European way to world primacy.
Printed From: History Community ~ All Empires
Category: Regional History or Period History
Forum Name: Early Modern & the Imperial Age
Forum Discription: World History from 1500 to the end of WW1
URL: http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=27304
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Topic: European way to world primacy.
Posted By: fantasus
Subject: European way to world primacy.
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 08:30
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Who else here around is interested in this problem: Europes, and in particular Western Europes way from just one place among others on this planet at about 1500, its rise to domination, political, cultural, technological, scientific and military in the following centuries, first finished in the 20.century? It included a lot of murdering, enslavement, but on the other hand there is very little sign anything like our "modern world" would have excisted by now. Some peoples have studied "special european factors", like religious and cultural (christian or even protestant "ethics"), other geographical factors (here obviously J.Diamond, with some interesting ideas, though I have a strong sense there is many additional geographical/environmental factors to those Diamond prefer). How much if any (as at least I think) insight can such studies of "external" (to humans) factors offer? |
Replies:
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 14:58
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European contributions are mainly in physics, calculus and engineering, but also in though, literature, music, religious and political ideas.
If Europe hadn't had that boom of expansion, conquests and inventions the more likely is that China, India or others had done the same inventions, instead.
There is nothing magical in Europe's golden age. It was just a moment of glory where Europe had the monopoly of development, a demographic surplus and force. A moment that's gone. ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 19:00
None of us seems to want any supernatural explanations. It is allso imaginable that in the very long run any part of humanity could have initiated a scientific Technological civilisation - even more so in some respects than the present. We may object though: Let us take the situation the year 1409: It is hard to see any sign any of the regions You mention, or any other non-european were approaching some "road to modernity" - there was no obvious reason they should do so for foreseeable future (say, millenia). Even when we remember the chinese expeditions to southeast Asia and Africa in the following decades, we should allso have in mind they stopped! allso remember there is nothing "magic" about the last five centuries, not even about the third millenium, so for those fond of alternative history one in which the civilisations 2009 were much like 1409 seems plausible!
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 19:15
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Well, if you visit any department of physics, mathematics or computing in any American university, or if you search for papers, you will notice that MOST scientists today are Chinese, Indians or at least non-Europeans. So, I bet the next millenia arrived too early...  ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 19:40
that is not the issue from my point of view!
I bet whatever their place of origin is, what in the broad sense may be labelled "western tradition" is indispensable part of what they are doing.You may have some point though, if You say that much that was exclusively "western" may today be "global". That is today, and beyond what at least I would call "early modern" even with a stretch!
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 19:48
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Define well what you mean by "westerner". Don't forget that Pytagoras, the first "western" mathematician was half Phoenician, and Euclides was an egyptian mathematician... With respect to "Magna Europa", I believed the dream of glory had ended in the ruins of WWII ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 20:06
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 20:14
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Europe was a crazy, brilliant, prejudiced and downright savage place in the early modern period (I take it we're talking 1450-1750 sorta period?) On the one hand, huge advances in government administration, philosophy, politics, individualism, literature, science, ethics, and so on and forth. On the other hand, huge inequality, frequent wars, frivolity, stupidity, bigotry, heartlessness, religious intolerance and bloodshed, hatred, and maybe worst of all, nationalism. Its a bit silly to judge history from a 21st century morality, but there is few who can look at this period of European history and not be both stunned and amazed by the giant leaps in the arts and sciences, but horrified by the colonialism, slavery and brutal wars. I would agree with Pinguin that WWI brought the 'European Dream' crashing down to reality. WWII might have finished the job off. We'll probably need another war to cop ourselves on and admit the future is in the far east, not some crusty English or French university  ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 21:23
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 28-May-2009 at 23:20
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I should have said Nationalism had it roots then. (Formation of the nation states, national identity et. all)
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Posted By: JRScotia
Date Posted: 29-May-2009 at 17:34
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Parnell, I think you have to name those huge leaps in government administration, science, politics and ethics during that period, because I just plain don't see them. The inequality, wars, stupidity, bloodshed and religious intolerance, yes. But it seems to me that most of the advances in the areas you say took place then, in fact by far took place in the modern era. There were some advances but not all that dramatic. Improvements in medicine--nil. Representative government--nil. Rights of the individual--nil. As far as why Europe was able to dominate, it's the same reason, in my opinion, that the Mongols dominated a large part of the world (ignored by most of us of a European tradition) earlier. Military conquest--pure and simple. Sometimes the greediest prevail.
