For years I’ve complained that we don’t have a good name to describe precisely the version of Europe that took over the planet in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ‘The West’ fits a certain sort of self-conception, but at the cost of a strange, supercessionist genealogy that includes Jerusalem and Athens. Some seem to like ‘Euro-American’, but as an American who studies Australia this category doesn’t seem to cover 1) non-American settler colonies and 2) people of color in American settler colonies. There is ‘global north’ as opposed to ‘global south’ but this drives me crazy since Australia, the colonizer, is south of Papua New Guinea. In PNG people regularly talk about ‘whites’ and I borrow that term from the lifeworld I study when I talk about PNG/Australian dynamics but of course again the US is made up of more than just white people. Whorf had the euphemism ‘Standard Average European’ which I like a lot but its not too catchy.
I was wondering recently whether reviving the term ‘Christendom’ wouldn’t be a good solution — in the sense of the Christianitas which Charlemagne was supposed to rule over. It actually covers the right bits of Europe (i.e. Catholics and successor states) that we mean when we speak of standard average colonialism, and demarcates an important part of the shared culture of both Europe and its settler colonies, regardless of the ethnicity of their inhabitants. Also, it indicates that colonization was really not something all of Europe got into, but only certain western portions of it.
So I don’t know — as a shortcut for ‘Catholic Europe and Its Settler Colonies’ maybe ‘Christendom’ is good enough? Just a thought.
I see your dilemma, but I don’t think Christendom is the solution. In religious circles Christendom has many definitions many of which have nothing to do with geography, culture or politics. Christendom – like other multipurpose words (Democracy, freedom, etc.) would only confuse the issue.
(I apologize for nixing this idea and not being able to offer a better one.)
Why not clarify things with “Christiandumb?”
Sorry Rex, I think it sucks a bit!
I’m not sure Charlemagne was closely related to 19th C. colonialism. Also given that the 19th century really saw the rise of secularism/atheism and even radical biblical criticism in Europe, to call it “Christendom” would be a blanket term that seems to deny (or ignore) a series of very real contemporary social debates.
Must there be a nice, catchy term? Desirable, yes; but not necessarily representative. Colonialists (from wherever they came) were not the neat, monolithic body that a catchy term would imply … that they’re hard to explain, that it’s mucky and messy and involves a lot of blather, I can’t help but feel is a great metaphor for all the bodies and brains in the colonial power game.
Christendom is a lot better than “Catholic Europe and its Settler Colonies” (thank goodness you didn’t say “successor states”) in so far as, in the Middle Ages (so-called!), what we now think of as “Catholic” was simply “Christian.” Why not say “Latin West”? That refers to those cultures whose Christianity was Roman/Latin Rite as opposed to Greek or Syrian or any of the rest and of course we already speak of the “Latin alphabet.”
“Latin West” would also, nicely, *not* contain Jerusalem (whose Christians were largely not Roman/Latin Rite) and Athens, which I don’t think you want to contain although I am tired enough to have misunderstood your phrasing when you mention qualms about “West.” Anyway, we medievalists use the term and you–though you speak of innovations like Australia and imperialism and all that–could, too.
The term “the West” is problematic for the reasons you have mentioned. I fully agree.
However Christendom??? I actually think it would make matters worse. I do research among and work with Muslim communities in Europe. In this context, replacing the term “The West” by Christendom would certainly play in the hands of those who see a fundamental opposition between the West and Islam (on both side of the imagined trench). And it would support the perception that it is basically all about a conflict between Christianity (most, I guess, would not differentiate between Christianity and Christendom. Why should they?) and Islam as two innately opposing blocks. Secondly, the term would imply that everything that happened actually happened because of the Christian identity of those countries and actors. While I am not denying that this identity shaped the history it is not the only one that was and still is at work. Even those who do not subscribe to any form of Marxism would imagine that socio-economic identities next to a range of other cultural identities played a role.
I agree to what attilathenum has written. Sometimes (misleading) catchy terms should be de-constructed and not be replaced by another catchy term because the phenomenon cannot be boiled down to one or two words. Instead, naming the constellations at work might be more helpful although it takes more paragraphs and is, I know, sometimes quite tiring.
