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The West Versus the Rest
and The Myth of Western
Exceptionalism
Imad A. Moosa
The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western
Exceptionalism
 Imad A. Moosa

The West Versus

the Rest and The
Myth of Western
Exceptionalism
Imad A. Moosa
Department of Economics
Kuwait University
Shadadia, Kuwait

ISBN 978-3-031-26559-4 ISBN 978-3-031-26560-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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To Nisreen, Danny, Ryan, and Ivy
 Preface

People talk about the West, Western civilization, Western culture, and
Western values as if the West is a well-defined entity. It is not. The West
is not a homogenous entity based on geography, culture, religion, poli-
tics, or economics. Several listings of Western countries are available, but
no two listings produce the same group of countries. The West is not
a precise, easily identifiable entity according to specific criteria. At least
seven criteria have been used to define the West and identify Western
countries. If anything, the common factor that characterizes the countries
that satisfy all of the criteria is imperialism.
Even though the term is loose, some supremacists argue that the West
is better than the Rest in anything and everything—“you name it, we’re
better at it”. The West is allegedly a collection of democratic coun-
tries that uphold the rule of law, have an independent judiciary, and are
corruption-free. Allegedly, only in Western countries are human rights
respected. Allegedly, if it were not for the West, the world would still
be living in the Dark Ages. The West, according to some supremacists,
has saved the world by developing science and technology without any
contribution from any country, region, or civilization from the Rest.
Some supremacists talk about the triumph of Western civilization
because all countries of the world are, by choice, adopting Western values.
We are also told that Western civilization is facing a threat from those
“who do not like our way of life”, particularly the Muslim World. It is
not clear how the proposition that all countries have adopted Western

vii
viii PREFACE

values can be reconciled with the presence of those who “do not like our
way of life”. Another supremacist tells us that the West has triumphed
because the West developed work ethics, as well as another five “killer
apps”. Naturally, the proclaimed killer apps do not include two truly killer
apps, concentration camps, and the machine gun. The same supremacist
believes that the British Empire made the modern world, when the
truth is the British Empire has spread nothing but death and destruction
throughout the world. If anything, the world would have been a much
better place, had the sun set on the Empire earlier.
This book has been written to debunk the myth of Western exception-
alism and supremacy. It is argued that Western democracy is not really
democracy and that the West does not care about democracy in the Rest.
It is argued that the West does not respect human rights in the Rest
or in the West. It is argued that the West does not observe the rule of
law, particularly the international rule of law. It is argued that the West
does not have independent judiciary—otherwise, Julian Assange would
have been set free long ago. It is argued that the West is more corrupt
than the Rest and that the West has actually taught the Rest how to be
corrupt. It is argued that Western science and technology was built on
the science and technology of other civilizations, something that Western
supremacists do not acknowledge. It is argued that what is known as
“rule-based international order” is a system where the West sets the rules
for the Rest to follow, but Western countries do not have to follow the
same rules. Western exceptionalism is effectively Western exemptionalism,
as Western countries enjoy the privilege of committing war crimes and
getting away with it. Western exceptionalism is also Western narcissism, a
la Deutschland über alless and Amerika über alles .
Writing this book would not have been possible without the help
and encouragement I received from my family, friends, and colleagues.
My utmost gratitude must go to my wife, Afaf, who bore most of the
opportunity cost of writing this book. I would also like to thank my
colleagues and friends, including John Vaz, Kelly Burns, Vikash Ramiah,
Liam Lenten, Brien McDonald, and Nirav Parikh. I would like to thank
my friends and colleagues at Kuwait University, including Ebrahim Merza,
Anwar Al-Shriaan, Khalid Al-Saad, and Nabeel Al-Loughani.
In preparing the manuscript, I benefited from the exchange of ideas
with members of the Table 14 Discussion Group, and for this reason, I
would like to thank Bob Parsons, Greg O’Brien, Greg Bailey, Bill Breen,
Paul Rule, Peter Murphy, Bob Brownlee, Jim Reiss, and Tony Pagliaro.
 PREFACE ix

I have always enjoyed discussing some of the issues covered in this book
with two friends holding different views of the world: Greg Bailey and
Bill Breen.
My thanks also go to friends and former colleagues who live far away
but provide help via means of telecommunication, including Kevin Dowd
(whom I owe big intellectual debt), Razzaque Bhatti, Ron Ripple, Bob
Sedgwick, Sean Holly, Dan Hemmings, Ian Baxter, Basil Al-Nakeeb, and
Mike Dempsey. Basil, a great economist and thinker, has been a source
of inspiration as we discuss at length various issues whenever we meet
somewhere in the world. I have benefited greatly from his magnificent
book, The Impact of Moral Economics, and this is why it is cited repeat-
edly in this book. Last, but not least, I would like to thank Anca Pusca,
the commissioning editor at Palgrave Macmillan, who encouraged me to
write this book.
Naturally, I am the only one responsible for any errors and omissions
that may be found in this book. It is dedicated to my daughter, Nisreen,
my son, Danny, my grandson, Ryan, and my granddaughter, Ivy.

Shadadia, Kuwait Imad A. Moosa

December 2022
 Contents

1 The Ambiguous West 1

2 Western Exceptionalism as an Ideology 27
3 Western Exceptionalism: Democracy 57
4 Western Exceptionalism: The Rule of Law, Judicial
Independence and Transparency 91
5 Western Exceptionalism: Human Rights 131
6 Western Exceptionalism: Contribution to Science
and Technology 175
7 Western Supremacy: The Views of Huntington,
Fukuyama and Ferguson 203
8 The Western Economic System 229
9 Further Thoughts on Western Exceptionalism 265

Index 293

xi
 Abbreviations and Acronyms

ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation

AD Anno Domini
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BC Before Christ
BP British Petroleum
CAR Central African Republic
CARES Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security
CBS Columbia Broadcasting System
CCTV Closed-Circuit Television
CEO Chief Executive Officer
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CNBC Consumer News and Business Channel
COVID Coronavirus Disease
CPI Corruption Perception Index
CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child
CSE Communications Security Establishment
DC District of Columbia
DHS Department of Homeland Security
EU European Union
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FIFA Federation of International Football Associations
GCC Gulf Co-operation Council
GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters
GDP Gross Domestic Product

xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

HDI Human Development Index

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
ICC International Criminal Court
ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
IMF International Monetary Fund
IQ Intelligence Quotient
ISIS Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
ISS International Space Station
ITV Independent Television
KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken
KPMG Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler
LIBOR London Interbank Offer Rate
MBA Master of Business Administration
MNC Multinational Corporation
MP Member of Parliament
NAIRU Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NBER National Bureau of Economic Research
NDP New Democratic Party
NED National Endowment for Democracy
NPR National Public Radio
NSA National Security Agency
NYPD New York Police Department
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
OWS Occupy Wall Street
PNAC Project for the New American Century
POP Publish or Perish
PPP Purchasing Power Parity
PWC Price Waterhouse Coopers
RSPT Resource Super Profits Tax
RT Russia Today
SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
SEC Securities and Exchange Commission
SWAT Special Weapons and Tactics
TSA Transport Security Administration
UAE United Arab Emirates
UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights
UHC Universal HealthCare
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UQ University of Queensland
US United States
USS United States Ship
 ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS xv

USSR Union of Socialist Soviet Republics

WASP White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
WHO World Health Organization
WJP World Justice Project
WMD Weapon of Mass Destruction
WTO World Trade Organization
WWII World War Two
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Top countries in terms of GDP per capita (US dollar,
PPP basis) 14
Fig. 1.2 Variation in GDP per capita of Western countries
(US dollar, PPP basis) 15
Fig. 3.1 Top and Bottom 10 Countries in terms of the Democracy
Index 68
Fig. 3.2 Losing winners of popular vote in US presidential elections 77
Fig. 4.1 Ranking of countries by the Corruption Perception Index 116
Fig. 4.2 Deviations of country CPI from the average and maximum
values 117
Fig. 5.1 Real minimum wages (2020 prices at PPP rates, $/hour) 155
Fig. 9.1 Rule of law indicators for some western countries 268
Fig. 9.2 Top five in terms of GDP (measured at PPP rates):
1500–1980 285
Fig. 9.3 Top five in terms of GDP (measured at PPP rates):
2010–2050 286

xvii
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 Dictionary definitions of the West 5

Table 1.2 Top 15 countries in terms of development indicators 16
Table 1.3 Huntington’s country classification in terms of civilizations 18
Table 1.4 Criteria of Westernness as applied to selected countries 21
Table 8.1 Components of the Economic Freedom Index 248

xix
 CHAPTER 1

The Ambiguous West

1.1 An Overview
I have always been bewildered by the meaning of the widely used terms
“West”, “Western”, “Westerner”, and “Westernization”. If we can define
the West as a homogenous group of countries and subsequently iden-
tify these countries, it follows that Westerners are the citizens of Western
countries and Westernization means the adoption, by non-Western coun-
tries and their citizens, of Western values and culture. However, it seems
that Westernization does not convert a non-Western country into a
Western one and does not convert a citizen of a non-Western country
into a Westerner. As a matter of fact, not all of the citizens of Western
countries are Westerners. Being a citizen of a Western country is a neces-
sary but not a sufficient condition for someone to be a Westerner or at
least to be perceived as a Westerner. These concepts are imprecise, even
misleading.
I am yet to find anyone who can tell me, with any degree of confi-
dence, what the “West” means, which countries can be classified as
“Western” and who is eligible to be called “Westerner”. I would imagine
that this would be a formidable task, even for the “celebrity historian”
Niall Ferguson, who is rather enthusiastic about the West versus the Rest
divide, as expressed in his book Civilization: The West and the Rest. The
criteria used to designate countries as Western and non-Western produce

