Of gates and keepers in the international system

😭😄🤣😀😃

以下是〈國際體系中的大門與守門人（Of Gates and Keepers in the International System）〉章節的條列式概念、重點筆記與問題整理：

🏛 一、導入概念：卡夫卡的寓言與國際體系的隱喻

**文本開場：**引用卡夫卡〈在法律之前〉（Before the Law）
→「法律之前有一個守門人（gatekeeper），鄉下人長年在門前等待進入的許可。」

寓意轉化：

國際體系如同卡夫卡的「法律」，擁有權威與合法性，但存在門檻。
守門人象徵「核心西方國家」，他們控制誰能被允許進入「現代國際秩序」。
外來國家（outsiders）——如土耳其、日本、俄羅斯——即是那位「等待被接納的鄉下人」。
等待與模仿的過程象徵「現代化」與「被社會化（socialization）」的長期困境。

🌍 二、主題一：局外人與局內人（Outsiders and Insiders）

核心論點：

土耳其、日本、俄羅斯在17世紀以前雖已是強大政體，卻不屬於威斯特伐利亞體系的原生成員。
他們後來主動選擇「加入歐洲國際體系」，模仿「西方」的制度與標準。
這種選擇帶來長期的身分焦慮（ontological insecurity）：
- 既想成為內部人，又被視為永遠的外部人。
- 對「現代性」與「國際認可」的追求成為民族核心動力。

引用觀念：

“insider but outsider” 狀態 → 導致「不確定要面對哪些威脅、忽略哪些威脅」的存在性焦慮。
“Rise of the West” 被視為鏡像挑戰，驅動東方三國的改革與民族主義。

🔄 三、主題二：土耳其、日本、俄羅斯的「反轉外交」現象

現象描述：三國皆在20世紀出現180度外交轉向

國家	轉向時期	從對抗 → 合作	轉折背景
土耳其	約1923年（共和國成立）	從抗拒西方 → 接納西化	奧斯曼帝國崩潰後的改革、凱末爾主義
日本	約1945年（戰後）	從軍國主義 → 親美經濟發展	二戰戰敗與佔領後改革
俄羅斯	約1991年（蘇聯解體）	從共產對抗 → 市場化改革	冷戰結束與西方化政策

理論挑戰：

主流國際關係理論（現實主義、自由制度主義）將此解釋為：
- 敗者被社會化（socialization of the vanquished）；
- 國家理性回應結構性壓力；
- 精英出於成本效益考量而模仿西方制度。
作者批評：這種解釋忽略了內在規範與身分建構的心理—文化層面。

🧭 四、主題三：改革的歷史模式與「模仿循環」

共同軌跡：

第一次西化浪潮（18–19世紀）
- 俄羅斯：彼得大帝、凱薩琳改革、1861年解放農奴。
- 奧斯曼帝國：塞利姆三世、馬哈茂德二世、坦志麥特（Tanzimat）改革。
- 日本：明治維新（1868–1912）、憲法與議會建立。
  → 都以「趕上歐洲」為核心動機。
20世紀的修正主義階段
- 奧斯曼帝國：1908青年土耳其革命、1913統一與進步委員會（CUP）掌權。
- 日本：1930年代軍部主導、亞洲擴張。
- 俄羅斯：布爾什維克革命。
  → 都試圖以「自主的現代性」挑戰西方秩序，最終導致災難或崩潰。
「失敗—重塑」循環
- 戰敗或體制崩潰後，重新轉向「西化、合作、制度模仿」。
- 形成一種結構性「模仿—抵抗—重塑」的歷史節奏。

🧩 五、理論意涵：社會化之外的第三種理解

主張：

這些國家的行為不能僅用「被迫社會化」解釋，而是要理解為：
- 一種「尋求存在認可（recognition）」的長期心理與文化過程；
- 是「非西方現代性」國家的持續困境：加入遊戲卻無法制定規則。

「守門人隱喻」重現：

「門內」＝規則制定者（西方核心國家）
「門外」＝模仿者（俄、日、土）
模仿雖可進入體系，但永遠「不被真正接納」。

📌 六、章節結論重點

三國的現代化過程是被迫在「外部威脅」與「內部自我否定」之間擺盪的歷史。
「模仿西方」的行動常帶有焦慮與羞辱感。
政治轉向與外交反覆反映了深層的身分不確定性（ontological insecurity）。
國際體系的「守門機制」在形式上開放、實質上排他。

❓七、延伸思考與問題

（一）理論問題

是否存在「非西方」進入國際體系的其他模式？（例如印度或中國）
「社會化」是否真的等於「現代化」？
何種條件下「外來國家」能成為規則制定者而非追隨者？

（二）歷史比較問題

為何土耳其可在戰勝西方後仍選擇西化，而日本與俄羅斯是在戰敗後？
「戰敗」在這三國歷史中是否具有儀式性功能——即重建合法性的契機？
俄羅斯的「第三羅馬」觀念與日本的「亞洲領導」理念，是否都是「門外自我認同」的表現？

（三）當代啟示

今日中國是否也處於「守門人—模仿者」的張力之中？
「全球南方」如何看待自己在「西方國際秩序」門口的等待？
若卡夫卡寓言中的「鄉下人」象徵非西方世界——那「守門人」究竟是誰？制度？還是文化認可本身？

是否希望我下一步幫你把這篇章節整理成一份可直接引用的研究報告或摘要草稿（例如作為〈國際體系中的局外人與局內人〉的教學筆記或引用綱要）？

😂😅🥰🥴😔

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” … The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything” …

Franz Kafka From Before the Law (1925)

1 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

1 國際體系中的局外人與局內人

These beleaguered empires traditionally harbored an elevated self- esteem – translated in modern times into a unifying nationalism – and possessed sizable cultural elites capable of superimposing their frustra- tions onto the grievances of mainly peasant populations, through mecha- nisms ranging from religious sermonizing to nationalist education and communist propaganda …

Georgi Derluguian, Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer

Introduction

This chapter introduces three political entities – Turkey, Japan, and Russia – that were not part of the original Westphalian system, despite having existed prior to the seventeenth century. In hindsight, this was a costly absence. Some time after the seventeenth century, rulers of Turkey, Japan, and Russia each made a deliberate decision to join the states system emerging from Europe, by accepting its international standards and borrowing a number of the domestic institutions of its major players. This initial decision to emulate “the West”1 had per- sistent consequences, not only for the foreign policies of the states in question, but also their domestic affairs. In the intervening centuries, each country went through numerous reforms, restorations, revolu- tions, reactionary backlashes, and wars, all of which were primarily motivated by the goal of catching up, competing, and standing equal with the core powers of the modern states system. However, even in the best of times, neither Turkey nor Russia, and not even Japan, has been completely able to shed its original “outsider” status and secure

1 “The West” is a term with many connotations – and how it is defined at a given moment is contingent on the processes described in this book. For now, the term should be understood as referring to what the country (or countries) in question thought “the West” to be at the time.

an unambiguous seat among the rule-makers of the modern states system.

This chapter sets up the argument that everything these states have done since joining the international system, from periods of enmity to periods of extreme cooperation with “the West” (and everything in between), is best explained by the ambiguous “insider but outsider” status shared by these three countries. At some point during their nineteenth-century interactions with the West, having to cope with the stigma of this insider–outsider status created great ontological insecurity for these states: a “deep, incapacitating state of not know- ing which dangers to confront and which to ignore, i.e. how to get by in the world.”2 Because this ontologically insecure relationship with the West was one of the key ingredients used to forge a “modern sense of self,” it has remained ingrained in the identities of these states.

