Welcome, welcome. And welcome to another episode of the Pivot. I am rahul of Samaj McDowell. I hope everyone is having an amazing, amazing day today.
Today I wanted to speak a little bit on the understandings and, you know, comprehending the importance as well as the history of civilizations. Usually nowadays you hear the notions of globalization is erasing the, the natural political borders of these sovereign states in order for the construction of a world government or, you know, a means of. Through the United nations, they are seeking to establish so some sort of unified global governance system that essentially assimilates all individuals into this one massive global civilization so that all things are similar. But honestly, that'll never happen.
And there are many reasons why that never happened. However, the one word that is very indicative of why that can never happen is civilization. Around the world for thousands of years, there's always been this underlying transcendental concept of a civilization, and sometimes it's thrown around as one of those words that's taken for granted. But in order to understand international relations, international politics, foreign policy, national security, defense, it's very important that you understand as much as a practitioner or a person of academia, but just simply as an individual what it means to be part of a group and to uphold an identity.
That leads me to this concept or the first portion of what it means to be part of a civilization is this notion of it being a cultural entity. It's not strictly or inherently naturally political. No, that comes later. It has to be cultural first in order to give rise to the foundations of political institutions.
How can it be governed by laws if these laws do not have some sort of attachment of myself to it, if it's not compatible to my identity, and if I do not acknowledge the transcendental understanding of values that's put behind the frameworks of this law because of cultural standings, I'm not going to respect it. I may still follow at the end of the day due to the type of consequences that we follow afterwards, but I may not respect nor view that law as pertaining to me. That's what we have to understand, that political institutions derive themselves for cultural institutions, and that includes religion, that includes geography, that includes the development stages that are primarily between becoming a much more centralized state and being a simple a tribe that have just settled after being for hundreds of years, hunter gatherers? You didn't have to worry about the establishment of political institutions as hunter gatherers because you're always on the move.
You migrated from point A to point B as you followed food, as you followed weather patterns, because of the two Notions of survival, the pursuit of self interest. If a civilization cannot necessarily, you know, provide for the pursuit of interest in survival, it's not going to uphold any value. So then we move on to well, what is the importance of civilization and how exactly did these civilizations interact with one another? Well, for one, the civilization is the utmost generalization of the compilation or the, the the togetherness of a group of people.
When we're looking at international politics, a civilization does not have to be just a single country. A civilization can comprise of many countries and it's based off the notions of shared elements of characteristics and identities. So that could be language, religion, politics, geography. It could be shared enemies, common interests, it could be a common ancestor.
All these elements are what provide the uniqueness to the construction of civilization. And to continue with that, that's what makes civilizations mercurial. Because states can change, societies can come and go, but civilizations tend to stay the same, especially the ones that have been established for thousands of years. If you look at the Indus civilization, the Chinese civilization, civilization, now river civilization, and eventually the Greeks and the Romans and the Native Americans, they've all established civilizations and isolation prior to then becoming exposed to other groups of people.
The only time that they really crossed with other organizations, other entities was through war. But as we see that most of wars and conflicts happen in two types of situations. Whether it's inter civilization or is on the very boundaries of two civilizations. For example, if we look at currently right now, we see the situation of Myanmar and Bangladesh.
You have the borders of two different civilizations, one being Buddhist, another one being Islamic. Within Myanmar itself, the genocide of the Rohingya Muslims is due primarily for economic reasons, as there are large deposits of jade and other minerals in southern Myanmar that the rather authoritarian and military, although it's not ran by military anymore, but the military has substantial influences on the political policies. The government seeks to not to not only remove the Ruinga from the geographical regions of southern Myanmar, due to a long history, at least in the 1950s, of seeing them as subhuman, as less than ethnically pure Burmese, but also for economic reasons. It's the same thing to the Christians in the north.
However, the struggle, the tensions are primarily between these two countries. Myanmar and Bangladesh is due to the levels of mass migration Oriental Muslims pouring to Bangladesh and further straining natural resources that are already in complication due to Bangladesh overpopulation, neglecting the waste management and very harsh or difficult climate change such as monsoons. These notions causes tensions between civilizations. And we see that where now Bangladesh is refusing to bring in more Rohingya Muslims into Bangladesh that are stuck at sea, therefore they most likely have to go back to Myanmar, potentially face persecution.
