AHC: Have Imperialism and Racism be on the decline in the 1800s

[Ellis MacVey]

Okay, so basically, the 1800s OTL saw a huge rise in racism and imperialism. In fact, it was the golden age of both racism and imperialism in Europe.

How can we switch that around and make it so, as science progresses, imperialism proves, while at first easy, eventually something rather difficult to maintain and almost more trouble than it is worse, while many scientific studies discredit racism?

Is it even really possible?

 

[xsampa]

Have !steampunk revolutionary france adopt a racist ideology, challenge the rest of Europe, and lose.

 

[Derek Jackson]

A successful radical reconstruction would weaken international 'scientific' racism a lot

 

[Skallagrim]

The best, most fundamental way to do this would be to start off rather early on, and with a POD you may not expect. Namely: with the Spanish colonial empire. Spain produced the School of Salamanca, which was radical for its time: it advocated the fundamental equality and rights of all human beings, opposed the depradations of secular colonialist ventures, argued that slavery was immoral, reasoned that every person in the Spanish Empire who converted to Catholicism should have the same rights as any Spaniard, supported freedom of conscience, supported limiting the power of the Crown (insofar that it should be forced to respect the rights of all subjects), and embraced a very scientific approach to the Scholastic tradition.

There's a reason why the USA had laws against race-mixing well into the 20th century, whereas the former Spanish empire has a population that has mostly been mixed for a very long time. This does not by any means imply that the Spanish Empire wasn't racist, but that it already had a sound basis to overcome that. In fact, it was mostly Spain itself (and its colonialist rulers) that enforced the caste-like system (rule of thumb: "the whiter, the better"). The people born in the colonies cared far less. So if, for starters, you bolster the School of Salamanca and its beliefs within Spain itself, that goes a long way to improving things.

Regarding temporal power, Spain also saw the idea of the Aranda Plan raised. After the ARW, the Count of Aranda proposed turning the Spanish Empire into a federal entity, with broad powers of self-governance for the overseas parts. Based off the aforementioned POD of a stronger School of Salamanca, this could end up being carried out. This is bolstered by the fact that Aranda supported free trade within the Empire, treating all parts as equal-- and the School of Salamanca likewise advocated free trade over protectionist policies, as well as the equality of all (Catholic) peoples.

The end result could easily be a surviving and thriving Spanish Empire, which has decisively turned its back on racist ideas, and which has a leading philosophical attitude that is open to the free exchange of ideas. Its policies of racial equality, as well as equality of all parts of the Federal Empire, would no doubt benefit them immensely. This would then force other European powers to either imitate these intelligent policies, or fall behind. Thus, the ATL 19th century would see a consistent decline in racism, and a consistent move away from imperial domination and towards true federalism. Not least because wherever such things would be implemented, they would have positive effects, whereas powers the remained staunchly opposed would only be hurting themselves in the process. They would literally be outcompeted by the superiority of non-racism and federal co-operation over racism and imperialst exploitation.

The School of Salamanca, which extolled the virtues of such free competition (not only of merchants and nations, but also of ideas) from the very start, would no doubt be immensely pleased by this outcome.

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

I mean I think preventing imperialism prevents the racism as it’s harder to think that a particular civilisation is inherently inferior when you possess no clear advantage over them. Butterfly the great divergence and you’re gold

 

[TimTurner]

The best, most fundamental way to do this would be to start off rather early on, and with a POD you may not expect. Namely: with the Spanish colonial empire. Spain produced the School of Salamanca, which was radical for its time: it advocated the fundamental equality and rights of all human beings, opposed the depradations of secular colonialist ventures, argued that slavery was immoral, reasoned that every person in the Spanish Empire who converted to Catholicism should have the same rights as any Spaniard, supported freedom of conscience, supported limiting the power of the Crown (insofar that it should be forced to respect the rights of all subjects), and embraced a very scientific approach to the Scholastic tradition.

There's a reason why the USA had laws against race-mixing well into the 20th century, whereas the former Spanish empire has a population that has mostly been mixed for a very long time. This does not by any means imply that the Spanish Empire wasn't racist, but that it already had a sound basis to overcome that. In fact, it was mostly Spain itself (and its colonialist rulers) that enforced the caste-like system (rule of thumb: "the whiter, the better"). The people born in the colonies cared far less. So if, for starters, you bolster the School of Salamanca and its beliefs within Spain itself, that goes a long way to improving things.

