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Ivo BUDIL Ideology and Social Darwinism in the 19 Th Century

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Ivo BUDIL Ideology and Social Darwinism in the 19 Th Century ARTICLES War and history: 8 Transformation of the concept due to ascending racial Ivo BUDIL ideology and social Darwinism in the 19 th Century War and history: Transformation of the concept due to ascending racial ideology and social Darwinism in the 19 th Century Ivo BUDIL Katedra historických věd, Fakulta filozofická, Západočeská univerzita v Plzni Department of Historical Sciences, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, University of West Bohemia Tylova 18, 301 25 Plzeň, Czech Republic [email protected] T ¡ Eurasian revolution taking place approximately from 1750 to 1830 brought radical change to relations between key power centres of Eurasia and essential disruption of glob- al power balance characteristic to the world of early modern age. 1 While in 1800, the Eu- ropeans had directly dominated 35% of world dry land; in 1878 it amounted to 67% and in 1914, to more than 84%. 2 The Ottoman Empire, India of Great Mughals and China were not able to face the mighty growth of Western economic, military, political and symbolical power caused by industrial revolution and other socio-economic changes in life of the European society at the turn of the 18 th and 19 th Centuries. Japan was able, thanks to its isolationist policy and internal socio-cultural consistency, to stand up to Western assertive- ness and in the Meiji period, after 1868, re-find a relatively dignified place within the new world system with core in Western Europe and North America. Different was the situation of the Ottoman Empire after conclusion of peace treaty with Russia in Küçük Kaynarca on 21 July 1774, of India after the Battle of Plassey fought on 23 June 1757 or of Persia after confirmation of Turkmanchai Treaty from 22 February 1828. The Chinese resistance was de- feated in the Opium War in 1839 to 1842, the last echo of the Eurasian revolution. After the disintegration of the Spanish overseas empire, the countries of Central and South America did not produce sufficient dynamism to meet the demands of modernism, succumbed to stagnation and political chaos and transformed into a large dependent peripheral zone. Africa and Pacific islands became the “Heart of Darkness”, “Barbarian Zone”, passively waiting for external actors to deplete their natural and human resources. The system of racial hierarchy, as developed in Western visions in the first decades of the 19 th Century, represented the global metaphor of world, originated by the Eurasian revo- lution. The striking irregularity of world economic development, wealth in prideful towns of Anglo-Saxons, stagnation in trade centres of the Mediterranean, the Orient and Latin America and the prehistoric underdevelopment in the interior of Africa constituted, similar- ly to the results of war conflicts, a strong argument in favour of essential differences in racial predispositions, advantages of racial purity and harmfulness of racial mixing. Race became a privileged tool of cognition and understanding of dramatic changes taking place in the 1 John DARWIN, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405, London 2007, 160. 2 Paul KENNEDY, Vzestup a pád velmocí: Ekonomické proměny a vojenské konflikty v letech 1500 až 2000, Praha 1996, 191. CENTRAL EUROPEAN PAPERS 2014 / II / 2 9 ¦§ § ¡ ¨¡ © © ¢ ¢ ¥¡£ w ¢£¤ ¥ n age. Racial classification of humanity was gradually asserted due to the development of West- ern natural sciences during late decades of the 18 th Century when more and more intel- lectuals, inspired by François Bernier and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, emphasized the historical importance of somatic diversity of mankind. The mobilization of popular masses in the course of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars ignited collective emotions manifested through metaphors of blood, violence and patriotism. Race became the opti- mal concept to capture and shield that new semantic field. The authority of natural scienc- es and the spirit of Enlightenment and secularization supported transfer of biological met- aphors to social and historical sciences. The category of race was strengthened also due to the retreat of traditional environmentalism. More and more Western thinkers believed that inborn and hereditary somatic features had more important impact on fates of human societies than climatic and geographical factors. For example Constantin François Volney, a French Orientalist, reassessed shortly before the French Revolution the traditional Hip- pocratic environmentalism and called physiognomy, an important evidence of the past of a relevant population: The nations of Europe and Asia had their history recorded in their fac- es.3 Modern racial theory was developed in an atmosphere of intellectual harmony among natural scientists like William Frédérick Edwards and historians like Augustin and Amédée Thierry or Jules Michelet or economist Charles Dunoyer. Henry Maine mentioned that the discovery of Sanskrit and Indian studies had serious political consequences: A new theory of language gave rise to a new theory of race. Populations