Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #866367 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 228 pages

Review
"This is a hard-hitting but infinitely justified skewering of the standard line on the 'miracle' of the West's rise to hegemony. Blaut begins with the Eurocentric racism of Max Weber vis-à-vis Islam and the Far East, and proceeds methodically down to Weber's most recent heirs, including Eric Jones and David Landes. He demonstrates his points through a close, albeit critical, reading of the works of these eight historians who have attributed Western superiority to ideology, values, capitalism, geopolitics, climate, and technological inventiveness. Blaut sets forth a powerful alternative explanation, one he promises to expand in a forthcoming third volume." --Janet Abu-Lughod, Department of Sociology, New School for Social Research

"This book is a sequel and complement to Blaut's earlier work, The Colonizer's Model of the World, in which he examined and rejected alleged European exeptionalism' and superiority based on religion, race, environment, and culture. Blaut returns to this same battlefield now. One after another, as in a shooting gallery, he not only hits but dissects and completely demolishes the ideology-dressed-up-as-theory of the eight most prominent exponents of Eurocentrism, from the now classic statement of Max Weber to its contemporary best selling versions by Jared Diamond and David Landes. A 'must' for macro sociologists and historians." --Andre Gunder Frank, Visiting Professor of International Relations, University of Miami and Florida International University

"This book dissects and completely demolishes the ideology-dressed-up-as-theory of the eight most prominent exponents of Eurocentrism in world history, from the now classic statement of Max Weber to its contemporary bestselling versions by Jared Diamond and David Landes. A 'must' for macro sociologists and historians." --Andre Gunder Frank, Visiting Professor of International Relations, University of Miami and Florida International University

"This is a significant work, one that is sure to be both widely read and controversial. Blaut contends with some major thinkers whose work has been relatively unchallenged. He takes strong critical positions and backs them up thoroughly." --Ronald H. Chilcote, Department of Economics, University of California, Riverside; editor of Latin American Perspectives

"This book is original...timely, well-written, and accessible. I would recommend it for capstone undergraduate history courses and for introductory graduate-level courses in world history." --Peter Gran, Department of History, Temple University, author of Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History

Review
"This is a hard-hitting but infinitely justified skewering of the standard line on the 'miracle' of the West's rise to hegemony. Blaut begins with the Eurocentric racism of Max Weber vis-Â…-vis Islam and the Far East, and proceeds methodically down to Weber's most recent heirs, including Eric Jones and David Landes. He demonstrates his points through a close, albeit critical, reading of the works of these eight historians who have attributed Western superiority to ideology, values, capitalism, geopolitics, climate, and technological inventiveness. Blaut sets forth a powerful alternative explanation, one he promises to expand in a forthcoming third volume." --Janet Abu-Lughod, Department of Sociology, New School for Social Research "This book is a sequel and complement to Blaut's earlier work, The Colonizer's Model of the World, in which he examined and rejected alleged European exeptionalism' and superiority based on religion, race, environment, and culture. Blaut returns to this same battlefield now. One after another, as in a shooting gallery, he not only hits but dissects and completely demolishes the ideology-dressed-up-as-theory of the eight most prominent exponents of Eurocentrism, from the now classic statement of Max Weber to its contemporary best selling versions by Jared Diamond and David Landes. A 'must' for macro sociologists and historians." --Andre Gunder Frank, Visiting Professor of International Relations, University of Miami and Florida International University "This book dissects and completely demolishes the ideology-dressed-up-as-theory of the eight most prominent exponents of Eurocentrism in world history, from the now classic statement of Max Weber to its contemporary bestselling versions by Jared Diamond and David Landes. A 'must' for macro sociologists and historians." --Andre Gunder Frank, Visiting Professor of International Relations, University of Miami and Florida International University "This is a significant work, one that is sure to be both widely read and controversial. Blaut contends with some major thinkers whose work has been relatively unchallenged. He takes strong critical positions and backs them up thoroughly." --Ronald H. Chilcote, Department of Economics, University of California, Riverside; editor of Latin American Perspectives "This book is original...timely, well-written, and accessible. I would recommend it for capstone undergraduate history courses and for introductory graduate-level courses in world history." --Peter Gran, Department of History, Temple University, author of Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History

From the Back Cover
"This book is a sequel and complement to Blaut's earlier work, The Colonizer's Model of the World, in which he examined and rejected alleged European 'exeptionalism' and superiority based on religion, race, environment, and culture. Blaut returns to this same battlefield now. One after another, as in a shooting gallery, he not only hits but dissects and completely demolishes the ideology-dressed-up-as-theory of the eight most prominent exponents of Eurocentrism, from the now classic statement of Max Weber to its contemporary best selling versions by Jared Diamond and David Landes. A 'must' for macro sociologists and historians." Andre Gunder Frank, Visiting Professor of International Relations, University of Miami and Florida International University

Customer Reviews

After the critique, some positive input
After reading Mr. Byars' review, I will only add that, instead of this book, on the vexing question of why Western countries have dominated the world during the last few centuries [the very way the question is posed is controversial!], I would suggest reading the following books: 1) "Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium" by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke; 2)"The Great Divergence", by Kennetz Pomeranz; 3 - 4): "The world economy. A millennial perspective" (2001) plus "The world economy: Historical Statistics" (2003) by Angus Maddison (a combined edition of these two volumes appeared on December 2007); 5) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation by John M. Hobson, and 6) it also seems interesting the brief book to be published this June "Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History 1500-1850" by Jack A. Goldstone.

