Islam and World History

The Ventures of Marshall Hodgson

Edmund Burke, Robert J. Mankin, Edmund Burke, Robert J. Mankin

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780226584782, 9780226584645
• eBook ISBN: 9780226584812
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: History

Published in 1974, Marshall Hodgson's The Venture of Islam was a watershed moment in the study of Islam. By locating the history of Islamic societies in a global perspective, Hodgson challenged the orientalist paradigms that had stunted the development of Islamic studies and provided an alternative approach to world history. Edited by Edmund Burke III and Robert Mankin, Islam and World History explores the complexity of Hodgson's thought, the daring of his ideas, and the global context of his world historical insights into, among other themes, Islam and world history, gender in Islam, and the problem of Muslim universality.
 
In our post-9/11 world, Hodgson's historical vision and moral engagement have never been more relevant. A towering achievement, Islam and World History will prove to be the definitive statement on Hodgson's relevance in the twenty-first century and will introduce his influential work to a new generation of readers.
 

CHAPTER ONE

The Ventures of Marshall G. S. Hodgson

Edmund Burke III and Robert J. Mankin

How far over the curve of the horizon to the future is it possible to see?

Marshall Hodgson and His Many Legacies

To engage with Hodgson’s thought is to apprehend the world of Islam through different spectacles. When it appeared in 1974, Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization was recognized as a major achievement.1 For the first time an American historian cast Islam in a world-historical frame and simultaneously asserted its moral vision. In doing so, Hodgson proposed a radical response to the persistent cultural biases that had stunted the growth of the Islamic studies field. For him Islam was not “other”; it was a venture alongside others that marked human efforts to bring about a just and moral world.

At present, the very idea of Islam as a monotheistic religion with a moral vision is impossible for most people to imagine. So too is the thought that the history of Islamic civilization is primarily the history of the Arabs. (In fact, fully 80 percent of world Muslims do not speak Arabic.) Although many people are aware that not all Muslims are Sunni, few know that 10–13 percent are adherents of the Shiʿa branch. Hodgson believed that rather than being of little consequence, these internal differences played a vital role in shaping how Islamic civilization unfolded.

This had several consequences for Hodgson. First, to “get Islam right,” it was necessary to rethink its place in the larger context of human history. Far from having an autonomous history, Islamic civilization is deeply embedded in the history of the rest of human society. Second, there would need to be a fundamental rethinking of the concept of civilization. Civilizations for Hodgson were not autonomous, culturally defined, and changeless spaces. Rather, they had had historically complex and often conflicting relationships internally as well as with their neighbors.

Changing our conception of civilization meant reinventing world history as well. Hodgson also had to reshape the field of world history. His world history began with the notion of the interconnectedness of societies in history and the indivisibility of human experience. From this perspective, the ascendancy of the West was not predetermined by its alleged moral and technological superiority, but drew upon the cumulative interaction of humans across Afro-Eurasia throughout history. Hodgson’s humanistic conscience and commitment to a nonracialist, nonteleological world history based upon the brotherhood of all humans provide a powerful argument against epistemological nihilists and moral agnostics.

Islam and World History: The Ventures of Marshall Hodgson brings together essays by American, European, and international scholars concerned with both the intellectual legacy and the enduring relevance of Hodgson’s vision. The time is ripe for a Hodgson revival. The world of Islam is vast (1.6 billion persons) and complex beyond the imaginings of most Americans; Hodgson’s world-historical vision and moral engagement have never been more relevant. As the first volume of critical essays on this important world historian and historian of Islam, this collection aims to bring Hodgson’s legacy into the twenty-first century.

Hodgson differed from most other academics of the 1950s and 1960s in that his writings were informed by his radical Quaker consciousness. A conscientious objector to World War II who was interned by the US government, Hodgson was profoundly challenged by the war and its aftermath. The political and moral desolation of the post–World War II era energized him as it did few others. A kerygmatic preacher, he sought to forge a humanistic pedagogy that would change how students/readers thought about cultural others in relation to themselves. The expression of that pedagogy was The Venture of Islam.

The revolutionary cosmopolitanism of Hodgson’s ideas has brought him the attention of a growing number of readers over the last several decades. This is because of his exacting intellect, as well as his insistence that we locate the history of Islam in the context of other world civilizations. In a present moment dominated by political and moral obtuseness, the breadth of Hodgson’s historical vision and his commitment to moral clarity speak across the years to the post-9/11 reader and scholar, whatever her or his specialization.

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When he died in 1968, Hodgson was on the verge of a major career as the author of an important monograph, a promising start on a third book, and more than a dozen articles.2 Instead, he is primarily known for his three-volume history of Islamic civilization, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, an undergraduate textbook. (As a thought experiment, think of another major scholar whose name is principally associated with a textbook.)