among whose languages could similarities to be found started emphasizing their historical relationship from which political bonds were derived. As Henry Maine wrote, the fact that people who do not understand each other can be politically associated based on a suspected linguistic bond constituted a completely new idea. The idea led to Pan-Germanism, Pan-Slavism and Pan-Celtism.4 After 1848, when the liberal expectations related to European revolutionary disorders had not been fulfilled, biological understanding of race as fatal predicate justifying historical- ly privileged status of specific population was asserted. While Montesquieu had viewed Germanism, nostalgic revival of Tacitean idealization of ancient Germans as defence of human liberty, Arthur Gobineau in the 1850s considered Germanship a racial disposition conditioning civilization vitality, strength and superiority. The racial dichotomy between the Aryan and Semitic element, popularized mainly by Benjamin Disraeli and Ernest Renan, brought a seed of inner conflict into the Western society. The understanding of history as ethnic or racial rivalry had had long tradition particularly in France, in connection with the memories of “migration of peoples” and German expansion that had founded the political order of early Middle Ages to considerable extent. For ex- ample in early 18 th Century, Count Henri de Boulainvilliers highlighted the fatal ethnic fight between autochthonous Gallic Romans and alochthonous German Franks. 5 Shortly before the Fall of the Bastille, Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès appealed with impassioned words for expulsion of old highborn families back to the German swamplands: “Why should they 3 Constantin François VOLNEY, Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte, pendant les anneés 1783, 1784, & 1785, Paris 1787, 76. 4 Henry Sumner MAINE, Village-Communities in the East and West, London 1913, 209–210. 5 Hannah ARENDTOVÁ, Původ totalitarismu I–III, Praha 2006, 250. ARTICLES War and history: 10 Transformation of the concept due to ascending racial Ivo BUDIL ideology and social Darwinism in the 19 th Century (§ ¡ third estate, author’s comment) not drive back to the Frankish forests all those families that preserve an absurd claim to coming from the race of conquerors and to having inher- ited their rights? I believe that the Nation, purged in that way, would be able to become reconciled with the idea that it consists exclusively of descendants of Gauls and Romans. Actually, if insisting on distinction of our origin, should we not persuade our less lucky fellow citizens that their blood relation with the Gauls or Romans has at least equal value as that of those claiming alleged relationship with Cimbri, Welsches and other savages who had emerged from the swamplands and forests of ancient Germania?” 6 In April 1793, Russian Tsarina Catherine II wrote to Melchior Grim, a German philosopher of the Enlight- enment: “Do you not observe what is going on in France? The Gauls drive out the Franks. But you will see that the Franks will return, and then the raging beasts longing for human blood will either be exterminated or driven to shelters.”7 In the period of Restoration, Augustin Thierry linked the narrations of the conflict of the Franks and the Gauls together with modern racial thinking and became one of the first cre- ators of the historical idiom.8 It was not surprising that Augustin Thierry valued extraordi- narily Walter Scott, appreciating highly his novel “Ivanhoe”. 9 Walter Scott taught him how to depict the history convincingly as conflict of antagonistic races. On 2 April 1820, Thierry published the article “Racial antipathy” (“Antipathie de race”) in “Censeur européen”, declaring that the Anglo-Saxon countries, Great Britain and United States of America were more lucky regions than France from the perspective of the level of achieved liberty. 10 Then he turned to traditional French narration: “We believe to be only one nation, but we are actually two nations, hostile in their memories and unappeasable in their outlooks.” 11 France is split between successors of the defeated and descendants of the conquerors who are deaf to language of liberty and peace. Unlike Mably or Montlosier, Thierry thought that national unity of the Franks and the Gauls was impossible: “The heaven is our witness that we are not the first to recognize and declare the dark and terrible truth that the territory of France houses two hostile camps ... The history has shown very clearly that regardless of what emerged from mixture of two primitive races, their endlessly contradictory spirit has been preserved until these days in two parts of population that remained separated forever... The legitimate origin and political succession are obvious facts. Let’s award them to those who claim them and let’s be proud of completely different origins. We are sons of men of the third estate. This third estate has emerged from communes that were refuges of bondservants. Bondservants were those who were defeated during the invasion ..., the consequences of which must be redeemed now.” 12 Similarly to the Americans who got rid of the English and achieved liberty, France must be freed from the Franks.
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