How the West Grew Rich

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 7/02/04 | Dinesh D'Souza

[kattracks]

The idea that America and the West grew rich through oppression and exploitation is strongly held among many intellectuals and activists.  In the West, the exploitation thesis is invoked, by Jesse Jackson and others, to demand the payment of hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations for slavery and colonialism to African Americans and natives of the Third World.   Islamic extremists like Bin Laden insist that the Muslim world is poor because the West is rich, and they use Western oppression as their pretext for unleashing violence, in the form of terrorism, against American civilians.

Did the West enrich itself at the expense of minorities and the Third World through its distinctive crimes of slavery and colonialism?  This thesis is hard to sustain, because there is nothing distinctively Western about slavery or colonialism.   The West had its empires, but so did the Persians, the Mongols, the Chinese, and the Turks.  Some Western empires like Britain and France grew rich, while others like Spain and Portugal remained poor.  And if colonialism is a universal institution, so is slavery.  Slavery has existed in every known civilization, from China to India to Africa to pre-Columbian America. 

 

What is uniquely Western is not slavery but the movement to abolish slavery.  Of course in every society, slaves have strongly resisted being slaves.  Runaways and slave revolts occurred frequently in all slave cultures.  But never in history, outside the West, did a movement arise of potential slave-owners to oppose slavery in principle.  Only in the West, and specifically in America, did hundreds of thousands of people expend a good deal of treasure and ultimately a great deal of blood to bring freedom to African Americans—a group that was not in a position to secure freedom for itself.

 

After defeating George Foreman for the heavyweight title in Zaire, Muhammad Ali returned to the United States where he was asked by a reporter, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?”  Ali replied, “Thank God my grand-daddy got on that boat!”  Ali’s point was that although the institution of slavery was oppressive for the slaves, paradoxically it benefited their descendants because slavery was the transmission belt that brought African Americans into the orbit of Western freedom.  The same is true of colonialism: against the intentions of the European powers, who came mainly to conquer and rule, colonialism proved to be the mechanism by which Western ideas like democracy, self-determination, and unalienable human rights came to the peoples of Asia, Africa, and South America.

 

These truths cast a new light on the issue of reparations.  Reparations are a bad idea, not only because people living today played no role in the evils of slavery and colonialism, and should not have to pay for other people’s sins, but also because the descendants of those who endured servitude and foreign rule are (much as they hate to admit it) vastly better off than they would have been had their ancestors not endured captivity and European rule.  Jesse Jackson has a much better life in America than he would have had in, say, Ethiopia or Ghana.

 

If slavery and colonialism did not make the West rich and powerful, however, what did?  The answer is that the West invented three institutions that never existed before: science, democracy, and capitalism.  Each of these institutions is based on a universal human impulse that took on a very specific institutional expression in the history of the West.

 

First, science.  Of course people everywhere want to learn about the world.  The Chinese recorded the eclipses, the Hindus invented the number zero, the Mayans developed a sophisticated calendar.  But science—which means experimentation, and verification, and a “scientific method” that one writer has termed “the invention of invention”—is a Western institution. 

 

Just like the impulse to learn, the impulse to barter and trade is universal.  People in every culture exchange goods for mutual benefit.  Money is not a Western invention.  But capitalism—which implies property rights, and courts to enforce them, and free trade, and stock exchanges, and institutions of credit, and double-entry bookkeeping—developed in the West.  Finally tribal participation is universal, but democracy—which requires elections, and peaceful transitions of power, and separation of powers, and checks and balances—is a Western institution.

 

None of this is to deny that the West, like every other culture, has shown itself to be arrogant and oppressive when it had the chance.  Oppression and exploitation, however, were not the cause of Western success; they were the fruits of that success.  Those who say that America and the West have grown rich at their expense are simply wrong.  The real cause of Western wealth and power is the dynamic interaction of science, capitalism, and democracy.  Working together, these institutions have created our commercial, technological, participatory society. 

 

Dinesh D’Souza, the Rishwain Scholar at the Hoover Institution, is the author of What’s So Great About America.  Email: thedsouzas@aol.com

[anniegetyourgun]

Dinesh....daring to go where most men fear to tread....

[goldstategop]

One can do no better to follow the path of Western success over the millenia than by reading James Burke's The Day The Universe Changed. He shows us how one event in the life of the West led to another and changed the way we saw the world and ourselves. Its the capacity of the West to reinvent itself that has made it such a successful civilization par excellence. And it that genius of invention that lies in America today.

[wolficatZ]

Speaking of James Burke,his "Connections" series is awesome.

[R. Scott]

“Champ, what did you think of Africa?” Ali replied, “Thank God my grand-daddy got on that boat!” Ali’s point was that although the institution of slavery was oppressive for the slaves, paradoxically it benefited their descendants because slavery was the transmission belt that brought African Americans into the orbit of Western freedom.