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Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 29-May-2009 at 18:58
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One must wonder what is meant by "world domination" and just exactly when was the moment! Of course, there is also quite a tinge of cultural chauvinsm when in it comes to elucidating the type of power exercised to merit the label. Can one truly speak of European domination in the 16th century and if so how then does one classify the Ottoman Empire? Even during times that we would now call periods of "primitive" communication, the world exhibited a surprising degree of "connectiveness and exhange" not only in ideas but also in technology. For example, today we tend to identify "mass production" with the Europe of the 19th century, nevertheless, the essential wherewithals for such economic activity was underway in China long before in enterprises such a porcelain making. If one scours the Archivo de Indias, one encounters lengthy legislation against the "importation" of silks (aside from traditional sumptuary laws), since their import was having a negative impact on domestic textiles! One has to understand that events in the 19th century that paralleled the growing militarization of Europe can not be thrust into prior centuries, specially in other areas of the globe where military traditions had also forged cohesive states.
As another poster indicated "it's a bit silly to judge history from a 21st century morality", but then it is also a bit silly to ascribe colonialism, slavery, and brutal wars as an unique European phenomenon. Just exactly how did the Ming and Qing dynasts consolidate their position on the Asian continent or for that matter what was the nature of Islamic trade in the Indian Ocean in the 16th through 18th centuries?
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 29-May-2009 at 20:26
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It strikes me that this question about the "morality" of european expansion - the questions about their wrongdoings or rightdoings - do belong to an "area" of history separated from the question about its background and in particular the questions wether geographical and environmental factors were important or not. Ethics and morality are important issues, and I think the "external factors" are too. I find it "risky" to discuss both. At least one then should be carefull about when to discuss the one or the other, and if there is seen some distant relationship to be aware excactly what that supposed relationship are about. |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 29-May-2009 at 23:03
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Why are you so surprised?
As a Latin American, descendent mainly of Europeans, I agree absolutely with the general image about the European expansiòn we have here.
The invasion was not only immoral, but it was a genocide. The colonial crimes of Europe are endless: killings, explotation, robbing (metals, lands), subjugation, you name it.
Even more. The development of Europe, the industrial revolution for instance, was based in the cash flow generated by silver, suggar, tobacco, slave trade, saling of opium, etc.
That's the hard truth.
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 30-May-2009 at 00:30
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 30-May-2009 at 05:14
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If you ask me, our modern world is the effect of the accumulation of knowledge in the form of sciences, technology, arts, history and general know how. That's has been a continuing on since prehistory to these days, and haven't stopped at all.
Europe was just an step into the development of manking. Today we are in a global society, thanks to the ambition of Europe, that allowed that escenary become real. ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 30-May-2009 at 08:10
Excactly that idea of "automatic" continuing "accumulation" and "progress" an all times and places should be doubted, investigated, discussed and perhaps at least not as easily accepted as is often done (by You, it seems, and others). Should I make a guess we would come closer to truth if we accepted there has been a lot of such "processes" going on. Sometimes periods of accellerating "accumulation" in one ore several of the fields You mention, sometimes great leaps - some times leaps the other way - loosing some parts of the "heritage". I agree that there must have been a lot of ambitions in parts of european societies but not that this in any way fully solve the questions.
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Posted By: Constantine XI
Date Posted: 30-May-2009 at 08:39
This is actually totally untrue. A few examples will suffice. Immunisation was implemented during this period, resulting in smallpox vaccinations. That alone is a large improvement, never mind all the others. Didn't the Dutch republic spawn during this period? It was no modern liberal democratic state, but by the standards of the time it was a dramatic improvement over most forms of government so far as democracy is concerned. The Bill of Rights in England also was a very substantial improvement over previous standards of individual rights.
Military might was a product of other factors within the European territories (technological innovation, advances in the organisation of the nation state, economic organisation and management). The successful European empires did not succeed due to a simple greedy->military might->domination formula. This is a vast oversimplification, and is untenable. ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 30-May-2009 at 20:44
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Simple explanations may sometimes be recommendable, but in this case I find the "greediness tesis" a poor one - because.1: It is a big question whether europeans at large are more or less "greedy" than peoples from other parts of the world. 2: but if it is so, it does not explain their succes very well - after all not all greedy ones get what they want! 3:In addition it leaves us with more questions (if we for a moment accept it´s true):what makes this difference in greediness? So we find this "answer" is not an answer after all, but rather some "I don´t care why". |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 30-May-2009 at 23:23
Progress can only be measured with precision in terms of advancements in science and technology. There you simply count the number of discoveries, theories, medical procedures and inventions, and there you go; you have an objective way to of it.
