All in all, the process that began in eighteenth-century
Britain has
left no one untouched. It has brought about a more homogeneous world
than has ever existed before in human times (consider, for example, the
cross-cultural uniformity of the nicotine-delivery systems). But it has
also led to great inequalities between peoples. Such inequalities are,
of course, nothing new in the history of the world; few major
encounters of the last two centuries have been quite so unequal as
those that resulted from the Spanish intrusion into the New World in
the sixteenth century. But the gross disparity of economic, political,
and cultural power brought about by the industrial revolution has in
the end touched far more people, and it continues to affect the whole
shape of the world we live in. It also generates enormous and
predictable resentment. Addressing white Americans at their annual
celebration of their independence in 1852, Frederick Douglass, an
escaped black slave, told them, "The rich inheritance of justice,
liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is
shared by you, not by me," and ended his oration with the observation
that "for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns
without a rival." The sentiments articulated by Douglass sound very
familiar in the world today.
One indication of the degree of this disparity is the
almost casual
ease with which, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the
British—and others who had successfully joined the imperial club—could
rule peoples who remained outside it. The partition of the continent of
Africa between the European powers in the late nineteenth century is
one example of this, and the creation of a Japanese empire in East Asia
at the expense of China and Korea is another. By the middle of the
twentieth century the days of such formal empires were largely over.
The point was not, however, that modernity had lost its power but
rather that it was now differently distributed. The process of
modernization had brought into existence modernized elites even within
societies that had yet to assimilate modernity on any scale, and the
existence of these elites had made direct imperial rule politically and
morally hard to sustain, let alone to extend. Hence the world today is
for the most part divided into nations rather than empires; even the
Russian empire, which thanks to Communism survived much longer than the
rest, has now broken up. But behind the facade of the world's united
and disunited nations, the formal and informal structures of
international relations show that succ&sfal modernization remains a
precondition for calling the shots.
In the 1840s it was possible for the British elite to look on with relative indifference
as the Irish
peasantry starved under British rule a few hundred miles away. Today the British participate in
famine relief in regions far more remote, and for which they have no direct political responsibility.
One might explain this in terms of a change of sensibility, and without doubt there has been one;
the British today care significantly more than they used to about bad things that happen in less
privileged parts of the world. But this change of sensibility has received crucial reinforcement from
more material considerations. These days awful events unfolding in remote regions have a way of
spilling over the borders of the luckless countries in which they take place; they are, for example,
liable to generate floods of refugees, and these can be a problem for everyone. The effect, of
course, is uneven. A tide of refugees from genocide in central Africa, for example, is unlikely to
inundate Europe, whereas refugees from the collapse of states in North Africa or the Balkans are
another matter. But the nature of the effect and its relative novelty are clear. The world's haves
accordingly display a measure of concern to mitigate the desperation of the have-nots, and more
generally of those who find themselves on the wrong side of the current world order. That there was
some ground for this concern became evident in the fall of 2001.
