The term “civilisation” conveys both a descriptive/pluralistic concept, where a variety of supracultural units co-exist across the globe, and a normative/unitary concept in the sense of ‘being civilised’, as opposed to being uncivilised or barbaric. There is also the idea of a civilising mission, a belief in the need to propagate one’s own civilisational values and systems to other peoples as if it were a virtuous deed.

The descriptive, pluralistic conception of civilisation is the attempt of many late modern scholars to imagine the citied Afro-Eurasian landmass as composed of distinct historical worlds that can be separately understood (Hodgson, 1993, p.9). Each civilisation was understood by some of these scholars to have an essence or special character that could be unlocked through philology, the pursuit of analysing and comparing the civilisation’s languages and its religious and literary tradition (Lockman, 2009, p.68). The literary tradition could include “Great Books” such as the Bible or Roman and Greek classics for Western or European Civilisation, or the Qur’an for Islamic Civilisation, or the Confucian canon for Chinese Civilisation. The essentialist perspective meant that scholars, such as the orientalist Ernest Renan, could make sweeping statements that reduced populations spread over vast geographic regions and time periods into monolithic units with rigid essences (ibid., p.78). Marshall Hodgson, an American Historian writing on global history suggests that, while supranational societies are important as a framework to understand history, these categories overlap and are situated in continuums of technology or urban/rural relation patterns that do not recognise reified monoliths or insuperable boundaries demarcating various “Civilisations” (1993, p.12).

The other conception of the term civilisation denotes a society that is refined, sophisticated and lacking a brutish nature, usually associated with urban life and a variety of shared values, norms and institutions. It is unitary, because there is only “civilisation” as opposed to lack thereof, and it is normative because it is assumed that it is a desirable state to be in (Osterhammel, 2006, p.13). Jürgen Osterhammel suggests that this ideal, much more than concepts such as justice or rationality, is dependent on what it is not and necessitates an inferior counterpart such as barbarism, savagery or a deficient manner of being civilised - what German historian Reinhart Koselleck labels an “Asymmetric Counterconcept” (ibid., p.14).

The normative belief of the superiority of one’s own civilisation can result in “the civilised taking the offensive” as either a “passion or a rational strategy” (ibid.). This is the civilising mission, what Osterhammel describes as a belief based around the right and duty to actively introduce the norms and institutions of one’s own culture to other peoples and societies based on a conviction of superiority and legitimacy in their way of life (ibid.). This thinking helped justify and legitimise the occupations by Western European powers in the modern period, such as Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt where he claimed to fight tyranny and superstition, and during the British colonisation of Africa where they championed the abolition of slavery and cruel punishments, and expansion of markets and international law as hallmarks of the civilising mission (ibid., pp.19-21).

While these terms were not useful beyond legitimisation of eurocentric and imperialist ideologies, their popular reproduction as social constructs have solidified them into having at least historiographical value.

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Bibliography:

Hodgson, M. G. S. (1993). Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History. Edited, with an introduction and conclusion by Edmund Burke III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Osterhammel, J. (2006). Approaches to Global History and the Question of the “Civilizing Mission”. Global History and Maritime Asia Working and Discussion Paper Series, Working Paper No.3.

Lockman, Z. (2009). Contending Visions of Orientalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available at https://doi-org.soas.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606786.