BOOK REPORT: TO GOVERN THE GLOBE: WORLD ORDERS & CATASTROPHIC CHANGE by ALFRED W. MCCOY

IN HIS LATEST BOOK, HISTORIAN ALFRED MCCOY analyzes globe-spanning empires, how they are formed, their life cycle, their effects upon the broader world, and how they decay and decline. McCoy paints a broad picture of the historical record, noting that there have been many empires: “…[I]n the four thousand years since humanity’s first empire* formed in the Fertile Crescent, at least two hundred…have risen, collided with other imperial powers, and in time collapsed.” (7) He says the rise and fall of empires¹ is the natural course of things and that they “...tend to be ephemeral creations of an individual conqueror like Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte that fade quickly after their death or defeat.” (9)

ON THE OTHER HAND, “world orders” arise on occasion that prove to be more resilient and have longer-term effects on the broader world than their leader-driven, more regionally oriented, and parochial counterparts.

 

“[W]orld orders entwine themselves in the cultures, commerce, and values of countless societies. They influence the languages people speak, the laws that order their lives, and the ways they work, worship, and even play. They are woven into the fabric of an entire civilization, with the consequent capacity to far outlive the empires that formed them.” (9)

 

HE GOES ON TO SAY that world orders are less “visible” than their empire progenitors, leaving behind their effects in the architecture and cityscapes, the languages, cultural mores, customs, laws, trading and commercial practices, and so on of the peoples they once ruled and societies they had dominated. Today, we might call this a form of  soft power influence, more intangible, but longer lasting than formal empires with their core regions of wealth and power dominating militarily and economically often hard-pressed hinterlands, and conquered peoples.

 

INTERESTINGLY, McCoy notes that world orders have generally come into being after major societal disruptions, such as war or disease, which act to weaken old systems and allow new ones to grow in the cracks. For example, following the Black Death plagues that occurred roughly between 1350 and 1450, much of Europe became a depopulated, economic ruin. Eventually, new forms of commercial and political activity developed, and nascent nation-states grew amid the remnants of the rigid manorial order of lords and serfs that we associate with the feudalism of the Middle Ages. 

 

OF COURSE, this class-based system, itself, had earlier grown out of late-Roman agriculture with its huge, slave-worked farming enterprises centred around large Roman villas in the countryside. Those landowners would become the petty warlords and chieftains, and later, the rulers of duchies, dukedoms, baronies, and the myriad city-states, state-lets, and kingdoms of the “Dark Ages” during the long centuries of the medieval period. As mentioned, this system gave way, following the great disruption of the Black Death, to larger kingdoms and eventually to the nations states, republics, and empires of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance. MCCOY EXAMINES the rise and fall of three empires that were first to leave behind what he describes as lasting “world orders” after their fall.

 

THE FIRST WORLD ORDER WAS THE IMPERIAL CIVILIZATION formed during Iberian Age which began in the 1400s with the rise of Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms and their expanding mercantile navies and overseas colonies.  McCoy describes new types of sailing ships—larger hulled, multi-masted, eventually equipped with heavy cannon—that were developed in Portuguese shipyards and used by the two countries’ explorers to establish trading centres and colonies, first with Portugal along the western, then eastern African coastlines, and soon the borderlands, islands and archipelagos of the Indian Ocean. Eventually their state-of-the-art sailing vessels would reach the New World of Central and South America where Spain was dominant. It was interesting to learn that Portuguese merchant-explorers were the first Europeans to trade in captured Africans as slave labour to work newly established sugarcane plantations on offshore islands like the Madeira Islands and the Azores. Eventually, both countries would expand their empires to include trade and colonial networks throughout much of the known world. For a long time, sugar and spice  were king, bringing merchants and imperial investors great riches. In particular, sugar brought Portuguese and Spanish explorers to the New World, where sugarcane and coffee plantations, along with gold and silver mining, brought enormous wealth into the Iberian homelands and Europe, helping to establish Spain as the continent’s—and the world’s—first hegemon well into the Seventeenth Century.

MCCOY NOTES THAT EACH EMPIRE has its own “energy technology”. By this he means each had a particular “fuel” it used to power its civilization. For Spain it was wind power (sailing ships) and human muscles (slaves). The next global hegemon, Britain, would use coal and steam-driven industrial machinery and, initially for a time, slaves to run its empire. And for the global hegemon to arise following Britain’s decline in the early Twentieth Century, the American Empire, the one we currently live under, it was slaves (for a while) and coal, but finally it was oil. (And the next globe spanning hegemon—probably China—will likely use oil, as well, with the fate of renewables dependant upon complex geopolitical forces.) He also notes each empire fell for a variety of reasons, one important one being the use, by its competitors, of a superior, more “energy-dense” fuel, that eventually left the older empires out-gunned, out-sailed, 'out-engined', and out-traded.