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western
Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_1
2 I. A. MOOSA

vastly different listings, and the classification of countries under “the

West” and “the Rest” is imprecise, yet highly divisive.
Historically, the West was anything West of Istanbul. The modern
equivalent of this criterion is religion, which makes the Western world
equivalent to the Christian world. If religion is the criterion used to place
a country in the Rest compartment rather than the West compartment,
why is it that Ecuador, a Christian country, is not part of the West while
Israel (which is a non-Christian country by design) is a Western country
according to some classifications? Well, it could be that when religion
is used to distinguish the West from the Rest, then the criterion is not
Christianity but rather Judeo-Christianity, as reference is frequently made
to “Judeo-Christian ethics” and “Judeo-Christian values”. If this is the
case, then Israel is a Western country, but this still does not explain why
Ecuador and the predominantly Christian countries in Latin America,
Africa, and Asia do not belong to the West, but rather to the Rest. Even
more puzzling is why Russia is not part of the West, even though it is
a European, Christian, and a white majority country. But then we must
remember that the Russians are Orthodox Christians, and this is probably
why they are not Westerners like their Catholic and Protestant cousins in
white majority countries. Some supremacists go as far as thinking that
the West, narrowly defined, consists of countries that have a majority of
White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPS) or that the WASPS are superior
to other categories of Westerners. This view has been expressed by Sam
Huntington (see Chapter 7).
In another sense, the West encompasses European countries as well as
countries of European origin in the New World. In this sense, the West
includes the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. If this is the case,
then Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and perhaps all countries in the Western
hemisphere should be part of the West (including Cuba). These countries,
however, belong to the Rest. In yet another sense, the West comprises
English-speaking countries, a concept that is definitely rejected by French
Canadians (an eminent American economist once told me that he got
himself in trouble by describing Canada as an “English-speaking country”
in a public lecture in Montreal). The criterion of language means that
Germany, France, Sweden, and Norway are not Western countries, while
Singapore is a Western country.
The economic criterion used to distinguish between the West and
the Rest is membership of the OECD, which makes Japan a Western
country—never mind that it is located in the Far East. Sometimes the
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 3

designation does not require membership of the OECD, just being a

developed country would suffice. Hence, Taiwan and South Korea should
be parts of the Western world, now that they are typically classified as
developed countries. If the level of development is measured by GDP per
capita, or by one of the well-being indices, then Kuwait and Qatar should
be classified as Western countries.
Sometimes the West is represented by NATO, which makes Turkey
a Western country. During the first Cold War (now that we are experi-
encing the second Cold War, with a hitherto limited shooting war), the
West was the First World—that is, NATO plus. This is why Hungary,
Romania, and Poland were not Western countries, but now that they
are part of the European Union, they are Western countries—or are
they? Again, it makes no sense that Poland is a Western country but
Russia is not, except for the difference that Poland is predominantly a
Catholic country whereas Russia is an Orthodox-Christian country, which
apparently matters for classifying countries under the West or the Rest.
It gets even more interesting (or ridiculous), as we often hear expres-
sions like “Western cuisine” and “Western landscape”. These expressions
make me wonder which set of countries share cuisine and landscape. I
cannot see anything common among Cornish pasty (England), haggis
(Scotland), hot dogs (the US), Blanquette de Veau (France), Emilia-
Romagna (Italy), and Pa amb tomaquet (Spain). As for landscape, no
common feature can be found among the English countryside, the Cana-
dian Rockies and the Australian desert. A related question is that if we
can identify “Western cuisine” and “Western landscape”, then we should
be able to identify non-Western (or Eastern or Southern) cuisine and
landscape, but this will be rather difficult.
One argument that can be used to defend the West-Rest divide is that
the West is more homogenous than the Rest (comprising Arabs, Chinese,
Russians, Latinos, Indians, etc.). This may be evident in the “homogene-
ity” of Western cuisine because it is arguable that the difference between
American burgers and British roast beef is smaller than the difference
between Indian biryani and Middle Eastern dolma. However, the differ-
ence between haggis and Pa amb tomaquet is just as significant as the
difference between biryani and dolma. A common characteristic of “West-
ernness” is either missing or negligible. This is also true of landscape and
any other criterion that is used to distinguish the West from the Rest.
As an economist, I was rather amused to read what someone wrote
to complain about China refusing to adopt a “Western exchange rate
4 I. A. MOOSA

system” in reference, I presume, to free floating. I thought that it was

disingenuous to complain about a country from the Rest not adopting a
Western system that makes the West different from the Rest. Of course,
the idea here is that non-Western countries are supposed to do things
either the Western way or the wrong way. In any case, not all Western
countries use free floating—as a matter of fact, the EU uses fixed exchange
rates by virtue of the common currency. Moreover, nothing is Western
about free floating, as countries like Japan and Korea use this system.
In the 1950s, Canada was the only country using free floating while the
rest of the world was on fixed exchange rates. If free floating is a criterion
used to identify “Westernness”, it follows that Canada must have been the
only Western country at that time. In the strict sense that free floating is a
system under which no intervention in the foreign exchange market takes
place, no country from the West or the Rest follows free floating.
The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in nature,
depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual, or political criteria are
used to classify countries under the West or the Rest. However, no matter
what criterion is used, the countries defined as comprising the West, even
in a very narrow sense (such as the Anglo-Saxon world), do not form a
uniform entity because vast differences can be observed with respect to
any of these criteria.

1.2 Dictionary Definition and Historical Origin

The definition and identification of the West and related concepts depend
on some criteria such as geography, culture, politics, and economics. In
geographical terms, the West may be defined as Western Europe, Western
Europe plus, or countries of the North Atlantic. In terms of culture,
they are defined as countries with West European heritage. In terms of
politics and military alliances, the West is the group of countries that
are hostile to Russia and China (NATO or NATO plus). In terms of
economics, they are identified by the level of economic development.
However, none of these classification schemes produces an exclusive list of
Western countries. Sometimes, mixed criteria are used, which is evident
in the dictionary definitions of the West displayed in Table 1.1. These
definitions refer primarily to Western Europe and North America, which
means that Australia and New Zealand are not Western countries.
The diversity of definitions shows a lack of consensus on what the West
means or encompasses. The concept of the Western World, as opposed to
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 5

Table 1.1 Dictionary definitions of the West

Dictionary Definition Criteria

UK dictionarya Any part of the world to the West Geography

of one’s own region; applied Geography, Economics,
specifically to the Americas and the Culture
Caribbean, or to Europe, as
opposed to the Middle East and
Orient
Europe, North America, and other
(often relatively wealthy) countries
with populations of mainly
European ancestry
Urban dictionaryb A region conventionally designated Geography, Culture
West, stemming from the
Greco-Roman traditions, relating
to democratic countries of Europe
and America
Western countries are the
democratic countries stemming
from the Greco-Roman traditions
Collins dictionaryc “Western” is used to describe Geography Culture
things, people, ideas, or ways of
life that come from or are
associated with the United States,
Canada, and the countries of
Western, Northern, and Southern
Europe
Longman dictionaryd The West is the Western part of Geography, Economics
the world and the people that live
there, particularly Western Europe
and North America (the industrial
countries of the West)
Merriam-Webster The non-communist countries of Politics
dictionarye Europe and America
Cambridge dictionaryf North America and Western Geography
Europe
a https://www.lexico.com/definition/Western_world
b https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Western%20countries
c https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/Western
d https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/the-West
e https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/West
f https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/West
6 I. A. MOOSA

other parts of the world, was supposedly born in ancient Greece, specifi-
cally in the years 480–479 BC, when the ancient Greek city states fought
against the Persian Empire to the east. The Greeks thought of themselves
as freedom-loving people, as opposed to the Persians who were thought
to be despotic. Hence, the West symbolized good peace-loving people
while the East was where bad people came from.
Membership of the exclusive club that is called the “West” has changed
over time. In the twentieth century, the political definition of what consti-
tuted the West changed several times. Between 1870 and 1945, the
dominant imperialist powers, Britain and France, considered Germany
to be hostile to the West—hence, Germany was not a Western country
despite the huge contribution of Germans to all fields of human knowl-
edge, which is one source of the alleged Western exceptionalism. During
the Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, the Iron Curtain was the de facto
border separating the West from the Rest in Europe. When the Iron
Curtain fell, the West expanded because the new members of the Euro-
pean Union and NATO somehow became Western countries. The border
of the West coincided with the Western borders of Russia, which has
always been denied the privilege of being a Western country, even though
the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is generally considered to be
Western-style music.
North America was considered part of the West in the 1850s, by which
time substantial colonization had occurred. Currently, no one knows what
the West is, even though the word is used as if it refers to a specific, well-
defined entity. If, for example, the West is defined by a certain set of
values, then it is possible to argue that all the countries of the world that
share the so-called Western values belong to the West, even if they are
geographically not part of the West. Thus, South Korea could be consid-
ered part of the West because it maintains “Western-style” democracy,
but Cuba is not a Western country because it does not have “Western-
style” democracy and shows no hostility towards Russia or China. One
can only wonder if Cuba was considered a Western country before the
Cuban Revolution when the country was effectively an American colony.
Hawaii is now part of the West, but only as the islands became an Amer-
ican state. Everyone eats McDonald’s and KFC—in this sense, the whole
world has been Westernized.
One definition of the West is that it comprises the countries adopting
Western values, which can be traced back to the Greeks and Romans. This
is the “golden nugget” theory of Plato to NATO, the passing of Western
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 7

values from one generation to another. For some historians, Western

civilization is a progressive, linear sequence (extending between Plato
and NATO), meaning that the modern ideals of freedom and democ-
racy flowed directly from classical Greece. However, Gress (2004) argues
that the notion of modern political liberty took shape between the fifth
and eighth centuries in a synthesis of classical, Christian, and Germanic
cultures.
On the other hand, Appiah (2016) rejects the proposition that the best
in the culture of Greece and Rome as a civilizational inheritance, passed
on like a precious golden nugget, dug out of the earth by the Greeks
and transferred to Rome when the Roman Empire conquered Greece.
He points out that the libraries of ninth century Baghdad contained
the works of Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Euclid, translated into Arabic. In
the Dark Ages, when Christian Europe made little contribution to the
study of Greek classical philosophy, and many of the texts were lost, these
works were preserved by Muslim scholars. Much of the modern under-
standing of classical philosophy among the ancient Greeks could not have
evolved without the texts that were recovered from the Arabs by Euro-
pean scholars during the Renaissance. He also notes that Spain, which
was once in the heart of the West, resisted liberal democracy for two
generations after democracy took off in India and Japan despite “oriental
despotism”.
The West and Western world have imprecise definitions that depend on
the time period and the perspective from which someone chooses to view
the world. In the following sections, the criteria used to classify countries
into Western and non-Western (the West and the Rest) are discussed in
detail with examples. The objective is to demonstrate that no matter what
criterion is used, the concept is loose.

