Light notes on Hodgson’s seminal Work: The venture of Islam--- Economic Hegemony as an impetus of modern Imperialism: is it over?

In today's reading, Hodgson chronicles the historical background that ultimately gave way to the World Order that prevailed in the 19^th century and which continues, at least in its broad lines, to dominate. Nineteenth century was by all accounts a European century.  The century saw the West, mostly Europe, but America as well, asserting its superiority on the international scene, extending its sovereignty through both economic and military means. During much of the 19^th century, European vessels and other maritime equipments crisscrossed the world oceans unchallenged. At no prior point in history had the Europeans enjoyed such freedom at sea. The Muslim world, which had once stood as the strong neighbor and contender, was at the receiving end of this new relentless campaign of world conquest.  The march through Muslim lands would continue unabated until the second decade of the 20^th century. During this period lands were divided between and annexed by invading armies, allowing for borders to be drawn—even when no hint of breakage exited hitherto as Hodgson rightly remarked: “The European made a great point of inventing boundaries where they did not exist.” [227] Tracing the history of European domination of the world inevitably leads to the discussion of the methods employed to bring others under this hegemony and also others’ reaction to them.

Hodgson is right in pointing out that reactions to the new role of the West were quick and took various forms. First, attempts were made to repel the encroaching armies, but this was soon proven futile because of the apparent disparity in technical, especially military, means.  The second stage was a period of accommodation, an attempt at appeasement in exchange for certain commercial and economic rights for the elites in various Muslim societies. Western imperialism was not initially militaristic in nature, although its military might would become central for hosts of reasons. Imperialism was mostly driven by economic interests. When it started it had two main goals in mind. First, it was meant to find new markets for Western companies which were producing at a massive scale thanks to the industrial revolution. Second, it was also meant in the same vein to secure natural resources and raw materials to fuel this very revolution.  As a result, economy played a major role. A good example of the role of economy in the imperial enterprise is Egypt. As Hodgson notes, it was on the pretext that Egypt failed to meet its financial obligations (which was created by Western lenders who knew well that Egypt can’t sustain, given the prospect of the international market, its spending spree, yet continued to lend it).  The use of fiscal institutions to create a state of dependency is also pursued elsewhere with the Ottoman Empire. Even though the Ottoman’s inability to repay their debts did not translate into direct military occupation, their dependency allowed European countries to intervene in the Empire’s most intimate affairs.

The larger community mostly suffered and silently resented the new order. The discontent among the masses, which only grew over time, lent itself to more matured forms of resistance. The new forms of resistance were championed by nationalist movements which sought to use Western tools and concepts to uproot Western hegemony. That these movements were eventually successful in creating ‘modern’ states in Asia, North Africa and the Middle East is not a matter of question. However, the question of the extent to which these states were able to address the essential conditions that made of 19^th century a special European century was a different story. The answer to this question lies in providing a comparative reading of the current World Order and the one that prevailed during the 19^th century. To the extent that they have differed, a positive answer could be given. An assessment of this sort has to probe two areas: the ability of such states to bridge the technical gap that brought about the initial onslaught and the resultant state of economic dependency on one hand, and their ability to fully absorb and thoroughly integrate the concepts that at once constituted the priori and posteriori of modernity.

One can safely assert that the technical parity is far from accomplished and the gap in this regard, has only widened, not narrowed.  While points can be made about certain improvement on the technical sphere in some Muslim countries such as Pakistan, India and Malaysia, this technical improvement are still a far cry from development in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Even in most third world countries, the technical gap is still significant. The exception to this being India and China, with the latter narrowing this gap in much faster pace in more than one domain and the former advancing in some areas such as computer programming and nuclear power.  One will also find the question about the integration of the concepts of modernity to be more complex for a number of reasons. Modernity in of itself has no clear cut definition. Still even if one is to provide a workable definition, the subjective nature of evaluating to what extent a concept, an outlook is culturally integrated would still preclude the arrival at a satisfactory conclusion. If by modern concepts one means the tendency of state and private institutions to employ rational and scientific reasoning (with whatever subjective limitations one can attach to these two) in the running of their everyday affair, one would still have to answer to what end is such rational and scientific reasoning is used. More problematic, is the fact that a varnish of modernity, a display of rationality and scientific research can hide behind it an emotional and impressionistic modus operandi. The ease with which certain technical gadgets could be transferred from one place to another facilitated and improved the art of camouflage, the act of self-deception. Part of this self-deception is that most of these countries (I am speaking here about Muslim countries specifically, but this also true of large numbers of African and Asian countries as well) did not adopt modernity out of genuine desire, but as a necessity—as  reality imposed by foreign entity. Therefore, modernity is integrated only as much as is necessary to convince others that it had been realized. The fact that the West has, in general, no desire to see the core of modernity successfully implanted elsewhere (because of the possible implications of that to the world order) made this process of self-deception  easy for the ‘dependent’ and a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of the West. Again with the exception of China, the prevalence of modernity in the above sense is still limited to small segment of the economy and of the population in most third world countries.

Unlike the question of technical parity and integration of modernity, the disparity on the economic level and the mechanism to perpetuate it is still (very much) in place. A modicum of hope materialized after the wave of decolonization succeeded in giving many elites in third world countries the chance to steer their countries in the direction of full independence. But a combination of planning on the part of the West and inefficacy of most of these regimes contributed to aborting that dream. The lion’s share of shattering hopes of economic dependency was taken by the institutions of Briton Woods, especially World Bank and the International Monetary Fundy.  These institutions first assured the dependency by making available to state who became newly independent a high interest-based loan packages along with some sound, but not always serious or sincere policy advice. This phase led to accumulated debts and inevitably to these institutions taking a far more aggressive role in dictating the fiscal policies of these countries. The word Structural adjustments, which became a buzzword in the early 1990s, was the magic word for a process that led to wild policies of deregulations and ultimately to the shrinkage of the public sector in favor of the private sector, especially multinational corporations. Now, this may not be a European hegemony in the way that 19^th century imperialism was, but it is, indeed, a hegemony of multinational corporations most of which were until very recently based in and operated from the West.  Now with the rise of outsourcing, the industrial base and unskilled labor, not necessarily the ownership or the skilled human capital, has somewhat shifted.