A World-Historical Model for Understanding Empires in Their Ancient Political, Medieval Cultural, and Modern Economic Forms - OKCIR: Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research

Sociologist Mohammad H. Tamdgidi published the following article titled “Toward a Dialectical Conception of Imperiality: The Transitory (Heuristic) Nature of the Primacy of Analyses of Economies in WorldHistorical Social Science,” in Review (Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations), vol. XXIX, issue 4, 2006:291328.

This article aims to illustrate, by way of advancing a nonreductive dialectical conception of history of imperiality in contrast to materialist approaches, both the relative historical validity and the transitory (heuristic) nature of the primacy of economies and their analyses in world-historical social science. The dialecticity of the conception allows for politics, culture, and economy to have similarly played primary parts in the rise of distinct forms of imperiality in world-history corresponding to ancient, medieval, and modern historical eras across multiple, but increasingly synchronous and convergent, regional trajectories.

The nonreductive dialectical mode of analysis reverses and relativizes the taken-for-granted universalistic modes of analysis of imperialism in terms of class, allowing for considerations of political domination, cultural conversion, and economic exploitation as historical forms of deepening imperial practice violating self-determining modes of human organization and development. Power-, status-, and class-based relations and stratifications are thereby reinterpreted as distinct forms of imperial practice which now assumes a substantively generative position vis-á-vis those structural forms.

The notion of “imperiality” (in contrast to “imperialism”) is used to denote both the macro-structural and the micro, intra/interpersonal, dynamics of the historical phenomena still shaping our everyday lives. The proposed mode of analysis provides new reasons for deconstructing universally economistic paths of entry into hitherto “transition debates” in favor of more contingent, historicized, and dialectical interpretations of the rise of the modern world-system and more proactive, creative, and utopistic endeavors in favor of non-imperial world-systems.

Toward a Dialectical Conception of Imperiality: The Transitory (Heuristic) Nature of the Primacy of Analyses of Economies in World-Historical Social Science

I saw a bird once in the Castle of Tus,
Sitting beside the head of King Keikavoos,
And saying constantly: “Alas, alas, where
Are the battle drums and the bells after the truce?”

—Omar Khayyam, c. 12th century AD

In his economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844, Marx stated that “communism, as fully-developed naturalism, equals humanism” (Tucker 1978: 84) and went on to emphasize how “consistent naturalism or humanism distinguishes itself both from idealism and materialism, constituting at the same time the unifying truth of both. We see also how only naturalism is capable of comprehending the act of world history “ (115). For the Marx of 1844, in other words, neither idealism, nor materialism, but humanism (which equals fully developed naturalism) was “the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution” (84).

Fifteen years later, in 1859, however, the riddle of history had been solved in favor of materialism. In his 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1970), Marx outlined a materialist conception of history that had served as a guiding thread for his studies. According to this conception, the “mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (Tucker 1978: 4).

Fast forward 34 years, when we find in Frederick Engels’s letter to F. Mehring, dated July 1893 (two years before Engels’s passing and about ten years past that of Marx), the following:

Otherwise only one more point is lacking, which, however, Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regards to which we are all equally guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal side—the ways and means by which these notions, etc., come about—for the sake of the content … This aspect of the matter, which I can only indicate here, we have all, I think, neglected at first for content. It is the old story: form is always neglected at first for content. As I say, I have done that too and the mistake has always struck me only later. (Engels, in Marx and Engels 1970: 495-496, 497)

It is perhaps in light of Marx’s 1859 materialist “guiding thread” of his studies, broadly interpreted, and the above balancing commentary offered in 1893 by Engels (and found in much of the critical studies of Marxist thought and practice in the ensuing decades) that we find in the editorial policy statement of Review, the journal of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations, a stress on the “primacy of analyses of economies over long historical time and large space,” while, at the same time, a balancing emphasis on “the holism of the socio-historical process, and the transitory (heuristic) nature of theories” (Review, “Editorial Policy,” inside front cover).

World-systems studies, particularly in the works of Immanuel Wallerstein, have in recent years drawn our attention to the artificiality of the structures of knowledge that we have inherited from the nineteenth century, in particular as a result of the rise of modern universities and academic disciplines (Wallerstein 1991; Gulbenkian Commission 1996). Wallerstein has specifically drawn our attention to one of the major analytical dilemmas facing academic and scholarly research in historical social scientific research: that arising from the differentiations among economy, politics, and culture:

This theorem of differentiation, although a mere two centuries old, is so deeply rooted in our consciousnesses and our linguistic tools that we find it almost impossible to formulate sentences, not to speak of whole analytic arguments, that do not employ this threefold distinction, so holy to liberal ideology.

What I think we shall have to do is evolve an entirely new vocabulary, since the terms we use now are so rigidly reified that merely a series of redefinitions, however careful, will probably be of little avail. (Wallerstein 2000: 307)

Wallerstein’s commentary, if read in light of the editorial policy of Review as noted above, raises important questions regarding the linguistic tools, vocabularies, and metaphors we continue to use, consciously or subconsciously, in our research. The problem is, as soon as the “primacy of analyses of economies” is evoked, an analytical dichotomy between them and non-economies is established, especially in the framework of “long historical time and large space.” Is this meant to draw our attention to the possibility, in pre-modern or post-modern times perhaps, of historical systems and civilizations that were (or will be) not economies but primarily shaped by cultural, political, or planning agencies of various types? If so, would this not complicate or limit the scope of the transhistorical logic built into Marx’s materialist conception of history, one in which economy more or less plays a determining role in shaping social life throughout human history? Bringing together the two important elements of Review’s editorial policy statement, one may ask: is the theoretical proposition of “primacy of analyses of economies” itself of transitory (heuristic) value in world-historical social science?

In this article I will try to tentatively illustrate, by way of advancing a nonreductive dialectical conception of history of imperiality in contrast to materialist approaches, both the relative historical validity and the transitory (heuristic) nature of the primacy of economies and their analyses in world-historical social science. The dialecticity of the conception allows for politics, culture, and economy to have similarly played primary parts in the rise of distinct forms of imperiality in world history corresponding to ancient, medieval, and modern historical eras across multiple, but increasingly synchronous and convergent, regional trajectories. The nonreductive dialectical mode of analysis reverses and relativizes the taken-for-granted universalistic modes of analysis of imperialism in terms of class, allowing for considerations of political domination, cultural conversion, and economic exploitation as historical forms of deepening imperial practice violating self-determining modes of human organization and development. Power-, status-, and class-based relations and stratifications are thereby reinterpreted as distinct forms of imperial practice which now assumes a substantively generative position vis-à-vis those structural forms.

After a brief attempt at conceptual clarification while amplifying the views of the Marx of 1844 in contrast to Marx’s materialist conception of history as expressed in his 1859 “guiding thread,” I will tentatively sketch in a narrative form an alternative guiding thread for the study of world history in terms of nonreductive dialectics of part and whole—hence, the use of the term “imperiality” which conjures both the micro and macro dynamics of the relations of imperial ruling constituting intra/interpersonal and global social spacetimes. While the “objective” aspects of world-historical development and the “accidental” nature of its events are accounted for, the role played by human agency in determining the direction of world-historical events is acknowledged and incorporated into the structure of the narrative. I will conclude by briefly noting how the proposed mode of analysis provides new reasons for deconstructing universally economistic paths of entry into hitherto “transition debates” in favor of more contingent, historicized, and dialectical interpretations of the rise of the modern world-system and more proactive, creative, and utopistic endeavors in favor of non-imperial world-systems.

Preliminary Conceptual Clarifications

In what way may we adequately understand Marx’s 1844 insight regarding the unifying truth of idealism and materialism in humanism (or what is the same for him, fully developed naturalism)? Why is this thesis so central for Marx at the time that he declares such an interpretation of the world-historical act to be the riddle of history solved—if and when humanity knows itself to be the solution?

