims within his State by ending tribal ownership. Individual Indians
should be able to retain land and pass it on to their heirs” (Horsman 1981, p. 193).
13. “Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national character. Their present
condition, contrasted with what they once were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympa-
thies. Our ancestors found them the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By persuasion
and force they have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain,
until some of the tribes have become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve
for awhile their once terrible names. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization,
which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of
the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware [tribes on the east coast who were already
‘assimilated’ and destroyed] is fast overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That
this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the states does not admit of a
doubt. Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great
a calamity” (Horsman 1981).
14. “What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand
savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embel-
lished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more
than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and
religion?” (Horsman 1981).
15. “Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and philanthropy has
been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment
been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth . . . . But
true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one
generation to make room for another” (Horsman 1981).
16. “In the monuments and fortifications of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of
the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated and has dis-
appeared to make room for the existing savage tribes. . . . Philanthropy could not wish to see this
continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers” (Horsman 1981).
17. “After a harassing warfare, prolonged by the nature of the country and by the difficulty of
procuring subsistence, the Indians were entirely defeated, and the disaffected band dispersed or
destroyed. The result has been creditable to the troops engaged in the service. Severe as is the
lesson to the Indians, it was rendered necessary by their unprovoked aggressions, and it is to be
hoped that its impression will be permanent and salutary” (Horsman 1981).
18. “That those tribes cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with
our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor
the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition.
Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of
their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circum-
stances and ere long disappear” (Horsman 1981).
19. See Drinnon (1997, pp. 95–98) on Jefferson’s often hypocritical stance on this issue.
20. Loewen is referring to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson, Boston, MA: Little, Brown,
1945.
21. Gatlung (1990, pp. 291–305) defines cultural violence as “any aspect of a culture that can be
used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural forms.” Atrocity literature has been used
by Americans to justify violence in a “guilt-free” manner.
22. In the ethics of Mahabharata, by contrast, war is to be conducted in accordance with its own
dharma. Often the warring parties feasted together at night when war was ceased temporarily.
214 Rajiv Malhotra
This was a different ethos than American “savage war” where the end justifies the means once
the other party has been demonized as a “savage.” U.S. arguments in the Iraq/Afghanistan War
that the prisoners captured are not entitled to treatment under the Geneva Convention is a logic
based on “savage war,” i.e., these combatants are “savages” and hence conventions of war are
not applicable.
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CH A P T E R T E N
What Have the Muslims Ever Done for Us?

Islamic Origins of Western Civilization
Joh n M . Hob son
Introduction
In Monty Python’s famous film “The Life of Brian,” Reg, the “inspi-
rational” leader of the revolutionary party—the PFJ (Peoples’ Front of
Judea)—convenes a secret meeting to rally his comrades to overthrow
the “oppressive and much reviled” Roman Empire. Having pointed out
that the Romans have taken everything from us and our fathers’ and our
fathers’ fathers . . . his speech rises to its climax with the words, “And what
have they ever given us in return?” After a long pause someone utters,
“the aqueduct.” This then leads to a series of similar interventions as the
f loodgates were now truly open. “Public order” someone shouts out,
which is then followed up by another comrade’s ringing endorsement,
“Yeah, you’ve got to admit Reg, it’s been a lot safer around here since the
Romans came along” (which is then met with rousing cheers of approval
from the whole audience). And after a whole series of similarly awkward
and increasingly rowdy interventions, Reg finishes his rallying speech
with the words, “Alright, but apart from sanitation, the aqueduct, medi-
cine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water sys-
tem and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
More recently, the British talk show host Robert Kilroy Silk created a
storm in Britain when he asked the rhetorical question, “what have the
Arabs ever done for us?” (which he confusingly conf lates with all Middle
Eastern Muslims). He replied by suggesting that they have given us very
little bar trouble and terrorism. That Kilroy Silk is no longer on air and
that many have dismissed his claims is in some respects beside the point.
For the fact is that a rising tide of Islamophobia is sweeping across Britain;
something that Kilroy Silk’s words feed readily into. Indeed in November
2006 the leader of the British National Party (the far-right quasi-fascist
218 John M. Hobson
party), Nick Griffin, successfully defended himself in court against the

prosecution’s claim that his recent words on Islam as an “evil religion” was
not, in fact, racist. And right now, we find that Turkey is facing ongoing
difficulties in joining the European Union with the suspicious whiff of
Islamophobia seeping out from just below the surface.
But to return to Kilroy Silk, his depiction of the “Arabs” dovetails
neatly with the assumptions that lie behind the rhetoric on the war on
terror. When President George W. Bush justifies the “war on terror” as
necessary to protect the “free world,” which he conf lates with Western
“civilization,” the key implication is that the “non-Western” world is a
realm of unfreedom and un-civilization or barbarism. And it presumes
that while the West has given much to the East the latter has given noth-
ing positive to the former. A little further behind this civilizational rheto-
ric are a series of unstated assumptions, which amount to the twin claims
that the West single-handedly created the modern capitalist world, and that
only the West has the power and goodwill to bequeath its own creation to
the East. These twin claims underpin Bush’s “civilizing mission” that was
imposed in the “barbaric” Middle East since 2003.
This widely held view of “us” and “them” is in fact but Eurocentric
hubris because what has not been recognized at the popular level is that
directly and indirectly the East in general and the Muslims in particular
have bequeathed a great deal that enabled the West to make the final break-
through to modern capitalism (Hobson 2004; and see the important pieces
by Bala [chapter one], Joseph [chapter two], as well as Demir and Kaboub
[chapter four], this volume). Throughout the long period of European
development—from roughly 650 CE to the completion of European
industrialization by 1900—perhaps the majority of the major ideas, tech-
nologies and institutions that underpinned this slow leap forward ema-
nated from the East. Particularly important is that between 500–1000 CE
a nascent global commercial system (incorporating all parts of the world
bar Australia and the Americas) was created by the Easterners—especially
the Arabs and Persians, but also the Jews, Black Africans, Indians, Javanese,
and Chinese. While this directly fuelled the rise of European commerce,
nevertheless the Eastern-led global economy’s ultimate significance lay in
the fact that it was along its sinews that Eastern ideas, technologies and
institutions f lowed, to be eventually copied or assimilated by the backward
Europeans between 650 and 1900. So, when considering the question,
“what have the Muslims ever done for us?” I shall take each of the major
turning points in the rise of the West in the last fourteen hundred years and
show how Islamic inf luences played a vital role in stimulating them.
But before embarking on this journey of rediscovery one caveat is note-
worthy. For it is not my intention to create a kind of Occidentalism where
the West is portrayed as a passive beneficiary of Islam’s many achieve-
ments. Nor would I claim that Islam made the West per se. Rather, I seek
merely to show that the West was not the sole repository of the necessary
inventive and creative genius that made its breakthrough to modernity an
inevitability. Rajani Kaneppalli Kanth put it rather more eloquently than

I when addressing this problem in his book, Against Eurocentrism:
To state the crux of the matter: the rejection of Eurocentrism . . . is not

intended to supplant it with an equally strident Asia-centrism . . . but
with the larger, and more accurate, vision of the collective, if unevenly
distributed, wisdom of the human race, within which latter-day
European knowledge occupies a distinct, if not always a primary,
space. (Kanth 2005, p. 9)
Added to this is the important point made recently by the late-great

Edward Said:
The worst thing ethically and politically is to let [Eurocentric] sepa-

ratism simply go on, without understanding the opposite of separat-
ism, which is connectedness. . . . What I am interested in is how all
these things work together. That seems to me to be the great task—
to connect them all together—to understand wholes rather than bits
of wholes. . . . In a wonderful phrase, Disraeli asks, “Arabs, what are
they?” and answers: “they’re just Jews on horseback.” So underlying
this separation is also an amalgamation of some kind. (Said 2004,
pp. 260–261, 424)
At the very least, then, I seek here to reveal the important Islamic-Western
connections. And at most, I would suggest, without these connections to
the Muslim world it is debateable whether the Europeans would have
ended up by tripping the modernistic light fantastic.
Islamic Origins of the Medieval European

Energy Revolution
In the early phase of European development the Muslims pioneered

all manner of energy forms that were subsequently passed on to the
Europeans. These included the noria (an ingenious water-raising machine),
the windmill, the water-mill and various irrigation techniques. And in
turn, these enabled the medieval European energy revolution. However,
the Eurocentric historian, Carlo Cipolla, asserts that the water-mill is
a strictly European invention, the proof of which is that it was entirely
absent in the East (Cipolla 1993, pp. 210). But as Arnold Pacey notes:
It used to be thought that [the water-mill] was a distinctively European

development. But it is now known that there were numerous water
mills in the vicinity of Baghdad, and that water power was applied to
paper-making in that region for two or more centuries earlier than
in Europe. (Pacey 1991, p. 43)
220 John M. Hobson
Actually, Pacey understates the case. A fuller picture is provided by al-

Hassan and Hill:
Muslims were obviously very keen to exploit every possible water

supply as a potential source of power for milling. They even gauged
the f low of a stream by the number of mills it would turn—the
stream was, as it were, so many “mill-power”. . . . There were mills
in every province of the Muslim world from Spain and North Africa
to Transoxiana. (al-Hassan and Hill 1986, p. 53)
Strikingly, throughout the Middle East waterwheels and watermills pro-

liferated along the rivers, being deployed for irrigation, grinding grain,
and crushing materials for industrial processes. Indeed there were mas-
sive norias on the Orontes River at Hama in Syria (wooden water-raising
machines that stood over sixty feet tall). Crucially, the norias and water-
mills were also built in Islamic Spain from where they subsequently dif-
fused across “Europe.”
Nevertheless, various Eurocentric replies are often marshalled at this
point though I shall deal only with the issue of the windmill by way of
example. Eurocentric historians often reply by claiming that the windmill
was a uniquely European invention that was founded in the thirteenth
century. And the proof lies in the point that Persian windmills were hori-
zontal whereas in Europe they were vertically mounted (i.e., the familiar
“tower mill”). But claims for an independent European invention are ren-
dered problematic by the point that the earliest reference to the windmill
is in Persia in 644. “More certain perhaps, is the mention of windmills
in the works of the Banuˉ Muˉsaˉ brothers (850 to 870), while a century
later several reliable authors are speaking of the remarkable windmills
of Seistan (e.g., Abuˉ Ishaˉq al-Istakhrıˉ and Abuˉ al-Qaˉsim ibn Hauqal)”
(Needham and Ling 1965, pp. 556–557). The Persian windmill subse-
quently diffused not only to Europe but also to Afghanistan and China
(Forbes 1956, pp. 614–617). That the actual design did not diffuse across
to Europe seems fair; that there was no Persian input at all seems unfair.
For it is clear that the idea of the windmill diffused. And it is surely no
coincidence that the European Crusaders, who would undoubtedly have
come across the Persian windmill during their “adventures”—particularly
given that many stayed on and settled in the Middle East—deployed it in
Europe not long afterwards.
Islamic Origins of the “Italian” Financial Revolution
A second major contribution that the Muslims bequeathed to the back-

ward Europeans was the institutional infrastructure that enabled or pro-
moted the celebrated Italian financial revolution of the post-1000 period.
Thus while Europeans celebrate the financial wizardry of the Italians of
the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, this obscures the point that all of their
financial practices came directly from the Middle East. These included
the commenda or collegantzia partnership. And while it is the case that the
roots of this institution stem back to pre-Islamic times, it was developed
furthest by the early Islamic merchants (Kister 1965, p. 117; Goody 1996,
p. 58). Indeed as Abraham Udovitch notes, “it is the Islamic form of this
contract (qiraˉd, muqaˉrada, mudaˉraba) which is the earliest example of a com-
mercial arrangement identical with that economic and legal institution
which [much later] became known in Europe as the commenda” (Udovitch
1970a, p. 48). Nevertheless this should hardly be a “revelation” given that
Muhammad himself had been a commenda merchant. Nor should it be
altogether surprising that the Italians came to use this institution given
that Italy was linked directly into the Arabic trading system. It is also
noteworthy that from the eighth century the qiraˉd was applied in Islam to
credit and manufacturing, and not just to trade (Udovitch 1970b; Goitein
1967, pp. 362–367).
The Italians are also wrongly accredited the discovery of a range of
other financial institutions including the bill of exchange and checks/
cheques, credit institutions, insurance, and banking. For the fact is that
all these institutions were derived from either the Islamic Middle East, or
the pre-Islamic Middle East given that “many of the business techniques
had been firmly established before the Qu’raˉ n had codified them” (Abu-
Lughod 1989, p. 216). The Sumerians and Sassanids were using banks,
bills of exchange and checks before the advent of Islam. Nevertheless it
was the Muslims who took these early beginnings furthest. Ironically one
reason for this lay with the need for Middle Eastern capitalists to circum-
vent the Islamic ban on usury. For example, payment was often delayed by
up to two months or more so as to conceal usury by paying a higher price
(thereby requiring such institutions) (Goitein 1967, pp. 197–199; Udovitch
1970a, pp. 61–62). Islamic bankers were common, as were international
currency changers, and the banks themselves entered into commenda agree-
ments for advancing money or credit in return for profits. The banks were
a vital conduit for international trade, transferring funds from one place to
another. The bankers issued notes—the “demand note” or bill of exchange
at a distant location (suftaja) and the “order to pay” (hawaˉ la) which was
identical to a modern check. As Abu-Lughod (1989, pp. 223) notes of the
hawaˉ la: “At the upper left corner was the amount to be paid (in numbers),
and in the lower left corner was the date and then the name of the payer.”
And as she points out on the same page, the demand note was in fact of
Persian origin and preceded its use in Europe by many centuries.
Islamic Origins of the European Renaissance
Many Eurocentric scholars trace the origins of the “modern European