It is often overlooked that these entities, which survived from the “pre-modern”3 era but were not organic participants in the “mod- ernization” processes taking place in Western Europe, undertook the project of reconstructing themselves as “modern” states in the same period as that of having to come to terms with the “rise of the West.” The perceived social, technological, and economic lag vis-à- vis Europe – especially emphasized during formative periods for the construction of the modern, Westphalian, “nation”-state identity in Russia, Turkey, and Japan – created a sustained preoccupation with international stature, a near pathology in the self-conception of these states not in any way healed, but perhaps even exacerbated, by the memories of the near-brushes with great-power status. This common ailment of Turkey, Japan, and Russia is the only thing that explains why the similarities between the political choices of these otherwise very different countries are so striking.

The puzzling socialization of Turkey, Japan, and Russia

Turkey, Japan, and Russia each exhibited the same 180-degree turn in their foreign policy behavior in the twentieth century: Turkey circa

2 Mitzen, “Ontological Security,” 341.

3 Jack Goldstone argues that the term “early-modern” is misleading and Eurocentric; see “Problem Of the ‘Early Modern’ World.”

1923, Japan circa 1945, and Russia circa 1991.4 Within a relatively short time span, each country stopped fighting with the core Western powers and began not only to cooperate, but also to remake their institutions according to the prevailing (Western) international norms of the time.

Mainstream IR theories dismiss these outcomes as a by-product of competition or as the socialization of the vanquished by the vic- tors. In the mainstream IR literature socialization is often viewed as a rational response by states to systemic constraints or material incentives. Neorealism, for instance, does not even consider sociali- zation “an important policy question because it is so common and inevitable,”5 and holds that the competitive environment created by the anarchic nature of the international system pushes states to become “like units” or fall by the wayside.6 Of the three cases men- tioned above, this explanation could potentially apply to all, but has been most frequently invoked to explain changes in Russian behavior toward the end of the Cold War, probably because in that case there was no battlefield defeat or military occupation.7 In analyses of the aftermath of traditional wars, as in the cases of Turkey and Japan, socialization of the defeated state is generally chalked up to the incen- tives created by the victor(s). Liberals and realists may disagree on

4 While these transitions were relatively speedy, they did not happen overnight. This is why I am giving approximate dates. A more nuanced account will be developed in the case-study chapters.

5 Alderson, “Making Sense,” 428.

6 Waltz claims that emulation is a result of competition; those who do not emulate the successful fall by the wayside. The effects of competition are not confined to the military realm; socialization to the system also occurs because refusal to play the game is to risk one’s own destruction, though he does

not really explain why. Theory of International Politics, pp. 74–7, 116–18, 127; Man, State and the War, p. 220. See also Thies, “Social Psychological Approach,” for an overview of the various socialization mechanisms posited by neorealist approaches. There are similar approaches in sociological realism and economic geography as well, with a generally functionalist understanding of why socialization/emulation/convergence happens. See e.g. North and Thomas, Rise of the Western World; McNeill, Pursuit of Power. For critiques of such approaches, see Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” 156; Checkel, “Norms, Institutions and National Identity,” 86; Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 100–2.

7 See e.g. Wohlforth, “Realism and the End”; Copeland, “Trade Expectations”; Brooks and Wohlforth, “Power, Globalization”; Schweller and Wohlforth, “Power Test,” etc. Waltz uses the same logic to explain the socialization of the Bolsheviks as well.

the underlying motivations of victors8 in such interactions, but they generally agree that socialization is a rational response by defeated states (or elites in those states9) to various incentives. Elites are assumed to push for domestic changes either because they have no other choice (neorealism)10 or because such adaptation is rewarded (liberal institutionalism,11 but also some veins of classical realism12 and constructivism13). Versions of these cost–benefit types of explana- tions have been used to explain the cases at hand here: Japan’s trans- formation is often attributed to the American occupation after World War II; Turkey’s to Atatürk. What is missing in such accounts is the international normative context that is framing the domestic debates about the country’s direction.

In fact, even a cursory comparison of Turkey after World War I, Japan after World War II, and Russia after the Cold War brings forth many other puzzling facts about these transformations that main- stream theories about socialization do not explain. Turkey made its switch to a “Westophilean” strategy after it had achieved military victory against the interests of the core Western countries and during a time it was completely free of foreign occupation. Yet the domestic reform package that accompanied this switch displayed such a com- mitment to Western norms that even the most dyed-in-the-wool colo- nialist could not have dreamed of implementing it. Japan made its switch following military defeat and while it was under occupation,

8 See Fritz, “Prudence in Victory,” for a review of the literature on victor behavior in the aftermath of defeat.

9 E.g. Byman and Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men.”

10 Alderson, “Making Sense,” 421; see also Cortell and Davis, “Understanding the Domestic Impact,” Ikenberry and Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” 283.

11 Ikenberry and Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” 290–2;

Ikenberry, After Victory; also in general, neoliberal regime theory explains normative compliance as an outcome of a cost–benefit analysis. See

e.g. Keohane, After Hegemony; Oye, Cooperation Under Anarchy; Martin, Coercive Cooperation, etc. See also Johnston, “Treating International Institutions,” 495, and Checkel, “Why Comply?” 555, for an overview.

12 See Cortell and Davis, “Understanding the Domestic Impact,” 81, and Alderson, “Making Sense,” 428, for an overview of the classical realist understanding of state socialization.

13 The difference between methodologically individualist constructivist approaches and neoliberal understanding of socialization is that constructivists emphasize the internalization of learning.

but not quite in the way the occupying power, the United States, wanted. Russia made the switch not after military defeat or occupa- tion, but completely on its own schedule, and caught even seasoned observers off-guard.14 All of these facts point to substantial degrees of agency exercised by these countries in choosing their strategy vis-à-vis “the West,” and also indicate that something more complicated than a simple cost–benefit analysis of external material stimuli was going on in each case of strategy formulation.

There are two common features between these three cases of strat- egy reversal in foreign policy: first, each occurred soon after what was perceived to be a major “defeat”15 of the previous institutional struc- ture of the country and its legitimating worldview. At the time Turkey made its switch, the Ottoman Empire had been decidedly defeated in World War I and replaced by the Kemalist Republic. The institutions of the Ottoman Empire reflected a worldview which was (old)-worldly, multicultural, hands-off, “advanced organic,”16 agrarian, nonsecular, segmentary,17 and anachronistic. The Kemalist regime that rose out of the empire’s ashes was obsessed with modernity, staunchly secular, ethnocentric, unitary, hands-on, bureaucratic, and emphasized indus- trialization above all else. The meteoric rise of the Japanese Empire in early twentieth century had come to a crushing halt at the hands of the Americans during World War II – who made sure afterwards that the militarist regime could never govern the country again. Japan gave up its expansionist militarism and embraced pacifist economic growth instead. Finally, the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union was marked by Russia’s desire to attract foreign investment and implement free-market principles. In all three cases, the ideological worldview espoused by a previous regime was entirely discredited,

14 Deudney and Ikenberry review the relevant literature in “International Sources,” 75, fn. 2.

15 In most situations described by this word, perception precedes any development on the ground that can be objectively measured; i.e. the unclosed gap with the West crystallized in a formal moment perceived by all involved parties as “defeat.”

