Douglas M. Peers is associate professor of history at the University of Calgary. He is currently completing a study of the conquest of India.
Why the West Has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam
by victor davis hanson
London, Faber and Faber, 2001. 478 pages
Hardback: £20.00
Historians, broadly speaking, can be classified under two general headings. There are the lumpers, sometimes referred to as parachutists, who view history in macroscopic terms and determinedly search out long-term trends in the expectation of identifying historical rules. Set against them are the splitters or truffle-hunters, who delight in rummaging around archives, seeking insights from the local and the particular. For much of the past century the splitters or truffle-hunters have enjoyed ascendancy, as the increasingly specialised nature of historical enquiry, coupled with the ever-multiplying volume of archival data, persuaded most scholars to refine their focus more sharply. The sheer weight of information put off all but the most brave (or foolhardy) from trying to stitch together the burgeoning number of detailed snapshots into a single panoramic view. But a number of parachutists have been spotted over the past decade, all of whom are intent on isolating the driving forces behind historical developments, and thus on providing an explanation for the ultimate question: how do we account for the rise of the West (and concomitantly the decline or at the very least the stagnation of the non-West)?
The revival of Western historical meta-narratives owes much to contemporary debates over globalisation and in particular to the efforts being made to refute criticisms of globalisation. Such criticisms are based on the assumption that globalisation is little more than Westernisation, and that the latter is itself simply an updated version of imperialism. Inspired by the writings of Michel Foucault, Edward Said and Antonio Gramsci (to name but a few), critics of globalisation have challenged a number of the core assumptions underpinning Western society and historiography. They have not only emphasised the coercive and exploitative relationships upon which imperialism and globalisation depended, but they have also attacked the very foundations of Western self-esteem by suggesting that other peoples did not necessarily want to become like us. Commentators at both ends of the political spectrum had hitherto subscribed to the belief that non-Western societies not only wanted to become like us, but could do so provided the appropriate institutions were put in place and the people given sufficient guidance.
Such optimistic forecasts have, however, been overtaken by recent events. Ethnic violence, ecological devastation, economic stagnation, the growing gap between rich and poor both within and between nations, and the apparent powerlessness of individuals and even governments in the face of such crises have called into question a number of the basic tenets of Western liberal capitalism and social democracy alike. The subsequent crisis of faith among the academic middle ground has seen the battlefield abandoned largely to postcolonial critics and neo-conservatives, who despite their many differences share one thing in common: a belief in the historical particularity of the rise of Western domination. The tragic events of September 2001 have given the quest to understand this rise a renewed purchase on the public imagination, and what were often rather speculative arguments have been ransacked for guidance in a crisis-wracked world.
This return to big history has been signalled most clearly with the recent publication of major works aimed at that all-important but all too often elusive general reader. Samuel Huntington, Jared Diamond and David Landes have all published books that provide explanations not only for why the West became dominant, but also of the kind of threats it might face in the future.1 Their explanation of Western dominance usually lies in some combination of factors such as superior technology, favourable geographical location, intellectual vigour and a willingness to take economic risks.
Victor Davis Hanson in his Why the West Has Won provides another perspective on this question: for him the key to Western dominance lies in Western military culture, or more particularly, in what he identifies as “civic militarism”, a uniquely Western cultural formation with a pedigree stretching back to ancient Greece. What does Hanson understand by “the West”? His definition is a very conventional one. The term refers
to the culture of classical antiquity that arose in Greece and Rome; survived the collapse of the Roman Empire; spread to western and northern Europe; then during the great periods of exploration and colonization of the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries expanded to the Americas, Australia, and areas of Asia and Africa; and now exercises global political, economic, cultural, and military power far greater than the size of its territory or population might otherwise suggest. (P. xv)
In Hanson’s view, Mars, not money or machinery, is ultimately what mattered. He argues that the chief advantage enjoyed by the West was its willingness not only to inflict, but to accept horrendous casualties. This meant that for the West, warfare could become much more lethal and decisive than for its opponents who, despite their individual bravery, were not as well prepared for total war.
Close scrutiny of a range of battles allows Hanson to distinguish between military cultures, for battles offer the ultimate “cultural crystallization” (p. 9). He offers an impressive range of case studies spanning several continents and millennia: Salamis (480 bce), Gaugamela (331 bce), Cannae (216 bce), Poitiers (732 ce), Lepanto (1571), Tenochtitlán (1520), Rorke’s Drift (1879), Midway (1942) and the Tet Offensive (1968). In all these battles, victory was ultimately dependent upon warriors raised within the traditions of civic militarism. At Gaugamela (near present-day Irbil in northern Iraq), Greek hoplites proved their worth against Persian forces. At Poitiers, a Frankish army built around farmers willing to protect their farms defeated the Saracens. At Tenochtitlán (Mexico City), Montezuma was defeated by European infantry who carried with them “the traditions of free enquiry, rationalism and success”. For Hanson, the West beat the rest because its soldiers were more committed to the public good, and that was a commitment unique to Western society:
The dramatic European expansion of the sixteenth century may well have been energized by Western excellence in firearms and capital ships, but those discoveries were themselves the product of a long-standing Western approach to applied capitalism, science and rationalism not found in other cultures. (P. 2)
Capitalism, science and rationalism not only better prepared soldiers and societies for collective effort, but also laid the foundations for the technological innovations that made Western armies deadlier than their non-Western enemies. For Hanson, the “military Revolution … was no accident, but logical given the Hellenic origins of European civilization” (p. 20).