dynamic” to the Renaissance, which allegedly furnished the Europeans
222 John M. Hobson
with the necessary “scientific rationality” and “individualism” upon which

modernity is based. In the conventional historiography, the Renaissance
was supposedly a rediscovery of pure ancient Greek science: “Europe
took nothing from the east without which modern science could not have
been created; on the other hand, what it borrowed was valuable only
because it was incorporated in the European intellectual tradition. And
this, of course, was founded in [ancient] Greece” (Hall 1962, p. 6). But
this obscures the point that many of the crucial ideas that underpinned the
European Renaissance and the subsequent Scientific Revolution were in
fact derived from the Middle East, and diffused across the Islamic Bridge
of the World through what I call Oriental globalization (on which more
later).
Occasionally, however, Eurocentric writers concede that some of the
Renaissance ideas came from the Middle East. But in this version, the
Muslims are portrayed simply as holders or translators of the ancient
Greek texts, and that all the Muslims did was simply return them whence
they originated—what one scholar calls the “warehouse model of trans-
mission” (Ghazanfar 2006). Thus we are typically told that “[u]ltimately
the mantle of the Greeks passed to the Islamic world, where in the bosom
of Allah, the Hellenic heritage was kept in custody until Western interest
rekindled” (Wertheim 1996, p. 35). In short, the Muslims are portrayed
as but mere librarians rather than original thinkers. Though a neat story,
it fails to square with the considerable evidence which points to the many
independent Eastern ideas that permeated the European Renaissance.
Interestingly, the backdrop to all this reveals a truly multicivilizational
network of ideas that were crafted together in the Middle East. How did
this occur?
In the early ninth century CE the seventh Abbasid caliph, al-Ma’muˉn,
founded the “House of Wisdom” (Bayt al-Hikmah) in Baghdad where inter
alia Greek works—especially those of Ptolemy, Archimedes and Euclid—
were translated into Arabic. But Arab scholars also drew heavily on Persian,
Indian and Chinese texts on medicine, mathematics, phi losophy, theology,
literature and poetry. They then crafted a new corpus of knowledge—
sometimes with the help of Jewish scientists and translators—that was
not only more than simply an amalgam of Greek thought but one that
was often critical of Greek ideas and took them much further, if not in
new directions. This process was aided by the fact that Baghdad stood at
the centre of the global economy and not only received new Asian ideas
but, having reworked them, transmitted them across to Islamic Spain.
Increasingly after 1000, Europeans rushed to translate the Islamic scien-
tific texts into Latin. The fall of Spanish Toledo in 1085 was especially
significant, for it was here where many European intellectuals gained
access to Islamic technical books. Learning from Islam was continued
on by the Spanish King Alfonso X (1252–1284), largely through Jewish
intermediaries (as did the Portuguese kings). Of the many examples on
offer, notable here is that in 1266 Ibn Khalaf al-Muraˉdıˉ’s important
text, The Book of Secrets about the Results of Thoughts, was translated at the
Toledan Court. This text and many others have furnished the Iberians
with a great deal of Islam’s innovations. Finally, the Italians also directly
learned of these ideas both through their trading links with the Middle
East and during the Crusades.
This claim, of course, is immediately counter-intuitive given the tra-
ditional Eurocentric assumption that the Renaissance thinkers themselves
were anxious to forge a new European identity that was independent of the
Islamic world. Indeed “the return to the classical [Greek] world was seen
as the answer to the [perceived] threat from Islam to European culture”
(Goody 2004, p. 48). And so we come to the first of the four paradoxes of the
Renaissance: that it was in part created to differentiate Europe from Islam
and yet it was from Islam that the Renaissance scholars drew so many of
their new ideas. How then did Islamic thinkers help shape the Renaissance
and the subsequent Scientific Revolution? A rapid sketch looks as follows
(for a fuller discussion see: Hobson 2004, pp. 173–183; Goody 2004, pp.
56–83; Joseph 1992, Chapter 10, and this volume [chapter two]; Bala 2006,
and this volume [chapter one]; Ghazanfar 2006; Raju 2007).
Mainly after the eighth century CE, Islamic breakthroughs in math-
ematics were particularly important. These included the development of
algebra and trigonometry. The former term was taken from the transla-
tion of the title of one of al-Khwaˉrizmıˉ’s mathematical texts. And by
the beginning of the tenth century all six of the classical trigonometric
functions had been defined and tabulated by Muslim mathematicians.
Developments in public health, hygiene and medicine were also notable.
Al-Raˉzıˉ’s medical works were translated and reprinted in Europe some
forty times between 1498 and 1866. And Ibn Sıˉnaˉ’s Canon of Medicine
became the founding text for European medical schools between the
twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The Muslims developed numerous medi-
cines and anaesthetics and pioneered the study of anatomy. They were also
keen astrologers and astronomers, and their ideas were avidly borrowed
by the Europeans. Ibn al-Shaˉtir’s mathematical models bore a remarkable
resemblance to those used by Copernicus 150 years later. And as early
as the ninth century, al-Khwaˉrizmıˉ calculated the circumference of the
Earth to within 41 metres. Last but not least, the Baconian idea that science
should be based on the experimental method had already been discovered
by the Muslims. It was the Muslims, and not the Ancient Greeks nor the
modern Europeans who made this pioneering breakthrough (upon which
all subsequent Western science has been based).
It is generally assumed that one of the vital aspects of the Renaissance
was a key development in art: the invention of single-point perspective.
Previously artists painted an object or person from a variety of different
angles rather than from a singular point perspective. Moreover, the size
or scale of the subject was based on the importance of the person being
depicted, rather than being a ref lection of his or her actual size. Generally,
the inventor of this perspective is thought to be the Italian Renaissance
224 John M. Hobson
painter, Filippo Bruneschelli, around 1425. But this approach was already
developed some 400 years earlier by the famous Muslim scholar, Ibn al-
Haytham (Alhazen), in his optical theory. Indeed “to represent the world
as it is or as it appeared to the eye of the observer—without the interpo-
sition of idealizations or spiritual projections—became a real possibility
and excited Renaissance artists. . . . The world now could be considered to
have become transparent to the human visual gaze” (Bala 2006, p. 91). In
addition, al-Haytham’s other major contribution was in helping promote
the turn to mathematical realism—a formulation that broke fundamen-
tally with Greek thinking (Bala 2006: Chapter 7). And, no less signifi-
cantly, the Baconian idea that science should be based on the experimental
method was one that had been pioneered by the Muslims and the likes of
al-Haytham (and not the Greeks).
Of course, one possible Eurocentric reply would be to say that this might
well have been merely coincidence in order to allow for the possibility of
independent European invention. But apart from the fact that we now
know that numerous Europeans translated the Islamic texts and used them
for many centuries thereafter, nevertheless it is worth returning to the
initial point made above. That is, there were numerous channels by which
Islamic knowledge reached Europe, including via Islamic Spain or Italy
(which was in direct trading contact with Egypt) or through Portugal,
where the Portuguese monarchs employed Jewish scientists and scholars
who translated many Islamic texts, or even via the Crusades. But in the
light of all this there were three further cruel paradoxes in addition to the
one already discussed that immediately come to light. The second paradox
lay in the point that at the very time when the Muslims were supplying all
these crucial ideas to the Europeans, the latter demonized Islam and waged
war on the Muslims through the first wave of the Crusades (1095–1291)
and subsequently through the second wave that was initiated by Columbus
and da Gama (post-1492/1498). Third, the Europeans subsequently claimed
disingenuously that they had independently come up with all the ideas
themselves. Here Rajani Kanth’s words are relevant: “Only slowly are the
astonishing . . . scientific achievements of non-European societies coming
to light; and they give the dispositive lie to European primacy, let alone
supremacy” (Kanth 2005, p. 38). Fourth, and finally, having denounced
Islam as regressive and intellectually irrational, the Europeans used this
constructed view to justify waging war on the “backward and irrational”
Muslims. And no less cruel is that in the light of the current war on terror,
it would seem that little has changed in the last millennium.
Islamic Origins of the European “Voyages of Discovery”
Eurocentric historians celebrate the post-1492 European Age of Discovery

(think of Columbus and da Gama) as a sign of the Europeans’ superior scien-
tific, military and nautical/navigational prowess as well as their precocious
geographical curiosity. More specifically, Westerners pride themselves

that it was a European—Vasco da Gama—who first sailed round the Cape
of Good Hope in 1497 and “discovered” a hitherto isolated and primitive
Indian race. And in linking up the backward and isolated East with the
advanced and progressive West, so he supposedly broke down the Eastern
walls or barriers to civilization and thereby inadvertently laid the founda-
tions for what later came to be known as globalization.
This parochial story is undermined in the first instance by the fact that
about fifty years earlier the famous Islamic navigator, Ahmad ibn-Maˉ jid,
sailed round the Cape from the Middle East, up the west coast of Africa
and into the Mediterranean via the Strait of Gibraltar (Tibbetts 1971,
pp. 206–208). Noteworthy too is that da Gama only made it across to India
with the invaluable help provided by a Gujarati-Muslim pilot (known as
Kanha), whom he fortuitously picked up at Malindi on the east coast of
Africa. Moreover, it is possible though not certain that Kanha also showed
da Gama a remarkably detailed map of India before he set sail to cross the
Arabian Sea. But most irksome of all is the point that virtually all of the
navigational and nautical technologies used by da Gama—the square hull
and stern post rudder, the lateen sail and triple mast system, the astrolabe and
compass, as well lunar cycles charts, solar calendars, and latitude/longitude
tables—were borrowed from either China or the Middle East. Accordingly,
without the help from the Muslims, it is debateable as to whether there
would ever have been an era that is, in all likelihood, disingenuously called
the European “Age of Discovery” (on which more below).
Oceanic sailing provided new challenges to the Iberians both in terms
of shipping design and navigation. But as Patricia Seed points out, they
turned to the Easterners—especially the Muslims via the Jews—to solve
these numerous challenges (Seed 1995, pp. 107–128). The first challenge
was the need to tack into the strong head-winds that blew up south of Cape
Bojador on the west coast of Africa. This was solved in the 1440s by the
construction of caravels that had a stern-post rudder and were rigged with
three masts, one of which bore a lateen sail. Nevertheless the origins of
the caravel date back to the thirteenth century when the Portuguese built
small fishing boats that were based on the Islamic qaˉ rib (Elbl 1994, p. 91).
The lateen sail was a crucial invention because without it the Iberians
would have been unable to sail past the Cape Bojador (on the western
tip of Africa) owing to the fact that the square sail is unable to tack into
oncoming winds that prevail there.
It is noteworthy, however, that Lynn White (1978, pp. 255–260), draw-
ing on Lionel Casson (1971, pp. 243–245), insists that the lateen sail was a
Roman invention and offers up five main justifications for this. First of
all, he claims that two separate pictures of Roman boats are rigged with
a lateen sail (one found on a second century tombstone and the other on
a fourth century mosaic). But this is questioned by Joseph Needham who
suggests that the picture of a Roman ship with a lateen sail depicted on a
tombstone of the second century could have been a square sail (Needham,
226 John M. Hobson
Ling and Gwei-Djen 1971, p. 609, note g.). And the other picture (dated
to the fourth century) does not provide conclusive evidence of a Roman
invention given that the Persians would have been using lateen sail-rigged
dhows at that time. Second, White claims, following Jules Sottas, that a
lateen sail was deployed on three large Eastern Roman ships in 533 (Sottas
1939, pp. 229–230). But as Richard Bowen points out, it seems more
logical . . . that the triangular sails refer to triangular top sails, which were
standard gear on Roman square-rigged ships after 50 AD” (Bowen 1949,
p. 7, note 9). Note that the triangular top sails were horizontally, not ver-
tically, mounted and did not function as a lateen. Third, White points to
the famous sketch, made around 880, of a European ship sporting a lateen
sail in the Mediterranean. But it turns out that this sketch, which was
originally revealed by Jal in 1848 is, according to Brindley, “so finished
that its accuracy is doubtful; it is too unlike ninth century work in this
respect” (Brindley 1926, p. 9). More importantly, though unsurprisingly,
Brindley proves that the date is wrong (given that the original reference
displayed in the Bibliothèque Nationale, though of the ninth century, is in
fact to an ancient king rather than a ship bearing a lateen sail).
Fourth and finally, White concludes that it was the Portuguese caravel
that was the vehicle which relayed the invention to the Muslims (who in
turn used it first only in the sixteenth century). But as we noted above,
the origins of the caravel date back to the thirteenth century when the
Portuguese built small fishing boats that were based on the Islamic qaˉ rib.
Moreover, we know that the Sassanid Persians were sailing to India and
beyond via the Persian Gulf from the third and fourth centuries. And
by the mid-seventh century the Muslims were sailing the length of the
Indian Ocean and beyond. The critical point here is that it would have
been impossible for the Persian and Arab ships to have returned home with
a square-sail because of the Gulf ’s prevailing northerly winds. For with-
out the lateen sail there would have been no Middle Eastern ships plying
the Indian Ocean that we actually observe.
In sum, it is not possible to conclude that the Persians or Arabs defini-
tively invented the lateen sail—though equally it is not possible to dismiss
its possibility. Nevertheless it is highly probable that it was the Muslims, and
not the Europeans, who, having refined it over a long period of time, passed
it on to the latter thereby enabling Vasco da Gama to set sail in 1497.
In turn, the lateen sail threw up a major navigational challenge. Because
the lateen sail led to a zigzagging (or triangular) sailing path, this neces-
sarily made it much harder to calculate the linear distance travelled. This
was solved by the use of geometry and trigonometry, which had been
developed by, and was borrowed from, the Muslim mathematicians (as
we noted earlier). A further challenge to oceanic navigation was posed
by the strong tides south of Cape Bojador, which could beach a ship or
simply destroy it. To solve this required knowledge of the lunar cycles
(since the moon governs the tides). At the end of the fourteenth cen-
tury this knowledge was developed by the Jewish cartographer resident in
Portugal—Jacob ben Abraham Cresques. Yet another challenge was the

