Civilizations: A Clashing

Civilizations: A Clashing

Introduction

Civilization's origins as a distinctive concept within Western thought can be specified with surprising precision. According to Bruce Mazlish, the term was first coined in 1756 by Mirabeau the elder 'to designate a society in which civil law had replaced military law to describe a group of people who were polished, refined and mannered, as well as virtuous in their social existence'. In its initial focus, the concept of civilization thus addressed questions of judicial organization and public morality. As a judicial notion, civilization elevated the civil power of the magistrate over the coercive power of the absolute despot. Likewise, on the question of public morality, civilization emphasized the importance of establishing internalized habits of restraint among the populace, with civilization's advocates being especially concerned with the restraint of impulses towards physical violence.

Indeed, common to civilization as both a judicial notion and a prescription for popular virtue was its emphasis on limiting the role of violence in public life, either through the imposition of civil laws to curb princely power, or alternatively through the inculcation of correct manners emphasizing habits of internalized self-restraint among the broader populace. In this respect, 'civilization' reflected its Enlightenment origins as a construct undergirded by the belief that human nature was both malleable and susceptible to refinement through the ameliorative influences of legislation and education. This conviction in turn reflected a progressivist view of history, in which humanity was seen as steadily moving away from a 'rude and barbarous' state, and towards a condition of ever-greater moral and material improvement.

For civilization's early sponsors, then, civilization was not necessarily a byword for European superiority. Rather, it was an end-state towards which Europeans themselves might progress, as atavistic impulses were sublimated and old prejudices dissolved through the application of reason.

As the 19th century unfolded and industrialization bequeathed on Europeans unprecedented material supremacy over the Afro-Asian world, the concept of civilization undeniably assumed more chauvinistic overtones. But the more pacifistic aspect of civilization that had earlier predominated, and that was animated by a deep concern for advancing Europe's moral improvement through the elimination of practices of arbitrary violence, was never entirely eclipsed. On the contrary, as a host of colonial wars steadily yielded the Europeans global dominion, civilization would serve as both a touchstone of the liberal conscience and as a license for empire. It is this essential polyvalence of civilization that accounts ...