Hanson’s juxtaposition of ancients and moderns is jarring in places. Do hoplites and American GIs really have that much in common? Would, for example, their values and worldviews be mutually intelligible? An allegedly shared “civic militarism” would seem to suggest they would, but how can we be certain? And what about Hanson’s claim that the British victory at Rorke’s Drift was attributable to the British army’s drill and discipline, bespeaking the traditions of egalitarianism and civic militarism? Few historians would consider the nineteenth-century British army a democratic institution, and the British and Zulu armies of that era probably had more in common than Hanson acknowledges.
It is also doubtful whether the civic militarism schema is applicable to what can be viewed as a quintessential example of Western military domination, namely, the British conquest of India. Hanson’s model of the volunteer soldier yeoman, so central to the traditions of civic militarism, would appear to describe better several of Britain’s opponents than the soldiers of Britain and the East India Company. Britain conquered India with a mercenary army, comprising European soldiers driven by desperation and Indian recruits won over by British pay scales. Moreover, if we look closely at British and Indian military cultures, the argument that there is some kind of inherent difference between Western and non-Western military cultures seems increasingly untenable, thereby threatening the dichotomy of West versus the rest upon which Hanson’s study relies.
Questions can also be raised about Hanson’s sources, for they are almost entirely Western in origin and were written by the victors. This is unavoidable in some cases, but even when the vanquished have been archivally silenced, the reports of the victors must be read against the grain, as, for example, in James Belich’s fine work on the Maori Wars.2
Hanson repeatedly reminds his reader that while he believes culture is key, he does not intend that culture be interpreted in moral or ethical terms. It is salutary not only to be reminded of the sheer brutality of warfare (something all too often lost in the anaesthetising works of many military historians), but also to be told bluntly that what made the West so militarily lethal was its separation of war from ethics. This is indicated in the book’s subtitle: for Hanson it a question of carnage and culture, not carnage or culture. He wishes to strip Western culture of any claims to moral or ethical superiority (at least on the battlefield) and convincingly demonstrates that savagery in warfare is the outcome and not the antithesis of Western cultural supremacy:
The Western way of war is so lethal precisely because it is so amoral—shackled rarely by concerns of ritual, tradition, religion, or ethics, by anything other than military necessity. (P. 21)
Yet in trying to emphasise just how successfully Western societies separated war from ethics, Hanson discounts alternative Western traditions, including those of the just war. Consequently, he represents Western military practices and beliefs as much more homogenous and uncontested than they were in practice. Also, by trying to write of war in morally neutral terms, Hanson’s overall perspective becomes rather Darwinian—a tendency even more pronounced as his discussion approaches the present.
This can be seen most clearly in his chapter on the Tet Offensive, arguably the weakest section in the book. He provides no new information on the battle, instead offering a rehash of the old argument that the United States was defeated at home, not in South-East Asia (“The conduct of Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, and the Berrigan brothers may have been treasonous”, p. 434). He proceeds to suggest that unless Americans rediscover and commit themselves to the ideals of civic militarism, their power and prestige in the world will suffer because consumerism has weakened their society. From that perspective, this book is a call to arms. Parallels can be drawn with arguments put forward by pundits like Robert Kaplan, Dinesh D’Souza and the British diplomat Robert Cooper, who have all advocated some form of “benign imperialism” to bring order and civilisation to the world.
Despite his efforts to separate culture from ethics, Hanson still views culture in a very positivist way. In fact, he subscribes to the same Weberian trinity of scientific enquiry, democracy and capitalism that has proven so attractive to David Landes and others. Civic militarism as defined here depends upon consensual government, secularism, rational enquiry, and above all, the love of freedom occasioned by the vigour of the middling ranks of society. For Hanson, “Freedom turns out to be a military asset” (p. 55). Such familiar echoes of Western exceptionalism are ultimately and inextricably lodged within the historical context in which they emerged and from which Hanson, like Landes and those before him, cannot and will not escape.
The rise of history as a professional discipline was simultaneous with the great surge of European imperialism. This was no coincidence, for the explanation for empire and its subsequent rationalisation depended upon the articulation of a notion of progress that not only explained European dominance, but sanctioned European claims to intervene in order to provide non-Europeans with directions as to the proper course of history. History, then, was complicit with imperialism, and while this relationship has never been completely severed, until recently it was becoming more self-reflexive. Hanson’s work rejects this trend, for he not only accepts the inevitability of Western domination, on account of the military power unleashed by civic militarism, but detects within it appropriate codes of conduct for societies and individuals to follow.
As a result, the polemical fallout of Why the West Has Won will probably overshadow its historical impact, but perhaps only among the already converted. Although this is not altogether surprising and may even be unavoidable given the author’s ideological predispositions, it is nevertheless unfortunate as a number of his insights, once wrenched free of their polemical groundings, merit close consideration. In particular, his emphasis on military culture as a means of comparing and contrasting societies has much to commend it, as does his timely insistence that military historians must be mindful of the brutal realities of war.
Endnotes
1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996); Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997); David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Are Some Rich and Others So Poor? (New York: Little, Brown, 1998).
2. James Belich, The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict: The Maori, the British, and the New Zealand Wars (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990).
