by Ryan McMaken
By the early twentieth century, the idea of the civilizing mission became a dominant mode of thinking for imperialists. The British imagined they were civilizing the backward Catholic Irish. The Russian colonizers in Siberia saw themselves as the “benevolent civilizer[s] of Asia.” British colonies in Africa and Asia were cast as outposts of civilized European culture in a sea of primitives. The Americans, not content with their own civilizing mission in North America, did the same in Puerto Rico where American reformers sought to replace Puerto Rico’s “backward” and “patriarchal” culture with a “‘rational’ North American one.”3
Spreading civilization and human rights has long been used as an excuse for state-building through colonialism and imperialism. This idea dates back at least to early Spanish and colonial efforts in the New World, and the rationale was initially employed as just one of many. The importance of the conquest-spreads-civilization claim increased, however, as liberalism gained ground in Europe in the nineteenth century. Liberals were more skeptical of the benefits of imperialism, so, as political scientist Lea Ypi notes: “During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the purpose of colonial rule was declared to be the ‘civilizing mission’ of the West to educate barbarian peoples .” The residents of these colonies were deemed to be “unsuited to setting up or administering a commonwealth both legitimate and ordered in human and civil terms.” The implied conclusion was that it was necessary that the European rules “take over [the natives’] administration, and set up new officers and governors on their behalf, or even give them new masters, so long as this could be proved to be in their interest.”1
That last caveat would become important to late colonial rationales: colonial rule was said to be in the interests of the natives themselves, who were incapable of proper and legitimate self-government. The British adopted these Spanish notions as their own in later centuries, and by the nineteenth century, we find John Stuart Mill claiming that “barbarians” were incapable of administering a respectable legal regime, and thus “nations which are still barbarous have not got beyond the period during which it is likely to be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners.”2
The old empires have largely disappeared but this thinking has certainly not disappeared. Today, the same thinking takes the form of support for humanitarian intervention both internationally and domestically. Just as the traditional imperialists assumed the residents of the colonies were too “backward” to be capable of enlightened self-government, modern internationalists and progressives assume that the old colonial metropoles still must serve as enforcers of human rights across the globe. Moreover, at the domestic level, the same rationale is employed to oppose decentralization or secession for separatist groups. The old imperialist mentality still prevails: self-determination and political independence must be opposed in the name of protecting human rights.
The “Civilizing Mission” of Empire
By the early twentieth century, the idea of the civilizing mission became a dominant mode of thinking for imperialists. The British imagined they were civilizing the backward Catholic Irish. The Russian colonizers in Siberia saw themselves as the “benevolent civilizer[s] of Asia.” British colonies in Africa and Asia were cast as outposts of civilized European culture in a sea of primitives. The Americans, not content with their own civilizing mission in North America, did the same in Puerto Rico where American reformers sought to replace Puerto Rico’s “backward” and “patriarchal” culture with a “‘rational’ North American one.”3 In Algeria, the ultimate goal was to bring the blessings of French culture and government to all Algerians via government schools. The locals who embraced French culture were labeled the évolués—literally, the “evolved ones.”
Among the imperial powers, rule by the metropole’s central state became intimately intertwined with what the elites saw as humanitarianism. Imperialists warned that without the metropole’s oversight, residents of the colonies would slaughter each other, or be constantly at war. Imperialists thus cast themselves as instruments of peace and safety for vulnerable minority populations. Ann Laura Stoler describes how, “appeals regarding moral uplift, compassionate charity, appreciation of cultural diversity, and protection” of women and children from aggressive men “were woven into the very weft of empire. —[they were] how control over…markets, land, and labor were justified…”4 Alleged humanitarian efforts thus often consisted of the imperial powers protecting the colonized populations from themselves. Alan Lester and Fae Dussart note: “Appeals for the protection of indigenous peoples against white and even British men…were also intrinsic to the legitimation of Britain’s governance of newly colonized spaces.”5
Imperialists developed informal litmus tests designed to “prove” that various groups of barbarians were ripe for colonization.
Be seeing you