1.3 The West as a Geographical

and Cultural Entity
In a geographical sense, the terms “West” and “Western countries” are
derived from the old dualism of East (Asia) and West (Europe). According
to McNeill (1997), the geographical concept of the West started as the
“Atlantic littoral of Europe” (the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Low
Countries, France, and Iberia). Subsequently, America was added, even
though it is not clear what he means by “America”, whether it is the US,
North America, or the Americas. In time, the West came to encompass
8 I. A. MOOSA

Australia, New Zealand, and all other European overseas settlements, such
as the Falklands and Reunion Island. Does this mean that Algeria was a
Western country up to its independence from France in 1962?
The geographical definitions of the West encompass a line drawn some-
where across Europe, placing Germany (sometimes), Poland and Eastern
Europe (sometimes), and Russia and the Balkans (always) beyond the
realm of Western civilization. Moos (2013) defines the West geograph-
ically as “Europe from 1500, and the United States from its founding
to the present”. However, the fact remains that there is no geographical
continuum that represents the West. How can a country located in the
Far East be called a Western country if geography is the criterion used to
distinguish the West from the Rest? And why is it that some countries in
the Far East are Western but no country from the Middle East is Western,
even though the Middle East is closer to the West than the Far East?
In any case, the geographical West is relative because the planet on
which peoples of the West and the Rest live is spherical (never mind what
flat earthers say). Australia is west of the US from a position on the US
west coast, but the US is to the west of Australia from a position on the
Australian west coast. Likewise, Europe is to the west of Australia from
a position on the Australian west coast but Australia is to the west of
Europe from a position on the European Atlantic coast.
The cultural (or cultural-religious) definition, known as the Latin West,
broadly refers to all of the countries shaped by Western Christianity
(Catholic and Protestant churches), have similar cultural and ethical
values, and use the Latin alphabet. McNeill (1997) suggests that the West
could be imagined as a civilization that is independent of locale, implying
a rejection of the geographical definition of the West.
These days, the West is sometimes portrayed as including not only
countries populated by Europeans, but also non-European countries that
have become Westernized by adopting Western values. According to
this definition, Japan is a Western country, but the contradiction here
is that Japan does not use the Latin alphabet. In fact, Japan does not
meet the characteristics of a Western country identified by Trubetskoy
(2017): Western Christianity, the Latin alphabet, and Western cultural
and ethical values. Interestingly, not even Greece (presumably the source
of Western culture) meets these criteria. Trubetskoy (2017) seems to
reject the economic definition of the West, by stating that Western coun-
tries are not necessarily wealthy, and the political definition by suggesting
that they are not necessarily politically aligned. Accordingly, he classifies
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 9

the following as Western countries: Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia,

Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, and even Cuba!! However, Greece
is not a Western country according to this classification.
Taylor (2020) argues that Western culture is present not just in
Western Europe, North America, and Australia, but also in former British
colonies such as Israel, Singapore, and Hong Kong. For Taylor, therefore,
Israel, Singapore, and Hong Kong are Western countries, even though
Hong Kong is a Chinese province (and China is definitely not a Western
country) while Israel is a Western country even though the country is
not Christian by design and where the Latin alphabet is not used. This
seems to be inconsistent with what Taylor refers to as a “certain Western
cultural continuum based around Christianity that extends from Lisbon
to Vladivostok”. He rules out the “post-Soviet countries” as Western,
even though they have a similar set of cultural values rooted in Chris-
tianity, because (as he argues) the introduction of democracy has not
made many post-Soviet and post-colonial nations more liberal in the true
sense of the word (open markets, emphasis on free speech, strong private
property rights, an independent and impartial judiciary, and the primacy
of the individual over that of the group). Accordingly, Taylor suggests
that a country located in Europe is not necessarily Western in any mean-
ingful sense. Therefore, Israel, Singapore, and Hong Kong are Western
but Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria are not.
For Taylor (2020), Western culture is Anglo-Saxon culture and
anything Western is “perhaps more accurately termed Anglo-Saxon”,
suggesting that Western values are rooted firmly in the Anglo-Saxon
tradition as formalized in the Magna Carta, the royal charter of rights
approved by King John of England on 15 June 1215. Specifically, Taylor
identifies the following social values: legal norms apply to everyone
regardless of social class; the right to a fair trial by a jury of one’s peers and
the right to face one’s accuser in open court; and the right to one’s own
property and the right to defend that property using deadly force. He
adds that in the West, “men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness and that these rights can only be deprived through due
process of law”. He also suggests that in the West, both national consti-
tutions and prevailing moral attitudes prevent angry mobs or powerful
oligarchs from systematically depriving unpopular and powerless minori-
ties of their rights. Well, I cannot think of any set of countries where these
values are shared. For instance, the right to bear arms is observed in some
parts of the West but not in the majority of Western countries. However,
10 I. A. MOOSA

a common feature is exactly the opposite of what we are supposed to see

in the West according to Taylor. In all Western countries, and by virtue
of the economic system, powerful oligarchs run the show and deprive
powerless minorities of their rights.
The values listed by Taylor are hardly held in the Orwellian West
where the oligarchy prevails. Freedom and democracy are being degraded
under a hoax called “national security”. Kangaroo courts have become the
norm in the West—to mention a few examples, the International Crim-
inal Court in the Hague (where the defendant is either a black African
or a Slav, and never a Westerner); the show trial of O.J. Simpson in the
1990s; the extradition trial of Julian Assange (but not Andrew Windsor
or Anne Sacoolas); the sentencing of Steven Donziger to imprisonment
just because he won a lawsuit against Chevron; and the acquittal of the
police officers who brutally beat Rodney King in Los Angeles. Even when
murderers are prosecuted and imprisoned, they are subsequently released
by a presidential pardon, like the mercenaries who shot and killed count-
less civilians in Baghdad in 2014 (the Nisour Square massacre, which
is described as one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and
occupation of Iraq).
The alleged Western countries are so diverse in terms of the alleged
Western values that this sort of collectivism is invalid. Dol (2020) defines
the West as a “cultural entity” comprising “Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, the United States and countries in Western Europe”. In partic-
ular, he refers to the “cultural landscape” that originally came from
Western Europe. According to this definition, therefore, Poland and
Greece are not Western countries. He makes the interesting remark that
the US is so vastly different from Western Europe that it cannot be a
Western country. He also suggests that beyond somewhat superficial simi-
larities, the US is “an obvious cultural, political and historical odd man
out in this group”, and he goes on to identify differences between the US
and Western Europe. For example, the US is the only Western country
that does not have a national healthcare service. It has a large civilian
population armed for the explicit purpose of resisting a tyrannical govern-
ment. It has virtually no social safety net, and its richest citizens are much
richer and its poorest are much poorer than any other Western country.
The leader of the West is vastly different from the rest of the West.
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 11

1.4 The West as a Political-Military Entity

The political-military (or ideological) definition of the West pertains to
the Cold War, whether it is the post-World War II Cold War against
the USSR or the present Cold War against Russia and China. The West,
therefore, is an alliance that is hostile to Russia and China in partic-
ular, but every now and then, an imaginary enemy emerges to justify the
squandering of taxpayers money and enriching the oligarchy that runs the
military-industrial complex. Trubetskoy (2017) suggests that the political
definition of the West implies membership of the countries whose domi-
nant culture is European that were aligned against the USSR during the
Cold War. They were not necessarily wealthy or even politically aligned,
besides being against communism (that is, being hostile to the USSR, the
World War II ally). Appiah (2016) suggests that during the Cold War,
the West was one side of the Iron Curtain while the east (the enemy)
was on the other side. According to this definition, the following coun-
tries are (or were) not Western: Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. On the other hand, the
following countries are Western according to this definition: Argentina,
Barbados, Dominican Republic, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent.
The political-military definition of the West implies NATO member-
ship, which has changed. Western countries may be restricted to the
12 founding members of NATO: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France,
Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the
UK, and the US. The West expanded by adding more members to the
alliance: Greece and Turkey (1952), Germany (1955), Spain (1982),
the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (2004), Albania and
Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017), and North Macedonia (2020). The
West could be NATO plus, including at present any country that shows
hostility towards Russia and China, including Australia, Japan, South
Korea, Taiwan, and Israel. By this measure, Ukraine may be a Western
country or it may not be so unless it joins NATO.
During Cold War I, a new definition emerged to distinguish between
the West and the Rest. The planet was divided into three “worlds”: first,
second, and third. The “three worlds” model of geopolitics can be traced
back to the mid-twentieth century as a way of mapping various players
in the Cold War. The term “third world” was coined by the French
demographer Alfred Sauvy in a 1952 article entitled “Three Worlds, One
12 I. A. MOOSA

Planet” (see for example, Wolf-Phillips, 1987). The first world was the
West corresponding to NATO members plus those aligned with NATO
against the USSR. The second world was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet
sphere of influence, including the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact
countries such as Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, East Germany,
and Czechoslovakia. The third world consisted of other countries, many
of which were unaligned with either, including India and Yugoslavia. It is
not clear whether China was in the second or third world. One description
of the third world is put forward by Mutua (2000):

The Third World consists of the victims and the powerless in the inter-
national economy.... Together we constitute a majority of the world’s
population, and possess the largest part of certain important raw materials,
but we have no control and hardly any influence over the manner in which
the nations of the world arrange their economic affairs. In international
rule making, we are recipients and not participants.