In arts is a bit tricky. What is progress in arts? Going to barroque to reaggetton, or from Da Vinci to Picasso, doesn't mean very much a progress to me at all. In any case you can measure progress when somebody invents perpective or the art of fugue.
In social order, you can measure progress when you observe codified laws, democracy or other advancements, but that's hardly easy to judge. Less in fuzzy topics like religion and theology.
Now, if we are talking about "those" kind of progress, Europe has contributed quite a bit. However, that continent shouldn't forget the root of Europe are in places like the Middle East and Egypt, and that include an ethic system and religion from ancient Israel: Christianism. Also a large part of the rough material that fueled Renascence, the Age of Discovery, the Scientific and Industrial Revolution, and even the Age of Reason, are based in developments from outside Europe: from India, China and the Muslim Middle Age.
Europe has its moment of glory (and misery, too) from 1492 to 1939. Today the European age is over. Welcome to Globalisation.
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 30-May-2009 at 23:49
Sorry, had passed over your post. Constantine pretty much summed up what I was going to say. I think it all has to be brought back to as it happened in its time. Its just pointless and counter-productive when we try and evaluate events and reform through the prism of a 21st century morality and thought process. Two ir-reconcilable divergences of thought here to be perfectly honest. And don't forget John Locke wrote his little pamphlet during this era. And this was also the preceding century to the greatest events of American and European History - the American and French Revolutions. The writings (Principally of the Philosophes in France) cannot be overlooked. And the greatest literary and educational achievement of all time was the original encyclopédie, first published in 1751. So to say that these years have little relevance to the modern world is, in a word, wrong.
Ah, but what makes a country capable of consolidation? Its one thing to blow the path in front of you, another to build roads, levy taxes and execute justice. Government administration and the advances herein (Thomas Cromwell being one of the greatest practical thinkers/doers in this regard) made this more possible than it ever was before. Colonys were a testament to the success of western administration, as unglamourous and dull as that rightly sounds  ------------- |
Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 30-May-2009 at 23:57
Thats a good issue to raise. Human beings are equally evil, murderous and vengeful. I tend to think we're equally greedy as well. Personally speaking I think the only thing between us (Humanity) and an Hobbesian State of Nature is government. Take that away and we'd be hacking each other to death with blood on our hands, crazed to death with power and thoughts of evil. Well perhaps not as dramatically as that, but something like it. It is the victory of the enduring power of the nation state that ensured the Europeans rose to dominance. It was the victory of constitutionalism and Liberalism that ensured that governments and peoples arrive at a grand compromise where both some liberty and safety are proportioned so as to ensure the maintenance of both (IE, Under a supreme state with complete authority in all things we would have complete safety and no liberty, under a weak government or no government we would have complete liberty, but no safety) ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 00:02
It may not be that easy to determine and measure even such "advancements".
And I will add I find little evidence there has been any steady "rate" of progress during all times even in such a limited sense.
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 00:30
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Well, it seems you are European, so of course you would tend to exagerate a bit the importance of Europe for the world. It is true that Europe has been very important for everybody in the last centuries, but Europe is not the only thing that exists under the sun.
For instance, since the 1900s, United States have been as much important as the whole Europe, and by itself. Most of the changes of the twentieth century were produced in the United States, from the first flight to the moon landing, from the atomic bomb to computers, from cartoon movies to 3-D animation, from Jazz to Rock, from McDonalds to MTV. Everything has been developed in the United States.
Today there are large parts of the so called (by Europeans, of course) Third World that have been developing fast. Places like Korea, China and Latin America are getting there.
With them a shift in global culture with happened, and is happening. From an Eurocentric worldview to a more global way of looking at the world.
It that framework, Europe will be still important, but it won't be the center of the cake anymore.
