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More reviews by Stephen Maire
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
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Worlds at War by Anthony Pagden
In WORLDS AT WAR, ANTHONY PAGDEN has written a grand history laying out the conflict between the Middle East and the West over the past 2500 years. The result is invigorating and stimulating.
A decade ago Samuel Huntington argued that the politics of the contemporary world could be reduced to a small group of civilizations or cultures in conflict with each other. The most dramatic and obvious conflict at present was between Islam and the West, although this was not to be seen as the only conflict. While the thesis was not new, Huntington's Clash of Civilizations articulated most clearly a widespread sentiment. Events in the years after publication seemed to endorse Huntington's thesis.
Pagden advances a thesis related to Huntington's and certainly no less sweeping, arguing that the Middle East and the West are at war and have been at war for much of recorded history. While the current basis of the conflict is between an Islamic East and a secular West, Pagden argues that even as the civilizations of East and West have changed, the conflict has remained. Where Huntington sees civilizations in conflict in the current age, Pagden shows civilizations changing but conflict enduring through the ages.
Clearly, Pagden cannot argue that the West and Islam have been at war for 2500 years since neither the West nor Islam existed 2500 years ago. Rather, Pagden identifies pairs of civilizations in East and West that have been at war. The earliest was the Greek city-states and Persia: Greek city-state democracy warred with Persian despotism. Time passes. With the rise of Islam the conflict evolves to one between a Christian West and an Islamic East or between the Crusaders and the Arabs. Finally, in the present day, the conflict continues between a now secular West and a theocratic East.
Pagden's argument of two rival world views in conflict works well enough in the first two instances, but seems an insufficient description of the current age. In the ancient world and during Islam's expansion, West and East were rather more balanced both politically, economically and militarily. In the current era, the West has come to be seen as more "successful" than the Islamic world and to be the more dominant civilization. One senses that the terms of the conflict have changed. Pagden speaks of the Islamic world almost envying the West's materialism and reacting to the West's perceived dominance.
How the West came to be so dominant is a question that vexes many historians. China historians note that at roughly 1000 CE, Chinese technology was ahead of or at least equivalent to that of the West. A similar situation existed in the Islamic world. Much of the foundation of Western science grew from translations of Arabic scientific works after the European dark ages. So, how did it come to pass that the West had such a dramatic advantage 800 years later? Pagden is not the first to take a shot at an answer to this question. Jared Diamond's recent and popular Guns, Germs and Steel attempts to answer this same question.
The short version of Pagden's answer is that in the West church and state separated enabling the creation of a secular world less and less subject to religious dogma while Islam stayed locked in the theocratic state defined by the Qur'an of about 1000 CE. A critical element is that the Qur'an and Islam make no distinction between the political and religious. The religious leaders are the political leaders and the Qur'an is felt sufficient to answer all questions of religion and politics. By contrast, in the Western world politics and religion exist separately. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" allows for two possible spheres although, as Pagden notes, the relationship has never been as clear cut as this seems to make it. Nevertheless, Western acknowledgment of religion's limits frees large bodies of knowledge to develop without religious restraint. To repeat, this is not as clear cut in practice as in theory, but the secular trend in the West has allowed for a massive growth in technology and material well being, while the dominance of Islam in the East would seem to have limited political, scientific and material development.
Clearly, as reference to Diamond suggests, there are many who do not share Pagden's thesis. While there is enough history here to argue a conflict between West and East on many different grounds, Pagden perhaps gives too little credit to how the character of the conflict has changed. It is far less a conflict of armies marching to battle, but a more insidious and subversive conflict of culture as portrayed in movies, television competing for hearts and minds rather than territory.
The pleasure of a grand history comes from letting the writer guide you on a panoramic journey. Pagden's writing is fluid and easily read and his argument articulate. As Pagden constructs his argument for the current age of conflict one wonders if conflict between the two is foreordained. Well before Pagden delivers his conclusion one senses that this cannot end well. Perhaps the divide between the secular and the theocratic, between the material and the religious, between the West and the East is simply too great to bridge. After recounting a history of conflict reaching back 2,500 years it is hardly surprising that Pagden sees the conflict continuing. Yet, in giving us an understanding of the conflict Pagden poses but leaves unasked a question: Knowing history, need we continue the past or can find a new future?
Stephen Maire
23/12/2008
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Stephen Maire is a Director of garment manufacturing and trading company. He has lived in East Asia for more than twenty years. |
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