The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (6 page)

Civilizations have no clear-cut boundaries and no precise beginnings and endings. People can and do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and shapes of civilizations change over time. The cultures of peoples interact and overlap. The extent to which the cultures of civilizations resemble or differ from each other also varies considerably. Civilizations are nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are seldom sharp, they are real.

Fourth, civilizations are mortal but also very long-lived; they evolve, adapt, and are the most enduring of human associations, “realities of the extreme
longue duree
.” Their “unique and particular essence” is “their long historical continuity. Civilization is in fact the longest story of all.” Empires rise and fall, governments come and go, civilizations remain and “survive political, social, economic, even ideological upheavals.”
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“International history,” Bozeman concludes, “rightly documents the thesis that political systems are transient expedients on the surface of civilization, and that the destiny of each linguistically and morally unified community depends ultimately upon the survival of certain primary structuring ideas around which successive generations have coalesced
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and which thus symbolize the society’s continuity.”
[10]
Virtually all the major civilizations in the world in the twentieth century either have existed for a millennium or, as with Latin America, are the immediate offspring of another long-lived civilization.

While civilizations endure, they also evolve. They are dynamic; they rise and fall; they merge and divide; and as any student of history knows, they also disappear and are buried in the sands of time. The phases of their evolution may be specified in various ways. Quigley sees civilizations moving through seven stages: mixture, gestation, expansion, age of conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion. Melko generalizes a model of change from a crystallized feudal system to a feudal system in transition to a crystallized state system to a state system in transition to a crystallized imperial system. Toynbee sees a civilization arising as a response to challenges and then going through a period of growth involving increasing control over its environment produced by a creative minority, followed by a time of troubles, the rise of a universal state, and then disintegration. While significant differences exist, all these theories see civilizations evolving through a time of troubles or conflict to a universal state to decay and disintegration.
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Fifth, since civilizations are cultural not political entities, they do not, as such, maintain order, establish justice, collect taxes, fight wars, negotiate treaties, or do any of the other things which governments do. The political composition of civilizations varies between civilizations and varies over time within a civilization. A civilization may thus contain one or many political units. Those units may be city states, empires, federations, confederations, nation states, multinational states, all of which may have varying forms of government. As a civilization evolves, changes normally occur in the number and nature of its constituent political units. At one extreme, a civilization and a political entity may coincide. China, Lucian Pye has commented, is “a civilization pretending to be a state.”
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Japan is a civilization that
is
a state. Most civilizations, however, contain more than one state or other political entity. In the modern world, most civilizations contain two or more states.

Finally, scholars generally agree in their identification of the major civilizations in history and on those that exist in the modern world. They often differ, however, on the total number of civilizations that have existed in history. Quigley argues for sixteen clear historical cases and very probably eight additional ones. Toynbee first placed the number at twenty-one, then twenty-three; Spengler specifies eight major cultures. McNeill discusses nine civilizations in all of history; Bagby also sees nine major civilizations or eleven if Japan and Orthodoxy are distinguished from China and the West. Braudel identifies nine and Rostovanyi seven major contemporary ones.
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These differences in part depend on whether cultural groups such as the Chinese and the Indians are thought to have had a single civilization throughout history or two or more closely related civilizations, one of which was the offspring of the other. Despite
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these differences, the identity of the major civilizations is not contested. “Reasonable agreement,” as Melko concludes after reviewing the literature, exists on at least twelve major civilizations, seven of which no longer exist (Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Cretan, Classical, Byzantine, Middle American, Andean) and five which do (Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Islamic, and Western).
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To these five civilizations it is useful in the contemporary world to add Orthodox Latin American, and, possibly, African civilizations.

The major contemporary civilizations are thus as follows:

All scholars recognize the existence of either a single distinct Chinese civilization dating back at least to 1500
B.C.
and perhaps to a thousand years earlier, or of two Chinese civilizations one succeeding the other in the early centuries of the Christian epoch. In my
Foreign Affairs
article, I labeled this civilization Confucian. It is more accurate, however, to use the term Sinic. While Confucianism is a major component of Chinese civilization, Chinese civilization is more than Confucianism and also transcends China as a political entity. The term “Sinic,” which has been used by many scholars, appropriately describes the common culture of China and the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and elsewhere outside of China as well as the related cultures of Vietnam and Korea.

Some scholars combine Japanese and Chinese culture under the heading of a single Far Eastern civilization. Most, however, do not and instead recognize Japan as a distinct civilization which was the offspring of Chinese civilization, emerging during the period between
A.D.
100 and 400.

One or more successive civilizations, it is universally recognized, have existed on the Subcontinent since at least 1500
B.C.
These are generally referred to as Indian, Indie, or Hindu, with the latter term being preferred for the most recent civilization. In one form or another, Hinduism has been central to the culture of the Subcontinent since the second millennium
B.C.
“[M]ore than a religion or a social system; it is the core of Indian civilization.”
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It has continued in this role through modern times, even though India itself has a substantial Muslim community as well as several smaller cultural minorities. Like Sinic, the term Hindu also separates the name of the civilization from the name of its core state, which is desirable when, as in these cases, the culture of the civilization extends beyond that state.

