It seems as though it was yesterday when I had initially signed up for fall classes, one of which would be HumCore. I must admit, initially I did not know what to expect. Would it be like the AP Lang. and Comp. Class I took in high school? Would it be like similar to AP literature? With an apprehensive note, my year began, and I can say three quarters later, HumCore has been more insightful than any previous english or history course I have taken. While in high school the topics and the format of analyzing primary sources and reading novels were similar, HumCore differs in that in integrated information from a vast array of perspectives and disciples into a truly interdisciplinary experience. As a Bio major, I appreciated the ability of looking at the events discussed this year, such as the Inca Civilization, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women without Men, through countless lenses: historical, economical, political instead of merely the common literary lens. Ultimately, one of my favorite aspects of HumCore was indeed the theme Empire and its Ruins. I was able to embrace the theme in my blog website; Empire in Everyday Life. Throughout the year, I explored the topic of empire in various fields: pharmaceutical, retail, national, and in literature through a humanistic perspective. This ability to attribute a common theme to a number of diverse areas of life translated into a deeper and better understanding of topic discussed during lecture. For example, in highschool, I had read Shakespeare’s The Tempest through the typical literary nature, analyzing Shakespeare’s use of metaphors and character development. However, in HumCore, my analysis was complexified and broadened to analyze the power dynamic between the conqueror Prospero and the conquered Caliban, as well as the role of female characters both absent and present, Miranda and Sycorax, and ultimately the effect of language on the establishment and reestablishment of identity of the conquered. In essence, this new analysis allowed for the integration of feminism, the power of language, power dynamics, social hierarchies all into the discussion of literary analysis. This increase in the breadth of analysis has ultimately enriched my individual perspective in not only this humanities course but ultimately in other courses as well. Analyzing different empires, from Roman to American, throughout the three quarters of HumCore have led to an increase in my interest in the politics of language and the notion that the educated conquerors often write the entire history, in the process shunning or misconstruing the experiences of the illiterate and educationally disadvantaged conquered population. I decided to address this specific topic in my final Spring Research project. In choosing Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, I decided to explore one of the few slave narratives that exist and how the perspective of the silent oppressed population of slaves was finally able to be voiced through men and women such as Douglass. While it would be simple to classify the African American race as the oppressed and the white European race as the conquerors, these generalizations are far from accurate. In the Abolition movement, former slaves joined forces with white abolitionists who in essence formed and shaped the narratives of the slaves to be tasteful and attractive to a white audience. While this in turn allowed for the furtherance of the slave voice, these white abolitionists ultimately also ended up restricting the true narrative of the slave population by filtering it extensively. Therefore, the complex dynamic and the extent to which the white population continues to filter the narrative of the African American Population is still relevant today, centuries after the abolition of slavery. In short, HumCore has helped me develop a more complex individual perspective and has allowed for me to better understand global historical empires through a wide variety of lenses. I am grateful for the incredible lecturers and amazing seminar leaders who have helped facilitate this transformation and look forward to what the next year brings.
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History is not merely written by the victors of empire, but more specifically by the writers and the educated of that specific empire. This one-sided narration lends itself to a biased history in which the voices of the conquerors frequently drown out the unheard voices of the conquered. The control of history through language is in essence a method by which conquerors skew historical fact in order to cast themselves in a more favorable light, creating an illusionary and deceptive version of history. Furthermore, this version of history is often the only account of events available to historians, perpetuating racial stereotypes and myths from the past into the present. A specific example in which this one-sided history is prevalent is in respect to the worldwide slavery of Black people that lasted for centuries. During the 1700-1800s, in many American cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, slaves and free blacks outnumbered whites. However, there exists relatively few black historical accounts in stark comparison to the plethora of documents provided by white slave owners. This disparity is attributed to the fact that much of the African American population remained uneducated and illiterate due to restrictions set by white men against the educating of slaves.
As C.G. Woodson explains in The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861: A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War, “slaves who had some conception of modern civilization and understood the language of their owners would be more valuable than rude men with whom one could not communicate… Yet [...] slaves could not be enlightened without developing in them a longing for liberty.” (Woodson Ⅰ) Therefore, many slaves were born illiterate, died illiterate, and the stories of their plight perished with them, leaving only the misconstrued testimony of their well-educated owners. However, as time progressed toward anti-slavery and slavery abolishment movements, more accounts from newly-freed slaves emerged and the true extent to which this population suffered became more and more explicit and less and less veiled by the perspective of their previous owners.
The work of these historians aims at filling the gap that represents the lack of African American voice during the period of slavery in the United States and ultimately functions by using objective writers of the present in order to rectify the history written by the writers of the past.
