The Myth of Progress
On Linearity and Inevitability
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The very existence of the term postcolonialism suggests that history progresses linearly, determinedly marching towards the light of progress and reason. More than that, of course, it makes colonialism the defining marker of history. Precolonialism is relevant only in its movement towards colonialism, colonialism is an era proper, and the postcolonial is now. Many postcolonial academics have set themselves staunchly against what is widely referred to as “imperial history,” a linear history that celebrates progress and makes history a stage of which Europe occupies the center.
Any decent history class should teach at least one lesson: history is not, and cannot be, inevitable. As soon as you fall into the trap of reading history as though it’s a story neatly being wrapped up into the ending you know, you’ve lost the plot entirely. The plot and hope, probably, since it’ll then become difficult to look out into the present and remember that anything could happen at any time.
I remember the anxiety that came with my linear reading of history when we studied Pakistan History in middle school. We learned about the Mughal Empire for several semesters, and there was this foreboding feeling that it would all soon unravel. As soon as the chapter on Jahangir started, there was a palpable relief from the class. Here enters the British ambassador. We were now, instead of moving towards the beginning of our oppression, in the story that led to our independence in 1947.
Thomas Roe, the first British ambassador to the Mughal Empire, would probably have been greatly comforted to find out that students in the 2000s would read his mission as a foregone success. For him, however, it was nothing short of an ill-considered gamble. He was representing a court that was falling apart and nearly bankrupt. Three years before Roe arrived in India, King James was so far in debt (almost £80 million in modern money), that he had to sell Crown lands to provide a wedding gift for his daughter. The only people who got on ships to the “new world” were the desperate and the adventurous- indeed, some argued for colonies simply to rid themselves of the poor and unemployed, who were muddying the streets of London with their inconvenient idleness.
Roe arrived at a rich and opulent empire being courted by his competitors, the Portuguese and was armed with a retinue of gifts that Emperor Jahangir might’ve turned his nose up at. He never got the chance, however, because the customs officials were so unimpressed that they advised Roe that his prized objects were cheap and would displease the court.
These bumbling (and desperate) overtures are a far cry from what you might imagine at the beginning of the great British Empire, upon which the sun never set. But it was the case nearly across the board. Spanish colonists wash up on the shore of Turtle Island, covered in sores and abscesses and are saved by curious and confused indigenous people. Strange-looking Portuguese missionaries are reluctantly allowed to preach in Japan because of a few greedy politicians. A filthy Captain James Cook met a few Aboriginal people on the coast of Australia, noticed they didn’t farm, and declared the land empty and perfect as a penal colony. Utterly random, nine times out of ten.
This is important to remember, because it contrasts with the popular narrative of imperial history: civilizing missions born from dreams of a great empire. Europe was faltering without trade, and they needed a new frontier. If a few more ships had been wrecked, if a few more courts had been hostile, it would have all fallen apart. This idea of imperial history is static- it immobilizes us like bugs in amber. If history is chronological and linear, much of the world has been left behind, assigned to the postcolonial bin of history. There is no space in this narrative for more than two groups: those progressing and those historically abandoned. In this sense, we’ve progressed very little past Fanon’s era, in which he described the world as “cut in two,” “inhabited by two different species,” the brightly lit and well-fed settler’s town and the hungry, dark casbah. What was the casbah is now the entire continent of Africa, which we’ve left behind in our popular imaginings, to a story outside of modernity, where death, hunger and violence is normal. Much of the Middle East, too, occupies this space of savagery and death.
Another of Fanon’s terms becomes relevant here: the politics of substitution. “The fantasy of the native is precisely to occupy the master’s place.” With this sort of sharp divide, that is historical, geographical and material in nature, it seems like the only path forward. To view ourselves in the light of modernity, instead. But I think that urge has to be resisted. To focus on the narrative side, we need to move towards a pedagogical understanding of the discipline that decenters linearity and allows more dynamism. It allows more of the story to shine- especially the ambiguous bits, those lingering closer to the margins and boundaries.
Further reading:
It also boggles my mind when people talk about the dark ages as if everyone around the globe was living like that?? While it was only europe living like that.
very refreshing!! the linear narrative of history is truly getting over-rinsed. There is a difference between clock time and constructs of time, and temporalities are multi-dimensional and exist at the same time. imperial/colonial histories are always partial, rising and declining at different times yet we are sold the idea of a clean beginning and end with so much context conveniently left out. thank you for this very digestible and thought provoking read!!