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Posted By: JRScotia
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 01:45
This is actually quite TRUE. From Wikipedia: "The process of vaccination was discovered by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner - Edward Jenner in 1796, who acted upon his observation that milkmaids who caught the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox - cowpox virus did not catch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox - smallpox ." Almost 50 years after the period that was specified. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine#cite_note-0 -
Ok. You're right. It wasn't NIL. Only ALMOST nil. There were two instances in all of Europe of some small improvement. Actually my first statement was that there were tiny improvements, and that is the case. But they were very, very small. In no way can I see any dramatic improvements in those areas. Literature, sure. Art, absolutely. Some rather dramatic inventions in navigation and warfare, yes. But others that were mentioned, ethics, politics, medicine were amazingly stutified.
I disagree and since you offered no proof that I was wrong, I won't bother with listing the huge lists (conquering several contenents anyone?) of why I say I'm right. They were indeed greed and might based conquests and not based on some intrinsic superiority. ------------- |
Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 03:06
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Parnell: Amen Penguin: First: China and Korea have never been considered Third World. China would have been "Second World" until the fall of the Soviet Union. Ditto for North Korea. South Korea would have been classed as "First World", along with Japan, as both were allied with the "West". Both China and Korea were civilized states long before the First Inca ever knotted a Quipu, or heard a tune on a chasqui. The forerunner state to the Chinese Empire may predate the Peloponnesian War, but Korea does not, though a Korean state can be traced back to 200 A.D., and perhaps 300 B.C. More importantly, only South Korea can rightly be considered First World. The DPRK must be considered "Third World" since the fall of the USSR, as there is no "Fourth World" category. Second, the U.S. may be geographically North American, but it is European in the cultural and philosophical sense. Third, note that the language of choice for the rising Asian nations is English, and that the preferred accent in China,. Singapore, Taiwan, and India is "Acquired English" as opposed to American Standard.By the way, if you google "Raffles Singapore" And "Sarawak Raja" you will discover that not all European colonialism was negative as far as the descendents of the "colonized" are concerned. JRScotia: In re: "They were indeed greed and might based conquests and not based on some intrinsic superiority." Wouldn't you consider superior organization skills, superior logistical projection capabilities, and a mental framework that allows one to analyze a situation and forge alliances among competing peoples as some measure of cultural superiority in that time and place? The Spanish conquest of the Americas was testimony of their military might. Indeed, even on the European continent, their land forces were invincible until 1627 (Breda?), ergo the reason the United Provinces and Britain developed into maritime powers. As for the British, their colonial wars were hardly walkovers, and just to cite the Sikhs as an example, the military technology of both sides was comparable as regarded armaments. British superiority was organizational and logistical, rather than technological. It was hardly simple might, but rather knowing how to best employ and sustain the forces they had. Just some thoughts. ------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 03:18
Something wrong with the definition, then. Don't you think?
So, you mean "The West" is the same than gringo-allies? Curious definition.
  Well, that shows clearly you don't have a clue about quipus or chasquis. The first quipu ever found was in Caral. And Caral is from 3.000 B.C., just a century after Egypt and a long time before Chinese civilization as we know today appeared.
Besides, Chasquis didn't play tunes when running, only a small trumpet to call the attention to the next chasqui when arriving to the Tambos.
Indeed. Don't you have countries to put in the "Fifth world" cathegory?
Well, if you consider Americans to have a culture ...
. French complain for Eurodisney and McDonalds.
So, what that means? I bet English is preffered because it is a simple language. A lot more than writting in chiken steps.
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Posted By: malizai_
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 03:28
Wasn't there a precedent with the Turks who were inoculating way before? Vaccination being just another form of inoculation. ------------- |
Posted By: JRScotia
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 04:02
I suppose IF you consider Turks European. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but I don't.
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Posted By: JRScotia
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 04:10
I wasn't saying they had no relevance only that there wasn't as much progress in some areas as you were indicating, Parnell. As for road building and executing justice--are you acquainted with the history of the Americas? (Sorry, I really don't mean that to be rude) 1. The Aztecs for example had amazing architecture so I'm none too sure of European superiority or at least large superiority. 2. Justice? If you were an indigenous American or a member of say the Irish population during that period, you might question the very existence of such a thing. (Cromwell? He was certainly a "doer" but do you really want to try to link that with JUSTICE? Rather reminds me of a recent conversation about Edward I) Europeans did do some things very well in those things but others I don't see any superiority in. Admittedly those improvements starting to come soon after, some no doubt started during that period. But I see huge improvements in how to conquer other peoples (military) and I'm in serious doubt about the road building issue but it'll take some research on my part--not something I know off-hand. I don't see any kind of superiority of culture. ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 08:50
No, perhaps it is not? Some times it may be beneficial not to discuss everything under the sun or every period.