It's things like that where civilization, the understanding of civilization is so broad that it becomes much more complicated. Just because you're in the same civilization doesn't mean that you will have the same mutual interest all the time. Look at the Greeks, the Greek city states, they're constantly right at war with each other, constantly. This understanding of civilization, if you look at it more as an umbrella, but not just an umbrella, look at it as a continual evolution.
And according to Samuel Huntington, in the Clash of Civilizations, there are five, seven per se, different civilizations. They should be really examined as they have major influences on international stage. And the first one, and we're going to go through this for the most part together, the first one is the cynic civilization, which refers to that of the Chinese civilization. This is one of the most oldest, if not the oldest civilizations in the world.
A common understanding of China is the notion that it is a civilization state. As it was a state primarily constructed through the establishment of thorough, concrete Chinese identity over the past 5,000 plus years, then China as it developed for the most part of its early history, it was primarily based between warring states, warring factions, warring empires, kingdoms. However, through that China established a very concrete and very well established civilization identity to even the point that when Genghis Khan, the Mongols invade China, they were unable to overcome the identities of China. They had to assimilate to the tenets, the cultural understandings, the Confucius identities and the already established tenets and institutions of the Chinese sphere in order to properly conduct their control and implement their authority over the Chinese people.
Keeping that into account, the Chinese state is one of the most well known examples of a cohesive civilization. When you look deep down into the the Chinese state, you're looking at a framework of a heavy centralized state, but a very weak rule of law. What I mean by that is that the Chinese emperor or even Mao Zedong or Ding Xiaoping or Xi Jinping, that the, the leader of the Chinese civilization was not necessarily restrained by law. And that was unintentionally and granted, though the bulk of the Chinese civilization was established through a meritocratic type of institution, meaning that in order for you to change the government, you needed to pass a particular type of merit test, which was primarily done to keep the children of the upper class within the realms of government.
They're very patrimonial. Even through that system. The understandings of the rule of law was Very weak. But the cultural state is extremely stable, extremely concrete.
You have the notions of Han Chinese that if essentially if you see the now within the Chinese People's Republic of China currently, that if you're not Han Chinese, although in the Constitution they preach and promote notion of equality amongst all ethnicities and races within China, that's not the case. As you look at the Uyghurs that as they are misplacing the Uyghur Muslims in western China, they're replacing them with ethnically Han Chinese. But also the western Chinese provinces are completely important for the establishment of one belt, one road initiative. Therefore to do social engineering, to systematically embrace the culture, the identity and therefore the civilization.
Islamic civilization, the Uyghur Muslims. From the history books you get an artificial, an artificial yet expanded establishment of Han Chinese and then the Han Chinese that the government does not necessarily want per se with inside the continent of China, they send them elsewhere to work essentially they send them to Africa, send them to Europe, Central and South America, Canada, across Southeast Asia, to Australia with the notions of essentially doing a social engineering campaign around the world to better elevate their civilization status around the world that causes conflict with other civilizations, as we see between the scenic civilization and what's understood as the Western civilization. But I'll get to the Western civilization concept eventually. Towards the end of the discussion of the different examples of civilizations outside of the Chinese civilization, which has been directly responsible for things such as paper, which is another example of inventions and innovation, is actually a key, a key representation of civilization identity.
China established really destructive notions of paper, gunpowder, all of that, all these technologies and innovations that a lot of Western history books try to credit to Russian civilizations, when it was actually established by the Chinese from the Indians and then centuries later as invention, the technology naturally does that through trade, through exposure to other civilization. These types of technologies are innovated once that they're brought to other civilizations to be implemented and eventually be the precursors of further innovations. We see that with the Mysorean rockets of India, the kid one Mysore has since established one of the first ever notions of rocket artillery. It was used against the British in the third, the fourth Anglo Mysorean wars, which eventually led to the completion of subjugation of the continental Great Britain.
What did England do? They were amazed by these said rockets. They took them back to London, studied them, searched them, figured out their strategic military usages and then used them in the Nepal course with better technology. That's how technology also progresses.