The best way to interpret the young Marx’s declaration of the unity of idealism and materialism in humanism as fully developed naturalism is by considering how he originally conceived of the dichotomy of mind and matter in terms of the dialectics of part and whole. The Marx of 1844 is still deeply entrenched in the Hegelian dialectical thought, but has begun to break free of the master’s a priori idealism without having yet turned his dialectic completely on its head in favor of a priori materialism. This leads the young Marx not to embrace the opposite, that is, materialism, for the drumbeat of the Hegelian dialectic is still too fresh in his mind to allow for the rise of a false dichotomy between idealism and materialism. Therefore, when Marx declares communism, or humanism, to be identical with fully developed naturalism, he is actually conceiving humanity as a part of nature, not as one juxtaposed on it from without. If humanity is seen as a part of nature—in fact its highest developed form in known nature (or as Marx has it, as “fully developed naturalism”)—then all the powers and primacies attributable to nature would also be applicable to the powers of conscious and willful humanity. The dichotomy of idealism and materialism, reflecting an alienated and alienating dichotomous conception of the powers of “nature” versus the powers of “man” externally conceived, could not be possible in such a nonreductive dialectical part/whole framework. The search for the primacy of one over the other would be tautological, for one is a part of the other.

Treating humanity as a part of nature is indeed liberating for the Marx of 1844. It is for him a solution to the riddle of history, for world history is conceived as the act, increasingly conscious and intentional, of humanity in the process of humanization, of seeking to actualize its fully developed nature as a self-determining species. Human mind, consciousness, and will, are not elements external to the human productive forces—as they became a year or two later in the German Ideology (Tucker 1978: 157-8; Tamdgidi 2003: 154-186), but are essential, and central, to those productive forces. Human consciousness and will are not superstructural phenomena for the Marx of 1844, but the most central, creative, and determinant of the material productive forces shaping human history. In fact, the riddle of history is solved only when humanity becomes self-conscious, coming to know itself to be the solution. Mind is not seen as external to matter—nor humanity as external to nature—but as a part of it. The cultural and political acts are not separable from the economic act in the Marx of 1844—the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 being composed in unity with one another for similar reasons. They are one and the same for the Marx of 1844. The fact that human creative powers become fragmented and divided as alienated economic, cultural, and political forms of human labor and rigidified in separate institutional spheres is itself expressive of a transitory historical process that is to be overcome in favor of integrative humanism as fully developed nature—where the distinctions of economy, culture (including philosophy) and politics are overcome as aspects of the unitary process of conscious human self-determination actualizing a potentiality inherent in human species.

I have previously argued (Tamdgidi 2003, chapters I and IV) that the house-like metaphor Marx erected in his guiding thread of 1859, comprised of an economic foundation and political, legal, and intellectual superstructures above, must itself be seen as a transitory (heuristic) metaphor typifying a particular mode of production. Such a causal architecture is a transitory scaffolding pertaining to a particular social formation based on the capitalist mode of production, but not necessarily a long-term and large-scale social structure spanning human history—as Marx’s 1859 guiding thread leads his readers to conclude. The building storeys metaphor inspiring the imagination of the 1859 Marx, in other words, signifies a historically specific model pertaining to the particular form of alienated human powers found in the modern capitalist world- system. This metaphor is inherently a di/trichotomous one, as it does not, even figuratively, allow for the identity of economic, political, and cultural elements, while signifying their distinctions. What is on one floor cannot be at the same time on the other floors. Economic, political, and cultural elements cannot be, in such a metaphor, one and the same processes.

In the Marx of 1859 the materialistically driven logic of the capitalist mode of production, as captured in the metaphor of the house storeys, is generalized to all societies as a universal law of human development, and where this is found to contradict historical reality—such as in ancient or feudal societies where “here politics and there Catholicism played the chief part” (Marx 1977: 176, footnote)—the dilemma is explained away either by the reciprocal influence of the superstructure over the economy, or by suggesting that the economic conditions (“mode of living”) of these societies themselves allowed for such overdeterminations by the superstructure to be made possible in the first place.

Let us read here once again the words of the anonymous admirer whom the Marx of Capital quotes in his Postface to the Second Edition in order to illustrate his own method:

The one thing which is important for Marx is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and it is not only the law which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connection within a given historical period, that is important to him. Of still greater importance to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e. of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connections into a different one. … It will be said, against this, that the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. But this is exactly what Marx denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist … On the contrary, in his opinion, every historical period possesses its own laws … As soon as life has passed through a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. (Marx 1977:100-101)

Marx’s anonymous reader is here both emphasizing the transitory (heuristic) nature of particular forms of economic laws across social formations, while maintaining an universalist position on the law of primacy of economy—one which of course pleases the materialist Marx of Capital. In the very passage in which “abstract laws” governing various historical periods are denied, claims are made regarding the transhistorical primacy of economic forces in shaping world-historical outcomes. For this Marx, “the social development as a process of natural history [is] governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence” (Marx, quoting his reader, Ibid., 101). This is far from the view of the Marx of 1844 for whom the “process of natural history” includes the human act in world history, and its self-awareness of such a conscious, intelligent, and willful mission is declared to be the riddle of history solved.

In what way can we consider the primacy of economies, and their analyses, transitory and heuristic phenomena confronting our research endeavors in world-historical social science? What would a universally nonreductive and flexible dialectical conception of world history be like in contrast to the one codified by the historical materialist Marx of 1859?¹ Let us tentatively engage in a narrative exercise in world history to explore this question.²

The Rise of Ancient Civilizations: Nomadic, Rural, and Urban Revolutions

“Much of the world history is the story of the way different civilizations have come closer together,” writes John Morris Roberts in his encyclopedic entry on “World History” (1995). We often forget, however, that world history is also the story of how humanity split into “different civilizations” in the first place. Our fixation on recorded history, of say the past 5500 years, often diverts our attention from the very long- term and large-scale processes that preceded recorded history. For the same reason, we also ignore the unrecorded histories of the nomadic populations who profoundly shaped the history of “civilized” world until very recent times. Human world history is a singular spatiotemporal story of human fragmentation and reintegration—recorded or not.

Human evolutionary chronology is still a debated subject. Some scholars believe that our earliest primate ancestors lived as far back as 40 million years ago. The first hominoids are believed to have evolved between 30 to 20 million years ago and were still roaming the earth 4 million years ago. The most recent ancestors of human species, the Homo Erectus, walked on earth about 2 million years ago. An evolutionary branch of Homo Erectus, the Homo Neanderthals, lived around 500,000 B.C. but became extinct about 100,000 B.C. Traces of our own species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens—another branch of the Homo Erectus—have been traced back to at least 40,000 B.C.

Our nomadic ancestors were still more inclined to use their environments as they found them, rather than transforming them for their needs. It is not surprising, therefore, that with the apparent exhaustion in each locality of the available resources for their hunting, gathering, and later pasturing “technologies,” they simply moved to new locations across the planet. Global mobility was even then itself a productive force. The major splitting of the Homo Sapiens Sapiens into separate groups spreading around the globe began around 40,000-35,000 B.C. with the Nomadic Revolution. This global spreading went hand in hand with the gradual emergence of the earth’s crust from the last Ice Age. Nomads’ concentration in the northern regions was due to the widespread grasslands providing plentiful existing food for hunting, gathering, and pasturing. 33,000 years ago nomads were already in Australia, and 20,000 years ago in North America. All the ice free zones of the globe were already occupied by 12,000 years ago. It is the discovery of agriculture that effectively ended the nomadic way of life in the southern regions, while in the north the nomadic life still continued until recent times.

The Agricultural (or the so-called “Neolithic”) Revolution began around 10,000 B.C., when the raising of crops and domestication of animals were learned. Permanent settlements in villages then became possible. But, given the relatively isolated and separate nature of human settlements around the globe, the agricultural revolution did not begin at the same time in each region. The original birthplace was in Mesopotamia, circa 10,000-9,000 B.C.; at this time the raising of cereal grasses/plants, domestication of goats/sheep, and (later) taming of cattle were learned. The same was soon followed in the Nile Valley, and later in Indus Valley region. Crops were raised for the first time around 7,000 B.C. in southeast Asia. People in where now is Mexico also cultivated crops by 7,000 B.C.Development of agriculture and settlements in villages stimulated the growth of small-scale technology. Development of new systems of work organization proceeded in parallel to the development of agriculture and light crafts. By 5000 B.C., there were already significant agricultural villages and settlements in Mesopotamia and Egypt, later giving rise to the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations. The Harappatian civilization in Indus Valley followed.

