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Thecivilizing mission (Spanish:misión civilizadora;Portuguese:Missão civilizadora;French:Mission civilisatrice) is a political rationale formilitary intervention and forcolonization purporting to facilitate the cultural assimilation ofindigenous peoples, especially in the period from the 15th to the 20th centuries. As a principle ofWestern culture, the term was most prominently used in justifying French[1]colonialism in the late-15th to mid-20th centuries. The civilizing mission was the cultural justification for the colonization ofFrench Algeria,French West Africa,French Indochina,Portuguese Angola andPortuguese Guinea,Portuguese Mozambique andPortuguese Timor, among other colonies. The civilizing mission also was a popular justification for the British[2] and German[3][4] colonialism. In theRussian Empire, it was also associated with theRussian conquest of Central Asia and theRussification of that region.[5][6][7] The Western colonial powers claimed that, as Christian nations, they were duty bound to disseminateWestern civilization to what they perceived as heathen,primitive cultures. It was also applied by theEmpire of Japan,which colonized Korea.[8][9]
In the eighteenth century, Europeans saw history as a linear, inevitable, and perpetual process ofsociocultural evolution led by Western Europe.[10] From thereductionist cultural perspective of Western Europe, colonialists saw non-Europeans as "backward nations", as people intrinsically incapable of socioeconomicprogress. In France, the philosopherMarquis de Condorcet formally postulated the existence of a European "holy duty" to help non-European peoples "which, to civilize themselves, wait only to receive the means from us, to find brothers among Europeans, and to become their friends and disciples".[11]
Modernization theory – progressive transition fromtraditional, premodern society to modern, industrialized society – proposed that the economic self-development of a non-European people is incompatible with retaining their culture (mores, traditions, customs).[12] That breaking from their old culture is prerequisite to socioeconomic progress, by way of practical revolutions in the social, cultural, and religious institutions, which would change their collective psychology and mental attitude, philosophy and way of life, or to disappear.[13]: 302 [14]: 72–73 [15] Therefore,development criticism sees economic development as a continuation of the civilizing mission. That to become civilized invariably means to become more "like us", therefore "civilizing a people" means that every society must become a capitalistconsumer society, by renouncing their native culture to becomeWesternized.[16]Cultivation of land and people has been a similarly employed concept, used instead ofcivilizing in German speaking colonial contexts to press for colonization andcultural imperialism through "extensive cultivation" and "culture work".[17]
According to Jennifer Pitts, there was considerable skepticism among French and British liberal thinkers (such as Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Edmund Burke, Denis Diderot and Marquis de Condorcet) about empire in the 1780s. However, by the mid-19th century, liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville endorsed empire on the basis of the civilizing mission.[18]
Although the British did not invent the term, the notion of a "civilizing mission" was equally important for them to justify colonialism. It was used to legitimatize British rule over the colonized, especially when the colonial enterprise was not very profitable.[2]
The British usedtheir sports as a tool to spread their values and culture among native populations, as well as a way of emphasizing their own dominance, as they were the owners of the rules of these sports and were naturally more experienced at playing these games.Test cricket, for example, was seen as a sport that inherently involved values of fair play and civilizedness. In some cases, British sports served a purpose of providing exercise and integration across social boundaries for native populations.[19] The growth of British sports led to a natural decline of the colonized peoples' sports, creating fear amongst some that a loss of their native culture might hamper their ability to resist colonial rule. Over time, colonized peoples ended up seeing British sports as a venue to prove their equality to the British, and victories against the British in sports gave momentum to nascent independence movements.[20][21][22]
The idea that the British were bringing civilization to the uncivilized areas of the world is famously expressed inRudyard Kipling's poemThe White Man's Burden.
