Informal Empire and the Rise of One World Culture

G. Barton

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349312719, 9780230232341
• eBook ISBN: 9781137315922
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

Informal empire is a key mechanism of control that explains much of the configuration of the modern world. This book traces the broad outline of westernization through elite formations around the world in the modern era. It explains why the world is western and how formal empire describes only the tip of the iceberg of British and American power.

1

Models of Global Transformation

Thus in the beginning all the world was America.

John Locke (1690/1960: 319)

There is a gap in our explanation of how and why the world is configured as it is. Why, for instance, do the elite of India justify their role in society through technical prowess? Why is China’s eastern seaboard a cliff of high-rises? Why did the sheikhs of the United Arab Emirates feel compelled to build 7-star hotels and a palm-shaped island staffed by Indians and managed by Britons, Australians and Germans? Why is there a mixed economy of capitalism and socialism in almost every part of the world? Why, except for a Western and Marxist bureaucracy in China, is parliamentary government the dominant ideal almost everywhere? Why have Western images colonized the mental landscape of nearly the entire global population? Why are the beaches of California an image stamped on the minds of the poorest jute-producing villages in Bangladesh? Why is the imagination of the world dreaming dreams of progress and development, dreams that were born in the Enlightenment and elaborated now in science-fiction fantasies that take the movie viewers in Manila and Johannesburg to the stars? Why is environmentalism more popular than even democracy? Why is the earth warming? Why do so many care?

It is because there is one world culture and this one world culture is Western. The rise of Europe in the Modern Age, the growth of the Industrial Revolution and the expanse of the imperial powers, all played an ineluctable role in creating a single world encomium, a process of regional interconnectivity called ‘globalism’. But a key concept that explains how the modern world came to its present configuration has been persistently missing. It is missing because it has proven to be an almost impossibly difficult concept to define and, worse yet, to apply. But its importance cannot be overstated. It is a conception that actually describes the mechanism of control that has led to a single world culture. This missing concept is ‘informal empire’.

‘Informal empire’ explains the broad reach of European culture and the transformation of societies, many of which (though not all) came briefly under formal imperial rule. The term, as defined by this author, refers to an imperial elite playing a formative role in the creation, maintenance or co-opting of another elite. It broadens the classic definition by the imperial historians Ronald E. Robinson and John Gallagher to better explain how elites have Westernized the world. While many historians of social and cultural history, particularly postcolonialists, have focused on the agency and even revolutionary potential of non-elites, this work projects a different course. The populations of the non-European world have expressed their agency and radically altered the economic structure of their culture through consumer choice and labour participation at the expense of traditional products and occupations. These choices and proclivities, far more than strategic and revolutionary actions, have helped form the modern world. Non-European elites, often in symbiotic relationships with European elites, most particularly British and American, have provided the framework and opportunity for this agency.

This approach may disappoint those who seek an ideological teleology of revolution as the ‘way out’ of a largely capitalist global system, and it may disappoint as well those who imagine an ‘empire strikes back’ response to Western power structures. But we must not conflate revolutionary hope with observation. Informal empire, I argue here, is a key mechanism of control that explains much of the configuration of the modern world as it is today – including globalism. While I will touch briefly on the subject of resistance in the final chapter, a separate book could be written that explores patterns of cultural and political formation that resulted from fighting back against imperial elites and the varied forms of hybridism that arose as a result. This volume, however, traces the broad and undeniable outline of Westernization through elite formations around the globe. Globalism is a fait accompli. Yet the literature on globalism has failed to explain adequately the mechanism of historical change behind the symbiosis of world cultures in the modern era. This work on informal empire corrects this problem.

The present book is an attempt to give a historiographical survey of the idea of ‘informal empire’, and to place before the reader a theoretical framework to guide further investigation. It does not and cannot in a single volume prove the precise boundaries of informal empire in all parts of the world at a given time. Nor can this volume give a who’s who of the elite groups who run the world. Speech codes and professional punishment disallow such a frank discussion, not only in the United States, Europe and Australasia, but in most of the world where each region harbours its own untouchable ruling class.¹ This book can, however, trace the broad outlines of elite formation from the Industrial Revolution to the present and by doing so begin to focus on the methods by which our elites gain and hold power. It can also answer one of the most important and far-reaching questions faced by historians: Why is the world Western?

The first chapter lays out models of global transformation that have attempted to understand the rise of Europe and the modernization of much of the world. The second chapter explores the idea of informal empire and how legal minds, philosophers, historians and government officials, among others, have deployed this concept using a wide array of terms. The third chapter focuses on what I call here the ‘Palmerstonian project’ to loosely describe the British approach to trade and global transformation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After this comes a region-by-region analysis of Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East that attempts to give a brief big-picture account of how the elites of these key regions have interacted with British elites, and then also to engage with the historiographical tradition that has dealt with the questions of informal empire in that region.

