Essay: Do modernization and westernization go hand-in-hand?

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a common belief that the key to ensuring the success and modernity of a civilization was the incorporation of western innovations and customs. For years many people believed that modernization and westernization went hand-in-hand in ensuring an advanced, powerful nation.  However, these terms are not synonyms. Modernization refers to the process of innovating infrastructure and updating its society to utilize modern, as opposed to old-fashioned, practices, while westernization refers to the process of incorporating European and American customs into a civilization. According to Cyrus Veeser, premodern societies of this time were encouraged to adopt “the economic, political, intellectual, social, and even religious structures of Western Europe and the United States” so as to ensure future prosperity for its people (Veeser 3).  Both Cyrus Veeser and Greg Grandin reflect on the important relationship between westernization and modernization in their novels Great Leaps Forward and Fordlandia, respectively.
The logic behind the belief that modernization and westernization go hand-in-hand stemmed from the fact that modernity was invented in the West with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.  England used its newfound wealth it acquired from industrializing its economy to build the world’s greatest navy and rapidly expanded its empire across the globe, and it rapidly rose to dominate the 19th-century global system economically, militarily, and politically.  Other European nations and the United States soon followed in the British footsteps, and by the 1930s, the modernized states of Great Britain, Germany, and the United States alone supplied two-thirds of the world’s industrial goods (Veeser 5). The concern for those nations that still fell under the “premodern” category became bridging the massive power gap that existed between themselves and the western economic powerhouses.  Many leaders came to realize that in order to defend themselves from western economic and diplomatic influence, they needed to revamp their own infrastructures and mirror the innovations that had been successful in these Western societies (Veeser 8-10).  The process of westernizing a civilization in order to gain respect from superior powers and protect itself against outside influence is called “defensive modernization.” This practice became quite common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as more and more states faced the risk of western exploitation if they did not make efforts to industrialize their own countries.
In the case of Turkey, the question of whether or not to westernize was a matter of “life or death” of the state.  In the early 1920s, the newly developed Turkish state, previously known as the Ottoman Empire, risked absorption by European empires if it did not take drastic measures to innovate its society to reflect that of the more advanced United States or European countries. As the first president of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal realized that if he did not completely renovate the state to fit western standards, it would be subject to outside influences and power absorptions due to its failing infrastructure.
A major focus of Kemal’s westernization of Turkey was to secularize the nation and eliminate religion as a main influence of everyday life. He eliminated the institution of the Caliphate, which had granted the Ottoman Sultan the leadership position of the Islamic faith. Without political ties to Islam, Turkey was now free to move forward as a secular state without the added responsibility of governing the Muslim world (135).  Furthermore, Kemal outlawed Muslim men from wearing the Fez, calling it “an emblem of ignorance, negligence, fanaticism, and hatred of progress and civilization” (137). The wearing of the fez was part of Ottoman “sumptuary laws” which required citizens of different ethnic/religious groups to dress in a way that set them apart from others. To Kemal, it represented the old traditions of the Ottoman Empire, in which different religious groups were divided and separated among society, which was the opposite of Kemal’s goal of homogeny in Turkey.
Continuing with the goal of secularization, Kemal replaced the Ottoman legal system with that of the Swiss civil code, German commercial code, and Italian penal code, explaining that “Turkey was choosing the best that Western civilization has to offer” (Veeser 136).  With the absence of the Muslim legal code, Turkish women now enjoyed unprecedented freedoms. The “new woman” movement of Turkey reflected that of the United States’ at the same time, in which women were granted the right to vote, danced to American jazz, received education and job opportunities, and could dress freely (137).  Other policies he enacted to modernize Turkey and incorporate western customs included rewriting the Turkish alphabet with European symbols, adopting the Western calendar, and investing in a railroad system that revitalized the Turkish economy and assimilated the creation of sugar, tobacco, and cotton plants (141).
Kemal’s attempts to modernize Turkey through westernization were greatly successful, and he is revered as “Ataturk,” or “Father of the Turks.”  His innovations, as observed by the west, “had taken a slice of Asia and tried to turn it into a bit of Europe” (Veeser 123).
Sun Yat Sen, a major actor of China’s modernization movement, also recognized the importance of incorporating western practices into Chinese society.  Sun himself was quite westernized, being fluent in English and having converted to Christianity after years of actively speaking out against the Chinese practices of idolatry.  He had studied medicine at a British university in Hong Kong, and it was during this time that he observed the benefits of maintaining a friendly relationship between Chinese and Western intellectuals (Veeser 94).