need for more accurate navigational charts than those already available
(ie., the Portolan). This was solved by turning to Islamic astronomy, which
enabled them to calculate the size of the earth and thereby calculate the
distance traveled by using degrees.
The astrolabe was especially important. But while it first emerged in
Ancient Greece, nevertheless its details were never clear and the refer-
ences to it are few and far between. It was, however, the Muslims who
undertook all the major innovations that can be traced back probably
to al-Fazaˉrıˉ in the mid-eighth century (and not Maˉshaˉ’allaˉh as has been
sometimes claimed). By the ninth century the astrolabe was in regular pro-
duction and had diffused into Europe via Islamic Spain by the mid-tenth
century (Kunitzsch 1989: Chapters 8, 10). Interestingly, the apparently
oldest Latin text on the astrolabe, Sententie astrolabi (from late tenth-cen-
tury Northern Spain) is heavily reliant on various Islamic texts including
al-Khwaˉ rıˉzmi’s treatise on the astrolabe (Kunitzsch 1989: Chapter 9). But
equally as impressive were the many refinements that were pioneered by
various Islamic astronomers, which enabled the regular use of the astro-
labe by later Europeans.
The Portuguese also needed to establish precise location in day-
time hours. Here they relied on the suggestions made by the promi-
nent Córdovan Muslim astronomer, Ibn al-Saff aˉ r (whose treatise had
been translated into Latin). They no less borrowed Islamic innovations
in mathematics in order to work out latitude and longitude, relying on
the Islamic tables developed by an eleventh-century Muslim astronomer.
Moreover, calculating latitude also required knowledge of the solar year
(since the sun’s declination was pivotal to such calculations). Once again,
they turned to the sophisticated Islamic and Jewish solar calendars that
had already been developed in the eleventh century. All in all, the con-
temporary, Pedro Nunes, boasted in 1537 that: “it is evident that the dis-
coveries of coasts, islands, continents has not occurred by chance, but to
the contrary, our sailors have departed very well informed, provided with
instruments and rules of astronomy and geometry” (Nunes cited in Seed
1995, p. 126). Indeed they were very well informed. But they only were
so because of the breakthroughs in Jewish, though mainly Islamic, science
upon which the so-called Portuguese Voyages of Discovery were based.
To close this discussion, it is worth returning to the point made at the
beginning of this section, where we noted that without the help of the
unnamed Muslim-Gujarati pilot da Gama might never have arrived in
India. That the influence of the Islamic navigator had indeed been extremely
important was revealed by the fact that on the return journey his absence
meant that da Gama was extremely lucky to have made it back at all. As the
record in the Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama explains:
Owing to frequent calms and foul winds it took us three months

less three days to cross this gulf [i.e., the Arabian Sea], and all our
228 John M. Hobson
people . . . suffered from their gums, which grew over their teeth, so
that they could not eat. Their legs also swelled, and other parts of the
body, and these swellings spread until the sufferer died. . . . Thirty of
our men died in this manner . . . and those able to navigate each ship
were only seven or eight, and even these were not as well as they
ought to have been. I assure you that if this state of affairs had con-
tinued for another fortnight, there would have been no men at all to
navigate the ships. (cited in Ravenstein n.d., p. 87)
Later on they were forced to burn one of the ships owing to the fact that
there were simply not enough sailors to man them all.
This contrasts with the Middle Eastern seafaring tradition that stems
back over 2,000 years before da Gama set sail. And the irony here was
that while da Gama sought a Crusade against Islam, it was the passing of
Eastern—especially Islamic—“resource portfolios” via the Islamic Bridge
of the World that had enabled him to undertake his journey in the first
place. But despite all of this, perhaps the most significant point is the
one alluded to earlier: that da Gama’s celebrated voyages might better
be relabelled “voyages of rediscovery.” For the fact is that the Portuguese
discovered nothing that had already not been well known to many of the
Eastern peoples. Put differently, the Eurocentric discourse obscures the
“Eastern age of discovery” that began as far back as about 500 CE, a dis-
cussion of which I now turn to.
Middle Eastern Origins of the Global Economy and

Oriental Globalization, c.500–1800
The emergence of Oriental globalization owed its origins to the Eastern

Age of Discovery after 500 CE. An important backdrop to this was the
formation of a series of interlinked regions or “empires.” These com-
prised T’ang China (618–907), the Islamic Ummayad/Abbasid Empire in
West Asia (661–1258), the Islamic Ummayad polity in Spain (756–1031),
and the Fatimids in North Africa (909–1171). Moreover the kingdom of
Śrıˉvijaya in Sumatra was important in that it constituted the vital entrepôt
that connected China to the Indian Ocean between the seventh and thir-
teenth centuries. These inter-linked regions were vital in promoting an
extensively pacified space that fostered considerable trade and enabled the
transmission of the more advanced Eastern “resource portfolios” (ideas,
institutions and technologies) across to Europe.
While a number of capitalist agents were important here—including
Africans, Jews, Indians, Chinese, and Javanese—the prime role in set-
ting up the global economy was performed by the Muslims. The global
economy comprised three prime routes, though the two most important
ones were the Middle and Southern routes, both of which were presided
over by the Muslims (Abu-Lughod 1989). The Middle route had a land
component that linked the Eastern Mediterranean with China and India,
and a sea route that passed through the Persian Gulf. The Southern route
linked the Alexandria-Cairo–Red Sea complex with the Arabian Sea
and then, as with the Middle sea route, the Indian Ocean and beyond
to Southeast Asia, China and Japan. These routes ensured that Europe
was fundamentally connected to the Afro-Asian-led global economy after
about the eighth century, albeit mainly in an indirect way down to 1498.
And even during the period of so-called Western hegemons from Venice
onwards, all such powers were dependent upon Eastern trade for their
survival.
Thus with the “Fall of Acre” in 1291, the Venetians came to rely on the
dominant Southern route that was presided over by the Islamic Egyptians.
As Abu-Lughod claims, “Whoever controlled the sea-route to Asia could
set the terms of trade for a Europe now in retreat. From the thirteenth
century and upto the sixteenth that power was Egypt” (Abu-Lughod
1989, p. 149). Moreover, Venetian trade did not dry up after 1291 but
continued on, especially given that the Venetians managed to circumvent
the Papal ban and secured new treaties with the Sultan in 1355 and 1361.
And right down to 1517, Venice survived because Egypt played such an
important role within the global economy. Moreover, after 1517 Venice
continued its trading connection through the Ottomans.
Nevertheless, Eurocentrism claims that after 1492/1498 the Portuguese
and Spanish initiated the process of proto-globalization, before the global
baton of power was passed on to the Dutch and then the English. But in
fact European trading connections intensified thanks largely to the role
played by the Muslims and Indians but, above all, the Chinese who sat at
or near the centre of the global economy between c. 1450 and c. 1800.
With respect to the Muslims it is important to recognize the important
roles played by the Ottoman and Safavid empires.
Thus while Eurocentric historians claim that the mainstream of global
trade was presided over by the Portuguese after 1498, all that was really
happening was that the Portuguese were joining the mainstream trade
that was presided over by the Ottomans and, albeit to a lesser extent, the
Persians. For despite all the talk of the superiority of the Cape route, the
fact is that far more trade passed from the East to Europe via the Levant,
which had arrived from the Red Sea (Southern) route, the Persian Gulf
(the Middle route) and via the overland caravan routes. Noteworthy here
is that with respect to the items that the Portuguese supposedly held a trad-
ing monopoly in—pepper and spices—the fact is that three times more
came across via the Red Sea route and the overland caravan routes than
via the Cape route (Steensgaard 1974, pp. 155–169). Moreover, a good
deal more silver and bullion passed across these Muslim empires than via
the Cape route (Haider 1996; Subrahmanyam 1994, pp. 197–201).
Of course, the equation of Islam with capitalist activity immediately
stands at odds with the traditional Eurocentric assumption that the two
are antithetical. This dovetails with the Eurocentric assumption that
230 John M. Hobson
empires are economically regressive (which feeds into the Oriental des-
potism thesis). Apart from the fact that Muhammad had been a commenda
(qiraˉd) trader who had married a rich Quarayshi woman whose family
had made its fortune through banking, it is instructive to brief ly consider
some of the linkages between Islam and capitalism, some of which can be
found in the Qu’raˉn. According to Maxime Rodinson’s detailed exami-
nation he asserts that the Qu’raˉn, “Does not merely say that one must not
forget one’s portion of the world, it also says that it is proper to combine
the practice of religion and material life, carrying on trade even during
pilgrimages and goes so far as to maintain commercial profit under the
name of ‘God’s Bounty’ ” (Rodinson 1974, p. 14). Islam prescribed that
businessmen could more effectively conduct a pilgrimage than those who
did only physical labour. Indeed the Qu’raˉn states that:
If thou profit by doing what is permitted, thy deed is a djihaˉd. . . .

