Other Civilizations: The Vicissitudes in the Concept of Civilization

There were other claimants other than Europe to the awareness that their society was
different from that of the barbarians outside. Thus, the Chinese saw themselves as
inhabiting a “Middle Kingdom,” the Romans spoke of the Pax Romana, and the Arabs,
with Ibn Khaldun leading the way, thought in terms of the city and the nomad.
However, this recognition should not obscure the difference: “civilization” as a reified
term emerges in the eighteenth century, in the West, and only then is applied
retroactively to other “civilizations.” In other words, older civilizations can only be
seen through the reified term that came after their existence, i.e, through a European
lens!
Two points are important here.
The first is that there were civilizations, great and small, before the European in the
eighteenth century. To varying degrees, these civilizations were aware of their status,
indeed, self-aware as to their “superiority” to other or noncivilized groups.
The second point, however, is that the degree of self-awareness, and the context in
which it developed, which led to the reification of civilization with all its claims, such
as we have been grappling with in the preceding chapters, emerged only a few centuries
ago, in a European form. This statement does not denigrate what we now view as other
civilizations. It simply places the concept of civilization in a historical frame and allows
for its consideration on a global basis. (91-92)

D.Salameh
 Napoleon and the Baptism of Ancient Egypt: Domino Effect

In 1798, Napoleon landed in Egypt. Although his purpose was conquest, as part of
the battle against the British, another intention was the acquisition of scientific
knowledge. He was accompanied by 152 scientists, scholars, and other officials to
help him “explore” the country.
In the event, Napoleon did not hold on to Egypt. However, with the discovery of the
Rosetta Stone in 1799 and its subsequent translation, a key was unexpectedly found
into a whole other world: that of ancient Egyptian civilization. Thus was conquered
a long-ago “land” and “life” of past times that became part of European
civilization’s “holdings,” stored in museums, archived in books, and even given
visual representation in Paris in the form of an obelisk in the place de la Concorde.
A few decades after the discovery of ancient Egypt, similar finds were made in other
parts of what has come to be called the Middle East. Mesopotamia (as named by the
Greeks, but variously called Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria by its
inhabitants) became an equal claimant to the title of first civilization.
Both Egypt and Mesopotamia became contenders for the title of having been the
first to have an alphabet and other manifestations of civilization. (92-94)

D.Salameh
 Conditions of Civilization

Why do we need to talk about the conditions of civilization? We need to look at

beginnings since the recovery/discovery/revival/modernization of other civilizations will
be seen through the reified concept of civilization.
The primary condition for the emergence of “civilization” was a major climate change
about 12,000 years ago, which made possible a profound shift in the condition of the
human species, so that hunter-gatherers gradually became agriculturists. In other words,
this led hunter-gatherers to settle in fixed abodes and to raise crops and domesticate
other animals. With this step, societies arose with larger populations.
The transformation followed many of the features that we recognize as forming a
civilization: fixed settlements, shortly becoming cities, walled about; surplus production,
allowing for different social strata—warriors, priests, artisans, and traders, along with
farmers; an agricultural surplus that permitted differentiated power and division of labor,
as well as complicated crafts and art, leading to striking intellectual and material
changes, such as priestly religions and technical innovations of various sorts; the
development of early “sciences” such as astronomy; an increasing population; and the
development of large armies and more effective weapons.
The civilizations that resulted seem to have had had an inherent dynamism, leading to
growth, extension, and then decline and fall. (Another way of looking at this dynamism
might be to view it as a process of accivilization.) Although Homo sapiens seems to have
originated in Africa, the developments listed above were mainly in what has come to be
called the Fertile Crescent, or the Middle East. (94, 128)

D.Salameh
 Archeology: Reviving the Past and Reconstructing the Present

The specifics of archaeological excavations are constantly challenging our received ideas of when
something first appeared and where and how it spread—in general pushing everything further into
the past.
These ancient civilizations are only known to us as such as a result of the workings of European
civilization. These civilizations are not “native” to the peoples now inhabiting the areas in which
the past is being dug up (although increasingly these peoples are now repossessing their own past)
but have been conjured up by prehistorical and historical studies that constitute part of what
present-day civilization is about.
In its self-reflexivity, resulting in the eighteenth-century invention of the concept of civilization,
Europe prepared the way for its relations with other civilizations. This could be, for example,
in the form of coexistence,
attempted conquest,
simply keeping them at arm’s length,
or combinations of the three.
What was unavoidable was the recognition of these “other civilizations.” In the case of ancient
civilizations, they were literally excavated from the past, and thus given new life. In this revived
form, they were ingested into European civilization itself, cannibalized, so to speak. Only then
were they returned to humanity at large. (95)

