Renewable Revolution

OCTOBER 23, 2017 BY NATALIE ANDERSON

By Brian C. David
MA Thesis, James Madison University, 2017

Possible portrait of Saladin, from a manuscript copy of ‘Kitab fi ma’arifat al-hiyal al-handisaya’, written and illustrated A.D. 1354, Collection Freer Gallery of Art, Accession Number F1932.19 (at Thesis link)

Abstract: This thesis seeks to uncover and understand the strange historical journey of the Muslim Sultan Yusuf ibn Ayyub, known to the West as Saladin. The historic Saladin was a ruler famous for his successful campaigns against the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, his victory at the Battle of Hattin, and his holding action against the Third Crusade. Upon Saladin’s death in 1193, he became the subject of numerous legends, most of which describe him as a merciful, chivalric, and ideal leader of men. The epitome of what a thirteenth century European noble was supposed to be.

This thesis seek to explain how these legends helped form cultural identities, it will also show how the legends of Saladin evolved over time, through a direct comparison between the legend’s role in the thirteenth century and the twentieth century.

Further, this thesis will show how these legends, rather than being simple justifications for Saladin’s success and behavior, are in fact a vehicle which historians and writers can use to better understand English and French medieval culture, and how those two cultural groups defined themselves as societies. Despite vast cultural changes to England and France over those seven hundred years, the legends would again be used to help define the identity of those two nations.

Not only is this thesis trying to justify Saladin’s success and behavior, these later legends are deeply intertwined with justifications for imperialism and scientific racism. The unpacking of these legends will not only help the reader to better understand who Saladin truly was, but understand the culture of Europe as well.

SNIPPET:

The historians to be analyzed, such as Lane-Poole and Gibb, were heavily influenced not only by Scott, but by an imperialist worldview as well. So if there is a link between modern imperialism and romantic literature, what is imperialism?

Imperialism is defined as the extension of power and influence that one entity exerts on another.²³² Modern imperialism, specifically deals with the domination of the world by European nations during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

While this domination most obviously done through military force, European imperialism employed multiple methods, from economic to social controls, to dominate huge sections of the world throughout the modern period. A major part of imperialism, and where the legends of Saladin become important, is the literature of imperialism. Literary imperialism is a grouping of ideals, attributed to Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that favor European conquest and domination of non-European nations and peoples.²³³

Specifically when talking about the history of modern imperialism in the Middle East, one can clearly see this domination as not just militarily and economically, but culturally as well. British and French imperialist had little respect for any of the cultures that dominated the Levant, and did not believe them incapable of governing themselves.

Thus during the 1920s, they had the League of Nations create the system of mandates, not only to draw up borders for the region, but established imperialists powers to govern those territories as well.²³⁴ This patronizing form of  domination was common, it was done in Africa and Southeast Asia as well, and shows how little imperial governments viewed the native peoples of the regions they dominated. It is in the writings of imperialists that one finds the justification for this conquest and domination, and this is the link between imperialism and literature.²³⁵ This act of justification does not necessarily have to be a conscious one; rather it is the result of education and knowledge of the day reflected in the writings of those who lived in the empire.

This truth about imperialism is what Phillip Curtin discussed in his seminal work on the subject, Imperialism (1971): That imperialism was the means by which Europeans justified the empires they conquered through new industrialized technological means. Britain and France, the subject of this thesis, had the two largest empires during the zenith of modern imperialism, and thus both benefited the most from such writings.

Click here to read this thesis from James Madison University

Agelbert NOTE: European culture has, as you will learn by reading this thesis, a LONG history of pushing propaganda justifying the brutal and murderous subjugation of people who are not Europeans (that is, when said Europeans weren't busy trying to pillage each other) by the deliberate wide dissemination of lofty, high sounding rhetoric and clever claims that they are "doing God's will".

Pro-imperialst propaganda goes way back. It was composed almost exclusively of duplicitous double talk then, and continues to be every bit as bigoted, mendacious and self serving today.

Captalism is the logical socially destructive product of the imperialist world view in that, exactly like imperialsm, it justifies plunder, abuse, cruel subjugation and murder for naked self interest with lofty, high sounding baloney rhetoric about 'freedom' and 'liberty''. The difference is that, unlike under Imperialism, under Capitalism the plundering  of ANYBODY is 'justified' by greed.