And if thou invest it for thy family and kindred, this will be a Sadaqa
[that is, a pious work of charity]; and truly, a dhiram [drachma, silver
coin] lawfully gained from trade is worth more than ten dhirams
gained in any other way. (Rodinson 1974, pp. 16–17)
And Muhammad’s saying that “Poverty is almost like an apostasy,”
implies that the true servant of God should be aff luent or at least
economically independent. The booths of the money-changers in
the great mosque of the camp-town Kufa possibly illustrate the fact
that there was no necessary conf lict between business and religion in
Islam. (Goitein 1968, pp. 228–229)
It is also significant that the Qu’raˉn stipulates the importance of invest-

ment. And while we usually consider the Sharıˉa (the Islamic sacred law) as
the root of despotism and economic backwardness, it was in fact created
as a means to prevent the abuse of the rulers’ or caliphs’ power and more-
over, it set out clear provisions for contract law. Not surprisingly there
was a rational reason why the Islamic merchants were strong supporters of
the Sharıˉa. Furthermore, there were clear signs of greater personal free-
dom within Islam than in medieval Europe. Offices were determined on
the basis of “egalitarian contractual responsibilities.” And these entailed
notions of rationality that were, according to Hodgson, closer to the mod-
ern notion of geselleschaft than to traditional notions of gemeinschaft
(Hodgson 1993, pp. 111–116, 141).
Ultimately Islam’s comparative advantage lay in its considerable “exten-
sive” power. That is, Islam was able to conquer horizontal space, realized
most fully in its ability to spread and diffuse across large parts of the globe,
as well as in its ability to spread capitalism. The centre of Islam, Mecca,
was in turn one of the centres of the global trading network. Islam’s
power spread rapidly after the seventh century so that the Mediterranean
became in effect a Muslim Lake, and “Western Europe” a promontory

within the Afro-Asian global economy. Islam spread not only westwards
to Christendom but also eastwards right across to India, Southeast Asia,
and China, as well as southwards into Africa through either religious or
commercial inf luence (and often both). Its economic reach was extraordi-
nary for the time. So much so that one scholar has aptly stated that, “the
self-evident fact must be accepted that they [the Arabs] were among the
pioneers of commerce in those far-away countries and that perhaps, as
Tibbets suggests, they acted as middlemen in the trade between China
and South-east Asia” (Di Meglio 1970, p. 126). Certainly by the ninth
century—as various contemporary documents confirm—there was one
long, continuous line of transcontinental trade pioneered by Islamic mer-
chants, reaching from China to the Mediterranean (Abu-Lughod 1989,
p. 199; Hourani 1963, p. 62).
Islam rapidly became an urban society that was nourished by long-
distance trade. Indeed the picture of a dense urban trading network coun-
ters the traditional Eurocentric vision of Islam as a desert populated by
nomads. As Marshall Hodgson put it, Islam was “no ‘monotheism of the
desert,’ born of the Bedouins’ awed wonder at the vast openness of sky
and land . . . Islam grew out of a long tradition of urban religion and it was
as city-oriented as any variant of that tradition” (Hodgson 1993, p. 133).
Maxime Rodinson reinforces the general claim being made here:
the density of commercial relations within the Muslim world con-

stituted a sort of world market . . . of unprecedented dimensions. The
development of exchange had made possible regional specialisation
in industry and agriculture. . . . Not only did the Muslim world know
a capitalistic sector, but this sector was apparently the most exten-
sive and highly developed in history before the [modern period].
(Rodinson 1970, p. 56)
As noted earlier, the Middle Eastern Ummayads (661–750), Abbasids

(750–1258) and North African Fatimids (909–1171) were especially
important, serving to unite various arteries of long-distance trade known
in antiquity between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. These
included the Red Sea (the Southern route) and the Persian Gulf (the
Middle route). The Abbasid capital, Baghdad, was linked to the Persian
Gulf route, which in turn fanned out through the Indian Ocean and
beyond into the South China Sea as well as the East China Sea. The con-
temporary, al-Ya’quˉbi (c. 875), described Baghdad as the “water-front to
the world,” while al-Mansuˉr proclaimed that “there is no obstacle to us
and China; everything on the sea can come to us on it” (cited in Hourani
1963, p. 64). Other Islamic ports were also important, especially Sıˉraˉf on
the Persian Gulf (on the coast of Iran south of Shıˉraˉz), which was the major
terminus for goods from China and Southeast Asia. In addition to the sea
routes, perhaps the most famous was the overland route to China, along
232 John M. Hobson
which caravans passed through the Iranian cities of Tabriz, Hamadan

and Nishapur to Bukhara and Samarkand in Transoxiana, and then on
to either China or India. Marco Polo (the “Ibn Battuˉta of Europe”) was
particularly impressed by Tabriz:
The people of Tabriz live by trade and industry. . . . The city is so

favorably situated that it is a market for merchandise from India and
Baghdad, from Mosul and Hormuz, and from many other places; and
many Latin merchants come here to buy the merchandise imported
from foreign lands. It is also a market for precious stones, which are
found here in great abundance. It is a city where good profits are made
by travelling merchants. (cited in Bloom and Blair 2001, p. 164)
Finally, between about 650 and 1000 the Islamic Middle East and North
Africa occupied the leading edge of global productive power. Eric Jones
claims that the Abbasid Caliphate was the first region to achieve per capita
economic growth (supposedly the leitmotif of modern capitalism) ( Jones
1988: Chapter 3). Fernand Braudel described the economic activity of
Islam after 800 in the following terms:
“Capitalist” is not too anachronistic a word. From one end of Islam’s

world connections to the other, speculators unstintingly gambled on
trade. One Arab author, Hariri had a merchant declare: “I want to
send Persian saffron to China, where I hear that it fetches a high
price, and then ship Chinese porcelain to Greece, Greek brocade to
India, Indian iron to Aleppo, Aleppo glass to the Yemen and Yemeni
striped material to Persia.” In Basra, settlements between merchants
were made by what we would now call a clearing system. (Braudel
1995, p. 71)
A string of Islamic intensive (productive) innovations and technological/

ideational refinements was crucial here. These comprised, inter alia, paper
manufacturing, which began after 751, and textile-manufacturing with
both Syria and Iraq being famous for their silk manufactures, while Egypt
led the way in linen and woolen fabrics. Moreover, Islamic production
extended to sugar-refinement, construction, furniture manufacture, glass,
leather tanning, pottery, and stone cutting (Goitein 1961). Interestingly,
Egyptian sugarcane production was a leading global industry and exten-
sively exported its refined “sukkar” across much of the world (hence
the term “sugar”). Muslims also used impressive dyes. Added to this list
of Islamic gifts that were bequeathed to Europe were the Gothic arch
and other architectural developments, developments in music, agricul-
ture, and foods such as oranges, lemons, apricots, bananas, courgettes,
artichokes and, last but not least, coffee. Islamic inf luence is revealed by
the many Arabic (and Persian) terms that were imported into European
languages. Chemicals known as mordants were needed to make dyes
colorfast, especially Alkali (from the Arabic word al-kali, “ashes”). Saffron
comes from the Arabic zafaran. The word damask derives from Damascus,
muslin from the city of Mosul, and organdy from the city of Urgench in
Central Asia. Mohair comes from the Arabic word mukhayyir (meaning the
best), and taffeta from taftan (the Persian verb, “to spin”), paper (hence the
English word “ream” from the Arabic term “rismah”) (Bloom and Blair
2001, pp. 110–111).
All in all, then, it seems more reasonable to talk of the European “voy-
ages of rediscovery” given that the Muslims and other Easterners had linked
up much of the Afro-Eurasian region through a relatively dense network
of trading arteries. Thus while the “discovery” of India by da Gama might
well have been a revelation to the backward Europeans it was merely yes-
teryear’s news to the Easterners. Moreover, da Gama and his Dutch and
British successors did not set up the era of proto-globalization. For there
were no civilizational walls to batter down since these had already been
done away with over the previous millennium, mainly at the hands of the
Muslims. Put differently, all da Gama and his successors were really doing
was directly joining the global economy that had been constructed by
the Muslims and others (within which the Europeans had been indirectly
linked to the Eastern economies during the previous six centuries).
As a result of all this, the final gift that the Muslims bequeathed to
the Europeans was in passing across to the latter all manner of technolo-
gies, institutions, ideas and inventions that were pioneered beyond the
Middle East. In this crucial sense, the Islamic Middle East constituted the
bridge of the world, linking Europe up with the wider Eastern world, whose
inventions played such a crucial role in stimulating the rise of the West.
Arguably in the absence of the manifold Islamic contributions between 650
and 1900 (the latter date representing Europe’s breakthrough to industrial
capitalism), most likely Europe would have remained on the backward
periphery of the Islamic-led global economy where it found itself in the
aftermath of the Roman Empire. Put differently, had Islam not emerged,
the Europeans might never have got to a point where they could strut the
world stage in the first place and ask such questions as “What have the
Muslims ever done for us?’
Conclusion
So what does all this tell us about the Islamophobic rhetoric that underpins
the war on terror and the presumptions that stand behind Kilroy Silk’s
question? It should be clear by now that the presumption that the West
single-handedly created modern capitalism cannot be sustained. Rather the
West owes a great deal to the East in general and the Muslims in par-
ticular. Thus the familiar notion that the West created single-handedly
the modern world appears as little more than Western parochialism. It
is one thing to borrow or appropriate the East’s innovations, but another
234 John M. Hobson
thing entirely to deny the East the recognition that it so richly deserves.
Recognizing the Eastern contribution could bring a much-needed dose
of humility, which is entirely absent from the not-infrequent conceited
Western rhetoric that lies behind the war on terror. In the interests of
global reconciliation, then, showing gratitude for the many things that
the East in general and the Muslims in particular have bequeathed to the
West might be a first-step to healing some of the wounds that the West has
cruelly inf licted upon the East’s sense of self; something which, according
to Osama bin Laden, began in 1922 with the carving up of the Ottoman
Empire (though Western attacks, of course, stem back to the Crusades).
But to sum up: only by incorrectly assuming that the East—and espe-
cially the Middle East—is a land that is foreign to “civilization”—can
we continue to wage a barbaric war on an imaginary “barbaric” enemy.
Kilroy Silk’s rhetorical question, then, might be better phrased from the
point of view of the Muslims: “What have the Europeans ever done
for us in return for all that we have done for them?” And here Kilroy
Silk’s reply would be more fitting: very little bar imperial trouble and
war. But, above all, we might do best by asking: “Apart from the noria,
windmills, water-mills, irrigation techniques, commenda partnerships,
bills of exchange and cheques/checks, credit institutions, insurance and
banking, trigonometry, geometry, and algebra, medicine and anaesthet-
ics, public health and hygiene, philosophy and theology, literature and
poetry, astrology, astronomy, science, and the experimental method, car-
tography, navigational techniques including the astrolabe, lunar and solar
calendars, longitude and latitude tables, the lateen sail, and last but not
least, the creation of a global economy that delivered not only a vibrant
stream of Eastern trade but more importantly the many Eastern inven-
tions, institutions, ideas, technologies, production techniques and a list of
foods and products far too numerous to list here, what have the Muslims
ever done for us?”
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PA RT 4
Eurocentrism: Policy and Prospects

CH A P T E R E L E V E N
Beyond Eurocentrism: The Next Frontier

Breaking with the Enlightenment, and its delusional Modes of Discourse,

involves necessarily returning to our Organic Roots in Anthropic Society,
radically rent for centuries by Modernist Revolutions. We need therefore
to reconfigure our placement in the Universe, both Social and Natural,
and Reclaim our Natural State of Autonomy and Self-Regulation.
I offer here, in pithy “Thesis” format, an unravelment of Modernism in
favor of the real Organa of Anthropic Existence.
1. In its most basic sense, Politics, en generale, is simply the Relations
between Competing Orders of Men. More specifically, it refers to the
Modalities of Masculinity as expressed in the “Public” Domain whose very
illimitable extension is an index of the Atrophy of the “Domestic Economy
of Affections,” i.e., Convivial Relations.
2. Economics, on the other hand, refers to the Momenta of the Material Life,
and takes Two General Forms: (a) One, the efforts invested in garnering a
conventional subsistence which is originally a “Feminine,” Non-Modernist
activity, involving various Reciprocities with/within both Natural and
Communitarian resources; and the Other (b), the uniquely Male-driven
search for “Command over Resources,” i.e., a “Surplus,” potential or actual,
involving Asymmetrical and Adversarial relations between Disparate Cadres
of Men, in overlordship over “Other” Men and Women, Other Species, and
Nature. It is this latter thrust [peaking under Modernism, but far from unique
to it] that merges concordantly with the Masculinist Politics described above.
3. The “Social” is simply the Matrix of Familial Relations centered on the
Modalities of Child-Rearing, and Child-Care, and is therefore, again, a
uniquely Feminine site of Praxis.
Theorem# A: Women and Children form the irreducible Familial Units of
Anthropic Society., upon which Men impinge and intrude as Itinerants only.
a) The ordinary Anthropic State is one of Tribalism—the Anthropic ver-
sion of Mammalian Herds—which is an extension of the Familial/
Kin Principle.
b) In essence, Humans exist as both Pack and Herd animals .Modernism

