Understanding Europe (The Works of Christopher Dawson)

VIII. Europe Overseas: Colonization and Empire

108 viii Europe Overseas Colonization and Empire The change in the world position of Europe which has taken place during the last fifty years has inevitably caused a strong reaction against the spirit of nineteenth-century imperialism. The idea of empire has become identified with the oppression of subject peoples , the “White Man’s Burden” has become a joke, and the whole colonial development is regarded as a form of economic exploitation. Yet the imperialist phase of Western culture is not confined to the second half of the nineteenth century. It was the culmination of a much wider movement which goes back to the close of the Middle Ages and which has been one of the main forces in the formation of the modern world. However great may be our moral disapproval of Homo Europaeus in his relations with weaker and more primitive peoples, we cannot ignore his positive achievements, for they have changed the face of the earth and created a new world, or even a number of new worlds. Moreover, this question has a peculiar importance for the English-speaking peoples, in the Old and the New Worlds. For the United States, which have always been foremost in the denunciation of imperialism and colonialism, are themselves the greatest product of these movements; while Great Britain has been in the past the greatest of all the colonial powers and still owes her international importance to her imperial position. But leaving aside these considerations, it is impossible to understand the nature of the modern world apart from the Western movement of colonial expansion which has transformed the closed Mediterranean continental world of ancient and mediaeval culture into an oceanic civi- Europe Overseas 109 lization which has unified the world. Whatever may be our moral judgment on Imperialism, we must accept it, like War or the State, as one of the constituent elements that have made the modern world. Moreover , even when we consider it from a strictly moral point of view, we must recognize its mixed character. Like civilization itself, it has been inspired by ideal as well as material motives and has had a missionary as well as an acquisitive character. It has brought out both the best and the worst elements in Western culture. This two-fold character goes back to the very origins of the movement in the later mediaeval period. For the great discoveries which were the starting point of the European expansion were themselves inspired by a double motive. They were an attempt to free European commerce from the stranglehold imposed by the Turkish conquest of the Levant and they were an extension and continuation of the crusading movement which played such a great part in the history of mediaeval Christendom. This second motive is especially clear in the work of Prince Henry of Portugal, who was the great precursor of the Age of Discovery. In view of the repeated failures of the crusading movement, and especially of the latest crusading efforts of Portugal in Morocco, Prince Henry conceived the idea of turning the flank of Islam by the exploration of West Africa and the establishment of a new Christian dominion in Guinea. The indomitable persistence with which he pursued this limited aim launched Portugal on the path of discovery which led ultimately to the circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope in 1486 and to the opening of the route to India and the Far East in 1492. The same motives led Ferdinand and Isabella to finance the voyage of Columbus in 1492, and it is no accident that the discovery of America was the immediate sequel to the capture of Granada, which ended the long history of the Spanish Reconquest. Yet from the beginning the economic motive played a great part in the movement. Henry the Navigator himself encouraged the African slave-trade, and the famous letter of Toscanelli to Canon Fernan Martins of Lisbon, which is said to have given Columbus the idea of his Western route, is not inspired by any crusading idealism but with the concrete problem of finding “a shorter way to the place of spices” . Thus the discovery of the New World and the opening of the new 110 Understanding Europe route to India were at once the result of the old mediaeval crusading ideal and of a very modern interest in cheaper grocery, and this combination of incongruous motives characterizes the whole history of the...