This havoc and chaos was especially seen in populations bordering the straight line dropped by Sir Cyril Radcliffe. Due to the hasty drawing of the separation line, the Partition often split villages and their inhabitants were forced to choose a nation to join. These refugees were forced to leave their ancestral lands and move to foreign land, in which they had to completely start over, thereby stalling the economic success of either nation. Furthermore, this formal division of the land ultimately fostered the animosity between the Muslims and the Hindus and aggravated the religious tensions, hampering the attempt at a United India. India is not alone in its experience of the fragmentation of its land. Indeed, other countries, including notably Germany, Korea, and Czechoslovakia have experienced similar partitioning. While the dissolution of all of these countries occurred in different eras of time and under different historical contexts, they were ultimately all a result of extreme tension and war, and the effects of the separation are continually being felt by their respective populations. Even in Germany, which reunited under a common flag in October of 1990, there are significant discrepancies between east and west Germany. For example, the formerly communist eastern German companies faced strong competition from the western companies, and even today the income levels in the east are significantly lower than those of the west. What’s more, Germany’s unemployment rate is not distributed evenly; there is a significant increase in the unemployment rate in the eastern side of the country. Another example is in the recently divided Czechoslovakia into the countries Slovakia and Czech Republic. The split has also led to economic struggle and trade deficits, as well as confusion surrounding how the common currencies will be implemented. However, perhaps more importantly, this division has led to a surge in nationalism and the ideology of Czech exceptionalism and xenophobism, leading to increased tensions with neighboring countries. In conclusion, the partitioning of lands has been relatively common throughout much of modern history. However, the negative implications of this partitioning, from increased xenophobia to weakened economies, have also been prevalent, ultimately leading us to reflect on the enduring effects of partitions. Is splitting up ancestral land and fragmenting various populations increasing racism and tensions among people of different ideologies? Is this increase in xenophobia in turn leading to even more partitions, thus creating a negative domino effect that threatens both national and global unity?
In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero is depicted as the protagonist despite his malicious actions and manipulative nature shown throughout the play. While the voice of the conquered– represented largely through Caliban– is present, the voice of the conqueror is ultimately dominant. This play is a direct reflection of the historical context in which the English colonial project was of great relevance and importance. This can be seen in the play as almost every character, from the lord Gonzalo to the drunk Stephano, ponders how he would rule the island on which the play is set if he were its king. There also seems to be an indirect focus on race and the inherent inferiority of the “other” or barbarians in the mind of the conquerors. In my own adaptation of The Tempest, I would attempt to show a reversal of the power dynamic between the conquerors and conquered that represents much of the modern world around us. Today, while the history of colonialism and imperialism remains forever engraved in countless cultures worldwide, there is a larger focus on independence and democracy. Furthermore, I would create a film as the medium for the work due to its modernity. Film represents a more modern take on the classic play, and this use of a more modern medium would underscore the focus on the shift between the perspective of the past to that the present. I share the interest of facilitating the emerging of Caliban’s voice, however I believe that there are other voices that are suppressed in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
While the film would undoubtedly represent an ultimate amelioration of society in the progression of time, I would also include various troubling themes into the film in order to hint at the problems our society continues to face today. Including topics of corruption, violence, and the continuation of racism and sexism would work in order to assure the audience that we have not yet reached what is considered to be the perfect utopian society. However, I would attempt to leave the end of the film open to interpretation in order to allow for the audience themselves to ponder and reflect upon whether reaching a utopian society is even possible.
Guns, Germs, and Steel, a theory originally derived by Jared Diamond, has been attributed to the fates of human societies and empires throughout history. Yet while guns and steel are discussed often in terms of the success of various empires, germs and diseases are often overlooked or stated in a way that minimizes and backgrounds its effect on the course of history. The truth is, diseases have ultimately helped contribute to the fall of countless empires and may have even taken more lives than weaponry or other methods used by conquerors to conquer the conquered. An example can be seen with the Roman Empire. Historians have commonly attributed the fall of the Roman Empire to violence, moral corruption, and economic collapse —an idea most aggressively championed in Bryan Ward-Perkins’ book, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. However, in recent years historians have also started to revisit the fall of the Roman Empire with an openness to the importance of environmental factors, including climate change and pandemic disease.
Due to decreased populations, fewer defended the borders. This led to an increase in the frequency of invasions, allowing for the battles to take even more Roman lives. While exact death tolls are uncertain, the outbreak is estimated to have taken the life of about 7 or 8 eight million victims. By comparison, the worst defeat in Roman military history, Battle of Cannae (during the Punic War II, 216 BCE), claimed around 60,000 lives. Another example can be seen with the onset of the collapse of the Inca Empire before the Spaniards officially took over.