The notions of political geography and the placements of civilizations Amongst each other, outside of the scenic civilization, you have the Japanese civilization, which is a very homogenous civilization. They primarily do have some borrowed understandings and identities from the Chinese civilization, primarily in the aspects of their Alphabet as well as their religion. However, they didn't, they didn't really emerge until 100 to 400 AD compared to Chinese civilization has been around since at least 1500 BC. So between 100 and 400 AD and 1500 BC you kind of understand that as people migrate, as organizations, organizations, as people, tribes, as they begin to settle and they start to make the transition, then that's when you see the understandings of political geography.
The environment sculpts and changes the perceptions which then further molds your identity, which then makes establishes a culture which influences establish of financial structures and institutions and then eventually political institutions. And then you get into the notes of an established state. Like for example, the original kings within Western England, within Western Europe, primarily on the Isles of England. The, the form of the original kings of these tribes were completely different from when you think of Napoleon Bonaparte, when you think of, let's see, Charlemagne, when you think of Wilhelm.
These particular kings were essentially, they were in charge of their particular tribes, but notion that they were above the law. In fact, they protected the law primarily in the judicial sense. That was the cultural understanding, what it meant to be a leader. That these kings of England will go around constantly moving across the Isles of England to exert their authority through the means of judicial hearings.
So it seems their local lords either could not do themselves or simply because the people did not trust the local lords due to corruption, due to bribery, so on and so forth through situations like this. As societies change within civilization, civilizations also too expand and change. The understandings of individualism within Western Europe was planted at least around the 8th century, at least prior to the 5th century. It was until the 19th and the 10th century when it started to happen on a very systemic, longer nationwide, nationwide, but really region wide, due to the salvation of the Catholic Church and bringing women into the forefront due to widows owning and acquiring property inherited from their dead husbands.
These are understandings of the common law of England, contractual agreements and things of that. The notion you start to see the frameworks of Western civilization that we have now that we take for granted because we're born into the civilization. That right there is a pure example of the demonstration of the importance of civilization to the establishment of financial, economic and political institutions that's continued to morph to this very day. Unfortunately, as we see, there's time to decay on this very day back on track.
As we leave Japanese, we go to the Hindu civilization which was actually along the compatibility of Chinese civilization, China and India. The cynic and the Hindu civilization were primarily neck and neck on course of same means of development going from hunter gatherers and stationary tribes towards the notions of kingdoms and strike cratic societies. However, the rise of the Brahmanic faiths altered the course of Indian development where instead of constant war between the tribes, establishment of empire buildings early on, the Indian course of development altered to where now the individual Indian kingdoms essentially was enhanced by the Brahmanic faiths, by the Roman class that became the Indian civilization. That religion dictated the construction of Indian political institutions.
While China it was war, it was chitocracy, it was innovation, it was the suppression of enemy families, the establishment of a meritocratic institution of bureaucracy, the uplifting of an emperor, the establishment of Confucianism that was used to bring much more emphasis to uphold a political apparatus rather than to restrict it. The magic Confucianism was essentially a political as well as a cultural code of law and standard that unified the Chinese civilization state around the notions of respecting the elders of family, respecting the family, respecting the emperor, to know your position in society. And that's when you get into the notions of neo Confucianism and legalism and so on and so forth. That has continued to mold Chinese civilization to what is today.
That explains their submission to authority. India, on the other hand, the Brahmanic faiths completely molded to to a certain degree the political institution that we have now, which is fully corrupt based off of patronage, a lot of inherent corruption and tribal languages. It did not destroy the patrimonial states and linkages that had destroyed empires such as the Ottomans, such as the various caliphates, such as a few of the Chinese emperors and dynasties that once patrimonialism takes over the upper echelon frameworks of the political dynasties, it is bound to essentially corrode those institutions. The grant any that haven't wanted.
I wanted two different empires. This is the Gupta empire. But the problem was is that for India, due to their civilization and influences of religion, they didn't severely subjugate the kingdoms that they usurped. Hence why that once these Indian empires fell, these individualized kingdoms returned back to their place in comparison to the Chinese.
