What makes you think the causation went this direction? To me, the Shimonoseki campaign of 1863 and 1864 (and Western imperial mercantalism in general) is evidence that the massive gains through trade happened before norms against stealing from the outgroup. If you’re unfamiliar with the history of the Meiji Restoration then more well-known historical examples include the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Opium Wars.
My actual guess is that this actually happened incrementally over millennia.
I’m not super informed on the history here (feel free to correct or add nuance). But I assume by the time you’ve gotten to the Meiji Restoration, the Western Imperialists have already gone through several layers of “don’t steal the outgroup” expansion, probably starting with small tribes that sometimes traded incidentally, growing into the first cities, and larger nations. And part of the reason the West is able to bring overwhelming force to bear is because they’ve already gotten into an equilibrium where they can reap massive gains from internal trade (between groups that once were outgroups to be stolen from)
I also vaguely recall (citation needed) that Western European nations sort of carved up various third world countries among themselves with some degree of diplomacy, where each European nation was still mostly an “outgroup” to the others, but they had some incremental gentleman’s agreements that allowed them to be internally coordinated enough to avoid some conflict.
(How much of this to attribute to coordination vs technological happenstance vs disease, etc, is still debated a bunch)
I think the conversion of France into a nation-state is representative of the Western imperial process in general. (Conquest is fractal.) Initially the ingroup was Paris and the outgroup was the French countryside. The government in Paris forced the outgroup to speak Parisian French. Only after the systematic extermination of their native culture and languages did the French bumpkins get acknowledged as ingroup by the Parisians. In other words, the outgroup was forcibly converted into more ingroup (and lower-class ingroup at that). This process was not unlike the forced education of Native Americans in the United States.
It is true that the expansion of polities from small villages to globe-spanning empires happened over millennia. But I think it’s a mistake to treat this process as anything having to do with recognizing the rights of the outgroup. There was never a taboo against stealing from the outgroup. Rather, the process was all about forcibly erasing the outgroup’s culture to turn them into additional ingroup. Only after they the people of an outgroup were digested into ingroup were you forbidden from stealing from them. The reason the process took thousands of years is because that’s how long it took to develop the technology (writing, ships, roads, horses, bullets, schools, telephones) necessary to manage a large empire.
There’s a big difference between recognizing the rights of Christians before versus after you force them to convert to Islam—or the rights of savages before versus after they learn English.
I also vaguely recall (citation needed) that Western European nations sort of carved up various third world countries among themselves with some degree of diplomacy, where each European nation was still mostly an “outgroup” to the others, but they had some incremental gentleman’s agreements that allowed them to be internally coordinated enough to avoid some conflict.
It is true that the outgroup was sometimes respected such as the French not wanting to provoke a conflict with the British but the gentlemans’ agreements between European powers were not rooted in universal human values. It was because the outgroup had a powerful army and navy. The European empires enthusiastically stole from each other when they could.
Another tool the Western imperial powers used to coordinate against weaker countries was Most Favored Nation status, which was part of the Unequal Treaties.
Addressing object level:
My actual guess is that this actually happened incrementally over millennia.
I’m not super informed on the history here (feel free to correct or add nuance). But I assume by the time you’ve gotten to the Meiji Restoration, the Western Imperialists have already gone through several layers of “don’t steal the outgroup” expansion, probably starting with small tribes that sometimes traded incidentally, growing into the first cities, and larger nations. And part of the reason the West is able to bring overwhelming force to bear is because they’ve already gotten into an equilibrium where they can reap massive gains from internal trade (between groups that once were outgroups to be stolen from)
I also vaguely recall (citation needed) that Western European nations sort of carved up various third world countries among themselves with some degree of diplomacy, where each European nation was still mostly an “outgroup” to the others, but they had some incremental gentleman’s agreements that allowed them to be internally coordinated enough to avoid some conflict.
(How much of this to attribute to coordination vs technological happenstance vs disease, etc, is still debated a bunch)
I think the conversion of France into a nation-state is representative of the Western imperial process in general. (Conquest is fractal.) Initially the ingroup was Paris and the outgroup was the French countryside. The government in Paris forced the outgroup to speak Parisian French. Only after the systematic extermination of their native culture and languages did the French bumpkins get acknowledged as ingroup by the Parisians. In other words, the outgroup was forcibly converted into more ingroup (and lower-class ingroup at that). This process was not unlike the forced education of Native Americans in the United States.
It is true that the expansion of polities from small villages to globe-spanning empires happened over millennia. But I think it’s a mistake to treat this process as anything having to do with recognizing the rights of the outgroup. There was never a taboo against stealing from the outgroup. Rather, the process was all about forcibly erasing the outgroup’s culture to turn them into additional ingroup. Only after they the people of an outgroup were digested into ingroup were you forbidden from stealing from them. The reason the process took thousands of years is because that’s how long it took to develop the technology (writing, ships, roads, horses, bullets, schools, telephones) necessary to manage a large empire.
There’s a big difference between recognizing the rights of Christians before versus after you force them to convert to Islam—or the rights of savages before versus after they learn English.
It is true that the outgroup was sometimes respected such as the French not wanting to provoke a conflict with the British but the gentlemans’ agreements between European powers were not rooted in universal human values. It was because the outgroup had a powerful army and navy. The European empires enthusiastically stole from each other when they could.
Another tool the Western imperial powers used to coordinate against weaker countries was Most Favored Nation status, which was part of the Unequal Treaties.
Nod. That all sounds about right to me.