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Post by dodger on Aug 27, 2013 15:35:29 GMT
Useful critique of eurocentric historians, 25 Aug 2010
This Will Podmore review is from: Eight Eurocentric Historians (Paperback)
In this brilliantly illuminating book, the late James Blaut, who was Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois at Chicago, examined and criticised books by eight influential historians who presented the standard model of Eurocentric world history - Max Weber, Lynn White, Robert Brenner, Eric Jones, Michael Mann, John Hall, Jared Diamond and David Landes.
Eurocentrism falsely ascribed historical superiority to Europeans over all other peoples. It saw progress as permanent and natural in Europe, but elsewhere as only produced by European rule. Europeans modestly saw themselves as uniquely progressive and rational, with the best ideology, family structure, markets and cities. Eurocentrism grew and gained its validation from Europe's colonialism (and later from the EU). There were four kinds of Eurocentric theory - religious (the notion of Christendom, dominant in the 19th century), racial (popular until the 1940s), environmental and cultural.
For German sociologist Max Weber, the keys to Europe's superiority were race, `Oriental despotism', `the Protestant ethic', and the European mind. Lynn White, the American medieval historian, thought that Europe's inventions, particularly the heavy plough, the horse collar and the three-field system of crop rotation, gave Europe the lead. But these were all invented elsewhere as well.
Robert Brenner sited capitalist development uniquely in late-medieval English rural society, but all its key attributes have been found elsewhere too. Jared Diamond claimed that Europe's environment was uniquely favourable to progress.
White, Brenner, Jones, Mann and Hall all repeated Adam Smith's notion that capitalism developed naturally from (European) feudalism because capitalists removed political blocks to economic progress. They all propounded the colonial myths that Asia and Africa's despotic states and backward religions blocked progress. Yet Europe also had despotic states and a backward religion.
Some saw imperialism as `the expression of a deep human drive' (Landes). They saw colonialism as natural and progressive: Europe's ideas would modernise the east, removing the cause of its poverty - irrational traditions (not exploitation or colonialism). Some thought that Europe gave civilisation, development, modernisation, globalisation and aid; in return the rest gave their wealth.
Blaut contended that Europe's rise began in 1492, because Europe was best placed to grab the New World's riches. But this smacks of geographical determinism. Spain grabbed much of the New World's riches, but didn't industrialise. Britain pioneered the industrial revolution, but Blaut doesn't explain why. The British working class made the industrial revolution; in its struggle for survival, our class made industry, made itself and made history.
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Post by dodger on Aug 27, 2013 15:41:39 GMT
Fine study refuting eurocentrism, 28 July 2010
This William Podmore review is from: The Eurasian Miracle (Paperback)
Jack Goody, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, has written a fascinating book on the growth of civilisation.
He argues that civilisation began across Eurasia with the Bronze Age Revolution (3000-1000 BCE). This urban revolution, starting in the ancient Near East, spread swiftly to Egypt, the Aegean Sea, India and China.
He decries the self-serving myth that we of the west are uniquely dynamic, modern and advanced, as against a static, traditional and backward east. He upsets the conventional view that the nuclear family, individualism and rationality were the west's necessary conditions of development and were unique to the west.
Some caricature the east as having no law, being uniformly collectivist and peculiarly prone to tyranny. Some suggest that private property is the unique engine of progress and that it is a concept unique to the west.
Goody says that the relative advantage between east and west has alternated, as you would expect in an exchange economy. There is not a single, unique, ever-ascending line of European supremacy. In the west, feudalism was a regression, a de-urbanisation, followed by the renaissances of the 12th and 15th centuries.
Christianity inhibited the free intellectual inquiry necessary for the development of science; it denied sculpture and the theatre. Historian Michael Mann claimed that Christianity was `the transmitter ... of the classical legacy'. If so, why, when Christianity was so dominant, were the dark ages so dark?
Historian John Hall contended that Europe was special because it did not have a `predatory or bureaucratic government'. Was Spain's colonial state not both predatory and bureaucratic?
Some write of the `miracle of the west' and `the uniqueness of the west'. Others write of the European miracle, a northern European miracle, even of an English miracle. Goody rightly rejects this self-centred view. There are no miracles.
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Post by dodger on Sept 26, 2013 13:22:32 GMT
Engaging study of renaissances in many cultures, 20 July 2010
This Will Podmore review is from: Renaissances: The One or the Many? (Paperback)
Jack Goody, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, has written a most engaging and enlightening book on renaissances. He contends that all literate societies have times of looking back, leading to a flowering of culture.
Chapter 1 examines the idea of renaissance. Chapter 2 studies Europe's first medical school, the University of Montpellier, and the Arabic and Jewish contributions to the rebirth of that knowledge. Chapter 3 compares renaissances and looks at the growth of secular knowledge. Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 look at the cultural histories of Islam, Judaism, India and China. Chapter 8 sums up.
Goody shows how the Italian Renaissance freed people from the limits imposed by the ruling religion. The Renaissance stands out because of the extent of the post-Roman decline and of Christianity's power. The Renaissance's suspension of belief opened up a more secular and humanistic way of thinking, giving more freedom to science and the arts. The supernatural hindered inquiry into the natural world by claiming that God had already answered all questions. The Renaissance opened up the wider world of pagan or polytheistic Greece and Rome, and allowed independent inquiry and the development of representational arts and the theatre. Religion gave way to science.
Also, autocracy gave way to democracy. As he writes, "Democracy is partly involved with secularity (not inevitably but as a tendency), because the rule of the people usually implies the actuality of a secular rather than a transcendental power."
Their empires led to Europe's states' taking a self-centred view of the world, for example, Arnold Toynbee stated that the Renaissance was `the natural expression of the western spirit'. Goody notes "the non-intrinsic nature of cultural supremacy, that is, it does not attribute advantage or backwardness to a permanent quality of the culture such as genius or spirit or mentality but to factors that can change over the course of time." Drawing a straight line between Antiquity and the Renaissance excludes non-European cultures from the growth of civilisation.
Culture flourished from the growth in manufacturing and international trade. As Goody writes, "Contact with these eastern cultures [Persia, India and China] helped stimulate the changes leading to the Italian Renaissance, that is to a resumption of trade, the rebirth of a wider approach, and a renewal of cultural contacts with the past and with the present." He concludes, "Europe was not alone, nor was it a cultural island."
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