16 Goldstone convincingly argues that this is a more apt term to describe what are usually called “early modern” empires. Despite being sophisticated in many other ways, these empires depended primarily on organic sources of energy to fuel their economies: crops, animals, men, and timber. Goldstone, “Problem of,” 261–2.

17 See e.g. Durkheim, Division of Labor; Gellner, Plough, Sword.

and brushed aside for a radically different worldview, one which was in line with the normative demands of the international system.

Second, by the twentieth century, the three countries in question were no longer novices at socializing to system norms or emulat- ing the West – each had followed emulation strategies in the past in order to improve competitiveness, to gain the acceptance of the inter- national society of European states, and to assuage domestic concerns about lagging behind the West. Russia is considered to have taken this step first at the end of the seventeenth century under the leadership of Peter the Great (reign: 1682–1725), followed by his wife Catherine I, and, later, also under the rule of Catherine the Great (1762–92). The reform strategy had been revisited18 most ostensibly again during the reign of Alexander II (1855–81) who, in 1861, issued the Great Emancipation Statute freeing and elevating 20 million serfs to equal citizen status. Despite a longer history of participating in European affairs and even borrowing military technology, the first Ottoman Sultan to be seriously persuaded of the necessity of comprehensive Westernization was Selim III (1789–1807), but Selim was executed after a rebellion and serious reforms in line with European demands were not implemented until the reign of Mahmud II (1808–39), and continued by his son, Abdülmecid II (1839–61). In 1839, Abdülmecid II issued the Tanzimat Declaration (prepared by his father), which recognized the sanctity of life, liberty, and individual honor of his subjects, and decreed that government should be formed according to fundamental principles. As in Russia (1905), these reforms would ultimately culminate in the convening of the first parliament (1876). Meanwhile, on the other side of the Asian continent, Japan faced the necessity of such reforms almost as soon as it came into serious contact with Western powers. This realization ushered in the period known as the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912). In 1868, the Japanese emperor Meiji issued the Charter Oath, recognizing the freedom of each individual to pursue their own calling and urging the abandon- ment of traditional ways. In 1889, only 13 years after the Ottoman

18 Focusing on “reform” periods is somewhat misleading because even under “traditionalist” rulers, life was not static in any of these empires.

I nevertheless draw the distinction to emphasize periods where reforms were deliberately chosen in order to bring the country more in line with the West.

Empire, Japan adopted its first constitution, and in 1890, held its first national elections.

These facts contribute to a rather curious pattern. Three states, which for one reason or another were not part of the original Westphalian arrangement or the emergent society in Europe in the seventeenth century, became convinced of the necessity of joining it later on: in the case of Russia almost immediately; in the case of the Ottoman Empire somewhat more belatedly; and in the case of Japan, as soon as the decision became unavoidable. Realizing that taking part in this formation as an equal member required changing the trad- itional ways, various rulers in these countries implemented domestic reforms, some of which were substantive and some of which were for appearances’ sake. Domestic politics between the initial realization and the twentieth century was marked therefore by periods of reforms and periods of the inevitable backlashes to these reforms.

In the early twentieth century, each country was taken over by lead- ers with revisionist agendas. In the Ottoman Empire, this happened just before the defeat and collapse of the empire: the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), originally a secret society within the ranks of the Young Turk movement, took de facto control of the empire with a coup in 1913 (following the “Constitutional Revolution” of 1908). Between 1913 and 1918, it followed an aggressively revisionist agenda intended to recapture the Ottoman Empire’s glory days, and, as a proto-fascist movement, oversaw some of the most brutal actions committed in the name of the empire, including the mass killing of the Armenian population in 1914–15. In Japan, a similar dynamic was repeated in the 1930s, with the military establishing complete control over the government and pursuing an aggressively expansionist for- eign policy in Asia, with comparably bleak results for the population there. It needs no recounting that in the early decades of the twentieth century, Russia, too, was taken over by a leadership that was not enamored with the international status quo.

Obviously, there were ideological differences between these three regimes, but these differences should not be over-emphasized. The CUP regime in the Ottoman Empire and the militarist regime in Japan exhibited characteristics that resemble fascism, whereas the Bolsheviks in Russia subscribed to a version of Marxist communism. All three movements, however, were born out of the belief that tra- ditional approaches to foreign policy were not working and that the

lag with the West would grow larger if right measures were not taken. Ironically, then, none of these movements, now remembered mostly for their brutality, would have risen if the countries in question could have been somehow shielded from ideas about progress and modernity emanating from Europe.19 The differences do matter, of course: the fact that the Bolsheviks had a more substantive ideology and a domes- tic reform plan, and the fact that they took power after Russia’s near defeat in war, and through a popular revolution, made all the differ- ence in terms of the longevity of their regime, in comparison with the CUP regime in the Ottoman Empire and even the military regime in Japan. The latter two had risen to power without radically displacing the existing political structures of their respective countries, and were neither particularly inspired nor inspiring in terms of their proposed domestic solutions (as is perhaps the case with all forms of revision- ism fed from a traditionalist well).

Nevertheless, the trajectory is the same across the cases even as its longevity varies: the Ottoman Empire’s bout of revisionism was short and bitter, lasting less than eight years; Japan sustained it for about twice as long; whereas the Soviet Union held out for an impres- sive eight decades. Each of these revisionist governments was then replaced by regimes very receptive to Western norms, ideas, and insti- tutions. Here is the most interesting part, though: in all three cases, there was a remarkable degree of continuity in terms of the people involved in the said transitions. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who oversaw Turkey’s transformation into a “civilized” state, was a direct progeny of the Young Turk movement; and “Kemalism” is in many ways a smooth continuation of the CUP ideology, its main point of differ- ence being the proposed solution to the international status problem. Shigeru Yoshida, who oversaw Japan’s transformation into a paci- fist country that puts “economy first,” had been an active participant in the imperialist movement of the war years; in fact, he had been imprisoned for his involvement just before becoming the prime min- ister of postwar Japan. There is even more continuity in the Russian case: party leaders who initiated the transition were the same people who continued to serve after the transition. It would not be a stretch, then, to conclude that, in all three cases, leaders who were willing to

19 For a discussion of the perverse effects of progress, see Elias et al., “Toward a Theory,” 359.

fight the great powers of the West one day became the emissaries of Westernization20 the next day.

To put it another way, none of the aforementioned explanations from mainstream IR as to why these countries reverted (with a vengeance) to emulating the West after revisionist “defeat” provides much mile- age. Socialization is not explained by foreign interference or coercion or even persuasion, since there was little in two of the three cases; it is unexplained by leadership change, since in all three cases, the lead- ers overseeing the transition were simply the younger members of the old guard; and it is not even explained by survival, since the depth of transformation went far beyond what would have been necessary to ensure physical security (not that the physical existence of the state was ever in serious jeopardy in any of the three cases except perhaps Turkey). Detailed case studies in Chapters 3 to 5 will show that in the immediate aftermath of “defeat,” leaders in each country chose what was the most status-enhancing strategy given the international norms of the time, despite other avenues being available to them, including some with even greater material yield. Despite the high costs of these status-seeking strategies, leaders were able to get popular support for them because domestic constituencies in these countries are greatly preoccupied by international stature, and especially with the relative standing of their state vis-à-vis “the West.” This argument is more in line with the predictions of ideational approaches which hold that states are motivated by considerations of self-esteem, status, and pres- tige, but what those approaches fail to account for is the backdrop of modernity21 and the profound impact the diffusion of modern ontol- ogy had on the “self-esteem” of certain states.

