Western Civilization
Quigley's primary analytical unit — emerging c. 970 CE on the institutional base of feudalism, currently in its third Age of Conflict; the civilization in which both Quigley and the reader stand
Also known as: Western Civilization, the West, Western, Western society
Western Civilization is the producing society that emerged in north-western Europe around 970 CE out of the wreckage of Classical civilization and is the principal case study Quigley uses to articulate his seven-stage model (EoC 132). Uniquely, it has gone through the cycle of instrument of expansion and institutionalisation three times — feudalism → chivalry; commercial capitalism → mercantilism; industrial capitalism → monopoly capitalism — and is therefore now in its third Age of Conflict, dated by Quigley from roughly 1893 (EoC 132). What sets it apart from every prior civilization, Quigley argues, is its open-ended epistemology: it has so far been able to reform or circumvent each institutionalised instrument rather than collapse into Decay (EoC 10–11).
Mixture: The Four Sources
Quigley identifies four cultural streams that mixed to form Western society between roughly A.D. 370 and 750: Classical culture (chiefly in law, government, philosophy, and science), Semitic influence (chiefly through Christianity and the Jewish people, with effects largely in the field of religion and morality), the barbarian Germanic influence (a very diffused stream, chiefly notable in social relations and technology), and Saracen influence (mostly incidental items, also serving as an intermediary in the transfer of further Classical material) (EoC 348). The mixture period of Western civilization was, he stresses, simply a continuation of the Classical period of invasion, and ran straight into a roughly two-hundred-year Gestation that ended around 970 CE (EoC 350–351). The decisive changes happened at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. At one pole was military technology: the slow assembly of the European mounted, mailed, stirrup-riding knight, which by the late eleventh century gave Western society a defensive weapons system that no surrounding peripheral force could break (EoC 349–350). At the other pole was religion: Christianity furnished a new ideology, distinct from both the Classical and the barbarian, for which men were willing to sacrifice wealth, leisure, and safety, and which served to divorce peoples' allegiance from a dying Classical culture and focus it on a new social-religious centre (EoC 348). Quigley locates the geographic core of the new civilization in western Europe, especially France, which had been a peripheral society of Classical civilization and was now the heartland of a new producing society (EoC 148). The mixture, in short, produced a society religiously Christian, militarily feudal, and culturally Latin-Germanic — and it produced it in a region that had been, only a few centuries before, an imperial frontier.
Instrument of Expansion: Feudalism, Then Capitalism Three Times
Western civilization is unique in Quigley's typology for having had three successive instruments of expansion and three Ages of Expansion (EoC 132). The first instrument was feudalism, an organisation that arose in the period before the tenth century when Europe needed defence against Saracens, pagan Germans, and eastern raiders, and which performed its task so well that by 1100 Europe was mounting the counterassault we call the Crusades (EoC 118). Quigley analyses the feudal arrangement as a productive system, not merely a political one: the specialised mounted knight provided protection, the specialised peasant (later legally bound as serf) produced food, and the resulting surplus — paid in produce and labour from peasant to knight, then redistributed through gifts, building, and the maintenance of military and ecclesiastical apparatus — was the engine of expansion (EoC 350–351). Quigley notes the structural ratio: in the late eleventh century one fully-equipped knight was supported by perhaps a hundred peasant households, and this disparity in power was so great that the knight could press the peasant well beyond the cost of protection alone (EoC 350). Within three hundred years, however, feudalism had become a vested institution of hereditary privileges and emoluments — institutionalised into chivalry — and was circumvented (not reformed away) by a new instrument: commercial capitalism, which drove the second Age of Expansion roughly 1420–1650 (EoC 132). When commercial capitalism became institutionalised into mercantilism, it was in turn reformed (not merely circumvented) into industrial capitalism, which drove the third Age of Expansion (c. 1725–1929). By 1930 industrial capitalism had become institutionalised into monopoly capitalism, and the civilization entered its third Age of Conflict (EoC 132). What is analytically remarkable is the variety of mechanisms — first circumvention by a new instrument (feudalism → commercial capitalism), then reform of the existing instrument (commercial → industrial capitalism) — by which Western civilization has prolonged its expansion. For the canonical theoretical framing see the theory of the instrument of expansion.