Why does Hodgson continue to have an important claim on our attention? For convenience’s sake, it makes sense to think of Hodgson’s thought as having four major aspects. These were Hodgson the orientalist, Hodgson the creator of Islamic studies, Hodgson the world historian, and Hodgson the preacher and pedagogue (the kerygmatic Hodgson). Let’s briefly consider each of the four avatars of Hodgson, before turning to the essays collected in this book. In this way, we can begin to understand some of the reasons why his work remains current even at fifty years’ distance.

Hodgson the Orientalist

Hodgson was trained in oriental studies at the University of Chicago in the late 1940s. The field tended not to attract moral/ethical epigones. Rather, oriental studies produced philologically trained scholars for whom the text and the oriental language (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, etc.) were the focuses. Not only did Hodgson have acknowledged language expertise, he also had an unparalleled ability to situate ideas and events in their broader regional and global contexts.

Hodgson’s first book, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizârî Ismâʻîlîs against the Islamic World, displayed an impressive understanding of the complex currents of eleventh-century Abbasid history. Deeply immersed in the mystical politics of the Nizari Ismailis, it is a tour de force well-grounded in the complex political and intellectual worlds of thirteenth-century Shiʿism. Had Hodgson’s career not been cut short by his untimely death, there is little doubt that a second monograph, signaled by his article “How Did the Early Shîʿa Become Sectarian?” would have cemented his reputation as an orientalist scholar. (For more on this see below.)

Hodgson and New Islamic History

Instead of another scholarly monograph, however, Hodgson embarked upon the writing of a textbook. When The Venture of Islam appeared in 1974, it posed a major challenge to the emergent Islamic field. Unlike his fellow orientalists who were primarily focused upon Islamic authors and their texts, Hodgson thought constantly about the larger cultural and political contexts in which they operated.

However, it is only in The Venture of Islam that one sees for the first time the full scope of his ambitious new framework. A first component was his revolutionary new periodization of Islamic history. Instead of the traditional chronology, which had been based upon the concept of an Arab classic age that concluded with overthrow of the Abbasids (1258 CE), Hodgson’s new periodization consisted of three main parts, each of which was accorded a volume. Like the previous periodization, the first segment covered the period from the formation of Islam to the classical age of the caliphate (608 to 945 CE). The second volume broke sharply with the earlier approaches, which had viewed the Abbasid era as a classical era and the centuries that followed as the abode of tradition. Conversely, for Hodgson the Middle Periods (945 to 1500) were a high point during which Islam expanded across Eurasia from Morocco to China, becoming a truly universal religion. The third volume took the history from the gunpowder states of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires) to the present.

Hodgson’s new periodization also accomplished a second feat. Rather than viewing Islamic civilization as an essentially Arabian phenomenon, it consistently sought to locate it in the broader context of the history of the other major civilizations of Eurasia, if not of humanity as a whole. Whereas previously historians had difficulty in discussing political and religious change together, Hodgson’s dramatic rethinking of Islamic history made it possible to discuss religious and cultural change across cultural boundaries. Still more, it authorized historians to view the internal structure of Islamic history (hitherto linked to the rise and fall of Islamic dynasties) in terms of its social, cultural, and economic dynamics and its hemispheric historical extent. The Venture of Islam represents a major enrichment of our understanding, one that has played an important role in the emergence of the new Islamic studies.

Hodgson and New World History

Hodgson’s philosophically engaged and inspiring Venture of Islam was informed not only by his reworking of the central themes of classical Islamic history but also by his systematic effort to locate it in world history.

In the 1950s when his project was conceived, the civilizations model of world history in which the contribution of each civilization is discussed independently was still the dominant paradigm. Hodgson’s world history began with the notion of the interconnectedness of societies in history and the indivisibility of human experience.3 From this perspective, the ascendancy of the West was not predetermined by its alleged moral and technological superiority, but drew upon the cumulative interaction of humans.

Hodgson, the Moralist and Radical Preacher

Hodgson, the man of conscience makes academics uneasy. As well he should. Yet his moral commitment, the very thing that for so long made him a semipariah in academe, shines a beacon of hope to a new generation of readers interested in alternatives to the present state of the post-9/11 Middle East field. A lifelong Quaker who had publically asserted his pacifist beliefs and borne the consequences, Hodgson was a strong believer in the duty of the moral individual to assert truth to power. “Conscience” for Hodgson was connected to his Quaker faith, and to his belief in the duty of the moral individual to “speak truth to power.”

Hodgson’s example poses a challenge to the sort of professional scholarship that pretends that it is someone else’s job to see the morality of history, or indeed imagines that there can be no morality in an immoral world (and therefore the best thing to do is adopt an urbane nihilism).