They completely destroyed individual families to ensure the full compliance of those people that they've occupied. They demonstrated just from those two comparisons about India still was dominated by smaller cultural clicks. Within itself was they agreed within Sakani China still has the dominant singleized singular that's not even word singular identity that's dominated by Chinese. From there you have the Islamic civilization which primarily spawned in the seventh century.
From there, through the first four caliphates and what had been considered a major phenomenon, the Islamic world expanded tremendously from the Arabian Peninsula, which is nowaday currently Saudi Arabia to the Iberian peninsula to Turkey and most importantly spread the influences in its religion Southeast Asia to even the Indian subcontinent, even in pockets of sub Saharan Africa due to trade routes and the the military armies of African Muslims, the Muslim kings. From there we have. But even within the video within the Islamic civilization you still have different cultures. Just because that the shared civilization identity is Islam does not mean that every culture within that umbrella has to be the same.
You have the Turkic, you have the Turkic culture, you have Persian, Iranian, you have Mela, you have Indonesian, you have Maghrebi, you have Mashriq, so on and so forth. L, Egyptian, Sudanese, Boritrian, so on and so forth. You have a variety of cultures that fall within the understanding of Islamic civilization that even today Islamophobia has no compatibility. That's not all Muslims are the same.
It's like how all individuals under the Hindu civilization are not all the same. The same thing can be said even with the notions of Western civilization. But Western civilization is vastly different and unique for multiple reasons that I will be getting to momentarily. The next civilization, excuse me that we're primarily talking about is the Orthodox.
Orthodox civilization is primarily the the Russian per se nowadays considered the Russian sphere. But the understandings of Orthodox civilization stems from the collapse of the Roman Empire and the establishment of Byzantium. And then when Byzantium fell to that of the Turkish invasions of Constantinople, the church that the Russian Orthodox Church inherited that notion Orthodoxy, to which we are today. And because of that Russia utilizes the Orthodox civilization to achieve its own political grand strategy goals abroad primarily in the Balkans as well as in the Baltic and in countries Ukraine using the the Orthodox Church as a means to invoke domestic instability due course of disinformation in order to hinder the advancements of the European Union but also to exert Russian influences and form Soviet satellite states that itself by utilizing the civilization, the demographics within the Orthodox civilization that's here Russia is able to essentially re establish what was formerly the Soviet KGB apparatus reignited and use it to Moscow's own advantage as a means to make up for its lack of military capacity to go against the United States.
And now you can't defeat asymmetrical warfare and Disinformation by conventional means. Therefore, Russia utilizes the Church, using Orthodox church as part of of its overall national defense measures abroad and within Russia for political reason, for political gain. The continual re election of Vladimir Putin to be able to discredit his opponents for the notions of Russian nationalism, making emphasis on notions back to Pierre the Great. That's just a pure example of how civilization, the concept of a civilization can be utilized to the advantage of a state, a strong state, that you can't combat the identity of a civilization with a gun.
You can't. It's not going to work. Civilizations are permanent, they remain, they evolve, they're fluid, pure. But it's really hard to defeat the civilization in compares to defeating a country, a state or the destruction of society, whatever case may be.
A civilization is historic that will remain as identities comparable to their nature. And with that we can move into something that's much more pertinent and much more relatable. And that's the Western civilization, which primarily dated back to the 18th century. So 97, 700, 800.
The Western civilization is rather interesting as Western civilization pertains to primarily most countries for the most part that have been either directly occupied, heavily influenced or molded by the former Western European empires. So now today, Post World War II, it's more so transatlantic, so Anglo American. But the understandings of the Western civilization can incorporate Central and South America based off of the individual notions of what exactly is included within civilization. That is key, that is important, that we have to understand that civilization is very hard to determine.
Oh, this is the set definition of a civilization because it's extremely nuanced. You can use geography, you can use topography, you can use language and culture. You do anthropology, you do a lot of things. But at the end of the day, it comes down to what is it?
What is your exact definition of a civilization. Take out, for example, when we look at the different geographical continents. This is North America, this is South America, this is Asia, Europe, so on and forth. This is the Middle East.
Well, to me personally, the Middle east is just lost in Asia. It's not exactly the Middle east and it's just a continuation of Asian continent. But the concept of the Middle east was more so a geopolitical notion that was crafted in order to distinguish the geostrategic. The geostrategic location of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Qatar, Bahrain, so on and so forth.