D.Salameh
 An Illustrative Example

Its prehistory: rich lands made possible by the periodic flooding of the Nile, turned to agriculture, the raising of domesticated animals,
the building of houses and towns, the use of pottery vessels for the storage of food, the weaving of cloth, and the shaping of tools.
Artificial irrigation and land reclamation provided great surpluses beyond subsistence needs.
Beginning of history: Early Dynastic Period then Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. Egypt waxed and waned over the centuries and
millennia. Sometimes its center was in Lower Egypt, near the Delta, sometimes in Upper Egypt, that is, south of the cataracts and toward
Nubia. At different times, different cities were the major locus of power: Heliopolis, Memphis, Herakleopolis, Thebes.
What characterized this civilization? We only know about it through its remains and ruins (Egypt was gifted with stone).
Egyptians were as much concerned with death as with life: built sumptuous tombs (pyramids), replete with the goods of this world to
sustain them in the next. Despite consecration of death, they finance an affluent life for the rich and a relatively secure life for the poor.
And even to mount expeditions to conquer other peoples and lands.
Religion and its role: religion is itself “civilized,” while simultaneously acting as a civilizing influence. The gods themselves become
guardians of a lawful and moral order.
Other features: writing and alphabets, largest buildings (pyramids, obelisks, and temples), Calendars and the use of astronomy,
government and its various agencies, supervising land reclamation, the provision of food, the shipments of grain, trade in general,
fighting and warfare, clothing, jewelry, and art.
The most important point to stress is that it was both discovered and conquered by the European civilization of modern times, i.e., we
recognize it as a civilization only in retrospect. (95-100)

D.Salameh
 Japan and the Question of Acculturation

Either as a new conception of their past or as an aspiration to a future, numerous non-Western societies suddenly had to
cope with the question of civilization: Japan, China and Thailand.
Perry’s ships opened up Japan to Western commerce and civilization. How do other cultures and societies, with their own
claims to being “civilized” respond to this opening? In what manner do they adapt, adopt, or reject? Some wished to close
the doors, both materially and spiritually. Others wanted to espouse a combination of “Eastern morality and Western
technology.” Others saw that a spiritual, or cultural, revolution was as necessary as a scientific one. While some saw that the
only way Japan could keep its independence and take its rightful place in history was fully to embrace Western civilization.
The subject of civilization is strongly connected to the theme of modernity (doubts generated from within oneself; rejection
of the binding authority of tradition). In some cases, the two are almost treated as synonyms. Perhaps a subtle difference is
that civilization is a state to be achieved, and modernity is a process by which to achieve it.
The only way that Japan could take its rightful place in the international system was by becoming “civilized.” This, in turn,
meant adopting the standards of civilization that defined the international system; and these, of course, meant the European
definition. Civilization meant changes in institutions, such as the penal system and its prisons. It meant establishing a
diplomatic corps. It meant the embrace of a wide range of military initiatives, borrowing from the West. And it meant an
openness to Western thought and culture of an almost unprecedented nature. Japan became civilized through acculturation.
(100-109)

D.Salameh
Summary: Europe and the Panorama of Civilization
Once the notion of civilization emerged, then, as we have seen, “lost civilizations” could
also be found.
An example of lost civilization is ancient Egypt. However, that great civilization is no
more. We know it only in the objects excavated by imperialist spades, and their resurrection
by the archaeologists and linguists working from the end of the eighteenth century until the
present. In itself that civilization certainly no longer exists in twenty-first-century Egypt. If
the latter can claim a form of civilization, it is in terms of somehow belonging to something
we now call modern civilization. In this sense, it is more like Japan, China, Thailand, and
other countries that we might have considered, an-“other” civilization going through the
process of accivilization.
Japan is an example of an-“other” civilization that, in order to preserve “itself,” deliberately
opened itself in an extraordinary degree to the threats and promises of European
civilization. China, with a much greater past civilization, has been later, slower, and more
ambivalent as to the contents of the Western civilization forcing itself upon it.
As part of their current accivilization, these other civilizations have taken over their own
pasts. It is now their own archaeologists who dig up evidence of their past greatness. It is
now in their own museums that newly found artifacts and art objects are placed. In this
form, the past civilization becomes part of the aspiration to present greatness and pride. The
lessons of European civilization have been taken to heart. In this sense, European
civilization has lost its claim to superiority—it no longer controls the past—and it and the
“other” civilizations face a common task of (1) entering into dialogue with one another, and
(2) possibly constructing a new version of civilization, a global one. (109-111)
D.Salameh