The Nature of Empire
by Jason Godesky
Above is a recently discovered map drawn up by T.E. Lawrence, a.k.a., “Lawrence of Arabia.” Lawrence worked with the tribal leaders of the Middle East revolting against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The Ottoman Empire was one of the Central Powers opposed to the allies, including Britain, so Britain had an interest in coordinating with the Arab Revolt. Lawrence, an officer in British Military Intelligence, worked closely with the Arabs and achieved an understanding of their culture that few Europeans have ever had. It was the kind of understanding that made him a folk hero in the Middle East for championing Arab’s rights to the British and Ottoman Empires, and made him one of Britain’s most celebrated war heroes. It was the kind of understanding that led to the map above.
This map was drawn up as a proposal to the British government on how the Middle East should be divided. It relied on the region’s own cultural fault lines, rather than the interests of colonial powers. The NPR article on the map describes it thus:
He included a separate state for the Kurds, similar to that demanded by Iraq’s Kurds today. Lawrence groups together the people in present-day Syria, Jordan and parts of Saudi Arabia into another state based on tribal patterns and commercial routes. The map also envisions a separate state called Palestine — Lawrence knew the British were considering the creation of a homeland for the Jews. And he saw no reason to separate Iraq’s Sunnis and the Shiites — an issue that continues to divide that country today.
Of course, Lawrence’s advice was not heeded. The Middle East was carved up along entirely arbitrary lines. In his excellent introduction, The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis describes the situation well:
In the Western world, the basic unit of human organization is the nation, in America but not in Europe usage virtually synonymous with country. This is then subdivided in various ways, one of which is by religion. Muslims, however, tend to see not a nation subdivided into religious groups but a religion subdivided into nations. This is no doubt partly because most of the nation-states that make up the modern Middle East are relatively new creations, left over from the era of Anglo-French imperial domination that followed the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, and they preserve the state-building and frontier demarcations of their former imperial masters. Even their names reflect this artificiality: Iraq was a medieval province, with borders very different from those of the modern republic, excluding Mesopotamia in the north and including a slice of western Iran; Syria, Palestine, and Libya are names from classical antiquity that hadn’t been used in the region for a thousand years or more before they were revived and imposed–again with new and often different boundaries–by European imperialists in the twentieth century; Algeria and Tunisia do not even exist as words in Arabic–the same name serves for the city and the country. Most remarkable of all, there is no word in the Arabic language for Arabia, and present-day Saudi Arabia is spoken of as “the Saudi Arab kingdom” or “the peninsula of the Arabs,” depending on the context. This is not because Arabic is a poor language–the reverse is true–but because the Arabs simply did not think in terms of combined ethnic and territorial identity. Indeed, the caliph ‘Umar is quoted as saying to the Arabs, “Learn your genealogies, and do not be like the local peasants who, when they are asked who they are, reply: ‘I am from such-and-such a place.’”
Though the geopolitics of the petroleum age have made us acutely aware of the ramifications of such short-sighted cultural blindness, this was not an effect limited to the Middle East. The conflicts that today ravage Africa, southeast Asia, and Oceania are all, like the conflict in the Middle East, the legacy of colonialism.
We might sigh and shake our head, and wonder how the colonialists could have been so self-involved as to not learn the slightest bit about the cultures they conquered to make such a high-stakes blunder–but for the fact that it is no blunder at all. Jeff Vail explains:
The Exploitation Model of colonial control, and the legacy of British cartography: England is a small country, with a relatively small population. They were never able to field the kind of imperial expeditionary forces of other empires. Instead, from the very beginnings in India, they pioneered a new means of controlling colonies: exploit internal divisions. I call this the “Exploitation Model�, and it has been used with great success, first by Britain, then by the US in all corners of the globe. It started in India, where the British recognized that they could not field a force large enough to control the hugely populous and well armed people of the subcontinent. They recognized, however, that India was rife with internal divisions, fractured into a complex web of princes and potentates each with long-running internal disputes. They learned that by leveraging their forces in the support of one local group against another, they could greatly multiply their power, and effectively control a nation several times larger than their own. It was in India that they laid the groundwork for the Exploitation Model: leverage a minority group with the promise of “If you help make us rich, we’ll see to it that you also get a disproportionate share of the wealth�, and ensure loyalty by withholding access to some critical part of the machinery of power – make them rely on you just as much as you rely on them.