It was to a lot of people, the middle of the east towards North Vietnam, Eurasia, which would be in a different episode when we talk about The Mackinder geopolitical theory of the heartland, which was the precursor to the understanding of classical geopolitics. But back to understanding the West. Out of all the different civilizations that we have, the west is the only one that's really known by a single direction. And it's only primarily because what it refers to is not defined by a particular religion, language, geography, political structure, but primarily due to the understandings of where the origins of the inherited political institutions stems from.
And that was primarily Western Europe. Through this concept of the Western civilization, you also get the understandings of the concept of this is Westernization, which is used to primarily discredit American foreign policy within the Eastern Hemisphere. Starting from the Middle east and Africa, targeted towards China, Russia. To alter political, economic, cultural institutions, identities and frameworks against the very inherited historical institutions.
For example, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the invasion of Gandhist in 2001, the bombings in Pakistan, as well as even the Marshall Plan. To assist Europe post World War II to provide an economic and financial stimulus. But under the direction and molding of the United States. That's all that.
That is apparently. But other than the Western Empire, the Western civilization within it, you have the notions of individualism. You get the concepts of rule of law. You.
You get those notions of freedom and equality of you are. You are the possessor of your own happiness, you can acquire private property. But all of this was due to continual cultural and social changes under the frameworks of inherited civilization traits. And the main civilization trait was individualism.
And because of the Catholic Church wanting to destroy this patrimonial society of inherited lands, of concubine, the practice of having concubines, especially for pastors and priests, through notions of Catholic Church, through the uplifting of the role of the woman, through the return of the Justinian codes, when it came to torts and contracts, property and proper civil law and punishments. Misunderstandings of individualism became supplanted within Western European societies as pagan tribes, primarily in Germany, began to convert. And over the decades and centuries after the conversions of Germanic kings, implementations of Christian society, virtue, laws and values, individuals and flourish, which paved ways for capitalism. So in order for capitalism to be a civilization as a whole had to change, at least accept the societal notions of individualism.
That was very different from the realms of the. Of Eastern Orthodoxy, of the Hindu civilization, of the Cynic civilization, even of Latin American and African civilizations, the Japanese civilization, Islamic civilization, where there was not necessarily a promotion of individualism, there was more so what's called cesaro papatism which is essentially notions of that the king, the ruler dictated the ecclesiastical practices of the religious institutions and patrimonialism flourished. However, in all this, as we just stated that the characteristics of civilization at the very beginning was very influenced by religious practices. We're talking about primarily Christianity, Islamic Hinduism and Confucianism.
Buddhism isn't necessarily counted per se because it didn't really last in the Indian subcontinent. Once it moved elsewhere to other countries and South Southeast Asian Asia, Pacific, it either evaporated or it morphed into something else. Therefore it's not really counting per se as one of the major religions. It's a very major religion as far as we're talking about personal enlightenment and reaching your nirvana.
But as far as actual molding of civilization, identity is not one of the top four that we are really going to be concerned about. Civilizations through history grew, adapted primarily once they really started to interact with each other. And that really began around the year 1500. Everything before then, yes, civilizations have interacted with each other.
They went to war with each other, traded with each other. But for the most part prior to 1500, a lot of the conflicts were confined within the individual civilizations, the civilization umbrellas. That has to definitely be understood that a lot of, for example, in Western civilization a lot of the wars that happened between countries were part of that particular civilization. Then you start to get into the, the inter civilization wars.
When you start to get the Ottomans invading Europe, where you start to get the establishment of the caliphates invading the Iberian peninsula. We start to get into the Islamic civilization invading the Hindu subcontinent when you started to get the Japanese civilization invading the Cynic civilizations. Prior to 1500, a lot of the civilizations were rather isolated and separated because they did not have the technology to really communicate, collaborate, to integrate. They traded.
We see records of that since the Roman Empire where you have Roman boats going to current Sri Lanka or the western coast of India or making all the way to the, to the coasts of China, so the Chinese boats making their way to East Africa and then the caravans and the road and so on and so forth. We get that, we understand that, that's true. But a lot of the modes of civilization comes from eternal civilizational conflicts. That is one of what we see actually currently right now.