All major scholars recognize the existence of a distinct Islamic civilization. Originating in the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century
A.D.
, Islam rapidly spread across North Africa and the Iberian peninsula and also eastward into central Asia, the Subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. As a result, many distinct cultures or subcivilizations exist within Islam, including Arab, Turkic, Persian, and Malay.

Several scholars distinguish a separate Orthodox civilization, centered in Russia and separate from Western Christendom as a result of its Byzantine parentage, distinct religion, 200 years of Tatar rule, bureaucratic
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despotism, and limited exposure to the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, and other central Western experiences.

Western civilization is usually dated as emerging about
A.D.
700 or 800. It is generally viewed by scholars as having three major components, in Europe, North America, and Latin America.

Latin America, however, has a distinct identity which differentiates it from the West. Although an offspring of European civilization, Latin America has evolved along a very
[every]
different path from Europe and North America. It has had a corporatist, authoritarian culture, which Europe had to a much lesser degree and North America not at all. Europe and North America both felt the effects of the Reformation and have combined Catholic and Protestant cultures. Historically, although this may be changing, Latin America has been only Catholic. Latin American civilization incorporates indigenous cultures, which did not exist in Europe, were effectively wiped out in North America, and which vary in importance from Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Bolivia, on the one hand, to Argentina and Chile, on the other. Latin American political evolution and economic development have differed sharply from the patterns prevailing in the North Atlantic countries. Subjectively, Latin Americans themselves are divided in their self-identifications. Some say, “Yes, we are part of the West.” Others claim, “No, we have our own unique culture,” and a large literature by Latin and North Americans elaborates their cultural differences.
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Latin America could be considered either a subcivilization within Western civilization or a separate civilization closely affiliated with the West and divided as to whether it belongs in the West. For an analysis focused on the international political implications of civilizations, including the relations between Latin America, on the one hand, and North America and Europe, on the other, the latter is the more appropriate and useful designation.

The West, then, includes Europe, North America, plus other European settler countries such as Australia and New Zealand. The relation between the two major components of the West has, however, changed over time. For much of their history, Americans defined their society in opposition to Europe. America was the land of freedom, equality, opportunity, the future; Europe represented oppression, class conflict, hierarchy, backwardness. America, it was even argued, was a distinct civilization. This positing of an opposition between America and Europe was, in considerable measure, a result of the fact that at least until the end of the nineteenth century America had only limited contacts with non-Western civilizations. Once the United States moved out on the world scene, however, the sense of a broader identity with Europe developed.
[17]
While nineteenth-century America defined itself as different from and opposed to Europe, twentieth-century America has defined itself as a part of and, indeed, the leader of a broader entity, the West, that includes Europe.

The term “the West” is now universally used to refer to what used to be called Western Christendom. The West is thus the only civilization identified
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by a compass direction and not by the name of a particular people, religion, or geographical area.
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This identification lifts the civilization out of its historical, geographical, and cultural context. Historically, Western civilization is European civilization. In the modern era, Western civilization is Euroamerican or North Atlantic civilization. Europe, America, and the North Atlantic can be found on a map; the West cannot. The name “the West” has also given rise to the concept of “Westernization” and has promoted a misleading conflation of Westernization and modernization: it is easier to conceive of Japan “Westernizing” than “Euroamericanizing.” European-American civilization is, however, universally referred to as Western civilization, and that term, despite its serious disabilities, will be used here.

Most major scholars of civilization except Braudel do not recognize a distinct African civilization. The north of the African continent and its east coast belong to Islamic civilization. Historically, Ethiopia constituted a civilization of its own. Elsewhere European imperialism and settlements brought elements of Western civilization. In South Africa Dutch, French, and then English settlers created a multifragmented European culture.
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Most significantly, European imperialism brought Christianity to most of the continent south of the Sahara. Throughout Africa tribal identities are pervasive and intense, but Africans are also increasingly developing a sense of African identity, and conceivably sub-Saharan Africa could cohere into a distinct civilization, with South Africa possibly being its core state.

Religion is a central defining characteristic of civilizations, and, as Christopher Dawson said, “the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest.”
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Of Weber’s five “world religions,” four—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism—are associated with major civilizations. The fifth, Buddhism, is not. Why is this the case? Like Islam and Christianity, Buddhism early separated into two main subdivisions, and, like Christianity, it did not survive in the land of its birth. Beginning in the first century
A.D.,
Mahayana Buddhism was exported to China and subsequently to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. In these societies, Buddhism was variously adapted, assimilated to the indigenous culture (in China, for example, to Confucianism and Taoism), and suppressed. Hence, while Buddhism remains an important component of their cultures, these societies do not constitute and would not identify themselves as part of a Buddhist civilization. What can legitimately be de
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scribed as a Therevada Buddhist civilization, however, does exist in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. In addition, the populations of Tibet, Mongolia, and Bhutan have historically subscribed to the Lamaist variant of Mahayana Buddhism, and these societies constitute a second area of Buddhist civilization. Overall, however, the virtual extinction of Buddhism in India and its adaptation and incorporation into existing cultures in China and Japan mean that Buddhism, although a major religion, has not been the basis of a major civilization.
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