‘Whites’ or ‘whitemen’ would actually work fine if we took seriously Bashkow’s finding that the term does not (primarily) refer to color but to the consequences of a certain way of life. When dark-skinned people live that way, they are whitened. So if we want a term that refers to a cultural world in which settler colonialism is practiced, whitemen might be just the ticket, because it excludes all colors of people from those places who don’t live that way, and includes all colors of people who do. But unpacking all that for common usage, not so much.
(Btw, great question from one of my students this semester: when did white Europeans stop being indigenous? Well, did they? Caryl Phillips has that notion of the “European tribe” that might be useful here.)
‘Christendom’ is not without advantages. As an agnostic child of the Enlightenment it bothered me at first, and I wanted to retort that atheistic illuminati were among the ideologists of race and empire. But it’s certainly true that the general moral background of colonialism is christianoid even for the secularists, and it’s also true that Christianity adds to ordinary historical conquest and colonization the strange need to produce moralizing legitimations of power that for most other folks would be self-explanatory.
‘Latin West’ leaves the Brits and the Dutch out, so that won’t do. Ultimately I agree with Carmen that taking the time to specify local constellations is preferable to any sort of conceptual procrustean bed.
“When dark-skinned people live that way, they are whitened.”
That’s one of those ‘trying to engineer culture and jargon’ that just isn’t going to work without staining actual people in a negative way. Anything that you have to explain to people in a cumbersome way isn’t going to get incorporated into automatic assumptions. I can’t think of one example that has ever worked. That’s right up there with someone saying they are blacker than Obama because they grew up poor.
We have enough of these metaphors in our society that separate what is and what is not “culture.”
I think as anthropologists we should be highlighting that there is no particular color of skin that is anything, or associated with anything. Or, that people with white skin have no culture, just a primal need to dominate others. Also, the last thing you need in the American black community is for more stigmatization for acting what is conceived as white.
Others have remarked that subsequent events have made “Christendom” inexact; so how about Holy Roman Imperialist?
As Holy Roman Emperor (in exile), I for one certainly approve this designation.
@Carl Two words; China, Japan. Two empires, no Christianity to speak of.
Well that didn’t go over too well. I have to admit I do like ‘Latin West’ and ‘Christiandumb’ even though the second is rather unkind.
Carl: ‘Latin West’ leaves out England? Tell that to Ann Boleyn. I’m sympathetic with Bashkow’s claim (that is a great book) but I think it doesn’t really work as a label for anyone _unless_ they’ve read his book.
I still like the idea of a religious designation because 1) it cuts across racial lines 2) religion is obviously cultural (as opposed to race, which some people think isn’t cultural) and I like culural designations and 3) to a first approximation (and maybe even a second) it really is the Catholic areas which became the great colonizers. I know this definition is ‘procrustean’ but sometimes one needs quickly to speak in generalities.
The other problems with the creation of absolute paradigms, is that they render in-group variability invisible. Those of you with physical anthro., and/or statistics, know that in looking for the patterns of central tendency, which is what we do (individuals are not our focus), then you have to understand and compare inter and intra variability.
What I mean by this, is that terms like the West, Christiandom, whatever, hide very real in-group variability, and over state between-group differences. I.e., I’d rather be a rich guy in Bolivia, than a poor guy in Chicago.
Please people, please let’s not forget the basic lessons of Eric Wolf. There are connections everywhere and power is not unidirectional. Sympathize with the socialists on your campus, and join them even, but don’t buy into simplified versions of the world.
@ John: I’m missing your point. Of course you’re right, but Rex was asking about names for modern westo-europoid settler colonialism. The Huns and Scythians weren’t Christian either.
@ Rex, “I think it doesn’t really work as a label for anyone _unless_ they’ve read his book” is true, but also the dilemma for any neologism or jargon repurposing you gin up here.
Ann Boleyn predates Protestant Britain’s global-imperial phase by a little bit, so I’m sticking to thinking Latin West is a stretch for modern Northern Europe.
Since I don’t want to just be the party of No, I now officially propose Westo-Europoid.
@Carl: How does “Latin West” leave the Brits out? We’re talking about the LW back in the day here, not yesterday.
@Bertilak: Your observation sets us up to ask what exactly would be at the foundation of the cover term. Is this Latin West Latin because its territory was once part of the Roman Empire and/or because the territory was within the purview of the Vatican? Great Britain had a very different route to these attributes than Mediterranean countries did.