What is important here is that the West was the first world while the Rest
was the second and third worlds. The term “second world” has become
largely obsolete following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The term
“third world” remains the most common of the original designations,
but its meaning has changed from “non-aligned” and become more of
a blanket term for the developing world. With the disappearance of the
Warsaw Pact, there are now two worlds: Global North (the West) and
Global South (the Rest).

1.5 The West as an Economic Entity

The West is sometimes known as the “Rich West”, comprised of rich and
developed countries. Richness is typically measured in terms of GDP per
capita while development is measured in terms of several indicators or
sometimes by membership of the OECD. These criteria do not define
the West accurately. Some non-Western countries are richer and more
developed than Western countries, and within Western countries these
measures vary significantly.
According to Trubetskoy (2017), the “Rich West” consists of all
European-settled countries whose GDP per capita is over $10,000. This
definition takes away many Central and South American countries that are
not highly developed, even though they are part of the West on cultural
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 13

grounds. On the other hand, this definition includes former communist

countries like Poland and Latvia. Thus, Belize, Bolivia, and Brazil are
not Western countries according to this criterion, even though they are
Western according to other criteria. Trubetskoy does not reveal the reason
for fixing the threshold at $10,000, which seems rather arbitrary—a nice
round figure.
An examination the GDP per capita figures leads to two observations.
The first is that several non-Western countries rank highly in the list,
which means that high GDP per capita is not an exclusive character-
istic of Western countries. The second is that if the West is a uniform
group of countries, then the levels of GDP per capita should be close
and variation is small. EU member countries have to meet the conver-
gence criteria for price stability, sustainable finance, and other indicators
to make sure that individual economies do not diverge significantly. In
this sense, the West as an entity should consist of countries that are close
in terms of GDP per capita. In Fig. 1.1, we can see the GDP per capita of
the highest 25 countries measured on a PPP basis (provided by the World
Bank). A number of non-Western countries make the list, including Singa-
pore, Qatar, UAE, Brunei, Taiwan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. In
Fig. 1.2, we observe how individual Western countries fare relative to the
mean value of just over $60,000. Obviously, variation is significant.
Instead of using the terms “rich” and “not-so-rich” to distinguish
the West from the Rest, distinction may be stated in terms of economic
development. Thus the West consists of developed countries while the
Rest comprises less developed, underdeveloped, or developing countries.
The underdeveloped world encompasses former colonies in the Global
South in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Developing countries are typi-
cally presented as backward, inferior, and in need of “rescuing” by the
West. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank send “experts”
to developing countries, presumably to help them tidy up their economies
by pursuing Western free-market economic policies.
The United Nations uses a specific country classification for the prepa-
ration of the World Economic Situation and Prospects, a publication that
describes trends in various dimensions of the world economy. If we
examine the list of developed countries provided by the United Nations,
we will get the impression that as soon as a country joins the EU (which
makes it Western), it becomes a developed economy automatically. The
list of developed economies contains Croatia, Cyprus, and Malta, but not
Singapore, China, or Russia. Therefore, it is not that Western countries
14 I. A. MOOSA

Luxembourg
Singapore
Ireland
Qatar
Switzerland
UAE
Brunei
US
Norway
Denmark
Netherlands
Iceland
Austria
Taiwan
Sweden
Germany
Australia
Belgium
Kuwait
Finland
Canada
Saudi Arabia
France
UK
Bahrain
0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000

Fig. 1.1 Top countries in terms of GDP per capita (US dollar, PPP basis)

are developed, but rather they are branded developed when they become
Western.
Economic development is measured by a number of indicators, apart
from GDP per capita. These measures include population growth, occu-
pational structure of the labour force, urbanization, infrastructure, literacy
rate, life expectancy, infant mortality, and the human development index
(HDI). In general, population growth rates are higher in developing
countries. In developing countries, most of the labour force engages in
primary activities such as agriculture, mining, fishing, and lumbering.
In developed countries, by contrast, most of the labour force engages
in tertiary activities that comprise the service sector of the economy.
Urbanization is the percentage of a country’s population who live in
urban areas, which is higher in developed countries. The infrastructure
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 15

120,000

110,000

100,000

90,000

80,000

70,000

60,000

50,000

40,000

Fig. 1.2 Variation in GDP per capita of Western countries (US dollar, PPP
basis)

is better in developed countries. The literacy rate and life expectancy

are higher in developed countries, whereas the infant mortality rate is
lower. The human development index is composed of three indicators: life
expectancy, education (adult literacy and combined secondary and tertiary
school enrolment), and real GDP per capita. It is higher in developed
countries.
Table 1.2 reports the top 15 countries in terms of development indi-
cators. We can see that the top countries in population growth are
developing countries, and the same is true for the infant mortality rate.
However, life expectancy in the US is lower than in Costa Rica, the
Maldives, Peru, Colombia, and Turkey. Infant mortality rate in US is
higher than in Cuba. In terms of the literacy rate, most of the top coun-
tries are non-Western, with North Korea coming on top. India, which is
now a developing country, had the largest economy in the world until the
arrival of the British Empire and the start of massive systematic looting
16 I. A. MOOSA

Table 1.2 Top 15 countries in terms of development indicators

Population Urbanization Literacy rate Life Infant Human

growth expectancy mortality development
index

Syria Kuwait North Korea Japan Nigeria Norway

South Monaco Ukraine Switzerland Somalia Ireland
Sudan
Burundi Nauru Uzbekistan South Korea Chad Switzerland
Niger Singapore Azerbaijan Singapore CAR Iceland
Angola Anguilla Barbados Spain Sierra Germany
Leone
Benin Bermuda Cuba Cyprus Guinea Sweden
Uganda Qatar Estonia Australia South Australia
Sudan
DR Congo Belgium Italy Italy Mali Netherlands
Chad San Marino Kazakhstan Israel Benin Denmark
Mali Uruguay Lithuania Norway Burkina Finland
Faso
Zambia Malta Singapore France Lesotho Singapore
Tanzania Iceland Tajikistan Luxembourg DR UK
Congo
Cameroon Israel Armenia Sweden Liberia Belgium
Guinea Netherlands Belarus Iceland Guinea New
Zealand
Liberia Argentina China Canada Niger Canada

that made it an impoverished country. The massive plunder of South

America by two other Western countries (Spain and Portugal) made them
rich and developed, while rendering the plundered countries poor and
under-developed. The scramble for Africa and the brutality used to extract
resources (particularly in the “Belgian” Congo) left the continent impov-
erished. Even after the end of colonization, the use of the IMF and World
Bank as weapons of mass destruction sustained the status quo that African
countries are impoverished and dependent on the West. It is only natural
that non-Western countries do not fare well in the league of economic
development.
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 17

1.6 The Huntington Classification Scheme

In his “science fiction” Clash of Civilisations, Samuel Huntington
suggested an arbitrary classification of countries into those that belong
to the West and those that belong to the Rest (Huntington, 1993,
1996). According to his classification, which is based on cultural and reli-
gious criteria, the West falls under one category whereas the Rest falls
under seven categories. For Huntington, the West is characterized by
the classical legacy (Greek philosophy and rationalism, Roman law and
Latin), Western Christianity, European languages, separation of spiritual
and temporal authority, the rule of law, social pluralism, representative
bodies (parliaments), and individualism. All of these characteristics of
Western exceptionalism, and many more, will be discussed and debunked
in Chapters 3–6. For the time being we concentrate on the classifica-
tion scheme. Western Christianity covers Protestants and Catholics and
excludes Orthodox Christianity, perhaps for the purpose of excluding
Russia.
The Huntington classification scheme, which is displayed in Table 1.3,
leads to a number of head-scratching questions and issues. Why is it
that most of the Philippines is Western, but Greece and Bulgaria are not
Western (even though they are European countries, members of the EU
and NATO)? It is likely that 90% of the Philippines is Western because
that is the Christian part whereas the non-Western part is the 10% Muslim
part of southern Philippines. In any case, I am yet to meet a Pilipino who
refers to himself or herself as Westerner. Oceania is Western, which is
understandable if we are talking about New Zealand, but what about
Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Vanuatu,
Kiribati, Tuvalu, Nauru, and Tonga? Surely, Huntington did not regard
these as Western countries. He entertained the possibility of including
Latin America and the former member states of the Soviet Union, but
then he put Latin America under a separate culture. The Chinese dias-
pora falls under the Sinic civilization, which means that American-born
Chinese are not Westerners (and the same is true of the global Indian
diaspora). Japan does not appear under Sinic civilization, but the Koreas
do, because Huntington considered Japan to be a hybrid of Chinese civi-
lization and “older Altaic patterns”. It is not clear why Chad, Ethiopia,
the Comoros, Mauritius, the Swahili coast of Kenya and Tanzania do not
fall under African civilization.
18 I. A. MOOSA

Table 1.3 Huntington’s country classification in terms of civilizations

Civilization Member countries

Western Civilization The US, Canada, Western and Central Europe,

Australia, Oceania, and most of the Philippines
Latin American Civilization South America (excluding Guyana, Suriname and
French Guiana), Central America, Mexico, Cuba,
and the Dominican Republic
Orthodox Civilization Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Romania,
great parts of the former Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia
Buddhist Civilisation Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar,
Sri Lanka and Thailand
Sinic Civilization China, the Koreas, Singapore, Taiwan, and
Vietnam
Hindu Civilization India, Bhutan, and Nepal
The Muslim World The Greater Middle East (excluding Armenia,
Cyprus, Ethiopia, Georgia, Israel, Malta, and
South Sudan), Northern West Africa, Albania,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, parts of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Brunei, Comoros, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Maldives, and southern Philippines
Civilization of Sub-Saharan Africa Southern Africa, Middle Africa (excluding Chad),
East Africa (excluding Ethiopia, the Comoros,
Mauritius, and the Swahili coast of Kenya and
Tanzania), Cape Verde, Ghana, the Ivory Coast,
Liberia, and Sierra Leone
Unclassified Ethiopia, Haiti, Israel, and the former British
colonies in the Caribbean
Cleft Countries Ukraine, French Guiana, Benin, Chad, Kenya,
Nigeria, Tanzania, Togo, Guyana, Suriname, Sri
Lanka, and Sudan

According to Huntington, Ethiopia and Haiti are labelled “lone”

countries because they do not belong to one of the major civilizations.
Israel is unique, in the sense that it has its own civilization, but one
which is “extremely similar” to the West. I am not sure why Israel has
a civilization that is closer to the West than that of a white-Christian
country like Russia. The “cleft” countries are “cleft” because they identify
with separate civilizations. Therefore, Ukraine is “cleft” because it has a
Catholic-dominated western section and an Orthodox-dominated eastern
part, French Guiana is “cleft” between Latin America and the West, and
Sri Lanka is “cleft” between Hindu and Buddhist.
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 19

Huntington’s classification of countries into civilizations has been crit-

icized because it falls the realm of Alice in Wonderland. For example,
Egefjord (2004) writes the following:

[There] are several problems with Huntington’s concept of civilizations.