With the disease weakening the working class, agricultural output dropped, leading to starvation and even more death, ultimately enabling the Spanish quick access to the wealth and control of the Inca empire. The Roman and Inca empires are not unique in demonstrating mass destruction and death due to disease rather than military conquest. The same theme is present in the fall of the Han Dynasty, the Ottoman Empire, and countless more. This ultimately reminds us of the fragility of human societies in the face of nature and leads us to reflect upon our precarious dependence on the fickle planet that we call home.
“If we admit this Consolidated Government it will be because we like a great splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, and a navy, and a number of things: When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, Sir, was then the primary object.” Read full transcript here Many have reiterated and taken up Henry’s position over the years, while others disagree strongly with his thoughts. As much as these debates might be dismissed as belonging to an age of outdated antiquity with no substantial relevance to the modern world, they ultimately remain related to the core of the nation’s purposes and convictions today. The controversial relationship America maintains between the value of liberty and the desire for domination and imperialism as an empire is of intense interest in the modern world, as it has been since the beginning of the American nation. Various historians have affirmed the United States as an empire. In her novel American Umpire, Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman’s emphasizes that “the existence of the American Empire is an undeniable fact.” According to Richard Immerman as he asserts in his novel Empire for Liberty, “America is and always has been an empire.” Others affirm that, “the old view that the United States had not been an empire [is] smoldering rubble.” It is indisputable that American rule, as it has played out over time, has led to the dispossession of and domination over disparate peoples, a key attribute of the move from continental to hemispheric to global empire. This imperialism is most prevalent with respect to the populations of color on its constantly expanding continental and oceanic frontiers, including but not limited to Native Americans, Africans, and Mexicans. Interestingly however, while empire is about domination, liberalism is about the vehement resistance to this domination. In Americans, who are considered liberals and promoters of democracy, this resistance to unjust domination runs deep and there is a tradition of anti-imperialism in American political thought. As Walter Lippmann wrote, in 1944, “the American antipathy to imperialism . . . is organic in the American character, and is transmitted on America soil to all whose minds are molded by the American tradition.”
There has never been and most likely will never be a final word in respect to the American Empire debate. It is ultimately our job as citizens and intellectuals to explore and accept competing interpretations of not only the United States but of the entire world, cultivating a more broad and encompassing discussion instead of a narrow, self-centered one.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, ruins are the, “the downfall or decay of a person or society; complete loss of resources, wealth, moral or social standing, well-being, etc.” While this definition of ruins does holds true, it fails to recognize the vast array of types of ruins, whether in the differing levels of destruction, the specific perpetrator of the ruins, or the ultimate contribution the ruin has to the modern world. Ruins must be analyzed according to the causes of their downfall. Natural disasters have occasionally led to ruins that preserve instead destruct the history and culture of a certain era or group of people. Pompeii represents one of the most significant examples of this ironic oxymoron, “preservative ruin”. In the year 79 A.D., the devastating eruption of Vesuvius unexpectedly buried the city of Pompeii in a thick layer of ash and lava. The scale of the tragedy was appalling: in what had been one of the most active and splendid Roman centers, life immediately came to a permanent standstill. Yet what was undeniably a catastrophe for the Pompeians has ultimately evolved into a miraculously preserved slice of Roman civilization for the modern world, offering a unique window on the ancient world and on the arts, customs, trades, and everyday life of the past.
Ruins perpetrated by mankind, however, are another topic altogether. The Syrian Civil War between the rebel force opposition and the government of Bashar al-Assad represents a gruel example of the extent of destruction mankind can have, mercilessly turning infrastructure into ruins and taking the lives of countless innocent men, women , and children.