The aforementioned strategy of willing and deep emulation is only explained by the fact that the countries under investigation here (along with some others) share a unique set of experiences as stigmatized

20 For the moment, I am using this as a blanket category for actions emulating the dominant Western norms and institutions of the time.

21 Neorealist thinking about socialization also fails to account for changes ushered in by modernity, e.g. as manifested in the disparity between the reaction of the Ottoman Empire to the rise of Europe versus how European states viewed the Ottoman Empire at the peak of its power. If material competition is a sufficient explanation for the depth of the transformation that countries such as Turkey, Russia, and Japan underwent after modernity, European states should have exhibited similar responses when they were weak and the Ottoman Empire was powerful.

outsiders which caused them to be especially concerned about inter- national stature. In other words, the insecurities created by the inter- national environment have been built into the national identities of these states. The status-conscious trajectories in the last century can be traced back to that original insecurity, and in fact this was what ultimately drove these states Westward after their respective defeats. The evidence for these claims lies in developments in the nineteenth century.

Modernity, ontological insecurity, and the international system

A handful of political entities that survived from the “pre-modern” era – entities usually lumped together under the category of pre- modern/agrarian/gunpowder empires – experienced a different transition to modernity than the Westphalian states that were the locomotives of that transition.22 They had a different experience because they had to recreate themselves as “modern” states against a backdrop of an emerging international society of states that had already made the transition organically. The material advance of the early-comers was backed by a culture spouting universalizing claims about enlightenment, progress, rationality, and self-interest. As a result, perhaps for the first time in world history, (autonomous) emulation of competitors took on a deeper meaning – in embracing the Western European state models, these agrarian empires were also enveloped in a certain new worldview, one that is specific to and the essence of modernity. By emulating the Westphalian state model and trying to join the European society of states, people23 in these gun- powder empires also came to accept a continuous worldview in which

22 This is not to imply that successor states to those entities that did not survive the transition intact are exempt from this generalization; they also had

a markedly different experience with modernity than Western European states. However, the literature concerned with the political behavior of such cases (as a group) is considerably larger. For starters, see e.g. Ayoob, “Third World”; Clapham, Third World Politics; Willetts, Non-Aligned Movement; Rodríguez, Latin American Subaltern; Chaturvedi, Mapping Subaltern Studies, as well as Blaney and Inayatullah’s Problem of Difference and

Mitchell’s Colonising Egypt.

23 Originally, this was very much an elite-driven process. More on this issue later.

there are no exceptions; a worldview with a marked emphasis on progress, rationality, and science; a worldview which inevitably gen- erates a universal social hierarchy predicated upon comparisons and measurements.24 Once the peoples of the old empires started accepting this worldview, it was inevitable that they too would embrace its judg- ment: they found themselves as coming up short, not just materially but socially and culturally. “Objective” measures of “progress” could not be ignored. This is what is at the root of the “auto-Orientalism” exhibited by Turkey, Japan, and Russia to this day.

In other words, while emulation, especially as a military strategy, is a relatively frequent phenomenon in world history, it took on a dif- ferent depth once the processes that constitute modernity started roll- ing. There are two separate issues here: (1) the nature of the modern ontology; (2) the fact that modernity as a shared value system linked previously independent communities – “The figuration of established- outsider arises in the junction and interaction of different groups. It emerges when formerly independent groups become increasingly reciprocally dependent.”25 In modernity, emulation became a vehicle for a totalizing kind of socialization, the like of which had not been witnessed before. Unlike in the agrarian ages, borrowing in moder- nity could no longer be limited to a certain technique or sector, since inferiority in one sector of life signaled possible inferiority in others.26 All aspects of life were connected, all governed by laws operating with the same fundamental principles.27 A remarkable feature of moder- nity is the assumption that the same universal method of rationality can explain every human dynamic. Modernity is characterized by the

24 See Gellner, Plough, Sword and also Nationalism. Also see Malesevic and Haugaard, “Introduction”; Haugaard, “Power, Modernity”; and Meyer and Jepperson, “‘Actors’ of Modern Society.”

25 Olofsson on Elias, in Andersen and Kaspersen, Classical and Modern Social Theory, p. 371.

26 The uniqueness of this universalizing, “scientific,” evidentiary (and therefore seemingly indisputable) character of the modern worldview is what Bull misses in the numerous claims he makes about the nature of the nineteenth- century European society of states; for instance, in his foreword to Gong’s Standard of “Civilisation”, p. 2: “The arrogance of many Europeans, in equating civilization with the particular civilization of Europe, was no less than that of the Chinese.” I will have more to say about this distinction in Chapter 2.

27 Gellner, Nationalism, pp. 21–3.

increasing integration of various spheres of social life – all previously thought to have their own separate essences and rules – into one uni- versal ontology.28 This worldview came to dominate European affairs only in the nineteenth century (and even there was not fully hegem- onic until the twentieth), but it had its roots in developments going back several centuries.

A number of simultaneous processes were involved in this gradual transition into modernity. First, the rise of absolutist states with rec- ognized monopolies on state power29 was a critical turning point.30 At the same time, the bloodshed of the Thirty Years War had led to a general fear of difference and motivated early-modern thinkers like Hobbes31 to search for a universal stand-point beyond question,32 which then led to the emergence of ideas such as natural law, social contract, and rational method, which were used at first to justify absolute sovereignty of monarchs, but later gave rise to an emphasis on individual agency.33

The next two centuries in Western Europe are marked by two cru- cial developments:34 a transfer of political power to the center and

28 See e.g. Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 13; Gellner, Plough, Sword; Gellner, Nationalism; Elias, Civilizing Process; Haugaard, “Power,

Modernity.” We may also invoke Bauman here, who argues that modernity is characterized by the drive toward order, management, naming, and segregating. See e.g. Modernity and the Holocaust; Modernity and

Ambivalence.

29 Wight, Systems of States, p. 135.

30 Elias, Civilizing Process; Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” 162.

31 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 5; see also Collins, From Divine Cosmos, pp. 4, 6, 7, 28, 29, 32.

32 Blaney and Inayatullah, “Westphalian Deferral,” 32. In “Territoriality and Beyond,” 157–62, Ruggie has an excellent review of the particular manifestations of this search in a number of social spheres, e.g. on p. 158:

“What was true in the visual arts was equally true in politics: political space came to be defined as it appeared from a single fixed viewpoint. The concept of sovereignty, then, was merely the doctrinal counterpart of the application of single-point perspectival forms to the spatial organization of politics.”

33 See e.g. Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society; Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose. See also Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity.

