Reflections on "the West"

 Just last week, I finished a chapter for an edited volume on history and authority that, although good, may never get published. I say this not because the editors rejected it -- they did not. But because I am uncertain it will make it past peer review. I do not think it is a bad article; in fact, parts of it are excellent. But it is "political". I took on one of the most authoritative stories in history -- Western civilization -- and subjected contemporary classics and ancient history writers who promote "the West" and Western exceptionalism to the same type of scrutiny I was trained to apply to ancient texts.  "Western civilization" is a political concept, so any attempt to understand its history and continued power is de facto political as well. As far as those who treat it as a neutral category are concerned, to try to understand it is to violate some sort of academic objectivity, because to truly understand it means to see it as a history of violence and exploitation. For some people, those are good things. If you think they are bad, you are "political."

In doing philological analysis of my colleagues instead of simply citing them as one opinion on an ancient topic, I may have crossed a line. Because no analysis of the Western civilization narrative can avoid the problems of imperialism, colonialism, and genocide that created it. The racism and White supremacism are always there, even when we pretend it isn't. Many of my colleagues want to preserve the language and the category of "West" by pretending it is historically neutral and values-free. It never is. It can't be. And scholars who spend their time arguing about the historically contextual meanings of words should know better.

There are perhaps people who are at this very moment thinking that "the West" is having a moment and is a force for good in the world and so critiquing the history of the label and its meaning is bad. But, if anything, the invasion of Ukraine and the language surrounding it should make clear that this history is very relevant and that we should be concerned  with how we understand "the West" historically. We should be particularly interested in how "West" and "Western" are used to stand in for "civilization" and "civilized".

Like my colleague Neville Morley, who speaks of his own scramble to finish his chapter for the same volume, I too wanted to include a section in my chapter on the current language surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We are awash in stories of "the West" standing against the evil tyranny of Russia. Except, of course, it isn't "the West" doing it. It is one of those spaces on the map that "the West" designated back in 1994 as a buffer zone between itself and Russia. There are numerous spots on the map of Eurasia that act as such buffer zones. Greece is one, as Yannis Hamilakis discusses in his new co-authored book Archaeology, Nation, and Race. Ukraine is a buffer zone. And the language used in the press and by pundits and analysts in Russia and Europe/US to discuss the war make clear that Ukraine is not "the West". 

Historically, Ukraine's region has always been both a geographic border region and a civilizational one for those who identify as Europeans. But even in antiquity, when no such identity existed, what is now Ukraine was thought to sit at what was considered the boundary between Europe and Asia since the days of Herodotus and Hippocrates. Both the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places and Herodotus set the boundary at the Don River, which is very near to the southwestern border of Russia and the eastern border of Ukraine. The territory in Ukraine that Russia is claiming for themselves and currently attempting to depopulate of Ukrainians is on that eastern border near the Don River (ancient Tanais). 

In antiquity, this area was inhabited, according to various ancient Greek texts, by a combination of various groups of "Scythians" and with Greek colonies.  In the Hippocratic Airs, the residents of the region were oddities in need of a medical explanation. The schematic nature of the environmental theory unpinning the Airs demands that the imagined wet and cold climate of the region create people who are bloated and round and can only look like the Scythians the author and other southern Greeks were familiar with through the application of technologies, specifically, hot irons to burn out the wet and damp from their bodies and turn them into the muscled and lithe horseback warriors they were known to be. 

Herodotus, however, provides a lot more detail and variety to his story of the Scythians. Hartog is still, perhaps, the best read for understanding the hold the nomadic horsemen of the Black Sea region held on southern Greeks, but Herodotus himself gives us the story that informs most of our modern imaginary about Steppe peoples, horse-warriors, nomads, and "primitives" on the prairies. They are the quintessential "Noble Savage".  The map below gives a reasonable interpretation of Herodotus' placement of the different Scythian groups and decades of archaeology have given us a picture of exquisite artisans, warriors, and horseman that doesn't conflict all that much with Herodotus' representation. 

Of course, this isn't the whole story. Everywhere along those coasts are Greeks, going all the way back to the 7th century BCE. And Olbia, of course, isn't too far from where Odessa is now, which is itself on top of a Greek colony. Not on the map above also are the group Herodotus calls the Helleno-Scyths and, of course, the Colchians, who may have been descended in part (again according to Herodotus) from an ancient Egyptian shipwreck, while the Sauromatae were said to have descended from a shipwrecked crew of Amazons. Regardless of how accurate Herodotus' origin stories are, what we do know is that Ukraine today is the result of millenia of rich cultural interactions that have formed into its own modern nation today. It doesn't belong to Russia anymore than Greece belongs to "the West" or Russia (despite their apparent grand imperial plans on the country). Also, despite the sentiments of some folks, Ukraine is Europe. But being in Europe doesn't make them "Western", at least not enough for some people. 

