Schumpeter, Persian & Arab imperialism
Warrior type, instinct, motive, psychology, evolutionary facts, logic..
The Source:
Imperialism and Social Classes: Two Essays by Joseph Schumpeter, with an introduction by Bert Hoselitz, and translated by Heinz Norden, Meridian Books 1955
First published in Archiv für Sozialwissenshaft und Sozialpolitik, Tubingen, Germany, Vol. 46 (1919) and Vol. 57 (1927).
IMPERIALISM IN PRACTICE
… What imperialism looks like when it is not mere words, and what problems it offers, can best be illustrated by examples from antiquity. We shall select the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian empires and later add certain examples from a more recent period of history. We shall find characteristic differences among them, as well as one basic trait common to all, even the most modern brand of imperialism —a trait which for that reason alone cannot very well be the product of modern economic evolution. …
Egyptian imperialism
The case of Egypt, down to the Persian occupation, is particularly instructive, because here we see the imperialist trend toward expansion actually in the making. The Egyptians of the "Old" and "Middle" Empires—down to the Hyksos invasion—were a nation of peasants. The soil was the property of a hereditary, latifundian nobility which let it out to the peasants and which ruled in the political sense as well. This fundamental fact found organizational expression in a "regional" feudalism, an institution that was for the most part hereditary, rooted in real property, and, especially during the Middle Empire, quite independent of the crown. This social structure bore all the outward marks of force, yet it lacked any inherent tendency toward violent and unlimited expansion. The external situation ruled out such a trend; for the country, while easy to defend, was quite unsuitable as a base for a policy of conquest in the grand manner. Nor was it demanded by economic requirements—and indeed, no trace of such a policy is apparent. Throughout the period of the "Old" Empire of Memphis we learn of but one warlike undertaking (except for unimportant fighting on the Sinai peninsula). This was the campaigns in southern Syria under the Sixth Dynasty. In the "Middle" Empire of Thebes things were not quite so peaceful; still, fighting revolved essentially only about the defense of the frontiers. The single conquest was Nubia (under Amenemhat I and Usertesen III).
Things changed only after the expulsion of the Hyksos … in the "New" Empire. The immediate successors of the liberator, Aahmes I, already conquered upper Cush to the third cataract and then reached farther into Asia. They grew more and more aggressive, and campaign followed campaign, without the slightest concrete cause. Dhutmes III and Amenhotep III were conquerors, pure and simple.
In the end Egyptian rule reached to the Amanes and beyond the Euphrates. Following a reversal under the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, this policy was resumed, and after the Assyrian invasion (662) and the liberation by Psamtik I, Egypt, reunited under Necho II, again passed over to the attack, until the Battle of Karkamish (604) put an end to its Asiatic undertakings.
Why did all this happen? The facts enable us to diagnose the case. The war of liberation from the Hyksos, lasting a century and a half, had "militarized" Egypt. A class of professional soldiers had come into being, replacing the old peasant militia and technically far superior to it, owing to the employment of battle chariots, introduced, like the horse, by the Bedouin Hyksos.
The support of that class enabled the victorious kings, as early as Aahmes I, to reorganise the empire centrally and to suppress the regional feudal lords and the large, aristocratic landowners—or at least to reduce their importance. We hear little about them in the "New" Empire. The crown thus carried out a social revolution; it became the ruling power, together with the new military and hierarchical aristocracy and, to an increasing degree, foreign mercenaries as well. This new social and political organization was essentially a war machine. It was motivated by warlike instincts and interests. Only in war could it find an outlet and maintain its domestic position.
Without continual passages at arms it would necessarily have collapsed. Its external orientation was war, and war alone. Thus war became the normal condition, alone conducive to the well-being of the organs of the body social that now existed. To take the field was a matter of course, the reasons for doing so were of subordinate importance.
Created by wars that required it, the machine now created the wars it required. A will for broad conquest without tangible limits, for the capture of positions that were manifestly untenable—this was typical imperialism.
The case of the Persians is distinct from that of the Egyptians in that the former appear as a "warrior nation" from the very outset. What does that term mean? Manifestly, a nation whose social structure is oriented toward the military function, that does not need to be readjusted to that function by the power of the crown and a new warrior class, added at some time to the previously existing classes; a nation where the politically important classes—but not necessarily all the classes—view warfare as their main profession, are professional soldiers, do not need to be specially trained as such.
