THE SYSTEMS OF WORLD HISTORY AND THE LIMITS TO GEOGRAPHIC DETERMINISM

Oswald Spengler was one of the first thinkers to masterfully predict the second world war. For him , it was inevitable since two Faustian spirits were pitted against each other. The English harbored an irrational form of progressivism drenched in a mercantilist spirit. While the other , the Prussians , viz , Germans were harbingers of traditional moral relativism. He constantly believed that the Twilight of Western Civilization would be brought about by the rise of the industriousness and resourcefulness of the Prussian Juggernaut.
He erred here as it was the mercantilist view of the English that prevailed. He talked in depth of “Second Religiousness “ while introspecting and rectifying his own outlook . He says that it wasn’t traditional Christianity that brought upon the major world, such a fate. It was an intrusive form of progressivism of the irrational religion of the English, made of the same material as nascent Christianity. While pondering upon this , he made an indisputable and watershed observation. Just like how strict interpretation of Christianity killed the Roman Empire’s intellect, all Civilizations’ face a formidable challenge during their winter stage, as in their period of intellectual decline.

In case of the Occidental world, progressivism is seen as a parallel to this pure and unfazed interpretation of the God and his doctrine. Much akin to the Darwinian standpoint of Spengler, civilizations were modelled around geographical entities with the stronger one poised to gobble up the weaker. However, there are two elements that he completely doesn’t allude to in his otherwise stunning analysis. Firstly, the Greco-Roman thought process is what that dominates all modern day understanding about civilizations, in that all concepts and philosophies that float today can be traced to the reformist ideas of the Renaissance and the development of economic thought during the Scottish Enlightenment. Very little are they accustomed to the intellectual traditions of the archaic failing to acknowledge that the historical process of civilizations is polycentric at best as opposed to the European view that the fall of the Roman Empire and the quagmire that ensued gave rise to a gregarious body of knowledge about cultures and societies. Lastly, not a fallacy or a flaw as Spengler or for that matter no one could have predicted the Industrial Revolution despite living through it, his synthesis of findings lacks the room for change which is a constant across all factors that make up a civilization. The making of Modern America, for instance is a classic exponent. The Founding Fathers of the United states were self professed adherents to the English philosopher John Locke, whose idea of Empiricism went on to conquer the United States. Ideas of a nation state, freedom of expression whilst allowing for religious (Puritan) values to give shape to the economic system are its product. After surpassing a weakened Britain during the same Second World War, America could have easily, as per Spengler, tamed and subjugated the weaker world in tangible terms at least but that didn’t and as a matter of fact couldn’t even have happened. Power can be jointly commanded or concentrated at once but civilizations, they always remain polycentric. The rise of the Soviet Union can easily be ascribed to that. Civilizations don’t decay but change and mutate. And it’s laughable to think that Romans accepted Chrisianity for faith & belief. They did that to retain political power on the world as the then thinkers saw the future of the world. The Roman civilization is very well alive even today. For that matter, no civilization can decay or fall into oblivion. Poets romanticize it for obvious reasons but the truth is far from being poetic.

The march of history or the rise and fall of civilizations, for its unique understanding , has at its disposal various methodologies for the mastery of the sheer quantity and vastness of the subject matter. The Linear approach to the evaluation of civilizations entails the study of each unit in detail, exploring every cultural facet as intricately as can be. Or, one can adopt the contrarian World Systems Approach which looks at each culture as part of a greater world civilization and studies the interactions among them and their influences on the parent world institution.

There is no question of any either-or scenario as both are complementary or on second thought necessary for each other’s sustenance. One approach generates the quantitative data whereas the other plays its part in the development of theories on historical processes and change. Change is a crucial constant across all world history in every era and time period. In a wider sense, all history is in fact an anecdote of change and we are in whatever capacity, tellers of the tale.

Consider Herodotus for instance, whose “Histories” are the finest exponents of a wider approach to the subject. His chief investigations are primarily structured around the relative changes in power dynamics between two or more civilizations. He examined the rise of the Achaemenids, the First organized Persian entity and the factors and circumstances , most importantly, the surroundings that enabled it. He delineated how the mighty and resounding empire carved by the resilience of Fars (Persian for Persia ) was brought to its knees by the indomitable Faustian spirit of the Greeks portended by one Alexander of Macedon. Even the peripheral cultures were accounted for, namely the Scythians who didn’t bow down before the Persian juggernaut and in fact inflicted the worst humiliation possible upon them by beheading Cyrus The Great in battle, whose mention only occurs in Hellenic texts with no independent veracity as such. Nonetheless, Iranian empires and traditions never decayed and neither did the Greco-Asian ones with the rise of the Parthians or Sassanids later. The Muslim Arabs too that conquered Iran, only robbed it of its political independence and were so unsuccessful at reducing its culture that they themselves got consumed by it. While there is a plethora of themes in Herodotean works including significant philosophical ones, what is of particularly vital importance is his idea that societies are adapted to the geographies they inhabit. Scholarly jargon of the modern world refers this to as Geographical Determinism.