34 However, we should always keep in mind Ruggie’s point that “the reasons for which things were done often had very little to do with what actually ended up being done or what was made possible by those deeds.” See “Territoriality and Beyond,” 166.

a separation of the economy from the polity.35 In the pre-modern and early-modern eras the polity and the economy were connected. As wealth was more easily acquired by predation than production, there was an ever-present incentive36 to reinvest gains in methods of coercion. Kings regarded their kingdoms as their private domains,37 but their right to levy taxes was constantly challenged by nobles who raised their own armies. The emergence of capitalism changed this dynamic.38 The surplus generated by capitalism allowed specialists of coercion to be bought off with the tax revenue, shifting power to the economic realm and civil society.39 The accompanying “civiliz- ing process” gradually converted most warrior nobles to “courtiers and bureaucrats.” The centralization of power created networks of interdependence, making individuals more sensitive to the needs of others and putting them in more need of a universal set of manners.40 In other words, the rise of European “civilization” went hand in hand with the rise of capitalism, and the accompanying march of scientific rationality, as well as the use of such rationality to justify the exist- ence and the power of the state.41

One of the key elements in the rise of an autonomous economic sec- tor was a series of political revolutions and reforms in major Western European countries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.42 These revolutions gave breathing room to civil society, undercut the power of traditional elites, and in many ways prepared the ground for the last phase for the emergence of the modern sovereign state – characterized by industrialization, rationality, bureaucracy, and effi- ciency in war-making, manifested especially in the state’s ability to

35 Gellner, Plough, Sword; Gellner, Nationalism. See also Mouzelis, “Nationalism,” p. 125; Haugaard, “Power, Modernity,” p. 75; Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” 151; Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State,

p. 429; Jones, European Miracle, p. 147.

36 Haugaard, “Power, Modernity,” p. 78.

37 Ibid., p. 79.

38 All of historical sociology, Marxist or otherwise, converges on this argument.

39 Haugaard, “Power, Modernity,” p. 80.

40 Elias, Civilizing Process.

41 See Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters, where he argues that after the Enlightenment, the state started amassing and administering resources in order to organize society according to some preconceived model.

42 See Goldstone, “Cultural Orthodoxy.”

generate man-power from a new “national” base. All of these later developments in some way flow from the ascendance of a production economy and the accompanying increased integration/differentiation of society43 (even if the spark of the Industrial Revolution was in some way accidental).44

The point of this brief review is that the states that originally remained aloof from these processes were in some ways victims of their own “glorious” pasts.45 As Goldstone argues, there was noth- ing unique about the revolutions in Western Europe – the Ottoman Empire and China also had similar revolts around the same time. The difference was in the outcomes. Whereas revolts in Western Europe were interpreted as the failure of existing regimes and as signaling the need for something new, in agrarian empires similar revolts ended up reinforcing the traditional social hierarchies.46 In other words, while the revolutions in Western Europe gave full steam to the ideas of Enlightenment and social progress that had germinated in the develop- ments of the seventeenth century (i.e. the search for universal rational/ natural laws and their applications to social life), in agrarian empires the same processes were originally interpreted as the result of a devia- tion from traditional methods that had brought success in the past. The success of traditional methods explains why social and economic life in agrarian empires of the European periphery were (temporarily) frozen47 at around the same time that northwestern Europe started undergoing momentous transformations. This analysis also overlaps with the World-System explanation of why the Ottoman Empire and Russia were originally left outside the growing world-economy – as large agrarian empires, their economies were self-sustaining universes for a longer time than was the case in the smaller states of Europe.48

What all of this means is that until the end of the eighteenth century there was no great unbridgeable development gap between the territorial states of northwestern Europe and the agrarian

43 E.g. Durkheim, Division of Labor, but also Bauman’s entire body of work.

44 See e.g. Goldstone, “Rise of the West”; Hobson, Eastern Origins; Frank, ReORIENT.

45 And in contrast, societies which benefited most from these developments had been facing near destruction not long ago. See Ruggie, “Territoriality and

Beyond,” 161.

46 Goldstone, “Cultural Orthodoxy,” 130.

47 Ibid., 131.

48 Wallerstein, Modern World-System, pp. 324–5.

empires outside the European periphery.49 If that statement sounds controversial, it is only because the nineteenth-century European schemas about the civility, modernity, and social development (or lack thereof) of the various regions of the world are still with us to some degree.50 Since the nineteenth century, it has become custom- ary to assume that something was culturally wrong with the states left out of the “rise of the West.” What is forgotten is that prior to at least the eighteenth century, social and economic life in countries such as the Ottoman Empire, Russia, or China was not so differ- ent from other agrarian empires now considered part of “Western Civilization,” such as Spain.51 Wallerstein points out that the develop- ment of the absolutist monarchies in the Ottoman Empire and Russia in the sixteenth century shared substantial parallels with develop- ments in Western Europe.52 Collins documents the indigenous rise of merchant capitalism within Japan,53 just as other scholars have docu- mented similar processes and trade booms elsewhere in the universe of agrarian empires.54 I have already pointed to Goldstone’s argument about political revolts in agrarian empires occurring around the same time as those in northwestern Europe (1750–1850). These revolts had different outcomes, but were ushered in by similar causes and bot- tlenecks in the economy.

Broadly speaking, then, prior to the nineteenth century, there were two parallel lines of state development trajectory in the world, which continued to overlap. On the one hand, there were states that were constituted as “advanced organic,” agrarian, gunpowder empires, such as the Ottoman Empire, India, Russia, China, and Japan.55 On the other hand, the smaller territorial states of northwestern Europe, most notably, England, France, Netherlands, perhaps also Sweden,

49 See e.g. Aydın: “The Ottomans followed developments in military technology in Europe very closely and were able to keep pace with the innovations in Europe until the second half of the eighteenth century.” Anti-Westernism in Asia, p. 17.

50 See Goldstone, “Problem of”; also see Collins, “Sociological Guilt-Trip”; Wallerstein, “Development of the Concept of Development.”

51 For an antidote to nineteenth-century views of comparative history, start with Braudel, Mediterranean.

52 Wallerstein, Modern World-System, p. 313.

53 Collins, “Asian Route.”

54 Goldstone, “Problem of.”

55 Also Spain – but Spain was an original member of the Westphalian system.

and later Prussia, had avoided imperial constitution as a result of the Thirty Years War and the Westphalian Settlement,56 but were increasingly interconnected with each other through the formation of a regional society of states (an arrangement formalized by Westphalia and backed by the historical bond of Christendom) and a capitalist economy.57

Obviously, even prior to the nineteenth century there were cer- tain key developments within the states of the second group that were not experienced by states in the first, such as the abolition of serfdom, decline of feudalism, and the emergence of early-modern political thought. However, had it not been for the successful revo- lutions and reforms of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these developments could have been remembered as divergences that went nowhere, just as in the agrarian empires of their counter- parts. Furthermore, empires on the European periphery were not completely oblivious to the beneficial results of various advances in Western Europe, even if they lacked a precise understanding of the causes and were focused mostly on the end results. As noted above, Russia had decided it would be a good idea to copy certain Western institutions as early as the late seventeenth century; the Ottoman Empire had the same idea not too long after, and in fact was bor- rowing piecemeal military technology long before then. The crucial fact, however, was that all interacting states at that time were ruled by traditional monarchies (leaving aside the issue of religious differ- ences for the moment). This is why, initially, the desire to copy the successful models in Europe was restricted mostly to the military sector.

However, the French Revolution, and subsequently the Industrial Revolution, changed this equation considerably. Prior to the French Revolution, international politics were constrained not by the rule of law but by the principle of dynastic legitimacy and the ensuing homology in the domestic social structures of major states.58 The French Revolution challenged that order by ushering in the prin- ciple of popular sovereignty, articulated in “holistic, messianic

56 Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose, p. 88.