Alice Conklin explained in her works that the French colonial empire coincided with the apparently opposite concept of "Republic".[citation needed]
The concept of a "civilizing mission" would also be adopted by theUnited States during the age ofNew Imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Such projects would includeUS annexation of the Philippines during the aftermath of theSpanish-American War in 1898. TheMcKinley administration would declare that the US position within thePhilippines was to “oversee the establishment of a civilian government” on the model of the United States.[23] That would be done through adopting a civilizing process that would entail a "medical reformation" and other socioeconomic reforms.[24] The Spanish health system had broken down after the 1898 war and was replaced with an American military model, which was made up of public health institutions.[25] The "medical reformation" was done with "military rigor"[25] as part of a civilizing process in which American public health officers set out to train native Filipinos the "correct techniques of the body."[26] The process of "rationalized hygiene" was a technique for colonizing in the Philippines, as part of the American physicists assurance that the colonized Philippines was inhabited with propriety. Other "sweeping reforms and ambitious public works projects"[27] would include the implementation of a free public school system, as well as architecture to develop "economic growth and civilizing influence" as an important component of McKinley's "benevolent assimilation."[28]
Similar "civilizing" tactics were also incorporated into theAmerican colonization of Puerto Rico in 1900. They would include extensive reform such as the legalization of divorce in 1902 in an attempt to instill American social mores into the island’s populace to "legitimatize the emerging colonial order."[29]
Purported benefits for the colonized nation included "greater exploitation of natural resources, increased production of material goods, raised living standards, expanded market profitability and sociopolitical stability".[30]
However, theoccupation of Haiti in 1915 would also show a darker side to the American "civilizing mission." The historian Mary Renda has argued that the occupation of Haiti was solely for the "purposes of economic exploitation and strategic advantage,"[31] rather than to provide Haiti with "protection, education and economic support."[32]
After consolidating its territory in the 13th century through aReconquista of theMuslim states of Western Iberia, theKingdom of Portugal started to expand overseas. In 1415,IslamicCeuta was occupied by the Portuguese during the reign ofJohn I of Portugal. Portuguese expansion inNorth Africa was the beginning of a larger process eventually known as thePortuguese Overseas Expansion, under which the Kingdom's goals included the expansion ofChristianity intoMuslim lands and the desire ofnobility for epic acts of war and conquest with the support of thePope.
As the Portuguese extended their influence around the coast toMauritania,Senegambia (by 1445) andGuinea, they createdtrading posts. Rather than become direct competitors to the Muslim merchants, they used expanding market opportunities inEurope and theMediterranean to increase trade across theSahara.[33] In addition, Portuguese merchants gained access to the African interior via theSenegal andGambia rivers, which crossed long-standing trans-Saharan routes. The Portuguese brought incopper ware,cloth,tools,wine andhorses. Trade goods soon also includedarms andammunition. In exchange, the Portuguese received gold (transported from mines of theAkan deposits),pepper (a trade which lasted untilVasco da Gama reachedIndia in 1498) andivory. It was not until they reached theKongo coast in the 1480s that they moved beyond Muslim trading territory in Africa.
Forts andtrading posts were established along the coast. Portuguese sailors, merchants, cartographers, priests and soldiers had the task of taking over the coastal areas, settling, and building churches, forts and factories, as well as exploring areas unknown to Europeans. ACompany of Guinea was founded as a Portuguese governmental institution to control the trade, and calledCasa da Guiné orCasa da Guiné e Mina from 1482 to 1483, andCasa da Índia e da Guiné in 1499.
The first of the major European tradingforts,Elmina, was founded on the Gold Coast in 1482 by the Portuguese.Elmina Castle (originally known as the "São Jorge da Mina Castle") was modeled on theCastelo de São Jorge, one of the earliest royal residences inLisbon. Elmina, which means "the port", became a majortrading center. By the beginning of the colonial era, there were forty such forts operating along the coast. Rather than being icons of colonial domination, the forts acted as trading posts – they rarely saw military action – the fortifications were important, however, when arms and ammunition were being stored prior to trade.[34] The 15th-century Portuguese exploration of theAfrican coast, is commonly regarded as the harbinger ofEuropean colonialism, and also marked the beginnings of theAtlantic slave trade,Christian missionaryevangelization and the firstglobalization processes which were to become a major element of the European colonialism until the end of the 18th century.
Although thePortuguese Empire's policy regarding native peoples in the less technologically advanced places around the world (most prominently inBrazil) had always been devoted toenculturation, includingteaching andevangelization of the indigenous populations, as well as the creation of novel infrastructure to openly support these roles, it reached its largest extent after the 18th century in what was thenPortuguese Africa andPortuguese Timor. New cities and towns, with their Europe-inspired infrastructure, which included administrative, military, healthcare, educational, religious, and entrepreneurial halls, were purportedly designed to accommodate Portuguese settlers.
