Civilizing mission

The mission civilisatrice (the French for "civilizing mission"; Portuguese: Missão civilizadora) is a political rationale for military intervention or colonization, proposing to contribute to the spread of civilization, mostly in reference to the Westernization of indigenous peoples. A somewhat similar, more recent phenomenon is the stated goal of spreading liberal democracy, used as a justification for regime changes, including by military force, invasion, and war.

It was notably the underlying principle of French and Portuguese colonial rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was influential in the French colonies of Algeria, French West Africa, and Indochina, and in the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Guinea, Mozambique and Timor. The European colonial powers felt it was their duty to bring Western civilization to what they perceived as backward peoples. Rather than merely govern colonial peoples, the Europeans would attempt to Westernize them in accordance with a colonial ideology known as "assimilation".

Today the whole Araucanía is subjugated, more than to the material forces, to the moral and civilizing force of the republic...

— - Chilean president Domingo Santa María in 1883 on the Occupation of Araucanía.

Intellectual origins

The intellectual origins of the mission civilisatrice can be traced back the Christian tradition dating from the Middle Ages. European thinkers had naturalized social change by using the development metaphor. In the eighteenth century history became to be seen as an unilinear unending inevitable process of social evolutionism with the European nations running ahead. Racists saw the "backward" nations as intrinsically incapable but the more "progressive" thinkers like the Marquis de Condorcet postulated a holy duty to help those peoples "which, to civilize themselves, wait only to receive the means from us, to find brothers among Europeans and to become their friends and disciples".

Evolutionist views survived colonialism. Modernization theorists declared that traditional customs had to be destroyed, traditional societies had to adapt or to disappear.

Development criticism sees development therefore as continuation of the colonial civilizing mission. To become civilized has always meant to become 'like us', therefore "Civilizing" now meant that in the long run all societies had to become consumer societies and renounce their native traditions and habits.

History

French colonial era

The civilizing mission was initially championed by French Republican political leader Jules Ferry. Equal rights and citizenship were extended to those peoples who adopted French culture, including primary use of the French language in their lives, wearing Western clothes, and conversion to Christianity. Despite granting French citizenship to the residents of the "Four Communes" (Dakar, Saint-Louis, Gorée, and Rufisque), most West Africans did not adopt French culture or Christianity. After World War I, "association" replaced assimilation as the fundamental tenet of the colonial relationships. It was thought that French culture might exist in association with indigenous societies and that these autonomous colonies might freely associate with France in the French Union.

Portuguese colonial era

Africa

After consolidating its territory in the 13th century through the Portuguese Reconquista against the Muslims states of Western Iberia, the Kingdom of Portugal started to expand overseas. In 1415, Islamic Ceuta was occupied by the Portuguese during the reign of John I of Portugal. The Portuguese expansion on North Africa was the beginning of a larger process eventually called the Portuguese Overseas Expansion. Concerning the characterization of Portuguese political strategies in North Africa in the context of local and international conjunctures and of the process of Portuguese empire-building in the 15th and 16th centuries, Kingdom of Portugal's goals included the expansion of Christianity into Muslim lands and the desire of nobility for epic acts of war and conquest with the avail of the Pope.

As the Portuguese extended their influence around the coast, Mauritania, Senegambia (by 1445) and Guinea, they created trading posts. Rather than becoming direct competitors to the Muslim merchants, the expanding market opportunities in Europe and the Mediterranean resulted in increased trade across the Sahara. In addition, the Portuguese merchants gained access to the interior via the Senegal and Gambia rivers which bisected long-standing trans-Saharan routes. The Portuguese brought in copper ware, cloth, tools, wine and horses. Trade goods soon also included arms and ammunition. In exchange, the Portuguese received gold (transported from mines of the Akan deposits), pepper (a trade which lasted until Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498) and ivory. It was not until they reached the Kingdom of Kongo coast in the 1480s that they outdistanced Muslim trading territory in Africa.

Forts (fortes) and feitorias ("trading posts"), were established across the coast. Portuguese sailors, merchants, cartographers, priests and soldiers had the task of taking the coastal areas, settling, and building churches, forts and factories, as well as exploring unknown land and sea. The Company of Guinea was founded as a Portuguese governmental institution whose task was to deal with the sices and to fix the prices of the goods. It was called Casa da Guiné, Casa da Guiné e Mina from 1482 to 1483 and Casa da Índia e da Guiné in 1499.