This model was used by the British to establish and control their empire: from the apartheid exploitation model used in colonial Africa to the tribal exploitation model used to establish the House of Saud, as well as control the remnants of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.
With rise in expectations for independence and self-determination beginning in the 20th century, Britain had to adapt their model to the changing geo-political arena. They had to permit the appearance of independence to their colonies, while maintaining the flow of wealth and resources on which they depended. The Exploitation Model adapted quite well to this end: if a minority group depends on your support to control an “independent� country, then you can exert the exact same level of influence on this “sovereign� nation as you can over a colony – perhaps more, because you are no longer as culpable in matters of starvation, poverty and human rights. In addition to adapting the exploitation model to the changing world stage, the British carefully used their monopoly over cartography to ensure that these newly independent entities were cut up into chunks that would perpetuate ethnic strife and provide a ready pool of minority groups bidding for British support to their power with offers of enhancing British influence over the nations affairs.
Thus, neocolonialism. Whee de juris control must be surrendered, de facto control will suffice. The United States has largely inherited Britain’s role, being far more capable at the neocolonial game than the United Kingdom. In most cases, it would be “embarrassing” for the United States to be directly involved in the various actions that must be done on its behalf. Instead, the United States can assume a certain degree of seperation and maintain the fiction of autonomy by merely supporting despots and tyrants around the world, who see that American interests are seen to first and foremost–and the country’s own interests always remain a distant second.
A surprising number of people believe this fiction, and refuse to acknowledge that the post-war United States is imperialist or that neocolonialism is, in fact, a real phenomenon. It’s worth noting that among those who make a study of world cultures, neocolonialism is accepted as a given; it is only those far removed from the realities of the neocolonial enterprise–usually from the comfort of the new imperial heartland–that doubt its existence. This is another of the benefits of neocolonialism–the obfuscation of what is really going on. Once imperialism was unmasked as a brutal system of exploitation, a more “delicate” form needed to be adopted. Thus, neocolonialism.
If this seems all far too cynical and “anti-American,” then I would highlight that this not simply an attribute of America, but a fundamental principle to all empires. Caesar’s Gallic Wars chronicles how he played internal rivalries among the Gauls in the very same manner as the British in India. Rome often ruled through “client kings,” like Herod, who retained a fictive authority, but only as a figurehead. There, too, it was a fiction fed to the people to avoid the ugly truth of Roman domination. In Rome, as in our current neocolonial enterprise, the purpose of empire was the same: to benefit the imperial center, at the expense of the periphery.
Most of the resources any society needs ends up existing in a zero-sum game: in order for one society to have more of it, some other society must have less. As John Dominic Crossan illustrated so well in The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, Rome found that “peace” and “prosperity” were just such resources. The Pax Romana was a golden age–for Italy. The provinces suffered poverty, famine, and a nearly chronic state of war. Essentially, the imperial enterprise was, for Rome, an exercise in the exportation of violence and suffering themselves.
The modern United States has established itself in a similar manner as an imperial center. We have established a thriving, industrialized economy based on the consumption of fossil fuels. We obtain those fuels from the neocolonial periphery, where it is obtained well below market value because of our military domination–maintained largely by maintaining a sufficient level of violence and internecine strife that keeps our oil suppliers as dependent on us (militarily) as we are on them (economically). The IMF, the World Bank and similar organizations keep the Third World eternally in crushing debt (see John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man), creating a situation where it makes more sense for an individual farmer to grow cotton or coffee for the United States, than food for his family. This keeps the Third World as dependent on the United States (nutritionally) as we are on them (commercially).
