Zouaves and Darwin

In the American Civil War, I've always thought that the uniform of the Zouaves -- a flamboyant 'oriental' uniform worn by self-styled elite troops in the early war -- expressed much about the curious intellectual milieu in which Darwin wrote and in which the Civil War was fought. Ironically, even as Confederates debate whether African slaves could be soldiers and fight, their Zouave's uniforms paid homage -- presumably unwittingly -- to Algerians' fighting spirit and martial prowess. (One suspects they didn't think to wonder who the French were copying when they adopted the red bloomers and fezes.)

It's a neat illustration of a larger point about the evolution of European self-image and self- perception, of which Darwin was a significant part. Darwin wrote in the midst of a watershed period for Europeans' view of themselves and their place in the world, most particularly their growing acceptance of a view that history could be seen as a story of 'progress.'

A half-century later, Conrad would remind Europeans that 'this too was one of the dark places in the earth' -- among its other meanings a marker of the European sense that they had emerged from 'darkness' to enlightenment. (Heart of Darkness, whatever other meanings it carried, was also a fairly prophetic reminder of Europeans' ability to devolve into -- mechanized -- savagery).

A half-century to a century earlier, the Ottoman Empire would be a near-equal player in European power politics, with fairly fresh memories of the wars of religion, the Ottoman siege of Vienna, and a shadowier memory of threat/pressure from Islam and the 'East.' 'Progress' would have been an alien concept in a world that was extremely uncertain.

In short, Darwin writes at a very particular time, when 'guns, germs, and steel' had clearly shifted the balance of power fairly decisively toward Europeans, and when Europeans were increasingly aware of the fact.This is important because ideologies of 'white supremacy' become -- briefly -- plausible in a way they are not half a century before, say when Napoleon's army is starving and dying in Egypt, or when European coastal installations are mere-fingernail grip claims to territory in Africa or India.