The first of the major European trading forts, Elmina, was founded on the Gold Coast in 1482 by the Portuguese. Elmina Castle (originally known as São Jorge da Mina Castle) was modelled on the Castelo de São Jorge, one of the first Portuguese Royal residences in Lisbon. Elmina, which means "the mine", became a major trading centre. By the beginning of the colonial era there were forty such forts operating along the coast. Rather than being icons of colonial domination, the forts acted as trading posts—they rarely saw military action—the fortifications were important, however, when arms and ammunition were being stored prior to trade. The 15th-century Portuguese exploration of the African coast, is commonly regarded as the harbinger of European colonialism, and also marked the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade, Christian missionary evangelization and the first globalization processes which were to become a major element of the European colonialism until the end of the 18th century.

Although the Portuguese Empire's policy regarding native peoples in the less technologically advanced places around the world (most prominently in Brazil) had always been devoted to enculturation, including teaching and evangelization of the indigenous populations, as well as the creation of novel infrastructure to openly support these roles, it reached its largest extent after the 18th century in what was then Portuguese Africa and Portuguese Timor. New cities and towns were purportedly designed to accommodate Portuguese settlers and their Europe-inspired infrastructure, which included administrative, military, healthcare, educational, religious, and entrepreneurial halls.

Queen Ana de Sousa Nzingha Mbande in peace negotiations with the Portuguese governor in Luanda, 1657

The Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda in 1575 as "São Paulo de Loanda", with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. Benguela, a Portuguese fort from 1587 which became a town in 1617, was another important early settlement they founded and ruled. The Portuguese would establish several settlements, forts and trading posts along the coastal strip of Africa. In the Island of Mozambique, one of the first places where the Portuguese permanently settled in Sub-Saharan Africa, they built the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, in 1522, now considered the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere. Later the hospital, a majestic neo-classical building constructed in 1877 by the Portuguese, with a garden decorated with ponds and fountains, was for many years the biggest hospital south of the Sahara.

The establishment of a dual, racialized civil society was formally recognized in Estatuto do Indigenato (The Statute of Indigenous Populations) adopted in 1929, and was based in the subjective concept of civilization versus tribalism. Portugal's colonial authorities were totally committed to develop a fully multiethnic "civilized" society in its African colonies, but that goal or "civilizing mission", would only be achieved after a period of Europeanization or enculturation of the native black tribes and ethnocultural groups. It was a policy which had already been stimulated in the former Portuguese colony of Brazil. Under Portugal's Estado Novo regime, headed by António de Oliveira Salazar, the Estatuto established a distinction between the "colonial citizens", subject to Portuguese law and entitled to citizenship rights and duties effective in the "metropole", and the indigenas (natives), subject to both colonial legislation and their customary, tribal laws. Between the two groups there was a third small group, the assimilados, comprising native blacks, mulatos, Asians, and mixed-race people, who had at least some formal education, were not subjected to paid forced labor, were entitled to some citizenship rights, and held a special identification card that differed from the one imposed on the immense mass of the African population (the indigenas), a card that the colonial authorities conceived of as a means of controlling the movements of forced labor (CEA 1998). The indigenas were subject to the traditional authorities, who were gradually integrated into the colonial administration and charged with solving disputes, managing the access to land, and guaranteeing the flows of workforce and the payment of taxes. As several authors have pointed out (Mamdani 1996; Gentili 1999; O'Laughlin 2000), the Indigenato regime was the political system that subordinated the immense majority of native Africans to local authorities entrusted with governing, in collaboration with the lowest echelon of the colonial administration, the "native" communities described as tribes and assumed to have a common ancestry, language, and culture. After the World War II, as communist and anti-colonial ideologies spread out across Africa, many clandestine political movements were established in support of independence. Regardless it was exaggerated anti-Portuguese/anti-"Colonial" propaganda, a dominant tendency in Portuguese Africa, or a mix of both, these movements claimed that since policies and development plans were primarily designed by the ruling authorities for the benefit of the territories' ethnic Portuguese population, little attention was paid to local tribal integration and the development of its native communities. According to the official guerrilla statements, this affected a majority of the indigenous population who suffered both state-sponsored discrimination and enormous social pressure. Many felt they had received too little opportunity or resources to upgrade their skills and improve their economic and social situation to a degree comparable to that of the Europeans. Statistically, Portuguese Africa's Portuguese whites were indeed wealthier and more skilled than the black indigenous majority, but the late 1950s, the 1960s and principally the early 1970s, were being testimony of a gradual change based in new socioeconomic developments and equalitarian policies for all.

