The past is a foreign country, said L. P. Hartley—and it's the truth. We're used to the success of Europeans over the last four or so hundred years in overwhelming everyone else and conquering the world. So Europeans are evil dominators and everyone else victims or their ruthlessness. But move a couple of hundred years further back and suddenly things aren't quite the same. Instead, it was the Muslims who had overwhelmed everyone else and conquered the world. And back another few hundred years and it was the Romans. And back another few hundred years and it was the Persians. And back another few hundred years and it was the Egyptians. And so on and so on.
It's also the case that the three or four hundred years before the present have allowed the whole globe to focus attention on the success or failure of the countries that border the Mediterranean. So the success of Europeans over those last four hundred years begins with the domination of the Mediterranean, made more or less possible by the victory of the Hapsburgs at Lepanto in the mid-16th century. There was still conflict between Europeans and Muslims, to be sure—the final siege of Vienna took place in the late 17th century, after all: but Lepanto secured the homeland sufficiently so that the Hapsburgs could look to the "New World" and exploit what Columbus had "discovered" at the end of the 15thcentury. So the expansion of Europe into the rest of the planet, to which the English came a bit late, was a Mediterranean phenomenon in the first place. So was the expansion of Islam in the previous period, and so was the rule of Rome, and so was the Persian and the Egyptian dominations.
The rest of the world had its own imperial gives and takes. In the Americas the Incas succeeded the Chimors, who succeeded the Cuscos, who succeeded the Aymara, who succeeded the . . . . And the Olmecs gave way to the Mayans who gave way to the Toltecs who gave way to the Aztecs who gave way to the Spaniards who gave way to the Mexicans. And in Eurasia—the complicated history of the Mongols—invading Europe, India, China, Japan—is too convoluted to outline. Africa, immense continent as it is, has various rises and falls in various areas, from the rise and fall of the Empires of Mali, Ghana, Songhai, Kanem in the west to the Caliphates and Sultanates of the east to the Kingdoms of Kongo, Luba, and Lunda in the center and the Empire of Zimbabwe in the southeast.
To be sure, the rise-and-fall of colonial empires produces different modes of command and control, some more horrific than others. And in that horror the Europeans of the last four hundred years are up there in the panoply of devastation. But then the Aztecs and the Incas were no gift to their predecessors, nor were the Persians nor the Mongols . . . you get the picture.
From all this I, at least, derive two principles. First, judge the present ruthlessly, to be sure, but keep in mind that the present is a continuation of a horrible horrible past. Second, don't assume that the folks who represent the present horror will be replaced by more humane, kinder, gentler successors. Humanity, it seems, has never ever been humane, and probably never will be.
One final observation. The culprit in all human-caused misery is the relationship of power to weakness. In different historical modes that relationship has different modes of expression. Currently it's a straightforward matter of monetary wealth, but in the past it could have been something different. Medieval lords had little monetary wealth, but they had a great deal of power nonetheless bea