The crucial point is not the mere capacity or inclination to resort to arms when the need arises. The landlords and even the peasants of Egypt were originally no strangers to the profession of arms. But it was not their profession as such. They took up arms much as the modern "civilian" joins the army—when they had to. Their lives were centered in the private rather than the military sphere. War was a nuisance—an abnormal emergency. What is the crucial point is that in a warrior nation war is never regarded as an emergency interfering with private life; but, on the contrary, that life and vocation are fully realized only in war. In a warrior nation the social community is a war community. Individuals are never absorbed into the private sphere. There is always an excess of energy, finding its natural complement in war. The will to war and violent expansion rises directly from the people—though this term is here not necessarily used in the democratic sense, as we shall see later. Hence the term "people's imperialism", which today is unquestionably nonsense, is in good standing when applied to a warrior nation.
Persian imperialism
The Persians offer a good example of such a warrior nation. True, even their organization did not emerge full-fledged until the conquest of Elam (second half of the sixth century). True, even with them the crown grew powerful only in the ensuing period of triumphs. And, despite continued adherence to universal, compulsory military service, they saw the rise of a more narrowly circumscribed standing army of personal followers that was to become the ruling class within the world empire.
But despotism was a consequence of conquest, rather than the basis for the inauguration of a policy of conquest, the source of imperialist tendencies.
Limitations on the royal power survived for a long time, as did the autonomy of the aristocracy, especially the ruling houses of the seven original tribes. This fact is readily understandable because the imperialist policy of the crown, instead of being at odds with the aristocracy, rested on it, merely formulated its policy. And the Persian people continued to occupy a position of preference within the empire. The king treated them with extreme care, offering them bounties and freedom from tribute. They constituted themselves the master class, though with a great measure of moderation. It was unnecessary to subject them to a special new system of military rule.
But the mere statement that we are here dealing with a "warrior nation" does not, of course, say everything. Indeed, this very character of the Persians as a warrior nation requires explanation. That explanation does not lie far afield. True, we do not know a great deal about the Persians before they entered into the limelight of history, but we do know enough about the prehistory of all Iranian Aryans to be able to reconstruct the prehistory of the Persians as well. It was geographic factors that made warriors of the Iranian Aryans. For them, war was the only method for keeping alive, the only possible form of life in a given environment. Warriors by environment, the Persians very probably reached the regions where history first finds them with sword in hand.
And the psychological dispositions and organizational forms gained from such a mode of life persisted, continuing in an "objectless" manner. This is in accord with psychological developments that can be verified everywhere. The miser originally saves for good reasons, but beyond a certain point his hoarding ceases to be rational. The modern businessman acquires work habits because of the need for making a living, but labours far beyond the limits where acquisition still has rational meaning in the hedonist sense.
Such phenomena have familiar parallels in the evolutionary facts of physical organisms and further parallels in the evolutionary facts of social phenomena, such as law, custom, and so on. Imperialism is such a phenomenon. The imperialism of a warrior nation, a people's imperialism, appears in history when a people has acquired a warlike disposition and a corresponding social organization before it has had an opportunity to be absorbed in the peaceful exploitation of its definitive area of settlement.
Peoples who were so absorbed, such as the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, or the Slavs, never of themselves develop imperialist tendencies, though they may be induced to do so by mercenary and generally alien armies. Peoples who were not preoccupied in this fashion—who were formed into a warlike pattern by their environment before they settled permanently, while they were still in a primitive stage of tribal or even clan organization—remain natural-born imperialists until centuries of peaceful work wear down that warlike disposition and undermine the corresponding social organization.
In the case of the Persians, we can thus understand what would otherwise remain incomprehensible—why the brief struggle for liberation from the Medes under Kurush II automatically turned into a war for the subjection of these former overlords and why this war reached out farther and farther. The Bactrians and Armenians were subjected. Babylon and Sardis were conquered. In the end Persian rule reached to the coast of Asia Minor, to the Caucasus and the Indus. A characteristic case was the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses. The invasion was made as a matter of course.
