and US. Mughal India was a remarkable center of learning and cosmopolitan culture. A common South Asian civilization incorporated Islam as well as Hinduism and other religions, though in the 20th century movements of Muslims and Hindus sought to purify each from the influence of the other.
Compared to the Arab world, Persia produced both a different version of Islam and a distinctive civilization. This is partly because of a long prior history in which Zoroastrianism was its leading religion. There had been powerful empires in what is now Iran since ancient times. Indeed, Herodotus is considered the founder of history for chronicling the Persia’s recurrent wars with Greeks in the 5th Century BC. In popular culture, these are probably remembered most for the story of a runner seeking Spartan reinforcements for Athenians at the battle of Marathon. But an enduring sociological significance was to identify Persians with tyranny. Not only was the Persian Empire ruled by powerful figures like Darius the Great and Xerxes. The Persians appointed tyrants – using that word – to rule conquered Greek city-states.
In the 18th century, a great classical sociological theorist, Charles de Secondat, better known as Montesquieu, wrote a highly influential book called Persian Letters. This used the device of two imaginary travelers to hold up a mirror to European civilization. More generally, learning about differences (real or imagined) from other civilizations was a way for Europeans to learn about their own – and debate their aspirations for how they wanted it to develop. In his major work, The Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu sought to understand the differences among countries not just by their specific legal or political systems but by the ‘spirit’ which lay behind them. Behind monarchy he saw love of honor, behind democratic republics he saw virtue. But behind despotism, he saw fear.25 More generally, Persia, Islam and the East came to symbolize the despotic or tyrannical rule many Europeans wanted to avoid by developing republics, democracies, and constitutional monarchies.
Karl Marx saw ‘oriental despotism’ as the product of a distinctive ‘Asiatic mode of production’. China, Marx argued, had developed a massively powerful state that enabled it to solve certain problems. State capacity was needed, for example, to build dams and dredge the Yellow River, controlling floods and providing effective transportation. On the basis of such projects, along with technological innovation and the disciplined work of a huge population, China became the most advanced economy in the world at the time when Western capitalism was gathering steam. But eventually the dominance of the state blocked innovation.
China, like Russia before it, underwent revolution that eventually brought Communist parties to power. But classical sociological theorists analyzed both revolutions as driven by social factors beyond ideology. Exploitation of peasants had increased with growing cities and urban elites demanding bigger shares of what was produced. Middle classes grew but were frustrated by intransigent old states that failed to create opportunities for them by modernizing. And, of course, wars destabilized old regimes. Perhaps things could have turned out otherwise, but in these cases, weak social institutions allowed new autocrats to replace the old. Modernization came in some areas, but without political liberation or strong civil society.
Colonialism, Race, and Modernization: Ironically, the same Europeans who were proud of developing legitimate rule at home used force and conquest to establish colonies abroad. This produced an extreme version of the disembedding and disruption Karl Polanyi analyzed as part of the ‘great transformation’ in Europe itself. Colonial rule was often despotic.
Europeans set out on voyages of exploration with agendas of curiosity, scientific exploration, religious conversion, and opening up trade routes. They were astonished at the variety of human life they found, as well as animals and ecology. Explorations did transform science, notably biology as well as sociology which were entwined in the emergence of evolutionary theory. And missionaries did spread Christianity around the world (though often as an adjunct to power not a peaceful alternative). But agendas of economic gain and state power quickly came to dominate.
Spain and Portugal took the lead, extracting silver and good from brutally administered mines in Latin America. Britain followed, conquering India and establishing lucrative trade in both directions (as distinct from extraction alone). India and neighboring countries like Burma (Myanmar) were also integrated into British trade with China. British, Indian, and US merchants made fortunes selling Opium grown in South Asia to Chinese merchants in exchange for silver, and when the Chinese government tried to crack down on addiction and the trade that fueled it, Britain responded with military force. The US was an ally in Britain’s Opium War.
European colonizers soon came into conflict with each other. France and Britain fought each other in North America (and US expansion, which was itself in many ways colonial, came into conflict with Spanish colonies). Piracy was an attempt to seize a share of the gold Spain and Portugal tried to carry to Europe from Latin America, and was backed by European countries. There were also major naval battles. A 19th Century ‘race for Africa’ helped pave the path to WWI as different European powers clashed while trying to grab shares of Africa for themselves.
While European empires fought each other, they also established a new global economy with devastating social implications. In some parts of the world, inhabitants were displaced or murdered to make room for settlers. This was the history forged in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Americas. In other parts of the world, like both India and Egypt, Europeans ruled over conquered states and civilizations, establishing trade relations to European benefit.
But colonialism never meant just trade or just political power, it was also a transformation in what Marx called ‘relations of production’. Extracting mineral wealth called for mines, and working these was commonly deadly. Plantation agriculture was also brutal, but it flourished to supply markets with sugar, cotton, tea, and eventually rubber. The slave trade grew to support this new economy. Slaves were extracted from Africa as gold was extracted from South America. They were sold into work in the mines. They were sold to work on the plantations. An expanding shipping industry linked these different sites.
Settlement, mineral extraction, plantations, slavery, and indeed shipping all shaped distinctive kinds of societies. So did colonial domination – which affected both the dominated and the dominators. The impacts lasted past struggles for independence, creating distinctive postcolonial social formations.
Impacts started with death and human destruction. They included both blocked paths of economic growth, in some cases, and in others channeling of growth into modes of production that unequally benefitted colonial countries. They included arbitrary national borders, drawn for colonizers convenience and often at odds with the organization of indigenous society in Africa. They also included opportunities for some to work in imperial administration, and not only in their home countries. There opportunities in the colonial militaries and in business. The British Empire launched the global South Asian diaspora – that for example saw Mahatma Gandhi make his early career in South Africa, after education in London, and before eventual return to transformative leadership in India. Talented youth from French as well as British colonies had the chance for elite education in the colonial center. This shaped their movements for independence, which were often indebted to European socialism and labor politics – and indeed to Marx and related strands of classical sociological theory.
But in the experience of colonial elites, as of Black Americans, there was pervasive ‘double consciousness’ (to use Du Bois’ phrase). They were at once part of the educated class and sometimes the power structure, and part of the dominated population of the colonies. They were privileged in some ways, yet stigmatized by race. For race – what Du Bois called “the color line” – ran through every aspect of European colonization. It also brought the impact of colonialism into the heart of rich societies that understood themselves as white. After all, without Black, or Brown, or Yellow, or Red what reason was there for the category of white? Europeans fought with each other, but they colonized and enslaved almost exclusively “people of color”.
Ending colonialism was
