Through all of the political, economic and social changes made in the
structure and function of western civilization its basic activities have
remained unchanged. The nuclei of civilized life have been cities
concerned primarily with trade, commerce, industry, finance--planned,
organized and administered by businessmen, their professional and
technical associates and assistants. In practice, city centers of wealth
and power have expanded, using the military as the readiest means of
implementing policy. They have occupied and garrisoned the foreign
territory brought under their control. At home and abroad they have
exploited nature, men and other animals in their interest and for their
profit. The trading cities of medieval Europe, the emerging nations of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the colonizing empires of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the industrial European
empires of the nineteenth century devoted their energies increasingly to
expanding into new territory, occupying and exploiting it, and fighting
the wars which pock-marked the ceaseless struggle for pelf and power. In
short, they continued to build up the institutions and to follow the
practices of civilized peoples. This has been true of the millennium
that began with the crusades and has hastened the rise of western
civilization and its extension to planet-wide proportions.
Similar conclusions can be drawn from the life stories of the score or
more of civilizations that rose, flourished and sank into inconsequence
during the previous five thousand years.
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