Western Dominance

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in his book "Carnage and Culture", Victor David Hanson proposes this theory....

He says the explanation for western dominance in world history comes from its democratic underpinnings in ancient Greece. He further ascribes their use of shock tactics, total war, and organization as stemming from this basic tennet of of democracy. This small paragraph is a dramatic simplification of his theory.

Its an interesting and somewhat controversial book. I was wondering what your thoughts were on his theories.

I tend to see his point but as usual I would like to see if there are differing ideas before completely formulating my thoughts.

Comments?

 

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IMHO the democracy in greece had very little to do with the European supremacy until 1914. Greece also influenced Persia and North Africa but neither one was a player at the time the Europeans set out to conquer the new world.

This supremacy has much more to do with

- First and foremost, the Roman Empire, which left a tremendous heritage to the entire mediterranean and western european region - civil organization, military organization, a 'consciousness of power', and of course
- secondly Christianity, which created a feeling of community among the nations of western europe... the catholic church was the institution that (IMO) was by far the most important things holding Europe together and maintaining communication between the European nations throughout the worst of the early middle age.
- thirdly the geography of Europe. If Europe was as flat as southern Russia or as open as North Africa the Huns, Avars, Mongols and other steppe nations would have kept ravaging Europe again and again throughout the centuries, and no French or German or Spanish empire would have lasted longer than a one or two hundred years. Europe would look much more like Persia or Russia.

 

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During the 19th century many believed that political organization was the "white man's" gift or skill. Other races were more war like or more labourous, etc... This is of course way too generalized and smacks of imperialism, because it can be used for an excuse to invade and use cultural imperialism in other places of the world. It also implied that only Europeans were good at democracy, and that only they should rule. (a contradiction if ever there was one)

I agree that geography had a lot to do with European hegemony, as in Europe is essentially a penninsula (and Europe has great farm land)... But I also believe that it had much to do with the breaking of conservatism. Chrisitanity and the greek and roman elements that it drew from was actually a major break from the supersitious nature of the old world. In the old world (particularly mesopotamia) the poor were kept supersitious and the rich were unquestioned rullers. In the Greek and Roman (influenced also by Judaeism), and later European cultures, their was a deffinit need to make the world senseable, to make the world clear and logically organized, which later developed into sceintific thinking. Though Europe was behind in science for a very long time, I believe that it eventually led the world because of the emphasis on ration over emotion, and because of more emphasis on efficiency than absolute order. Though there are many exceptions to this rule to be found in European history of this period, they are just exceptions, and they shrinked away little by little over time.

 

[King of Men]

I like Keegan's theory better, as put forth in "A History of Warfare". Briefly, he suggests that the relevant invention is the decisive battle - again with the Greeks, but a different emphasis. Hanson has the same idea, but stretches the causal chain one further link by implying that only democracies can fight decisive battles because only they have the requisite participation of the citizen. I disagree, take a quick look at Japan in WWII. But I agree with them both that a decisive-battle and seek-out-the-enemy ethic were very important in ensuring European dominance.

 

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Originally posted by Karl Martell
IMHO the democracy in greece had very little to do with the European supremacy until 1914. Greece also influenced Persia and North Africa but neither one was a player at the time the Europeans set out to conquer the new world.

This supremacy has much more to do with

- First and foremost, the Roman Empire, which left a tremendous heritage to the entire mediterranean and western european region - civil organization, military organization, a 'consciousness of power', and of course
- secondly Christianity, which created a feeling of community among the nations of western europe... the catholic church was the institution that (IMO) was by far the most important things holding Europe together and maintaining communication between the European nations throughout the worst of the early middle age.
- thirdly the geography of Europe. If Europe was as flat as southern Russia or as open as North Africa the Huns, Avars, Mongols and other steppe nations would have kept ravaging Europe again and again throughout the centuries, and no French or German or Spanish empire would have lasted longer than a one or two hundred years. Europe would look much more like Persia or Russia.

Hansen would agree with your points #1 and #2. He notes that the Romans inherited many Hellenic influences (Southern Italy and Sicily) much more so than their northern Goth nieghbors.

Christianity emerged in the Greco-Roman world; its influences are legion. His chapter on Lepanto also notes Christianity as a large factor.

 

[Arilou]

I disagree. I think that europe today was as much influenced by germanic freedmen as by greek democracy.

 

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Greek Democracy ....

I would disagree with the idea that German free men had as much influence on western supremacy as Greek democracy. Greek democracy introduced the idea of citizen soldier. It basically said that if you voted to go to war then it was you who actually went. It gave the soldier a say in his actions but it also tied the army to the "polis" or city.