But more so we see it happening on notions of fault lines, growing fault lines. Whether that's within the civilizations of the United States where you have left, you have cultures of left wing politics or right wing politics and culture clashing because of the enhanced practices of de urbanization, the notions of the cultural importances of, let's say you have a particular culture that's within the city of Los Angeles or a particular city state and they have a very negative perception of those that work in the farmlands are agrarian, agrarian culture. We see a lot of that happening out in the West Coast. We see that now happening under COVID 19 lockdowns, where you have individuals, white Americans going on to say this is against essentially their identity, what's known as their freedoms.
The quote unquote seen signs of, you know, give me liberty or give me COVID 19 which I don't agree with. But that is understanding that a lot of conflicts happen within the frameworks of a civilization. From there, that gives us this understanding that it was not until the year 1500 that a lot of these civilizations, such as the Indian, the Mesoamerican, the valleys of the now civilization, Tigris, Euphrates, Mesopotamia, in this Yellow River Valley, they didn't interact, they didn't go to war with each other. However, as time went through, civilizations developed, constructed laws, institutions, identities formed.
That's when you started see conflict, conflicts emerged. The civilizations. When there starts to be a grown cleavage between interpretations of laws and cultural identities and representations, that in itself could be catastrophic. When we discuss about the understandings of technological innovations, how that's important for civilization brought the notions of Chinese vengeance.
Well, the empowerment of civilization is primarily banking on the implementation accessibility of technology. Printing was invented in China around the 8th century, but didn't arrive to Europe until the 11th century. Paper was established in 2nd century China, arrived in Japan in the 7th century, didn't make its way to the Central Asian tribes of kingdoms, empires, the 8th century. Then it made its way to North Africa in the 10th century, entered Europe through Spain in the 12th century and then arrived in northern Europe in the 13th century.
Gunpowder was made in the 9th century, so 800s made its way through the Ottoman Empire and then reached Europe in the 14th century. That shows you this should be an indication that the survival of civilizations is based upon the advancements of technological development. It is based off of this understanding that the international community is inherently anarchic. And because of this anarchic, I must maximize my security for my own protection, to pursue my own self interest.
That big said it's best to see, okay, well how is it that one civilization dominates another civilization and the perfect example of that would be the Western empire or the Western civilization. The Western civilization was able to do something that no other civilization was able to do on a large scale. Now that started in the 8th and 9th century. So now we're talking about 7 hundreds and 8 hundreds.
Because of the practices of individualism being present in Western Europe. Economic and financial development and primarily their institutions, but also their practices grew from the understandings of social freedom. To an extent that innovation through individualism will pave way to better develop. They granted think about that in the 8th century.
But because of the already established cultural notions of being an individual rather than a community, rather being communal, that you are directly responsible for your actions and forever action under its consequence. There's this underlying notion of being ambitious, of utilizing this individualism as a means to not only enhance my personal physical position, but also in a way to mold and to propel a culture. That is what essentially happened. And what's Europe prior to that West Europe was extremely underdeveloped because of it needed institutions such as the Catholic Church to institutionalize individualism.
Contract agreements, bringing back the Justinian codes to better mobilize institutional developments that would later all give rise to capitalism and eventually the Renaissance. Greater technological advancements such as deep water navigation, the concept of a blue ocean navy to expand maritime trading and maritime military development to be able to leave Western Europe and to go off to colonize and conquer other civilizations. But this came at a price of essentially utilizing the other technologies that they've acquired from other civilizations, Such as the Islamic empires, primarily the Ottomans or the Byzantine Byzantine Empire. We go further that or even the Chinese empires that were printing in gunpowder and paper.
We also look at well, what does it mean to be part of the Western civilization? Well, that really didn't primarily happen until the end of the 15th century. Starting by the 1400s, once the Moors were officially pushed out of the Iberian Peninsula, which is Spain and Portugal. That also incorporates when Portuguese sailed around Africa to get to Asia, the Asian spice trade to disrupt the Ottoman monopoly or the trading of spices across the spice road, the road in which China was sending silk and nuts and various spices, especially with India into Europe.