The rise of civilization in the proper sense of “civil”ization began with the development of cities, marking the advent of Urban Revolution. This signified the fundamental spatiotemporal division of material and mental labor, being made possible by the growing yields from agriculture on a continuous basis. Specialized occupations such as the arts, crafts, building, trade, priesthood, etc., now became possible. The earliest civilizations emerged in Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates Valley) and Egypt (Nile Valley), and later in the Indus Valley. This was followed later by the emergence of ancient civilizations in the Mediterranean region (Crete), east Asia (Yellow River Valley), and in the central Americas. In all these regions, proximity to rivers and cultivable land was essential.

But these settlements were not populated islands in the ocean of barren lands. The concentrations of settled (both rural and urban/“civilized”) populations in the above six regions were in the midst of populations to the north still living a nomadic life. The settled populations lived in the midst of a world population of nomads, albeit the latter being spread across wider regions. World history is from the beginning the story of the whole human experience, of both settled and nomadic populations. No part of this story can be understood without taking into consideration the other part. Human history from its very beginnings was a global history. This is due both to the fact that the whole of human population originally spread from the same nomadic ancestry, and to the fact that their subsequent forging into a global society as evident today makes the prehistory of each population the prehistory of humanity as a whole.

Since the settled population itself originated from nomadic beginnings, the relation of the nomadic to (both the rural and urban) settled populations must be conceptualized in terms of the relationship between a whole and its part (see Figure 1). A problem with world-historiography is the partial focus on the history of the settled population as opposed to the nomads who for millennia surrounded and influenced the lives of settled populations. Such an approach ignores the fact that nomads themselves have been world-historically the major source of the settled populations. Populations of the original ancient civilization in Sumer, for instance, were nomads themselves originally, moving from the central Asian regions to Mesopotamia. Other populations, such as the Akkadians in Mesopotamia were of Semitic origins. The Elamites were themselves originally nomads migrating south from the Black Sea region. The key point here is to conceptualize the history of the settled population as an organic part and parcel of the world population who originally spread to cover the whole globe as a result of the Nomadic Revolution.

The nomadic mode of production was closely dependent on environmental changes and immediately responsive to climatic conditions. There has been a cyclical pattern in the earth’s climate in the north since the ending of Ice Age (Nothiger 1989: 12). This cyclical pattern involves warmer and dryer areas during one period, followed by colder and damper areas in the succeeding period. It is only with the significant climatic changes brought about by large-scale human industry in modern times that the current climatic cycle in which we live today may be considered an exception, characterized by a shorter cold and damp period, bringing about an earlier global warming.

The cyclical periods have been roughly thousand years in duration (see Figure 2 below³). During the warmer and dryer periods in the north, pastoral life was threatened, leading to movements of nomadic populations towards southern and western regions of Eurasian landmass. These “migrations” towards southwest gradually acquired an invasive character as the new arrivals found resistance in previous migrants who had already been settled in lower regions and whose settlement patterns, originally rural and agricultural, had increasingly become urban as the agricultural production was improved and permanent spatiotemporal divisions of mental and material labor became possible. The degree of invasive success of the nomadic population was dependent on the war (and peace) technologies of both sides and the degree to which each side was itself unified or divided. The relationship was not one-sided, however. As a result of the dialectic of nomadic invasions on one hand and resistance by increasingly “civilized” and richer settlers on the other, not only nomads adopted settler life-styles, but also settlers acquired nomadic characteristics in terms of their ability to mobilize themselves militarily and politically and become more aggressive towards nomadic—and other settled—populations. This dialectic was responsible for the increasing politicization of both settled and nomadic life-styles in subsequent centuries. Whether the origins of “imperialism” was indigenous to the increasingly stratified settled populations themselves or a result of the recurrent nomadic-settled population conflicts (which significantly catalyzed imperial tendencies among both populations) may be more fruitfully decided via concrete historical and regional analyses than a priori assumptions regarding the primacy of internal vs. external factors.

For a long time prior to 3500 B.C., the availability of natural resources for their nomadic way of life in the north, and the rudimentary life conditions of rural settlements in the south, did not provide the nomadic populations with the need and sufficient invasive force to substantially disrupt the ever increasing quantity and ever improving quality of life of the settled population. Earlier movements to southern regions were more “migrations” than invasions. This allowed the settled population in each region to develop in relative independence from the destructive invasive force of the nomadic population in the north, and from substantial disruptions from settled populations in other regions—especially given that great distances and geological barriers separated them. For these reasons, the nomadic population still did not play any substantial role in mediating and linking “ancient civilizations” which gradually emerged during largely non-synchronous periods.

By “ancient civilizations” here is meant the indigenously evolved and permanently urbanized settlements in contrast to the ones created later by imperial expansions of existing civilizations or populations to other regions. Ancient civilizations were largely pre-imperial settlements that gradually experienced their own deepening inner divisions of labor and differentiation of social classes and strata. They were not yet multi-civilizational, but were mini-systems more or less composed of homogeneous populations sharing common natural resources, languages, religious beliefs, administrative mechanisms, and social customs and traditions. Ancient civilizations across the above-mentioned six major settlement regions of the world emerged more or less non-synchronously. With regards to both the east Asian and the American ancient civilizations, it is important to note the 2000 years gap that separated the origination of rural settlement patterns in these regions compared to other regions.

Ancient civilizations were necessarily great innovators. They were creative, and had to be in order to survive. They invented the basic cultural habitat and temporal calendars of human civilization. Philosophy, religion, and science were parts of intellectual specializations emerging from their midst, but these constituted more or less unified aspects of what was central to their contribution to human civilization: Art. There were yet no rigid separations among the diverse aspects of human intellectual pursuit. It was as skilled creators, artists, and innovators that their distinguishing contributions to human development may be traced. Art was the raison d’être, and the most original contribution of ancient civilizations to human history.

Although we may be drawing a picture that is much rosier than the actual historical scene of the ancient period, we may note that being “civilized” may be associated properly with cultivating the inherent creative powers vested in human nature in the midst of a settled life characterized by non-interference in other populations, than with “invading” others’ lives, customs, and livelihood. In this sense, to be “civilized” means to not invade other people’s lives, customs, and livelihood, and instead respect others’, and one’s own, right to self-determination and cultivation of creative powers vested in human nature. Aside from the common technical use of the concept “civilized” to denote the rise of urban society, we may then use the concept from a moral standpoint to denote this “settled,” non-interfering, and non-imperial mode of living.

Imperiality and Its Historical Types: Political, Cultural, and Economic

The rise of empires began a qualitatively new era in human history in which we still live today. It signified the beginning of a violent process of human development via forced incorporation, following a long period of relative isolation of human communities across the globe. Although the continual pressure of the invasive nomadic populations from the north was a significant catalyst for the rise of imperiality in world history, one may also argue that the deepening social (class, status, and power) divisions within the fabric of ancient civilizations also reflected tendencies towards imperiality arising from their midst—if by imperiality we mean the relations of ruling through which the life of a particular group, community, or “civilization” becomes subjected to the will of another, violating its self-determining mode of social organization and development.

Given the non-synchronous tempo of emergence and development of various ancient civilizations, imperial expansions across civilizations also took place non-synchronously across the globe, adding significant complexity to the trajectory of development of each community in light of the more or less advanced states of development of populations in other regions with which they came in contact through imperial expansion. The use of the term “civilization” in the imperial era as a whole must therefore be distinguished from its use for the earlier pre-imperial period, for now the life and conditions of “civilizations” were intricately tied to imperiality. What at home appeared “civilized” was the flip side of the “barbarism” exercised abroad in the treatment of other populations—settled or nomadic.

