Perspectives on History Part 1

It is said that history is written by victors. What later generations read and learn about regarding history is a particular point of view. Other equally valid points of view are either ignored or suppressed. In an earlier post, I talked about the importance of history. Here I want to talk about how the same event is viewed by the various protagonists and how that view changes over time.

Perhaps one of the best places to start in this regard are the Crusades. These were a defining event in the history of Christian and Islamic interactions. From the Christian and Western perspective, the crusades were events of enormous importance. The Crusaders were fired by the religious polemic of Pope Urban II who urged them to liberate the holy land from the clutches of the infidel. The Crusades resulted in the establishment of Christian states in the Levant area. The interaction with the scientifically and culturally more advanced Muslim civilization galvanized West European thought and laid the foundation for the so-called Enlightenment period.

This perspective of the Crusades: that they were events of seminal importance is the one that has become what may be called accepted wisdom. What was the perspective of the other side regarding the Crusades? As it turns out, initially very different. Amin Maalouf in an excellent book (The Crusades Through Arab Eyes) has gone back to primary Arab sources to reveal what the Muslims living at that time thought of the Crusades. The perspective on the other side initially was not that of a religious war unlike the view of the Crusaders. Originally, the Westerners (or Franks as the Arabs called them) were viewed as another set of conquerors similar to the many such conquerors who had come before. The Crusades were essentially viewed as a land grab and the Outremer (as the Crusader states that were established as a result of the First Crusade) was quickly incorporated into the politics of the region. It was only gradually and primarily as a result of the sustained religious fervor of the Franks that the Muslim population came to view the struggle with their opponents as something religious. It should be noted that this view was not sustained after the Crusader states were destroyed and the Franks driven out. So from the Muslim perspective at the time and for a long time thereafter, the Crusades were not viewed as a majorly important event. So what caused Muslims to also view the Crusades as a seminal event? In a word: colonialism.

People in the West (and here I use West as a convenient shorthand for the states that established colonies including the US) in general do not appreciate the impact that colonialism had on the rest of the world. Generally speaking, most conquerors were militarily strong, culturally weak entities that occupied militarily weak, culturally strong entities. In cases where the occupied peoples were also culturally weak, they tended to get wiped out. Another feature of most conquerors was that the area they captures was generally contiguous. Not only that, the conquered became part and parcel of the state that the conquerors established. Western colonialism was different. The conquerors were militarily and culturally strong. They established overseas empires i.e. territory that was not contiguous and the conquered lands and people were generally speaking not considered to be part of the mother country i.e. the country of the conquerors. Also the conquerors almost invariably considered the culture of the conquered as inferior. Not only that, the former were convinced that they had a "civilizing" mission. The result was that the Western colonial powers tried their best to raise a generation of natives who were essentially divorced from their own culture and steeped in a foreign one. After independence, these natives formed the elite of the new states and specially in the beginning tried to stamp out local culture (which they regarded as inferior). So one effect of colonialism was not just loss of independence. It was also what can be considered as loss of soul. Part of the reason why a generation of third worlders is angry is that this generation feels a loss and disconnection in a way that their parents and grandparents did not. It is in this context that the Crusades were eventually reconstructed in the Muslim world as a fight between Christianity and Islam. Ironically, this view, which was the motivating factor for the original Christian protagonists, was by this time being downplayed in the West. So, one set of events; two completely different perspectives.

Avatar

I recently saw the latest, greatest movie on the block - Avatar. This is a technical masterpiece. The quality of the special effects is truly on a different scale altogether. James Cameron has managed to create a lush world peopled with characters, animals and plants that look real. For me perhaps the biggest technical achievement is in the eyes. The eyes are very realistic and give the blue skinned Na'avi a full range of emotions. A huge amount has been written about the movie and will continue to be written. Notwithstanding the special effects, the actual story of Avatar is pretty weak; in this respect, Titanic's story was much superior. So viewing it from a straight forward story point of view, the movie is actually disappointing.

However, confining oneself to just the story or even the special effects actually does Avatar a disservice. This movie has several layers to it. To understand what this movie is about, one needs to at the very least acknowledge the different levels at which it operates.

At the most obvious level, Avatar is a love story set in a different planet. Like nearly all Hollywood love stories, this movie has a predictable happy ending. Watching the relationship evolve from the beginning, it was soon clear that there was not going to be any unrequited love nonsense. However, dig a little deeper and the movie actually asks several questions.

For example, to what extent should organizations be allowed to go in search of profits? This is not something abstract or imaginary. Entire societies have been devastated physically an unalloyed pursuit of profit. Neither is this something that happened in the past and does not happen today. This devastation is going on even today. Why are indigenous Indian tribes being slaughtered in the Amazon? Why did the native Indian population of the Caribbean islands essentially die off soon after their discovery? What about the African slave trade? Slavery is a reprehensible activity which needs to be stamped out in all its aspects. However, the African slave trade had been going on for several centuries before the arrival of the Europeans without devastating local societies. What changed when the Europeans came? Why was European demand for African slaves so much greater than what had come earlier that the local societies were destroyed?

Another question: do native societies have any value or are the values of a society that has greater material power more important? This question specially reverberates amongst formerly colonized peoples. Almost without exception, colonialism had the insidious effect of alienating native people from their culture. Stronger cultures were able to absorb the cultural effects of colonialism better than weaker cultures; none were immune from it. Throughout the colonial period and even till today, the underlying assumption has been that Western culture is superior to anything else in the world. While this is not generally not stated explicitly in the West anymore, nevertheless, it is there unstated and implicit in the writings of many Western analysts and writers. This for instance is the reasoning behind American's view of themselves being superior to the rest of the world. That someone would not necessarily want to live in an approximation of US society much less its clone is something that generally does not seem to occur to most Americans.

Yet another question: do material needs trump the environment? This is actually a rather subtle question that the movie poses. Why are the bad guys behaving in the manner that they do? They want to obtain unobtainium (or something like that) which is an energy rich material presumably not obtainable anywhere else. This material is needed to power the material needs of the society back home. The question is should this material be obtained at any cost regardless of impact of local society or environment. Is there a chance of a possible trade-off? Lest people think this is an abstract question, a direct analogy can be drawn at what is going on today in the real world. In the US Appalachian mountains, companies are engaged in mountaintop removal mining which physically removes a mountain in order to access a coal seam buried underground. The removed material is dumped down the mountain where it destroys streams and generally causes environmental havoc. In many oil producing countries, highly polluting methods of extraction are being used without regard to the environmental impact. How about using dynamite to kill fish? This method not only kills the fish in which the fishermen are interested in, it also kills other fish in addition to destroying the environment for all the fish. Why would companies and people behave in such destructive manner? To feed to appetite of the global material culture.

One point that I should note here is that people in developing countries are in many respects more sensitive to the issues raised by Avatar. The reason for this is that large numbers of them have experienced first hand or they personally know someone who has experienced firsthand many of the issues raised by the movie.

So Avatar operates at many levels. The more obvious levels are actually the less interesting ones. It is the deeper levels at which the movie operates that are more interesting and have far greater consequence.