Geography is the best hypotheses to try explaining political and historical developments as it is undoubtable being a physical tangible reality. One can’t just walk up to a mountain or enter a water body and claim that they are social constructs and the physical barriers they present are not real lest you wish to attract the bewilderment and pity of those around you. Yet most importantly the study of how geography shapes a society or civilization in that light and the conclusions as provided by geographic determinists are more often than not correct, however, the exceptions have a huge impact nonetheless, possibly larger than what one can fathom. Determinism through Geography can never be debunked. The first civilizations sprung up because of Geography and this section of the piece merely deals with and critiques how with the advancement of scholarly pursuits of anthropology and history, Geographic Determinism can no longer be the only and absolute catalyst for change with the rise of a variety of global centers of power each an outcome of various factors that may or may not overlap against each other in all situations.

It’s extremely difficult to argue against Geographic Determinism . For instance, even after considering all the biases and research interpretations one may come to hold, it can’t in any way be denied that a large chunk of Russia’s social, political and economic development was driven by how its society interacted with its vast landmass and its harsh climate. There are certain points or axioms about Geography that are taken at face value and are almost always true. Let’s consider the example of mountains being great physical barriers. They are the reason why a few societies are isolated and don’t interact in a manner that asserts their influence on others, case in point being the Incas who had absolutely little or no influence extending beyond the realm of the towering Andes. On the other hand, mountains are also a great refuge for the cultures and societies that seek to escape the influence of larger active civilizations that reside in other geographies such as the flatlands or the coastlines to cite a few. But there are regions that contradict these established developmental nodes usually taken for granted. Let’s revert to the Incas who flourished just before the Spanish Armada arrived at the shores of South America. The other Pre-Columbian cultures penetrated deep into the forests as the Incas rose to the heights of the mountains. In South America alone, many civilizations contradict these very Eurasian and African notions or assumptions of geography and society. These Pre-Columbian civilizations were the ones that specialized in settling, building and prospering on geography that was harsh, daunting and difficult by African and Eurasian standards. Their societies simply favored such a ground which begets the question of what is a more important determinant, the geography or how we as societies perceive and react to Geography. The Khmer civilization provides a sound and logical explanation behind the conflict between Geography and Society. In the dense jungles of Cambodia lay the ruins of a once magnificent Angkor Wat, a city that was mysteriously abandoned . Nobody exactly knows what happened as ancient and for that matter, mediaeval Cambodians recorded their history and experiences of change on Palm Leaves which survived for only a hundred odd years and thus had to continuously be copied. In accordance to predominantly Hindu, and latter Buddhist dictums of life, decay and renewal, writing history was a religious ceremony for the Khmers. Every century, Monks or Priests before them, would copy texts from rotting leaves on to fresh ones forming a chain of historical records that passed through time in a cycle but that very chain was interrupted and destroyed in the 13th century and a vast period of Cambodian history, to which happened to coincide the abandonment of the Angkor Wat is and remains obscure.

When the French colonized the Indo-China peninsula, their intellectuals stumbled upon the ruins of the once magnificent city and claimed that there was a sudden civilizational collapse and drew parallels with the Bronze Age collapse later on. Modern historians however, refuted this and instead asserted that instead of an abrupt one, the decline was gradual in virtue over the course of three centuries. They base their premise by pointing out that the abandonment of Angkor Wat coincided with an increase in seafaring trade by South-East Asian civilizations which marked a consequent shift in structures that benefitted those entities existing in coastal regions. The 1400s marked a great change in the course of history in the region as Seafaring empires of South East Asia and East Africa rose and cemented their hegemony whilst the landlocked civilizations held together by agricultural wealth witnessed a decline by all means. But what can also be propositioned through perhaps an upheaval so gargantuan is the coincidence of the fall of Angkor with doctrinal and religious change in Buddhist theology. A large volume of the inscriptions on the temples, statues and the many monuments unearthed or discovered, give impressions of a taxonomical society organized religion. The entire narrative though is a testament to the negation of the rise and fall theory or peak and decay heralding , exactly like Spengler had believed all civilizations to be, which certainly was not the case.