German free men were tied to nothing. They had entire strucutres built on plunder and migration. There was often very little organization other than the strongest man wins. It wasn't until the Germans settled down on land and began forming societies based on Roman models (which stem from Greek models) that they began to assert their dominance.

Contrast Rome in its heyday to the Germans. Ceasar overran Gaul fairly easily. Sure it was tough but even presented with a brilliant opponent (Vercintorix) and a unified enemy people he triumphed. The early days of Rome are all about their invading the german areas, not the other way around. Occasionally, there were spactacular losses where the Romans would be annhiliated by some force of Germans. The Germans lacked to ability to capitalize on this because of their lack of organization and tribal thinking. Rome would very quickly make up the losses and move on.

It wasn't until Rome was collapsing that the Germans began to assert themselves. By that time Rome had ceased to be a Republic and was no longer using citizen soldiers. Its failure to use the western way of war led to its downfall.

The germans it must be noted, did not fill in the gaps. They were incapable of filling the Empire's shoes. They quickly broke into small rival kingdoms. Not until they settled the land, thereby becoming attached to it and arrived at an organized participatory form of government (feudalism) did the West take back off again.

It was the greek form of citizen soldiery tied to the land that allowed the west to flourish, not the racial traits of the germans.

On a side note, I would hesitate to use Japan as an example of a non-western society that believes in decisive battle. It is clearly the most westernized country in the east. It was then and it still is now. Its government made a concertated effort in the late 19th century to reorganize itself on the Western model. However, you still see old eastern traits seeping back in. In the battle of Midway the Japanese desire was to force a decisive battle with the American carrier forces. But their plan was anything but straightforward. It called for elaborate deception, false invasions, and widely seperated forces. It resulted in one of the key defeats in the war. If the Japanese had simply marhsalled all that force and thrown it at our three puny carriers then the world might be a different place. Did they truly want a decisive battle or were they subtely hinting that they still prefered the traditional eastern tactics of encirclement and maneuver? Just a thought.

 

[Arilou]

Ah, but look at Scandinavia...

There were elaborate systems of laws in place already before christinaity (we know this because the later laws seem to build upon them rather than replace them completely...) The swedish peasantry (not sure if peasantry is the right word) had to serve on the King's Ships etc. etc... Citizen soldiers were alive and well (and it can be argued that feudalism is merely an advanced form of this) and was an integral part of many armies... Although the germanic society (if it resembles viking-age and early medieval scandinavian society any) was not democratic but it was not monarchic or aristocratic either...

 

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Military prowess has very little to do with histoirical dominance. Sceince is what gave the west its edge; its ability to conquer almost all others. How citizens were organized in foot-battles is laughable irrelivant.

 

[Arilou]

He brought up the military aspect, not I what I meant was that the citizens (although the term wasn't really used at the time) were a part of the governing structure.

 

[King of Men]

Originally posted by CoolElephant
Military prowess has very little to do with histoirical dominance. Science is what gave the west its edge; its ability to conquer almost all others. How citizens were organized in foot-battles is laughably irrelevant.

Could be, though then you are faced with the necessity of finding out where the science comes from, and here I think the social/military organisation is important.
But really, think how Greece defeated the Persian Empire; you can hardly argue that the Greeks were vastly sophisticated in their weapons technology compared to their opponents. Likewise, India had technologies that were at least within shouting distance of the Europeans', and was conquered by laughably small forces.

 

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Originally posted by CoolElephant
Military prowess has very little to do with histoirical dominance. Sceince is what gave the west its edge; its ability to conquer almost all others. How citizens were organized in foot-battles is laughable irrelivant.

This argument is only applicable in certain instances after the Industrial Revolution.

One other thing to consider, science doesn't magically appear, it must be developed by an open society by educated individuals with time and money to spend as they wish - something much mroe conducive to the Greek democratic model than the Perisian autocratic one.

 

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Re: Greek Democracy ....

Originally posted by shrike00
I would disagree with the idea that German free men had as much influence on western supremacy as Greek democracy. Greek democracy introduced the idea of citizen soldier. It basically said that if you voted to go to war then it was you who actually went. It gave the soldier a say in his actions but it also tied the army to the "polis" or city.

I'm sorry but I have to siagree 100% with you. The idea of a citizen soldier was laughably absurd to the Romans of the mid-2nd century. It is true that the Roman republic and even the early Empire was so strong because it had an army that was made up largely of loyal citizens and people aspiring to be citizens, but starting with the era of Empire the army was not an organization made up of Roman citizens but rather of warlike people from all over the empire who either wanted to be citizens or who fought for the Romans because war was all they excelled in.

