The Near East and the Free Market Capitalist System: A Brief History

Pokhara, Nepal - Sergi Barisashvili, c.2010

Here's another essay I found that I have written at some point in time that is neither the continuously restless present, nor the fast approaching future. The original essay title was 'Examine the significance of notions of 'The Orient' throughout European history.' and the restrictions of the allowed word count were enough to force it into being a fairly contrived and under-developed argument in my opinion, whilst also taking far too much from Said's Orientalism simply to get referencing and comprehension marks. Anyway, read at your will, or against it, and again, seriously, copy this and in 4 days your wildest dream won't come true, and instead a man in a grey overcoat will drug you, take you home, and make you forcibly preform the entire musical, Les Misérables over and over again, in drag and in Japanese, whipping you every time you miss a note or misuse a grammer structure, with a salty barbed wire whip, all to the backing-track of Justin Bieber's album on repeat until you finally escape aged 46 to discover absolutely no-one even noticed you'd gone. And if by any chance this is your wildest dream, give me a call on 07786414610 or add me on fetish.com, my username is crossdressingasainbieberphille1789. また来週 baby... ; )

    In writing a response to this title it is, I believe, necessary to approach the question from several different angles, namely; how would we define the notions of the 'Orient', and how have they changed throughout history, if indeed they have? What are the implications of such notions and over what ends do they hold significance? And lastly, how is the 'Orient', and indeed 'Europe' defined. It would appear implicit in the title that these 'notions' are European notions, and indeed what else could they be, for, as Said proposes in his discourse on Orientalism, The Orient is, "almost a European invention", and so I feel this area of inquiry holds little to be expounded upon. However, it is an important and integral concept as, whilst there exists a hegemony of Orientalist thought in the west, through Orientalism to its spiritual successor, Globalisation, there exists within the Orient itself no equal intellectual hegemony on notions of the Occident. The consequence of this is that any question of this nature, encompassing both Europe and the Orient, is destined to focus upon the effects Europe's own notions of the Orient had upon itself, as opposed to the effects upon the area of its study, as whilst the Orient is often portrayed as being the opposite of the Occident, it is in historical, cultural, political, and religious terms, more commonly perceived, in European notions, as its inferior.
    It is towards this assumption I believe the title refers in its use of the word 'notions', for since the time of the Ancient Greeks up until present day the Orient has been conceived as an "antitype" (the term and the concept is Said's), against which Europe can define itself, and justify its assumption of cultural, social, and religious superiority. But Europe, it should be considered, is by no means homogeneous in its Oriental outlook. An English man in India during the latter half of the Eighteenth century is predisposed to view the Orient differently from a French man in the same position, the former seeing it with the notion that he has some preordained right to, and cultural familiarity with, the area, the other seeing it with a sense of loss, forever relegated to the eternal romanticism of oriental antiquity within which one could have placed Egypt during the Victorian Era. The significance of this notion of an "antitype" in European history is to create, through a grander sense of scale, a forced homogeneity by which Europe defines itself as an entity, uniting these different Oriental outlooks under the banner of European culture, and by extension commerce, religion, politics, and so forth. By this I mean that if any society is to create a notion of an "antitype" it must first decide what defines it, and by defining which of the surrounding societies have similarities to ones own, and which are diametrically opposed, one forms a cultural alliance and hence a definition of not only the Orient, but also of a more unified Europe.
    This leads on to an interesting and relevant point to which within the confines of a short essay I can do no justice, but also no harm. I feel it worth mentioning that Europe is by no means a unified continent. One need only to mention the World Wars, the Iron Curtain, and the word 'Empire' to justify this, and it leads on to a relatively interesting concept integral to this question. That is, can one truly talk about the 'Orient' or of 'Europe' as a whole in such a context, whilst fully appreciating and appraising the scale and diversity of his subject? Or, when one talks of 'Europe' or of 'The Orient', does one simply refer to the hegemony of one country, or set of ideals, most prominent at the relevant point in history, in opposition to the Orient? I cannot answer this question here, but I pose it because it underlines the problem that Europe is only ever spoken of in terms of a body acting in unison when in the context of another large body, such as America, Africa, and most importantly here, Asia. So, when talking of Europe in this way, one must be aware that one is not talking about Europe as a whole, but of a set of prominent ideals or powers that define Europe only for the purpose of what one is attempting to argue. In this sense then a definition of Europe is to an extent subjective, and subject to its extent. However, there is one useful and established way of looking at Europe in the context of Asia, and so it is, that we must return to the notion of western dominance.