Syria is just one example of the reckless destruction of mankind. History has been speckled with various incidents, including the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the countless wars that have ravaged diverse frontiers. It is not to say that Nature has not had its fair share of deft destruction. Yet ultimately, while we can do little to control natural disasters, the destruction enacted by mankind is indeed in our own hands. Many people associate the word empire with the glorious ancient empires of distant past, such as the Roman Empire that ruled the vast majority of the known world at the time through conquest, allowing the Roman Empire to continue to rule for a prosperous 507 years. However, empires in that context are long gone and no longer have a defining role in the 21st century; an empire in the 21st century no longer is one that consists of brute conquest and forced rule, but that of an economical and market conquest. In the 21st century the idea of power has dramatically changed. Power is no longer having an intimidating army that can invade and conquer. Instead, the idea of globalism, stocks, shares, capital, and market control are the new sources of power. In order for a 21st century empire to succeed, it must have a strong hold on a certain market substantial profits from the stocks and shares. Ultimately, a modern empire is one that is able to retain its economical power and surpass its competitors. The pharmaceutical industry is no stranger to this methodology. Yet what separates the pharmaceutical industry or “empire” from other industries is that it has a full monopoly, allowing it to impose ridiculously high prices that question the morality of the entire industry and the field of medicine. Allowing newly discovered medication to be patented ultimately allows the pharmaceutical industry to exert itself as a present-day empire. Yet while this loophole is certainly monetarily beneficial for private drug companies, it is the center of controversy for the moral aspect. These monopolies on certain drugs and medications allow for the unhampered increase in prices and this in a way enslaves the patients that depend on these medications in order to survive. What’s more, the pharmaceutical industry imposes these price hikes on almost all drugs, especially on those with a high usage among patients in the United States. This leaves most people to rely on some sort of insurance and people who lack insurance fall victim to medication that can easily be in range from a few hounds dollars to thousands of dollars for a single prescription. This ultimately causes for most uninsured people to go untreated as it discourages them from seeking out treatment due to these astronomical prices. All in all, these factors have contributed to the pharmaceutical industry becoming a 21st century empire that uses a modern form of economic slavery of leeching off of helpless people in order to grow in economical power. This empire has a strong, unbending hold on the drug and medical industry and on the majority of people– both ill and healthy– within the United States. Is this what a modern-day representation of empire has become? An all-powerful industry with capitalistic motivations that make victims of ill, desperate people? The glorious ancient empires pale in comparison. Retail empires, such as Walmart, Macy’s, and Sears, are coming to a slow yet imminent end – but not for the reasons one may initially assume. Their demise has nothing to do with a failure to secure suppliers or running short of products to sell. Instead, their impending fall comes as a consequence of the very business structure that had once made them so powerful. Built in an era where being an empire was the only sure path to power and competitive dominance, companies such as Walmart and Macy’s are products of an age where to be successful as an organization was to be inherently isolated, preeminent, and monolithic. An age where cornering a market was only possible after infrastructure development, aggressive marketing spending, and massive capital investment. In the post-Internet era however, retail empires are steadily giving up ground to retail networks. Due to poor sales in the 2016 holiday season, Macy’s announced that it would be closing 68 stores nationwide, a move that would lead to a loss of over 10,000 jobs. Furthermore, according to CNBC, the company plans on investing $250 million of the projected $550 million annual savings from these closings into its digital business. Macy’s is just one retail empire on the long list to close down a number of its brick and mortar stores; Toys R Us, JcPenney, and Michael Kors –among many– have also announced sweeping closures. In short, as summarized on a Clark Howard Radio show, “retailers on this list are closing stores because they’re not giving people what they want in terms of things like price, fashion and selection. As a result, shoppers are increasingly turning to online and discount merchants for better deals.” There are some who still favor the “retail empire”, such as Heather Chaplin, who in an article for the New York Times, writes, “With online shopping, making purchases has become an algorithm-driven, frictionless experience of terrifying efficiency. [...] Online retailers cater to this utilitarian drive, and we in turn forget there are other ways, that there is value in a pleasurable experience even if no item is delivered the next day.” The term “empire” has come to refer to an archaic form of commerce, excluding new technologies necessary for success in the modern economy of today. What’s more, It’s becoming abundantly clear that networks, not empires, are the retail and service models of the future. For example, Airbnb, now merely nine years old, will annually put more people in more rooms than the Hilton Hotel chain. Smartphone connected Uber cars now outnumber yellow cabs in New York City. Empires are rooted in ownership and control; therefore, they scale very slowly and are inherently capital intensive. Also, due to secrecy in terms of innovation efforts, empires adapt to changing consumer and market dynamics at a sluggish rate. And because so much energy goes into simply sustaining the empire itself, it depletes energy that could be spent for innovation and adaptation, thus beginning a downward spiral of value. Networks, on the other hand, are structurally lean and scale rapidly. For the most part, they operate transparently and collectively, and are more fluid, flexible, and adaptable to change. And because networks demand less energy devoted to maintaining infrastructure, they can dedicate more of their energy to their business model, leading to success for the network as a whole. Can retail chains transition from autocratic owners of empires to collaborative operators of platforms and ultimately evolve into networked businesses? It’s not impossible yet unlikely; the empire mentality runs deep in these old era companies. |