Sun blamed the Manchus for corrupting the Chinese government and cutting it off from contact with the West, believing that the Chinese isolationism under the Qing Dynasty set them years behind in modernizing the Chinese economy.  He instead encouraged a healthy relationship with the west, as he saw it essential in revitalizing the Chinese economy. The Chinese modernization policy of “ziqiang” emphasized “Chinese learning as the base, western studies for use” (Veeser 102). Finding a balance between Western and Chinese cultural practices proved difficult in practice, however. In the “international zones” of China’s port cities, in which citizens experienced direct contact with European traders on a daily basis, the Chinese complained about the arrogance of the foreigners and their condescending attitude towards Chinese culture (Veeser 93).
Sun’s respect for western culture is shown through his crediting of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as a major source of inspiration for his Three Principles of the People, which outlined his goals for the modernization of China.  He reworded Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, and for the people” to emphasize the importance of nationalism, democracy, and livelihood (Veeser 102).  However, as time passed and economic and military issues arose between the US, Europe, and China, Sun lost hope in modernizing China through western capitalist means and instead turned to socialism as a defense against western imperialism and hypocrisy.  He justified this socialist movement by claiming it was necessary in order to “emancipate Asia and the down-trodden states from European and American oppression (Veeser 111).  This eventually paved way for the establishment of the Chinese Communist party in the 1940s.  What had started out as a pro-western Chinese modernization movement eventually resulted in turning towards socialism as a means to combat the “evils” of western imperialism.  Sun Yat Sen offers a unique perspective on westernization as he had encouraged it throughout the majority of his influence as modernizer of China, however, he eventually resorted to socialism, the antithesis to western capitalism, as an answer to China’s economic and political problems.
Westernization is not always successful in ensuring the prosperity of a modernizing society.  Automobile tycoon Henry Ford was a staunch believer in using American society as the blueprint for modernization.  In an attempt to establish a rubber colony in Brazil, he sought to bring innovation to the Amazon by replicating small town America in his “Fordlandia” colony.  He wanted to make Fordlandia “an example of his particular American dream, of how Ford-style capitalism — high wages, humane benefits, and moral improvement — could bring prosperity to a benighted land, free of government meddling” (Grandin 348).  He had high hopes that Fordlandia would succeed in becoming the America of the Amazon, however, this proved to be easier said than done.
While it did aesthetically replicate small-town America with “modern wooden houses, a clubhouse where the men played cards and pool, a hotel for visiting guests, a tennis court and swimming pool, a movie theater, and a golf course,” it lacked the proper resources and knowledge necessary to ensure survival in a foreign environment (Grandin 193).  Despite the great biodiversity found in the Amazon, Ford refused to hire experts in botany or plantation management, due to his strange disdain for experts. As a result, there was no individual in Fordlandia that possessed a proper knowledge of how to adapt its agricultural practices and livelihoods to suit the jungle climate in which they resided.  Its population suffered from malaria epidemics, famine, and poor housing conditions in a climate that they had no prior knowledge of survival (Grandin 150).
Fordlandia was ultimately a failure because Henry Ford was so focused on replicating the American town in Brazil that he refused to take into account the environmental differences between Michigan and the Amazon, as his lack of willingness to adapt his American methods to fit the specific needs of the Brazilian ecosystem proved to be disastrous.  Henry Ford’s failure in the Amazon proves that in many cases simply trying to recreate Western society is not enough to modernize a complex civilization with many different needs and priorities and exemplifies that using western practices is not always the easy answer to industrializing a premodern society.
Although not necessarily essential, incorporating western practices into a society proved widely successful in ensuring the modernity and prosperity of a nation, as demonstrated through the modernization efforts of states like Turkey and China.  However, as shown through the failed colony of Fordlandia, modernization is a more complex issue and must be adapted to fit the needs of a particular nation and ethnic group. As a more diverse, complex global society of today, it is important to recognize the significance of cultures that differ from white Eurocentric standards.  Although during the modernization period, western customs may have been viewed as far more superior and advanced than those of Asian, African, or Middle Eastern cultures, it is important to recognize the innovations and significances of other non-European or American cultures and recognize that we can all benefit from incorporating diverse traditions and practices to ensure a well-developed, diverse society.