Three major forms of imperiality may be distinguished from one another during the long imperial era up to the present: political, cultural, and economic. To be sure, all empires and imperial expansions involve all these three dimensions. I have argued elsewhere for treatment of culture, polity, and economy in terms of part/whole dialectics (Tamdgidi 2002, forthcoming). The political and the cultural processes must not be conceptualized as being “non-economic,” but integral to it. Indeed, it was the political and cultural preconditions set by precapitalist empires that made possible the modern predominantly economic form of imperiality. What distinguishes the three forms of imperiality from one another is the primary means by which the incorporation of new groups, communities, and regions into the empire is carried out and maintained. In political imperialism, the primary motives are militaristic invasion, control, and domination of other communities and civilizations. In cultural imperialism, the violence of ideological conversion of other communities to one’s own cultural and religious beliefs becomes the key motivating factor. In economic imperialism, the primary motive is the exploitative integration of the natural and human resources and wealth of other communities. The key processes distinguishing the three forms of imperialism are thereby political domination, cultural conversion, and economic exploitation.

We need not uniformly impose a materialist or idealistic logic across the three imperial periods to uncover a universalistic and trans-historical “economic basis” for political or cultural imperialism, or a cultural basis for political and economic imperialism, or a political basis for cultural and economic imperialism. These distinct forms could exist as developmental phases of imperiality, or even exist contemporaneously within or across clashing empires. The move from outright dominative political modes of imperiality to more subtle cultural and economic modes involves a deepening of the imperial relations of ruling. All aspects may be present, but in each period one or another mode of imperiality becomes a predominant mode, casting its hue on other motives. The relative lack of economic development under political and cultural imperialism itself can be explained by the extra-economic determinations of social development during these periods, not vice versa. In contrast, it is the establishment of economic foundations of cultural hegemony and political domination in the modern period that has made possible the deceptive, seemingly autonomous and “sovereign,” cultural and political forms of neocolonialism present in the contemporary period.

Although political imperialism may be considered to have originated back in 2300 B.C. with the rise of the Akkadian empire, it was in the aftermath of the Indo-Europeans invasions of the south and the rise of the Assyrian empire circa 800 B.C. that the classical period took shape, later reaching its height in the Persian, Hellenic, and Roman empires in west Asia and Europe, Maurya and Han empires in south and east Asia, and the old and new Maya empires in the pre-Columbian Americas—nonsynchronously across space. Classical periods entered their structural crises during A.D. 300-500 and were gradually followed by cultural imperialisms of Zoroastrian (Sassanid), Christian (Byzantine), Islamic (Arabic), Hindu (Gupta), Buddhist (Tang and Sung), and pre-Columbian religious empires (Inca, Aztec, and Taltec), which presided over various increasingly synchronous “medieval” periods. The fall of Constantinople in A.D. 1450 ushered a rapid, globally synchronous phase of transition to the modern period characterized by the rise of economic empires originating in Western Europe. The older model of imperiality characterized by the monopolistic drive of a single power increasingly proving to be a failure, through the sheer violence of trial and error the modern economic empires invented collective imperialism which became finally and formally established in mid twentieth century after two world wars with the formal institutionalization of the “United Nations.” This innovation in imperiality, long-time in the making since the fifteenth century, in effect created the most successful and enduring world-empire in history characterized by a singular economy but of multiple cultures and polities organized in a system of hierarchical core, peripheral, and semi-peripheral “nation-states” (Wallerstein 1979, 1996). By mid twentieth century, the whole face of the globe became finally integrated into the economic world-system of collective imperialism.

It is important to note in the narrative that follows the plural form we use for the classical and medieval periods, and to some extent for the early modern period. There was not a single “classical” or “medieval” or “modern” period across the globe, but several classical periods, medieval periods, and early modern periods, defined primarily in terms of the type of imperial rule predominating in each period. The three terms, classical, medieval, and modern are thereby used typologically in reference to political, cultural, and economic forms of imperiality arising nonsynchronously across multiple regions rather than in reference to specifically dated historical periods centering in Europe. Various regions experienced temporally different trajectories of classical, medieval, and modern imperiality. This was largely due to the fact that the further back we go in history, the less synchronous we find to be the trajectories of human development in different regions of the world. What we mean to do by pluralizing classical, medieval or early modern periods, therefore, is to point out the different tempos, spaces, and natures, of political, cultural, and economic forms of imperial expansion in different regions of the world. Also to note is the fact that the non-synchronicity of development trajectories in the earlier periods made it possible—especially during transition periods across regions—for various forms of empires confronting one another contemporaneously. The three ideal type periods, in other words, were not rigidly distinguished from one another across time, but sometimes also impacted one another across different spaces of imperial expansion. Below we will take a closer look at each of the three historical ideal-types of imperiality.

The Rise of Classical Political Imperiality and the First Major Nomadic Invasions

As early as 2300 B.C. in Mesopotamia the Akkadian empire incorporated the Sumers into its domain. Egypt’s dynasties also became increasingly divided and imperial, seeking to expand their dominion to other outlying regions. The same may have perhaps been true of the ancient civilizations of the Indus Valley which, in time, largely disappeared on their own before (or because of) the arrival of new “migrants” from the north. The increasing stratifications in ancient societies and internal turmoil were also experienced in the east Asian and later in the pre-Columbian Americas. Ancient civilizations themselves became a source of imperial expeditions to outlying settlements and regions. The increasing divisiveness and internal turmoil in turn made these earlier communities vulnerable to the invasive force of nomadic “outsiders.”

Aside from the original populations whose migrations and settlements resulted in the rise of earliest ancient civilizations, the first major series of invasions of the south by northern nomadic populations took place during the 1700-700 B.C. climatic period. These “migrations” were generally towards the west and south passing through the Caucuses. Aryans moving south to the Indus valley and the Iranian Plateau were among the first wave of newcomers in this period. The Hellenic tribes that moved to the Balkans and to the Aegean and Mediterranean regions were also Indo-European in origin. The 1700-700 B.C. migrations encountered considerable resistance by civilizations of the south who had already become established as thriving, rich, and resourceful communities by this time, experiencing deepening inner divisions within and among themselves. This was in contrast to earlier climatic cycles when the differences in social development between nomadic and settled populations were still insignificant and less a cause for major collisions between the two populations.

The most important by-product of the Urban Revolution was the invention of writing, and that it is with writing that “recorded” history began. However, the recorded history, often written by and from the point of view of the settled populations, has treated the nomadic migrants and invaders as “outsiders.” For instance, for the original archaic and Semitic populations who founded the ancient civilizations, themselves previous migrants, the newly arriving Indo-Europeans were “barbarians.” But for Aryans, themselves migrants previously, Scythian became “barbarians” in turn. Greeks, another Indo-European “migrants” to the Mediterranean region, later referred to the Persian or Scythian outsiders as “barbarians.” This was a pattern in almost all regions: old-comers referring to themselves as “civilized” and to new comers as outsiders and invaders.

With their increasing numbers, fighting power and warring tools, coupled with the exhaustion of their natural resources in the north, the 1700-700 B.C. Indo-European invaders substantially disrupted and changed the relatively autonomous ancient patterns of human development. It was the continuing conflict between the invading nomadic populations of the north and the defending settled (rural and urban) populations of the south that significantly shaped major events in world history during subsequent millennia. Despite their home-grown sources, the rise of empires was in many ways also a result of, and/or reaction to, the intensifying conflict between the nomadic and settled populations. As much as “barbarians” became settled and therefore adopted the life-styles of the “civilized” populations of the south, the “civilized” population of the south became “barbarians” by adopting the invasive manner and life-style of the northern nomads seeking expansion across the globe.

The key provided by the nomadic-settled dialectic allows us to understand not only why ancient civilizations “vanished,” but also why the historical period since then has been overall a history of imperial expansionism rather than of a more “civilized” humanization process. It is the shock of nomadic invasions exerted “externally” on ancient civilized settlements that contributed to the overdetermination of the political force and the emergence of various “classical” periods of political imperialism experienced non-synchronously across different “civilizations.” Philosophy, especially of law and order and government, was the paramount world-outlook of the classical periods. In the academies of the classical periods, philosophy ruled.

Classical periods were periods of political imperialism, that is, of reintegration of human settlements through sheer power and violence. By political imperialism is here meant domination of other communities for its own sake. Such political imperial expansions of course also involved cultural and economic needs, interests, and processes as well. Politics is at the same time a cultural and economic process. However, what distinguishes political imperialism from other forms is that ruling other communities is pursued for its own sake rather than being simply a means for other cultural and economic ends. Other communities were conquered, simply for the sake of retaliation or of self-protection under the threat of mutual annihilation: conquer or be conquered.

