The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [37]
Even in the Far East, where the West never made formal annexations, European impact was massive. When the weak and dysfunctional Qing court tried to ban the opium trade in the early nineteenth century, Britain—whose treasury had become addicted to revenues from opium—launched a naval attack. The Anglo-Chinese wars, often called the Opium Wars, highlighted the power gap between the two countries. At their conclusion in 1842, Beijing was forced to agree to a series of concessions over and above the resumption of the opium trade: it ceded Hong Kong, opened five ports for British residents, granted all Britons exemption from Chinese laws, and paid a large indemnity. In 1853, Western ships—this time American—entered Japanese waters and put an end to Japan’s policy of “seclusion” from the world. Japan subsequently signed a series of trade treaties that gave Western countries and their citizens special privileges. Formal empire continued to grow as well, extending into the lands of the sickly Ottoman Empire as well as Africa. This process of domination culminated in the early twentieth century, at which point a handful of Western capitals ruled 85 percent of the world’s land.
Westernization
In 1823, the East India Company decided to set up a school in Calcutta to train locals. It seemed wise and straightforward enough. But the policy sparked a fiery letter to Britain’s prime minister, William Pitt, from a leading Indian citizen of Calcutta, Raja Ram Mohan Roy. The letter is worth quoting at length.
When this seminary of learning was proposed . . . we were filled with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Anatomy, and other useful sciences, which the Nations of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the inhabitants of other parts of the world.
We now find that the Government are establishing a Sanskrit school under Hindoo Pundits to impart such knowledge as is already current in India. This seminary . . . can only be expected to load the minds of the youth with grammatical niceties and metaphysical distinctions of little or no value to the possessors or to society. . . .
The Sanskrit language, so difficult that almost a life time is necessary for its perfect acquisition, is well-known to have been for ages a lamentable check on the diffusion of knowledge. . . . Neither can much improvement arise from such speculations as the following; which are the themes suggested by the Vedant? In what manner is the soul absorbed into the deity? What relation does it bear to the divine essence? . . . I beg leave to state, with due deference to your Lordship’s exalted status, that if the plan now adopted be followed, it will completely defeat the object proposed.12
Whenever you hear the argument that Westernization was purely a matter of arms and force, think of this letter—and hundreds of letters, memos, and orders like it. There was coercion behind the spread of Western ideas, but there were also many non-Westerners eager to learn the ways of the West. The reason for this was simple. They wanted to succeed, and people always tend to copy those who have succeeded.
The West’s prowess at amassing wealth and waging war was obvious to its neighbors by the seventeenth century. One of them, Peter the Great of Russia, spent months traveling through Europe, dazzled by its industries and its militaries. Determined to learn from them, he returned home and decreed a series of radical reforms: reorganizing the army along European lines, modernizing the bureaucracy, moving the capital from Asiatic Moscow to a new, European-style city on the western edge of the Russian empire, which he named St. Petersburg. He reformed the tax code and even tinkered with the structure of the Orthodox Church to make it more Western. Men were ordered to shave their beards and wear European-style clothing.