Generational Dynamics World View

[Bob Butler 54]

I would argue that it was China losing the Opium Wars while Japan won against Russia.  That put the two countries in opposite roles in colonialism.  China was cemented as oppressed, while Japan became a colonizer.  With these things happening around ‘the early 1900s’ I have no argument with your time frame.

I would say colonialism faded a little earlier than the 1960s.  After World War II the United States offered to forgive Lend Lease if the colonial mother countries opened up their ports.  Everybody took the offer, though it doesn’t seem to take a large part in the history books in why colonialism ended.  That doomed the old colonialism.  It took a while for the old mother countries to release their colonial relationships, for the former colonies to become fully independent, but that was when the big change came.  Colonies were no longer a source of cheap raw materials and a guaranteed market while the mother country held the manufacturing.  The shipping profits were no longer guaranteed to the mother country.  That is the old Industrial Age pattern with respect to colonialism.  The key was the closed ports.  Eventually, the manufacturing jobs went to the former colonies to take advantage of the cheap labor.  The echoes of the old colonial system linger yet.

'Western' and ‘The West’ are really undefined terms.  I’ve no real problem with everyone creating their own definition.  I see several waves, mostly dependent on adapting the Enlightenment values of democracy, human rights and equality.  The British started the original wave, and it spread to their various colonies.  The French Revolution and Napoleon started another wave, but France and much of the area Napoleon held for a time was not a reliable democracy right away.  By the Enlightenment virtues standard, they took a rockier road.  Germany was still autocratic going into World War II, and it took West Germany to really adapt truly Enlightenment values at wars end, and East Germany with the reunification.  Catholic south Europe and South America have a separate and generally slower path than the British or French ones, which I have not really followed that much.  Japan had their reboot after World War II.  Hong Kong has a messy situation.

But you seem to have your own interests, so I wouldn’t expect you to concentrate on the same things.

This conversation has made a little clearer how stepping out of the Industrial Age pattern has several semi independent aspects.  There is xenophobia, the Enlightenment values, the colonial aspect, and each could turn at independent times.  The Reformation had something to do with it, splitting the Catholic south off of the Protestant north and helping to create the Protestant work ethic which became part of the Industrial Revolution which in turn fed off colonial exploitation.  There are many areas to focus on, and you can easily get off either focusing too much or too little.  People focusing on different things would naturally come up with different definitions.