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This book challenges one of the most pervasive and powerful beliefs
of our time concerning world history and world geography. This is
the doctrine of European diffusionism, the belief that the rise of
Europe to modernity and world dominance is due to some unique
European quality of race, environment, culture, mind, or spirit,
and that progress for the rest of the world results from the
diffusion of European civilization. J.M. Blaut persuasively argues
that this doctrine is not grounded in the facts of history and
geography, but in the ideology of colonialism. It is the world
model which Europeans constructed to explain, justify, and assist
their colonial expansion.
The book first defines the Eurocentric diffusionist model of the
world as one that invents a permanent world core, an "Inside," in
which cultural evolution is natural and continuous, and a permanent
periphery, and "Outside," in which cultural evolution is mainly an
effect of the diffusion of ideas, commodities, settlers, and
political control from the core. The ethnohistory of the doctrine
is traced from its 16th-century origins, through its efflorescence
in the period of classical colonialism, to its present form in
theories of economic development, modernization, and new world
order. Blaut demonstrates that most "Western" scholarship is to
some extent diffusionist and based implicitly in the idea that the
world has one permanent center from which culture-changing ideas
tend to emanate. Eurocentric diffusionism has shaped our attitudes
concerning race and the environment, psychology and society,
technology and politics.
From the British Empire to the WTO, imperialism and its political
economy have turned the world upside down. This volume of original
essays by internationally noted scholars traces the spread of
imperialism and capitalism and demonstrates that globalization is
not a New Millennium phenomenon, but rather one with classic roots
as well as contemporary reverberations.
This volume examines and critiques the work of a diverse group of
Eurocentric historians who have strongly shaped our understanding
of world history. Building upon the foundations laid in his
previous book, The Colonizer's Model of the World, which provided a
systematic overview of the nature and evolution of Eurocentrism,
Blaut focuses in depth on Max Weber, Lynn White, Jr., Robert
Brenner, Eric L. Jones, Michael Mann, John A. Hall, Jared Diamond,
and David Landes. The role of each of these thinkers in generating
colonialist understandings of history is described, and the
fallacious assumptions at the roots of their arguments are
revealed. Working toward an alternative understanding of the
origins of modernity, this clearly written book provides invaluable
insights and tools for students and scholars of history, geography,
sociology, anthropology, and postcolonialism.
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