He fails to explain how and why cultural factors-religion, ethnicity and
language-form a civilization. His explanations of why there is a fault
line between the Western and Orthodox civilizations but not between
Catholics and Protestants. Similarly, he claims there are significant differ-
ences between Japan and China, but less so between China and Vietnam.
And why “is fragmented sub-Saharan Africa supposed to be as unitary as
the single-member Japanese and two-member Hindu civilizations?

Well, the fault line between Western and Orthodox civilizations is

intended to exclude Russia from the West. This is a simple but plausible
explanation. Fox (2002) identifies another problem raised by Hunt-
ington’s classification of civilizations, which is the difficulty of putting
minority groups (for example, Afro-Americans in the US and Black
Muslims in Africa) within the frame of any of the major eight civiliza-
tions. Indigenous people do not fit any of the eight civilizations identified
by Huntington. In a nutshell, Huntington’s classification scheme does not
serve any meaningful purpose, it makes no sense, and it is rather arbitrary.

1.7 The Core West and Auxiliary West

We have seen that the West is a loose term that may include a large or
small number of countries, depending on how it is defined and which
criterion is used to classify countries into Western and non-Western. Here,
the core West is defined as those countries that satisfy all of the criteria
used to identify Westernness: (i) the geographical criterion of being in
Western Europe and North America; (ii) the economic criteria of having a
high level of GDP per capita, being a member of the OECD, and having
the label of a “developed country”; (iii) the political-military criterion
of being a member of NATO; and (iv) the cultural criteria of having a
majority white Christian population and using the Latin alphabet. Any
country satisfying these criteria is a core Western country.
Table 1.4 shows how some group of countries fare in terms of satis-
fying the seven criteria. Out of these, only nine countries get all of the
20 I. A. MOOSA

ticks, which makes them members of the core West. Australia, which satis-
fies the important criterion of having a white Christian majority, does not
satisfy the geographical criterion, and it is not a member of NATO (or
it is an “honorary” member, given its active participation in the invasion
of Afghanistan, which was a NATO operation). Japan is not in the core
West because, like Australia, it is not a member of NATO and it is an Asian
country (and also because it does not have a white Christian majority).
The auxiliary West consists of countries that support the core West
in whatever it does and have a white Christian majority, including
members of the EU, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The impor-
tance of having a white (preferably Anglo-Saxon) majority is highlighted
by Appiah (2016) who argues that lumping a whole lot of extremely
different societies together, while delicately carving around Australians
and New Zealanders and white South Africans, implies that “Western”
can look simply like a “euphemism for white”. This is a reflection of the
racism and xenophobia associated with the terms “West” and “Western”.
Let us now concentrate on members of the core West. One can readily
see that these countries have imperialist past and perhaps imperialist activ-
ities at present. These nine countries had colonies in Africa, Asia, and
the Americas. All of them were represented at an international confer-
ence held in Berlin and organized by Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of
Germany, and Jules Ferry, Premier of France. The marathon conference
was held between 15 November 1884 and 26 February 1885 to lay down
the basic rules for colonizing Africa. This is why several scholars asso-
ciate the West with imperialism. For example, Appiah (2016) suggests
that the very idea of the “West” did not emerge until the 1890s, during
a heated era of imperialism. McNeill (1997) associates the West with
imperialism and refers to the era “when the British and French colonial
empires bestrode the world and Germany and Italy were, by compar-
ison, marginalized”. For McNeill, the core West was the Anglo-French
alliance, with Germany and the US gaining recognition at a later stage.
Appiah (2016) also refers to the association between the West and slavery,
subjugation, racism, militarism, and genocide.
The description of the West put forward by Beinart (2017) is consis-
tent with the imperialist interpretation. He argues that the term contains a
pejorative meaning as it is used to “describe and delineate the wealthy and
dominant societies from the poorer societies—those who are subjugated
economically, militarily, and otherwise, by deliberate restraints placed on
Table 1.4 Criteria of Westernness as applied to selected countries

Country Western High incomea OECD member Developeda NATO member White Christian Latin
Europe/North majority alphabet
America

Australia ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Belgium ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Brazil ✓ ✓
France ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Germany ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Israel ✓ ✓ ✓
Italy ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Japan ✓ ✓ ✓
Korea ✓ ✓
Mexico ✓ ✓ ✓
Netherlands ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Poland ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
1

Portugal ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Russia ✓ ✓
S. Africa ✓ ✓
Spain ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Sweden ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Switzerland ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Turkey ✓ ✓ ✓
UK ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
US ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
THE AMBIGUOUS WEST

a According to the United Nations: https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wesp/wesp_current/2014wesp_country_classification.pdf

21
22 I. A. MOOSA

them by the wealthier ones”. The West, he believes, is the “Wealthy, Colo-
nial (slave-holding), Europe-descended (or allied) societies”. Thus, the
West consists of the countries that “control the world” or “those who
seek to continue in domination of others and their lands”. This is done
not only through colonization but also economically through interna-
tional organizations (IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc.) and the notorious
principles of the Washington Consensus.
Moos (2013) suggests that the West has dominated the world’s nations
in political influence, military might, monetary success, and cultural
dissemination, thereby setting the stage and dictating the terms for inter-
national relations. Beginning in the 1500s, conquistadors and missionaries
imposed the Western world onto the vulnerable “New World” in a very
concrete and physical way. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the
West’s political grip on their colonies loosened, but its economic and
cultural power over the world remained strong as ever.
International law has been used to protect Western interests. Ikejiaku1
(2013) argues that in the past, international law was used by Westerners
to legitimize colonialism and all their acts of exploitation in developing
countries. In modern times, international law is predominantly used to
protect, project, and promote the interest of Westerners, including multi-
national businesses that are scattered globally. He adds that “since the
eighteenth century global events, as reflected by the application of inter-
national law in the context of the people of third-world countries, have
been replete with accounts of dominations, manipulations and subjuga-
tion, schemed and master-minded by the Western world”. He concludes
that the reconstruction of international law in favour of Western countries
has been one key instrument that perpetuates severe inequality between
the West and the Rest. In short, international law has been used by
the West to legitimize or justify acts of exploitation and subjugation in
developing countries.
Westernization, the adoption of the practices and culture of Western
Europe by societies and countries in other parts of the world, has been
largely done through compulsion and reached much of the world as part
of the process of colonialism. Westernization began with traders, colo-
nizers, and missionaries from Western Europe who believed that their way
of life was superior to those of the peoples in the countries to which they
travelled. The peoples of occupied countries were required or encouraged
to adopt Western European business practices, languages, alphabets, and
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 23

attire. They were also encouraged to assume Western European educa-

tion systems, literary and artistic standards, and to convert to Christianity.
Many countries had Western types of government and military practices
imposed on them.

1.8 Concluding Remarks

The tendency to divide countries into two groups, the West and the
Rest, gives the impression that the members of the two groups are of
two different kinds and that the groups are uniform with respect to the
underlying characteristics. No matter how the West is defined, member
countries differ significantly on all counts. It is even more so for the
Rest. However, the underlying idea is that the West is superior to any
other group of countries with common characteristics, which makes the
West superior to the other groups (hence, superior to the Rest). It
is much more precise to use the term “Arab countries” than Western
countries, at least because Arab countries use the same language, an
important common denominator. It is more precise to talk about Euro-
pean countries than Western countries because European countries can
be identified precisely in geographical terms. However, using the term
“The West” to distinguish some European countries from others makes
it possible to exclude Slavic Europeans, which means that the term has
racist connotations.
According to Beinart (2017), the West is not an ideological or
economic term. For example, India is the world’s largest democracy and
Japan is one of the most economically advanced countries—yet these two
countries are not considered as part of the West. Beinart also believes that
the West is not a geographical term. For example, Poland is further east
than Morocco, France is further east than Haiti, and Australia is further
east than Egypt—yet, Poland, France, and Australia are Western coun-
tries but Morocco, Haiti, and Egypt are not. The West, according to
Beinart (2017), is a “racial and religious term”, which means that for a
country to be considered Western, it must be largely Christian (preferably
Protestant or Catholic) and largely white. Latin America is not Western,
even though most of its people are Christian, because the population is
not clearly white. Albania and Bosnia are not Western, even though the
people are white, because they are mostly Muslim. Russia is not a Western
country, even though the people are white and Christian, because they are
Orthodox Christians.
24 I. A. MOOSA

It remains true, however, that the universal common characteristic of

the core Western countries is imperialism. For the countries of the core
West, it is still business as usual, as they indulge in invasion and occupa-
tion, covert action and regime change, as well as economic intervention
by unleashing the IMF and World Bank and the principles of the Wash-
ington Consensus. Even though the term “West” is loose and imprecise,
the discussion found in the coming chapters pertains to the core West and
auxiliary West as defined in this chapter.