One side prepared for it, the other side anticipated it, just as though any other course were out of the question.
… Just as happens today, public opinion looked primarily to personal motives on the part of the ruling men—a line of inquiry that turns history into a form of gossip richly embroidered with romance. As for Cambyses, he was a warrior and the overlord of a mighty power. He needed deeds, for himself and for it. Egypt was not a particularly suitable object of aggression—but there it was, and so it was attacked. The truth of this interpretation is proved by the fact that the Persians never dreamed of stopping in Egypt but were intent on pushing on, to Siwah and Carthage on the one hand, and to the south on the other—even though there were no princesses to offer convenient pretexts for war. These further advances largely miscarried, and the difficulties in the way of further penetration proved to be insurmountable. But we have here a failure of military power rather than of the will to conquest. …
… True, pretexts for war were always found. There is no situation in which such pretexts are altogether lacking. What matters here is that the pretexts are quite unsuitable to form links in the chain of explanation of historic events—unless history is to be resolved into an account of the whims of great lords. This, after all, is precisely the point at issue—why to some peoples any pretext was good enough for war, why to them war was the prima rather than the ultima ratio, the most natural activity in the world. This is the question of the nature of the imperialist mentality and constitutes our problem.
Even less satisfactory than the explanation by flimsy pretexts is the theory that points to the interest in booty and tribute, or in commercial advantages. Of course such elements are never lacking. Yet the Persians, of all conquerors were remarkably mild toward the peoples they subjugated. They never even remotely exploited them to the extent that would have been possible. Naturally they did seek some return from their conquests, once they had been made. The Persian king would become king of the country in question—as in the case of Egypt—or impose tribute or military levies on it. Yet there were never any cessions of privately owned land to Persians. The social organization of the conquered country usually remained intact. Religion, language, economic life suffered no harm. The leading men were often elevated to the imperial Persian aristocracy. Any concrete advantages were more in the nature of tokens of victory, esteemed as such, than of goals sought and exploited for their own sake.
Specifically nationalist trends are nowhere in evidence. The Persians did not "Persianize". In their proclamations, the kings often used several different languages. Unquestionably we have here a case of "pure" imperialism, unmixed with any element of nationalism. …
The religious element is conspicuously absent, with the Persians as with the Egyptians, a fact that is particularly noteworthy in the latter case. Both were tolerant to the point of indifference, especially the Persians, who actually fostered foreign cults. …
[MH: Omitted here is long discussion of some other imperialisms in the Ancient Near East, except for the following passage on professed Assyrian ‘religious’ motivations.]
What answer would we get if we were to ask an Assyrian king: "Why do you conquer without end? Why do you destroy one people after another, one city after another? Why do you put out the eyes of the vanquished? Why do you burn their habitations?"
We would be told the official—perhaps even the conscious—motive. Tuklâtî-pal-ísharra I, for example, replied:
"The God Assur, my Lord, commanded me to march. . . . I covered the lands … with ruins. . . . I chastized them, pursued their warriors like wild beasts, conquered their cities, took their gods with me. I made prisoners, seized their property, abandoned their cities to fire, laid them waste, destroyed them, made ruins and rubble of them, imposed on them the harshest yoke of my reign; and in their presence I made thank offerings to the God Assur, my Lord." …
Characteristically, this account reads much like Assurnasirpal's report of a hunt:
"The gods Nindar and Nirgal, who cherish my priestly office, gave the beasts of the desert into my hands. Thirty mighty elephants I killed, 257 huge wild bulls I brought down with arrows from my open chariot, in the irresistible power of my glory."
… Such an answer from the king does not help us much. It is scarcely permissible to assume that he was lying or pretending—nor would that matter, one way or the other. But we can scarcely be disputed when we insist that the God Assur commanded and his prophet—in this case the king himself—proclaimed merely what was in keeping with acquired habits of thought and the emotional response of the people, their "spirit", formed by their environment in the dim past. It is also plain that conscious motives—no matter whether, in the concrete case, they were always religious in character—are seldom true motives in the sense of being free of deceptive ideologies; and that they are never the sole motives. Human motivation is always infinitely complex, and we are never aware of all its elements. The Assyrian policy of conquest, like any similar policy, must have had many auxiliary motives.
