Product Description

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.

Blaut presents persuasive evidence that Europe was not more highly developed that other civilizations prior to 1492, and had no unique "potential" intellectual, social, or environmental for modernization. He shows that the "rise" of Europe over other world civilizations occurred because of the wealth obtained in early colonialism, mainly in the mines and slave plantations of the Americas. He then argues that the European conquest and exploitation of the Americas resulted from the fact that Europeans were geographically closer to the Americas than were African and Asian maritime-oriented civilizations, and that the conquest itself was facilitated by the great epidemics of Eastern Hemisphere diseases which decimated the populations and destroyed the civilizations of the "New World."

This highly readable, illuminating volume will challenge and inform a broad audience that includes general readers. Disputing fundamental ideas in geography, history, anthropology, and the humanities, it is essential reading for professors and students in these fields.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #261324 in Books
• Published on: 1993-10-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 246 pages

From Library Journal
Blaut (Univ. of Illinois) challenges the notion of "Eurocentric diffusionism": the pervasive presumption that superior Western culture has naturally flowed outward, bringing modernization to the rest of the world. In four chapters the author argues in detail that the historical propositions supporting European preeminence are myths. The conquest of the New World was simply the result of greater maritime accessibility to America, and the rise of Europe, after 1492, was due to the immense wealth of subsequent colonial accumulation. This is a highly analytical, provocative, and scholarly work. While not always convincing in certain aspects, it belongs in libraries serving readers interested in a revisionist view of world history.
- William F. Young, SUNY at Albany Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"...a solid, well-documented and valuable study that will aid in combating Eurocentric prejudice and maligning of Third World countries and peoples." --Indianapolis Peace & Justice "...an engaging book...a clear and accessible style, generally valid assertions, and an explicit sense of geography. The book serves as a valuable foil against a persistent Eurocentric bias in historical interpretation--effectively challenging how we look at the world." --The Professional Geographer "This is a highly analytical, provocative, and scholarly work." --Library Journal "....someone sounding off on a favorite topic can be fascinating, and Professor Blaut, an American, is certainly that. His attack is aimed, with much ammunition, at the theory that there is such a thing as an innate European superiority over the rest of the world and that civilization depends on it." --New Scientist "....Thoroughly researched...Blaut presents arguments in a clear, highly readable, and engrossing fashion....Truly revolutionary....Blaut's greatest contribution is to call on readers to rethink the multitude of flawed Eurocentric assumptions upon which modern scholarly inquiry is based. The potential audience is far reaching and includes academics in the social sciences and humanities as well as informed readers interested in both historical and modern global economic development. The book is certainly appropriate for a graduate level course in non-Western development or the colonial experience." --Growth and Change "A bold, lucid, and thought-provoking work." --Science & Society -- Review

Blaut presents arguments in a clear, highly readable, and engrossing fashion....Truly revolutionary -- Growth and Change

Jim Blaut has written an exciting book that successfully challenges conventional Eurocentric diffusionism. The text is very accessible and is well documented with numerous concrete historical examples. The book is very popular amongst the students that I teach -- Daniel Weiner, Associate Professsor of Geography, West Virginia University

This is a highly analytical, provocative, and scholarly work -- Library Journal

This is a work with truly revolutionary implications, a badly needed recasting of our badly flawed, conventional First World vision of ourselves and the thrust of modern history. This could come to be regarded as a landmark achievement -- Wilber Zelinsky, Professor Emeritus, Penn State University

Review

Customer Reviews

Orientalism-lite: a weak and poorly grounded book...
It is difficult to critique Blaut's book without falling into the trap of expounding the `Eurocentric diffusion' theory oneself. If he was making the point that many historical thinkers at many points in time were guilty of over-estimating the uniqueness and impact of any `European miracle', then I would have some sympathy with his argument. However, his aims are much grander. He wishes to prove that the success of `Western' civilisation was a geographical happenstance, and that the whole canon of European historiography is built on the basis of `Eurocentric diffusion', and he, of course, is the only person to have spotted this.

