On the concept of Westernization of "Non-Western" societies:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I might note that for the purposes of this post, the West is defined in the sense it usually means: the rich white countries of Western Europe. "Western values" are identified with the subset of these countries with established liberal democracies, not the others with longer histories of autocracy.

One concept that I see appearing with great regularity in this community and elsewhere is the idea that if a society adopts Western values that the result is an automatic improvement, just because it adopts them.

I really don't think that this has applied in the cases where this is done *without* the brutality of the West imposing its values by the crash of the bomb as has been done with regularity since the age of imperialism. I think that first of all, there is the most straightforward and obvious problem with this: Western "values" come with associated Western *institutions* that by and large were imposed by violence everywhere in the West. There is nowhere in the West where these institutions did not arise through violence and bloodshed *in the West*. To impose institutions with such a basis on societies which lack the institutions and inbuilt safeguards arising from these origins is inherently self-contradictory. The West did not learn how to contain, for instance, problems of democracy until the Sans-Cullottes were parading through the streets cheering the thunking sound of the guillotine.

The West did not learn how to contain issues of nationalism until the wholesale horrors of World War II led to European states "resolving" their ethnic problems by simply creating mono-ethnic societies and having most European Jews killed off. The West did not "resolve" racial matters in the New World, it either ignored them or waged war amongst itself over it with high losses for no gains. If the West could not resolve these issues evolving more or less organically without gruesome horrors, how then is it that societies to which these concepts have *no* equivalent roots would do any better? How can values not established in the West until mutual bloodshed came into play be established wholesale in other societies that are expected to do by peace what the West was incapable of doing without mutual self-destruction?

Another problem that uneven Westernization creates is the pattern of the Westernized elite, which often resorts to brute force to sustain itself, and an uncomprehending and hostile masses which come to identify the Western concept of the state with brutality and evil. The oldest example of this is the post-Petrine Russia of the Romanov Dynasty, where Imperial St. Petersburg/Petrograd was a very European city.....and the blundering idiots and doddering dinosaurs of Russia engaged in wholesale brutal repression without any noticeable benefits of it for any save a small number even of the Russian nobility, while their foreign wars invariably ended in disasters after the Napoleonic invasion. As a result the crude and distorted mirror images of the West that developed in Russia guaranteed that in a Russian context, Westernization would serve primarily to strengthen and streamline existing horrific institutions, not to create a new society built upon and based upon liberty. This of course meant very bad things as an improved Russian autocracy winds up resembling not the United States or United Kingdom but is very akin to Stalinism, complete with secret police, all-powerful state ruled by a thug with a personality cult, and a clumsy, blundering paranoid system.

Another pair of more recent examples would include Mustafa Kemal's Turkey and the Pahlavi Empire in Iran. In both cases Westernization was imposed purely from above by elites that never bothered to make any attempts to even pretend to speak the same language as the masses, or to so much as make token gestures so that both sides would see the same word in the same way or the same concept in the same way. The result is that people come for damn good reasons to identify the West with oppression and brutality, and if that's what it is to them, why would self-respecting people want such a thing?


To me I think that any concept of Westernization from without is bound to fail for these reasons. Your thoughts?

Comments

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

I'll assume you mean modern Western values, and not things like the Hellenization that successfully spread across Asia Minor post Alexander.

I'll anticipate an obvious counter example to your post, in Japan. I'll counter that counter and argue that post-war Japan is less an example of "Westernization" imposed from without, and more a combination of an already existing policy (temporarily halted during the course of the war) of intentional Westernization from within, combined with the Japanese tendency to examine foreign situations and institutions and adapt them locally and practically (an artifact of coming of age in the wake of the fall of the Middle Kingdom in the Opium Wars. Their foreign policy ever since then could possibly be seen in the light of watching China fail to adapt to changing times, and being overrun, and vowing never to suffer that fate.) In other words, they were already largely westernized long before World War II (including a strong tradition of Democratic advocacy and Constitution writing among the educated class), and even though we were there afterwards because of a military victory, the groundwork was there already, and as such there was little to no indigenous attitude that "westernization" was some horrible thing.

I can't think of one example of a nation where westernization has "succeeded" without it being invited in the first place. I mean, the only counter example would be the U.S. itself, and as you pointed out, "Westernization" here was accomplished in concert with a lot of historical baggage (including bloody wars and strife) that have defined HOW it works. To expect it to happily transplant WITHOUT those sorts of upheavals, especially in a place where many might not be willing, is foolishness.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's what I meant in my first paragraph.