ThePortuguese explorerPaulo Dias de Novais foundedLuanda in 1575 as "São Paulo de Loanda", with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers.Benguela, a Portuguese fort from 1587 which became a town in 1617, was another important early settlement they founded and ruled. The Portuguese would establish several settlements, forts and trading posts along the coastal strip of Africa. In theIsland of Mozambique, one of the first places where the Portuguese permanently settled in Sub-Saharan Africa, they built theChapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, in 1522, now considered the oldest European building in theSouthern Hemisphere. Later the hospital, a majestic neo-classical building constructed in 1877 by the Portuguese, with a garden decorated with ponds and fountains, was for many years the biggest hospital south of theSahara.[35]
The establishment of a dual,racialized civil society was formally recognized inEstatuto do Indigenato (The Statute of Indigenous Populations) adopted in 1929, and was based in the subjective concept ofcivilization versustribalism. Portugal's colonial authorities were totally committed to develop a fullymultiethnic "civilized" society in its African colonies, but that goal or "civilizing mission", would only be achieved after a period ofEuropeanization orenculturation of the native black tribes and ethnocultural groups. It was a policy which had already been stimulated in the formerPortuguese colony of Brazil. Under Portugal'sEstado Novo regime, headed byAntónio de Oliveira Salazar, theEstatuto established a distinction between the "colonial citizens", subject toPortuguese law and entitled to citizenship rights and duties effective in the "metropole", and theindigenas (natives), subject to both colonial legislation and their customary, tribal laws.
Between the two groups, there was a third small group, theassimilados, comprising native blacks, mulatos, Asians, and mixed-race people, who had at least some formal education, were not subjected to paid forced labor, were entitled to some citizenship rights, and held a special identification card that differed from the one imposed on the immense mass of the African population (theindigenas), a card that the colonial authorities conceived of as a means of controlling the movements of forced labor (CEA 1998). The indigenas were subject to the traditional authorities, who were gradually integrated into the colonial administration and charged with solving disputes, managing the access to land, and guaranteeing the flows of workforce and the payment of taxes. As several authors have pointed out (Mamdani 1996; Gentili 1999; O'Laughlin 2000), theIndigenato regime was the political system that subordinated the immense majority of native Africans to local authorities entrusted with governing, in collaboration with the lowest echelon of the colonial administration, the "native" communities described as tribes and assumed to have a common ancestry, language, and culture.
AfterWorld War II, ascommunist andanti-colonial ideologies spread out across Africa, many clandestine political movements were established in support of independence. Regardless it was exaggerated anti-Portuguese/anti-"Colonial" propaganda,[36] a dominant tendency in Portuguese Africa, or a mix of both, these movements claimed that since policies and development plans were primarily designed by the ruling authorities for the benefit of the territories' ethnic Portuguese population, little attention was paid to local tribal integration and the development of its native communities. According to the official guerrilla statements, this affected a majority of the indigenous population who suffered both state-sponsored discrimination and enormous social pressure. Many felt they had received too little opportunity or resources to upgrade their skills and improve their economic and social situation to a degree comparable to that of the Europeans. Statistically, Portuguese Africa's Portuguese whites were indeed wealthier and more skilled than the black indigenous majority, but the late 1950s, the 1960s and principally the early 1970s, were being testimony of a gradual change based in new socioeconomic developments and equalitarian policies for all.[citation needed]
ThePortuguese Colonial War began inPortuguese Angola on 4 February 1961, in an area called theZona Sublevada do Norte (ZSN or the Rebel Zone of the North), consisting of the provinces ofZaire,Uíge andCuanza Norte. The U.S.-backed UPA wanted nationalself-determination, while for the Portuguese, who had settled in Africa and ruled considerable territory since the 15th century, their belief in a multi-racial, assimilated overseas empire justified going to war to prevent its breakup and protect its populations.[37] Portuguese leaders, includingAntónio de Oliveira Salazar, defended the policy of multiracialism, orLusotropicalism, as a way of integrating Portuguese colonies, and their peoples, more closely with Portugal itself.[38] For the Portuguese ruling regime, the overseas empire was a matter ofnational interest. In Portuguese Africa, trained Portuguese black Africans were allowed to occupy positions in several occupations including specialized military, administration, teaching, health, and other posts in thecivil service and privatebusinesses, as long as they had the righttechnical and human qualities. In addition,intermarriage of black women with white Portuguese men was a common practice since the earlier contacts with the Europeans. The access to basic, secondary, and technical education was being expanded and its availability was being increasingly opened to both the indigenous and European Portuguese of the territories.