During the classical periods of political imperialism, the trajectories of development of almost all areas from the Mediterranean and north Africa to the Indus Valley began to be forged into a singular historical process. The classical period in the region did not emerge overnight, however. It was a result of a long period of transition. Given the lack of synchronicity in the emergence of civilized settlements, in fact, there was no single period of transition to classical empires, but several. In the Mesopotamian region, the transition lasted about 1500 years from 2300 to 800 B.C. 1200 B.C. was a crucial turning point in the whole region since it was around this time that the Indo-European nomads invading the south began using weapons forged from a much more superior metal: Iron. The earlier bronze weapons could not withstand the power of the new iron weaponry. All the pre-1200 B.C. empires in the region succumbed to the invading migrants as a result of the use of the iron weapons, and it was through the adoption of these same weapons, in fact, that the classical age of political imperialism itself began.

In the classical period, politics ruled. Politics was not an “epiphenomenal” factor hiding an underlying “economic” logic. It was the determining role of the political force that influenced the nature of cultural and economic processes. The dominant ideology of the classical periods was philosophy, especially that pertaining to law and politics. It was during this period that “international law” was born. But also this was the period during which human world-outlook became for the first time dualistic. The splitting of “matter” and “mind” raised the “fundamental” question of philosophy, and depending on the answers provided by this or that philosopher, materialist, idealist, skeptical, or agnostic schools of thought were crystallized. However, this was also the classical age of dialectics, born because the elements that it sought to unify were now split for the first time. The emergence of philosophy and the splitting of idealist and materialist world-outlooks served the political purpose of an aristocracy seeking to legitimate its power over its own “slave” and other so-called “barbarian” populations. Slavery was not the “basis” of classical political empire; it was its result. The classical period bequeathed to the future the basic forms and rules of world-systemic government—albeit in its imperial form.

The most important legacy of classical periods of imperialism was the formation of cross-communal and multicivilizational political structures, organizations, laws, and philosophies. The attitude was mainly that of pride in one’s “civilizational” philosophy in ruling others. “Greatness” was defined in how large a territory, and how many diverse “civilizations,” were brought under the rule of one’s empire. Babylon invented the first laws. Assyria was proud of its brutality. Persia was proud of its alleged political toleration of diverse subject populations. Greece was proud of its democracy and natural philosophy. Rome was proud of its skills and arts of government. It is true that there were cultural pride and economic gain motivating imperial expansions, but overall the purpose was to conquer, to expand one’s dominion and/or to reduce the potentials of being conquered by rival emerging empires. The threat of political subjugation or outright annihilation by other “barbarians,” settled or nomadic, was imminent everywhere. Often imperial expansions ended as soon as they were achieved; this perhaps explains the narrower, political, nature of objectives of imperial expansion during this period. The political model of imperial expansion sooner or later entered periods of structural crisis across regions, however; the excesses of power led to significant moral decline and questioning of the purpose and meaning of life in both the political “métropoles” and their “colonies.” Art, as well as religion and early science, were of course important hallmarks of the classical periods, but they served the purpose of politics and its ideological weapon, philosophy.

It was in response to the failing efforts in political imperialism that a new, cultural, form of imperialism was invented. The leading ideological weapon during the following periods of cultural imperialism was religion. In time, the demise of political empires ushered various “medieval” periods of cultural imperialism, which later became increasingly synchronized across world settlements. Cultural empires of medieval periods were predominantly religious, and religion was the hegemonic world-outlook in these empires.

Medieval Periods and the Rise of Cultural Imperiality

A.D. 500-1500 in Europe has been described as the period during which “Great religions …. and scholarship developed as people wondered about the meaning of human life and the mysteries of nature” (Roberts 1995: 422). This period is also known as the Medieval period or the Middle Ages, or even Dark Ages, in Europe where the influence of Christianity was paramount. It was post-designated as a “middle” period for it fell between the time of the classical world and the start of the “modern” era in A.D. 1500. The use of the term for other regions of the world would be problematic, however, if the same beginning and end dates were basically transplanted onto them, and the same quality of “darkness” was also assigned to the experience of other regions.

If we consider the non-synchronicities in the rise of civilizations and of classical political empires in different parts of the world—a fact which still was true during the period across the Eurasian landmass and in the Americas—it would be possible to consider various regions as having experienced their own nonsynchronous medieval periods. What the variously dated “medieval” periods in different regions of the world shared was the common element of the use of culture, especially religion and religious conversion, as the primary means and motive for imperial expansion. The empires of the medieval periods were largely religious empires, seeking to expand their power through cultural and religious conversion and incorporation of other human settlements and regions of the world.

The fact that medieval Europe experienced a “dark age” may not have been necessarily due to the predominance of Christianity or religion in general as a dominant ideology. That the religious experience became “dark” in Europe may have had more to do with the experience of absorbing the brunt of the second wave of nomadic invasion from the north, an experience which shaped the way religion was itself interpreted and practiced by the nomadic conquerors. In contrast, the Byzantine empire, which was also Christian and, later on, the Islamic empire are not characterized as being as “dark” as what the Western European populations experienced. These other medievalisms have instead been portrayed as flourishing periods during which cultural legacies of ancient times were more or less preserved and absorbed into their cultural imperial efforts.

Although religion became a dominant ideological force for imperial expansion during the medieval periods, the sources from which various empires drew upon to built their new cultural empires had been formed during the classical periods—similar to how the early appearance of the model of Akkadian imperialism long before the advent of classical empires provided inspiration to the advent of political world-empires. In fact, religion had fertilized and animated the secret mystical movements of the classical periods, as philosophy and political (“democratic”) utopian movements took shape earlier in the transition to the classical periods. Judaism, which had been the particularist religion of Hebrews fleeing Egypt, began to take a more universalist character during the period when Judah and Israel tribes united to build their independent kingdom. Subsequently the Hebrew Prophets, increasingly critical of the luxurious courts of Hebrew kings, built an universalist monotheistic religion which became the source from which Christianity and Islam drew inspiration during subsequent centuries. The final Hebraic monotheistic religion was shaped in Babylonian captivity during 597-538 B.C., and it was during the same period that similar inventive religious efforts were being undertaken in other communities. This transition period may be characterized as the Renaissance of the East.

While Hebrews were building their monotheistic religion in the western regions of the Middle East, Zoroaster also began to teach a new religion in Persia around the same time. His teaching, which centered around the dualist conflict of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, was nevertheless also monotheistic in that the overall supremacy of Ahura Mazda in the end was sought—though this was made dependent on the active human participation in the struggle of the good against the evil. In the Indian region, it was also in 563 B.C. that Siddhartha Gautama (future Buddha or Enlightened One) was born, later abandoning a life of luxury to seek religious enlightenment. Buddha’s teaching was a reaction to the social conditions resulting from the caste system enforced by the Brahmins, conditions that rigidly preserved the hierarchies among the living. Brahmins promised the possibility of transcendence of rigid hierarchies only through reincarnation—provided that the downtrodden maintained their faithful adherence to their social station in life. Buddha’s teaching in effect suggested that all social castes were equally affected by worldly suffering, and that it was possible through a middle path to avoid both self-mortification and self-indulgence in order to find salvation in this world.

It is important to make a distinction between the rise of religious teachings and the more secular philosophical doctrines that were also being developed concurrently. The religious teachings at this time where secretive mystical reactions to the dominant political empires prevalent at the time, and it is in the course of medieval periods that they were rediscovered and elevated to official religious status by the rising cultural empires. However, teachings of Confucius in China, or those of philosophers in classical Greece, were more or less systemic doctrines prevalent contemporaneously in the political empires being established and spread at the time. It was in fact in reaction to the secular doctrines of Confucius that Taoism was born in China as a passive religious doctrine, advocating retreat from complexities of the world to engage in simple living close to nature. Likewise, we have to make a distinction between the philosophical doctrines dominant in classical Greece and the mystical religious teachings such as those espoused by Pythagoras and other secret societies.