Yes, why not a discussion about the way to US world primacy, though such a discussion should not be placed in the early modern subforum I think. Perhaps a discussion of the geographical factors that may have had contributed and to some degree perhaps directed this way. [/QUOTE]
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 12:32
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JR, I like our little tete a tetes. You've a good tone, its full of bombast but there's a hint of reasonability to it as well. Quite fun really. My issue wasn't necessarily anything to do with road building persé, its the administration, government administration, that made such mighty leaps and bounds in the era. Roadbuilding being one simple example of which. Along with canals. And the general provision of infrastructure. And when I say justice I'm not passing a moral glance in that direction at all, I'm talking about the authority of the state. I'm using an essentially neutral tone to describe how the power of the state increased along with its authority, and the beginnings of a state governed by the rule of law began to emerge. The actual laws are irrelevant, the fact that they were beginning to be enforced throughout both the conquered and the homeland with some sort of regularity and uniformity is a testament to the power of the state. Which is why Europeans rose to be dominant. The Ancient Romans built their Empire through the power of their laws and systems of justice - for their statebuilding. The ancient Greeks built it through the power of innovation and the glory of their individuality and their arts. But they didn't build an enduring Empire like the Romans. Thats were the key to understanding European supremacy comes in, I think. ------------- |
Posted By: JRScotia
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 15:45
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Thanks, Parnell. I try to keep hold of some degree of reasonableness. And I also enjoy our little discussions. Listen, if you can't bring passion to history there doesn't seem to be a point. At the same time, even people you intently dislike were actual people and most of them had both a good and a bad side. Some are harder to see than others though (*cough cough* Oliver Cromwell). I still don't see the huge leaps in administration that you see, but maybe I'm missing something. And I see what you're saying about legal administration, but I think you're still saying something that isn't the case. they were beginning to be enforced throughout both the conquered and the homeland with some sort of regularity and uniformity Now maybe what you mean by regularity and uniformity isn't what I mean. To me that means that it's equally applied to the conqueror and the conquered. Parnell--you know that isn't what happened. Indios got equal treatment? Irish? Catholics? Ummmm No. They didn't. If that's not what you meant, I'm not quite sure what you are getting at. Maybe that they were effective administrators? That they were capable of administering bits and pieces scattered all over the world might be some increase in administrative capabilities, I suppose. But it does seem to me to be more administration in bits and pieces rather than large scale, organized administration with consistency throughout. Edit: In fact, the administrative weakness of the early modern nation state may well have been a good thing considering its often lethal intent. Otherwise, for example Cromwell's campaign of ethnic cleansing would have been even more effective than it was. Like I said, I can see some big jumps, I just think some of them came a bit later than you're saying.
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Posted By: gcle2003
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 19:52
I think you're mixing up your Cromwells. Parnell said Thomas. ------------- |
Posted By: gcle2003
Date Posted: 31-May-2009 at 20:04
It was coined in the fifties but in France I think so I think it was originally Troisième Monde. You're correct that it meant the non-aligned countries - those who were neither Communist or Capitalist (Soviet bloc, American bloc if you like). On the whole they did tend to be poorer countries, but the term included, for instance Yugoslavia, Egypt and India - Tito, Nasser and Nehru being the three most influential leaders of it - and there were also poor committed countries, including at that time western-allied countries like Pakistan, which was First World. NB: As the presence of Tito indicates, a country could be actually communist and still be third world if it was independent of the Soviet bloc.
Anyway it wasn't meant to be an economic term at all. Confusion arose later, especially with the end of the cold war. ------------- |
Posted By: JRScotia
Date Posted: 01-Jun-2009 at 14:10
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So he did. I had to go back and check. I beg your pardon, Parnell. I did read rather carelessly. THOMAS Cromwell was an interesting man but history making as to organizing government? Perhaps, but not that I see really. Certainly King Henry regretted his execution. I've read quite a bit about him and I don't recall his have done anything to improve the basic makeup of the governance. I've always been more impressed with his patronage of the humanists and there were some remarkable advances in the area of philosophy during this period.
