European Expansionism and the Influences of Religion, Military and Economics - Research Paper Example

?European Expansionism and the Influences of Religion, Military and Economics. The principle of expansionism governed Europe from the 16th to 19th centuries. Expansionism legitimizes the increase of one’s own borders, widening a ruler’s dominion at the expense of other sovereign states. These conquered territories would be annexed and incorporated by a process called imperialism. Owing to the monarch’s sole and indisputable sovereignty, the unilateral decisions made were considered unalterable and ultimately beneficial to the nation’s interests. This magnitude of power residing in the king was absolute. “Russia watched its (European) neighbors and crafted its own brand of absolutism. In the process, Tsar Alexei legally combined millions of slaves and free peasants into a single serf class bound to the land of their aristocratic masters.”1 European nations, inclusive of Russia constructed their own versions of empire which ended up stratifying society as states became hotly embattled as they competed with one another for land, resources and power. Extension of kingdoms inevitably breeds imperialism. Through his series of conquests, Napoleon “came near to establishing France as the sole power of the Western world.”2 The French Napoleonic empire soon stands as a threat against the other European nations as they conjecture that a “reinvigorated France might pose a threat to England’s colonial empire.”3 Religious, military and intellectual movement fostered and facilitated European expansion. Patronized by Christianity, European rulers would empower themselves claiming their own authority as divinely ordained. European leaders employed religion as “the cultural and organizational foundations for … European imperialism, if only to facilitate… evangelization and conversion to Christianity”4 Acting on the power of divine right, Christianity strengthens its hegemony by nullifying and suppressing other traditions. As a result, European nations gain the ascendancy through wars and forced conversions. Seeing themselves as royal representatives selected by Providence, the monarchs were “ministers of God and lieutenants on Earth5.” Therefore, being subject to God equates to being subject to the European king. Divine right decrees that God bestowed entitlement to rulers to hold sway over their states. This divinely appointed king is then assured of unswerving loyalty and unquestionable authority. Since Christianity ruled religio-politically in Europe, the king sees it as his duty to extend not only his kingdom, but to proselytize the vanquished and have them accept his faith. The Chronicle of Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1798) cites Napoleon espousing the belief in divine right since he was “appointing (him)self controller of God’s secrets.”6 Encountering devout Muslims in Egypt, they view Napoleon as attempting to usurp an authority that belonged to God alone. Other evidences of the prevalence of the concept of divine right are manifest in Prince Klemens von Metternich’s Results of the Congress at Laybach (1821) in which Metternich pronounces the certainty of Providence creating and supporting the emperor Tsar Alexander of Russia and the king of Naples addressed in his correspondence.7 This magnitude of political power was total, especially coupled with a preponderant military. One of the predominant ways of control a people is to overpower and conquer them by force. Kings implemented duress through open warfare to re-align nations with their own political designs. The 16th to the 19th century was a period in which might was right. Military prowess was secured via state-of-the-art navies and expert soldiers and cutting-edge martial tactics and arms; hence one sees that “Europeans enjoyed an advantage in terms of military technology”8. The British navy and the Spanish armada were held in great respect for their nautical proficiency. Napoleon Bonaparte was a military general with exceeding ambition to reign over the world. Very swiftly, Napoleon “succeeded in defeating Austria, Russia, Prussia” by military confrontation9 . Napoleon’s marches his almost 600,000 man army across Europe and Russia subduing kingdoms and conquering territory after territory. In his exploits, might and “military genius brought victory and ever new conquests on the Continent.”10 While waging war, European empires persist in subjugating inferiors by seizing power, self-appropriating resources and land, capturing prisoners of war as slaves and supplanting native government administrations. Once the military succeeded in repressing the people, assimilation of thought and culture replace the original, the colonized thinks similar to the colonist. A method of solidifying power is assimilation of thought and culture, inculcating the minds of the subjected peoples with a particular ideology. Instilling one’s subjects was the prime method of guaranteeing control. Between the 16th to 19th centuries, prevailing European thought corresponds with those of the age of reason. Esteemed as revolutionary, the age of reason or the enlightenment ushers in new ideals such as science, separation of church and state, liberty, justice and redefined sovereignty. In the Enlightenment era, with an amputated monarchy (literally speaking), absolutist monarchs and church-led states fall into unpopularity. Soldiers and colonial settlers transfer their way of thinking as they “helped to spread the political notions and social legislation that were the hallmark of modern democratic, civil and economic freedoms.”11 Thus, the proliferation of ideas resulted from imperialism. The tenets of reason pioneered by the French were carried even into Russia during Napoleon’s conquest since his reign “served to disseminate and root ‘The Rights of Man and the Citizen’ in many parts of Europe.” 