breaks the Tribal Tie, by invention of the Novel Domain of “Civil
Society”—not an Anthropic Society at all—which is the ultimate home
of the arid, Masculinist Paradigm shorn of all Affective Affinities.
4. Culture is a Hierarchical ordering of Values, Tastes, and Preferences, whose
tone, form, and content, are set by the historically specific Gender Balance
of Ideologies and Practices extant in a given Eco-society at a given Moment
of Evolution. The wide divergence in the Cultures of Patriarchy is accounted
for by this, amongst other factors.
5. And Civilization, i.e., the Pacification of Anthropic Existence, is the
extent to [and intensity with] which essentially Feminine Hospitalities, as
conceived within the Familial Moment, are extended in evolution—with,
by, and through the consent of the Ruling Patriarchs who are ever the
Final Arbiters of Power—in a given culture, to the full range of Anthropic
activities and possibilities.
a) Stated differently, Theorem# B: “Civilization” is simply the
extent to which the “Feminine Principle” trumps inherent Masculinist
proclivities;
b) As such, Theorem# C: Gender struggles, not Class struggles, are the true
determinant of this “Civilizing” process.
6. Women are, perennially, not merely the prime Bearers of Conviviality,
but through their affective activities essentially found (and are the pro-
genitors of ) the Affective Society, and become the Guarantors, even in
Patriarchical Empires, of what we might understand as the Prerequisites of
Civilization.
7. Religion is not necessarily, “false consciousness,” despite infiltration
into its discourse by ruling orders who seek to manipulate it, but is our
Original Paradigm of Anthropic Awareness of the Universe. It needs only the
on-going enrichment of Non-Modernist Science and Philosophy, as avail-
able in all PreModernist frames, to arrive at profundity. It can serve as
Opiate, but is more often, an Amphetamine.
Theorem# D: Religion is uniquely PreModernist [the bulk of it is Non-
European as well; the only heartfelt religion Modernist Europe has bequeathed
us is the Worship of Mammon] in provenance; its late surrogates within later-day
Modernism are but desperate, reactive efforts to counter/resist burgeoning Modernist
Inhospitalities.
8. In European history, Church and State fought it out because Catholic
Ideology was resistant to the needs of Capital Accumulation.
Theorem# E: There is no need for us all to Universalize, permanently, a pass-
ing footnote in European History.
Theorem# F: The Protestant Revolution “modernized,” i.e., subverted, the
Anti-Materialist import of Classical Christianity.
In Eastern/Traditional Formations, Religion provided, as in Medieval
Europe, both a Code of Propriety and Conduct and a Repository of Anthropic
Knowledge. In ancient Vedic Civilization, for example, Science, Religion,
and Philosophy, are virtually indistinguishable.
Beyond Eurocentrism 241
Theorem# G: This integration of Religion and Science is equally true

of all Tribal and Traditional Formations. Modernism virtually invents/
concocts the Self-Divisive Society, par excellence, permanently at War with
Itself.
Besides, to ask why we are here in the first place is the very First
Anthropic Query, and is the locus classicus of the Religious Impulse:
Modernist Science has little to offer here, and can claim no monopoly on
Answers to such queries.
Theorem# H: We must not impose Modernist Divisive Grids on such organi-
cally integrated systems. Modernist Knowledge, where it is not blatantly counterfac-
tual, is purchased at the dear, and dire, cost of Traditional Wisdoms.
9. Formal “Equality,” the dissembling slogan of Modernism, is far from
being an Anthropic virtue, and is absent as a serious demand, in all Non-
Modernist Formations. As an ideology, Modernist Equality is arguably the
Alien, Individualist Antidote to Caring, Civility, and Corespective behaviors.
Theorem# I: Anthropic Hierarchies, based on Trusteeship, are Anthropic
Universals and are not inferior to abstract, barren, and, more to the point, fictitious
Modernist Equalities which leave us cold, separate, isolate, and uncared for.
10. “Liberty,” in its Modernist usage, is, similarly, a Negative, Anti-social
Ideology born again of a Reactionary Corporatism. Substantively under-
stood, it is emphatically not a Modernist invention, nor even a Modernist
Condition, except in its characteristically Anti-social, Corporatist, and
Alien(ating) form.
Under European conditions, Libertarian Sloganeering devolved from the
need of emergent industrial oligarchies to be free of customary, traditional
restraints that curbed their Manifests of Expropriation. And, in its Individualist
Variant, as pervades the Subject Orders within Modernism, it privileges only a
Hobbesian Estrangement from others, which is no great boon.
Indeed, such Asocial Liberties would spell, and have so spelt, the moral
failure [collapse] of society at the very moment of their success.
Theorem# J: Modernism has invented neither Individuals nor Individualism,
except in their Asocial, Misanthropic, and perverse forms.
11. Putative Democracy, reducing only to a formal voting rule, is not a
virtue, either, and is again a tendentious Tool of Modernism, an arti-
fice originally to resolve differences peaceably within the Ruling Strata.
Majority Rule, its concomitant, is both divisive and corrosive, and breeds
only anger and discontent. Traditional formations pursue a far more effec-
tive and satisfactory Mode of Participation: Consensus-building—which
takes Aeons to achieve, but which leaves none behind.
Theorem# K: Hominids seek Autonomy, which is Communitarian and
Cultural, in the extreme, not abstract freedoms.
Theorem# L: Modernism destroys all Autonomies in favor of mechanical
Dependencies, created by either Market or State.
12. The Anthropic Family is an exemplary, pedagogical model of a natu-
ral and traditional institution; it is not based on Equality, Freedom, or
Democracy—and yet offers the human animal all the nurturance vitally
necessary for survival. Now imagine, in context, the madness of the High
Modernist Marx and Engels who hoped, astonishingly, in some of their
wilder fantasies, to “abolish the family.”
Theorem# M: In much the same way that Economics has no understanding
of Anthropic Needs, Modernism has no understanding of our Species-Being, or our
real, flesh and blood, State of Being.
Whilst knowing better, despite its long-standing Physics-Envy,
Modernism tendentiously likens us to free-fending Atoms, i.e., standard,
homogeneous and, above all, Manipulable Entities.
13. The Escape from Alienation is given by Delinking—be it Individually,
in Groups, and/or as Communities—Epistemically and Ontically, from
the variegated Logics of Modernism, so we can reconstruct our lives free from
Modernist Delusions/Practices. This does not involve, at least directly,
any need to “seize the Winter Palace,” or confront power violently, which is
the Eternal Masculinist Temptation. In effect, Modernism is Self-Subverting;
minus our willful consent to its Epistemes, its Hegemony simply ceases to be.
14. More explicitly, to be Whole, we need to bring our Lives and
Labors under Self-Direction and infuse all our inherited, arid, and barren,
Modernist roles, which confer no benediction, with real meaning, so next
time you say “have a nice day” in that routine, disembodied all-American
way: mean it, and you might even surprise yourself,
Theorem# N: Modernism fails to survive scrutiny when confronted seriously
with its own Myths.
To challenge Modernism we need to Quiz/Query the Formal Rationality
of the System with Substantive Rationality, Formal Justice with Substantive
Justice, Formal Education with Real Education, and so on, in our daily
lives.
Theorem# O: By Demanding the Impossible, as above, albeit in a routine
way, we expose convincingly the hollow Charades of Modernism.
15. Life, just possibly, is meant to be lived, not theorized.
Theorem# P: There is no need for a Social Science, only Social Empathy.
In effect, the most pervasive Transcendent Anthropic Need is to huddle.
Even within Masculinist Patriarchy, we are Heat seeking, not Light seeking
Animals.
16. Theorem# Q: To tame/contain the Murderous Predations of Masculinity
is the Permanent Challenge for Anthropic Civilization: It can only be so calmed
within the Matrix of Kinship, or the Social Economy of Affections.
This is what Tribal, i.e., Familial, society achieves super abundantly. It is
the real Anthropic Paradise we Modernist subjects have lost.
17. The current, Epochal Struggle between the Mammals and the Reptiles
will not be won by Modernism, since Nature may not be supplanted for
long by the Artifice of Culture.
18. The world over, Religion, which stands today for an Anti-Modernist,
Transcendent Ethics, is in revolt against Modernist tyranny. Its Power to
Mobilize is simply inexhaustible.
Beyond Eurocentrism 243
19. In the end, and we are fairly close to that Climacteric, the
Spontaneous Moral Economy constituted by Women, Toilers still close
to their Peasant Roots, and Traditional Cultures, will both survive and
triumph.
20. We Custodians of Abstract Words can assist their struggles, but only
if we so choose.
Theorem# R: We are the Planet—and do not dwell apart from it—and the
Planet, through us, is/will be fighting back.
Theorem# S: Planets likely survive, but Recalcitrant Species don’t:
Therein lies our Warning. Nature, eventually, Repairs all Trespasses against
her Weal.
21. The Challenge for Sentient/Thinking beings is to intrude the
Sympathy of Life into all our nostrums, and engage Modernism criti-
cally in all domains, in particular Science, Politics, and Everyday Living.
Indeed, a simple slogan suffices to define this posture, as from the Non-
Eurocentered to the Eurocentric: “You are not the Standard; We are not on
Trial.”
22. But the real Challenge of Eurocentrism is to Reclaim our Anthropic
Natures once more: and strip the imposed, delusory, Material Veils within
which we sadly, but daily, hide our true Anthropic Affinities, from both
ourselves, and each other.
Note
This Paper was presented in a Special Event at the American Economic Association Meetings,
Chicago, January 4, 2007: “The Challenge of Eurocentrism: A Global Review of Parameters:
Festschrift Celebration of the Life and Work of Rajani Kannepalli Kanth.”
POST FAC E
Eurocentrism—Whither Now?
We live, quite obviously, in rather fateful times.