The revival of religious and secular thinking and inventiveness during 600-400 B.C. became significant much later when the current secular and political ideologies and philosophies of classical periods in these regions lost credibility and authority as a result of the decline and fall of classical empires in the early centuries following the birth of Christ. The rise of Christianity was itself an important by-product of the decline of the last and greatest major empire of the classical period, the Roman Empire. It was this decline that accompanied the search for new messiahs in the Middle East. The religious doctrines that had been invented a long time before, especially during 600-400 B.C., became resurrected and used as weapons for new cultural modes of imperial expansionism. For this reason, it is important to make a distinction between the original religious doctrines and teachings on one hand and the imperial use to which they were put by the emerging empires of the medieval periods, on the other. Religion in itself is not a culprit for imperialism, as much as philosophy and law were not so for political imperialism during the classical periods, nor science for economic imperialism in the modern period. That these fragmented forms of human knowledge became increasingly split from one another and acquired an ideological character and were thereby substantively and organizationally manipulated and revised to become primary or secondary means of imperial expansion were altogether different processes. As such, they must be distinguished from the reasons for which these world-outlooks were originally invented in ancient civilizations as by-products of the essentially curious, creative, and artful human endeavor.

The ascendance of monotheistic religion to the position of dominant ideology was itself an important expression of the central function of religion in cultural imperialism during the medieval periods. Zoroastrianism, Judeo-Christianity, and Islam were of course monotheistic. What is interesting is that Hinduism itself also began in the early centuries A.D. to caste away its Brahmanic polytheism and embrace a universal theistic architecture dominated by the more unified trinity of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. If the advance of political empires during previous classical periods exposed various cultures to the multiplicities of deities and gods of various separate settlements, the acknowledgment of a single deity and an all-powerful god legitimated the expansion of cultural empires to other regions. It is not surprising that among all the religious doctrines adopted by cultural empires during the medieval periods, it was the monotheistic religions of Judeo-Christianity and Islam that became the dominant ideologies of cultural imperialism. Medieval periods overall witnessed a long process of Christianization of Europe (and later of the Americas), Islamicization of the Middle East, North Africa, Western India, and Central Asia, monotheicization of Hindu India, and Buddhification of East Asia, including China, Indochina, and Japan.

Medieval periods were characterized by an emphasis on the “civilizing” role of culture and religion in the imperial expansions. That religious imperial conversions took violent or peaceful forms here and there does not change the essentially cultural form imperiality took during the medieval periods. Here again we need not identify religion and culture as “epiphenomenal” factors explicable only by an “underlying” economic or political logic. Religious and cultural motives, conflicts over value systems and identities expressed in religious and cultural forms, themselves played an important role not only as motives for imperial expansion, but as goals for which various forms of economic and political organization had to be invented and used. The feudal system, characterized by the rule of a landowning nobility closely tied to or even ruled by the Church as exercised through various forms of monarchial rule, was the form of economic organization best suited to religious and cultural imperialism. If during the classical periods, the dominant ideology took the shape of philosophical discourses and doctrines, in the medieval periods ideology was predominantly expressed around religion, pro or con. In the academies of the medieval periods religion ruled. The human mind, having become dualistic in the preceding classical era, gravitated towards idealism during the medieval periods.

The Second Major Nomadic Invasions and the Rise of Collective Economic Imperiality in Modern Times

The second major nomadic invasion of the “civilized” world during the A.D. 300-1300 climatic period coincided with the rise and demise of cultural empires. This coincidence was partly “accidental” socially (or “necessitated,” if considered within the broader geological and climatic context) and partly world-historical, given the decline of classical empires and the deepening divisions among world’s civilizations as a whole. This time around, for the triumphant Indo-European settled populations, the newly arriving Hun, Turkish, and Mongolian invaders from the East, or of the Northmen, such as Germanic tribes or later Vikings, arriving from the North, were “barbarians.” Mongols seemed barbarians to the eyes of Chinese and other settler communities. Turks and Mongols were barbarians to the Indians and Persians. Arabs were barbarians to Rome. Germanic tribes, Celtics, Avars, Magyars, Goths, Varangians, Merovingians, and Crolingians were among other nomadic populations that invaded the lower regions of Europe during the second climatic period. These populations did not suddenly come into existence at the time they invaded the south. They had histories of their own as old as those of the civilized world—only unrecorded and unknown to the settled populations they occupied.

The coincidence of the second major shock of nomadic invasions with the medieval periods of cultural imperialism was experienced differently according to the particular spacetimes of the contacts made by various settlements. The medieval Europe became “dark” not because it was religious, but because it experienced the destructive brunt of Gothic and Germanic invasions from the north. The flourishing Byzantium, and the golden age of Islam are evidence for the fact that religious empires did not necessarily have to be “dark” during this period. Islamic and Persian civilizations themselves later experienced their own “dark age” as a result of the destructive force of Mongolian invasions. The invasive force of the nomadic populations during the second climatic period was also made possible in general by their mobility and relatively more superior technologies of movement and aggression. Again, the outcomes of these invasions were determined by the relative technologies of war and peace, and of the inner divisions or unifications of both sides. If Iron weapons were key in the destructive force of Indo-European invaders during the previous warm climatic period, during this warm climatic period horseback raiding was key to the success of invasions by Central and East Asian nomads. Ship-building and navigational technologies of northern European nomadic tribes during this climatic period similarly supplied them with superior mobility and aggressive capability in confronting the settled populations of southern Europe. The discovery of the military uses of explosives, of compass, etc., long after their invention is a great reminder of how the inventions of ancient and settled civilizations were not often the cause of the rise of violence and imperiality, but how the rise of imperiality provided avenues whereby such inventions could be subjected to new violent military use. This was similar to the story of how philosophy, religion, and science became themselves ideologically reinvented and used in time for the pursuit of political, cultural, and economic imperiality.

The birth of global history in the post-1500 period is a misnomer. World history has always been global ever since the Nomadic Revolution, thanks to both the shared earlier bio-genetic heritage of human species as a whole, and the mediating role the nomadic incursions into the settled and civilized world played later in linking diverse histories of civilizations to one another. We may say that the history of various regions of the world became more synchronized spatiotemporally in the post-1500 period, but non-synchronicity does not mean a lack of singular global history.

The Turkish and Mongolian nomadic empires played a significant role in synchronizing developments across the three Eurasian empires: the Christian Empires of the West, the Islamic empires of the Middle East, and the Chinese empire in East Asia. It is true that Mongols played a significant role in the destruction of the cultures of those they conquered; but in time they also contributed to the transfer of much information across the “civilized” worlds. The transfer of knowledge about Chinese inventions of gunpowder, compass, and paper significantly contributed to the changes which lay at the foundation of the modern world, for they contributed to the fluidity of information, materials, and military powers across cultures of the old and the new worlds.

It was Europe’s earlier dark age that brought forth the earlier recovery of the late medieval renaissance, as the ending of the earlier Indo-European invasions had brought about the classical eastern renaissance of the 5th and 6th centuries B.C. from which classical philosophies, and later medieval monotheistic religions, emerged triumphant. Although the creative humanism and utopianism of the late medieval renaissance was short-lived and later overshadowed by the hegemonic rise of imperial science, it provided another jolt to human “civilization” regarding the possibilities latent in human creative powers. It was as a result of collapse of medieval cultural empires that new, increasingly world-systemic, processes of economic imperialism originated in Europe. The clashes of economic empires among themselves and surviving remnants of cultural empires, eventually resulted, through a series of horrendous world wars (and not just those we know of in the 20^th century), in the rise of the modern world-system of collective imperialism. The rise of collective imperialism is an unprecedented turning point in the history of imperiality ever since the rise of early empires over the ashes of ancient civilizations. At last the world became economically, politically, and culturally integrated synchronously—albeit through inherently repressive and imperial means.

The period 1500-1945 witnessed great changes in all aspects of life around the world. The world’s population more than tripled from 450 million in 1500 to 1.5 billion by 1900. Cities and towns grew steadily during this period. This period is that of ascendance of the European economic empire(s) around the world, accompanied by significant scientific, technological, and organizational developments. Although the original capitalist world-economy that emerged was limited in geographical influence, in time it increasingly expanded to cover the whole globe by the late 1800s. It took two massive world wars during the first half of the twentieth century to settle the dominions of various economic empires that now collectively rule the world.