57 Watson, Evolution of International Society, p. 272.

58 Bukovansky, “Altered State,” 199. Also see Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” 151–2.

and universalist”59 form. This development introduced a heteroge- neous element to what had been a homogeneous system.60 Mlada Bukovansky underlines the transformative effect the French Revo- lution had on the international system: “Revolutionary ideas dir- ectly challenged the legitimacy of dynastic, monarchical regimes, and … the demonstration effects of the mobilizing power of popu- lar sovereignty and nationalism invited emulation, but emulation of a technique rooted in popular sovereignty … would also chal- lenge the legitimacy of dynastic regimes (both from within and from without).”61 These developments were further aided by the Industrial Revolution. Although most scholars disagree with his chronological ordering, Gellner’s general point about the intimate link between the emergence of industrialization and nationalism62 in Europe can- not be denied. The geopolitical struggles described by Bukovansky above gave rise to states with unprecedented infrastructural powers, which were then used to break down local communities and their segmentary worldviews.63

Along with the advent of mass schooling,64 the continuous world- view of industria swept over the emerging population of modern individuals. The modern “individual” constructed by this world- view has no essence and, like atoms, is interchangeable with other individuals,65 lives in a world governed by natural laws that can be discerned through scientific reasoning, and serves the state only because the state is rational and represents the collective will of individuals.66 The twin revolutions in the political and economic realms at the turn of the eighteenth century dismantled the trad- itional gemeinshaft order for good67 in the leading states of Europe, and replaced it with Gesellschaft communities integrated through the principle of nationalism.

59 Bukovansky, “Altered State,” 198.

60 Ibid., 199; Halliday, “International Society as Homogeneity,” 435.

61 Bukovansky, “Altered State,” 200.

62 Gellner, Nationalism, p. 32.

63 Mouzelis, “Nationalism.”

64 See Ramirez and Boli, “Political Construction.”

65 See also Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” 157–8.

66 Haugaard, “Power, Modernity.” Also see Giddens, Modernity and Self- identity.

67 A fact very well recognized by contemporary sociologists such as Tönnies and Durkheim.

The modern international system

The modern international system emerged from these developments. The emphasis on the peace of Westphalia as the origin of the modern states system really does a disservice by obscuring the degree to which modern-day international dynamics, inequalities, and hierarchies were shaped by nineteenth-century events.68

Bukovansky argues that it was within that century that European politics truly started resembling a “state of nature.”69 Prior to the nineteenth century, wars had been constrained by the shared norms stemming from the homology in domestic structures: “The balance of power was understood in such a way that compensations in territory, wealth, or prestige, were considered a monarchical right … Neither contiguity nor national homogeneity were major priorities of eight- eenth century monarchs.”70 The French Revolution introduced the idea of fighting in the name of universal principles of liberty, equal- ity, and fraternity,71 and led to the rise of the belief that any action against a state that did not stand for those principles was legitimate and justified.72 For a brief while, these developments in France had a destabilizing impact on the European states system, but this destabi- lization was temporarily resolved after the Napoleonic Wars. Part of the reason for that outcome was the post-revolutionary abandonment of many new ideals in France, which made possible France’s reintegra- tion into the society of states. The transition to the new system was managed under the Concert of Europe arrangement, which gave some states time to gradually come around to the new principle of popular sovereignty73 (completing processes already under way), and bought others time to try to fend off the inevitable.

The effect on the rest of the world, however, of this new, mod- ern European worldview, as politically manifested first in the French Revolution, was much more devastating.74 E. H. Carr famously analyzed

68 Bukovansky, “Altered State”; Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose; Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place”; Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society; Mann, “Predation and Production.”

69 Bukovansky, “Altered State,” 213.

70 Ibid., 205. 71 Ibid., 211. 72 Ibid., 213.

73 Also see Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose, p. 122, for the transformative effect of the nineteenth century on the articulation of state legitimacy in this direction.

74 Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place.”

the link between Enlightenment idealism and European imperialism in The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939. As he points out, nineteenth- century European worldviews were increasingly characterized by the belief that self-interest was not only rational but also moral.75 Carr calls this worldview “the harmony of interests” doctrine, and argues that it was first pushed along “by the unparalleled expansion of production, population and prosperity, which marked the hundred years following the publication of The Wealth of Nations and the invention of the steam engine.”76 As competition got tougher, this worldview got a second push from Darwinism, which was applied to international politics to justify the ruthless land-grab of the latter part of the nineteenth century:

The path of progress is strewn with the wreck of nations; traces are every- where to be seen of the hecatombs of inferior races, and of victims who found not the narrow way to greater perfection. Yet these dead peoples are, in very truth, the stepping stones on which mankind has arisen to the higher intellectual and deeper emotional life of to-day.77

Not only was this seen as an apt description of how things were, but also of how things should be. The British in particular believed that their empire was serving a higher purpose. Again as quoted by Carr, Cecil Rhodes wrote: “I contend that we are the first race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.”78

Imperialism was not a phenomenon unique to the nineteenth cen- tury, but the particular tenor and justifications of nineteenth-century imperialism were unprecedented. As pointed out by Hobson and Sharman, prior to the nineteenth century, a superior Europe-as-West identity had gradually emerged as Europeans, originally held together by the loose ties of Christendom, increasingly came to define them- selves negatively79 against the natives80 in Africa and the Americas,81 as well as the infidels of the Ottoman Empire.82 This would crystallize

75 Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, pp. 43–5. 76 Ibid., p. 47.

77 Ibid: citing a 1900 international relations book, p. 48. 78 Ibid., p. 72.

79 See Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 166; Neumann and Welsh, “The Other.”

80 See the discussion of Colombus in Blaney and Inayatullah, Problem of Difference, p. 10.

81 Yet settler states in the Americas were incorporated into the idea of “West” relatively easily. See Watson, Evolution of International Society, p. 234.

82 Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place,” 85.

into a full-fledged racist ideology in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, affecting even the understandings of what constitutes a “Great Power.” Echoing Carr, Hobson and Sharman argue that “the British (and others) engaged in imperialism not simply because ‘they could’ (as materialists assume). Rather they engaged in it because they believed they should.”83 Governing large areas in the “inferior non- European” world was taken as a mark of great power status.

Hobson and Sharman perfectly summarize the new ideas behind the nineteenth-century reconstruction of European state identity.84 Allow me to quote at length, as it is extremely pertinent to the dis- cussion here:

Particularly important was the construction of the theory of Oriental Despotism … It prescribed that Western states were progressive and eco- nomically successful because they were liberal, while Eastern states were imagined as but tyrannical regimes that stifled economic progress. Moreover, this characterization also enabled Europeans to present or construct the East as a ‘despotic threat.’ This theory was complemented by the construction of the ‘Peter Pan theory of the East’. Here the East was imagined as weak, passive, helpless and inert such that it was deemed axiomatic that it would be fundamentally incapable of self-development or growing up. By contrast the West was imagined as strong, proactive, independent and progressive

… Within this framework, the East was essentialized in terms of a passive and helpless female, the West as a strong and independent male … Last but not least, social Darwinism and scientific racism were important. This enabled the Europeans to construct a civilizational league table in which the “three races” of mankind were classified within three divisions … – the Whites who resided in the ‘advanced’ First World of Europe (Division 1); the Yellows who resided in the ‘barbaric’ Second World (Division 2); and the Blacks who resided in the ‘savage’ Third World (Division 3).85

All of these ideas were clearly manifested in nineteenth-century inter- national law, which was centered on a premise that states had to meet a Standard of Civilization in order to be treated as equal participants in the international system.86

Edward Keene points out that, as a seventeenth-century legal thinker, Grotius, who is usually credited with the idea of a European