12 The Europeans supported the revolutionaries who served as “missionaries in the production of global knowledge during the Enlightenment”13 leading others to adopt their worldviews and deepen the imperial roots in foreign lands. French philosophes gain wide currency internationally as thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke blaze a trail in terms of political reasoning. Historical documents such as Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) and John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government (1690). Leviathan (1651) is a critical intellectual work which argues for expansionism. Hobbes sets forth that to have dominion over other men he counts as an intrinsic property of man’s nature. Therefore war is the natural product of man’s belligerence, his passion for self aggrandizement, and his inclination to seem superior to others. Laws and government are existent and in force to protect and curb these lusts of man. The motives of peace are judged as the fear of death and the desire to peace to gain materialistic ends and enjoy comforts. Absolute monarchy is upheld as a regime which fosters relative peace and provides protection because it is believed that the supremacy of one counterbalances and checks the strivings of men among themselves. On the other hand, in John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government (1690), Locke treats with the negative side of expansionism. He disagrees that a sovereign who invades another’s territory has justified right of rule since “the aggressor…can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think, that robbers and pyrates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master.”14 These thoughts worked both to stabilize rulership and at the same time, undermine the colonizer’s rule as liberty and independence become catchphrases. Subsequent to this intellectualism, economic expansion was key to benefitting from imperialism. Economic considerations such as mercantilism and capitalism also factor in European expansionism. Mercantilism is an economic ideology which prevails, positing that the prosperity of a nation depends on its supply of capital; hence, one observes that European colonizers are spurred on to realize profits to increase the nation’s wealth. Materialistic acquisition and aggrandizement of the nation are primordial in the administration of government. To stabilize foreign rule, European monarchs would integrate home policies and extend it to the annexed territories. In Jean Baptiste Colbert’s Instructions 1667, 1668) and A Royal Ordnance (1669), Colbert ensures “the government’s intervention in the economy (going) hand in hand with strengthening the king’s rule at home and abroad…For this reason, he extended mercantilist policies to France’s colonies in North Americas and the Caribbean islands.”15 Economic management abroad could not be left to chance especially since the territories were widely distanced from the mother state. Extension of policies would buttress the state’s power and promote unity. The French Empire at the time was fragile and so bureaucratic measures were taken to fuel and maintain control over the economy. In Jacob Walter’s The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier, the soldier reports of colonized “areas that were densely populated and on a whole, were quite prosperous, with an elaborate network of traders and stores…this “system” worked fairly well.”16 Composed by Adam Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) is a historical text which advances the idea of capitalism and laissez-faire liberalism17. Both economic philosophies lay the groundwork for European government and economy. Smith tends to revive a liberalism of a country’s local economy and the international market. Preceding capitalism and laissez-faire liberalism is a restrictive and imperialistic order controlled by the State. Smith’s view is to encourage a liberalization of the world market with no barriers to trade. Instead of an insular, local market, Smith believes in borderless free-trade economics. Unfortunately, both economic systems herald exploitation and commodification of man as “the use of slavery resulted in severe economic and political inequality which led to underdevelopment”18 and the advent of the industrial age forces millions into factory hands. Slavery/human trafficking and profiteering dwarf all other moral and humanitarian concerns, compressing the masses into impoverishment and subjecting them to political oppression. Bibliography: Andrade, Tonio. “Beyond Guns, Germs, and Steel: European Expansion and Maritime Asia, 1400-1750.” Journal of Early Modern History 14, no. 2, (2010):165-186. Haynes, J.A. “Notes on the Philosophy and Method of Science.” History of Economic Thought, University of Toronto, (2010). Lualdi, Katherine. Sources of The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures: A Concise History, Bedford/St. Martin's; 2nd edition, (2004) Nunn, Nathan. The Importance of History for Economic Development, Harvard University, Department of Economics, Harvard University and NBER, Cambridge, (2009). doi: 10.1146/annurev.economics.050708.143336. . Offen, Karl. “Historical Geography I: Vital Traditions.” Progress in Human Geography, (2011). doi:10.1177/0309132511417964 Stamatova, Peter. “Activist Religion, Empire, and the Emergence of Modern Long-Distance Advocacy Networks.” American Sociological Review, 75 no. 4, (2010): 607-628. doi:10.1177/0003122410374083 Walter, Jakob. Marc Raeff. The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier, NY: Penguin Books, 1993. Ziegler, Herb. Jerry Bentley. Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past (From 1000 to 1800, (2006): 684. Read More