The capitalist world-economy does not necessarily have to be characterized by multiple states. The multiplicity is in fact a misnomer. The interstate system already constitutes a more or less singular state structure for the world capitalist economy as a whole. What made the singular (though hierarchical) interstate system necessary, and possible, was the emerging conflict among various economic empires from Europe whose continuing struggle for supremacy over other world regions led to an unprecedented innovation in imperial governance: collective imperialism. The collective nature of modern imperialism not only has provided an unprecedented staying power for the hegemony of a particular set of imperial powers headquartered in the West, but has also assured that no single imperial power could have the necessary organizational, economic, political, and ideological force for ruling the world alone (Wallerstein 1996).

In the academies of modern economic imperialism science rules. Science has been metamorphosed into the ideology of collective imperialism, and endowed with considerable financial and interstate organizational resources to maintain the hegemony of a collective world empire more interested in knowing the present and the past than in reshaping the future in alternative non-imperial paths. The “objective” exclusion of the “scientist” from her or his subject matter allows the development of scientific research projects that are devoid of humane values and urgency relative to basic human needs and aspirations. Modern science and technology creates more problems for humanity than it resolves.

If science has been the predominant ideological expression of the modern economic and collective imperialism, postmodernity is today the ideological expression of the period of structural crisis of collective economic imperialism involving increasing reglobalization of economic, cultural, and political processes. “Globalization” is a manifestation of the deepening rivalry of divergent interests among imperial forces seeking to reintegrate the global village. It also signifies, given new technological innovations unprecedented in history, of a turning point in the timespace synchronicity of economic, cultural, and political imperial rule across the whole globe. The blurring of intellectual predeterminisms of economy, culture, and politics; the questioning of artificial borders separating peoples from one another, the increasingly evident failures of all past efforts to reintegrate humanity into a just global society, are all symptomatic of the structural crisis of the model of collective economic imperiality. This global crisis is a general crisis not only of collective economic imperialism, however, but that of imperiality itself, i.e., of the barbarian modes of “civilizing” the world through economic exploitation, cultural conversion, and political domination—having become increasingly fused with one another in unprecedented ways.

The Dialectics of Global and Personal Imperialities

As illustrated in Figure 3, world history has been a singular spatiotemporal process of dialectical splitting and reintegration of the human species. It is in the context of this world-historical process that the study of any world-system, or the “comparative” study of world-systems in general, can become meaningful. The search for “economic” criteria for delineating world-systems from one another at a particular spacetime ignores the fact that the apparent “isolation” of a particular mini- or grand world-system is itself only a transient episode in the singular world-historical process of alienation and reintegration of humanity as a whole. Using modern “materialist” logics of historical investigation to decipher the boundaries of world-systems is a result of our dualistic and Cartesian modes of predeterministic theorizing which separate “matter” from “mind” and assign universalistic primacy to the former vis-à-vis the latter. In such a conceptual framework politics and culture do not have the same weight as the “material” linkages, exchanges, and chains. But even then, the integrative role played by the “unrecorded” history of the nomadic populations leaves no doubt that at no time in world history were human settlements really separate and isolated from each other—for their separations and isolations were themselves world-historical products.

World history is much more than an assemblage of “physical” products and technologies, and linkages. It is an ensemble of human biologies, mythologies, ontologies, epistemologies, arts, psychological patterns of behavior, subconscious imprints, ideas, as well as forms of cultural-ideological, politico-military and economic social organization. Just because the tempos of globalization were slower and subtler in earlier periods does not mean that human history was not global. The ties that link human “civilizations” are much deeper and much older than trade patterns. Transhistorical use of economic analysis as a primary tool will not allow us to see other visible and invisible elements that link the human species into an organic whole. Previous linkages, either before the fragmentation of early communities or during the process of imperial reintegration, had already meshed human history into an inseparable whole long before even the rise of ancient civilizations, let alone for the rise of the modern world-economy. Only a glance at our schematic representation, in Figure 3, of the enormously long process of human evolution compared with the relatively short “moment” of the last few millennia can indicate the degree to which biological, psychological, cultural, political, as well as economic, human legacies had already “globalized” the human reality long before recent awakenings of the global nature of the modern world.

Generally, as illustrated in Figure 4 by the increasingly straightened transition lines separating parallel periods across various regional settlements, the further back we go in the history of imperialism from its present economic to preceding cultural and political eras, the less synchronicity we find in the nature of transition periods across various regions. The closer we come to the present, however, the more synchronous the spatiotemporal patterns of development of human settlements become. Regardless of whether, when, and how, any regions of the world became reincorporated into the world community, the present singular nature of human habitat has made the histories of all economies, historical systems, and civilizations an integral part of the human world history as a whole.

The conflict between settled and nomadic lifestyles is the source of the East-West dialectic long ingrained in our world-historical vocabularies and imaginations. The introversive nature of the East and the extroversive nature of the West are expressions of the same conflict. The East-West discourse is an expression of the self-global logic of human development at work in particular world-historical spacetimes as pursued by settled and nomadic populations. Ancient civilizations were self-developing. That was, after all, their raison d’être as opposed to the nomadic life-style from the midst of which they had themselves emerged. But this narrow self-centeredness, in the global context of other (re)settling and nomadic populations, proved self-defeating. They could not reckon with the sheer invasive force of the nomadic populations who in time themselves became settled while simultaneously making the settled populations “nomadic” and globalizing. The civilized-barbarian dialectic of course worked both ways. But the barbarian pattern of human development at work during the long imperialist eras of classical political, medieval cultural, and modern economic empires have also proven to be self-defeating—for its very invasive logic is dehumanizing and alienating. The imperial mode of globalization by its very nature undermines human self-determination. Bringing liberty, self-determination, and democracy to a community from without is impossible, and a contradiction in terms.

The contrasting introversive and extroversive dialectic of the East-West conflict must not be seen simply as grand, long-term and large-scale, modes of behavior at the level of large civilizational communities. Such grand structures are produced and reproduced on the micro and intra/interpersonal scale of human relationships in the midst of our personal every day lives, here and now. The spatiotemporal distanciation of “self” from “society” in our sociological methods, theories, and praxes, is itself an expression of the splitting dialectic of settled and nomadic life-styles playing itself out at the personal level of our everyday academic lives. Imperialism and colonization are not just macro world-systemic processes, but intra/inter/extrapersonal processes as well at the local level, in terms of how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to our natural/built environments. To dominate, to convert, and to exploit—in short to oppress—“others” without and within are micro processes that express, reproduce, and make possible macro processes of global imperiality on a world-historical scale (Tamdgidi 2004). The global and the personal cannot be separated for they relate to one another in terms of the dialectic of part and whole. Transformation of the whole cannot take place without transforming its parts.

Instead of explaining imperiality from social classes, it may be more fruitful to explain social classes from imperiality. In many ways, they are one and the same, relating to one another in terms of the dialectics of part and whole. What does it mean to be “imperial,” to colonize? Imperialism is an attitude, a mode of relating. It is a relationship of control, by “self” of the “other.” Whether this takes the form of domination, of conversion, or of exploitation, does not really matter. These all share the same common element, violating the self-determination of one social unit by another—economically, culturally, politically. Class relations are economic forms of imperiality. Here, the control is by one group of another carried out under disguised ideologies of the civilized rich and the barbarian poor. Class, racial/ethnic, and gender oppressions have less to do with unequal quantitative distribution of extrinsic rewards such as goods and income, and more with the violation of the qualitative intrinsic values of human self-determination and dignity. Leaving aside economistic reductivisms, class relations are not just about economic exploitation, but also about cultural conversion and political domination. The imperial, the colonizing, attitude is much deeper than class relations; it is indeed its source, its essence. Global imperialities cannot exist without their corresponding conduits in personal spacetimes as conflicts and clashes among inter/intrapersonal selves manifesting the conflict between invasive globalizing agencies and resisting settled identities and modes of living.