It came as a bit of a shock to many people to hear journalists reporting on the invasion using phrases like "relatively civilized" and "they look like us" to discuss the first waves of refugees coming from Ukraine. It was part of their explanation for why these refugees should be accepted into Europe as opposed to all the refugees whom various European states said they were "too full" to take who came from Syria and other war zones to their south (though, of course, Syria is another Russia vs "the West" war, just on someone else's turf). The argument had to be made, though, because Ukraine is only "relatively civilized" because it sits a a buffer between "East" and "West" and isn't "the West." 

The UK is at least honest about this in their refusal to open their borders to refugees. Brexit was mostly aimed at getting eastern Europeans out of the UK, so at least they are consistent. Poland is taking in the most Ukrainian refugees, marking it also as a buffer, just as Greece and Italy were expected by their northern allies to take in and deal with all of the refugees driven out of Syria by war. "The West" builds concentric circles of Westernness around itself. Those concentric circles aren't just Westernness, though. Because "Western" is just a proxy for "civilization" in these discourses. Those circles are also about level of "civilization" -- from civilized to barbarian to savage. Ukraine is in the "relatively civilized" circle, along with much of eastern Europe and as such are deemed inferior locations of resource extraction and exploitation by the still colonizer mentality of western European countries. That hasn't changed in more than a century. 

The fact that Europe and the US are even mobilizing as much effort as they are to help Ukraine is amazing. When Hungary attempted to fight off the Soviets in 1954, they were abandoned, even after continual encouragement by Radio Free Europe and other propaganda mechanisms to resist the Soviets. One member of the British parliament made clear where he stood. He said in response to debate about supporting the revolution something to the effect of "Ever since Arpad and his Magyars entered into the Carpathian basin, they have been nothing but trouble for the rest of Europe." But the point is, those Magyars were not "Europe." They were not "the West". They were a buffer between "the West" and Russia (and in earlier centuries, between Christendom and barbarians) and so were sacrificed. 

NOTE: Viktor Orban is clearly an ally of Putin and is doing only now what he can do without drawing Putin's ire entirely.  Far right governments stick together. But in 1954, the Hungarian revolutionaries were abandoned. Just facts. 

Anyway, the point of this all this is that that story of "the West" is a powerful one that often obscures the realities that it is a story of "civilization" and is part of a narrative about "values" and not geography. It isn't that Ukraine isn't geographically "West" of those who supposedly embody the "East" (Russia off and on for about 300 years now), but that it is in an external concentric circle of civilization that situates it as only "relatively civilized." Their purpose in Europe is to be sacrificed to ensure the safety of their geographically western (and so more "civilized") neighbors. 

If Ukraine manages to push Russia back and survive this war with its country intact, it won't be because "the West" came to its aid (enough). It will be because they fought for their very existence and Russia wasn't as almighty as they present themselves. But the cost will be millions of Ukrainian lives destroyed -- people murdered, bombed, shot; children kidnapped and adopted into Russian families to try to erase their Ukrainianness; hospitals, schools, homes, museums, historic buildings, parks roads, bridges, businesses obliterated; millions displaced perhaps never to be able to return. An actual attempted genocide while we watch. A very "Western" result. 

Notes on "West" and "Western Civ"

Yes, I included this meme in the article.

I recently (like this morning) finished an article that examines three ways in which ancient Greece is used in support of white supremacism: orientalism, western civ narratives, and whitewashing ancient peoples. The article is for a volume called "Polarized Pasts" and has a word limit. Also, there is soooooo much material about Western civ that I had to delete about 3000 words worth. Instead of consigning it all to my digital trash bin, I thought I would post some of those cuts here as it seems to be a topic lots of people are interested in. But, you can probably see why it got edited out--too dense, etc. Anyway, let's go:

On Ian Morris' Why the West Rules...For Now

For some scholars there is nothing inherently racial or racist about the idea of a “West” and “Western civilization”. It can either be about values or geography. Ancient historian Ian Morris, for example, prefers a geographic definition of West, which he hopes will help him avoid falling into racist tropes. He devotes the better part of 100 pages in his book Why the West Rule—For Now coming up with a definition of “West” intended to show the fallacy of biological (and thereby race based) definitions of “Western”. Morris begins his quest to answer the question “Why does the West rule” by seeking to define it.