These chapters are vital to present in broad outline a new framework to understand how the world Westernized under what I call the ‘imperial network’. In Chapter 8, ‘The United States and the Imperial Web’, I examine the transfer of power from a network of imperial elites focused in Britain, to a network of imperial elites focused in the United States. In the final chapter, ‘Resistance’, I chronicle a brief outline of a counter-tradition that opposes the basic principles of informal empire and the globalization of those select strands of Western consumerism that threaten not only distinct indigenous cultures around the world, but many of the core values of the Western tradition itself. While another book could be written entirely on the transfer of power to America, and how the United States has exercised its power in the last few generations, I only sketch out a brief outline of this. My intent is to explain, better than other models of world history, how the mechanism of control through elite formation has worked and why the world is Western, focusing first on Britain, which launched the most far-reaching changes in the modern era, and then on the United States, which inherited – and often seized – the imperial levers. Clearly much more work is needed to ask other vital questions that run parallel to this discussion, such as: Who is our elite? How did they gain power? Shall we continue with them in power? An understanding of informal empire as the mechanism of power that globalized the world through a process of elite formation and co-option is an important first step in answering these questions.

Although many books and articles treat with singular aspects of informal empire – and many articles partially examine the concept through the lens of a particular region – there is not a single book written on the topic. The result has been a gunshot-scattering of academic fragments. This overview is not meant to lay out new archival evidence for or against informal empire, nor to present informal empire in a good or bad light. Rather, it is to define and then to examine two exemplars that have played a prominent role in the globalization of the world Britain and the United States. The goal is to offer a useful model for world historians to frame their analysis of change, particularly in the last 200 years of the modern era. It will hopefully throw light on the mechanisms of power that sweep aside all national boundaries, leaving no traditional culture untouched, and is the proximate cause for pervasive Westernization and global change.

Informal empire is a process that involved courage, hope and massive exertion of creative power and force. It also changed the world forever, raising the standard of living of most of the global population and reorganizing every aspect of society – including and most importantly, the basic ideas by which humans understand the world. It has also pushed many cultures over the cliff, including destroying what many would consider the most noble aspects of Western culture itself. It is not the place for a historian to pronounce a simplistic judgement on this process.

This investigation runs parallel to the investigation of Western-oriented elites. As democrats we have difficulties thinking about elites. The term conjures up images of privilege, the use and abuse of force, of inherited wealth or of an alien class of rulers whose claim to power is based on violence, privilege or subterfuge. Democratic citizens, when they think of elites at all, are encouraged to think of a Jeffersonian hierarchy based on virtue and knowledge or of professional attainment. Anyone can start a business and get rich. Anyone can run for office, or become the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or the president of the United States. We hold these assumptions because of the classical liberal ideas of the self-made person, and because capitalism and democracy have become in our minds almost symbiotic twins. To support one is to support the other. We also hold these pacific assumptions about our elites because we have absorbed the ideology of the professional ideal, an ideal that has permeated our educational system, our institutions and the structures of capitalism itself. For the most part those who govern the modern world justify their power through this professional ethos. They are specialized, and they have worked hard for their specialized knowledge and therefore they are experts. They have earned their upper-class status and they hold greater influence over the course of society, including politics, in accordance with their knowledge. They justly deserved the wealth that they have accumulated. Even candidates for the highest office, such as that of prime minister and president, campaign on their ‘qualifications’ to hold power.

While sociology in the early twentieth century offered bold and incisive analysis of elite formation, the association of elite studies with the politics of the far right, most particularly fascism, has warned scholars off the topic and left a significant vacuum. Elaborate euphemisms, or vague abstractions, harmless to elites on both the right and the left of the political spectrum have replaced hard-headed analysis of the ruling class. Elites, however, though they can be imagined as structures (such as corporations or the top 1 per cent or the bourgeoisie), are in fact, people. There are in the world landed elites still and political dynasties, certainly also inherited wealth and even monarchies, chiefdoms and religious castes. Elites have common characteristics that can be identified through ethnicity, religion, cultural affiliations and nationality.

Many theories of elite formation have been suggested in the modern period: Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau’s racially unmixed Aryan aristocracy that created and sustained culture; Alexis de Tocqueville’s ‘intermediary corporations’ that allowed the masses to express their ideas and power to a ruling elite of wealth and privilege in a democracy; Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ‘social contract’ that allowed the masses to express the ‘general will’, often through a strongman; and Napoleon Bonaparte’s bureaucratic elite, trained in the lycées, that sought to stamp not only France but the conquered European territories with Enlightenment categories of law.²

Theorists of collective psychology have argued for a symbiotic relationship between the crowd and its leaders. This usually consisted of a critique of the liberal parties and of unfettered democracy, starting with the debate between the Girondins and the Jacobins in the French Revolution, through to the debates between landed and business elites in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Theorists of elite formation have attempted to explain the inevitability, effect and interdependence of the pivotal groups in society, although with little agreement on who constituted this elite. In France, Hippolyte Taine (1828–93) saw a confluence of race, place and environment that allowed an elite ‘creative milieu’ to create culture. As with the Italian School of elite theorists who followed, he understood human nature to be savage, with strains of violence, lust and folly predominating. The French Revolution merely substituted a highly centralist absolutism from one man (the monarch) to a group of men (an assembly). Liberty and individualism suffered under both systems, while empty and romantic phrases replaced hard-headed scientific knowledge of the world. Precisely because nineteenth-century France suffered under democratic elites, innovation and the search for truth were stifled and society unsettled. For Taine, literary production captured the best of human efforts and formed an aristocratic cultural elite of talent – determined by factors outside the individual’s control – that defined an era. Opponents described him as a theorist not of genius and innovation, which exhibit the will to burst through constraints and define an individual vision, but of fatalism and mediocrity, depicting elites as passive to their environment.³