83 Ibid., 87.

84 Also see Hobson, Eastern Origins, p. 228.

85 Ibid., p. 88. See also Kingsbury, “Sovereignty and Inequality,” p. 69.

86 See also Gong, Standard of “Civilisation”, pp. 6, 14, 24.

society of states, was quite comfortable with the hypothetical idea of equality between European and non-European states.87 By the nineteenth century, however, the international system was very much divided: “there was an order promoting toleration in Europe, and an order promoting civilization beyond.”88 Focusing only on the former obscures the degree to which international dynamics beyond most of Europe were constituted along hierarchical principles.89 Keene also argues that, as a result, Europeans thought of sovereignty outside of the Western world very much as divisible:

While, say, a nineteenth-century British diplomat would have found it inconceivable that he might claim a right to exercise any sovereign preroga- tives over the French, his counterpart in the colonial service would have thought it perfectly appropriate to take over some of the sovereign preroga- tives that an Indian prince possessed, even ones guaranteed by prior treat- ies, if that was what it took to facilitate progress or to stamp out corruption and barbarism.90

What has to be realized is that the civility various European states accorded each other in the nineteenth century and the utter lack of respect they showed to the peoples elsewhere in the world were con- sequences of the same modern, “enlightened” worldview. As Michael Mann puts it: “Precisely because Europeans as a whole constituted a moral community, they could not be enslaved.”91 The “freest people” in the world, however, shackled most of mankind in the name of civi- lization, which was precisely Norbert Elias’s point when he observed that civilizing processes go along with de-civilizing processes.

Modernity, stratification, and the production of “Outsiders”

In some ways, then, the growing social inequalities and hierarchy of the nineteenth-century international system can be seen as a

87 Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society, p. 109.

88 Ibid., p. 7. See also Salter, Barbarians and Civilization, p. 15: “In the nineteenth century, ‘civilization’ was taken to represent a mission of homogenization and ‘improvement’. Thus, the rhetoric of ‘civilization’ was quickly appropriated by imperial ideology to mean the ‘civilizing mission.’”

89 Ibid.; Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place.”

90 Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society, p. 7.

91 Mann, “Predation and Production,” p. 65.

natural consequence of the increasing dominance of the “modern” worldview. Two aspects of modernity made such developments possible.92

First is the idea that the scientific method can be applied to every- thing. The scientific method is very much about “objective” meas- urements and comparisons,93 which are then used to develop more efficient solutions to problems, leading ultimately to progress. Applied to international politics, the dominance of such a worldview94 implied that distinctions between states and cultures could only be judged on a universal scale of “scientifically” measured accomplishments.95 Civilizations that were unfamiliar to Europeans could no longer be understood as simply doing things differently (in ways in which the logic of such difference escaped the Europeans); such difference was interpreted as inferiority. As Mitchell notes:

These differences were not the differences within a self, which would be understood as an always-divided identity; they were the differences between a self and its opposite, the opposite that makes possible such an imaginary, undivided self … [T]he domination of the West over the non- Western world depended on this manner of creating a “West”, a singular Western self-identity.96

This conclusion about the superiority of the Western identity seemed to have empirical support in the undeniable material progress of the (north-)West in the nineteenth century.

Second is the rise of nationalism, which on the one hand helped to integrate increasingly atomized individuals and bolster the modern state, yet on the other, gave rise to a marked differentiation between insiders and outsiders,97 with morality being aligned with the interests, desires, and needs of the former. Furthermore, nineteenth-century conceptions of nationalism were shaped by

92 Gellner, Nationalism, pp. 19–39; Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, Introduction.

93 See also Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, pp. 13, 60.

94 Mitchell points out that the age of exhibition with its ordering and cataloguing impulse was “necessarily the colonial age” p. 13 (italics mine).

95 See Salter, Barbarians and Civilization, p. 16, for a review of nineteenth- century “scientific” theories of societal development.

96 Colonising Egypt, p. 166.

97 See Chapter 2; as well as Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, pp. 63–4.

“scientific racism”98 and were therefore informed by biological con- ceptions of the “nation” (another side effect of the transferability of modern epistemological principles).

The particular manifestation of nineteenth-century principles in the society of European states as a Standard of Civilization can also be parsed as a common sociological phenomenon, one that often accompanies societal formations. The hierarchical structure of the international system in the nineteenth century resembles very much what Weber called a socially stratified society. According to Weber, in societies where market rules are not in full operation and are, rather, controlled by convention, culture, and rules of conduct, the result is rigid social stratification and monopolistic appropriation (which is an apt description for nineteenth-century imperialism). If a society is stratified by status, social strata and the status groups placed in those strata exhibit features of “closed” social relationships whereby “the participation of certain persons is excluded, limited, or subject to conditions.”99 This is significant because:

A closed social relationship is capable of guaranteeing its monopolized advantages to its members through a) competition freely engaged in within the group; b) regulation or rationing of such advantages; and c) their appro- priation by individuals or small groups on a permanent basis, in which case they become more or less inalienable. This last case is a closure within, as well as against outsiders. Such appropriated advantages will be called “rights”.100

Membership in social strata is determined by lifestyle factors and is usually hereditary. Socially stratified societies are also marked by hierarchies of power, whereby certain high-ranking status groups monopolize economic and political advantages.101 This monopoliza- tion could be legitimized under a rubric of “rights” in the manner described in the passage cited above. As a result, in societies stratified purely according to social status, there is little to no upward mobility. The most familiar example of this type of stratification is the caste system in India.

98 Mann, “Predation and Production,” p. 67.

99 Weber, Economy and Society, p. 97.

100 Ibid., p. 96.

101 Weber, Basic Concepts.

Essentially, the dominant norms of such a society are based on what Raymond Murphy terms “collectivist criteria” of closure. Closure is “the process of mobilizing power in order to enhance or defend a group’s share of rewards and resources.”102 Property, credentials, and assessments of individual material capability in general are examples of individualist criteria of exclusion. Collectivist criteria of exclusion are based on group characteristics such as race, culture, religion, and physical traits, and are designed specifically to transfer advantage to members of the in-group. It was no accident that Great Britain, as the first country to enjoy the benefits of the Industrial Revolution, was also the staunchest supporter of the Standard of Civilization. Closure criteria may circumscribe the behavior of group members as well. Keene notes that toward the end of the nineteenth century Germany grew increasingly skeptical about the twin pillars of “toleration” and “civilization,” and its revisionist maneuvers as a latecomer to both industrialization and imperialism put its own “civilized” status in question.103

Especially pertinent here is Norbert Elias’s work on “the Established and Outsiders,” which emerged out of Elias’s analysis of the social dynamics in Leicester (“The Winston Parva Study”).104 This urban settlement was organized into three districts, Zones 1, 2, and 3. The inhabitants of Zone 1 were white-collar professionals, whereas Zones 2 and 3 were both working class. The entire community believed Zone 1 to be the best area to live. Zone 2 (the “old village”) inhabitants, while poor, considered their area respectable and looked down upon Zone 3 dwellers, whom they characterized as dirty and quarrelsome, which was not actually the case for most of Zone 3. The most puzzling part of the study was the fact, observed by Elias, that Zone 3 inhabit- ants “seemed to accept, with a kind of puzzled resignation, that they belonged to a group of less virtue and respectability.”105 They resented the verdict of the other zones, and were also shamed by it.

Elias explains this curious dynamic by reference to the fact that the “old village” of Zone 2 was indeed older than other zones, and as a result had a network of “old families” who took it upon themselves to

102 Murphy, “Structure of Closure,” 548.

103 Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society, p. 123.