People like to point at the time when the Roman empire collapsed and say "Hey, look how the influx barbarians all of a sudden brought Rome down." But Rome had been using barbarians quite successfully as soldiers for a long time and had been able to cope with the related problems. (mutinies, loyalty to the legion but not to the government, lack of discipline compared to the citizen armies of old) The old concept of a citizen soldier was absolutely useless when the empire needed troops who would guard frontiers a thousand miles away, and when a soldier would not see Italy for ten or even twenty years. Such a lifestyle was only attractiv to professional soldiers, and since Roman citizens had plenty of other opportunities to make a living the army attracted mainly provincials and said barbarians.

German free men were tied to nothing. They had entire strucutres built on plunder and migration. There was often very little organization other than the strongest man wins. It wasn't until the Germans settled down on land and began forming societies based on Roman models (which stem from Greek models) that they began to assert their dominance.

Contrast Rome in its heyday to the Germans. Ceasar overran Gaul fairly easily. Sure it was tough but even presented with a brilliant opponent (Vercintorix) and a unified enemy people he triumphed. The early days of Rome are all about their invading the german areas, not the other way around. Occasionally, there were spactacular losses where the Romans would be annhiliated by some force of Germans. The Germans lacked to ability to capitalize on this because of their lack of organization and tribal thinking. Rome would very quickly make up the losses and move on.

Uhm sorry to point it out but Gaul was inhabitated by Celts, not Germans. Caesar fought battles against Germans because German tribes (under Ariovist) tried to conquer Gaul for themselves, that's why the war started in the first place.

You're right in saying the disorganization of the Germans was what made them easy prey to the Romans for a long time. But Rome never conquered Germania, despite big successes by Tiberius. Hell, even Varus regularly collected tributes and taxes from the tribes east of the Rhine before he went to fight a small rebellion and ended up butchered in a war of liberation. The Germans were disorganized and uncultivated, but they resisted Rome long and hard enough to discourage a conquest of Germania.

And where does a Greek concept fit in? Free citizens versus rude barbarians? The Roman imperial army was hardly a citizen-army of the Greek model. The Germans were the free men, the warriors whose rights were built upon their capability to defend the tribe and who followed an elecetd leader. The Romans were the imperial peons, the rowdy bunch recruited from all over the uncivilized fringes of the empire, who often enough marched on Rome and installed their generals on the imperial throne. Not the Romans were a model of Greek ideals, on the contrary. The Germans - despite all their wildness and incapability to live peacefully - were much closer to the Greek model.

It wasn't until Rome was collapsing that the Germans began to assert themselves. By that time Rome had ceased to be a Republic and was no longer using citizen soldiers. Its failure to use the western way of war led to its downfall.

The germans it must be noted, did not fill in the gaps. They were incapable of filling the Empire's shoes. They quickly broke into small rival kingdoms. Not until they settled the land, thereby becoming attached to it and arrived at an organized participatory form of government (feudalism) did the West take back off again.

It was the greek form of citizen soldiery tied to the land that allowed the west to flourish, not the racial traits of the germans.

The greek citizen soldier was long since obsolete. Greece itself had long since been absorbed into the Roman Empire, and become a backwater. Greece would remain a backwater until the 19th century... pillaged, raped, ravaged throughout the centuries, by Germans, Avars, the Romans and their Byzantine successors, the Slavs and the Turks. The Roman Empire (and thus, indirectly, 2000 years of western civilization) were built upon the contrary model... the army as the opposite of a citizen, a society whose only purpose in life is war and the preparation for wars. Sure they were good at building bridges, aqaeducts, roads, even building cities. But the legion did not go home when the war was over, they marched off to the other end of the world to fight the next war.

 

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As I said before, certain aspects from Greece and Rome that formed into Christianity are what gave Europe its break from conservatism, and that provided for scientific advancement. And Europe was more advanced than any other continent by the end of the 15th century.

 

[Rundris]

I don't think Greek ideas had a whole lot to do with the development of western civillization because I don't think anyone really knew what they were. I think they were mostly forgotten until recent history.

My first degree is in astronomy. It has always surprised me that by 200 BC the Greeks knew that the Earth, Moon, and the Sun were spheres, that the Moon orbited the Earth and the Earth went around the Sun and they even knew the sizes of the Earth, Sun, and Moon, and the distance from the Earth to the Moon and the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

They figured this all out just using simple geometry and common sence. They had a hard time figuring out the diameter of the Earth (which was the unit of measure in all of the distance calculations) but they got a lucky break when one day when a Greek in Egypt discovered a well in Egypt that had no shadow, it was pointing straight at the sun.

The only reason the Greeks could not come up with an accurate model of the solar system was because they hadn't "discovered" ellipses. They figured heavenly bodies just had to move in circles.

