The global interpretation of history has been going on for a long time all over the world. It is growing by the day. It is presented as a global explanation of all the problems of today and makes the West responsible for all the misfortunes of all the peoples of the world.
According to this reading, the West would not have become the dominant power on the planet if it had not seized the raw materials and labour of other nations. Its wealth would have started with spices from Asia and gold from America, followed by cotton from India and America, and then fossil fuels from the Middle East. It would have been impossible without the exploitation of free labour - the slaves put at the service of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Britain, the United States. According to the proponents of this theory, the discourse of the West, according to which its abundance is explained by the values of freedom and human rights, is a distortion, the result of a hypocrisy that seeks to conceal the reality of plunder and to impose a discourse of its own. A universalism that says it only serves its own interests.
Hence, they say, Westerners (and more precisely dominant white men) cannot, having exploited and plundered them, forbid the peoples of the world who have been their slaves to benefit in turn from the fruits of growth. Therefore, he must make amends, give back all that he has taken from other nations, step aside, and no longer claim that their values are universal.
According to this reading, the countries of the South must unite, regardless of their political regimes, to claim their due. They must not allow the West to force them to reduce their use of fossil fuels, the conditions for their growth, under the pretext of environmental problems whose sole cause is the West. Nor should they impose values such as those of democracy or secularism, which would be nothing but masks of white ideology.
The strength of this discourse is its coherence: it explains everything. It gives meaning to the struggle of the 'damned of the earth', which Frantz Fanon spoke of in his last book, published in 1961, in the preface to which Jean-Paul Sartre justifies attacks on civilians ('To kill a European is to kill two birds with one stone: to eliminate at once an oppressor and an oppressed'). In particular, this speech illuminates the conflict in the Middle East that would pit colonised peoples against an artificial Western entity imposed in a region where it would have nothing to do'. Similarly, it leads to the idea that in the countries of the West, the descendants of slaves and migrants from these countries should reclaim the wealth stolen from their ancestors and not have values imposed on them that are not theirs. Naturally, some people also come to internalize feminism and anti-colonialism.
But here, as in any globalising theory, much of the above is false: slavery is not an invention or monopoly of the modern West. It existed in all previous societies: in Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, China, Africa, pre-Columbian America. Historically, many peoples believed that their neighbours deserved nothing but to be treated as slaves. Many traders bought, transported and sold slaves long before the arrival of Europeans. Many nations plundered the resources of others. Moreover, abundant natural resources and slavery are not the real sources of the West's economic boom; on the contrary: when resources and labor are free, no one is encouraged to innovate. And it is through awareness of lack that innovation and development have come. It was also the cities in need, such as Bruges, Venice or Amsterdam, that were the first places to develop individualism, personal freedoms, the rule of law and the hope of well-being for everyone.
So we must take a big step and recognise that no one is innocent and that we will not build a happy humanity on hatred, but on the recognition of the barbaric past of each of our peoples and through our commitment to end it by respecting the other. I BGNES
--------------------
Jacques Attali is a French economist, financier and philosopher. In 1991, he became the founder and first head of the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He is the author of novels, essays and monographs, among which the book "The Jews, the World and Money" stands out.