 

EMPIRES DON’T NORMALLY COLLAPSE all in one go. The Roman Empire arguably took centuries to decline and eventually fall.  WITH RESPECT TO SPAIN’S IMPERIAL RULE, the vast wealth it absorbed from the New World kept it in business for centuries  but, increasingly, push-back from new states, city states, new trade leagues and private commercial interests, like the Royal Dutch Company, the East India Company, the Hanseatic League, as well as innovative banking and financial instruments, allowed greater scope for private “companies” to operate in spheres previously reserved for imperial offices. These new commercial enterprises gradually eroded Spanish and Portuguese trade networks, wresting from the former hegemons their imperial hold over foreign trade. This decline of Iberian authority occurred during an entrenched period of warfare on the European continent. Two major conflicts, the Hundred Years War, and the Thirty Years War ate away at Spain’s treasure, accumulated over the centuries of its New World domination. The last gasp of these complex civilizational conflicts—the Napoleonic Wars of the early Nineteenth Century—paved the way (or perhaps more accurately disrupted the way) for Britain to assume the mantle of world hegemon with the rise of the British Empire.

 

BUT, AS MCCOY POINTS OUT, during this period of upheaval and decline of Spanish suzerainty—seen in the decay of Hapsburg rule in Europe and final breakup of the Holy Roman Empire—there remained the less obvious and ephemeral “world order” left over from Spanish rule. What he means by “world order” is that set of civic values, beliefs, and moral concepts; attitudes towards citizenship and rulers, governance structures, laws, institutional ties, trade relations, treaty obligations, and so on, that remain place, in one form or another, long after the formal empire from which they sprang fades from memory.

 

MCCOY SAYS that the driving force behind societal change over the last 500 years exists in the tension between rulers and those who are ruled, and what rights and responsibilities each should have. One can argue that ever since the establishment of organized societies, tensions and struggles have existed between elites and the masses.² I mentioned the Black Death plagues of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries and how destructive and disruptive they were for European society. However, the high mortality of the disease resulted in labour shortages which, for the first time, gave the labouring masses the leverage they needed to demand higher wages and other benefits from the ruling elites.

Such class tensions existed well into (and beyond) the period of Spain and Portugal’s ascendance to world hegemony.

TO SUMMARIZE: Iberian rule left in its wake two distinct "orders" that would influence successor societies, including the next hegemon, Great Britain. The first was the primacy or legitimacy of imperial rule. Thus, great powers had the right to dominate and control lesser ones by whatever means necessary. In the 15th Century, when Spain and Portugal began to have conflicts over the newly 'discovered' lands along coastal Africa, the Catholic pope moderated treaty agreements which divided the world between the two maritime empires. West of a certain meridian would be territories Spain could claim, East of the line would be for Portugal. THUS, much of the New World fell into Spanish hands, while riches plundered found along African and Indian Ocean shores were Portugal's for the taking. It can be said that the legitimacy and acceptance of imperial rule, established during the Iberian Age, lasted well into the 20th Century, arguably until the post-war period of decolonization during the 1950s and 60s. Ruling other peoples by decree and fiat was simply the way the world was ordered. This view held for centuries.

THE SECOND "ORDER" LEFT OVER from the debris of Spanish rule, when northern European nations successfully contested Iberian suzerainty during the Seventeenth Century, was the acknowledgement of individual rights within society: When Spain began to acquire colonies in the New World, enslaving Amerindians (and later, Africans) to work their sugarcane plantations and silver mines, a papal bull issued at the time gave the church's blessing to "invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever and...to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery" (47), enshrining in law and custom centuries of European slave trade. However a counter narrative arose to challenge this view.  Spain and Portugal, being devoutly Catholic nations, were greatly influenced by the church and its rulings. When decades of abuse against indigenous populations in the New World and elsewhere became public knowledge, and especially after the publication, in 1542, of a book by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas called A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, intercessions and protests by priests and clerics like de Las Casas, who witnessed the mistreatment of African and Amerindian slaves at the hands of their Iberian overlords, the church made efforts to moderate the most egregious aspects of slavery. Such debates would continue throughout the Iberian Age.

