Gandhi, Carpenter, Schreiner and the Crisis of Modern Civilisation at the Turn of the 20th Century

In his published works MK Gandhi frequently refers the concept of 'civilisation'. Gandhi divided this concept into two distinct types: modern and ancient. The former he identified chiefly with western industrial and technological civilisation that had, in his view, reduced the West to a state of 'cultural anarchy', while he viewed the latter far more positively. In his Platonic dialogue, Hind Swaraj, this distinction is drawn very emphatically. Hind Swaraj was strongly influenced by Edward Carpenter's essay Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, in which Carpenter draws an analogy between civilisation and disease. Carpenter's essay rested in turn on the earlier anthropological researches of Lewis Morgan in Ancient Society, a substantial part of which is devoted to the structure of ancient Greek society, and which largely inspired Friedrich Engels to compose his study of the origin of the family. This article explores the implications of these debates on social structure, attitudes to property, and gender relations, which were shared by Carpenter's close friend Olive Schreiner, the proto-feminist author of The Story of an African Farm.