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Beinart, P. (2017, July 7). The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw
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Dol, Q. (2020, May 27). The United States Is Not a Western Country. Here’s
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Perception of Third-World Category. African Journal of Legal Studies, 6, 337–
356.
McNeill, W. H. (1997). What We Mean by the West. Orbis, Fall, 513–524.
Moos, E. (2013). Did the West Define the Modern World? HOHONU, 11,
76–77.
Mutua, M. (2000). What Is TWAIL? Proceedings of the 94th Annual Meeting
(International Law in Ferment: A New Vision for Theory and Practice), 5–8
April.
Taylor, W. (2020, November 23). Cultural Superiority Isn’t Racism: Why
Western Values Underpin the World’s Best Countries. The Mallard.
 1 THE AMBIGUOUS WEST 25

Trubetskoy, S. (2017, December 7). List of Western Countries. https://sasham

aps.net/docs/maps/list-of-Western-countries/
Wolf-Phillips, L. (1987). Why ‘Third World’? Origin, Definition and Usage.
Third World Quarterly, 9, 1311–1312.
 CHAPTER 2

Western Exceptionalism as an Ideology

2.1 American Exceptionalism

American exceptionalism is the doctrine that America (the US) is excep-
tional, different from (that is, superior to) other countries. America is
exceptionally exceptional, which makes it superior even to its exceptional
partners in the West. American exceptionalism goes hand in hand with
descriptions of the US as an “empire of liberty”, a “shining city on a
hill”, the “last best hope of Earth”, the “leader of the free world”, and
the “indispensable nation”. It is also “the land of the free and the home
of the brave”, even though one cynic puts it as “the land of the lockstep
and the home of the craven” (Tant, 2020). None of these descriptions and
labels fits America (apart from the “lockstep” and “craven”) because it is
an Orwellian state spreading death and destruction throughout the world
by using its military might, numerous spy agencies, and the resources
provided by the (exceptional) European banana republics and kingdoms
that obey Uncle Sam blindly.
American exceptionalism, which is an ideology, is defined in several
ways. In one sense, it means that the US is unique among nations with
respect to its ideas of democracy and personal freedom (Tyrrell, 2016).
In another sense, the US is different from other countries, where excep-
tionalism stems from the American Revolution, which led to the creation
of “the first new nation” (Lipset, 1996). It pertains to a nation that

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

Switzerland AG 2023
I. A. Moosa, The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western
Exceptionalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26560-0_2
28 I. A. MOOSA

embraces liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy,

and laissez-faire economics. I am not sure how to reconcile individu-
alism and laissez-faire economics with egalitarianism. In reality, America
is less democratic than its partners in the West and personal freedom is
questionable, given that it is home for 25% of the world’s prison popu-
lation, most of them serving lengthy sentences without trial (sentenced
following plea bargains). The historian Gordon Wood describes American
exceptionalism as follows (Aziz, 2012):

Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of

ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era; so too, did our
idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to
lead the world toward liberty and democracy’. This fallacious sentiment,
coined ‘American exceptionalism’, has become Washington’s mantra; it has
wrought death and misery on billions.

Another characteristic of American exceptionalism is that the US has a

“unique mission to transform the world”. This is unquestionable as we
can see America’s footprints all around the world. America has certainly
transformed Iraq and Libya, among others, from prosperous countries to
wastelands run by thieves and warlords. America has even transformed
its European allies from sovereign nations to banana republics and king-
doms, receiving and executing orders from the CIA and going as far
as forcing the presidential plane of Evo Morales to land while flying
in Austrian airspace in 2013. Right now, these banana republics and
kingdoms are destroying their economies and making their citizens live
in misery because America decided to fight Russia to the last drop of
Ukrainian blood.
In the Gettysburg address of 1863, Abraham Lincoln stated that
Americans have a duty to ensure “government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. Yet another
theme is that the history and mission of the US give it superiority over
other countries. When the administration of George Bush Junior was in
power, the term was used to refer a situation where the US is “above”
or an “exception” to international law. According to Frel (2006), this
phenomenon is less concerned with justifying American uniqueness than
with asserting its immunity to international law. Thus, American excep-
tionalism became formally equivalent to Amerika über alles during the
 2 WESTERN EXCEPTIONALISM AS AN IDEOLOGY 29

George Bush Junior era. The use of Deutschland über alless was rampant
before and during the Nazi conquest of Europe. This is how O’Neill
(2018) explains exceptionalism:

Americans are expected from birth to believe in the notion of US supe-

riority over other peoples in other nations. The daily school ritual of
pledging allegiance to the flag and playing the national anthem at sporting
events—whether the Super Bowl or a neighborhood swim meet—is a
given. Americans are taught that they are intellectually, socially, economi-
cally, and morally superior to any other people on earth. We believe that
we place a higher value on life than others do.

American exceptionalism simply implies superiority, a concept that has

been attacked with charges of moral defectiveness and the existence
of double standards. Ignatieff (2005) discusses American exception-
alism and human rights and identifies three forms of exceptionalism:
exemptionalism (supporting treaties as long as US citizens, including mili-
tary personnel committing war crimes, are exempt from them), double
standards (criticizing others for not heeding the findings of interna-
tional human rights bodies but ignoring what these organizations say of
the US), and legal isolationism (the tendency of US judges to ignore
other jurisdictions). Another cynical view of American exceptionalism is
expressed by Walt (2011) who says the following:

The only thing wrong with this self-congratulatory portrait of America’s

global role is that it is mostly a myth. Although the United States possesses
certain unique qualities—from high levels of religiosity to a political culture
that privileges individual freedom—the conduct of US foreign policy has
been determined primarily by its relative power and by the inherently
competitive nature of international politics. By focusing on their suppos-
edly exceptional qualities, Americans blind themselves to the ways that they
are a lot like everyone else.

Walt identifies the following myths: (i) there is something exceptional

about American exceptionalism, (ii) the US behaves better than other
nations do, (iii) America’s success is due to its special genius, (iv) the
US is responsible for most of the good in the World, and (v) God is on
our side. In particular, the propositions that the US behaves better than
other nations do and that it is responsible for most of the good in the
world are counterfactual, the exact opposite to the truth. As for “God is
30 I. A. MOOSA

on our side”, O’Neill (2018) says that “leaders of many militaristic and
imperialistic countries have assumed that God is on their side”. American
exceptionalism has been used to sell to the public the military incursions
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. The Bush Junior administration
used exceptionalism to legalize torture.
American exceptionalism makes America a rogue state as judged by its
behaviour. This is what Palermo (2017) has to say:

“American Exceptionalism” plays out in the real world: Anything the US

does that violates “universal” standards of international relations—such
as the sovereignty of nations, respecting international borders, extrajudi-
cial killings, torture, targeting civilians, etc.—can be brushed off by the
“whoops, sorry” defense, followed by finger-pointing at adversaries, and
dismissing any criticism that comes America’s way as “a stunt”.

Some scholars believe that exceptionalism is a conduit to militarism.

Rojecki (2008) argues that “American exceptionalism proved to be a
resonant moral catalyst for elite media support of unilateral US mili-
tary action”. Shoemaker (2014) sees American exceptionalism as implying
superiority to other nations and therefore has a special role to play in
world history through interventions in other countries, which is perhaps
why Dick Cheney believes that the US has the right to promote national
interest even when that requires military force and the circumvention of
international law. Richards (2016) believes that American exceptionalism
can be detrimental because “believing the US is unique and ultimately
better than other countries is a precursor to believing this country and its
leaders are infallible, and can therefore do no wrong”. Da Costa (2016)
notes that “throughout the twentieth century, American Exceptionalism
has served as a powerful hegemonic discursive instrument, justifying
countless interventions in Latin American foreign and domestic affairs”.
Exceptionalism is typically taken to be “exemptionalism”, in the sense
that the US is “above” or an “exception” to international law, which is
quite evident in contemporary US behaviour with respect to international
relations. In this sense, exceptionalism is less about justifying American
uniqueness than asserting its immunity to international law. Frel (2006)
puts the following forceful argument:
 2 WESTERN EXCEPTIONALISM AS AN IDEOLOGY 31

While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more
special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at
the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something
as heinous as a war crime.

He adds:

From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to

the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of
Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn’t feel as wrong and worthy of
prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-
soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the
Nazis…. Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States
or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes
of Hitler’s Third Reich. But the truth is that we can, and we have—most
recently and significantly in Iraq.

American exceptionalism has been criticized on the grounds of moral

purity. Zinn (1980) argues that American history is so morally flawed
because of slavery, civil rights, and social welfare issues that it cannot
be an exemplar of virtue. He also notes that American exceptionalism
cannot be of divine origin because it was not benign, particularly in
dealing with Native Americans. Pease (2009) mocks American exception-
alism as a “state fantasy” and a “myth”, suggesting that state fantasies
cannot altogether conceal the inconsistencies they mask. He gives two
examples of events that expose American cruelty and incompetence: the
revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison (Baghdad) and the
way the government dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Arguably, the US is exceptional in more than one way. It is exceptional
because it dominates the world militarily, economically, and culturally. It
is the country of choice for most adults worldwide who wish to relo-
cate permanently to another country. And America is exceptional because
only Americans have walked on the moon. However, America is also
exceptional because, unlike other developed countries, it does not provide
its citizens with universal healthcare. It is exceptional because it has the
shortest life expectancy and highest infant mortality rate among devel-
oped countries. It is exceptional because it incarcerates more of its citizens
than any other country on the planet. It is exceptional because income
inequality far outstrips what is found in other developed countries. It is
exceptional because no other country can match the death toll of gun
32 I. A. MOOSA

violence in the US. It is exceptional in terms of the damage and misery

inflicted on countries that have dared say “no” to Uncle Sam.
In a moral sense, America is exceptionally ordinary at best. Its founda-
tional document, which claims to recognize the equality of all men (not
women), was written by and for slave owners who included a descrip-
tion of the local population they were exterminating as “merciless Indian
Savages”. It was not originally conceived as a means of liberation for all
but for a privileged few who sought to recreate “a romanticized colo-
nial past”. Gathara (2019) is right in suggesting that “in much of the
non-white world, even before Trump, the US has been less the beacon
of hope it claims to be and more the harbinger of death and war and
colonial-style exploitation and oppression”. Yes, America is exceptional,
but for the wrong reasons.