Lust for blood and booty, avarice and the craving for power, sexual impulses, commercial interests (more prominent with the Assyrians than the Persians)—all these, blended to varying degrees, may have played their part in motivating individuals and groups; also operative was the unrestrained will to gratify instincts—precisely those instincts to which a warlike past had given predominance in the mentality. Such real motives are powerful allies of official motives (whether religious or otherwise), increase their striking power, or usurp their guise. This aspect of imperialism emerges more sharply in the Assyrian case than in any other. But it is never altogether absent, not even today.
Here too, however, the actual foundation of the religious motive—and here is the crucial formulation—is the urge to action. The direction of this urge, determined by the nation's development, is, as it were, codified in religion. It is this, too, that makes the God Assur a war god and as such insatiable. For the fact of definite religious precepts can never be accepted as ultimate. It must always be explained.
In the case of the Assyrians this is not at all difficult. That is why I placed the hunting account beside the war report. It is evident that the king and his associates regarded war and the chase from the same aspect of sport—if that expression is permissible. In their lives, war occupied the same role as sports and games do in present-day life. It served to gratify activity urges springing from capacities and inclinations that had once been crucial to survival, though they had now outlived their usefulness. Foreign peoples were the favourite game and toward them the hunter's zeal assumed the forms of bitter national hatred and religious fanaticism.
War and conquest were not means but ends. They were brutal, stark naked imperialism, inscribing its character in the annals of history with the same fervour that made the Assyrians exaggerate the size of the muscles in their statuary.
Naturally, imperialism of this kind is worlds removed from the imperialism of later ages. Yet in its innermost nature the imperialism of Louis XIV, for example, ranks beside that of the Assyrians.
[MH Dict. Louis XIV(1638–1715), son of Louis XIII, reigned 1643–1715; known as the Sun King. His reign represented the high point of the Bourbon dynasty and of French power in Europe, and in this period French art and literature flourished. His almost constant wars of expansion united Europe against him, however, and gravely weakened France's financial position.]
True, it [the French case] is more difficult to analyse. The "instinctual" element of bloody primitivism recedes, is softened and overgrown by the efforts of both actors and spectators to make these tendencies comprehensible to themselves and others, to found them on reason, to direct them toward reasonable aims—just as the popular mind seeks to rationalise ancient customs, legal forms, and dogmas, the living meaning of which has been lost. In an objective sense the results of such efforts are nearly always fallacious, but that does not mean that they lack all significance. They indicate functional changes in social habits, legal forms, and so on. They show how these modes of thought and behaviour can either be adapted to a new social environment and made useful or be weakened by rationalist criticism.
That is why the newer imperialisms no longer look like the Assyrian brand, and that is why they are more easily misunderstood. Only a more searching comparison will put them in their proper light. But we shall now add to the examples already cited—which were to introduce us to the nature and the problem of imperialism—certain others that will enable us to discuss individual points of interest and that will serve as a bridge to modern times.
Arab imperialism
In order to illuminate especially the character of the religious brand of imperialism, let us briefly discuss the case of the Arabs.
The relevant facts are simple and uncontroverted. The Arabs were mounted nomads, a persistent warrior type, like the nomadic Mongol horsemen. At heart they have remained just that, despite all modifications of culture and organization. Only at a late date and incompletely did por- tions of the Arab people relinquish the equestrian profession —no one readjusts so slowly and with such difficulty as the mounted nomad. Such people are never able to support themselves alone, and in Arabia they constituted a master class that systematically exploited for its own purposes, some- times by means of outright robbery, the (likewise Semitic) population that had settled here and there and was engaged in agriculture and trade.
[MH: Below and elsewhere in the book Schumpeter uses the word ‘democracy’ in a strange ill-defined way completely unlike the far more rigorous, realistic (and essentially Weberian) concept of ‘democracy’ elaborated in post-1930 writings. I discuss the latter version in my book as “imperfect political competition” pp. 144-8].