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Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 01-Jun-2009 at 15:17
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The French demographer Alfred Sauvy (1898-1990) coined the term Tiers-Monde [Third World] on 14 August 1952 in an article published in L'Observateur, that closed with this summational phrase:
"...car enfin, ce Tiers Monde ignoré, exploité, méprisé comme le Tiers Etat, veut lui aussi, être quelque chose."
This paraphrasing of the Abbe Sieyes had the intent of identifying the aspirations of the dispossessed, and Sauvy intentionally referenced the political and economic aspirations of the new and emerging nations of the world in terms of popular discontent with the international status quo and economic development. Sauvy was active in the UN bureaucracy from the 1950s and his classification caught on and was modified several times by later commentators, including the facile distinction between Capitalists, Communists, and Neutrals. The 1955 Bandung Conference did not originate the classification and its sponsor states (Burma, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and Pakistan) sought to instill a socio-political cohesiveness among new and emerging states so as to weaken their reliance on Europe and the United States. "Third World", as with Barbara Ward's distinction in Rich Nations and Poor Nations (1962) touched more upon conditions of daily life and social justice than politics. True, the setting within the context of the Cold War proved confusing but from the perspective of the United Nations it was a fortuitous "neutral" term through which to address the aspirations of "development" absent the entanglement of ideology.
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 01-Jun-2009 at 17:27
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OK, so the term "third world" is of french origin, and I got it wrong. Still I have the impression many, also from "non-european" part of the world adopted the term.
Perhaps there now are more significant divisions? Any suggestions?
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Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 01-Jun-2009 at 17:58
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drgonzaga: Amen! Penguin. There were no Incas three thousand years ago. Indeed, if I remember my Prescott and Garcilaso de la Vega, the Incas did not rise until after 1000 A.D. Remember, there was one one Inca at a time. As for "Chinese chicken steps"; Chinese writing was the perfect instrument for governing an Empire. It could be read by anyone, ragardless of their local language, though it was long the sole provinence of the literatti. Even the Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese adopted forms of Chinese writing as their own. Later the Koreans and Vietnamese developed their own writing systems, but neither gained any acceptance until the early 20th century. English is the language of choice in Asia because the prominence of Anglo-American culture within Western culture is universally recognized there, and respected. Furthermore, English is the language of modern business. It is not a simple language to learn, as you should well know. Basic, spoken Chinese is easier to learn than Spoken English, unless you are tone deaf, but written Chinese is much harder. (East Asian languages get harder once past the basics, because there are no pronouns, per se. Nouns are used as pronouns, and the noun you use to refer to either yourself or others depends upon the relationlship between you.) Spoken Mandarin Chinese, or Hanoi dialect Vietnamese, is as elegant as high class Castillian Spanish or Parisian French. The real point here is that the most dynamic socio-economic cultures in today's world are learning English as a second language. ------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: Al Jassas
Date Posted: 01-Jun-2009 at 21:54
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Hello to you all
Well I have been looking into this problem for years. Up to this point I think there are three events and three movements that made europe what it is today.
The events are the peace of Augsburg, peace of Westphalia and of course the discovery of America.
The three movements are the university movement of the 14th century, the exponential growth in trade in the 16th and 17th century and the institutionalisation of the state from the 16th century onwards.
Why I chose these, well for the following reasons.
Augsburg finally distroyed the last vesteges of papal authority and legitimized the existance of faiths other than the catholic faith. From now on half of europe was outside the pope's authority and the other half under papal anger. Popes would never be strong again.
Wesphalia established for the first time the idea of independent nations and internal independent of nations. Now, war was not fought on a whim of the ruler but through diplomatic means. States were now free to develope themselves with relative freedom of fear that their independence would be infringed upon. Of course this didn't happen immediately but it was a step non the less.
As for America well it is self explainatory.
For the movements, it is from the university that the renaissance came, it was from university that reformation movements begging from the Lullards and ending with Luther began. It was in the university where european science developed and then prospored. It was from the university that the great ideas of philosophy were forged. One can trace all the great ideas that shaped europe to this often forgotten and unrecognised institution.
Trade replaced religion as the prime mover of europe from the 14th century. However with the discovery of America, the demise of the papacy and the realisation tht people want the guy who gives them food not sell them superstition trade got the kick start it needed. Europe was poor, extremely poor. 95% of the people were either serfs, tenants or simply beggars. Religion was the only way to conrol these people and because of it those nations lost to the pope. European monarchs found it more profitable for them and their subjects to support trade because the more money you had the stronger militarily you were and the nearer to the pope's heart and later to the people's heart. As wealth poured in europe everything took off. Industry, science, which you coul not navigate oceans without, technology, how to reach to the destination faster than your competitor etc.