For Morris, the “West” (and “East”) is defined as:

…simply a geographic term, referring to those societies that descended from the westernmost Eurasian core of domestication, in the Hilly Flanks.[1] It makes no sense to talk about “the West” as a distinctive region before about 11,000 BCE, when cultivation began making the Hilly Flanks unusual; and the concept stars to become an important analytical tool only after 8,000 BCE, when other agricultural cores started appearing. By 4500 BCE, the West had expanded to include most of Europe, and in the last five hundred years colonists have taken it to the Americas, the Antipodes,[2] and Siberia. “The East”, naturally enough, simply means those societies that descended from the easternmost core of domestication that began developing in China by 7500 BCE. We can also speak of comparable New World, South Asian, New Guinean, and African traditions. Asking why the West rules really means asking why those societies descended from the agricultural core of the Hilly Flanks, rather than those descended from the cores in China, Mexico, the Indus Valley, the eastern Sahara, Peru, or New Guinea, came to dominate the planet (117).

For Morris, any divisions in culture are simply that, cultural, and a result of distinctive developments in these seven different core regions where agriculture and animal domestication become established. It is a fact of geography…except when it isn’t, of course. While Morris makes efforts throughout his discussion to dispute and ultimately refute what he calls “racial” theories of “Western” supremacy, he ever engages with the issue of how “race” and “culture” are intertwined. In fact, he assumes that “race” is itself about DNA and biology and not what we know it to be—a matter of social convention that seeks biological distinctions for cultural differences. As Angela Saini so eloquently shows, almost all theories of human cultural and “biodiversity” rest still on the categories created by race scientists in the 19^th century—Europe, Africa, and Asia.[3] Morris not only doesn’t challenge such racist thinking, his use of “simply geographic” distinction that then develops “cultural descendants” allows the core of racist distinctions between an “East” and “West’ to hide in plain sight and continue to be used by those who uphold a cultural superiority of “Western civilization” as built ultimately on a biological reality.

Although Morris attempts to make the idea of ‘Western’ stand geographically and rooted in a deep antiquity, he still adheres to a theory that Western civilization was something that becomes quintessentially (northern and western) European by the 16^th century, such that they could spread it through colonization to “the Americas, the Antipodes, and Siberia”. What this means is that the current definition of ‘Western” contains a decidedly non-cohesive geographic collection of spaces. As Sam Huntington states, the places that stand as the “West” since the 16^th century are identified purely by the association with northern European settler-colonialism and imperialism. An amusing (but accurate) map of the ‘West’ might look something like this (Fig. 3):

Don't worry! I also included this map in the article! It just didn't work here as part of this particular section

Because Morris is looking into the deep history of a division between “West” and “East”, he doesn’t situate the origins of “Western civilization” with the Greeks, specifically. In fact, between roughly 1000 and 100 BCE, Morris sees “West” and East” as roughly comparable in their achievements, eschewing a “Greek Miracle” or, as Kwame Anthony Appiah calls it “Golden Nugget”, at the core of most Western civilization narratives. But, Morris does gradually shift the “West” away from it Eurasian starting point (as he designates it) towards Europe, while designating China as the ultimate bearer of the title “East” in order to make this work. Ancient Iran and the Achaemenid Persians, the Orientalized eastern other of the 300 discussed at the beginning of this chapter, are a credited with pushing the West forward, but then Morris shifts to core of the West, recentering it at Rome. It’s a very clever sleight of hand that allows the technologies and cultural deep past of western Asia and Egypt to be appropriated and claimed as the inheritance of northern and western Europeans via the ancient Greeks and Romans, while paving the way for the modern rejection of those same regions as part of the West at all, something visible most clearly in the “clash of civilization” models.

By defining Western as he does, Morris, even though he disagrees with Huntington in important ways (he does not view Western civilization as inherently superior, for example), ultimately defines the “West” through the mechanism of colonization and imperialism, not unlike those who do advocate for a narrative of Western superiority—a position inextricably bound to white supremacism and racism because it posits behaviors and values originating in a single geographic and ethnic space as inherent and heritable immutable characteristics.

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[1] Hilly Flanks in the term used for the foothills regions within the so-called Fertile Crescent, the region that ranges across modern Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, eastern Egypt, Cyprus and the southeastern tip of Turkey.

[2] i.e. Australia and New Zealand.

[3] A. Saini 2019. Her interview with geneticist David Reich and discussion of the state of aDNA research is particularly illuminating.

West is Best? 

In response to the flap over Rep. Steve King’s remarks linking White nationalism, White supremacism, and Western civilization, Matt Lewis, senior writer for the Daily Beast wrote:

One could spend a lifetime studying the virtues of Western civilization, but it occurs to me that I should at least explain what I mean when I say those words. In general, we are referring to the norms and values that began in Western Asia and were developed and influenced by the Greeks, the Roman Empire, Judeo-Christian traditions, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment.

Due to a set of unique circumstances, this culmination of these events gave birth to innovative ideas like reason, tolerance, skepticism, individualism, natural law, human rights, liberal democracy, and an emphasis on science—in short, many of the virtues and values that a good “liberal” ought to endorse (not to mention the art and literature in the Western canon).

