This chapter builds on Elias's comment in the late 1930s that the increased acceptance of Western ideas of civilization in the non-Western world is the most recent phase of the civilizing process that can be observed (Elias 2012 [1939]: 426). Part of the explanation for that overall trend was the role of non-Western ‘civilizing offensives’ to create modern state structures and to alter prevailing orientations to the world order in the attempt to comply with diplomatic practice in the European society of states. The general movement suggested an increasing convergence of European and non-European ruling elites. To return to the seventh theme that was discussed in the Introduction, the whole process was driven by the unequal power relations between established and outsider groups that suppressed but did not remove underlying political tensions. These tensions intensified when global power distributions became more even and as anticolonial forces launched effective challenges to colonial domination and demanded admission into international society on equal terms with the founding European members. The ‘revolt against the West’ (which will be discussed in Chapter 6) led to the globalization of international society, initially reinforcing the belief, at least in the more optimistic liberal circles, that the whole of humanity might one day become united in the first worldwide civilization.

Explaining the social directions that Elias observed requires an extension of the discussion of civilizing offensives that was advanced in Chapter 4. That inquiry focused on how such an exploration could overcome Elias's failure to consider how European states had used their monopolies of power to control non-European regions. The investigation can be taken further by considering how non-Western governing elites used their power monopolies to promote complementary civilizing projects. Their top-down civilizing offensives were instrumental in the globalization of the civilizing process which included the transition from a European to a universal society of states. The following comments may seem to echo Elias's comments in the late 1930s on tangible global trends in the first part of the century. He maintained that, with the ‘spread of civilization’, there was a ‘reduction in the differences both of social power and of conduct between colonist and colonised’ (Elias 2012 [1939]: 423–5).