And for those looking for a broad framework to understand the past, I would add the following works, whose scope is amazingly global: 1. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 2. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 3. Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 4. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and 5. War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat.

missing the essential points
Some weeks ago, I uttered strong scepticism re. this book of Blaut against the praising review of reader Krul ("Useful and inspiring criticism of Eurocentrism in history", November 14, 2007), on which see my responses to Krul. Reader Krul then suspected (correctly) that I could not have read the book by Blaut, because Blaut - in Krul's evaluation - had refuted all my arguments already. Now I have done my homework and read the book carefully and found all my scepticism justified. While Blaut refutes the more silly arguments of Eurocentrism, he skips or evades or misses all the more important ones. While Blaut pays lip service to Max Weber in the first chapter of his book, he simply did not understand what Weber was trying to do. The late Blaut was a geographer by training and experience. So all those arguments of the "eurocentric" historians that display unfounded theses on climate and geography are more or less convincingly refuted. But those are not the really important ones.

We should keep to the facts first. It is a simple fact, that all great civilizations of China and India etc. have been stagnant or declining at the advent of the "western imperialists". But even this could not prove that those old civilization were unable to become "modernized from within". Only one has to prove, or at least to make probable, the claim that this could have happened. But nowhere is Blaut even near to such a proof.

Blaut rightly ridicules the idea that the Chinese, having invented the bookprinting, should not have books. In fact they had a vast amount of books. But apparently they never had "a culture of the book" as Europe had from around 1500. To have "a culture of the book" is much more than just to have many books. It means to have a public debate on political and scientific issues in the way the West had such a culture during all the years from around 1500 on. If Blaut was able to refute the claim that the Occident was special on this, he did not tell me. The same with science. Once more with a scornful aside he states that of course every great culture - and surely those of India and China - has had science. I never thought otherwise. But once more he is evading or missing the essential point : What do we call science ? To know about plants and animals and dieseases this and that by observations, and to have astrology and alchemy and magics, was everywhere - and surely so in the Occident up to around 1700 - accepted as "science". But from the times of around 1550 CE with Paracelsus and Vesalius and then with Galilei and Kepler and Descartes this concept of science changed in the West. Astrology was left behind eventually by astronomy, and alchemy was left behind by chemistry, and the mathematical sciences made a great upstart with Descartes and Pascal and Fermat and the Bernoullis and Euler and many others. Nothing on this is to be found in the book of Blaut. He simply seems to have missed it.

Even as a geographer Blaut could have been knowledgeable on the philosophical roots of Occidental science. But apparently he wasn't or didn't let us know. This is a common trait of all those "revisionist anti-eurocentrics" : They compare what is common to all advanced civilizations and by this miss important differences. Blaut compares irrigation systems and agriculture and means of transport and housing etc., but ignores differences of philosophy and sciences and the cooperation of "men of letters" and "men of crafts". What I wanted to know is : Where in any place of Asia or Africa was somebody like Galilei or Kepler or Newton ? Where are the likes of Huyghens or James Watt ? Those are the difficult and important questions - and Blaut did not address any of them.

Again and again I am stressing the fact that you can improve the plowshare or the harness or the windmill or the watermill or the irrigation system etc. by "smart and ingenious engineering", but that in this way you never will arrive at a car or an airplane or a radio or a computer. To build such devices, you have to understand nature in depth and to apply math to describe "the laws of nature". Electrodynamics and Quantummechanics are not invented by "engineers", but by mathematicians and experimenters. There is not the slightest hint that anywhere outside of the Western world this has been achieved or was even in preparation before the advent of Western "imperialism". Since Blaut does not even address this problem, I am about sure that he did not even see it. The same applies with modern "Western" forms of administrative law or of scientific economics. And so, after reading the book carefully, I can say with confidence that Blaut did not refute any eurocentric claim of real importance and reader Krul too is plain wrong on this. Sorry.

Once more we should keep to the facts : Only the "western" scientific standards have enabled us to support billions of humans on a level of economic comfort that was unthinkable even in the West only 200 years ago. This - and not "imperialism" - is causing every other civilization in all of Africa and Asia to copy western science and government and economics and medicine etc.. There is no other proven way to prosperity. If you call this "eurocentrism" then you are denying the facts. If any leader in all of the Orient of today needs a difficult medical treatment, he will ask for a western doctor to be flown in from the leading medical schools of the West. See my comments to reader Nathaniel Woods !

And one more point : It is true - as we are told again and again - that the work of Aristotle has been brought to the philosophers of the Occident by the Arabs and Jews from Spain during the 12th and 13th century. But once more we should see two other facts here : The works of Aristotle and Plato and other important Greek philosophers and scientists have been preserved not only in the Arabic world, but in the Byzantine world too, where the Arabs got this stuff first. And then : If the Arabs have been that smart - they knew of the printing press and papermaking from China many years before the West - Why didn't they modernize way ahead of the West ? Because they lacked a dynamical culture ! They simply were not interested in having an "open society" in the sense of Popper. For a short time the door to modernity may have been open in the Islamic world, but then it was shut close again by rulers fearing liberty. And this was more or less the fate of all of the Orient. This too is not addressed in the book of Blaut.

I give the book two stars, because it is well written and stimulating in part and so no complete waste of time. But overall Blaut was not up to his task, and most of the other "anti-eurocentrics" very probably are not either. I would like to be disproved on this and see some really good arguments supported by facts.

Last charge of the PC brigade?
Lets make this short.

European descended historians naturally Europe-orientated. Europe take over the world, naturally quite important. Europe highest and best civilisation world has seen, QED more important than lesser cultures. European culture dominant today, therefore important.

Don't you just despise these PC numbnuts...