Abstract
George Steinmetz’s Sociology and Empire is for the social scientist and the independent thinker. It records a process central to the disenchantment of the critical sociologist with his own field: That sociology was complicitous and contributory in modern-day empire making. So, what’s new? What is often lacking in serious historical writings about empire building is not which academicians participated in such geopolitical power struggles, most in positions of power and prestige did, and not which society was colonized—at one point or another, most were. What is much more important is knowing what particular bureaucratic personage pursues empire building and how this political prototype reproduces itself and thus becomes fundamental to Westernization creating a legion of “looking out” human actors who wish to partake of the fruits of others. As Sociology and Empire reveals, by omission and commission, although the politics of empire building is well known, the actual process of empire building—the playtime escapades of military life—is little to unknown. The following review reflects on Steinmetz’s important work and concludes by offering up new ideas to old behaviors.
Sociology and Empire is a treasure trove of insightful essays outlining in lucid sociologese the many entanglements of empire, empire production, and empire decay. Specifically, some articles show the depth of these entanglements, such as Besnik Pula’s brilliant essay on twentieth-century Italy’s resurrection of the politics of the Roman Empire in Ethiopia and Albania. Other essays do an exceptional job of recording how Western politics greatly influence perpetual warring despite our modern-day table talk of moral advancement. For example, Michael Mann correctly articulates that the U.S. government hoodwinked the American political class into resoundingly believing that Iraq was responsible for 9/11 and yet, “the intelligence, then and now showed no evidence of Iraqi complicity” (p. 237). Of the 18 essays, Mann’s brings us closest to the realities of our day: the carnage of war and the politics of those who make it.
Sociology and Empire provides a superb array of definitions and key terms of imperialism and empire making: from “unification through conquest” (p. 285) to external manipulation and transformation according to the needs and interests of colonial rulers (p. 374) to, my favorite, “empire is, minimally, the exclusive political control imposed by one sovereign society over another” (p. 9). Yet, however, masterful, these essays are simply elaborate word constructions that merge reality with fiction. Empire building, in fact, is the effect of a highly rational, selfish, overindulging mind-set (to the point of self-destruction). Since this so-called Machiavellian martial character or Lombrosian atavistic drive does not appear to develop in all humans, a more valuable direction of inquiry would be to identify its origins, to measure its evolutionary development, and, once recognized, to propose how best to effectively manage and/or resist it.
What we can extract from the text, toward the above proposed ends, is first that the essence of empire building is creating war accompanied by a multitude of human-made anxieties. Pula’s article showed that imperialism, however, defined, can have meaning beyond domination and subjugation. Pula demonstrates that in the 1936 war against the Ethiopians, Italy employed theft, repression, political subterfuge, and military violence including lethal gas to conquer and dethrone the ruling party of Ethiopia, while in Albania, they used irredentism and urban planning to reinforce and rebuild the city of Albania, albeit in the name of Fascism and by Italian architects to offer a path to modernity. Modern-day Italy sought to destroy Ethiopia, as their ancient conspecifics did by salting the soil so nothing would grow. In Albania, the purported approach was much more sanguine. Good states should help good states, and no state is perfect. Such thinking remains operative today, as in the past, for war is not the answer, if it ever was. As Albert Bergesen suggests, China’s new method of employing material and technological assistance to developing societies without the usual eco-political strings attached may be an exemplar of the new antidote to Western hegemony and perpetual warring (p. 301).
The imitation of lethal technology and the vast exportation of ideas of killing en masse are the cornerstones of empire development, yet they are almost completely ignored in the book. This is one important oversight that could help bring the rich historical work into sharper focus.
Bergesen’s chapter on “The New Surgical Colonialism” argues that the next world war will erupt from the European–Russian block against the rest (p. 317). A powerful deduction, to be sure, but it belies the future. Warring is the moral and psychological breakdown of society. Constantly reenacting vestiges of a so-called vainglorious past brings us closer to repeating it. Reproducing war in recreation or reality creates confusion about good and evil, about where our priorities lie, and about the constant integration and transformation of names, ethnicities, and countries. Warring does not reverse ennui but creates and reinforces through “psychic contagion” new evils in the world. In war, the reviewer adds, the morally fittest may not always survive. At the risk of manifesting a self-fulfilling prophecy, the process of the reproduction of the war-mind must be interrogated and understood using unconventional methods.
Steinmetz notes in the book, just as John Hobson argued over a century ago, the child soldier is a victim of his social milieu, a budding mercenary unaware of the travesty of his actions, and yet willing to follow his leader—any leader—in becoming an instrument of the state (p. 23). While still psychologically malleable, he is transformed through the exposure of complex operations of compulsory regimented military training, a key mobility ladder in Western cultures, and learns the politics of divide and conquer. The nascent soldier, like his forebears, seeks the creature comforts of modern-day warring—the G.I. bill, adventure, free education, lifelong pension, housing, medical care, and so on—but is too young to recognize the unintended consequences of his actions: mass organized murder, displaced people, dysfunctional families, famine and disease (historically from scattered human remains left to decay on the battle field), interethnic conflict, civil disobedience, economic and material disparities and mystifications, and lessor known, the normalization of war and its anxieties: namely, mental disease, the creation of false history, parades, dirges and odes, pseudo esprit de corps cults, and biased folklore through a barrage of political symbols that reminds us of how great the past was without clearly distinguishing which past and for whom. In short, Sociology and Empire, directly or indirectly, shows us that the human ecosystem is under tremendous threat by the ideological descendants of ancient times. The regimes we see around the globe today represent modern-day slavery of a new arrangement with people barricaded behind Hadrian walls, gated communities, tethered to cubicles and offices, isolated in metal carapaces, and trapped by the poisonous gravitational pull of warmongery on all levels, eroding our inherent communal spirit.
That we do not learn how empires are made and by whom on a more macro theoretical level is a bit of a crime given the large size of this book and its scientific pastiche. The mystery of empire building is posed as a blessing and a curse. Yet, for the macro-historic sociologist, Sociology and Empire will no doubt have a lasting impression, adding both helpful records about the discipline’s role in empire building and contradictory ideas to an already confused mass of humanity.