2.2 From American Exceptionalism

to Western Exceptionalism
The description of American exceptionalism in the previous section seems
to indicate that America is exceptional even relative to its partners and
comrades in arms, other Western countries. However, since America is
the leader of the West, Western countries must have been blessed with
some exceptionalism of their own. Because exceptional America is the
leader of the West, the latter must also be exceptional relative to the
Rest. In general, Western exceptionalism is the idea that the West is,
somehow, superior to the Rest, which means that it has privileges that
countries of the Rest should not or could not have. Aziz (2012) describes
Western exceptionalism as follows: “European countries too have been
bitten by the Washington bug giving rise to what can be termed as
Western exceptionalism, which effectively means that the West is above
all”. Some European politicians do not shy away from putting forward
the idea of European superiority. On 13 October 2022, Josep Borrell
described Europe as a “garden” and “most of the rest of the world” as a
“jungle”, warning that the “jungle” could invade the “garden” (PIndia,
2022). This naturally means that the “garden” should take pre-emptive
“defensive” action by bombing the “jungle” relentlessly.
Like American exceptionalism, the West is exceptional whereas the
Rest is unexceptional. And like Amerika über alless and Deutschland über
alless , the West is above the Rest (Der Westen steht über dem Rest ).
Western exceptionalism is symbolized by the North Atlantic Terrorist
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Domestic
annals of Scotland
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
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are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Domestic annals of Scotland

from the revolution to the rebellion of 1745

Author: Robert Chambers

Release date: November 29, 2023 [eBook #72262]

Language: English

Original publication: Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, 1861

Credits: Richard Tonsing, Susan Skinner, and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOMESTIC

ANNALS OF SCOTLAND ***
Transcriber’s Note:
New original cover art included with this eBook is
granted to the public domain.

CANONGATE TOLBOOTH.
 DOMESTIC

ANNALS OF SCOTLAND

From the Revolution to the Rebellion of 1745.

By ROBERT CHAMBERS,
F.R.S.E., F.S.A.Sc., &c.

Bargarran House.
W. & R. CHAMBERS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

MDCCCLXI.
 Edinburgh:
Printed by W. and R. Chambers.
 PREFACE.

The Domestic Annals of Scotland from the Reformation to

the Revolution having experienced a favourable reception from the
public, I have been induced to add a volume containing similar
details with regard to the ensuing half-century. This is in many
respects an interesting period of the history of Scotland. It is
essentially a time of transition—transition from harsh and despotic
to constitutional government; from religious intolerance and severity
of manners to milder views and the love of elegance and amusement;
from pride, idleness, and poverty, to industrious courses and the
development of the natural resources of the country. At the same
time, the tendency to the wreaking out of the wilder passions of the
individual is found gradually giving place to respect for law. We see,
as it were, the dawn of our present social state, streaked with the
lingering romance of earlier ages. On these considerations, I am
hopeful that the present volume will be pronounced in no respect a
falling off in contrast with the former two.
It will be found that the plan and manner of treatment pursued in
the two earlier volumes are followed here. My object has still been to
trace the moral and economic progress of Scotland through the
medium of domestic incidents—whatever of the national life is
overlooked in ordinary history; allowing the tale in every case to be
told as much as possible in contemporary language. It is a plan
necessarily subordinating the author to his subject, almost to the
extent of neutralising all opinion and sentiment on his part; yet,
feeling the value of the self-painting words of these dead and gone
generations—so quaint, so unstudied, so true—so corrective in their
genuineness of the glozing idolatries which are apt to arise among
descendants and party representatives—I become easily reconciled to
the restricted character of the task. If the present and future
generations shall be in any measure enabled by these volumes to
draw from the errors and misjudgments of the past a lesson as to
what is really honourable and profitable for a people, the tenuis
labor will not have been undergone in vain.
Edinburgh, January 1861.
 CONTENTS.

PAGE
REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY: 1689–1694, 1
REIGN OF WILLIAM III.: 1695–1702, 107
REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE: 1702–1714, 257
REIGN OF GEORGE I.: 1714–1727, 389
REIGN OF GEORGE II.: 1727–1748, 535
APPENDIX, 619
INDEX, 627
 Illustrations.

Frontispiece—CANONGATE TOLBOOTH, EDINBURGH.

Vignette—BARGARRAN HOUSE.
PAGE
THE BASS, 106
AFRICAN COMPANY’S HOUSE AT BRISTO PORT, 123
EDINBURGH,
PORTRAIT OF DR PITCAIRN, 224
MACPHERSON’S SWORD, 234
HOUSE OF LORD ADVOCATE STEUART, 256
DRESSES OF THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND, 1676, 270
BARGARRAN COAT OF ARMS, 511
LADY PLAYING ON SPINET, 574
OLD TOLBOOTH, EDINBURGH, 638
 DOMESTIC
ANNALS OF SCOTLAND.

REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY: 1689–1694.

Our narrative takes up the political story of Scotland at the crisis of

the Revolution, when, King James having fled in terror to France, his
nephew and daughter, the Prince and Princess of Orange, were
proclaimed king and queen as William and Mary, and when the
Episcopacy established at the Restoration, after a struggling and
unhonoured existence of twenty-eight years, gave way to the present
more popular Presbyterian Church. It has been seen how the
populace of the west rabbled out the alien clergy established among
them; how, notwithstanding the gallant insurrection of my Lord
Dundee in the Highlands, and the holding out of Edinburgh Castle by
the Duke of Gordon, the new government quickly gained an
ascendency. It was a great change for Scotland. Men who had lately
been in danger of their lives for conscience’ sake, or starving in
foreign lands, were now at the head of affairs—the Earl of Melville,
Secretary of State; Crawford, President of Parliament; Argyle
restored to title and lands, and a privy-councillor; Dalrymple of Stair,
Hume of Marchmont, Steuart of Goodtrees, and many other exiles,
come back from Holland to resume prominent positions in the public
service at home—while the instruments of the late unhappy
government were either captives under suspicion, or living terror-
struck at their country-houses. Common sort of people, who had last
year been skulking in mosses from Claverhouse’s dragoons, were
now marshalled in a regiment, and planted as a watch on the Perth
and Forfar gentry. There were new figures in the Privy Council, and
none of them ecclesiastical. There was a wholly new set of senators
on the bench of the Court of Session. It looked like the sudden shift
of scenes in a pantomime, rather than a series of ordinary
occurrences.
Almost as a necessary consequence of the Revolution, a war with
France commenced in May 1689. Part of the operations took place in
Ireland, where James II., assisted with troops by King Louis, and
supported by the Catholic population, continued to exercise
sovereignty till his defeat at the Boyne (July 1, 1690). The
subjugation of Ireland to the new government was not completed till
the surrender of Limerick and other fortified places by treaty
(October 3, 1691). Long before this time, the Jacobite movement in
Scotland had come to a close by the dispersion of the Highlanders at
Cromdale (April 1690). A fortress and garrison were then planted at
Inverlochy (Fort William), in order to keep the ill-affected clans
Cameron, Macdonald, and others, in check. At the same time, the
Earl of Breadalbane was intrusted with the sum of twelve thousand
pounds, with which he undertook to purchase the pacification of the
Highlands. In 1691, there were still some chiefs in rebellion, and a
threat was held out that they would be visited with the utmost
severities if they did not take the oaths to the government before the
1st of January next. This led to the massacre of the Macdonalds of
Glencoe (February 13, 1692), an affair which has left a sad shade
upon the memory of King William.
In Scotland, it gradually became apparent that, though the late
changes had diffused a general sense of relief, and put state control
more in accordance with the feelings of the bulk of the people, there
was a large enough exception to embarrass and endanger the new
order of things. There certainly was a much larger minority
favourable to Episcopacy than was at first supposed; whole provinces
in the north, and a majority of the upper classes everywhere,
continued to adhere to it. A very large portion of the nobility and
gentry maintained an attachment to the ex-king, or, like the bishops,
scrupled to break old oaths in order to take new. Even amongst those
who had assisted in the Revolution, there were some who, either
from disappointment of personal ambition, or a recovery from
temporary fears, soon became its enemies. Feelings of a very natural
kind assisted in keeping alive the interest of King James. It was by a
nephew (and son-in-law) and a daughter that he had been displaced.
A frightful calumny had assisted in his downfall. According to the
ideas of that age, in losing a crown he had been deprived of a
birthright. If he had been guilty of some illegal doings, there might
be some consideration for his age. Anyhow, his infant son was
innocent; why punish him for the acts of his father? These
considerations fully appear as giving point and strength to the
Jacobite feeling which soon began to take a definite form in the
country. The government was thus forced into severities, which again
acted to its disadvantage; and thus it happened that, for some years
after the deliverance of Scotland from arbitrary power, we have to
contemplate a style of administration in which arbitrary power and
all its abuses were not a little conspicuous.
In the very first session of the parliament (summer of 1689), there
was a formidable opposition to the government, headed chiefly by
politicians who had been disappointed of places. The discontents of
these persons ripened early next year into a plot for the restoration of
the ex-king. It gives a sad view of human consistency, that a leading
conspirator was Sir James Montgomery of Skelmorley, who was one
of the three commissioners sent by the Convention in spring to offer
the crown to William and Mary. The affair ended in Montgomery, the
Earl of Annandale, and Lord Ross, informing against each other, in
order to escape punishment. Montgomery had to flee to the
continent, where he soon after died in poverty. The offences of the
rest were overlooked.
Amongst the events of this period, the ecclesiastical proceedings
bear a prominent place—efforts of statesmen for moderate measures
in the General Assembly—debates on church-patronage and oaths of
allegiance—tramplings out of old and rebellious Episcopacy; but the
details must be sought for elsewhere.[1] During 1693, there were great
alarms about invasion from France, and the forcible restoration of
the deposed king; and some considerable severities were
consequently practised on disaffected persons. By the death of the
queen (December 28, 1694), William was left in the position of sole
monarch of these realms.