Internally the Arabs were organised along thoroughly democratic lines, again like all mounted nomads. It was a gentile and patriarchal type of democracy, in keeping with the "relations of production" that prevailed among a nation of herdsmen and horsemen, and quite different from agrarian and urban democracy—but democracy all the same in the sense that all members of the nation carried political weight and that all political expression grew from the people as a whole. The Arabs were divided into loosely knit tribes, headed by a freely elected sheik or emir who was dependent, in all affairs of importance, on the assent of the clan chiefs. The stock from which the tribes developed constituted the primary community, the fundamental social bond.
There were three elements that brought this Arab world to the stage of ferment. First of all, there was the alien rule of the Byzantines and Persians … Secondly, in the realm of ideas, there was the religious bond that existed between the tribes. This was objectified in the ancient sanctuary of the Kaba at Mecca, where all the tribes met … The center itself, the breeding place of new trends, was in the possession of a single tribe, the Koreishites, who thereby assumed a privileged position, often at odds with other interests. Even within the Koreish tribe the holy place was in charge of a special clique, as always happens in such cases. In the third place, an urban commercial culture, reaching out to draw in certain individuals, clans, and tribes, developed in the centres of communication, especially Mecca. This was bound to wear down many corners of the old order and way of life and thinking, at the same time opening a gulf between the elements so affected and the simple, old-style Bedouins, to whom these things appeared alien and dissonant.
There appeared, at first purely by way of reaction, a movement of social reform or revolution, beginning in the early seventh century. Pristine simplicity, a softening of the contrasts between poor and rich, a voluntary relinquishment of the pursuit of profit—these were Mohammed's first thoughts …and his first practical demand was for a purge of the stain of money-grubbing by means of alms-giving.
Whatever his adherents may have thought, the interests that were threatened recognised the situation with the clarity peculiar to them and acted promptly. But their measures failed to destroy Mohammed, merely driving him out, and only a year after the Hegira he was able to make himself master of Medina. Thus all they succeeded in doing was to force him, first, onto the defensive and, then, the offensive, with a corresponding shift in his viewpoint. The reformer of the sacred tribe became the aggressive fighter against the "Infidels". Inner communion gave way to the call for war on behalf of the faith—the jihad—as the most important practical demand, the normal outward attitude of the faithful.
Partly as a cause of this ideological orientation, partly as its consequence, there came into being a practical fighting organization, which reduced the element of inner communion to the role of a means for self-discipline on the part of the warrior, and to which the Bedouins took like ducks to water.
Both ideology and organization proved their vitality and grew with the task for which they had been created—the struggle for Mecca and the unifying conversion of the Arab tribes. And when, suddenly, they had arrived, become firm, grown into a power, they followed the impulse they had received. Mohammed himself attempted to reach beyond Arabia (the campaign of Said), though without success. Abu Bekr, having developed the new politico-military organization and secured it against uprisings, invaded Syria without difficulty. Yet the new clerical warrior state remained democratic, despite the Caliph's wealth of temporal and clerical power. It could do so, because it had grown straight from the people. Loot was community property, to be distributed according to military rank.
Not until Othman was the acquisition of land in the conquered countries permitted. The original idea had been that the Arabs would remain a master class, merely establishing garrisons. Under Omar, Persia was invaded—without any good reason, but with brilliant success. Byzantine Syria suffered the same fate at almost the same time. Then came Palestine, Phoenicia, Egypt. Christians and Jews were expelled from Arabia, forbidden to use Arab script and language.
After a period of confusion came the culmination, under the Omayyads (661-750), when the center of empire shifted to Damascus.
Ideology and organization began to lose their original impact.
There was increasing differentiation and division of labor. The Arabs began to fuse with the conquered countries, and developing despotism did its work.
Rigid centralism succumbed and the Occidental Caliphate separated from the Oriental. The Arab wave spent itself against Byzantium.
But the basic outlines remained. North Africa and Spain were conquered.
Frankish [Germanic] might rather than any lack of Arab will put an end to further penetration. In Asia it was the same story. Many armed actions still succeeded.
A halt was called only when it was impossible to push on.
And whenever a halt was called, internal difficulties erupted, destroying the empire in the end.
The diagnosis is simple. We are here face to face with a "warrior nation" and must explain from its circumstances how it came to be one.