Examples of this policy include several black Portuguese Africans who would become prominent individuals during the war or in the post-independence, and who had studied during the Portuguese rule of the territories in local schools or even in Portuguese schools and universities in the mainland (themetropole) –Samora Machel,Mário Pinto de Andrade,Marcelino dos Santos,Eduardo Mondlane,Agostinho Neto,Amílcar Cabral,Joaquim Chissano, andGraça Machel are just a few examples. Two large state-run universities were founded in Portuguese Africa in the early 1960s (theUniversidade de Luanda in Angola and theUniversidade de Lourenço Marques in Mozambique, awarding a wide range of degrees from engineering to medicine[39]), during a time that in the European mainland only four public universities were in operation, two of them in Lisbon (which compares with the 14 Portuguese public universities today). Several figures in Portuguese society, including one of the most idolized sports stars in Portuguese football history, a black football player fromPortuguese East Africa namedEusébio, were other examples of assimilation and multiracialism.
Since 1961, with the beginning of the colonial wars in its overseas territories, Portugal had begun to incorporate black Portuguese Africans in the war effort in Angola,Portuguese Guinea, andPortuguese Mozambique based on concepts of multi-racialism and preservation of the empire. African participation on the Portuguese side of the conflict ranged from marginal roles as laborers and informers to participation in highly trained operational combat units, including platoon commanders. As the war progressed, the use of African counterinsurgency troops increased; on the eve of themilitary coup of 25 April 1974, Africans accounted for more than 50 percent of Portuguese forces fighting the war. Due to the technological gap between both civilizations andthe centuries-long colonial era,Portugal was a driving force in the development and shaping of allPortuguese Africa since the 15th century.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, in order to counter the increasing insurgency of the nationalistic guerrillas and show to the Portuguese people and the world that the overseas territories were totally under control, the Portuguese government accelerated its major development programs to expand and attempted to upgrade the infrastructure of the overseas territories in Africa by creating new roads, railways, bridges, dams, irrigation systems, schools and hospitals to stimulate an even higher level ofeconomic growth and support from the populace.[40] As part of this redevelopment program, construction of theCahora Bassa Dam began in 1969 in theOverseas Province of Mozambique (the official designation of Portuguese Mozambique by then). This particular project became intrinsically linked with Portugal's concerns over security in the overseas colonies. The Portuguese government viewed the construction of the dam as a testimony to Portugal's "civilizing mission"[41] and intended for the dam to reaffirm Mozambican belief in the strength and security of the Portuguese colonial government.
When thePortuguese explorers arrived in 1500, theAmerindians were mostly semi-nomadic tribes, with the largest population living on the coast and along the banks of major rivers. UnlikeChristopher Columbus who thought he had reachedIndia, the Portuguese sailorVasco da Gama had already reached India sailing aroundAfrica two years beforePedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil. Nevertheless, the wordíndios ("Indians") was by then established to designate the peoples of theNew World and remains so (it is used to this day in the Portuguese language, the people of India being calledindianos).
Initially, the Europeans saw the natives asnoble savages, andmiscegenation began straight away. Tribal warfare andcannibalism convinced the Portuguese that they should "civilize" the Amerindians,[42] even if one of the four groups ofAché people in Paraguay practiced cannibalism regularly until the 1960s.[43] When theKingdom of Portugal'sexplorers discovered Brazil in the 15th century and started tocolonize its new possessions in theNew World, the territory was inhabited byvarious indigenous peoples and tribes which had developed neither awriting system norschool education.
TheSociety of Jesus (Jesuits) has been since its founding in 1540 as amissionary order.Evangelization was one of the primary goals of the Jesuits; however, they were also committed to an education both in Europe and overseas. Their missionary activities, both in the cities and in the countryside, were complemented by a strong commitment toeducation. This took the form of the opening of schools for young boys, first in Europe, but soon extended to both America and Asia. The foundation ofCatholic missions,schools, andseminaries was another consequence of the Jesuit involvement in education. As the spaces and cultures where the Jesuits were presently varied considerably, their evangelizing methods diverged by location. However, the Society's engagement in trade, architecture, science, literature, languages, arts, music, and religious debate corresponded, in fact, to the common and foremost purpose of Christianization.