I would bring this up (although I didn’t know that Ali had said it) with some neighbors when I lived in a “ghetto”. Most didn’t want to hear it and would still rant about the evil White Men owing them for slavery - ranting while setting in a White Man’s apartment and drinking a White Man’s beer.
There rants were often cut short when they realized where they were.

[Smartaleck]

I believe that it was Dinesh who also observed that almost all the successful countries /civilizations were all located north of the equator?

Guess everything south of the equator is backwards?

[Don'tMessWithTexas]

Yikes! Good read!

[tdadams]

bump for later

[maica]

Speaking of James Burke,his "Connections" series is awesome.

&&&&

Ditto! Do those shows ever get replayed? I rarely leave FNS! LOL!

[maica]

“Champ, what did you think of Africa?” Ali replied, “Thank God my grand-daddy got on that boat!”

***

This is one quote that should be taught when important quotes are being taught.

We can ALL say the same, because if our forebears were among the "haves" wherever they lived, they most likely would have stayed there. (Yes, I know that Africans did not volunteer to come, but, some Africans are slaves to other Africans even today.)

[DreadCthulhu]

Well, most of the worlds landmass is in the northern hemisphere; and a larger percentage of the southern hemisphere's land is of marginal value - think Antarctica, the Australian desert, the tropical rainforest in South America + Africa, and so on. This alone would make for more successful northern countries, as there are more of them.

The northern hemisphere benifits from the massive east-west axis stretching from Japan though China, India, the Middle East, and into Europe, where is was fairly easy for food plants & domestic animals to be relocated(ie you can grow the same food plants almost anywhere in this area), and where the climate is the best for large scale human habitation. You'll notice that most of the worlds major civilizations started in this area. The second largest horizontal axis on earth is in the United States & Southern Canada.

[XBob]

fascinating look here too:

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0%2C1284%2C52594%2C00.html

"Knowledge Web" is the pet project of James Burke, an Oxford-educated historian whose fascination with technology resulted in Connections, a television series that explored the strange links between technological breakthroughs and historical events.

Knowledge Web (K-Web) is intended to be the visual and virtual extension of almost three decades of Burke's attempts to show how all knowledge is somehow connected to all other knowledge.

The not-for-profit site is being built by about 100 volunteers from around the world, but more helping hands are needed.

K-Web project manager Patrick McKercher said K-Web currently could really use programmers who can work with Java, XSLT and XML. Experienced researchers and writers are also wanted. Volunteers can sign up here.

[wolficatZ]

I have a few episodes of Connections I taped off TLC a few years ago. Wish I had the whole series on dvd.

[BunnySlippers]

•

[MarkL]

I believe that it was Dinesh who also observed that almost all the successful countries /civilizations were all located north of the equator?

Guess everything south of the equator is backwards?

I think that Dr. Walter Williams stated a more likely reason in a recent article. He believes the reason for the success of the West is due to the combination of liberty, freedom and captitalism.

This makes quite a bit of sense. Liberty and freedom grant a person the opportunity to succeed or fail. Add property rights to the mix, and a person has incentive to succeed. Lots of people succeeding and producing brings prosperity to the society. On the other hand, when you have a collective society, which may be required for survival, for a short time and for small groups, you will invariably wind up with people who have no incentive to produce, and will wind up with more and more people who either do nothing, or produce the bare minimum. At the beginning of a collective society, there may be incentive in that if they don't produce, the people will die, which seems to be a pretty good incentive. The problem with collectivism is that it stagnates society. The key to the "success" of a collective society is that it can only exist for a short time before it collapses. And the greater the population, the shorter the period it will exist, without needing force to keep the society running.

And that's the key... When you look at most African nations, they're actually quite rich in natural resources. However the societies that are running those nations are killing the people.

Mark

[Cronos]

Dinesh D’Souza

Isn't he Indian?

[Smartaleck]

hmmmm........I think there's a bit more to it. Like gov't and culture.

Reminds me of Sam Kinison talking about sending aid to people living in the African deserts. We don't need to send food, we need to send u-hauls so they can move to where the food is!

[rdax]

Isn't he Indian?

No, D'Souza means son of John Phillips Souza, the famous patriot and composer of marching songs :-)

[DreadCthulhu]

I agree with that culture & government is also very important - for example, the Middle East got a good head start on civilization, but they squandered that lead due to overcontrolling theocratic governments. Just pointing out that climate & geography in certain areas are just better suited for human habitation, and spread of civilzation.

[Cronos]

I believe that it was Dinesh who also observed that almost all the successful countries /civilizations were all located north of the equator?

hmmm.. lessee: Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Persian, Greek, Roman, Western. All northern Hemisphere. Kind of hard on the South Africans, Australians, Argentines, Chileans etc.