Colonialism, anti-colonialism and the idea of progress

The idea of progress has two related components. The first is that the human species universally progresses, albeit at different rates and to different degrees, from an original primitive or child-like condition, referred to as savagery, through to barbarism, and culminates at the apex of progress in the status of civilization. The second component of the idea of progress holds that human experience, both individual and collective, is cumulative and future-directed, with the specific objective being the ongoing improvement of the individual, the society in which the individual lives, and the world in which the society must survive. For some thinkers it seems logical that what follows from the general idea of progress is the notion that progress is directed in a particular direction, or that history is moving forward along a particular path toward a specific end. History, in this conception, is not merely the cataloguing of events, but a universal history of all humankind, a cumulative and collective history of civilization, that is, History. The notion that different peoples or cultural groups are at different stages of development along the path of universal progress has led some to deem it necessary to try to ameliorate the condition of those thought to be less civilized. This enterprise has variously been known as the "white man's burden," the "burden of civilization," or the "sacred trust of civilization." The general aim of these often violent and overly-zealous "civilizing missions" was to ameliorate the state of the "uncivilized" through tutelage, training, and conversion to Christianity. With European expansion, wherever "civilized" and "uncivilized" peoples existed side by side, there soon developed an unequal treaty system of capitulations, also known extraterritorial rights. In much of the uncivilized world this system of capitulations incrementally escalated to the point that it became full-blown colonialism.