Civilization: The West and the Rest

Ferguson dedicates the fourth chapter to the development of medicine. He links the pursuit of medical research in the West to imperialist exploits abroad, especially in 19th- and early 20th-century Africa, the pseudo-science of eugenics, and World War I. He suggests that colonial subjects received the benefits of civilization in the form of cutting-edge medical treatment. On the other hand, the colonizers subjected the local populations in Africa to forced labor, and concentration camps, and used them as cannon fodder in World War I. 

The zenith of Western empires was between the middle of the 19th and the middle of the 20th centuries when “the West ruled over the Rest” (142). Countries comprising “10% of the world’s land surface governed more than half the world” (144). Empire took on different forms, and domination of others was both formal and informal. It was a “living space for surplus population,” a way to mitigate conflicts and engage in “civilizing” pursuits like missionary work (142). Of all European empires, Britain was the largest, whereas Germany was late in the game.

The global life expectancy between the early 19th and early 21st centuries rose from 29 to 67 years. Ferguson links this improvement to medical developments in the West that were then disseminated around the world including the Western imperial project. In many ways, the rapid colonization of Africa in the late 19th century, its geographic and climatic conditions, and its “uniquely life-threatening repertoire of tropical diseases” made the continent the most challenging testing ground for modern medicine (147). Overall, the victories over deadly or serious illnesses like the plague, cholera, and tuberculosis “were not confined to the imperialists but also benefitted their colonial subjects” (148).

Of all Western empires, Ferguson considers France to be the most enamored with its “civilizing mission” (149). To explain this phenomenon, the author first compares the American and French Revolutions. The former was less violent and shorter than the latter. Also, the French “put equality above liberty,” or “they chose Rousseau over Locke” (154). 19th-century political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville noted this difference when he described the American focus on “liberty of association for political purposes” (154). In contrast, de Tocqueville noted the French “passion for war” and risking one’s own life to defend the state (154). The French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars had a combined battlefield death toll of 3.5 million.

Ferguson seeks to understand “the juggernaut of war” at the time of the Industrial Revolution (157). He examines the work of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz who himself first saw his first battle at age 12. Clausewitz believed that the French revolution “transformed the dark art of war” (157). The Prussian theorist argued: “Even the most civilized of people [the French] can be fired with passionate hatred for each other” (157). Ferguson identifies a relationship between the violence of the French Revolution that spilled into the Napoleonic Wars, the development of war in the 19th century, and the West’s colonial pursuits. For France, the Napoleonic Wars translated into a loss of its overseas colonies and losing a financial war with Britain. The latter was able to use its maritime supremacy to “switch to markets further overseas” (161).

By the middle of the 19th century, France abolished slavery in its empire and sought to transform its colonial subjects “into Frenchmen with the maximum possible zeal” through intermarriage, assimilation, and other “civilizing” initiatives. The French colonial officials believed that “their African subjects were all intellectually [stunted]” (165). French colonial pursuits involved forced labor, an “integral part of the tax system in West Africa,” like the construction of the Dakar-Niger railway which “helped impose European rule” (165, 171). The entire French colonial system in Africa was, however, “threatened with defeat by one lethal foe—disease” (168). West Africa was “known as the white man’s graveyard” while the entire continent became “the ultimate testing ground” for modern medicine (168).

The French colonial project involved late 19th-century laboratories to study tropical diseases on-site inspiring “a generation of European medical innovators” (169). The French banned witch doctors, sought to establish a national health service, and introduced compulsory immunization against serious diseases like smallpox. The colonizers also destroyed mosquito breeding grounds to reduce malaria. These measures led to a reduction in epidemics like yellow fever. At the same time, the French used medical emergencies and science as “a spurious rationale for treating Africans brutally” in places like Senegal (175). As time went on, the French “civilizing mission,” initially based on the notion of universal citizenship, did not mean in practice that many Africans became French citizens (174). Even in the 1930s, French colonies featured racial segregation.

In addition to the eradication of deadly diseases, medical research in Africa was accompanied by the pseudo-science of eugenics and its perceived racial hierarchies. For German colonizers, “Africa was a giant experiment to test, among other things, a racial theory” (176). They turned theory into practice in places like present-day Namibia. Ferguson reminds the reader that only by the second half of the 20th century the notion of “racial hygiene” and eugenics were “finally discredited with the realization that genetic differences between the races are relatively small, and the variations within races quite large” (177). When the local tribes, like the Herero, rebelled, the Germans sought to exterminate them “by shedding rivers of blood” and by using “Cleansing Patrols” (178, 179). As a result, the remaining tribes in question who avoided being killed “were little better than slave labourers” (180). The Germans also engaged in “racial-biological research” and sent skulls back to Germany (180). Scientists like Doctor Eugen Fischer promoted racial theories about the “blood of less valuable races” (180). Ferguson links these African colonial pursuits to the later Nazi perception of the Slavs as a lower race and their land in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as one “to be exploited economically with colonial methods” (189).

Finally, when World War I began, it was not unusual for the European colonial powers to use soldiers sourced from their colonies. After all, this war was “between world empires” and “within Western civilization” (181). More than two million Africans participated in World War I, of which over 33,000 West Africans died (187). For example, the French Colonial Corps used the Senegalese as attack troops ahead of the Europeans “permitting the saving of the lives of whites” (185). The French promised the Senegalese citizenship in exchange for their participation. Paradoxically, World War I was also a “driver of human progress,” leading to advancement in surgery and psychiatry.