The long, enervating, Night of EuroModernism is quite nearly at an End.
Epochs end, sometimes, in Cataclysms: and so might this one.
Baptized in Fire, Immolated in Catastrophe: it may all be only natural.
Certainly, no Formation has tried harder to subvert Sustainable Values more
fervently.
But the First Issue is not really the imminent End of an Era: rather, it is
what might take its place in the Comity of Things—and Non-Things.
Now, the Planet has always been a veritable Mother of Hospitalities in this
regard, for Aeons. So, the Anthropic Laboratory to turn to can only be
the received History of our Species, in particular of its time-tested Tribal
Integument, within which the Genius of our Race has lay virtually hid from
Modernist insight, for generations.
In odd, mordant, irony, it is our putative “primitive” forebears that likely
hold the key, if one can be supposed to exist at all, to our Future History.
In this respect, the Bushmen and other such Aboriginal peoples of this
Good Earth have much to teach us, being the generative Mother Lode of our
scopious Agenda of Possibilities. It is that Trove, howsoever interlarded with
enduring Human Imperfection, that might yet engender a Great Restoration.
They watched us Enter, Once upon a Time: they will watch us Depart
from the burning Stage of History: as equably, Now, as Then.
But the Second Issue is, perhaps, even more critical: can We, who may
now be presumed to have Eyes to See, Learn?
Unless there is a Providence, which Ordains our Ends, the Answer can
only be unclear: We might—We might not. Indeed, given the Masculinist
Proclivities I have outlined in my Papers in this Work, it is all too easy to
be pessimistic.
The saga of what passes for “history” is, more often than not, the strug-
gle of Big Men being challenged by Little Men, until a role reversal is
achieved: and then, back to the Sisyphean struggles again.
But, I would yet counsel Perseverance. Left to Men Alone, the Anthropic
World of us Hominids might have perished at the very moment of its Great
Inception. But, it didn’t. Why?
The Answer is not difficult to glean. The Other Gender [and its Structural
Allies] stood in their Unwholesome Way.
They still do now.
But they will do so, I think, far less passively than before. Indeed, it is
my firm conviction that we are, In These Times, at the Dawn of a New
Consciousness.
The Bearers of this New Light are, and will be, Women [together with their
Allies].
Indeed, it is Women [via their vivifying “Paradigm of Femininity”] come
to Consciousness, in belated realization of their own Creative Potential.
In realizing themselves, they will help fulfill whatever promise may be
thought to reside in our own, roughshod, Anthropic Possibilities.
I have argued, here and elsewhere, that Civilization, if it exists in any
shape or form at all, is their Singular Contribution. In effect, they have already
Saved the species, a long time ago. And, repeatedly, thereafter.
And They will do so, again.
Of course, Nature lends a helping hand here.
Women are, amongst a host of other Things/Non-Things, Progenitors,
Propagators of Our Kind. The necessity of rearing children, within a
Semblance of Security, even within a Masculinist Wasteland of War and
Despotism, is/becomes their “natural” Prepossession.
The Power of Propagation is a powerful force, possibly the most
powerful force operative on the Planet, outside of forces that constitute
Non-Anthropic Nature. It is far more potent than the ubiquitously rabid
Masculinist potential for itinerant War and Violence. Whilst it may well
be a struggle of Instinct versus Instinct, some instincts, arguably, are stronger than
Others.
I can only state this hypothetically here, since, as I have said earlier:
there is no God’s Eye View of the World.
Moreover, additionally, an important obstacle vests in the fact that the
Language of Modernist Science simply lacks the Essential Vocabulary needed
to understand and express this insight effectively.
Worse, the corrupt Language/Lexicon of Modernism, and the arid
Cosmology it constitutes, is, both ontologically and epistemically, for all
its delusionary dialectics, an Ineffable Fraud upon the Human Race.
We can, all, Think and Feel more deeply than we can Write, Express,
or Talk, in particular whilst employing the Dialect of Modernist Science.
This is because Feelings spring from Instincts that are pre-given, and
“embedded” far too deeply in the Anthropic Psyche to suffer corruption
at the hands of Modernist Ideologies steeped in the regressive gestalts of
Angst, Anomie and Despair.
The Modernist Mind excels at Asking Questions: that is its Critical,
Interrogatory Function [it confuses this Inquisitorial Propensity, mistakenly,
Eurocentrism—WHITHER NOW ? 247
with the “Scientific Temper”, and with “Objectivity,” and with other
Correlates of “Progressivist,” Intellectual Interlocution].
But it is less than useless at discovering Real Answers, for it deftly
avoids digging any deeper than the mere Surface of Things.
Indeed, its entire Q&A operates strictly within a Vicious Circle of its
own making, like a macabre hamster tilting endlessly within, and at, an
Ever Spinning Wheel of Delusion, unaware of being imprisoned inside but
One of all possible Explicate Worlds.
Instincts, like other Forces of Nature, subsist at the Implicate Level,
and, here, one need not Seek: one Finds. For Wisdom, and Knowledge [the
Golden Grail of Modernism], dwell, ever, Apart: and drift steadily away
from each other as Modernism Advances, though drawing closer again as
it Regresses.
Every Atom, physicists now tell us, is, in some hypothetical sense,
“Aware” of Itself. It is, as Amit Goswami has aptly written, a Self Aware
Universe.
We are the Planet, despite the delusion of living apart from it.
The Sentient are given Instinct, Intuition, and Revelation as both Means
and Ends of Anthropic Insight. The Modernist deploys only an Abstract
Reason, stripped of its Provenance in these Other Propensities, and so
wanders in a Perpetual Regress of His Own Making.
Women, and others who dwell in a Moral Economy [similar to Native
peoples, Peasant communities, et al.], herein, have the indefeasible Structural
Advantage.
Reason, in their context, is ever safely subsumed within the, healing
Matrix of Feeling.
As such, both their Thinking and Engagements are wholly grounded (despite
the Inroads of Modernist Ideology, determined to Extirpate this Great
Distinction: and, ominously, to clone Women in the Likes of Men): indeed,
grounded in the very Source of all Anthropic Morality, which is the Eternal
Locus of Nurturance, i.e., the Survival of the Human Infant.
In this simple Anthropic Fact, lie the only Seedings of Hope that are
wholly realistic, and based on our Inherent Anthropology alone, not any fanciful
f light of speculation.
But, there well might be more: even in a strictly scientific sense, the
possibility of a Guiding Energy (in short, the Random Data that litters
space may conceal all manner of Hidden Information) cannot be ruled out,
howsoever Inscrutable may be Its Ways.
Indeed, curiously, the Universe is arguably “teleological”: leastways, in
its Physics. It is apparently headed to Absolute Zero—and we are but less
than 3 degrees away from that awful Apocalypse.
If so, then we dwell not merely in a Self-Aware Universe, but, perhaps,
in a Self-Fulfilling one as well.
And, poignantly, given the unscalable reach of the Knowable Universe,
the absurdity of Eurocentrism is exceeded only by the sheer ludicrity of
our petty, anthropic Geocentrism.
So, to conclude: I believe it is our distinctive privilege, though vested

with Great Responsibility, to be at the Cross-Roads of Anthropic History
today, on the very Threshold of the Future.
We know, we feel, we “remember”: that, somewhere in our distal past, a
Wrong Turn was taken by Modernist Conquistadores, whose ill-effects
dog our lives today, in sphere after fractious sphere of societal existence,
within Modernist Civil Society.
We have seen, similarly, the Trivial Pursuits of Wealth and Warfare dom-
inate, even Engulf, our Modernist lives—to the point of Asphyxiation of
all, or most, of our Convivial Impulses.
The putative Garden of Eden was no idle Myth: it still exists, as it always
has, universally, in the Paradigm of Femininity, involved daily in Self less and
Unrequited Acts of Nurturance, Caring, and Co-Respective behaviors.
Women, even whilst entrapped in the wretched Modernist Cage, yet
remain the Self-Replenishing Fount of Original Philanthropy.
It is this Paradigm, Natural and Cultural simultaneously, that is still the
irresistible Vortex that can yet draw down the Predations of Masculinity,
and allow us to dwell once again, warmly enmeshed in the Tribal Tie of
Kinship, real or ersatz, and its Ineffable Bounty of Gratuitous Affections.
Speaking metaphorically, our Mammalian Heritage can yet slough off the
Accoutrements of Reptilian Traits that Modernism ushered in, unrelentingly,
some 500 years ago.
The desiccating Dogmas of Relentless Production and Incessant Consumption
might still succumb to the humbler Felicities of Being, imbued with the
benefice of Affective Bondings of Nurturance.
But this can only be via a long and hard struggle whose lineaments are
becoming more and more clear today.
Philosophies of Materialism Unbound, universally, are facing their ultimate
Anathema in the Incipient Prodromes of Conviviality, portending a Return to
our, all but forgotten, Anthropic Roots.
The Wise, the Beneficent, and the Self-Aware, can only, if they but so
choose, try and assist this Monumental, Meta-Historical Effort, in both
Theory and Praxis.
For It will, all but Inexorably, Prevail.
CON T R I BU TOR S
Arun Bala is a physicist and philosopher by education who is currently

a Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy. and an Adjunct
Professor in the Toronto School of Theology, both at the University
of Toronto. He not only taught philosophy at the National University
of Singapore for many years but has also worked with various interna-
tional institutions, including the Regional Institute for Higher Education
Development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore), the Dalhousie University School
for Resource and Environmental Studies (Canada), and the Foundation
for Advanced Studies in International Development ( Japan). He is the
author of the book The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
Amit Basole holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Duke University
(Durham, NC) and is currently a doctoral candidate in Economics at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has published articles in Nature,
Journal of Neuroscience, Progress in Brain Research, and Genetics. His inter-
ests include Eurocentrism, Knowledge Politics, Philosophy of Science,
Gandhian and Marxist Thought, and critiques of Industrial Modernity.
His Web site is: http://people.umass.edu/abasole/
Ravi Batra, a Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University,
Dallas, is the author of five international bestsellers. He was the Chairperson
of his department from 1977 to 1980. In October 1978, because of doz-
ens of publications in top journals such as the American Economic Review,
Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Review
of Economic Studies, among others, Batra was ranked third in a group of
“superstar economists,” selected from all the American and Canadian uni-
versities by an article in the learned journal Economic Enquiry. In 1990,
the Italian prime minister awarded him a Medal of the Italian Senate for
writing a book that correctly predicted the downfall of Soviet commu-
nism, fifteen years before it happened. Dr. Batra has been written up in
major newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times, Washington
Post, USA Today, Time, Newsweek, the U.S. News and World Report, and
has appeared on all major networks including CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC,
CNBC, among others. Batra’s latest book is The New Golden Age: The
250 Contributors
Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos (New

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). His Web site is ravibatra.com
Rajesh Bhattacharya received his Bachelors in Economics from
Presidency College, Kolkata, and M.Sc. from Calcutta University. He is
presently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Economics, University
of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as a Lecturer in Economics at Jogamaya
Devi College, Kolkata. He is interested in the political economy of devel-
opment and Marxian economic theory.
Firat Demir is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University
of Oklahoma and received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University
of Notre Dame (IN). His research is focused on international finance
and development economics, and in particular on the role of globaliza-
tion of financial markets in determining the growth and development
path followed by developing countries. He has published articles in the
Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Development Studies, Development
and Change, Review of Radical Political Economics, World Development, and
Applied Economics Letters.
Mathew Forstater is Associate Professor of Economics and Africana
Studies at the University of Missouri—Kansas City. Previously, he was a
Visiting Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute (1997–1999), where he
remains a Research Associate, and taught at Bard College (1997–1999) and
Gettysburg College (1992–1997), where he was the recipient of a number
of teaching awards. Forstater received his Ph.D. in Economics from the
New School for Social Research in 1996, where he specialized in Race
and Class and the History of Thought. He has published numerous articles
and book chapters and has co-edited ten books. Forstater is the author of
The Little Book of Big Ideas: Economics (Chicago Review Press, 2007).
John M. Hobson is Professor of Politics and International Relations at
the University of Sheffield, and is co-director of the Political Economy
Research Centre as well as a Subeditor of Political Studies. His main
research interest lies in the area of intercivilizational relations and
globalization, past and present. He is author of The Eastern Origins of
Western Civilisation (CUP, 2004) and is currently working on a book
manuscript on the Eurocentric foundations of International Relations
Theory. He is also completing a co-edited book comprising some of
John A. Hobson’s lectures provisionally entitled “Constructing the
International Mind.”
Nick Hostettler teaches at Queen Mary University of London. His recent
research has focused on the nature of Eurocentrism. His related research
interests are critical realism and Marxism. He is currently working on the
relationships between Eurocentrism, capital, and modernity.
George Gheverghese Joseph holds joint honorary appointments at
Universities of Manchester and Toronto. His teaching and research have
ranged over a broad spectrum of subjects in Applied Mathematics and
Statistics, including Multivariate Analysis, Mathematical Programming,
and Demography. In recent years, however, his research has been
Contributors 251
mainly on the cultural and historical aspects of Mathematics with par-

ticular emphasis on the non-European dimensions to the subject and
its relevance for Mathematics education. In 1993 he was invited by the
African National Congress of South Africa to take part in a Workshop on
“Mathematics Curriculum Reconstruction for Society in Transition.” In
recent years he has been invited to lecture at Hobart, Monash, Perth, and
Sydney in Australia; at Cornell, Los Angeles, New Mexico, New York,
Berkeley, and Chicago in the United States; at York, Laval, and Toronto
in Canada; at Western Cape and Durban in South Africa; at UNAM
in Mexico; at Cave Hill in Barbados; at Singapore, and at various uni-
versities in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, and Norway
as well as the United Kingdom. He has appeared on radio and televi-
sions programs in India, United States, Australia, South Africa, and New
Zealand as well as United Kingdom. His publications include four books:
Women at Work (Philip Allan, Oxford, 1983), The Crest of the Peacock:
Non-European Roots of Mathematics (1st Hardback Edition, Tauris, 1991;
1st Paperback Edition, Penguin 1992, 2nd Edition, jointly by Penguin
Books and Princeton University Press, 2000, 3rd Edition, forthcoming),
Multicultural Mathematics: Teaching Mathematics from a Global Perspective
(Oxford University Press, 1993) and George Joseph: Life and Times of a Kerala
Christian Nationalist (Orient Longman, 2003). A Malayalam translation of
the book came out in 2008. The last-named book is a political biography
of his grandfather, George Joseph, a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi,
Jawarhalal Nehru, and other leaders of modern India.
Fadhel Kaboub is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Denison
University where he teaches macroeconomics, economic history, and
monetary theory. He holds an MA (2001) and Ph.D. (2006) in Economics
and Social Science Consortium from the University of Missouri—Kansas
City (UMKC), and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Economics
and Management of Tunis (1999). His current research focuses on the
design and implementation of full employment policies in developing
countries. His work reconciles the critique of Eurocentrism with the
overall goal of improving the quality of life for all people through the
creation of decent, productive, and ecologically sustainable jobs. His most
recent publications include: “Elements of a Radical Counter-Movement
to Neoliberalism: Employment-Led Development,” (Review of Radical
Political Economics, September 2008); and “Institutional Adjustment
Planning for Full Employment” ( Journal of Economic Issues, June 2007).
Before returning to Denison University in 2008, Kaboub taught eco-
nomics at UMKC, Simon’s Rock College of Bard, Denison University,
and Drew University. He currently serves as the Book Review Editor of
the Heterodox Economics Newsletter, and serves on the editorial board of the
Review of Radical Political Economics.
Rajani Kannepalli Kanth is a Professor of Political Economy and Social
Anthropology. His current interests are in globalization, ecology, women’s
issues, peace studies, and philosophy. He has served Major Universities
252 Contributors
across the globe and has been an Advisor to the United Nations. He is
also involved in Film, Art, Literature, and Media. His most recent book
is titled Against Eurocentrism, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). He lives in
Salt Lake City, Utah. Professor Kanth is currently a Visiting Scholar at
Harvard University.
Kho Tung-Yi is a Singapore citizen who has lived in Asia, Australia,
Europe, and the United States. He has a background in Economics and
Political Economy and is currently a Researcher in Sociology at the
University of Oregon. His interests encompass global political economy,
feminism, ecology, and how they are connected to issues of peace and war.
Of late, he has been deliberating on the future of humanity. Previously a
professional tennis player, he has represented Singapore in the Davis Cup.
Rajiv Malhotra works in a variety of intercivilizational topics, including
whiteness in America and its implications to the world, especially India.
His approach to religions starts by examining their history-dependency,
and the resulting closed mindedness and conf licts. His interest in Indic
spiritual traditions stems from the following question: Can religiosity be
decoupled from historical prophets and other non-reproducible exclusive
claims, and would this lead to a postmodern spirituality?
Ali A. Mazrui is Professor and Director of Global Cultural Studies at
State University of New York, Binghamton, Senior Scholar in Africana
Studies at Cornell University and Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University
of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya. He is a leading expert on com-
parative civilization and has published over thirty books. He has also done
television documentaries for the BBC, London, and PBS, Washington, DC.
His books are on Global Cultural Studies, African Studies, political Islam,
and North-South relations.
I N DE X
Abarry, Abu, 138 Kantian Eurocentrism, 202–203