Finally states were ruled in the fasion of germanic tribal chiefs of old. This lead to nothing. However seeing that countries with a bureaucracy like Venice and the Ottoman empire prosper and achieve massive wealth and weild huge power and influence both on their subjects and outside made european monarch mouths water. The history of europe was always plagued by the struggle between nobility and the monarch. Now it was time to get rid of them and instead put people of humble origins but great skill at the helm. Richelieu and Mazarin did in France and it made France the wealthiest, strongest and most advanced nation in France. seeing this Britain followed and with one advantage, an active parliament. By the 1763 Britain became what France was 100 years ago.
Al-Jassas
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 00:22
Excellent post. ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 08:33
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Well, Parnell and Al -Jassas. The later of You have thought about this for years, but can You perhaps, before reading further, guess what my objections may be like?
I think it may be in next post...
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 08:48
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My criticism against the later explanations is not that they "are wrong", though I think there is a lot more that made Europe take a lead. Rather what I find unsatisfactory is that is is the "traditional historians way" of (non) explaining! Late historical events and actions "explained" by earlier ones, the way You may hear year after year at (some) univerrsity lectures. In a certain way this may not be completrely unacceptable, as long as we remember we only in a shallow sense has any explanations at all - and that this kind of explaining best fit minor events and details (which we all should love as true historians!) There may allways be at lot in a deeper sense "unexplainable" in the life of humans (history), but I think if we are not to continue in what seems to be close to "cirkles",it seems obvious to include external(relative to humans and their artefacts) factors. In a way this idea are perhaps in some way a "return", since even the "father of History", Herodotus, were interested in a lot other topics than pure human affairs and included them- though perhaps in a way we would not do today.
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 11:02
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At my university lectures we aren't given the 'grand narrative' spiel. I tend to rather ineloquently manage that by myself. Even the question 'European way to world primacy' would invoke 2,000 objections and many puzzled faces if put before most of the history academics in my college!
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 11:26
No doubtg You are right about that.Perhaps we even may go as far as to say "the grand narrative" is "the big evil" for some. To some extent I even understand them (or You?) , that there may be a danger of completely "eliminating" human independent action and give a false impression that everything and every detail can be set on some sort of formula. Perhaps I think it is also possible to go to far in the "opposite" - to occupy oneselves exclusively with details, not even daring to even think there might be something else. I have this little suspicion (partly from experience) that some part of academia are there.
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Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 13:02
In the scheme of things, a "grand narrative" within historiography is akin to the false elitism the old European bourgeois derived from the "grand tour": it is a superficiality that obscures true character. Now do not let such an observation upset because there is a parallel discussion at the root of Historical Study and the urge toward utilitarianism. Is Historiography a Science or an Art?
Now the original proposition behind this thread, the European way to world primacy, is heavy with cultural chauvinism and strongly premised upon 19th century Materialism. As one may understand from any reading of J. A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study, all is matter of Voltarian "definition of terms". I raise the ghost of the old Frenchman because he himself stands at the very door of History as a tool for explanation [yes, one can forcefully assert that Thucydides attempted the same a millenium earlier, but...] yet, historiography as with all grand creation myths is essentially a narrative on apocalypsis--let us say it speaks of the Twilight of the cultural gods!
OK even that is a heavy Romantic flourish but the world is stranger than we can ever imagine it, no matter how hard we try to fit it into a comfortable model. Yet, part of the delight in historical study is the perusal of the grand designs positing explanations for the accidents of transience through time. For example, Gibbons elaborated a masterly treatise on Rome with the simple object of underscoring how Christianity was the vehicle that brought the Empire down; however, this intellectual premise or assumption has more to say about the historical milieu of his time than any Roman perception or force. Therein the caveat. For in the writing of history, no matter how great the insight, one also carries the assumptions and prejudices of one's own being.
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 15:05
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History is a science and an art, I'd tend to believe. It is an art in that its partly a construct of the eye of the beholder, and its a science in that its partly objective. I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive.
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Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 16:03
Well Parnell, an old colleague of mine used to torture his students with this succint summation of what constitutes Science:
Science is the concerted human effort to understand, or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding. It is done through observation of natural phenomena, and/or through experimentation that tries to simulate natural processes under controlled conditions.
