Empires and Civilizations: The Search for Standards Continues

Abstract

The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea. By Brett Bowden. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 320 pp., $45.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-226-06814-5). The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea by Professor Brett Bowden opens with “Guizot's Question: Universal Civilization?”—a fitting introduction to the book's three parts. “Part 1 is about ideas and concepts” (p. 12), specifically the historical arguments for, and limits of, Civilization, Progress, and History as universals. Parts 2 and 3 “are about the application and consequences of those ideas” (p. 12)—the Art and Science of Empire, including the Expansion of Europe and the Classical Standard of Civilization and the Burden of Civilization (Part 2), and issues of New Barbarism and “New Realities” of Imperialism (Part 3). The book's Conclusion calls for open, nonjudgmental intercivilizational relations and dialogue.1 Such dialogue is deemed important today because of ongoing conceptual and practical connections: “the same set of ideas and concepts—civilization, progress, universality, and modernity—remain both salient and powerful when it comes to explaining and justifying policy making and decision making” (p. 17). The purposes that The Empire of Civilization identifies for itself include: to provide “a better understanding of the language of civilization” and “a better understanding of the actions that tend to follow the language of civilization” (pp. ix–x); to examine “the concerted attempt to inculcate ‘civilization’ in all corners of the globe” (pp. 1–2); to “argue that certain forces are at work in world politics striving to impose a purposefully charted ‘directionality’ on our world's near-term history and future” (p. 2); and to “say that the dominant architects of international society continue to be informed and influenced by a faith in the Enlightenment ideal of progress and humankind's universal linear March toward modernity” (pp. 2–3). Among …