All it took was a monument to prove the application wrong here say. The Great Sleeping Buddha, carved in the outer wall of the inner sanctum , according to archaeologists with conclusive proof was built sometime in the 1600s , a full 300 years after the supposed collapse of Angkor. How did a civilization that had already collapsed manage to build something so grand 300 years later? Well, contrary to what many people still believe, it never died or disappeared or waned. It still existed yet in a very altered and mutated form. Instead of imposing stone temples being built, huge flat basins seemed to have become the norm and what the archaeologists managed to ascertain was that since 1300, these stone temples fell out of favor supplanted by wooden ones which rotted away. There’s a very high likelihood that this was done deliberately.

Come 1300, Mahayana Buddhism was no longer the religion of the populace and it began experiencing a sudden rapid decline in favor of Theravada Buddhism which in many ways accentuates the temporariness of life rejecting the grand eloquent expressions of faith and embracing modest practice of it. The construction of stone temples soon began to be viewed as folly and so wood ousted stone. The Theravada Buddhists allowed their wooden temples to decay with time rooted in the firm belief that no man-made structure or thing is or can be sacred as they are temporary and so are the men who built them. Writing too changed as Palm leaves alarmingly replaced stone tablets. The stone structures of the city eventually were covered with linen and plant life emphasizing the shift in theology and its acceptance. So is it the society or the geography that explains the fall of Angkor or is it that both are mutually inclusive? Does the region we inhabit shape our culture or does our culture flourish in spite of how challenging the surroundings can be? The reason why Angkor is such a delicious case is that neither geographical determinists, nor anthropologists, nor social theorists like Spengler and neither can I provide a concrete explication. The period interluding from 1300–1600 is a known unknown phase of Cambodian history. We may never know what had actually happened. Angkor is a great illustration of history being the interpretation of what is unknown as much as it is of what is known.

Non landlocked civilizations being situated in Oceania as per the understood norms of geographic determinism, must have been great seafaring cultures. But reality is unfazed, and truth isn’t beautifully poetic yet again. Barring the Polynesians, other non-landlocked civilizations did not know how to navigate the deep ocean all throughout its history uniformly. Most of the times, it was a tourney in the shallow waters or coast hopping at best. It was technological innovation that infused a seafaring culture among these land based civilizations of Europe that fueled the engine of exploration and colonization. The Portuguese inventions of compass, carousel and cross staff enabled the navigation of deep seas. This revolutionized the way societies interacted with the geography of the oceans that were no longer deep gloomy pits of certain death but spirited and free highways ordained by God for the scrupulous conduct of trade and exchange of ideas and thinking traditions. So is it the geography of oceans that has shaped our society or is it that we collectively have come in engagement with the geography of the oceans? The answer is strangely inconclusive , a chicken or egg debate to be honest. A determinist would say that the Atlantic coastline of Portugal made it a seafaring empire with excellent navigators and explorers while a social theorist would argue by placing the onus on innovation, technology and Arab maps of the Andalusians translated in the 14th century into Portuguese. In response the determinist would say that it is the geography of coastlines that enabled the development of technology while the social theorist would retort by saying that the Ottoman blockade of the Bosporus and European trade forced this alternative into consideration. The determinist would again jump in and claim that Anatolia’s unique and strategic geography perpetuated the tenacity of the Ottomans to which the social theorist would again reply by saying that the Ottoman conquest of Rome bought the latter’s institutions into its control and thus governance too.

In China, determinists argue that the flood-like nature of the Yang-Tze river and abundant rainfall is what that led to the development of state structures of civilizations earlier than others to organize collective action of managing the river by building dams and in the process , facilitating irrigation. While I firmly believe that competition among the warring kingdoms and states shaped the earliest civilizations of China in a quest to obtain the most efficient state structure to fight a war more comprehensively. Similarly, determinists would indicate that the calm uninterrupted flow of the Nile and development of urban and rural spaces along the Nile basin only which gave Egypt an isolationist touch, surrounded by ocean, desert and mountains led to civilizational stagnation which when coupled with lack of contact with other cultures fostered no innovation technologically which in turn led to its overrunning first by the Assyrians, then the Persians , then the Greeks, followed by the Romans and finally the Arabs. I , on the other hand, would approach this lack of innovation by postulating that there was no single conscious effort made at all, to innovate. The absolutism of the Pharaonic traditions and as highlighted by the long standing ancient Egyptian culture of writing, the rigidity to interact with outsiders and hostility towards everything foreign by the early Egyptian civilizations is what precipitated the stagnation and shunning of innovation.

