THE GREAT OPENING^63ical remains, that the coming of the white man and his fellow-traveling
pathogens (smallpox, influenza, etc.) had brought death to nine tenths
of a Mexican Indian population of perhaps 25 million, no one has
been able to look at the story in the same complacent way.*
These nomenclatorial dissents are a form of expiation and political
mobilization. They aim to delegitimate rather than illuminate. The
target is European (Western) dominion and the gains therefrom. The
purpose: to impute guilt, provoke consciences, justify reparations. We
can do better by asking what happened and why.
The discovery of the New World by Europeans was not an accident.
Europe now held a decisive advantage in the power to kill. It could de
liver its weapons wherever ships could take them; and thanks to new
navigational techniques, European ships could now go anywhere.
Here let us pause a moment to consider the larger implications of
this inequality. I would put forward a law of social and political rela
tionships, namely, that three factors cannot coexist: ( 1 ) a marked dis
parity of power; (2) private access to the instruments of power; and (3)
equality of groups or nations. Where one group is strong enough to
push another around and stands to gain by it, it will do so. Even if the
state would abstain from aggression, companies and individuals will not
wait for permission. Rather, they will act in their own interest, dragging
others along, including the state.
That is why imperialism (the domination by one group of another)
has always been with us.* It is the expression of a deep human drive.
- The one exception to this disenchantment has been a persistent gratification in the
spread of Christianity to a world of pagan religion, human sacrifice, and cannibalism.
Far be it from me to defend these older practices. Still, the historian must note that
those proffered "salvation" paid a high price and might put a different value on the ex
change.
t Some would argue that all of this is patently untrue. The world is composed of a
diversity of nations of unequal size and strength, and one does not see the strong al
ways dominating or exploiting the weak. That is correct; but such forbearance is in
large part conditioned by the balance of power. Nations will join forces if necessary to
prevent hegemony; hence a rational calculus of forbearance. But it is a fragile calculus,
liable to errors of appreciation. Thus it took many centuries to arrive at such an equi
librium in Europe, but twice in this century the balance has been challenged, with
tragic results. The recent Gulf War was also the result of such a miscalculation (based
on misinformation); and the reasons for the huge response were, first, the nature of
the stakes (oil), and second, the conviction that it was important to affirm the princi
ple of what used to be called collective security.
On this equilibrium power model of imperialism, see Landes, "Some Thoughts on
the Nature of Economic Imperialism" and "An Equilibrium Model of Imperialism."