Abeles, F.F., 36 lessons from Native American
Abu-Lughod, Janet L., 221, 229 experience, 200
Adams, John, 175 making of a supernation, 171–174
Adams, John Quincy, 189, 192 Manifest Destiny, 178–179
Adelard of Bath, 29–30 “merciless savages”, 182–183
Adorno, Theodor, 127, 204–205 mutations of Myth, 177
African Diaspora, 135–136, 139 myth of savages and heroic
Africans: A Triple Heritage, The, 161–162 frontiersmen, 174–175
Afrocentrism, 134, 138–139 Native American reservations, 194–195
Ahmad, Mohsin, 166 Native Americans and, 179–181
Al-Andalusi, Said, 34 “noble savages”, 183–184
al-Ghazali, 19, 63 overview, 171–212
Ali, Muhammad, 70 power of Myth, 210–212
al-Kashi, Jamshid, 41 theorizing savages in early expansion,
Almagest (Ptolemy), 29 181–184
al-Ma’mu¡¥n, 222 Amin, Samir, 97, 139
Ambedkar, B.R., 86–87, 91–92, 103 Amoco-Arco, 49
American exceptionalism Annan, Kofi, 155
academic research and museumizing of Archimedes, 18, 222
Indian culture, 195–198 Ari, Marimba, 138, 199–200
atrocity literature as genre, 206–208 Aristotle, 18–19
Biblical mythology and, 179–180 Aryabhata, 35
civilization’s aesthetics, morality, and Asante, Molefi, 138, 140, 144
reason, 200–202 Ascher, M., 41
discourse on Native Americans, 198–199 Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP)
Enlightenment thinking and, 180 theory, 70–71
evolution of Myth, 208–210 Ayaga, Odeyo, 138
founding of America, 175–177
frontier encounters with other Bacon, Francis, 20, 97, 222–223
civilizations, 204–205 Bala, Arun, 3–21, 218, 223, 243
greed and, 180–181 Bandung epistemology, 142–144
guilt management and genocide, Baraka, Imamu Amiri, 134, 143
184–194 Baron, M.E., 36
hypocrisy as national character, Barro, Robert J., 68
199–200 Basole, Amit, 83–101, 247
“immoral potatoes” and other savages, Basu, Pranab, 96, 99
203–204 Batra, Ravi, 45–58, 247–248
254 Index
Bentley, J., 35 Clash of Civilizations, The (Huntington),
Berger, Peter, 117 9, 12
Berkhofer, Robert, 180 Clinton, Hillary, 163
Berlusconi, Silvio, 83 Coltrane, John, 135, 143
Bernal, Martin, 30, 97 Columbus, Christopher, 191, 224
Bernanke, Ben, 53, 55 computerization, 53, 149
Bhattacharya, Rajesh, 83–101, 248 Confucianism, 116–126
Biblical myths, encounters with Native as antidote to Eurocentrism, 124–126
Americans and, 179–180 Confucianist modernity, 118–119
Bind Us in Time: Nation and Civilization in globalization and, 121–124
Asia (Gungwu), 11–12 ideology and dynamics, 119–121
Black Power movement, 143 origins and signifcations, 116–118
Black studies, 134–139 postcolonialism and, 121–124
Blair, Tony, 83 Singapore and, 117–124, 128
Blaut, J.M., 112, 211 Conoco-Phillips, 49
Bodde, D., 16 Constantine I (emperor), 148
Borradori, Giovanna, 83–84 corruption, poverty and, 45–58
Bowen, Richard, 226 defined, 46–47
Brahma Siddhanta, 35 Cortez, Hernando, 210
Brahmagupta, 35 Cortez, Jayne, 135
Brands, H.W., 193
Braudel, Fernand, 232 da Gama, Vasco, 148, 224, 226–228, 233
Brindley, H.H., 226 dalits, 87, 91, 95–96, 102, 103
British Petroleum (BP), 49 Dandekar, V.M., 93
Brodkin, Karen, 174 Dark Ages, 30–31, 63, 69
Buddhism, 139–142 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 194
Bush, George W., 49, 108, 166, 218 Defending the West: A Critique of Edward
Bushmen, 6, 247 Said’s Orientalism (Ibn Warraq), 14, 17
Demir, Firat, 63–80, 218, 248
Cabral, Amilcar, 136, 143 Dengyo, 140
Calinger, R., 36 Derrida, Jacques, 83–84, 211
Callicott, J. Baird, 140, 141 developmentalism, 100, 122, 131–132, 138
Cambridge Illustrated History of of the World’s Dewey, John, 87, 91
Science (Ronan), 15–16 Dharampal, 28
Casson, Lionel, 235 Diop, Cheikh Anta, 139
caste system, India and, 86–87, 90–92, Dirlik, A.F., 117, 120, 125–126
95–96, 102–103 Drinnon, Richard, 180, 184, 188–189, 197
censorship, 159–163 Du Bois, W.E.B., 139, 143
Cesaire, Aime, 139 Dutt, A.K., 103
Chakrabarty, D., 89, 97, 102
Chatterjee, P., 86, 102 economic development
Chen Li-fu, 118 East Asia and, 131, 137, 140
Cheney, Lynne, 162 India and, 100, 102, 107, 114
Chetwynd, Eric, 58 Middle East and, 77–94
Chetwynd, Frances, 58 Edwards, C.H., 35–36
Chevron-Texaco, 49 Eliade, Mercea, 212
Chipko movement, 95, 103 Engels, Friedrich, 70, 240
Ciller, Tansu, 163 Enlightenment, 1, 3, 30, 65, 70, 72,
Cipolla, Carlo, 219 83–84, 92–93, 97, 114, 177, 179–195,
City on a Hill imagery, 175–177 198, 200–203, 212
Index 255
Enlightenment rationalism, 88–90 Greece
Enlightenment thought, encounters with mathematics and, 29–32, 35–36
Native Americans and, 180 Middle Eastern inf luences, 8, 18–20,
Euclidean geometry, 18, 36, 41 222–224
Eurocentrism greed, encounters with Native Americans
clash of civilizations and, 20–21 and, 180–181
Confucius and East Asian development, Greenspan, Alan, 55, 56
116–126 Guiso, Luigi, 68
East Asia and, 107–109
economic development in MENA and, Habermas, Jurgen, 83
67–71 Hagedorn, Jessica, 135
as erroneous and distorted Haider, Jorg, 159
historiography, 111–113 Hall, McKenney, 196
as EuroAmerican ethnocentrism, 111 Halliday, Fred, 66
mathematics and, 33–34 Harootunian, H., 126
as modernity, 113–116 Havel, Vaclav, 83
persistence of, 83–84 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 182, 186
as “superficial cultural subordination”, Haydar, 159
110–111 Hegel, G.W.F., 4, 184, 201, 212
experimentalism, 20, 23 hegemony, vs. homogeny, 149–151
Exxon-Mobil, 49 Heidenheimer, Arnold, 58
Hinduism
Fanon, Frantz, 139 fundamentalist, 88–90, 92, 102
Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 47–49 Huntington and, 12, 22
Fiegenbaum, L., 36 science/mathematics and, 16, 40
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), 77 Hindutva, 88, 102
“forming/transforming structures”, 137 Hirschmann, Albert, 86
Forstater, Mathew, 133–144, 248 Hirshman, Albert, 86
Frank, Andre Gunder, 65 history, relativity of, 163
free trade, 46, 53, 77 History of Economic Analysis
Friedman, Milton, 53, 57 (Schumpeter), 63
frontiers. see American exceptionalism Hobson, John M., 16, 65, 67, 70,
Fukuyama, Francis, 10, 22, 114 217–234, 248
Hodgson, Marshall, 230–231
Galileo, 16, 18 homogeny, vs. hegemony, 149–151
Gandhi, Mahatma, 84–91, 96, 100, 102, Hong Kong, 117, 120–121, 128
103, 142, 147, 151, 155–157, 164, 249 Hostettler, Nick, 248
Gandhi, Mohandas, 155 housing bubble, 55–56
Garden of Eden mythology, 175–177, 195, Huff, Toby E., 16
201, 207, 246 Huntington, Samuel, 9–14, 17, 20, 21, 22
Garvey, Marcus, 136
Gerdes, P., 32 Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), 18–19, 224
Gherardo of Cremona, 29 Ibn al-Shatir, 223
globalization Ibn as-Saffar, 227
defined, 148–149 Ibn Khalaf al-Mura¡¥d.¡¥¡¯*, 222–223
poverty and, 52–54 Ibn Khaldun, 63, 97
Goebbels, Joseph, 160 Ibn Qayyim, 63
Goh Keng Swee, 120 Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 34, 63, 223
Graham, A.C., 16 Ibn Taimiyah, 63
Gray, Cecil Conteen, 134, 138 Ibn Warraq, 14–21, 22
256 Index
ibn-Majid, Ahmad, 225 Jackson, Andrew, 175, 184, 189, 193, 198
Ignatiev, Noel, 174 Jacobinist Institution Building, 71–77
Ikeda, Daisaku, 140, 143, 144 development bottlenecks, 73–74
imperialism, 14, 26–29, 76, 87–88, 93, formation of centralized state, 72–73
99–100, 137, 212 neoliberalism and, 75–77
imperialism, mathematics and, 26–29 sociopolitical conf licts and revival of
Inalcik, H., 69 Oriental despotism, 74–75
Independence, Liberation, Revolution: An James, C.L.R., 139
Approach to/nlthe Understanding of the Jefferson, Thomas, 154, 180, 182–183,
Third World (Tran), 136 184, 189–190, 194
India Jesseph, Douglas M., 18
caste system and, 86–87, 90–92, 95–96, Jodha, N.S., 94
102–103 Johnston, Michael, 58
Chipko movement, 95, 103 Jones, Eric, 232
education, 96–98 Joseph, George Gheverghese, 22, 25–43,
Enlightenment thinking and, 83–84, 97 218, 248–249
fascism and, 88–90, 97, 101, 102 Joseph, Keith, 25
Hindu fundamentalism and, 88–90, Judaism, 40, 154, 212, 222, 224, 226–227
92–93, 102
independence, 84–87 Kaboub, Fadhel, 63–80, 218, 249
mathematics and, 34–36 Kanth, Rajani Kannepalli, 1–6, 237–241,
modernism and, 82–84 243–246, 249–250
Narmada struggle, 95, 103 Karakasidou, Anastasia, 160
Pashchimikrit and Bahishkrit, 93–96 Katz, V.J., 41
political participation, 95–96 Kaufman, Bob, 142
poverty and, 93–96 Kebede, Ashenafi, 135
power and instrumentalization of local, Kemenade, W.V., 121–122, 128
98–99 Kennedy, John F., 175
social engineering, 87–92 Kenyatta, Jomo, 155–156
indigenous knowledge, 113 Kerala School, 35–36
Institute of East Asian Philosophies Keto, C.Tsehloane, 138
(IEAP), 120 Khayyam, Omar, 41
International Monetary Fund (IMF), 88 Khilnani, S., 93
Internet, 43, 150, 164 Kho Tung-Yi, 121–141
Irving, David, 160 Kilroy Silk, Robert, 217–218, 233–234
Islam King, Martin Luther Jr., 135, 142–143,
European Renaissance and, 221–224 155, 156
European “voyages of discovery” and, Kumar, S., 95, 103
224–228 Kumarajiva, 140
global economy and Oriental Kumarappa, J.C., 86, 95, 102
globalization (c. 500–1800),
228–233 land reform, 72, 75
homogenization and hegemonization, Landes, David S., 68
151–154 Lappe, Frances Moore, 140, 141
Italian financial revolution and, Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 178–179
220–221 Lee Kuan Yew, 118, 119–121
Medieval European energy revolution Lewis, Arthur, 86
and, 219–220 Lewis, Martin W., 66
origins of Western civilization and, Lieven, Anatole, 179
217–234 Lincoln, Abraham, 175
Index 257
Lincoln, Bruce, 210 minimization of violence, 155, 157
Loewen, James, 197–198 Modern West, dialogical origins of, 17–20
Lotus Sutra, 140–141. see also Buddhism modernization, 10–11, 14, 17, 72, 79,
85–86, 95, 109, 118–120,
Ma Zhenduo, 118 125–126, 171
Maathai, Wangari, 155 Eurocentrism and, 113–116
MacFarquhar, Roderick, 117 Moleah, Alfred, 138
Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 66 Mowitt, J., 103
Mahbubani, Kishore, 11 Multicultural/Anti-Racist (MC/
Makiguchi, 140 AR) Mathematics, 39–42. see also
Malcolm X, 135, 136, 142–143 mathematics
Malhotra, Rajiv, 171–212, 250 combating racism, 41–42
Mandela, Nelson, 155, 156 developing knowledge and empathy
Manifest Destiny, 173, 178–179. see also with different cultures, 41
American exceptionalism drawing on student’s experience as
Mao Zedong, 123 resource, 40
Marshall, John, 190–191 recognizing different cultural heritages,
Marx, Karl, 20, 21, 66, 70, 161, 240 40–41
Marxism, 88, 103, 136–137, 139, 151,
164, 212 Nagarjuna, 140
Marxism and Literature (Smythe), 137 Namada struggle, 95, 103
Mastermind of the Third Reich (Irving), 160 Nanda, M., 88, 90–92, 102, 103
mathematics National Curriculum (UK), 25, 37, 39
dismissal of non-European traditions, National Planning Commission (NPC),
33–34 India, 86, 102
exclusion by definition, 33–34 nationalism, 30, 36, 72, 75–76, 78, 89, 97,
hidden ideology of, 37–38 102, 109, 115, 123, 139, 179
“hidden mathematics”, 32–33 Native Americans, encounter with,
imperialism and, 26–29 179–181
Indian, differing perceptions of, 34–36 Biblical myths and, 179–180
objectives of multicultural/antiracist Enlightenment thought and, 180
mathematics, 39–42 greed and, 180–181
omission and appropriation by West, Native Americans, genocide of, 184–194
29–33 anecdotal data of atrocities urging
origins and nature of, 29–34 “savage wars”, 186–188
Mather, John, 175 Biblical and Enlightenment-based
May Fourth Movement, 123 intellectual justifications, 185–186
Mazama, Ama, 138 displacement for their own good,
Mazrui, Ali A., 147–166, 250 193–194
McCleary, Rachel M., 68 good cops and bad cops, 188–190
MENA institutional and legalistic
economic development in, 67–71 manipulations, 190–193
Eurocentrism and, 64–67 Neal, Larry, 134, 143
formation of independent states with Needham, Joseph, 13, 17, 225
Jacobinist Institution Building, 71–77 Nehru, Jawarhalal, 84–86, 88, 95,
overview, 63–64 103, 249
reform from within, 77–79 neoliberalism, 75–77
“merciless savages”, 182–183 New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible
Miao-lo, 140 Shift of Global Power to the East, The
Mill, John Stuart, 2, 92 (Huntington), 11
258 Index
Newcombe, Steve, 190 Rajagopal, C.T., 36
Newton, Isaac, 18, 28, 36, 40 Rao, J.M., 103
Ngugi, 139 Rath, N., 93
Nichiren, 140 rationalism, 14–21, 22, 88–90, 92, 103
Nigerian civil war, 156 Ravell, James, 138
Nkrumah, Kwame, 137, 139, 143 Ravell-Pinto, Thelma, 138
“noble savages”, 183–184 reactive self-understanding, 13, 21
Noland, Marcus, 68 Reagan, Ronald, 51, 52, 175, 177
nommo, 134–135, 144 reform, economic, 77–79
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), 136, 137 regressive taxation, 50–51
Nurske, Ragnar, 86 relativism
cultural and historical, 157–159
Obama, Barack, 57, 153, 163 empirical, 154–157
Obengo, Theophile, 138 empirical and comparative censorship,
oil prices, 47–50, 56 159–163
OPEC, 47–48, 51–52 historical, 163
oral traditions, African, 135 Ricardo, David, 53
Oriental despotism, 70–71, 74–75 Richards, Dona, 138
Orientalism, 63–65, 75, 126 Rigby, Peter, 138
“Other West”, 90, 91 Robert of Chester, 30
Othering, 14, 79, 127, 237 Robeson, Paul, 139, 143
Rodinson, Maxime, 230–231
Pacey, Arnold, 219–220 Rodney, Walter, 139
Paldam, Martin, 69 Ronan, Colin, 15–17
Palshikar, S., 95, 103 Roosevelt, Theodore, 173, 175
Pan-Africanism, 134, 136, 137–139 Rostow, W.W., 86
Paradigm of Femininity, 1, 2, 5, 244, 246 Royal Dutch Shell, 49
Paradigm of Masculinity, 1 Rudolph, L.I., 90
Pashchimikrit and Bahishkrit, 93–96 Rudolph, S.H., 90
PBS, 161–162 Rushdie, Salman, 158, 160, 210
Pearce, Roy Harvey, 179
Plamenatz, John, 147, 166 Sabra, A.I., 16
Plato, 18–19, 29–30 Sadat, Anwar, 151, 155
Playfair, John, 28 Sahasrabudhey, S., 94, 101
poverty Said, Edward, 14, 65, 126, 219
forecasts, 57 Samuelson, Paul, 53
fundamental cause of, 46–50 Sanchez, Sonia, 134, 135, 138, 142–144
future of, 57–58 Sangvai, S., 98, 99
globalization and, 52–54 Sapienza, Paola, 68
housing bubble and, 55–56 Sarkar, Prabhat R., 58
oil price rise and, 56 Sarkar, S., 88–90, 102
regressive taxation and, 50–51 Satanic Verses, The (Rushdie), 158, 160, 162
rising wage gap and, 54–55 “savages”, 181–184
share market crisis and, 55 Schumpeter, Joseph, 63
sinking minimum wage and, 52 Science and Civilization in China
Powell, Adam Clayton, 138, 143 (Needham), 13
Pryor, F.L., 68 secularization, 10, 67, 72, 84–85, 87,
Ptolemy, 18, 29, 222 89–90, 92, 95, 143, 149, 158, 163,
Puritanism, 175, 179, 182, 185, 208 177, 212
Pythagoras, 31–32, 33 Sedillot, L.A., 35
Index 259
Seed, Patricia, 225 Udovitch, Abraham, 221
self-criticism, 14–17, 20, 21, 22 United States. see American
Sen, Amartya, 11–13, 17, 20–21 exceptionalism
Sententie astrolabi, 227 universalism, 12, 14–15, 17, 20, 21, 65,
SGI (Soka Gakkai International), 140 92, 101, 108, 114–115, 122, 147, 155,
share market crisis, 55 157, 158
Singapore, 117–124, 128 USAID, 99
sinking minimum wage, 52 utopianism, 2, 183
slavery, 30, 87, 136, 147, 155, 172–173,
185, 191–192, 194–195, 201, Varamihira, 35
205, 208 Voloshinov, V.N., 137
Slotkin, Richard, 171, 185, 187 Vygotsky, L.S., 137
Smith, Adam, 50, 70
Smith, D.E., 35 wage gap, 54–55
Smith, Henry Nash, 176, 178 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 65, 109, 125
Smith, Ian, 156 Wang, L., 128
Smythe, Dallas W., 136–137 Wang Gungwu, 11–12, 22
Sottas, Jules, 226 Weber, Max, 3, 65, 67, 72, 124–125, 127,
Spector, Bertram, 58 128, 182
Stolper, Wolfgang, 53 Welsh-Asante, Kariamu, 138
Stolper-Samuelson theorum, 53 Westernization, 14, 17, 67, 71, 78, 93–94,
Swann Report, 25, 41 103, 116, 128, 152–154, 164, 191
White, Lynn, 225–226
Taiwan, 117, 120, 121 Whitman, Walt, 178–179, 212
Taylor, Cecil, 140 Wigen, Karen E., 66
technocratization, 76, 99, 102 Wilde, Oscar, 45, 156
Temple University, Black Studies at, Wilson, Gerald, 175
134–139 Wilson, Woodrow, 175
Thapar, R., 102 World Bank, 58, 76, 88, 99, 104
Thatcher, Margaret, 39 World Trade Organization (WTO), 91
Tibbetts, Gerald R., 231 Wright, Richard, 138, 139, 143
T’ien Tai, 140
Toda, 140 Young, Robert, 212
Tran Van Dinh, 136
Turner, Fredrick Jackson, 173 Zankel, Bobby, 139–140
Tutu, Desmond, 155, 156 Zingales, Luigi, 68