But they had to go throughout an empire who implemented high tariffs and export taxes onto import taxes to get through its lands onto goods that were going to Europe during the same price of 250 years. Starting off with in the 15th century. That is when you started to see Western Europe began to systematically up until the 1900s really to dominate the world and other civilizations. And I'm going to give you a few statistical facts that Europeans those are the former European colonies, including this include Americas control 35% of the Earth's land surface in the year 1800.
67% of the Earth's land surface In 1878, 84% of it in 1914. There's a gradual increase of occupation and ownership of land around the world infringing upon our civilizations, which is especially seen now in 21st century politics, even 20th century politics of Arab nationalism. To get rid of the Saxon co agreement, to get rid of the establishment of Israel to establish a vibrant Arab renaissance across the Middle east under his direction. Central American as South America military wounds in the 20th century they were employed by people such as the United States.
But look at Bolivar against this notion of being anti imperialist which means these notions that Western civilization is based on the notion of imperialism. To give you more statistics on the size of the Western civilization starting in the 15th century up until the 19th and 20th century. By 1920. I'm sorry, in 1800 the British Empire consisted of 1.5 billion square miles and 20 million people.
Well, by 1900 the Victorian Empire included 11 million square miles and 390 million people. Right. Granted that 300 of that 390 million people of 300 million were subcontinent but that still that should give you the statistical understanding of how big this understanding of the Russian civilization grew due to the systematic colonial apparatus of Russian empires such as England, France, Germany to an extent the Netherlands, Dutch Belgium, Portugal, Spain, United States. As Europe expanded, the Mesoamerican civilizations became practically extinct and that accelerated to the American manifest destiny.
Indian Islamic civilizations began to be subjugated at the will of the financial interests of Western civilization Africa. The African civilizations were subjugated primarily at the coast. First because it was seen as Western Africa was seen as a white man's grave due to the amount of diseases, but also that they were not immune to. They haven't had enough exposure to it.
But also because of the type of geographical environment that was present in West Africa. But then once they had been technology and they were able to effectively begin to combat those particular diseases, then that's when the interior of Africa began to be colonized primarily by the French and most African American. For essentially 400 years, the European civilization dominated the international community. And because of that domination, they intentionally established what will become international political, economic, financial institutions to ensure the continuation of their dominance.
That is the civilization legacy of the Washington Empire. And it's something that we take for granted today. Jeffrey Parker observed that the rise of the west depended upon the exercise of force, upon the fact that the military bounce into the Europeans and the habitat overseas was steadily tilting in favor of the former. The key to the Westerners success in creating the first truly Global empires between 1500 and 1750 depended upon precisely those improvements in the ability to wage war which have been termed the military revolution.
The expansion of the west was so facilitated by superiority and organization, discipline and training of his troops, and subsequently by the superior weapons, transport, logistics and medical services resulting from his leadership in the Industrial Revolution. Western civilization didn't win these wars against other civilizations simply by religious thoughts, political institutions, economic institutions, financial institutions, and won by a systematic overarching military campaign that exploited the military weaknesses of the other civilizations to ensure their own shared dominance in different ways. Some European countries were completely brutal their occupations. Others had a much more systematic approach, such as a marrying into the other civilization.
And then the new mixed race or the mixed ethnic offspring will become the new hierarch, the hierarch's ruling class of that particular civilization. You see that Central and South America, as well as the Caribbeans and in some cases in Africa with the French after the 1500s. The concept of civilization simply just Midwestern civilization. International law came from the halls of Western civilization, Western empires.
It came from the Westphalian dream. It came from this concept of quote, unquote, what it meant to be civilized. What expanded that civilization dominance was that these Western countries, because of now they're expansive around the world, they treated each other much more equally because of similar to the democratic. The democratic theory that democratic governments or societies will not go to war with other.
Granted, France and England have been at war God knows how long since the first time that they've really started to exploit North America. But it came to the constant understanding that they both militarily were around equity. It's similar how civilization development prior to 1500 was relatively flat. But then once the Industrial Revolution came, it skyrocketed and it continues to rise.