The Seven Stages Applied to the West
Quigley locates Western civilization across all seven stages of his seven-stage model as follows. Mixture: roughly 370–750 CE, beginning with the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Christianised post-Roman successor kingdoms. Gestation: c. 750–970, the era of the Carolingian synthesis, the Viking and Magyar raids, and the slow consolidation of the manorial-feudal-Christian order. Three Ages of Expansion (an unusual triple repetition produced by repeated reform or replacement of the instrument): 970–1270, 1420–1650, 1725–1929 — see Age of Expansion. Between these are interleaved two prior Ages of Conflict: 1270–1420 (the period of the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, the Schism of the Church, and the breakdown of the feudal order), and 1650–1725 (the long crisis of mercantilism, the wars of Louis XIV, and the long depression of agricultural and commercial prices); and a third — the present one — beginning around 1893 with the institutionalisation of industrial into monopoly capitalism (EoC 132). Stages 5 through 7 — Universal Empire, Decay, Invasion — have not been realised in the Western case. Quigley regards them as still analytically possible but not yet present (EoC 16–18). He cautions, however, that the loss of the ideology of Western civilization — should it occur — will rest, like the earlier loss of the Classical ideology, on overemphasis of materialism and selfish individualism rather than on overemphasis of rationalism or spirituality (EoC 347). The third Age of Conflict is itself the most complex, most interesting, and most critical of the seven stages, marked by declining rate of expansion, growing class conflict in the core, imperialist wars over peripheral markets, and the rise of irrationalism (EoC 137, 152).
What Makes Western Civilization Distinctive
What sets the West apart, in Quigley's analysis, is not its expansion (every civilization expands) but its capacity for reform. Outmoded institutions — feudalism in the high middle ages, municipal mercantilism in the period 1270–1440, state mercantilism in the period 1690–1810 — were discarded rather than allowed to strangle the productive system (EoC 19). Where Classical civilization could not abolish slavery, where Mesopotamian civilization could not reform the priesthood, and where Islamic civilization could not reform the Caliphate, Western civilization three times reformed or replaced its central productive organisation. This capacity for reform, Quigley argues, owes its possibility to a uniquely Western ontology: the belief that truth is continually unfolding, an open-ended epistemology that allows the categories of knowledge themselves to be challenged and revised (EoC 18). "Therefore Western civilization is capable of reexamining its direction and its institutions, and changing both as appears necessary. So in Western history, there was a succession of technological breakthroughs in agricultural practice and in commerce" (EoC 18). Quigley extends this analytic point to a guarded hope for the present: just as feudalism, municipal mercantilism, and state mercantilism were successively discarded, "we may also survive the economic crisis described by Quigley as monopoly capitalism in the present post-1900 period" (EoC 19, foreword by Harry J. Hogan). The corollary, however, is sober. The present crisis is real and unresolved, the reform that would re-launch a fourth Age of Expansion has not yet been visible, and Western civilization could still terminate if its reformist capacity should fail. Quigley refuses both fatalism and complacency: the only honest analytic position is that the past three reforms make a fourth possible but not guaranteed.
Current State and the Modern Crisis
Writing in 1961 (and in his later post-1965 lectures and in Tragedy and Hope, 1966), Quigley placed Western civilization in a late expansion / Age of Conflict configuration. Industrial capitalism had institutionalised into monopoly capitalism by roughly 1930, the rate of expansion was falling, and the characteristic Stage-4 phenomena — declining rate of expansion, growing class conflict in the core, increasing imperialist wars over peripheral markets, irrationality, the rise of mass political movements that mobilise the population without any commitment to the underlying productive reform — were all in evidence (EoC 137, 152). The Age of Conflict, Quigley writes, "is a period of imperialist wars and of irrationality supported for reasons that are usually different in the different social classes. The masses of the people (who have no vested interest in the existing institution of expansion) engage in imperialist wars" out of nationalism and out of fear, while the elites who do have a stake do so to defend their position (EoC 152). In Tragedy and Hope Quigley extends the analysis to the entire twentieth-century power network, treating the world wars, the rise of finance capitalism, the establishment of the Federal Reserve and the Bank for International Settlements, and the Cold War as the late-Age of Conflict manifestations of monopoly capitalism (T&H 19). The Anglo-American power network analysed in T&H is, in this framework, the institutionalised political form of monopoly capitalism in its core area. The reform that would re-launch a fourth Age of Expansion has not, in Quigley's judgement, yet occurred. He neither predicts collapse nor guarantees survival; he simply argues that the West has reformed three times before, and so still has the analytic possibility — though not the certainty — of doing so again (EoC 19). The reader of the early twenty-first century should read this material as still open.