Thus we see, that the key to First World prosperity is Third World suffering. The trend of globalization and the development of the Third World can only progress so far before it begins to have a negative impact on the First World’s level of prosperity. What will happen when this balance begins to shift? Will we see political turmoil resulting in the fall of the current imperial center? It may well be–and the United States would go down in history as one of the shorter-lived empires in the world. What can be said with certainty is that there can be no First World, without a Third World–wherever they may be, geographically. There can be no prosperous center, without an exploited periphery. The legal definitions of these areas means nothing; only the system of dependence and control.
Such is the nature of empire.
My history is rusty… how long after the Pax Romana did Rome fall?
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 20 October 2005 @ 11:01 PM
Well, the Pax itself lasted for centuries. Historians differ on exactly how long, but the Roman empire lasted for nearly 500 years. The key to their success was not even primarily military. Their most successful tactic was actually extending citizenship to the provinces–thus generating a sense of legitimacy.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 October 2005 @ 11:06 PM
for further information regarding Pax Romana see “The decline and fall of the Roman empire”. Abridged version runs about 3000 pages, but an excellent read. Full version is about 12 volumes, 1000+ pages apiece. when i can afford it i will get.
also T.E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Islam” is fabulous. his translations of the Koran, The Oddessy, and the Illiad are also fantastic.
Comment by Rory — 21 October 2005 @ 12:36 PM
Gibbon … meh. I was unimpressed. I think he gets a lot of his interpretation totally wrong.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 October 2005 @ 1:14 PM
A very nice article. Good view on the theme.
Just some things about the “Roman Empire”
1. There are no original writings known to us left from the Roman Empire.
2. The “history” of the Roman Empire is written in Latin…
Latin has been a life (used), medieval language.
3. If the times of rule of the three “dynasties” of the Empire are compared, it seems the rulers of the three diferent dinasties are almost identical. (1st ruler 1st dinasty very-very similar to 1st ruler of 2nd and 3rd dinasties, etc.)
4. The dates in the Empire history are sometimes precise to a DAY and more than a few times contradicting. This exaggerated precision makes the works unreliable. Especialy for something that existed MANY hundreds of years before.
5. According to what calendar have the writers made their works and according to what calendars have the original works been written? There have been a whooooole lot of different calenders in the times past. Of many (if not most) written dates it is unsure acording to wich calender it was meant. “The year of our Lord 6678″ is a bad indicator. And surely a bad suggestion to a medieval writer. Those were often monks, who knew very well in what year the world was created (at least according to their own medieval religious stream).
To SUM UP: Somewhere in the medieval times (to some speculations even as late as 17th century), someone (suposedly 2 French monks) transcribed the history of SOME Empire. They were very driven should be admitted, calculating all the events and dates to one day precision (many modern people could use some of this persistence
). There were “some” major mistakes made in the total timeline of the events. It can be assumed, that some missing facts were “filled in” (fabricated?).
And now the Empire of the United States.
As Jason mentions, the Roman Empire lasted about 500 years. Let us asume taking the above analysis into account that the described Empire lasted one third of the official history time, thus 167 years. Ok, let it even be 200 or even 300 years.
What later became the USA officialy gained it’s independance from Britain in the year 1776. That is 229 years before 2005. Well over either 167 or 200 year boundary. It is also one average western lifetime before the 300 year boundary. Oops
Isn’t analysis FUN?!
Grounded critics are more than welcome!
Dzint
Comment by Dzint — 7 December 2005 @ 3:04 PM
Err, what?
You get bonus points for originality, but there are a few fallacies in your thinking. First of all, the USA is in a completely different situation that the Roman Empire. The timeframe of the collapse of the Roman Empire has about nothing to do with the timeframe of the collapse of America. Secondly, how you draw any kind of discernable conclusion from the points you made is beyond me. You contradict yourself, saying they can’t know the date, and then saying that the dynasties occurred at similar times. Third, written histories are NOT the only artifacts we have available from the roman empire. Like, the city of Rome. Hmm.