Ideas like “individualism” and “tolerance” transcend race and religion. Any baby (white, black, Asian, Hispanic—it doesn’t matter) born in America is assimilated into this culture; yet, we have had a difficult time exporting these values at the macro level. That’s because the miracle of Western civilization has nothing to do with genetics, but everything to do with culture and assimilation (emphasis mine).[1]

“Reason, tolerance, skepticism, individualism, natural law, human rights, liberal democracy, and an emphasis on science…” Lewis’s list of values supposedly unique to Western civilization is not one he invented, and is particularly popular among the non-specialist literati, like New York Times opinion writer and author David Books . He regularly bemoans the fact that students in colleges are no longer being taught the classics and a Western civilization curriculum, because:

This Western civ narrative came with certain values—about the importance of reasoned discourse, the importance of property rights, the need for a public square that was religiously informed but not theocratically dominated. It set a standard for what great statesmanship looked like. It gave diverse people a sense of shared mission and a common vocabulary, set a framework within which political argument could happen and most important provided a set of common goals.[2]

These value-based definitions are always presented as universal and something that people, regardless of background or context, can assimilate to. Assimilationism is, as Ibrham X. Kendi has argued, one of the dominant ways racist ideas are perpetuated—it assumes that one culture is superior and that others should want to assimilate to it and need to in order to be considered equal.[3]

The values based definition of Western civilization is not exclusively a product of popular opinion but aligns with the understanding of the concept as discussed by many historians, such as Niall Ferguson. In his book Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011), Niall Ferguson defines the “West” geographically as western, Europe and its direct colonies since, roughly, 1500, originating with the “Anglo-Saxon” states and expanding to eventually include the rest of western Europe. He recognizes the debt it owes to antiquity (calling “Western Civilization 1.0)” antiquity from Mesopotamia to ancient Rome),but defines the “West” mostly as “a set of norms, behaviors, and institutions” encompassed in these specific values:

1. Competition—a decentralization of both political and economic life, which created the launch-pad for both nation-states and capitalism

2. Science—a way of studying, understanding, and ultimately changing the natural order, which gave the West (among other things) a major military advantage over the Rest

3. Property rights—the rule of law as a means of protecting private owners and peacefully resolving disputes between them, which formed the basis for the most stable form of representative government

4. Medicine—a branch of science that allowed a major improvements to health and life expectancy, beginning in Western societies, but also their colonies

5. The consumer society—a mode of material living in which the production and purchase of clothing and other consumer goods play a central economic role, and without which the Industrial Revolution would have been unsustainable

6. The work ethic—a moral framework and mode of activity derivable from (among other sources) Protestant Christianity, which provides the glue for the dynamic and potentially unstable society created by apps 1 to 5.[5]

Of course, the problem with rooting a culture or “civilization” in values is that these values tend to be projected not as one among many sets of values held by diverse peoples in the world, but as superior values—which is precisely what Ferguson argues:

There are those who dispute that, claiming that all civilizations are in some sense equal, and that the West cannot claim superiority over, say, the East of Eurasia. But such relativism is demonstrably absurd.[6]

Ferguson also explicitly states that empire and colonialism are fundamental to Western civilization. He repeatedly makes clear that the “West” is a superior culture, that its rise was “the single most important historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ”,[7] and that the proof of this is in the pervasiveness of a ‘Western way of life”:

For some reason, beginning in the late 15^th century, the little states of Western Europe, with their bastardized linguistic borrowings from Latin (and a little Greek), their religion derived from the teachings of a Jew from Nazareth and their intellectual debts to Oriental mathematics, astronomy, and technology, produced a civilization capable not only of conquering the great Oriental empires and subjugating Africa, the Americas and Australia, but also of converting peoples all over the world to the Western way of life—a conversion achieved ultimately more by the word than by the sword (emphasis mine).[8]

In other words, the values that opinion writers like Lewis and Brooks identify as Western, but suggest are universal or that anyone can assimilate to are the ones that historians like Ferguson (and even Morris, even if unintentionally) link exclusively to not just a strictly European origin and perpetuation, but even an exclusively “Anglo-Saxon” and then more broadly western European source.

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[1] “How Steve King’s Idiotic and Odious Words Help the Left Destroy Western Civilization” The Daily Beast Jan. 11, 2019 (https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-steve-kings-idiotic-and-odious-words-help-the-left-destroy-western-civilization; accessed Jan. 13, 2020).

[2]Brooks “The Crisis of Western Civ” The New York Times, April 27, 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/the-crisis-of-western-civ.html; accessed Jan. 27, 2020).

[3] Kendi 2019, 24-34, esp, and 2018, passim.

[5] Ferguson 2011, 13.

[6] Ferguson 2011, 5.

[7] Ferguson 2011, 8.

[8] Ferguson 2011, 4-5.