Regarding temporal power, Spain also saw the idea of the Aranda Plan raised. After the ARW, the Count of Aranda proposed turning the Spanish Empire into a federal entity, with broad powers of self-governance for the overseas parts. Based off the aforementioned POD of a stronger School of Salamanca, this could end up being carried out. This is bolstered by the fact that Aranda supported free trade within the Empire, treating all parts as equal-- and the School of Salamanca likewise advocated free trade over protectionist policies, as well as the equality of all (Catholic) peoples.

The end result could easily be a surviving and thriving Spanish Empire, which has decisively turned its back on racist ideas, and which has a leading philosophical attitude that is open to the free exchange of ideas. Its policies of racial equality, as well as equality of all parts of the Federal Empire, would no doubt benefit them immensely. This would then force other European powers to either imitate these intelligent policies, or fall behind. Thus, the ATL 19th century would see a consistent decline in racism, and a consistent move away from imperial domination and towards true federalism. Not least because wherever such things would be implemented, they would have positive effects, whereas powers the remained staunchly opposed would only be hurting themselves in the process. They would literally be outcompeted by the superiority of non-racism and federal co-operation over racism and imperialst exploitation.

The School of Salamanca, which extolled the virtues of such free competition (not only of merchants and nations, but also of ideas) from the very start, would no doubt be immensely pleased by this outcome.

this would be an excellent TL to read.

 

[oca2073]

The Europeans were no more racist than the non-Europeans of this period, everyone was "racist" back then by contemporary standards, it's just they had superior technology so they were able to enact their "racism". Everyone understood back then that civilizations getting stronger and conquering other civilizations was just a fact of life, and no one really disputed this law of the jungle concept which seemed utterly natural. So your first point, that 1800s saw a huge rise in racism and imperialism (as ideologies) is false. Conceptually it was just as bad as the 1700s, 1600s, 1500s, actually probably worse as at least anti-slavery consciousness was developing in Europe post 1800.

It was the power disparity not changing ideologies that drove imperialism in this period. Racist attitudes were no different in this period compared to before until the late 19th century when the Europeans were confident with their colonial empires they built. (meaning that much of the imperialism and slavery had already happened.) That was in fact the golden age of European racism/imperialism, roughly the late 19th, early 20th centuries. That was when they had developed a refined ideology of superiority based on the reality of their hegemony. But before then (early 1800s) they were simply acting like everybody else, pressing whatever advantage they could get for profit (slaves, imperialism, ect). They actually felt less inherent superiority to the people colonized/enslaved than later periods (but they still conquered/enslaved them anyways based on opportunism) The irony is that conditions for these people began to improve (compared to before anyways) AFTER the Europeans began to feel superior in every way.

If you ask whether it was possible to prevent so much imperialism in the 19th century, I guess you can have an earlier Enlightenment or delay the industrial revolution a century for more time for the Enlightenment to spread. But I am pessimistic because ultimately I believe it is required that a society become wealthy and prosperous enough that they develop a moral conscience to what they are doing. Hungry and restless people rarely care about morality. Even if miraculously they discover DNA and human equality ect, it's still hard to prevent the idea that because humans are equal, so they have the right to struggle against each other, and the victor gets the spoils and gets to improve themselves at the expense of the defeated. So while you might see early abolishment of slavery, indentured servitude would still be around, as would imperialism/colonization.

 

[funnyhat]

I'm not convinced that European racism increased a ton in the 1800s. Consider the treatment of nonwhite people in the Americas before then.

And how did imperialism increase when Europeans had already conquered a whole hemisphere before then? It just spread to new places when the old colonies (Americas) became independent.

 

[Falecius]

I think that preventing imperialism (which is, after all, a fairly common feature of, well, states) is going to be hard. Given a major difference in power, more powerful polities are likely to exploit to that to expand/conquer/colonize/vassalize other places if they can.
Racism (in the modern "scientific" sense) is partly indeed a consequence of this very sort of processes, but its ideological dynamic is separate and much easier to stop; I would suggest that a successful Revolutionary Haiti (not easy to do, but probably possible) may be among the latest effective PODs for this.

 

[oca2073]

As for the "School of Salamanca", they are going to have to overcome some structural problems. Namely that Latin America was too dependent on a plantation economy to foster much spirit of equality, and that European powers while they practiced imperialism abroad, were becoming more tolerant and pluralistic at home, and this combination worked well for their societies in making huge advances in the sciences and the arts even as stuff continued to happen abroad, that because of distance and communications being nothing like today, very few people knew anything accurately about...