Ptolemy's model of the solar system had the planets and the sun moving in circles, and the focuses of these circles moved around the Earth in circles. This created the zig zag effect where planets go one way in the sky then turn around and go back the other way before turning around again. I don't believe he ever tried to claim this was how the solar system was laid out, because that would have contradicted early observations, it was just a mathematical model that worked to predict where a planet would be in the sky at a certain point in time.

So then western society seems to have cast out all of this information, took Ptolemy's model minus the mini-orbits and said that was the way things were, which is amazingly ignorent.

I just find it weird that when Columbus was sailing off, people were telling him the world was flat and he would fall off the edge of the earth. Also, he had no idea how far he would have to go to hit the orient.

1700 years before he departed, the Greeks could have told him exactly how many miles (well they would have used stadia) he would have to travel to hit the orient.

Anyway, my point is that if Greek scientific discoveries were so twisted and forgotten so that they ended up being used to promote ignorence in society, I would bet Greek democratic ideas suffered the same fate.

I don't know, but I would guess Greek philosophers were used to justify monarchies and the church, and were probably seen by reformers as part of the problem rather than the solution.

 

[King of Men]

Originally posted by Rundris
I don't think Greek ideas had a whole lot to do with the development of western civillization because I don't think anyone really knew what they were. I think they were mostly forgotten until recent history.

Well, this depends on what you define as recent. They were largely rediscovered at the time of the Renaissance. I don't think you have to be American to consider that as quite some time ago.

Originally posted by Rundris
So then western society seems to have cast out all of this information, took Ptolemy's model minus the mini-orbits and said that was the way things were, which is amazingly ignorant.

Nonsense. The whole reason the Ptolemaic system collapsed was that no-one could find a way to fit the epicycles into the more accurate observations that were starting to become available. Also, while I don't know whether Ptolemy was inclined to consider his system as real, it is a very common fault in scientists to confuse the model and the reality.

Originally posted by Rundris
I just find it weird that when Columbus was sailing off, people were telling him the world was flat and he would fall off the edge of the earth.

I would find that weird too, if it were true. What they were actually telling him was, "It's too far, look here, the Greeks worked out the radius of the Earth 1800 years ago. Your ships can't go that far!" And they were absolutely right, too. What they didn't know about was the little continent in the way.

 

[Rundris]

Well I have always been taught that at the time of Columbus's voyage, most people thought the world was flat, and that the sun went around the Earth.

If people were telling him that based on Greek calculations the world was too big for his ships to make it around, that would be pretty interesting, but I have never heard that version of history before this thread

I also think that epicycles got tossed away simply because they are confusing. There were no new observations until way way later, like the 1500's or so. Ptolemy's model of the solar system less the epicycles had been accepted as the way things were by the church for ages by that time.

Religeous leaders wanted things simple. Simple theories lead to powerful messages.

Also, I think that Greek ideas being revisited is a recent thing. 300 or 400 years ago is recent. Western society was probably "behind" other societies around 1000 ad, but by 1500 western society was pretty much on pace to dominate the world.
I don't think Greek ideas were really discussed in that time period.

 

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Originally posted by King of Men
I like Keegan's theory better, as put forth in "A History of Warfare". Briefly, he suggests that the relevant invention is the decisive battle - again with the Greeks, but a different emphasis. Hanson has the same idea, but stretches the causal chain one further link by implying that only democracies can fight decisive battles because only they have the requisite participation of the citizen.

Actually, Keegan got his idea from Hanson (and refers to him in his book), not vice versa.

"Carnage and culture" is a very interesting book. Hanson sometimes lays it on too thick, but his main point about the relation between culture and methods (and efficacity) of warfare is valid.

 

[stnylan]

Since Columbus was sailing westward to find a short-cut to the East Indies I think it reasonable to assume he knew the world was round, or leastways thought so.

Christianity is far from simple - and a great deal of Greek philisophy and though survives and is incorporated into Christianity. Just because something does not survive independtly does not mean it does not survive.

Plus you can push the 'rediscovery' back into the 12th century since that was when Aristotle made his way back into Western Europe.

 

[Rundris]

Well ya Columbus thought the world was round, but I think that was a revolutionary idea at the time. I've heard some of his sailors were scared they would fall off the edge of the world. Maybe I am wrong. I'm not reading anything close to a first hand or even third hand account, but that is how the myth has been portrayed.

Columbus saw how the ships dissapeared at the horizon and from that deduced that the world must be round <- that is the modern day myth that I've been told anyway.

The Greeks looked at the shadow the Earth made on the moon and knew that the only shape that will make a disc for a shadow is a sphere.

The original Greek idea of the world being round was forgotten and then rediscovered using a different logic I think.