|
|
|
Audience for a Giraffe: European Expansionism and the Quest for the Exotic
ERIK RINGMAR
National Chiao Tung University
| There were, broadly speaking, two great waves of European expansionism—one in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century and the other in the nineteenth century. In the first wave the world was "discovered" and then explored; in the second wave, it was decisively invaded and occupied. People in other parts of the world have certainly engaged in similar expansionist enterprises—Huns and Mongols, Muslims or Indic groups in Southeast Asia, among others—but for some reason the results were never the same.1 What we ended up with, and what we still have, is an economic, political, and cultural world system with a center in Europe and in the successors to its North American colonies. |
1
|
|
The question is only how these two waves should be explained. The most common explanations are economic. Thus the first wave of expansion is seen to correspond to the commercial revolution that was taking place in Europe at this time.2 It was the revival of trade, the argument goes, that brought European economies to life, that boosted the power of cities and the middle class—and it was the insatiable demand of the middle class for foreign goods that made the Europeans look for trade routes across the ocean. Similarly, the second wave is seen to correspond to the Industrial Revolution. Here it was the invention of the factory system and Europe's vastly expanded productive power that created an unprecedented demand both for raw material and for export markets. Reacting to these economic imperatives, the Europeans sallied forth. |
2
|
|
It would be foolish to reject these explanations, but it is at the same time necessary to complement them. If we accept that a European desire for exotic goods provided a rationale for the search for trade routes, we still need to explain where this desire came from. And if we accept that industrialization led to a need for foreign markets, we still need to explain why this need took the form of imperial occupation. The problem in both cases is an excess of uncertainty and risk. The Europeans never knew what they could expect from their foreign ventures—whether they would lead to profits or losses—and under such circumstances expansionism is necessarily less than fully rational. Under conditions of severe uncertainty and risk, economic reasons cannot be all that imperative. |
3
|
|
Compare the case of China. Until the middle of the fifteenth century the Chinese had travelled far and wide—Java, the Indian Ocean, even Arabia and East Africa.3 In fact, if they only had arrived a few decades earlier, Portuguese ships traveling eastward could easily have bumped into Chinese ships, traveling westward, somewhere along Africa's eastern coast.4 But then the Chinese explorations suddenly stopped. No more official missions were dispatched, foreign commercial contacts were reduced to a minimum, and eventually all overseas travel and trade were banned. Despite the benefits of trade and the temptation of foreign possessions, the Chinese state decided that the costs outweighed the benefits. Looked at from a Chinese perspective it is clear that there was nothing imperative about what the Europeans did. On the contrary, the European expansion becomes a puzzle in need of an explanation. |
. . . |
There are about 9388 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