 

[funnyhat]

Racism (in the modern "scientific" sense) is partly indeed a consequence of this very sort of processes, but its ideological dynamic is separate and much easier to stop; I would suggest that a successful Revolutionary Haiti (not easy to do, but probably possible) may be among the latest effective PODs for this.

I see a successful Haïti as a consequence and not a cause : by the time of the Haitian revolution OTL, the Europeans/USA are in too deep with slavery and have to shun the ex-slave country so they do not encourage new revolts. To change that you need an earlier change in mentality that leads to slavery abolished much sooner. (But then that butterflies the Haitian revolution itself...)

 

[jerseyguy]

The pre-history of a vague concept of race wasn't an exclusively European phenomenon, Chinese figures referred to darker-skinned (from their perspective) South Asian and Southeast Asian people as "black". In the early Islamic period the people who lived around the Shores of the Mediterranean were distinguished from "white" people from Northern Europe and "black" people from Africa south of the Sahara.

Imperialism is nothing new to the 19th century, states have been conquering their neighbors since the first city-states formed in ancient Mesopotamia. The only way to avoid the form Empires took in the 19th century would be more rapidly closing or avoiding the technological gap between European and non-European societies. I guess by imperialism you mean the map circa 1914, where most of humanity was ruled by a few small European states.

The Victorian era colonial system where the planet was partitioned between roughly a dozen Empires contained the seeds of its own destruction. The proliferation of literacy, automatic weapons, and the ideas associated with mass politics didn't close the gap entirely, but it became narrow enough that Europeans couldn't maintain control as profitably in the 1980s as they could in the 1880s. I would say the emergence of scientific racism emerged as a way to explain this gap as the outcome of fixed biological differences. Kenneth

If a series of Arab Emirates or Confucian influenced East Asian states had been in an analogous position, they probably would've come up with a pseudo-scientific theory of a "superior" Arab or Chinese race. If the world developed more evenly and no single region had the technological advantage Europe did, the idea of fixed, biological races may still hang on until DNA is discovered, but the idea of a ranked pyramid of "superior" and "inferior" peoples wouldn't exist.

Kenneth Pomeranz's book The Great Divergence is a great economic history source on the industrial revolution and the divergence between Europe and East Asia.

 

[TRH]

The best, most fundamental way to do this would be to start off rather early on, and with a POD you may not expect. Namely: with the Spanish colonial empire. Spain produced the School of Salamanca, which was radical for its time: it advocated the fundamental equality and rights of all human beings, opposed the depradations of secular colonialist ventures, argued that slavery was immoral, reasoned that every person in the Spanish Empire who converted to Catholicism should have the same rights as any Spaniard, supported freedom of conscience, supported limiting the power of the Crown (insofar that it should be forced to respect the rights of all subjects), and embraced a very scientific approach to the Scholastic tradition.

There's a reason why the USA had laws against race-mixing well into the 20th century, whereas the former Spanish empire has a population that has mostly been mixed for a very long time. This does not by any means imply that the Spanish Empire wasn't racist, but that it already had a sound basis to overcome that. In fact, it was mostly Spain itself (and its colonialist rulers) that enforced the caste-like system (rule of thumb: "the whiter, the better"). The people born in the colonies cared far less. So if, for starters, you bolster the School of Salamanca and its beliefs within Spain itself, that goes a long way to improving things.

Regarding temporal power, Spain also saw the idea of the Aranda Plan raised. After the ARW, the Count of Aranda proposed turning the Spanish Empire into a federal entity, with broad powers of self-governance for the overseas parts. Based off the aforementioned POD of a stronger School of Salamanca, this could end up being carried out. This is bolstered by the fact that Aranda supported free trade within the Empire, treating all parts as equal-- and the School of Salamanca likewise advocated free trade over protectionist policies, as well as the equality of all (Catholic) peoples.

The end result could easily be a surviving and thriving Spanish Empire, which has decisively turned its back on racist ideas, and which has a leading philosophical attitude that is open to the free exchange of ideas. Its policies of racial equality, as well as equality of all parts of the Federal Empire, would no doubt benefit them immensely. This would then force other European powers to either imitate these intelligent policies, or fall behind. Thus, the ATL 19th century would see a consistent decline in racism, and a consistent move away from imperial domination and towards true federalism. Not least because wherever such things would be implemented, they would have positive effects, whereas powers the remained staunchly opposed would only be hurting themselves in the process. They would literally be outcompeted by the superiority of non-racism and federal co-operation over racism and imperialst exploitation.