Of course, Edward Said's Orientalism of 1979 had preceded Blaut's work by some 14 years, but despite the similarity of tone and approach, Blaut disregards Said's work in one sentence with a quick nod of approval - colonial activity in the Orient obviously being unimportant to his central thesis of the importance of the Americas in European growth. This is typical of Blaut's lack of interest in Asian, African or Middle-Eastern colonialism - for example, colonial India does not figure in his exposition at all. Blaut may not have been aware of the historical academic community's attacks on Said's thesis - these seem to me even more apparent in Blaut's thesis than in Said's. John MacKenzie's incisive critique of Said's Orientalism resonates with flaws I perceive in Blaut's book.

Firstly Blaut does not provide any evidence of linkage between `representation' of the `outside' world, as he calls it, in the `Colonizer's Model of the World' and the application of that `representation' in the colonialisation `project'. So what philosophical and historical texts existed in the critical 16th and 17th centuries that exhibited this Euro-chauvinism, and how were they harnessed by the colonisers in their supposed domination of the world? He only provides a brief survey of books from 1850 onwards in an extended footnote. Secondly, he creates a form of Euro-centrism himself in his argument painting a caricature of "the imperial mugger and unresisting victim" Thirdly, he essentialises `european intellectual history' as if it is one body of consistent opinion. An example of his writing shows this: "All scholarship is diffusionist insofar as it axiomatically accepts the Inside-Outside world". Also, he is highly selective about the examples he cites, and those that he cites as examples of `current thinking' are often archaic. An example can be seen in his argument against the `Malthusian Theory' of overcrowding "being propagated today", where he attacks books by Lawrence Stone and Robert Brenner, both published in 1977. He only admits in a footnote that an extensive exegesis criticising these works was penned in the 1980s. His selectivity also extends to his bold statement that all world regions were using the sea as effectively as each other prior to 1492. However, he cannot ignore the evidence of the prowess of the Portuguese in sailing techniques, but he hides this in another footnote. What of Bartolomeu Dias's rounding of the Cape of Good Hope which predated Columbus's voyage by four years? Surely the epic voyage of Da Gama's to Kenya and India in 1497/8 shows that Columbus's route was not a one-off freak happenstance?

John Thornton's book published the previous year gives a much more convincing historical and geographic explanation of European maritime Atlantic successes over the riverine African sailors, arguing that Europe (and the Middle-East) did have world-beating technical advantages in sailing technology and know-how by the mid 15th century.

The final `Saidian' streak in the book is its ahistoricism. Like Said, Blaut is not a historian. He is a geography professor. But how is this book ahistorical? Firstly, it ignores specific causality. What exactly was the flow of precious metals when they arrived back in Europe? Many historians believe that much of the bullion was respent on purchasing china, silk and tea. Surely this would have enriched Asia not Europe, and especially encouraged Asian industrialisation? Also, the countries which reaped the bullion rewards of South America (Spain and Portugal) patently did not defeudalise at the same rate as Britain and the Low Countries. And some areas, such as Italy and Germany did not gain directly from such colonies - and yet they lie within Blaut's uniform definition of `Europe'.

To conclude, Blaut fails to harness his idea of a `Coloniser's Model' to any practical instances of colonialist hegemony, or instances of underdevelopment in the colonies. William Coffey describes Blaut's approach as "spending a great deal of effort constructing a `straw man' which he heroically topples...but his approach may be more properly likened to an attack of (German) panzer divisions." He fails to convince that there is one unitary Europe with one Colonial Model of exploitation for capitalist development. Some analysis of the divisions within Europe is surely required to understand how capitalism developed, and where it found nourishment. The book argues against Weber's ideas of the `oriental despot', the cyclical rather than modernising nature of Asian societies and Weber's racist undertones. But it fails to address Weber's ideas on the famous `Protestant Work Ethic' and the Marx's and Weber's `spirit of the true man'. One year after the publication of Blaut's book. Francis Fukuyama published the highly successful and controversial End of History and the Last Man which investigated these issues - coming to very different conclusions from Blaut.