This isn’t to be a downer on your creativity at all — but maybe you should look into fiction writing rather than history.
Comment by Devin — 7 December 2005 @ 4:14 PM
Thank you for your response. I like it.
As you have understood, the strange calculation part about the collapse of the American Empire is of course a joke. Just to make the post a little less dry.
I did not explain this part enough, you are right. Read below.
Actualy, that is exactly the issue here. Was the city of Rome the real Rome of the Roman Empire?! How do you date an artifact in number of years before today? There are a few modern unprecise techniques, but before that, to determine an exact year, archeologists and historians relied on written records. ONLY!
Most techniques use data relative to a particular location. So a archeologist could say: “This second village was built within about 200 to 300 years after this first village in the same area”. But usualy the archeologist says: “I found a coin in a fundament wich we know is from around the year 100 BC. So the first village is from 100 BC and the second one from 200 to 300 BC”. How did he know about the date of the coin in the first place?!
Few example teqniques:
1. Artifacts of Known Age. Simple example is a coin with a date on it. From wich calendar is the date? For instance 100 years from when “our great capital was built”. When was that capital built acording to our modern calendar. And wich capital was it? Again, the written records are used.
2. Dendrochronology. Tree rings. Seems simple. The downside is that it is only accurate for multiple trees from thesame area and of course with enough undamaged rings on each one. This often proves difficult for wood that is one or few thousand years old. The dates are also relative to those trees. The problem remains: what is the absolute age of the material.
3. Radiocarbon Dating. Developed in 1949 (just 56 years ago). Most ancient history is written and most archeology is done well before that! Unfortunately this technique relies on the level of isotope Carbon-14. The level of this radioactive material is dependant on the level of cosmic radiation that is able to get through the “radiation defences” in the upper layers of the atmosphere. We can only know what the level of Carbon-14 got through the “defences” in the last several decades. What the level was 500 or 1500 yeas ago is a mistery. And yes, artifacts in museums can be and are contaminated by Carbon-14 from today. So re-dating them is unreliable. Once an artifact is out of the relative protection of the ground, it is contaminated if not handled propperly.
4. Potassium-Argon Dating is used mostly for stones with ages from a few billion to a few tens of thousands of years. Does not serve the descussed purpose.
5. There are also some more precise but experimental techniques. To be “sure” about the outcome, the results are often compared to the known “historical facts”. This realy prevents those techniques to develop properly.
Very important detail is that multiple teqniques are often used to determine the age of an artifact. For instance because the Carbon-14 technique will not give an absolute date (it will not!) the archeologist sugests a most probbable time period. The artifact is then dated acording to that relative time-window. Dating is done to the best knowledge of the person responsible in a particular team, particular country, particular time and particular level of the dating technique used. The level of C-14 in determined in different laboratories might even be similar. It is only unknown to wich absolute time this C-14 level belongs. Often the carbon analysis is not even used.
Mistaken identity of documents. For instance:
1. There are more than a few different Carthago cities mentioned around the mediteranean sea.
2. The name of the Italian city “Neapolis” means “New city” so does the Russian northern city name “Novgorod” and many other cities in the world. What will happen at translation? There is no assurance that the name will stay untranslated, or even worse, will be changed to the name as it is known to the translator from a different nation. Often neighbouring nations have different names for the same city.
3. The human behaviour stays similar everywhere, consider the following description. The “Great Leader” rode from the “New City” and conquered his foul enemies in “The King’s City” in the east. How can one be sure where this happened? This could be “Neapolis” and “Constantinopol”, but could theoreticaly even be some events from India. The middle east traded extensively with India. So ofcourse some epos and legends would be exchanged as well. In most of the world human names have a meaning. In the old days this meaning was important. Some people were known under different names.