People began to get wealthier, militaries became more modern. Technology began to continuously not only be innovated, but imported and put to better use. All in all, this indication that civilization there's no such thing as mod within a civilization. No such thing can be no such thing.
There's no one single civilization that is 100% the same. Now you may say, what about the Chinese? What about the Japanese? They are truly homogeneous society, especially in Japan.
Sure, but just like Chinese, the Indians want civilization. The beginnings of Japan was the establishment of many different Japanese kingdoms. And it's a warring for the shogunate Japan. And because of that, Japan and China have had similar developments as well.
In that capacity, that war established and rather accelerated the centralized state India religion established eventually the centralized state but remained the primary influencer and preserver for Indian polys and Indian kingdoms and individualized Indian cultures based on location of the subcontinent. Islam. Although the caliphates and Ottoman Empire expanded from Persia and Western India to that Iberian peninsula, within those caliphates substantially different cultures from the Maghrebi in Northern Africa to Mashriq to the Levantines, so on back at that time, Babylonians, so on and so forth to Jews to Palestinians to pagans at that time. Christians.
Within these civilizations are different pockets of other cultural identities. So what does that have to do now with the first century civilization? Civilization identity has crafted some of now the most unstable pockets and geopolitical trends. And it's become a trend that is very dangerous, that has put to risk the destruction of stable political and social institutions.
We see now Russia utilizing the Kremlin as well as the Orthodox Church to seep its influences in the Balkans as well as the Baltics. So it's Ukraine. We see in the Hindu civilization, primarily in the India as a continent you have Hindu nationalism killing innocent Muslims at the expense of Narendra Modi. At the same time you have the established Islamic fault line between the Hindu civilization and Islamic civilization between India and Pakistan that hundreds of thousands of people have died for.
You saw In World War II the violent invasion of the Senate civilization by the Japanese civilization. You see now in Africa the unfoldings of the artificial borders. You see Boko Haram, which was originally a Nigerian insurgency, now becoming a Sahel region insurgent terrorism catastrophe. You see now in Libya the once the Western civilization ousted Muammar Gaddaddafi.
We have now cesspool a radical Islamic recruitment of Qatar and Hezbollah from Al Qaeda, Taliban, Islamic State, various tribal militias, the Gaddafis under General Haftar, the UN backed government, Tripoli. You have continual organized crime destroying the capabilities of the rule of law. In central South America you have a Tribor area where in between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay that is the direct source of over a hundred billion dollars in black market trading. Civilization has to be respected within international politics.
This notion of globalization cannot work. It won't. The reason why it won't is because of the notions of you cannot erase an identity. The minute you try to erase an identity, it's the very moment that you start to essentially incapacitate the natural desires of being self acknowledged of who you are as a person and the society that you were brought into.
Civilization is a power force. We see this pushback in the European Union by right wing nationalists and populists who are I am Hungarian, I am Polish, I am Greek, I'm Italian, I am American. You had Islamic civilization and Turkey clashing with Greek civilization constantly. Now especially that has increased after the Syrian mass migration through Turkey into Europe.
When civilizations start to believe that their mere existence is threatened, violence will ensue. And it only takes an individual to exploit those notions of assumptions of mere extinction of who you are as a culture to usurp the power that comes with fear. When the future of civilization has now become a no. You look at the rise of right wing nationalism in the United States as being the single most threat to national security in the United States where now more people die or right with nationalism and Islamic terrorism in the United States, this is a natural occurrence.
It is a pendulum that has primarily survived the test of time. Societies may die, but civilization remains. And as you see, the 21st century will be a century. Oh, as Samuel Hunting stated of civilization clashes, these these solutions can be developed by overall better evaluation acknowledgment of what is comprised in civilization.
And once you determine awareness and you better understand it of a civilization, the better off we could potentially be. As the international community is purely anarchic as no one single political entity could oversee all 180 plus countries, countries will seek to align with those who share common interests, common intrigues and common enemies. The time of American Burmese is fast declining. It doesn't have to by the days of the western civilizations are currently being challenged by the counter reactions not just within the civilization but from other reawakening civilizations as well.
This has been the pivot behind the whole sinus of Dao. And I surely look forward to our next off script not practiced genuine authentic conversation on the importance of political geography in the 21st century.