Why Western Civilization Is the Master Case
Quigley used Western civilization, along with Classical civilization, as the principal empirical test of his seven-stage hypothesis (EoC 2). Chapter 10 of Evolution of Civilizations (pp. 333–414) is the longest and most detailed chapter in the book and applies the full theoretical apparatus — mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay, invasion, and the institutionalisation of the instrument of expansion — stage by stage to the West (EoC 348ff). Because the reader stands inside this civilization, Quigley treats it as the natural object of his analysis: the entire argument of EoC is, in effect, a long answer to the question of where the reader's own civilization stands in the cycle, and what it must do to survive. The methodological choice to anchor the whole framework in Western civilization is deliberate. Quigley repeatedly notes that his own and his readers' position inside the civilization is both an analytic advantage (we have richer information about it than about any other case) and a hazard (we have stronger emotional commitments to it than to any other case). The other civilizations in his sample — Mesopotamian, Canaanite, Minoan, and Classical — function partly as controls, allowing the analytically separable features of the Western case to be isolated. Tragedy and Hope then supplies the operational detail of how, in the twentieth century specifically, monopoly capitalism became entwined with the Anglo-American power network, the Federal Reserve System, the international banking establishment, and the postwar international institutions. Together EoC and T&H constitute Quigley's two-step argument: a general theory of civilizations (EoC), and the application of that theory to the twentieth-century crisis of Western civilization in particular (T&H).
Cited in
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 132 Quigley
Western civilization has had three periods of expansion, the first about 970-1270, the second about 1420-1650, and the third about 1725-1929. The instrument of expansion in the first was feudalism, which became institutionalized into chivalry.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 132 Quigley
This was circumvented by a new instrument of expansion that we might call commercial capitalism. When this organization became institutionalized into mercantilism, it was reformed into industrial capitalism… By 1930 this organization had become institutionalized into monopoly capitalism, and the society was, for the third time, in a major era of crisis.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 348 Quigley
The mixture of cultural elements that formed Western society came from four chief sources. One of these was Classical culture… Another was the Semitic influence, which came largely through Christianity… The third influence, that of the barbarians… while the last, coming from the Saracens, consists mostly in incidental items.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 351 Quigley
The period of mixture of Western civilization was merely a continuation of the period of invasion of Classical civilization and lasted from about A.D. 370 to at least 750. It was followed by a period of gestation of about two hundred years.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 118 Quigley
In the period before the tenth century, when Europe needed defense, an organization called feudalism grew up to provide this need, and performed its task so well that European culture was preserved from the assaults of the Saracens, the pagan Germans, and the eastern raiders.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 18 Quigley
The extraordinary distinction of Western civilization is that its ontology allows an open-ended epistemology… As a consequence reform is always possible.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 19 Hogan
Outmoded institutions like feudalism and — in the commercial area — municipal mercantilism in the period 1270-1440, and state mercantilism in the period 1690-1810 were discarded. Similarly, we may also survive the economic crisis described by Quigley as monopoly capitalism in the present post-1900 period.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 347 Quigley
The loss of the ideology of Western civilization (like the earlier loss of the ideology of Classical civilization) will rest rather on the overemphasis on materialism and selfish individualism than it will on overemphasis of rationalism or spirituality.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 129 Quigley
Western civilization about A.D. 970 had almost no city life, but still was a stage in a civilization.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 135 Quigley
Western civilization arose in western Europe, especially in France, which was a periphery of Classical civilization. And on other peripheries of Classical civilization were born Russian civilization and Islamic civilization.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 137 Quigley
As soon as the rate of expansion in a civilization begins to decline noticeably, it enters Stage 4, the Age of Conflict. This is probably the most complex, most interesting, and most critical of all the seven stages.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 19 Quigley
The twentieth-century power network operating within Western civilization is the principal subject of this volume.