Now, consider this scenario. if a medieval history writer would have three different sources, from three different countries with different names in them, written from different points of view. Those must describe different events, right? What the writer does not know is that the sources describe the same events. He first processes the first document about a “Wise Leader” who built “The Great City”. Aha, must be year 5000 according to my calendar. Then the second document about a “Great King” conquering a nation. If interpreted as a different person the second king might be squeezed in after the first king in 5025. Lets say the third document tells about a conquest by a “Great King” and then the building of a city. City was build after the conquest, this must be around 5050. So the history is now 50 years long and in a wrong sequence. It should have been: first nation conquired in 2 years; second city build there in 11 years; all this is done by the same person who ruled 15 years.
The same mistake can be done if there are three descriptions in different languages, from different points of view, with different precision, concentrating on different facts, but of the same dynasty. Those are pieces of puzzle from different boxes, giving a differen view of the same picture, and all have damaged edges and the colors are changed by time. These pieces will fit together and the picture will look acceptable.
Example of unreliability (you cann’t trust them)
1. The city of Rome has been very important in the middle ages because of the Catholic Empire (money and war). Wich city would not want to seem very ancient, to be able to say: “This city is important, it has been here forever!” Especialy if this city is an important place in some present (catholic) empire. How to achieve this? Just tell some loyal, “workaholic” monks to take some old (not even ancient) documents from SOME previous empire and rewrite them to create own important history. You must by any price impress your underlings! Some small fraude in historical texts will help make an empire stronger.
2. About the city of Rome artifact. City exists, and has some medieval Latin writings in it. High probbability that some form of settlement existed at this place for many centuries. But was this The Rome from the official history?
3. Such things happened a lot. Look at Venice. They invented a saint for their city, St. Mark. Saing this saint had a lot to do with Venice during his life. The Venicians also ruled the mediteranean for centuries and settled all around the area.
Unsure archeological dating, unreliable documentation, high probabbility of written fraude over the centuries, interpreting of new findings by using old, wrong information from unrelyable sources. Hmm.
I would rather want to know what really happend. I thought I knew. If you look one step beyond the iron truth of the schoolbook it seems the research is not completed yet. Should not a scientist verify the source of information? Excuse me, but who veryfied the validity of the medieval Latin historical texts?
This is not invented by me. I have not even provided concrete facts in this post. But some people can. The phenomenon is called The New Chronology. It is in fact not that new. It exists since the mainstream history has been fabricated. I do not take a very active part in it, but a good friend of mine does. I just keep my eyes open. The New Chronology has some harder facts to it’s desposition. Many New Chronologists are working seriously on the subject. Unfortunately some choose a “sensational” approach to sell their books. Just like some mainstream historians and archeologists do.
Dzint
Comment by Dzint — 9 December 2005 @ 9:02 AM
We have Roman artifacts and monuments from Britain to Israel, and they all agree on the chronology. We do have written records that were written in Rome, such as Tacitus, the Gallic Wars, et cetera ad infinitum. The coins and the monuments and the archaeological digs all line up perfectly with the historical accounts. In short, your claims are revisionist history of the worst sort: as unnecessarily radical as they are ill-supported. I can’t see a single valid argument for your case that doesn’t rely either on a complete ignorance of the evidence, or a manipulation of said evidence that is tantamount to deceit.
The Wikipedia entry on the subject sums it up in my mind: “Although Fomenko is a well-respected mathematician, his historical theories have been universally rejected by mainstream scholars, who view them as pseudoscience.” Put me down in the, “this is complete bunk” category.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 December 2005 @ 9:12 AM
I do agree with the post pointing to “Petroleum et Imperium Americanum » The Anthropik Network”
The main issue is of course the principle of an empire. Even assuming the Roman Empire did not exist as such, the “Roman history” can be used as kind of a manual to an empire.
Comment by Dzint — 9 December 2005 @ 9:22 AM