Portuguese overseas territories in Africa during the Estado Novo regime (1933–1974): Angola and Mozambique were by far the two largest of those territories

The Portuguese Colonial War began in Portuguese Angola on 4 February 1961, in an area called the Zona Sublevada do Norte (ZSN or the Rebel Zone of the North), consisting of the provinces of Zaire, Uíge and Cuanza Norte. The U.S.-backed UPA wanted national self-determination, while for the Portuguese, who had settled in Africa and ruled considerable territory since the 15th century, their belief in a multi-racial, assimilated overseas empire justified going to war to prevent its breakup and protect its populations. Portuguese leaders, including António de Oliveira Salazar, defended the policy of multiracialism, or Lusotropicalism, as a way of integrating Portuguese colonies, and their peoples, more closely with Portugal itself. For the Portuguese ruling regime, the overseas empire was a matter of national interest. In Portuguese Africa, trained Portuguese black Africans were allowed to occupy positions in several occupations including specialized military, administration, teaching, health and other posts in the civil service and private businesses, as long as they had the right technical and human qualities. In addition, intermarriage of black women with white Portuguese men was a common practice since the earlier contacts with the Europeans. The access to basic, secondary and technical education was being expanded and its availability was being increasingly opened to both the indigenous and European Portuguese of the territories. Examples of this policy include several black Portuguese Africans who would become prominent individuals during the war or in the post-independence, and who had studied during the Portuguese rule of the territories in local schools or even in Portuguese schools and universities in the mainland (the metropole) - Samora Machel, Mário Pinto de Andrade, Marcelino dos Santos, Eduardo Mondlane, Agostinho Neto, Amílcar Cabral, Joaquim Chissano, and Graça Machel are just a few examples. Two large state-run universities were founded in Portuguese Africa in the early 1960s (the Universidade de Luanda in Angola and the Universidade de Lourenço Marques in Mozambique, awarding a wide range of degrees from engineering to medicine), during a time that in the European mainland only four public universities were in operation, two of them in Lisbon (which compares with the 14 Portuguese public universities today). Several figures in Portuguese society, including one of the most idolized sports stars in Portuguese football history, a black football player from Portuguese East Africa named Eusébio, were another examples of assimilation and multiracialism. Since 1961, with the beginning of the colonial wars in its overseas territories, Portugal had begun to incorporate black Portuguese Africans in the war effort in Angola, Portuguese Guinea, and Portuguese Mozambique based on concepts of multi-racialism and preservation of the empire. African participation on the Portuguese side of the conflict ranged from marginal roles as laborers and informers to participation in highly trained operational combat units, including platoon commanders. As the war progressed, use of African counterinsurgency troops increased; on the eve of the military coup of 25 April 1974, Africans accounted for more than 50 percent of Portuguese forces fighting the war. Due to both the technological gap between civilisations and the centuries-long colonial era, Portugal was a driving force in the development and shaping of all Portuguese Africa since the 15th century. In the 1960s and early 1970s, to counter the increasing insurgency of the nationalistic guerrillas and show to the Portuguese people and the world that the overseas territories were totally under control, the Portuguese government accelerated its major development programs to expand and upgrade the infrastructure of the overseas territories in Africa by creating new roads, railways, bridges, dams, irrigation systems, schools and hospitals to stimulate an even higher level of economic growth and support from the populace. As part of this redevelopment program, construction of the Cahora Bassa Dam began in 1969 in the Overseas Province of Mozambique (the official designation of Portuguese Mozambique by then). This particular project became intrinsically linked with Portugal's concerns over security in the overseas colonies. The Portuguese government viewed the construction of the dam as testimony to Portugal’s “civilising mission” and intended for the dam to reaffirm Mozambican belief in the strength and security of the Portuguese colonial government.

South America

Portuguese map by Lopo Homem (c. 1519) showing the coast of Brazil and natives extracting brazilwood, as well as Portuguese ships