It is worth noting that Blaut's final book, entitled Eight Eurocentric historians was published in 2000, in the year of his death. It may be that this new edition may address some of the criticisms I level at his 1993 work.

Refuting Eurocentrism
James Blaut, a geographer at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is particularly known for his excellent refutations and polemics against Eurocentrism in economic history. This book, "The Colonizer's Model of the World", is the pinnacle of that oeuvre, together with its companion work Eight Eurocentric Historians.

The first and largest part of the book is devoted to refuting the mythology and mistakes of Eurocentric diffusionism, a body of theories and statements which purport to show that Europe or Europeans were in some way, whether mentally or physically or economically or environmentally or culturally, superior to Asians, Africans and other non-Europeans before the 'discovery' of America. Blaut does this by analyzing systematically the works of many recent and past popularizers of these theories, from the 'hydraulic societies' of Karl Wittfogel to the contemporary racist historiography of Eric L. Jones, and subjecting them to an unsparing criticism for their erroneous assumptions and ignorance of the non-European world. As Blaut shows, China, India, Southeast Asia and even Africa were not lagging behind Europe in any respect before 1492, including but not limited to technology, individual freedom (or lack thereof), and demographics. He also makes many essential geographic points, such as refuting the theories that tropical conditions are inherently unsuited for working or thinking, or that tropical soil is necessarily less fertile, or that Europe relied on rainfall agriculture unlike Asia. The book "Eight Eurocentric Historians" builds upon this part and goes into more detail about it.

The second part of the book is a discussion of the state of feudalism in Europe and elsewhere (about the same level of development except for the Americas, as Blaut shows) before 1492, and the immensely rapid growth, change, and development Western and Southern Europe underwent in the period roughly from 1492 to 1700. Blaut persuasively argues that only the colonization of the Americas, with the enormous influx of wealth and capitalistic production relations resulting from gold and silver mining and plantation work (particularly sugar), can adequately explain this phenomenon. He also explains why it was Europe that conquered America rather than the opposite, the answer being disease, and why it was Europe as opposed to Asia or Africa that did this, the answer being geographical location and advantageous wind patterns for sailing.

Blaut is unsparing and polemic in his writing, occasionally getting preachy, but his case is strong and aims home. He even criticizes otherwise radical authors for their failing in this regard, often legitimately, such as Marx and to a lesser extent Engels, Robert Brenner, Perry Anderson, and others. I do not endorse or support all his critiques on this field, as Blaut occasionally goes overboard, and his endorsement of Martin Bernal's "Black Athena" theory, now discredited, does not aid his case. (It must be noted that this book was written in 1993, and the refutation of this theory in "Black Athena Revisited" (Black Athena Revisited) was published in 1996.) Blaut nonetheless gives good cause also for the radical historians to revise and change the substance of some of the classic Marxist historical view - his book is yet more confirmation that the concept of the "Asiatic mode of production" is untenable and must be discarded, and it also gives more argument for introducting "protocapitalism" as a separate mode of production in between feudalism and Industrial Revolution capitalism, although Blaut himself is not yet willing to do so.

What is most important about this book however is not its historiographical import, but the essential corrective it is to much of the still popular view of world history and the development of Europe and its superior position. From Tarzan to Tintin and from Kipling to the popular view of American Indians, the entire picture of the interactions between Europe and the rest of the world are for many people still unwittingly based on completely incorrect Victorian prejudices and assumptions. This goes not just for the average guy, but even for intellectuals, in fact even for professional historians. And if Blaut's book could make a dent in this vision, it will have made a major contribution to international understanding and historical sense.

Pops a Few European Balloons
This is a good critique of the assumptions made by Eurocentric historians over the years about the superiority of Europe as compared to the inferiority of the rest of the world. Blaut effectively examines and explodes each theory dispassionately but thoroughly. Finally he comes up with his own explanation for European success since 1492: America. Europe's "discovery" of and exploitation of North and South America gave it the wherewithall it needed to overtake and surpass the rest of the world. A well written, well documented assessment which deserves a place beside The Great Divergence and ReOrient, among others.