By the middle of the 16th century, the Jesuits were present in West Africa, South America, Ethiopia, India, China, and Japan. In a period of history when the world had a largelyilliterate population, thePortuguese Empire, was home to one of the first universities founded in Europe – theUniversity of Coimbra, which currently is still one of the oldest universities. Throughout the centuries of Portuguese rule, Brazilian students, mostly graduated in the Jesuit missions and seminaries, were allowed and even encouraged to enroll athigher education inmainland Portugal. By 1700, and reflecting a larger transformation of thePortuguese Empire, the Jesuits had decisively shifted their activity from theEast Indies to Brazil. In the late 18th century, the Portuguese minister of the kingdomMarquis of Pombal attacked the power of the privileged nobility and the church and expelled the Jesuits from Portugal and its overseas possessions. Pombal seized the Jesuit schools and introduced educational reforms all over the empire.
In 1772, even before the establishment of theScience Academy of Lisbon (1779), one of the first learned societies of both Brazil and thePortuguese Empire, theSociedade Scientifica, was founded inRio de Janeiro. Furthermore, in 1797, the first botanic institute was founded inSalvador,Bahia. During the late 18th century, theEscola Politécnica (then theReal Academia de Artilharia, Fortificação e Desenho) of Rio de Janeiro was created in 1792 through a decree issued by the Portuguese authorities as a higher education school for the teaching of the sciences and engineering. It belongs today to theUniversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and is the oldest engineering school of Brazil, and one of the oldest inLatin America. A royal letter of November 20, 1800 by the KingJohn VI of Portugal established inRio de Janeiro theAula Prática de Desenho e Figura, the first institution in Brazil dedicated to teaching the arts. Duringcolonial times, the arts were mainly religious or utilitarian and were learned in a system ofapprenticeship. A Decree of August 12, 1816, created anEscola Real de Ciências, Artes e Ofícios (Royal School of Sciences, Arts and Crafts), which established an official education in the fine arts and was the foundation of the currentEscola Nacional de Belas Artes.
In the 19th century, the Portuguese royal family, headed byJoão VI, arrived inRio de Janeiro escaping from theNapoleon's army invasion of Portugal in 1807. João VI gave impetus to the expansion of European civilization in Brazil.[44] In a short period between 1808 and 1810, thePortuguese government founded the Royal Naval Academy and the Royal Military Academy, theBiblioteca Nacional, theRio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, the Medico-Chirurgical School ofBahia, currently known as the "Faculdade de Medicina" under the purview of theUniversidade Federal da Bahia and the Medico-Chirurgical School of Rio de Janeiro which is the modern-day Faculdade de Medicina of theUniversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
Nineteenth century elites of South American republics also used a civilizing mission rhetoric to justify armed actions against indigenous groups. On January 1, 1883, Chile refounded the old city ofVillarrica, thus formally ending the process of theoccupation of the indigenous lands of Araucanía.[45][46] Six months later, on June 1, presidentDomingo Santa María declared:[47]
The country has with satisfaction seen the problem of the reduction of the whole Araucanía solved. This event, so important to our social and political life, and so significant for the future of the republic, has ended, happily and with costly and painful sacrifices. Today the whole Araucanía is subjugated, more than to the material forces, to the moral and civilizing force of the republic ...
Chileans also deployed a "civilizatory crusade" discourse against Peru and Bolivia in theWar of the Pacific (1879–1884). Along these lines Peru and Bolivia were seen as representatives of a backwardAncien régime that fought its wars with armies of indigenous barbarians.[48] Negative views of this types also occurred among Peruvians as after the war, theindigenous peoples in Peru became scapegoats in thenarratives of Peruviancriollo elites, exemplified in the writing ofRicardo Palma:
The principal cause of the great defeat is that the majority of Peru is composed of that wretched and degraded race that we once attempted to dignify and ennoble. The Indian lacks patriotic sense; he is born enemy of the white and of the man of the coast. It makes no difference to him whether he is a Chilean or a Turk. To educate the Indian and to inspire him a feeling for patriotism will not be the task of our institutions, but of the ages.[49]
Pinkwashing, the strategy of promotingLGBT rights protections as evidence ofliberalism anddemocracy, has been described as a continuation of the civilizing mission used to justify colonialism, this time on the basis of LGBT rights in Western countries.[50][51]
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