The School of Salamanca, which extolled the virtues of such free competition (not only of merchants and nations, but also of ideas) from the very start, would no doubt be immensely pleased by this outcome.

I figured my timeline had too late a POD for the School of Salamanca to become more important than it was, but it does have a modified Aranda Plan implemented, so we'll see where that leads!

 

[Wendell]

The U.S. bans slavery in the old Southwest. This ban carries over into the Louisiana Purchase, et cetera, and 1848 is rougher in Europe.

 

[Islander]

Butterfly the Indian Mutiny and the Morant Bay uprising and race relations in the 19th centuary British empire could have taken a different turn, with a European educated class of Indians emerging many decades before OTL.

 

[pattersonautobody]

This needs a POD IMHO that gets rid of Islam (not hard, probably the rise of Islam is up there with the rise of Christianity as one of the most ASBish real turn of events in OTL.)

If this occurs, then MAYBE we get the butterflies to have a stronger Ghana and strong Ethiopia. If they can sufficiently modernize and avoid subjugation (maybe a Mongol screw means China establishes trade with Ethiopia? As for Ghana, that's tougher, maybe kings that better play the Portuguese and Spanish against each other?) then it is possible that they are at least like ATL versions of Turkey by the 19th century. Pretty strong, independent powers with semi-modern militaries and sufficient alliances that prevent European powers from carving up Africa. Perhaps, to prevent their ascendence, European powers prevent them colonizing other African powers and areas. So, what we get are respected African nations which probably end up at the table during WW1 as respectable powers.

If we go even farther back and make Dioscorus die during Chalcedon or something, maybe we get lucky and prevent the Coptic schism. If this is the case, then Ethiopia is considered even more "Byzantine" culturally and this goes a long way in long term perceptions of the people. They will be foreign, but not ultra foreign to Western Europeans.

 

[Zwide]

The Europeans were no more racist than the non-Europeans of this period, everyone was "racist" back then by contemporary standards, it's just they had superior technology so they were able to enact their "racism". Everyone understood back then that civilizations getting stronger and conquering other civilizations was just a fact of life, and no one really disputed this law of the jungle concept which seemed utterly natural. So your first point, that 1800s saw a huge rise in racism and imperialism (as ideologies) is false. Conceptually it was just as bad as the 1700s, 1600s, 1500s, actually probably worse as at least anti-slavery consciousness was developing in Europe post 1800.

It was the power disparity not changing ideologies that drove imperialism in this period. Racist attitudes were no different in this period compared to before until the late 19th century when the Europeans were confident with their colonial empires they built. (meaning that much of the imperialism and slavery had already happened.) That was in fact the golden age of European racism/imperialism, roughly the late 19th, early 20th centuries. That was when they had developed a refined ideology of superiority based on the reality of their hegemony. But before then (early 1800s) they were simply acting like everybody else, pressing whatever advantage they could get for profit (slaves, imperialism, ect). They actually felt less inherent superiority to the people colonized/enslaved than later periods (but they still conquered/enslaved them anyways based on opportunism) The irony is that conditions for these people began to improve (compared to before anyways) AFTER the Europeans began to feel superior in every way.

If you ask whether it was possible to prevent so much imperialism in the 19th century, I guess you can have an earlier Enlightenment or delay the industrial revolution a century for more time for the Enlightenment to spread. But I am pessimistic because ultimately I believe it is required that a society become wealthy and prosperous enough that they develop a moral conscience to what they are doing. Hungry and restless people rarely care about morality. Even if miraculously they discover DNA and human equality ect, it's still hard to prevent the idea that because humans are equal, so they have the right to struggle against each other, and the victor gets the spoils and gets to improve themselves at the expense of the defeated. So while you might see early abolishment of slavery, indentured servitude would still be around, as would imperialism/colonization.

This is true to an extent, but the limited nature of transportation around the world meant that people cared far less about "race" than they did about religion, ethnicity, or nationality. The medieval English probably viewed the Scottish and the Irish much more negatively than they did "black people", who they knew next to nothing about. Similarly, the Japanese probably had a much more negative view of the Koreans than they did of Indians -- who again, they had an extremely limited knowledge of. The Islamic world also viewed race very differently than the colonial Europeans. While non-Islamic Africans were viewed as savages, a Muslim with partial African ancestry was never viewed as being much different from a regular Arab Muslim. Prior to colonialism -- which put people from drastically different parts of the world in the same places and organized them in a hierarchy -- most divisions were based on other factors.

Prejudice and divisions have existed since time immaterial, but they definitely didn't exist in the same forms throughout history.