For most of recorded history, neighboring countries, tribes and peoples everywhere in the world regarded each other with apprehension – when not with outright fear and loathing. Tribal or racial attitudes were virtually universal, no one group being much better or worse in this respect than any other, and for good reason, given the conditions of life before the modern era.
This is a far cry from the prevailing sentiment of the world now, where an orthodoxy prevails that is summed up by the Latin phrase gens una sumus: we are all of one family. Like all orthodoxies, this one is espoused inconsistently and often hypocritically, but anyone who flouts it risks being condemned as a racist.
It’s not hard to understand why tribalism was universal until a few hundred years ago. Without either modern means of transport (no airplanes, no railways, no trucks or cars) or modern means of communication (no radio, TV, films, internet) most people knew almost nothing about societies other than their own. Their contact with other peoples was mostly limited to warfare, which made them even more hostile to other cultures. The general insecurity of life before modernity reinforced this sentiment: policing, banking, medical care, and social safety nets were almost non-existent, and without refrigeration or trucks, a supply of food was often uncertain. In a dangerous world people clung to their own kind for safety.
How did we get from this mood to the very different modern one? That’s the subject of my A Short History of Relations Between Peoples: How the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism. It’s a fascinating story, and one that, rightly understood, demolishes much of what is now said about matters of race and racism. That’s because the origins, development, and spreading world-wide of our modern anti-tribalist ideology was almost entirely the work of the British and their north American cousins. They are not the villains of the story, as modern radicals want us to believe, but instead its heroes.
The practical impediments to the world’s peoples getting to know each other were largely removed by British and American engineers. They invented the steam engine and then used it to develop the first railways, followed this up by inventing and mass-producing cars and trucks, and finally developed air travel. They pioneered radio, television, films and the internet. The result of all this was that an almost total ignorance of other peoples was turned around. Yet 18th-century Britain did something even more important than this: it began to develop the ideas that led to the modern ideology of gens una sumus.
Why did this happen in Britain? Because it was there that a movement to limit governmental power had begun with the Magna Carta, and continued with like-minded events such as Simon de Montfort’s Parliament, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. More individual freedom brought greater prosperity, and that in turn led to rapidly increasing literacy, and soon to a sizeable reading public. Dozens of newspapers and periodicals were founded, and in their pages ideas about right and wrong in human life and in government could be raised and discussed. Public opinion now became a far more powerful force in human life. Literacy sets the stage for manifestos, petitions, even campaigns concerning things that offend the public’s conscience.
A whole series of British writers and thinkers began to elaborate ideas about the conduct of life, and about the dignity of every human being. John Locke broached the idea that each life had its own rationale, and that none of us are made to be for the use of another. Here was the beginning of what eventually became the modern consensus of gens una sumus. It gained ground so quickly in Britain that there, and there alone, a powerful campaign to abolish slavery arose. By the end of the 18th century, that campaign began to achieve notable successes – but its influence did not extend outside the Anglosphere to Asia or Africa, where slavery persisted for many decades to come.
The crucial idea of gens una sumus spread as British Enlightenment influence in the world increased. As it took hold, it changed the way the British viewed their empire. Like other countries, Britain’s initial concern had been to strengthen its position in the world: if it didn’t expand into other territories, others would, and that would be dangerous. Britain’s great 18th-century debate changed that attitude. Now the British began to see themselves as responsible for the welfare and development of their subject peoples, preparing them for a greater role in their own governance. That change inevitably led to the end of empires. Furthermore, Britain’s industrial revolution was the driving force in the creation of our modern way of life. As this modernity spread across the globe, it too carried with it the ideology of gens una sumus.
Critical race theory wants us to believe that white supremacy and white racism are the source of our society’s problems, but history tells us that CRT has things backwards. It was white, imperial, capitalist Britain that rescued us from the tribal racism that once dominated the entire world. Anti-racism was developed not in the third world, where tribalism is even now a potent force, but among the very people whom CRT advocates despise.
John M Ellis’ latest book, ‘A Short History of Relations Between Peoples: How the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism‘, is published by Encounter Books.
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