Now let’s add the element of ecology to the study of civilizations. One would think that modern inequality originates from the domesticability and the variability of a large species of plants and animals in Mesopotamia allowing the inhabitants to innovate much earlier and quicker than their counterparts elsewhere and also develop complex societal structures as they settled first. This view extends to maintain that the ascent of Mesopotamia or the fertile crescent formed by the sea, Tigris and the Euphrates is what led to the flourishing of Mediterranean sea cultures and ultimately, European prosperity. However, Pre-Columbian Central and South America deflates this hypothesis too. The Aztecs and the Incas were much more prosperous than the Mediterranean Spaniards that conquered them. The hypothesis implies that the prosperity would have continued with the adoption of the superior elements of Europe rapidly, yet , exactly the opposite transpired. The civilizations, now Columbian in being, were so slow in adopting modern technologies, economic institutions and political structures, that they fell into destitution and poverty by the late 18th century. The shift in wealth was signaled by the Rise of North America and the downtrodden facet of the South. Daron Acemoglu & James A Robinson by looking at the geographical distribution of ancestral animals found out that not only does the sphere of influence extend beyond the Fertile Crescent but also validates that trade has no singular direction. Rightly so, trade doesn’t happen faster from West to East and North to South or vice-versa. Thinking so would contradict the whole belief in the Geographic hypothesis of seafaring and oceans being highways of trade with entities being able to travel anywhere.

The foundations of the discipline of Political Science lie in the ability of a people group to organize themselves and deliberating on the best way to govern yet the bread and butter of the intellectual realm of the subject lies in comparative study which is done by taking two countries or states with similar structures and outlook and evaluate when and why one would do something better than the other. This belief spearheaded the development of the Ricardian theory of Comparative Advantage as economic ideas flourished in the 18th century. At face, Switzerland and Lebanon aren’t similar yet they kind of are once you delve deeper. Both enjoy a mountainous refuge that protected persecuted peoples of the region with different groups creating a patchwork society. If anything, the juicy and delectable Mediterranean coastline of Lebanon makes its geography superior to Switzerland’s . Yet, despite the similarities, Switzerland is the best functioning state in the world, with it being alliterated to paradise while Lebanon’s history and course took a disastrous turn with it culminating into the epitome of dysfunction and erratic demeanor. So close , yet so far, so similar, yet entirely different.

The geographer is to be commended of course, and as I said before and reiterate , geographical determinants can never be defenestrated. The geographer has to be granted his powers of determining the foundation of development of any region or unit based on its geography but the same fellow can’t essentially explain what that development would be and how would it be brought about. The explanation of where that development would ultimately lead the people inhabiting that geography to is decided by a myriad of factors wrought about by society and not geography itself. Geography can’t help us reform Lebanon but only better institutions and policies can. South America is the final boss in this debate, the food for fodder. Saying that South America has bad or poor geography is laughable to say the least. I cast suspicions or aspersions on those who adhere to this inaccurate deterministic rambling if they even know the geography or not.

Spanning two complete and continuous coastlines, South America is a geographical paradise. Situated in Argentina is the mammoth Parana basin, the single largest freshwater reservoir in the world fled by the splendid Amazon creating an enormous stretch of cultivable fertile agricultural land and the smoothly navigable network of streams and rivers called the Rio De La Plata right up to the Atlantic Coastline laden with exquisite natural harbors. This region alone has all the benefits of the American Midwest and Mississippi Valley region combined. The Andes is a gargantuan repository of mineral wealth and precious metals with a very conducive climate for primary industries and mining to flourish, in comparison to its Himalayan and Uralic counterparts. The countries of Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile together form the most ideal and the best geography pandering to deterministic standards. But there’s not much to show for it as over centuries of hardship and turmoil, corruption, incessant foreign meddling, dysfunctional politics, lack of coordinated policy frameworks and mismanagement of resources have ensured that peoples of that region remain downtrodden and poor and not in a position to take advantage of perhaps one of the best geographies on the planet. All of these are political problems which can be solved through policy making or the societal development of the Latin American civilization and not geography.

Both geography and society are indeed indispensable aspects of the same unit, just like being two sides of the same coin. The system of World history isn’t biased towards any. The former explains what while the latter explains how and why. But what’s critical and at the same time integral is that civilization is but a product of a myriad of factors that influence or constitute either of the two, and the failure to acknowledge which would lead to intellectual redundancy, as placing bets on either the chicken or the egg would become the only resort.