Lecture 17, we call this modernization.
In the late 50s and early 60s, certain intellectuals in the United States came up with what we
call today a modernization theory.
I’m going to characterize it for you.
It argues this – colonized and/or agricultural states will copy Western industrial powers
with the resultant cultural changes; governments will take responsibility for education; governments
will be tolerant of various religious beliefs; and in intellectual life there will be a greater
emphasis put on science, education, technology; in family life, presumably a reduction in
birth rate, as families will not need as many children as they are no longer on the farm.
Now criticisms of this modernization theory – First, people have argued that no single
factor can account or explain such vast changes.
Societies don’t move at the same rate.
Modernization theory generally leaves religion out, and of course, you do that at your own
peril as a historian because religion can be quite powerful – as we see today.
Another criticism, modernization theory doesn’t predict behavior; it doesn’t predict things
like crime rates, for instance.
Modernization theory doesn’t take account of nations who take a different course from
the traditional Western course – an example, the Soviet Union did not become Western in
its politics.
In fact, it became the world’s first communist country with a centrally-planned economy instead
of reliance on the market.
Modernization theory is distinctly Eurocentric, another criticism.
So let’s go into this a bit further, this criticism about Eurocentrism.
There is an implied racial superiority when we talk about Eurocentrism.
You have a sort of temperate Europe over arid Asia and tropical Africa.
So not only do we have the sort of racial superiority, but we have a superiority of
climate –Western freedom and rationality over oriental despotism, another sort of stereotype.
European technical superiority is emphasized while forgetting that the West got many of
its ideas and innovations – technological inventions – from China and other places
in the East.
Europeans tend to equate modernization with civilization.
In other words, to be civilized you have to have these technological advances or these
cultural attributes.
For instance, you can talk about the French civilizing mission in Northwest Africa during
the age of imperialism.
Here, the French seek to reconcile their aggressive imperialism with the republican idea – when
I say republican idea I’m talking about representative government.
The French and Northwest Africa, in their civilizing mission, assume that their culture
is superior and indeed it is their duty to pass this superior culture on to the Africans.
The French civilizing mission in Northwest Africa, it could be turned both ways.
Those opposed to the French civilizing mission in African, or in Southeast Asia for that
matter, can be labeled as barbarian, as they are opposed to progress; civilization; modernity
– these are presumably positive things, yet when they’re cloaked in imperialism
they can be brutal things as well.
Finally, it is worth repeating that Europe’s rapid modernization is due primarily to four
factors – First, Europe’s exploitation of cheap, non-European labor; second, Europe’s
possession of the New World’s resources – in an earlier lecture we talked about
the fact that Europe’s great leap forward occurred in large part because Europe had
grassed those resources, those commodities available in the New World; third, Europe’s
insatiable curiosity about the rest of the world; and fourth, the spread of Christianity
across the globe provided both a noble motive and a clever cover for expansionism.
Some common trends as we talk about modernization – We see an increasing concern about public
health – again, with modernization you have urbanization; industrialization – people
flocking to the cities, leaving the farms behind – when you suddenly gather millions
of people into cities you could have serious public health issues.
So in public health, we tend to think of Western engineering, Western medicine; the desire
to clean up the cities; make them safe for people to live in.
You have the inoculations for disease, the attempt to prevent contagions, the creation
of infrastructure in cities – you think about sewers, clean sources of water.
Another factor of modernization, of course, is education.
We have here an expansion of schooling to nearly everyone, the addition of science and
technology to the curriculum.
Colonial schooling improved with missionaries.
Of course, this is again, a part of the imperial project, and of course, religion is one of
those justifications for imperialism – the idea being that we are bringing our superior
religion to these native peoples.
China sent students to learn from other societies.
A quote from the McNeill’s book that we’ve used throughout this semester, The Human Web,
quote, “Industrialization rewarded literacy in basic education as never before, so increasing
numbers of people sought it and many states saw fit to subsidize it – talking about
education.
For the first time, millions of children spend several years in formal schooling – learning
to read and write, to love the fatherland, and to accept discipline from people outside
their families.
Military technology another sort of symptom of modernization, those periphery nations
that we’ve talked about tend to try to copy Western institutions – new training; new
weapons to Africans and Asians; colonial protectorates established whereby the indigenous policy
and military forces are trained by the cores, to look after the core’s interest.
We see a good example of this, for instance, in Cuba in the first half of the 20th century.
Cuba was essentially a protectorate of the United States.
Cuban leadership looked after America’s interest in Cuba as opposed to the Cuban’s
interest.
So let’s draw some conclusions here.
Those instruments of modernization – science, technology, the telegraph, printing press,
railroads, steamships, the machine gun, the rifled steel cannon – all these became instruments
of the state and of the state’s various departments – it’s navies, armies, police,
tax collectors, and so on.
Also in conclusion, European faith in science – The Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment,
demonstrated to Europeans that science has the capacity to explain the world.
Well – if it can explain the world, perhaps it can explain our behavior, and maybe even
explain government and how power works.
Notice that the course that all college students have to take is called Political Science,
not Political Arts.
So the urge to Reform society, to improve it, comes directly from this faith in Enlightenment
ideas that man can recognize his problems and then devise solutions for those problems.
So – a brief survey of modernization.
Thank you.