When the Portuguese explorers arrived in 1500, the Amerindians were mostly semi-nomadic tribes, with the largest population living on the coast and along the banks of major rivers. Unlike Christopher Columbus who thought he had reached India, the Portuguese sailor Vasco da Gama had already reached India sailing around Africa two years before Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil. Nevertheless, the word índios ("Indians") was by then established to designate the peoples of the New World and stuck being used today in the Portuguese language, while the people of India are called indianos. Initially, the Europeans saw the natives as noble savages, and miscegenation of the population began right away. Tribal warfare and cannibalism convinced the Portuguese that they should "civilize" the Amerindians, even if one of the four groups of Aché people in Paraguay practiced cannibalism regularly until the 1960s. When the Kingdom of Portugal's explorers discovered Brazil in the 15th century and started to colonize its new possessions in the New World, the territory was inhabited by various indigenous peoples and tribes which had developed neither a writing system nor school education. The Society of Jesus (Jesuits) was since its beginnings in 1540, a missionary order. Evangelisation was one of the main goals of the Jesuits, but they were also committed to teaching and education, both in Europe and overseas. The missionary activities, both in the cities and in the countryside, were complemented by a strong commitment to education. This took the form of the opening of schools for young boys, first in Europe, but rapidly extended to America and Asia. The foundation of Catholic missions, schools, and seminaries was another consequence of the Jesuit involvement in education. As the spaces and cultures where the Jesuits were present varied considerably, their evangelising methods were very often quite different from one place to another. However, the Society's engagement in trade, architecture, science, literature, languages, arts, music and religious debate corresponded, in fact, to the same main purpose of Christianisation. By the middle of the 16th century the Jesuits were present in West Africa, South America, Ethiopia, India, China, and Japan. This enlargement of their missionary activities took shape to a large extent within the framework of the Portuguese Empire. In a period of history when the world had a largely illiterate population, the Portuguese Empire, was, however, home to one of the first universities founded in Europe - the University of Coimbra, which currently is still one of the oldest universities in continuous operation. Throughout the centuries of Portuguese rule, Brazilian students, mostly graduated in the Jesuit missions and seminaries, were allowed and even encouraged to enroll at higher education in mainland Portugal. The Jesuits, a religious order founded to promote the cause and teachings of Catholicism, had gained influence with the Portuguese crown and over education, and had begun missionary work in Portugal's overseas possessions, including the colony of Brazil. By 1700, and reflecting a larger transformation of the Portuguese Empire, the Jesuits had decisively shifted from the East Indies to Brazil. In the late 18th century, Portuguese minister of the kingdom Marquis of Pombal attacked the power of the privileged nobility and the church, and expelled the Jesuits from Portugal and its overseas possessions. Pombal seized the Jesuit schools and introduced educational reforms all over the empire. In Brazil, the reforms were also noted. In 1772, even before the establishment of the Science Academy of Lisbon (1779), one of the first learned societies of both Brazil and the Portuguese Empire was founded in Rio de Janeiro - it was the Sociedade Scientifica. Also, in 1797, the first botanic institute was founded in Salvador, Bahia. During the late 18th century, the Escola Politécnica (then the Real Academia de Artilharia, Fortificação e Desenho) of Rio de Janeiro was created in 1792 through a decree issued by the Portuguese authorities as a higher education school for the teaching of the sciences and engineering. It belongs today to the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and is the oldest engineering school of Brazil, and one of the oldest in Latin America. A royal letter of November 20, 1800 by the King John VI of Portugal established the Aula Prática de Desenho e Figura in Rio de Janeiro. It was the first institution in Brazil systematically dedicated to teaching the arts. During colonial times, the arts were mainly of religious or utilitarian nature and were learnt in a system of apprenticeship. A Decree of August 12, 1816 created the Escola Real de Ciências, Artes e Ofícios (Royal School of Sciences, Arts and Crafts), which established an official education in the fine arts and built the foundations of the current Escola Nacional de Belas Artes. In the 19th century, the Portuguese royal family, headed by D. João VI, arrived in Rio de Janeiro, escaping from the Napoleon's army invasion of Portugal in 1807. D. João VI gave impetus to the expansion of European civilization to Brazil. In a short period between 1808 and 1810, the Portuguese government founded the Royal Naval Academy and the Royal Military Academy, the Biblioteca Nacional, the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, the Medico-Chirurgical School of Bahia, currently known as Faculdade de Medicina under harbour of Universidade Federal da Bahia and the Medico-Chirurgical School of Rio de Janeiro which is the modern-day Faculdade de Medicina of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

See also

• Blaise Diagne
• Discourse on colonialism by Aimé Césaire
• Dutch Ethical Policy
• Enculturation
• Lusotropicalismo
• "The White Man's Burden" by Rudyard Kipling
• French law on colonialism

References

• Robert Aldrich. Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion. Palgrave MacMillan (1996) ISBN 0-312-16000-3.
• M. B. Jerónimo, The 'civilising mission' of Portuguese colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan (2015) ISBN 978-1137355904.
• Alice L. Conklin. A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa 1895-1930. Stanford: Stanford University Press (1998), ISBN 978-0-8047-2999-4.
• Dino Costantini. Mission civilisatrice. Le rôle de l'histoire coloniale dans la construction de l'identité politique française, La Découverte, Paris 2008.
• J. P. Daughton. An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2006), ISBN 978-0-19-537401-8.
• Michael Falser. Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission. From Decay to Recovery. Heidelberg, New York: Springer (2015), ISBN 978-3-319-13638-7.
• Patrick Manning. Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 1880-1995. Cambridge University Press (1998) ISBN 0-521-64255-8.
• Jean Suret-Canale. Afrique Noire: l'Ere Coloniale (Editions Sociales, Paris, 1971); Eng. translation, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–1945. (New York, 1971).
• Crawford Young. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. Yale University Press (1994) ISBN 0-300-06879-4