 

I WON'T DISCUSS IN DETAIL the successor hegemons to Spanish rule, Britain and the United States and their "world orders", but I'll mention that slavery, as an institution, obviously continued well beyond the Iberian Age. Rising empires like Holland, France, Germany and Britain all availed themselves of this human resource to make profitable their offshore plantation-colonies. But debates "left over" from Spanish and Portuguese imperial rule concerning the morality and legality of slavery took root in England which, over time, became the foremost proponent for abolition³, with the island nation officially ending its slave trade in 1833, and leading the way for other countries to follow suite. Thus, two rather contradictory "orders" from the Iberian Age: the legitimacy of imperial rule, on one hand and the ethical treatment of slaves, on the other, carried over into other societies and future centuries where, in turn, the English abolitionist movement amplified debates around social inequalities of non-slave citizens, such as issues around poverty, women's emancipation,  worker rights, freedom of speech, the vote, and so on. These debates continued throughout the course of the British Empire until its final collapse after WWII, when two world wars and an economic depression finally ended Britain's role on the centre stage of world affairs. 

SOCIAL UPHEAVALS LIKE WAR, McCoy would argue, are a prerequisite for fracturing empires and ushering in the newest hegemon, one that may develop into a "world order". Spain and Portugal arose following the Black Death. The British Empire came into its stride after the Hundred Years War and Napoleon. America arose after the cataclysm of WWII. McCoy speculates about the next hegemon, and asks: Will China emerge from the disruptions of recent global economic meltdowns, Covid-19, America's long-fought foreign wars and now a war in Ukraine, to supplant the United States on the world stage? 

THE POST WWII ERA saw the rise of the American Empire which built upon the legal framework and ethical concerns of the British Empire, and its enduring "orders", to construct a framework for international governance based on the rule of law and the sovereign rights of the individual. One area where this world order can be seen is in the various institutions created after WWII like the United Nations, IMF, World Bank, etc. WE SHOULD TAKE NOTE that in 1945, at the United Nations' first session, 50 nations were represented. In 2022, there were 193. There is something to be said for a rules-based international order that promotes individual human rights and the rule of law, and that acknowledges the right of colonized peoples to form their own nations. And in terms of the rights of the individual, the last 500 years has seen a remarkable entrenchment in law, custom and practice of this important concept. That, surely, must be progress?

FAR FROM PERFECT, the system we have today does represent progress in the centuries-long struggle for individual rights, state-hood, and  international law and order. 

 

MCCOY ENDS with a note of caution. If China does emerge as the dominant hegemon, it is unlikely it will  be as concerned with individual human rights, and this could signal a change that may prove wrenching for many in the West. China is a collectivist society, with schemes like a universal social credit score system that would not easily be compatible (at least for now) within the framework of international law and human rights legislation created by the American world order.

A SECOND NOTE OF CAUTION is climate change, about which McCoy is very concerned. He says it may prove to be a game-changer and as disruptive to human society as was the Black Death or world wars. Or worse. In fact, he suggests that Chinese hegemony, should it occur in the coming decades, may be short-lived due to widespread social disordering caused by sea level rise, desertification, species and habitat depletion, etc., that may start to bite as early as mid-century, making world-ordering projects by a single hegemon unworkable. He suggests dealing with the climate crisis will necessitate a radical social reordering and comprehensive international cooperation if organized human society is to survive.😟

Cheers, Jake.

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*Akkadia was the world’s first empire. It was established in Mesopotamia around 4,300 years ago after its ruler, Sargon (“Sargon the Great”) of Akkad, united a series of independent city states. Akkadian influence spanned along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from what is now southern Iraq, through to Syria and Turkey.

 

^1. Empire definition: “an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority, formally especially with an emperor or empress: the Roman empire.” (OED)

 

 ^2. I’d like to believe there exists more egalitarian ways of social organizing. For example, our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in small, family groups and clans, moving across landscapes no one owned, using what they needed and leaving the rest.

Such groups would have been less-hierarchically structured and without formal elites, making them pretty advanced, in my book--especially when you consider all the dumfukkery practised by our political elites these days! "NUKE THE RUSKIES!" "HI-FIVE!" If this keeps up, we'll be using stone tools again like these guys!(Well, we won't, because we'll be dead. Ed.)   

 

3. It must be said that steam powered machinery arrived just in time. It took the place of certain kinds of manual labour, lessening the empire's need for slaves and helped ease public opinion in favour of abolition.

 

 

McCoy, Alfred W. To Govern the Globe: World Orders & Catastrophic Change. Haymarket Books. Chicago, Illinois. 2021.

 

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! and GOOD NEWS FOR STEPHEN DONZIGER!

 

    "FREEDOM NOW, MOTHER-FUKKERS!!"