The first emotions of the multitude on 1688. Nov.

attaining confidence that the Prince of
Orange would be able to maintain his ground, and that the reigning
monarch would be brought low, that the Protestant religion would be
safe, and that perhaps there would be good times again for those who
loved the Presbyterian cause, were, of course, very enthusiastic. So
early as the close of November, the populace of Edinburgh began to
call out ‘No pope, No papist,’ as they walked the streets, even when
passing places where guards were stationed. The students, too,
whose pope-burning enthusiasm had been sternly dealt with eight
years back, now broke out of all bounds, and had a merry cremation
of the pontiff’s effigy at the cross, ending with its being ‘blown up
with art four stories high.’ This, however, was looked upon as a hasty
business, wanting in the proper solemnity; 1688.
so, two days after, they went to the law-
court in the Parliament Close, and there subjected his Holiness to a
mock-trial, and condemned him to be burned ceremoniously on
Christmas Day, doubtless meaning by the selection of the time to
pass an additional slight upon the religion over which they were now
triumphing.
On the appointed day, the students had a solemn muster to
execute the sentence. Arranged in bands according to their standing,
each band with a captain, they marched, sword in hand, to the cross,
preceded by the janitor of the college, carrying the mace, and having
a band of hautbois also before them. There, in presence of the
magistrates and some of the Privy Council, they solemnly burned the
effigy, while a huge multitude looked on delighted.[2]
There were similar doings in other parts of the country; but I select
only those of one place, as a specimen of the whole, and sufficient to
shew the feeling of the time.
A Protestant town-council being elected 1689. Jan. 11.
at Aberdeen, the boys of the Marischal
College resolved to celebrate the occasion with a burlesque Pope’s
Procession. They first thought proper to write to the new
magistrates, protesting that their design was not ‘tumultuary,’
neither did they intend to ‘injure the persons or goods of any.’ The
ceremonial reminds us slightly of some of the scenes in Lyndsay’s
Satire of the Three Estates. Starting from the college-gate at four in
the afternoon, there first went a company of men carrying links, six
abreast; next, the janitor of the college, with the college-mace,
preceding six judges in scarlet robes. Next marched four fifers
playing; then, in succession, four priests, four Jesuits, four popish
bishops, and four cardinals, all in their robes; then a Jesuit in
embroidered robes, carrying a great cross. Last came the pope,
carried in his state-chair, in scarlet robes lined with ermine, his triple
crown on his head, and his keys on his arm; distributing pardons and
indulgences as he moved along.
Being arrived at the market-cross, the pope placed himself on a
theatre, where a dialogue took place between him and a cardinal,
expressing the pretensions commonly attributed to the head of the
Catholic Church, and announcing a doom to all heretics. In the midst
of the conference, Father Peter, the ex-king’s confessor, entered with
a letter understood to convey intelligence of the late disastrous
changes in London; whereupon his holiness 1689.
fell into a swoon, and the devil came
forward, as to help him. The programme anticipates that this would
be hailed as a merry sight by the people. But better remained. The
pope, on recovering, began to vomit ‘plots, daggers, indulgences, and
the blood of martyrs,’ the devil holding his head all the time. The
devil then tried in rhyme to comfort him, proposing that he should
take refuge with the king of France; to which, however, he professed
great aversion, as derogatory to his dignity; whereupon the devil
appeared to lose patience, and attempted to throw his friend into the
fire. But this he was prevented from doing by the entry of one
ordering that the pope should be subjected to a regular trial.
The pontiff was then arraigned before the judges as guilty of high
treason against Omnipotence, in as far as he had usurped many of its
privileges, besides advancing many blasphemous doctrines. ‘The
court adduced sufficient proofs by the canons of the church, bulls,
pardons, and indulgences, lying in process;’ and he was therefore
pronounced guilty, and ordered to be immediately taken to the
public place of execution, and burned to ashes, his blood to be
attainted, and his honours to be blotted out of all records. The
procession was then formed once more, and the sentence was read
from the cross; after which ‘his holiness was taken away from the
theatre, and the sentence put in execution against him. During the
time of his burning, the spectators were entertained with fireworks
and some other divertisements.
‘After all was ended, the Trinity Church bell—which was the only
church in Scotland taken from the Protestants and given to the
papists, wherein they actually had their service—was rung all the
night.’[3]

Patrick Walker relates,[4] with great Mar. 14.

relish, the close of the political existence of
the unhappy episcopate of Scotland, amidst the tumults attending
the sitting of the Convention at Edinburgh, during the process of
settling the crown on William and Mary. For a day or two after this
representative body sat down, several bishops attended, as a part of
the parliamentary constitution of the country, and by turns took the
duty of saying prayers. The last who did so, the Bishop of Dunkeld,
spoke pathetically of the exiled king as the 1689.
man for whom they had often watered their
couches, and thus provoked from the impetuous Montgomery of
Skelmorley a jest at their expense which will not bear repetition.
They were ‘put out with disdain and contempt,’ while some of the
members expressed a wish that the ‘honest lads’ knew of it, ‘for then
they would not win away with hale gowns.’ And so Patrick goes on
with the triumph of a vulgar mind, describing how they ‘gathered
together with pale faces, and stood in a cloud in the Parliament
Close. James Wilson, Robert Neilson, Francis Hislop, and myself
were standing close by them. Francis Hislop with force thrust Robert
Neilson upon them; their heads went hard upon one another. But
there being so many enemies in the city, fretting and gnashing their
teeth, waiting for an occasion to raise a mob, where undoubtedly
blood would have been shed; and we having laid down conclusions
among ourselves to guard against giving the least occasion to all
mobs; kept us from tearing off their gowns.
‘Their graceless graces went quickly off; and neither bishop nor
curate was seen in the streets; this was a surprising change not to be
forgotten. Some of us would have been rejoiced more than in great
sums, to see these bishops sent legally down the Bow, that they
might have found the weight of their tails in a tow, to dry their hose-
soles, that they might know what hanging was; they having been
active for themselves, and the main instigators to all the mischiefs,
cruelties, and bloodshed of that time, wherein the streets of
Edinburgh, and other places of the land, did run with the innocent,
precious, dear blood of the Lord’s people.’
A more chivalric adversary might have, after all, found something
to admire in these poor prelates, who permitted themselves to be so
degraded, purely in consequence of their reverence for an oath, while
many good Presbyterians were making little of such scruples. On the
other hand, a more enlightened bench of bishops might have seen
that the political status which they now forfeited had all along been a
worldly distinction working against the success of spiritual objects,
and might thus have had some comfortable re-assurances for the
future, as they ‘stood in a cloud in the Parliament Close,’ to receive
the concussion of Robert Neilson pushed on by Francis Hislop.
Since Christmas of the past year, there had been constant mob-
action against the Episcopal clergy, especially in the western shires,
about three hundred having been rudely expelled or forced to flee for
safety of their lives. On the rebound of such 1689.
a spring, nothing else was to be expected;
perhaps there is even some force in the defence usually put forward
for the zealous Presbyterians on this occasion, that their violences
towards those obnoxious functionaries were less than might have
been expected. I do not therefore deem it necessary to go into ‘the
Case of the present Afflicted Clergy,’[5] or to call attention to the
similar case of the faithful professors of the Edinburgh University,
expelled by a commission in the autumn of 1690. There is, however,
one anecdote exemplifying Christian feeling on this occasion, which
it must be pleasant to all to keep in green remembrance. ‘The last
Episcopal clergyman of the parish of Glenorchy, Mr David Lindsay,
was ordered to surrender his charge to a Presbyterian minister then
appointed by the Duke [Earl] of Argyle. When the new clergyman
reached the parish to take possession of his living, not an individual
would speak to him [public feeling on the change of church being
here different] except Mr Lindsay, who received him kindly. On
Sunday, the new clergyman went to church, accompanied by his
predecessor. The whole population of the district were assembled,
but they would not enter the church. No person spoke to the new
minister, nor was there the least noise or violence till he attempted to
enter the church, when he was surrounded by twelve men fully
armed, who told him he must accompany them; and, disregarding all
Mr Lindsay’s prayers and entreaties, they ordered the piper to play
the march of death, and marched away the minister to the confines
of the parish. Here they made him swear on the Bible that he would
never return, or attempt to disturb Mr Lindsay. He kept his oath. The
synod of Argyle were highly incensed at this violation of their
authority; but seeing that the people were fully determined to resist,
no further attempt was made, and Mr Lindsay lived thirty years
afterwards, and died Episcopal minister of Glenorchy, loved and
revered by his flock.’[6]

A little incident connected with the Apr.

accession of King William and Queen Mary
was reported to Wodrow as ‘beyond all question.’ When the
magistrates of Jedburgh were met at their market-cross to proclaim
the new sovereigns, and drink their healths, a Jacobite chanced to
pass by. A bailie asked him if he would 1689.
drink the king’s health; to which he
answered no, but he was willing to take a glass of the wine. They
handed him a little round glass full of wine; and he said: ‘As surely as
this glass will break, I drink confusion to him, and the restoration of
our sovereign and his heir;’ then threw away the glass, which
alighted on the tolbooth stair, and rolled down unbroken. The bailie
ran and picked up the glass, took them all to witness how it was quite
whole, and then dropping some wax into the bottom, impressed his
seal upon it, as an authentication of what he deemed little less than a
miracle.
Mr William Veitch happening to relate this incident in Edinburgh,
it came to the ears of the king and queen’s commissioner, the Earl of
Crawford, who immediately took measures for obtaining the glass
from Jedburgh, and ‘sent it up with ane attested account to King
William.’[7]