Central European Papers 2014, 2(2):8-22 | DOI: 10.25142/cep.2014.024

War and history: Transformation of the concept due to ascending racial ideology and social Darwinism in the 19th Century

Ivo BUDIL

Katedra historických věd, Fakulta filozofická, Západočeská univerzita v Plzni, Department of Historical Sciences, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, University of West Bohemia, Tylova 18, 301 25 Plzeň, Czech Republic, budil@khv.zcu.cz

The concept of race and the phenomenon of racial ideology, strengthened by social Darwinism, led to substantial reassessment of traditional concept of war as historical phenomenon in the second half of the 19th Century. An aberration, morally problematic activity that can be resorted to only under exceptional and morally justifiable circumstances, became a vital principle and integral part of human existence. Not "eternal peace" but permanent "struggle for survival" was to constitute the desirable historical aspiration. That fact influenced markedly the character and course of World War I and principally of World War II. In the following study, I will try to show that the intellectual and cultural environment that allowed origination and expansion of racial thinking and the concept of racial war reflected, to considerable extent, the specific geographical-political situation of the 19th Century. The racial imagination constituted symbolical comment and legitimization strategy of redistribution of global powers in favour of the West.

Keywords: war, race, racial ideology, social Darwinism, Eurasian revolution, symbolic imagination, colonialism

Published: September 1, 2014  Show citation