We see how internal struggles gave rise to a unified war organization behind which rallied all the popular forces—including those in the ideological sphere —a war machine that, once in motion, continued so long as there was steam behind it and it did not run up against a stone wall. War was the normal function of this military theocracy. The leaders might discuss methods, but the basic issue was never in question. This point emerges with particular clarity, since the Arabs, for the most part, never troubled to look for even flimsy pretexts for war, nor did they even declare war. Their social organization needed war; without successful wars it would have collapsed. War, moreover, was the normal occupation of the members of the society.
When there was no war, they would rebel or fall upon each other over theological controversies.
The older social doctrine, especially the tendency to guard against merging with the conquered land and to keep the people fixed in the profession of arms, served the needs of this situation. Whenever that failed, whenever a new environment beckoned in another country with a richer background, whenever the Arabs settled down there, especially when they acquired land—then the impetus of war was spent and there developed such cultural centres as Cordoba, Cairo, and Bagdad.
The energies of the best elements were diverted to other goals. We have, then, a typical case of "objectless," violent expansion, born of past necessities of life, grown to the proportions of a powerful drive by virtue of long habit, persisting to the point of exhaustion—a case of imperialism which we are able to view historically, precisely, and completely from its very origins to its death in the functional transformation of its energy.
What was the role played by the religious element, the commandments of Allah, the doctrine of the Prophet? These pervaded and dominated Arab life with an intensity that has few parallels in history. They determined daily conduct, shaped the whole world outlook.
They permeated the mentality of the believer, made him someone who was characteristically different from all other men, opened up an unbridgeable gulf between him and the infidel, turning the latter into the arch enemy with whom there could be no true peace. These influences can be traced into every last detail of Arab policy. And most conspicuous of all in the whole structure of precepts is the call to holy war that opens wide the gates of paradise.
Yet if one sought to conclude that the religious element played a causative role in the Arab policy of conquest, that imperialism rooted in religion must therefore be a special phenomenon, one would come up against three facts.
In the first place, it is possible to comprehend Arab policy quite apart from the religious element. It rises from factors that would have been present even without Allah's commandments and presumably would have taken effect even without them—as we saw in the example of the Persians …
In the second place, it was by no means true that religion was an independent factor that merely happened to be tending in the same direction as the imperialist drive for conquest. The interrelation between the Word of the Prophet and the data of the social environment (that by themselves already explain that drive) is too obvious to be overlooked. It was the Prophet of the mounted nomads who proclaimed war everlasting—not just any prophet.
We simply cannot ignore the fact that such preachments came naturally to the Prophet and his followers. We cannot dispose of the question by positing a theoretical dominance and creative social force somehow peculiar to the religious element—as though some mysterious and unfathomable vision, remote from environmental pressures, had given rise to the Word of the Prophet in a vacuum …
It is pointless to insist that the Word of the Prophet is an ultimate fact beyond which social science analysis cannot go, any more than it can transcend the data of physical nature—when that fact becomes easily understandable from the very social, psychic, and physical background that is itself quite adequate to explain fully what the Word of the Prophet is otherwise left to explain alone. …
But suppose we do accept the theory that the Prophet's doctrine existed in vacuo. In trying to understand its success, we would—to mention the third point—inevitably come up against the same situation that confronted us when we sought to grasp its basic spirit.
It is only necessary to visualise what might have happened if the jihad had been preached to the unmilitary "fishermen" of Galilee, the "little people" in Palestine. Is it really far-fetched to assume that they would not have followed the call, that they could not have followed it, that, had they tried any such thing, they would have failed wretchedly and destroyed their own community?
And if, conversely, Mohammed had preached humility and submission to his Bedouin horsemen, would they not have turned their backs on him? And if they had followed him, would not their community have perished?
A prophet does more than merely formulate a message acceptable to his early adherents; he is successful and comprehensible only when he also formulates a policy that is valid at the moment. This is precisely what distinguishes the successful—the "true"— prophet from his unsuccessful fellow—the "false" prophet. The "true" prophet recognises the necessities of the existing situation—a situation that exists quite independently of him—and when these necessities subsequently change, he manages to adopt a new policy without letting the faithful feel that this transition is treachery.
I do not think this view can be disputed. What it means is that even in this highly charismatic case no causative role can be ascribed to the Word of the Prophet and that Arab imperialism must not be looked on as something unrelated to other imperialisms.