    It is I believe a limitation of Said's scope in Orientalism to address the desire to dominate only within the Western trait. The Persian Empire in the east limited Roman expansionism after the first century BC, and both empires became caught up in a long war over territorial gains, whilst the Mongolian Empire's attempted conquest of Europe between 1241-1242 posed a notable threat to the west,  with half of Hungary's population being wiped out in the process. I feel instead that seeing the assumed superiority of one's own culture over others is not a quintessentially European notion as Said at times may suggest, but rather a notion inherent to humanity in general, accessible to those who have the power and hegemony to utilise it. However, it is an unavoidable fact that this cultural domination in terms of notions of superiority over the 'Other' has applied to Europe throughout much of its history, part of its significance being an interest in the Orient for self-affirmation of its culture and its political ideologies, the greater significance, however, occurs when this self-affirmation is mixed with religion, and developing after World War Two, liberty, and the notion recurrent throughout European history, that these ideals should be spread to the 'un-enlightened' Orient.
    Whether the attempts of Europeans to spread these ideals, be it through conquest, Colonisation, or Globalisation of a free market are down to self perceived superiority is of course debatable, but at the moment  for the sake of argument we shall suppose that they are, simply so that we can outline the significance, or effects, of these notions without the argument becoming confused. If one wanted to define Europe from the Roman Empire till the twentieth century, one would probably define it by Christianity. The Crusades from the eleventh century till the thirteenth century are a quintessential example of the attempted expansion of European beliefs into the Near Orient in an attempt to crush the spread of Islam, seen as a fake religion, and reclaim the biblical lands, which, by its very nature belies the inherent presumption of right over the Orient. By the time of the fifteenth to twentieth centuries commodities and territorial expansion has begun to take precedence over religion, which manifests itself in Imperialism and Colonisation. By modern day, the notion that the Orient should be liberated and brought into a free market system takes the stage in the form of Globalisation. From this the significance of notions of the Orient as inferior, or in need of salvation are quite clear throughout European history. However, two questions arise that must be addressed immediately in order to examine this question in detail, and in context of European history as a whole. These are, have the motives for European expansion into the Orient changed, or have they always had the same underlying intention? And, can the effects listed above be fully attributed to an arrogant sense of superiority alone?
    I would suggest that throughout history, and exemplified in the instances given above, the significance of notions of the Orient on European expansion has always been underlined by economic acquisition. When I speak of Europe I now refer to the definition of Europe outlined previously for clarity, that by Europe I mean the dominant power or set of ideals that held a hegemony over the cultures of Europe at any given point in history. Expounding on the proposition that Europe's notions of the Orient had significance mainly for itself, as opposed to the the area of its study, and the problem of a disunited Europe, as shown through the spread of empire, I would now suggest that the main causal link essentially boils down to the desire for resources, and for money.
    Evidence for this can be found throughout European history. For the Romans, Egypt's "vast accumulated treasures and huge harvests had proved very useful to Augustus".(M.P. Charlesworth). Its fertile harvests could supply Rome in times of famine, but as such could also be used as a weapon, as by Vespasian in 69 AD, when he invaded Egypt and cut off the corn supply to Rome, he was crowned Emperor that same year. Out of this fear of reliance upon an external power, the Romans explored Africa in search of alternate food sources, such was their hatred of reliance on an Oriental "prating and arrogant people".(Pliny the Elder). The crusades, it could be suggested, were driven by a desire to counter the aggressive spread of Islam, but also by a desire to plunder the treasures of the Near Orient. British colonialism was to some large extent driven by a desire for trade routes, commodities and luxuries, whilst the Russian conquest of Siberia in the early nineteenth century, which they refereed to as "our East India", was for domination of the fur trade. This could be said to extend right up to present day where under the guise of liberty, western notions of 'free market' are set up in Middle Eastern countries, essentially opening up a market system whereby Europe, and to a larger extent America, selectively benefit from the resources of oil and cheap labour, whilst the Middle East gets to buy their coke, their cars, their coffee. In short, be inducted into their culture of materialistic culture.
    In conclusion it could be suggested that notions of the Orient have remained fairly consistent throughout European history, and have been ones of supposed dominance by Occident over Orient in the guise of either cultural, social, political, or religious ideals. The significance has been the use of this supposed dominance in the acquisition of, or control over primarily what would appear to be resources and money, be it in the form of Arabic treasure or of a consumer market, resulting in, or as the result of, the extension of dominant European notions into an Orient viewed as being inferior to its counterpart. Further to that, based on this trend the significance of notions of the Orient will continue to affect not only European history but its future as well, as it would appear from the argument outlined briefly in this paper that whilst the moral justification for supposing superiority over the Orient may change, the economic motivation for intervention remains in principle the same.