GIORGIO BORSA

La modernizzazione: problemi di metodo e di contenuto

N. 154

Summary — On November 30, 1989 in the Ugo Foscolo Hall of Pavia University, Professor Giorgio Borsa introduced a debate on the volume La modernizzazione dell’Asia e dell’Africa that was written for him and presented to him by his colleagues and disciples on his retirement as a professor of Pavia University.

The problem of modernization —Professor Borsa said — can be discussed at three different levels: how should modernization be defined, how did the process of modernization originate, what is the euristic value of modernization as a Weberian ideal type. By modernization Professor Borsa meant the transformation of what Fernand Braudel calls La civìlisation matérielle, following the Industrial Revolution. He did not share the view held by most historians that the process of modernization started in Europe well before the Industrial Revolution and coincided with the birth of capitalism, the development of rationalist thought and of the national state.

He also refuted the weberian theory linking the origins of capitalism and therefore of the modern world to the Calvinist ethics. As to the euristic value of modernization concept he believed that most of the fondamental issues of our recent history can be explained by referring them to the process of modernization. It is Professor Borsa’s contention that nationalism among colonial peoples arose not out of the refusal of modernization by the traditionalists, but out of frustration caused among the Westernized and modernizing élites by the colonial relationship, that after causing the disruption of traditional societies prevented the full development of a modern one. The other instance quoted by Professor Borsa was the rise and decline of Communism. The early success of the communist ideology in the developed countries was due to the hope of a better world it raised among the social groups that suffered most from the contradictions and dislocations set in motion by the Industrial Revolution: while in the underdeveloped countries it was looked at as a short cut to modernization. Communism declined and failed not because or its illiberal and undemocratic character, but because it proved incapable of producing real wealth and so much inferior to capitalism as a modernizing force.