Journal Article

CIVILIZATION: COMPARING CONCEPTS AND IDENTITIES

den Boer, Pirn

2024

Overview

This article is a transnational comparative study of the history of the concept of civilization. It starts with a hrief review of the meaning of concepts that historically preceded it, such as civilitas and civilite. Next, it focuses on the appearance of the concept in eighteenth-century England and France and the ways it was used hy different political theorists and polemists, mostly in the sense of politeness. During the nineteenth century in the colonies outside Europe, in Africa, in Asia, and in America, the concept of civilization played a hey role in the discourse of colonization. First it was used from above, hy the colonists, hut later on it was appropriated hy the colonized. At the end of the nineteenth century, civilization acquired one more layer of meaning as it was incorporated into nationalistic discourse. Eventually, the concept also became so internalized that the majority of people in a country could identify their own nation as the supreme form of civilization.

• Publisher: Berghahn Books, Inc
• Subject: Comparative analysis / Conceptualism / Cultural studies / History / Terminology / Transnationalism