At the time when Hodgson’s ambitious multivolume textbook was published, to attribute conscience and historical consciousness to Muslims was to challenge centuries of Western prejudice about Islam and Muslims. It also flew in the face of the then common expectations of the direction of modern history, because it was deeply skeptical of the prevailing progressive narrative.

Hodgson’s philosophically grounded history derived from postwar thinkers such as Martin Buber, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Jaspers, and Paul Tillich (among others). They sought to make religion relevant to the postwar era, and to address the problem of evil in the world and the possibility of hope. At the core of Hodgson’s vision was his insistence that Islam be viewed as one of the great civilizational impulses that have marked the course of human history (including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism/Taoism, Judaism, and Christianity).

The Ventures of Marshall Hodgson

In the early 1960s the history of Islam was deeply bound to the dominant Eurocentric narrative, which saw modernity as quintessentially Western and the history of other civilizations (including Islam) as faded glories. As well, professional historians tended to view world history as a deeply problematic enterprise, best exemplified by the woolly-minded metaphysical concerns of Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler. Hodgson’s vision led him to drastically recast much of the then-existing chronological framework by inserting Islam into a global context.

The difference, as Moroccan historian Abdesselam Cheddadi insists in his contribution to this volume, could not be greater. Compare for example the title of the first chapter of Venture (“The World before Islam”) to that of many of the competing textbooks (“Arabia before Muhammad”). Right away the reader is projected into a global narrative, a history in which Islamic civilization is but one civilization among many.

Cheddadi argues that Hodgson’s contribution depended upon devising a new conceptual framework for both Islamic history and world history. To understand how revolutionary Hodgson’s contributions to both fields were in their own time, Cheddadi suggests, we need to understand that neither would have been possible without the other. He begins by reminding us of the state of both fields at the end of World War II.

The task that Hodgson confronted, Cheddadi avows, was enormous. He had to disengage Islamic history from its orientalist tradition and narrow philological biases while simultaneously devising a conceptually more appropriate framework for world history in which Europe would be viewed as but one of a number of major world civilizations. Only by performing both operations simultaneously would it be possible to relocate the history of modernity within the entire history of humankind and thereby to reevaluate the role of Islamic civilization.

Hodgson’s Quaker belief in the unity of humankind and his dissatisfaction with the state of the intellectual field led him to a basic insight: that modernity was a global process that affected all parts of the world at the same time, but to different degrees. The implications of this insight were considerable. Without the cumulative history of the entire Afro-Eurasian Oikoumene (hereafter I use its more familiar English form, ecumene) the transformation of the West would have been impossible. Modernity, Hodgson notes, could have happened elsewhere than in the West. And that it first occurred in the West was freighted with enormous consequences. Recognizing this “double enterprise,” as Cheddadi calls it, is Hodgson’s great achievement. In many respects we have still not caught up with him.

Hodgson’s Ghosts

Marshall Hodgson’s Venture has long seemed a splendid anomaly in the context of the American Middle East studies field. As argued above, its call for a world-historical framework attentive to Islam’s moral vision was out of step with the then dominant narratives when it was published. Christopher A. Bayly disagrees. In his magisterial contribution, he argues that Hodgson was not as out of step with his time as we might think. Nor was his quest for a moralistic history as far from us.

Bayly begins by noting that the global crisis that culminated in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I was preceded by a growing European sense that spirituality had been crushed by the materialism of the modern age and was no longer to be sought in Europe. Instead, many Europeans looked to the spiritual heritage of the East. Bayly surveys the work of intellectuals, both European and Asian, who pursued this line of thinking in the first half of the twentieth century. He aptly compares Hodgson’s approach to that of French orientalist Louis Massignon (1883–1962), whose mysticism and generous moral vision of Islamic civilization most resembles his own.

Why has Hodgson had so slight an impact upon British intellectuals in the post-1950 era, Bayly asks. One reason, he suggests, was the residual power of Marxism in the 1950s–1970s, which rendered Hodgson’s emphasis on civilizations illegible, even though his global vision and residual materialism might in retrospect have appealed. British orientalists of the period also appear not to know him, their greatest collective achievement being the echt orientalist Cambridge History of Islam.

Given Hodgson’s obscurity in his own lifetime, the great puzzle for Bayly is why many Asian and world historians urge their students to read him. Is it perhaps because “they mourn the purging of moral judgment and idealism from their subject”? He leaves the question hang...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1. The Ventures of Marshall G. S. Hodgson
• 2. Islamic History and World History: The Double Enterprise of Marshall G. S. Hodgson
• Hodgson’s Ghosts
• Hodgson and the New World History
• Hodgson and the New Islamic Studies
• List of Contributors