@ Bertilak: What MTBradley said. Including Britain in the Latin West makes a lot of sense in the medieval back in the day, it’s true (although only if we focus on high culture and only if we ignore the trajectory issues MTB gestures at). But that’s not the back in the day Rex is interested in – he wants a term for the version of Europe that became world-dominant in the 18th-19th centuries. Calling northern Europe at that time Latin would be geographically, culturally and religiously perverse, unless what is meant is stripped down to places formerly occupied by the Roman Empire or the Catholic church. But since the former = western Europe and the latter = what’s normally called The West, adding Latin to West accomplishes nothing.
Or is the claim that there’s some independent and essential contribution of Latinity as Roman or Catholic legacy to the conquering-and-colonizing behavior of Spaniards, Portuguese, Belgians, Dutch and Brits alike? A contribution that transcends all localities of culture, religion and history such as the violent northern European rejection of Catholicism during the Reformation? That sort of claim doesn’t look very anthropological (or historical) to me, and seems to beg the analysis of exactly what were the effective factors that led to the history we’re interested in naming.
So, what do we want this new term to do? Do we want it just to designate a region or some other arbitrary commonality, or does it need to have some conceptual depth? If so, what?
For a rather different take on the distinction between Europe and Christendom, you might consult the German romantic poet Novalis, in his 1799 essay “Die Christenheit oder Europa,” “Christendom OR Europe”:
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/print_document.cfm?document_id=3619
Christians were originally given that name by people who weren’t Christians, so why not give Christendom a name that those supposedly outside Christendom might recognise? What about saying its been in a long transition between Dar al-Harb and Dar al-‘Ahd or Dar al-Suhl (Mandaville 2001, Parteger 2008:156f). This has three advantages: 1) it introduces terminology that many ‘Westerners’ would not be particularly familiar with, thus promoting a certain level of reflexivity; 2) it recognizes that in Islamic culture there is quite some debate about the contours and boundaries of non-Islamic culture; 3) it makes clear that there is _no_ ‘version of Europe that took over the planet in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ – history only looks European from a European standpoint.
The West can be described as an idealized construct of a polity specifically without Islam and Judaism. Western implies ‘not Eastern’ and so the construction of the East is also at stake. Discussion of the West and Christendom can own up to this and bring Islam and Judaism back into the picture where they belong. This inevitably problematizes the idea of Europe, but this is appropriate. If it was simple it wouldn’t be as interesting.
“3) it makes clear that there is _no_ ‘version of Europe that took over the planet in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ – history only looks European from a European standpoint.”
I’m very happy to hear this! Nothing for us white boys to feel guilty about, then, and no more confusion about whether we’re the big bad global scourges, too full of ourselves, or somehow both. 😉
“What about saying its been in a long transition between Dar al-Harb and Dar al-’Ahd or Dar al-Suh”
Brilliant. I’ve made that point in the past myself. This reflexivity and self-criticism is rather unique to Europeans and Americans. This obviousness jumped out of the pages at me when I read Said’s work on Orientalism. He at once notes that Orientalism is largely a product, and reaction against Islamic imperialism, but then glosses over that fact very quickly, but noting for one, that Islam preserved and brought forth philosophy, sciences, architecture, etc… I didn’t understand how that was any excuse, because surely the “West” could easily make the same claim.
“What about saying its been in a long transition between Dar al-Harb and Dar al-’Ahd or Dar al-Suh”
Brilliant. I’ve made that point in the past myself. This reflexivity and self-criticism is rather unique to Europeans and Americans. This obviousness jumped out of the pages at me when I read Said’s work on Orientalism. He at once notes that Orientalism is largely a product, and reaction against Islamic imperialism, but then glosses over that fact very quickly, by noting for one thing, that Islam preserved and brought forth philosophy, sciences, architecture, etc… I didn’t understand how that was any excuse, because surely the “West” could easily make the same claim.
@Carl, @MTBradley: Neither. I was thinking of those places in which Latin was the primary language of scholarship, I suppose, not just religion or law. Neither the Roman Empire nor “the Vatican” entered into my thinking at all, I’ll admit, because they seemed to be pointlessly problematic delimiters–as you yourself observe with the example of the GBr and its special “trajectory.”