104 Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders.

105 Ibid., p. xvi.

protect the respectability of the entire zone. It was this cohesiveness that made it possible for the “old villagers” to exercise exclusionary closure on Zone 3 individuals, barring them from participation in public life. Zone 3 individuals could not retaliate because they lacked the necessary cohesion for such an organization and also because they felt inferior: “to some extent, their own conscience was on the side of the detractors. They themselves agreed with the ‘village’ people that it was bad not to be able to control one’s children or to get drunk and noisy and violent.”106 Even if such criticisms did not apply to them personally, they felt shame because they lived in the same zone with some people who did act that way.

Elias believed that the dynamic exhibited by the subjects of the Winston Parva study was duplicated in most power relations: “In all these cases the more powerful group look upon themselves as the bet- ter people, as endowed with a kind of group charisma, with a specific virtue shared by all its members and lacked by others. What is more

… the ‘superior’ people may make the less powerful people themselves feel that they lack virtue – that they are inferior in human terms.”107 A similar process influenced the thinking of the decision-makers, elites, and intelligentsia outside the European society of states of the nineteenth century. They felt shame108 because they lived in “semi- civilized” or “barbaric” states.

The social impact of the “rise of the West”

While the “rise of the West,” which culminated in the great polit- ical enlightenment, technological advancement, and material prowess of (north-)Western Europe (and the United States) in the nineteenth century, is an undeniable fact of history, the hierarchical arrangement of the international system at that time was anything but an adulter- ated reflection of the distribution of capabilities. The European soci- ety of states and its Standard of Civilization is best understood as a

106 Ibid., p. 101. 107 Ibid., p. xvi.

108 Goffman’s point about shame is quite telling: “One assumes that embarrassment is a normal part of normal social life, the individual becoming uneasy not because he is personally maladjusted but rather because he is not … embarrassment is not an irrational impulse breaking through social prescribed behavior, but part of this orderly behavior itself.” Goffman, Interaction Ritual, pp. 109, 111.

closed social stratum of actors, who used a collectivist criterion of closure to exclude non-members (and individualist criteria to socially evaluate members). Non-members were denied basic rights such as contractual guarantees. Furthermore, they were stigmatized as being inferior, backward, barbaric, effeminate, childish, despotic, and in need of enlightenment. The fact that non-European states did not have the material capabilities of European states was used as evidence of the scientific validity of these claims. The stigma was then used to further exclude such states from the sovereign protections accorded by society, opening them up to further European exploitation, leading to more relative backwardness, and giving more “objective” credence to the stigma.

What is more important for the purposes of this argument, how- ever, is the fact that such European notions about progress were very much internalized by the elites in the “semi-sovereign” states of the nineteenth century. Even if they did not completely buy into theories of racial inferiority, they accepted the validity of other “objective,” “scientific” judgments about their countries and compatriots. This collective psychology is at the root of elite efforts, witnessed all over the semi-periphery in the nineteenth century, to “pass” as Europeans by adopting European fashions, speaking European languages among themselves, and learning European arts. All such behavior could be seen as part of an effort to distance oneself from one’s neighborhood. The elites outside of the Western core accepted the judgment of “civilization” because in their efforts to catch up with the West they had become habituated to the continuous worldview of modernity. Every institution they copied in an effort to keep up with the West, starting with military training, brought them closer to the core. Once they accepted the modern worldview, they could not but feel shame (even if at the same time they felt resentment). At some point the words “reform,” “modernization,” and “Westernization” became synony- mous.109 Moreover, the people most exposed to the ideas of a global social hierarchy were also the people who were in the best position

109 Even today it is difficult to separate these concepts. At the very least, Europe is still seen as totally and naturally “modern”; whereas in other places, Westerners look for “authentic” experiences untouched by modernity (as if such a thing were possible). Media coverage of non-Western areas almost invariably focuses on un-“modern” aspects of life, which are at best described as cute, quaint, or exotic, and at worst as scary, unsafe, and unpredictable.

to effect domestic change: the intelligentsia, the military (the military was always the first to modernize), and the ruling elite. All of the key institutions of the modern nation state such as nationalism, mass- schooling, and modern bureaucracy took their form around this time; not long afterward they were dutifully emulated outside of Europe by those states that still had the capability to shape their own domestic policies. Bauman’s point about East European educated classes being the most avid students of the Enlightenment applies equally to the cases at hand here: “They needed a mighty lever to lift society all the way up to the ideal: only a state wielding absolute power could serve as such a lever, and such a state, both able and willing to serve, was still to be created.”110 The emulation of key institutions of the mod- ern “gardening”111 state, even in their incomplete forms, at precisely the moment during which the elites in the “backward” countries had internalized the judgment of history, was instrumental in cementing the ontological insecurity created by such backwardness in (proto-) national psyches. As will be demonstrated in Chapter 2, the globali- zation of the established-outsider dynamic is unique to the modern international system.

I am not implying that elites in the Ottoman Empire or Japan (or even Russia) bought into the European rhetoric of being on a civilizing mission to rescue the rest of humanity from itself. Rather, what I am arguing is that they internalized the idea of linear progress and the idea that European material advancement was somehow connected to European culture and lifestyle.112 Even those elites who rejected or resented Europe did not reject this dichotomy of backwardness and modernity.113 They believed, along with their European contempor- aries, that there really was a developmental lag between civilizations.

110 Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 37. 111 Ibid., p. 20.

112 Watson observes this dynamic uncritically in “European International Society,” p. 31: “the nineteenth century is notable for the creation throughout Asia, Africa, and Oceania of Europeanized or Westernized elites. The Europeans and the Americans offered the instruction, and usually met with an enthusiastic response … The mastery of Western governmental practice and military technology enabled these elites to run a modern state.”

113 One of the interesting manifestations of this was in the discipline of history. Modernity brought with it the desire to write universal histories (see Fukuyama, End of History); so the discipline of history too was a

creation of nineteenth-century European ontology. At the same time, history is essential for the nation-construction projects. This is how the ironic

In other words, the problem of relative strength was no longer seen simply as difference in material capability (which is par for the course throughout human history) but had become a moral, social, and cul- tural issue. It had become an existential dilemma par excellence.

Elites in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan all entered the twentieth century with the same internalized lesson: their countries were “behind” the West in every aspect and something radical had to be done to change this status quo. That motivation is what gave rise to revisionist governments across the board within the first 30 years of the century. However, the reactionary ideologies of these revisionist governments were themselves very much products of modernity. At the very least, they exhibited the same faith in the power of the “mod- ern” state, a perfectly rational response after the Second Industrial Revolution. Each regime also exhibited an almost feverish commit- ment to do whatever was necessary, including the sacrifice of millions of lives, to catch up with “the West.”

Given the violent lengths these countries went to in the twentieth century to gain equal standing with the West, it really is remarkable that their post-defeat strategies turned out to be so peaceful, at least in terms of foreign policy. Despite appearances, however, the people of these states never stopped seeking status in the international sys- tem. There are as many ways of bettering one’s status in the inter- national system as there are in domestic societies. It should be evident from the discussion in this chapter that power relations in the modern international system have never been purely about military capabil- ity – what they are really about is the subject of the next chapter.

situation of nationalist movements justifying their own raisons d’être by historical accounts based in the work of European historians came about. Specific examples of this phenomenon will be discussed in the case-study chapters.

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1 國際體系中的大門與守門人