Imperial Conquests Were Less One-Sided Than People Think

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Pioneer Journal

Thanks in part to the 1978 publication of the seminal book Orientalism, written by the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, many people assume that European countries have been the main imperialist powers in history, conquering and pillaging throughout the African and Asian “East,” as well as the Americas.

A whole host of professors of “post-colonial” theory, often with little knowledge of history, have taken his thesis as gospel truth.

But over the past 1,400 years, more often than not, it was the “East” invading “Christendom.”

Fuelled by their conversion to Islam, Arab armies in the decades following the death of Muhammad in 632 conquered vast areas of the Middle East, extinguishing eastern rite Christian communities and pushing the Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire out of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. They also gained control of the eastern Mediterranean islands of Crete, Cyprus and Sicily.

Arab armies crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in 711 and had conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula by788. Moving over the Pyrenees into today’s France, they were stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732.

Arab rule over large parts of Spain lasted for centuries and did not end until the capture of Granada, the last outpost of Arab Al-Andalus, in 1492.

Arriving on the vast Russian plain from the steppes of Asia, the Mongols conquered all of present-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine by 1240 and ruled over its people for more than two centuries.

They moved further west, battling their way into Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Croatia, scoring further victories throughout the 13th century. Many European states became vassals and paid tribute to the Mongol Golden Horde. Infighting among various Mongol leaders finally led to their retreat from eastern Europe.

The Russian re-conquest of their lands began with Tsar Ivan III, who in 1480 formally refused to pay further tribute to the much weakened Golden Horde. Ivan IV in turn defeated the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates between 1552 and 1556, pushing the Mongols eastwards and establishing Russia as a major power.

Meanwhile, the Seljuk Turks had moved into Anatolia in the 11th century, further reducing the lands under Byzantine control. The establishment of the Anatolian Seljuk state began the Islamic period in Turkey.

However, it was the Ottoman Turks who finally put an end to the Byzantine Empire, with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Soon thereafter, Ottoman armies captured the Balkans and southeastern Europe; they would rule over most of Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and parts of Ukraine for centuries.

Even much of Hungary was under Turkish rule between 1526 and 1687, and the Austrian capital of Vienna was besieged twice, in 1529 and 1683.

During this period, the Christian states of Europe only went on the offensive in the Middle East during the Crusades between the 11th and 13th centuries.

But that was, after all, their attempt to recapture the lands, in particular Palestine, that had been the heartland of Christianity prior to their conquest by the Arab caliphates.

Only with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War did the British and French take over much of the Middle East, and they controlled it for only three decades.

From the 16th century on, the tables did turn elsewhere in the world, as western European powers grew in strength and empires like China and Persia weakened.

It was in the Americas, and in South and southeast Asia, where European exploitation really took place, with the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese in the western hemisphere; the British in the Indian subcontinent; the Dutch in the East Indies; and the French in Indochina.

As well, almost all of Africa was partitioned in 1885 by the Belgians, British, French, Germans, Portuguese, and Spanish, and foreign rule there lasted for some 80 years.

Note that these were western European countries. Those in eastern and southeastern Europe were themselves under foreign rule and not involved in colonialism.

It’s easy to be captivated by a grand theory espoused by an academic with a political agenda. That’s why historical facts come in handy. It’s a much more balanced record than Said’s acolytes assume.