From time to time, one comes across neat little audio-visual artifacts on the web that offer a different way of understanding a particular historical process. And in some cases, what is being explained is quite different than what is intended.
Over at the mapsofwar.com, they have a 90 second movie that purports to document the historical march of democracy. They explain the purpose of the video as follows:
- Where has democracy dominated and where has it retreated? This map gives us a visual ballet of democracy's march across history as the most popular form of government. From the first ancient republics to the rise of self-governing nations, see the history of democracy: 4,000 years in 90 seconds...!
Some of the historical inaccuracies regarding the material featured have already been covered over at the sociologicalimages blog. What is perhaps more telling are the exclusions, both geographic (e.g., Latin America) and historical (i.e., colonialism apparently isn't important to this story). But what is really egregious is the positioning of the United States as the 'first nation founded on democracy'.
Why? Because the United States isn't even the first nation founded on democracy in North America! The Haudenosaunee Confederacy and its Great Law of Peace predates the constitutional unification of the 13 colonies according to most estimates by at least six centuries. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that some aspects of the American constitution, most notably the separation of powers, were directly cribbed from the Great Law of Peace.
Yet, the idea that contemporary democracy is something that has blossomed out of western Europe and the United States persists. And with this persistence comes all of the dangers of the hubris that accompanies the claim of sole authorship over 'political civilization'.
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