I agree with most of your points concerning Imperial Japan, but would note that Japan had kept ties with the West, if carefully contained ones, in cities like Nagasaki and was thus much more aware of the scale of military changes than China was. And to put it bluntly given the Qing Empire in the Franco-Chinese War was able to actually win land battles invariably against a European Great Power the one time it fought a serious sustained land war with one, perhaps China didn't exactly have a *reason* to notice what European armies did until the age of tanks and airplanes.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

Don't entirely agree with this - the Qing Empire had numerous reasons to notice what the Europeans were up to, partially because they didn't perform well in the field. Before the era of the tank and the airplane European armies had twice managed to fight their way into Beijing itself despite the attempts of various Qing warlords and rulers. Europeans had forced the Qing to accept permanent trade outposts and essentially cede territory along their coasts. A European-style Japanese army had conquered a strategically vital part of Manchuria, and forced China to cede Taiwan. Their attempts at modernization were largely thwarted, however, by internal politics.

And this is one of the key problems with top-down Westernization. The establishment of the new institutions westernization requires involves the creation of huge new power blocks in an already existing power structure. When this process takes place not out of necessity but out of choice in a country that already has an established power structure there tends to be a lot of friction, because those people who have control over the existing institutions don't want to set up viable competitors. This is true even in the West, and I think it's possibly the biggest impediment to political reform in general. It's not incompetence - it's outright malice.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually they did perform well in the field in the one actual major war of a Great Power and China, namely the Franco-Chinese War of the 1880s. This, mind, was after the Taiping Rebellion, which is how the *Second* Opium War managed to do what it did, while most European wars with China were ones limited in time, space, and scale.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

I still don't entirely agree here. I think you have to count the Second Opium War simply because of the poor Chinese performance in the Taiping rebellion, which they then replicated on the field against the Great Powers. The fact that the Manchus had to rely on the Hunan Braves and the European-trained Ever Victorious Army in the first place was a mark that many of them understood the problem. The increase purchasing of western arms, and the importation of western military officers to train Chinese forces (the Ever Triumphant Army, etc.) is pretty much a sign that by the Taiping Rebellion many were aware that China was going down the drain.

The Sino-French war marks a high point as such, of Chinese military reform, even if a great deal of it depended on the success of the Black Flag Army. The subsequent dismissal of Prince Gong/Kung from the military department and the general route of the reformers sealed the nail in the coffin of Chinese reform.

As a result, the two remaining struggles with Great Powers in the 19th century were a disaster for China. Despite protestations to the contrary, Imperial Qing troops did fight in an organized fashion alongside the Righteous and Harmonious Fists to stop the west in the Boxer Rebellion, performed poorly, and failed to fight effectively despite a crushing numerical advantage. Subsequently, during the Sino-Japanese war, the Beiyang army fared poorly against the Imperial Japanese Army, who I think have to be awarded Great Power status at this time. The IJA was able to outmaneuver and outfight the Beiyang Army rather significantly, further humiliating Qing power.

I think that many people in China realized the powerlessness of their land forces after poor showings in multiple wars against western (and westernized) powers. However, I think Chinese military reform got quagmired in the power struggle between Cixi and Prince Gong, and later between Qing reactionaries and men like Li Hongzhang. Certainly there were powerful fractions within China who knew that China needed modernization even before the disaster of the Sino-Japanese war, but their reforms were too much for the conservative faction at the Imperial court to stomach.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Also, too many who hold up "Democratic Peace Theory" as a reason why we should just go and build Democracies everywhere forget that DPT also has a LOT of cautionary things to say about how NEW Democracies act.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Indeed. It's also worth noting that Democratic Peace theory primarily relies on No True Scotsmen to sustain itself and is frankly put a bit of an absurdity of noting that states allied with each other generally do not fight each other. Which one would assume is the purpose of an alliance in the first place....

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

I think the lure of Westernization is the constant belief that there has to be some way better then the long, bloody way to develop these values. I'm not sure how right it is, but I like to hold out hope. It's those who are too blinded by optimism to see the pitfalls though that get into trouble.

It's a view that requires a lot of moderation. The opposite, to assume that this long struggle to institutional development is necessary, seems sometimes to be a bit too accepting of the failings of other countries sometimes...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which is especially ironic coming from the USA where the national claims of the Republican Party were decided by the battlefield accomplishments of an army, not popular appeal.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I dislike this new spoiler/hide feature. People are using it to hide walls-o-text and I don't like getting pounced by walls-o-text.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

To me I think that any concept of Westernization from without is bound to fail for these reasons. Your thoughts?
I think its funny that "the West" is some standard to attain to nowadays. Before, back in my day, "the West" was always never good enough, because "the West" is precisely where Jerusalem isn't. The West has always been inferior, barbarian, and heathen. The East, ah now that is the land of God.