To “control” other nations, other ethnic or “racial” groups, other gender groups, other classes, other age groups, other “individuals,” “other” students or faculty, “other” selves, is to perpetuate the imperial discourses of domination, conversion, and exploitation. To control the “other” ultimately is to perpetuate the imperial discourses within. The “social” divisions and antagonisms cannot exist and not be perpetuated in the subjective discourses of multiple and colonized identities. Only a paradigmatic shift from the discourse of control and imperiality to the discourse of understanding and self-determination across groups, persons and selves can reverse the world-historical processes that led to the splitting of self and society into alienated realms and each into multiplicities of class, status, and power antagonisms as forms of imperial practice. Only autopoietic world-systems of self-determining social units, ultimately made of the building blocks of self-determining individualities, can build effective buffers against the restoration of the vicious cycles of barbarisms within and without.

Imperiality, barbarism, and “civility” are not grand schemes of world-systemic proportions, played out sometime in the past on grand scales of time and space. They live with and within us, inter/intrapersonally, every day. The shocks of nomadic and settled “barbarian” invasions have not been eliminated because there are no more nomads around. The absence is only a visual deception. They have only become internalized as potentialities within the fabrics of our imperial selves and social institutions. “Barbarism,” both Eastern and Western, is now equipped with the most sophisticated technologies of warfare and tools of destruction and political control, with formidable economic institutions and technologies, with unprecedented skills and technologies of cultural propaganda and brainwashing. Barbarism is a Medusa’s head ready to spring out of the “civilized” boxes of our postmodern realities and identities. And because it is so deeply entrenched within us all, individually and collectively, Western and Eastern, it will be simply impossible this time around in world history to destroy “barbarians” without destroying humanity itself. Only the discourse of understanding, of post-coloniality, of post-imperiality, of world-historical self-knowledge, can win the third major “barbarian” invasion of our lives.

Conclusion

The significance of recognizing the transitory (heuristic) nature of economies and their analyses in world-historical social science goes beyond the question of interpreting history and raises important issues regarding changing it. It is certainly helpful in the study of economies, and historical systems in which economy plays the chief part, to emphasize the primacy of economic analysis. However, an economistic and universally materialist logic cannot adequately consider the contingent and plural nature of precapitalist factors that contributed to the rise of the modern world-system, as it is inherently biased in favor of searching for the answer in the “economic” sphere. Likewise, utopistic endeavors in search of realistic historical alternatives to capitalism would miss the point that alternative social realities may not really be built into any laws of motion of economic forces, and may be contingent and dependent upon conscious and intentional human agency often in defiance of such presumed objective “laws.”

As was illustrated in the world-historical narrative presented in this article, the primacy of analyses of economies may not necessarily imply that economic forces have continually played significant parts in shaping historical systems and civilizations in the past, but have done so only in the modern period characterized by the rise and global spread of the capitalist world-economy. In fact, one may argue that maintenance of a position on the transitory (heuristic) nature of the “primacy of analyses of economies” and on the transitory nature of the economies which they seek to analyze, may be themselves indispensable requirements for advancing effective research on utopistics (Wallerstein 1998) and realistic historical alternatives to capitalism (Arrighi, Hopkins, and Wallerstein 1989, 1992; Tamdgidi 2001, forthcoming). How could this be otherwise—if we discover, indeed, that a fundamental prerequisite for radical transformation of our historical systems may be their not being economies after all, but ones in which human intelligence, conscious action, compassion, and willful purpose guide a society in which the separation of the economic, cultural, and political spheres has been abolished through innovative self-determining modes of human organization and development? We need to ask: Does the primacy of analyses of economies effectively contribute to utopistic outcomes, or at least to effective research on realistic historical alternatives to capitalism? Are better societies teleological outcomes arising from predictable economic laws of motion of history or are they products of conscious, creative, and largely unpredictable human action in the midst of chaos?

The nonreductive dialectical conception of history involves not only an appreciation of the transitory nature of our broader social structures of imperiality in terms of the deepening primacies of politics, culture, and economy, but a realization of the way in which those macro structures are produced and reproduced in the micro realms of our everyday lives, including our academic and intellectual discourses and the modes of analyses we adopt in pursuing our research. The key here is to be able to see the long-term, large-scale processes of both civility and barbarism, and their dialectic, at work in the intra/interpersonal here and now. Teachings that separate the self and the world-historical realms of human experience end up serving the interest of coloniality. The splitting of social knowledge into macro and micro itself serves to conceal the realities of one from the other. It is a double-vision long inherited from the past, still with us today. To dominate, to convert, to exploit, are colonial practices at both world-historical and intra/interpersonal landscapes of the here and now. The same failure may also emanate from being one-sidedly introversive, a condition which not only breeds today, but also world-historically bred in the past, possibilities for domination, conversion, and exploitation of oneself by others, personally and collectively.

Long-term and large-scale sociological self-knowledge allows us to simultaneously experience the dialectics of world-historical and intra/interpersonal imperialities and understand how they constitute one another. It allows us to experience our outer and inner enslavements and those in anonymous others across world-historical time and space as personal expressions of a singular narrative which ultimately we, personally and collectively, author. The human power of creativity, involving conscious and intentional human action, is the riddle of history solved, as the Marx of 1844 reminded us (but soon forgot in favor of “the materialist conception of history”)—if and when we come to know ourselves to be the solution and take part in the creative world-historical act according to such an understanding.

References

Arrighi, Giovanni, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein. (1989). Antisystemic Movements. London: Verso.

Arrighi, Giovanni, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein. (1992). “1989, The Continuation of 1968.” Review 2:221-242.

Assefa, Mehretab. (2003). “Nomadism in the Making of the Afrasian Ecumene: Toward a Paradigm of Pre-Modernity.” Ph.D. Dissertation, SUNY-Binghamton.

Bourne, Russell, and Harold C. Field, series editors. (1966). Great Ages of Man: A History of the World’s Cultures. New York: Time Life Books. Grun, Bernard. (2005). The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events. Fourth Revised Edition. New York: Simon & Shuster Touchstone.

Gulbenkian Commission. (1996). Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. (1970). Selected Works. Third volume. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Marx, Karl. (1970). A Contribution to the Critique of the Political Economy. Edited with and Introduction by Maurice Dobb. New York: International Publishers.

Marx, Karl. (1977). Capital. Vol. One. New York: Vintage Books.

Nothiger, Andreas. (1989). World History Chart. Ontario, Canada: Penguin Books Canada Limited.

Roberts, John Morris. (1995). “World History.” In The World Book Encyclopedia. Vol. 21. Chicago, London, Sydney, Toronto: World Book, Inc., A Scott Fetzer Company.

Tamdgidi, Mohammad H. (2001). “Open the Antisystemic Movements: The Book, the Concept, and the Reality” Review, XXIV, 2:301-338.

Tamdgidi, Mohammad-Hossein. (2002). “Mysticism and Utopia: Towards the Sociology of Self-Knowledge and Human Architecture (A Study in Marx, Gurdjieff, and Mannheim).” Ph.D. Dissertation, SUNY- Binghamton.

Tamdgidi, Mohammad. (2004). “Freire Meets Gurdjieff and Rumi: Toward the Pedagogy of Oppressed and Oppressive Selves” The Discourse of Sociological Practice, 6, 2:165-185.

Tamdgidi, Mohammad H. (forthcoming). Advancing Utopistics: The Three Component Parts and Errors of Marxism. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Tucker, Robert, C., ed. (1978). The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. (l979). The Capitalist World-Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. (1991). Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth Century Paradigms. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. (1996). Historical Capitalism with Capitalist Civilization. London and New York: Verso.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. (1998). Utopistics: Or, Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Century. New York: The New Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. (2000). “Where Should Sociologists Be Heading?” Contemporary Sociology 29, 2:306-308.

Acknowledgments

My interest in the study of world history has been inspired by the works of Immanuel Wallerstein and Terence K. Hopkins, as well as that of Mehretab (Abye) Assefa on nomadism (Assefa, 2003). For a fuller theoretical and methodological back- ground to thisstudy, see my previous work (2003) and Advancing Utopistics: The Three Component Parts and Errors of Marxism (forthcoming 2007a). I thank the Editorial Board of Review for providing useful feedback on an earlier version of this article.