ABSTRACT
To many Western observers, the 20th century started out brightly enough. Newspaper commentary, on the turn of the century, looked back on the 19th century and found it good, in current Western terms. Knowledge had advanced, science and material standards had gained, political rights had expanded. And, of course, through imperialism the West was providing needed guidance to the rest of the world, though there was some uncertainty about whether this stewardship was temporary – that is, that other peoples could become civilized in Western terms – or a permanent responsibility. Warnings about new threats to imperial hegemony qualified a few commentaries, but in general optimism prevailed. A whole school of history had developed – called Whiggish, after a nickname for English middleclass liberals – that saw the past as a great seedbed of Western values, with each major stage moving closer to current Western perfection. This was the outlook, indeed, that helped generate the Western civ course in the United States, under the ministrations of James Robinson and others.