Scholars of the Italian School, a few decades after Taine’s death in 1893, gained greatest prominence as theorists of elites, particularly Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941) and Robert Michels (1876–1936). They posited the idea that democratic leaders – no different from authoritarian leaders – manipulated the majority by methods of crowd control. These elected leaders cynically tapped into widely held instincts and myths to control the majority and covered their brutal power with a deceptive republican gauze. In the 1920s and 1930s, fascist movements combined the arguments of the Italian School with anti-Semitism to great effect.

Vilfredo Pareto created a founding document of sociology in his classic The Rise and Fall of the Elites (1901). He argued that elites (aristocrazia) always governed human societies. Elites gained status by demonstrating strength, energy and creativity: ‘Hence – the history of man is the history of the continuous replacement of certain elites: as one ascends, another declines.’ ‘Foxes’ speculated on new ventures, risked money for gain and were found heavily represented in the financial classes who put profit first, and covered their deeds with a hypocritical humanitarian sentiment. ‘Lions’ were conservative elements – the rentier class rather than the speculator class – that wished to preserve the status quo. For Pareto, Napoleon III represented the fraternity class of adventurers and financial speculators under an upstart liberal monarch. After the ruin of such a class of elites, and the government they ran, conservative consolidation would occur. Pareto never spoke of informal empire, but his analyses of foxes and lions are strangely apt as a description of the more speculative free trade characteristics of informal empire that lapses at times into formal empire, or the conservative consolidators. One could easily apply his circulation of lions and foxes in European societies to British and American empires, formal and informal.

Pareto also placed a great emphasis on the religious impulse that manifests itself under the guise of a secular form – socialism and reform movements of all sorts. A small group of people in literature, art, science and mysticism create new symbols that the ruling elite, or a challenging elite, will use in times of crises to rally the support of the mass population. Elites rise to power through various mechanisms. Pareto argued that when social selection is allowed to function then a hierarchy of talent rises to the top, reflected in the ‘social physiology’ of the society. All the progress of the human race is traceable to this simple fact: talent rises to the top when unimpeded. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of the same ‘aristocracy of talent’. While these key groups or people may not hold formal power in times of stability, their influence expands during times of change or stress. Since humans are guided by sentiment, not reason, such symbol makers become the true moulders of society.⁴

Elite theory returned to prominence again during the Cold War when theorists pitted the merits of ‘democratic elites’ that were open to new talent and worked in a balance of institutional power, against the monolithic authoritarian elites under the Communist Party in the Soviet Bloc. James Burnham argued in The Managerial Revolution (1941) and The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (1943) that scientifically trained elites were necessary to protect freedom from the passion and gullibility of the masses. What is the difference between the elites and the masses? To Burnham, it is the ability of the educated elites to act scientifically, analyzing all the myths of the common man, ‘Gods . . . ghosts . . . abstracted moral imperatives . . . ideals . . . utopias.’⁵ Very much in the line of the Italian School, Burnham argued that successful elites do not tell the truth but use the instincts and prejudices of the democratic mass to shape society for broad utilitarian means.

Joseph Schumpeter attempted to openly discuss elites in a democratic society but without the delegitimizing negativity that characterized the Italian School and Burnham. Schumpeter understood that a weak point of democracy was that the masses little involve themselves in political decision-making. Instead of avoiding the topic of elitism, he argued that democrats should cut their losses and openly admit the fact that a very small group of individuals wielded power in society. By discarding useful political lies democratic elites can seek validation through alliance with the masses. Because society has rival elite factions, all vying for power, the majority can then be empowered when it chooses to side with one elite faction or another. While this still leaves an active elite and a passive mass, it is still compatible with the democratic process because the masses have a choice of rival elite suitors.⁶

The most common non-professional strata of our elite are entrepreneurs. But while entrepreneurs and those who inherit great wealth sometimes do not hold a licence, they usually hire professional ‘experts’ to manage their wealth. As Harold Perkin pointed out, we have for the most part an elite of professionals in which ‘left’ and ‘right’ divide roughly by source of income: those who, on the left, derive their living from government sources or non-profit organizations, such as teachers and bureaucrats; and those who, on the right, make their living directly from the market, like business executives and managers of corporations, bankers and financiers. Then there is a wide spectrum of those who are often in between and work for semi-private but highly regulated for-profit industries: lawyers, doctors and insurance agents, to name a few. The modern world is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Models of Global Transformation
• 2. The Idea of Informal Empire
• 3. The Palmerstonian Project
• 4. Informal Empire and Africa
• 5. Informal Empire and the Americas
• 6. Informal Empire and Asia
• 7. Informal Empire and the Middle East
• 8. The United States and the Imperial Web
• 9. Resistance and the Imperial Network
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index