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The Challenge of Eurocentrism

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List of Figures and Tables ix

Introduction Challenging Eurocentrism: 45 Theses 1

Part 1 Received Theory, Science, and Eurocentrism

Part 2 Perspectives on Africa, West,

Seven Eurocentrism, Modernity, and

Part 3 Perspectives on the West:

Part 4 Eurocentrism: Policy and Prospects

Postface: Eurocentrism—Whither Now? 245

2.1 The “Classical” Eurocentric Trajectory 31

3.1 World Oil Consumption and Price: 1983–2007 48

The Seven Biases of Eurocentrism:

This volume originated as a Festschrift celebration of the Life and Work of

Ireland alone, or a multi-episode television drama on The Six Wives of

Between Sins of Quality and Sins of Quantity

strengths. Indeed, distinguished Western historians have been on record in

The sixth bias of Eurocentric history is the related sin of marginalizing

their independence, de Gaulle might never have returned to power, the

The Geography of Space and Time

I Islam before the Prophet Muhammad’s birth

but a convention chosen by Europeans. There was no spectator in outer

1. For a future-oriented approach consult Sardar (1987).

Against Eurocentrism: A Transcendent Critique of Modernist Science, Society and

Modernity’s political and ethical discourse claims the mantle of civiliza-

“balancing” force and coercion, hegemony is a precarious compromise

Shamed, dishonoured, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus

immanent and explanatory critique: where most uses of “Eurocentrism”

It is in this domain of non-acquisitive life processes that the needs of

The dialectic of modernity, though, stands in the sharpest possible contrast

religion of abstract, impersonal relations. The tragedy is of epochal pro-

of materialism is the dismissal, denial and exclusion of the “spiritual”

forms of science, social and political theory—are approached as so many

The aborted attempt to “find” [the lost world of nurturance] or rec-

The dénouement arrives with “The fatal conceit: elisions of materialism.”

of subsistence and coexistence based on real anthropic needs” (p. 114).

provides a certain alternative to the distortions of modernist civil society,

The possibility of utopia is critically-immanent, and perennially

The relationship with Marx and Marxism is similarly complicated, much

Marxist tradition have been wedded to Eurocentric humanism is also with-

Rajani Kanth’s Against Eurocentrism, however, is far from being a lone

Modernity needs to be thought of as a process which produces blood,

that looking to human fulfillment and speaking ethics, philosophy and

Challenging Eurocentrism: 45 Theses

5. The “Meaning of Life,” if one exists at all, might simply be To Be,

13. Modernist Nation-States [constructed on the notion of bellum omnia

notions of “Human Perfectibility.” Unless God, perchance, is an Ape, we are

29. Civilization, in the sense of the Pacification of Anthropic Existence, is

40. Contrary to many views, it is not the Planet that is endangered by

Received Theory, Science, and Eurocentrism

Eurocentric Roots of the Clash of Civilizations:

1. Huntington: Religion and the Clash of Civilizations

acquired its unique identity—its classical legacy, its roots in Christianity

These concepts, practices, and institutions . . . are what is Western but

In other words, civilizations outside the West which modernize benefit

We have selected modern natural science as a possible underlying

2. Amartya Sen: Plurality of Identities and

Huntington’s prognosis of intercivilizational relations has received many

The philosophical West has made enormous contributions to human-