What is true of Arab imperialism is true of any imperialism bearing a religious "colouration"— as we may now put it.
[A brief introduction to themes of later imperialisms follows.]
This applies to states and peoples, but not, of course, to the expansive drives of religious communities as such—that of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, for example. It too did not shrink from brute force and resort to religious warfare. Too often it exploited the instinct for conquest—which played an important part in the Crusades, for example—and often served the instinct for power as well—as in the case of many a Pope.
Whenever it was dominated by a state, as happened at times, for example under the Roman emperors and later under Charlemagne and Henry III, the expansive drive of the faith at once showed signs of merging into the expansive trend of the state in question; and if this did not happen on a more intensive scale, it was only because the relationship between the universal state and the Church never endured for very long.
Such incidents, however, remained accessory aberrations; for, by and large and to an ever-increasing degree, the Church maintained itself as a specifically clerical, super-governmental, and supernational power, not merely ideologically but also practically, in accordance with the power resources and organizational methods at its disposal. Hence its will to conquest remained a mere will to convert.
In the course of this mission of conversion and in the political interests of the Church, the military subjugation of one country by another might on occasion be desirable, but it was never an end in itself. Conversion without such conquest would have been—and usually was—sufficient in such cases.
The ideologically appropriate method—and the customary one—was the sermon. What needed to be spread was the rule of dogma and the corresponding organization of religious, not political, life. In this process natural instincts of pugnacity could be vented only incidentally and rarely. This is clearly seen from the characteristic fact that the devoutly Catholic Spaniards never dreamed of giving a religious motivation to their overseas conquests, though these conquests did indeed serve the interests of the Church.
Here, then, there is an essentially different element that would stamp such a religious imperialism as something distinct, something with outright religious causation—if, that is, we can really speak of imperialism in this case. We do not propose to do so and are holding this phenomenon up to view only to the extent that it interacts with the imperialisms of nations and states.
The Arabs, for their part, did not proselytise. When the inhabitants of conquered countries adopted Mohammedanism en masse, this was not the result of a deliberate plan by the conquerors, though it was an entirely plausible process of adaptation. Nor did the Arabs annihilate the infidels. On the contrary, they were treated with remarkable mildness. Neither conversion nor annihilation would have accorded with the Arab brand of war on behalf of the faith. From the viewpoint of their interests, neither course would have paid, for they were dependent on the labor and tribute of subjugated peoples for their livelihood, for their chance to remain a parasitical warrior and master nation.
Once the infidel was converted or killed, an object of exploitation was lost, an element that was necessary to Arab life, and social organization was sacrificed. Thus the Arabs were quite content to leave the infidels their faith, their lives, and their property. Let them remain infidels. What mattered was that they must serve the faithful.
There was never any objection that such a policy might be wrong since it perpetuated the existence of infidels—an argument that should carry much weight with religious sentiment and that was, indeed, always decisive in the case of Christian sentiment as embodied in the Catholic Church. However this policy may fit into the inner logic of the Mohammedan religion, it was Arab practice. And this is precisely what characterizes the position of the religious element in this case.
The meaning of the struggle was not the spreading of the faith but the spreading of Arab rule—in other words, war and conquest for their own sake.
This does not, of course, mean that we deny the significance of religious commandments in the consciousness of the people.
Had an Arab been asked why he fought, he might, as a born warrior, on proper reflection have countered with the question as to why one lived.
That is how self-evident, how far above all rational thought, war and the urge for expansion were to him. But he would not have given such a reply.
He would have said: "I fight because Allah and his Prophet will it."
And this reply gave him an emotional prop in his struggle, provided him with a mode of conduct that preserved his character as a warrior. Religion was more than a mere reflex, certainly within the body social. It is not my intention to pursue this approach to the extreme, particularly since we here touch on problems that reach far too deeply to be disposed of within the framework of our topic. It was for that reason that I emphasised just now the possibility of the religious idea's taking on a social life of its own, in the example of Christianity.
But the imperialism of a people or a state can never be explained in this fashion.
Arab imperialism was, among other things, a form of popular imperialism.
In examining this type at greater length, let us select the example of the ancient Germans. … [to be continued later, Carolingian, Christian, Roman..]
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