The term comes with considerable baggage, setting up a dichotomy wherein people, cultures, and histories are civilized - or not. While idea of civilization has been deployed throughout history to justify all manner of interventions and socio political engineering, relatively few scholars have stopped to consider what concept actually means. Here, Brett Bowden examines how idea of civilization has informed our thinking about international relations over course of ten centuries. From Crusades to colonial era to global war on terror, this sweeping volume exposes civilization as a stage-managed account of history that legitimizes imperialism, uniformity, and conformity to Western standards, culminating in a liberal-democratic global order. Along way, Bowden explores variety of confrontations and conquests - as well as those peoples and places excluded or swept aside - undertaken in name of civilization. Concluding that the West and rest have more commonalities than differences, this provocative and engaging book ultimately points way toward an authentic inter civilizational dialogue that emphasizes cooperation over clashes.
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A 2010 study studied this question.