Is there an objective conclusion in History? Let us use shorthand, will A in the presence of B always result in C? Thus, in terms of the human condition do certain events taken in sequence provide a predetermined conclusion that is unalterable and static? Yes, we can move back into the philosophy of history and notice the constructs of Vico (whom Marx plagiarized) and understand the impact of ideas on the writing of history, for example we are still in thrall to the concept of progress being the dynamic catalyst behind interpretative flow, but then are we not simply entering the realm of abstraction? In that sense, both Art and Science have a common beginning--we imagine and then postulate--but we can never declare certainty in terms of historical study for there we commit the fallacy best known as scientism. As the Franco-American intellectual, Jacques Barzun, iterated: "Scientism is the fallacy of believing that the methods of Science must be used on all forms of experience and, given time, will settle every issue." (From Dawn to Decadence, p. 218).
I would ask you to juxtapose Gibbons and Macaulay with much of what passes for History today. The Fall of the Roman Empire remains a pleasure to read, it is vibrant and literary; likewise the portraits penned by Macaulay, which are agreable to read. These men provoked curiosity, perhaps they were a bit glib on little points, but they were wonderfully dramatic in promoting a sense of understanding. Again Barzun: "But in the popular conception of Science, small and large are of equal moment and [this] superstition has been transferred to History, where a rational Theory of Error would legislate just the opposite: attend most carefully to the big points and judge the importance of details by their consequences." (Ibid. p. 569-570).
In History, there can be no "final report" on what "really happened" (pace Barzun) because interpretative narrative does not constitute theory nor inevitable conclusion. In essence, no matter any nationalistic sensibility, Napoleon Bonaparte was as much a "beast" in the 19th century as Adolf Hitler was to the 20th. The only difference, the time of the former is more removed from us than that of the latter. So much for all of those that dream "world primacy" as far as History is concerned.
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 20:20
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In the scheme of things, a "grand narrative" within historiography is akin to the false elitism the old European bourgeois derived from the "grand tour": it is a superficiality that obscures true character. Now do not let such an observation upset because there is a parallel discussion at the root of Historical Study and the urge toward utilitarianism. Is Historiography a Science or an Art?
Now the original proposition behind this thread, the European way to world primacy, is heavy with cultural chauvinism and strongly premised upon 19th century Materialism.
For example, Gibbons elaborated a masterly treatise on Rome with the simple object of underscoring how Christianity was the vehicle that brought the Empire down; however, this intellectual premise or assumption has more to say about the historical milieu of his time than any Roman perception or force. Therein the caveat. For in the writing of history, no matter how great the insight, one also carries the assumptions and prejudices of one's own being. [/QUOTE]
Ok, if You are right and some big bad "grand narrative" obscures some "true character", then let us know more about this other truth (the truth of history or one of them?)!
I will leave the mentioned authors because partly very limited knowledge, partly because I see their approach as rather different form ideas about "external" factors influencing historical effect.
Another thing:Is it desirable, or avoidable to study anything as "central"? (as in the usual talking about "eurocentrism", "americacentrism" etcetera).If so then Gibbons "sin" for instance seems to be to study Rome at all.
Perhaps the whole historian discipline ends up being a sort of "therapy"?
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Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 21:28
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Fantasus inquired:
"Ok, if You are right and some big bad "grand narrative" obscures some "true character", then let us know more about this other truth (the truth of history or one of them?)!"
An interesting query and a self-contained connundrum akin to the Johanine declaration placed in the mouth of Pontius Pilate: "Truth? What is truth? Is your truth greater than mine?" Let us take a typical bon mot from the Victorian era--"The sun never sets on the British Empire." Nifty and encapsulating is it not? No matter that it is an actual plagiarism of an earlier declaration: "El imperio en que nunca se pone el sol"--the empire upon which the sun never sets--said of the dominions held by Philip II of Spain. Interestingly enough, it was such an acceptable descriptive that a literary work of social criticism during Spain's Golden Age bluntly declared: The sun has set in Flanders! British intellectuals said much the same consequent to World War I as far as the British Empire was concerned. The confidence of different ages eerily echoed and resounding with an identical fate! Is it truth or a perverse coincidence? History as art would weave a grand narrative on the fate of all imperial pretensions--it was a heady theme among historians in the early decades of the last century.
By the way, in a rather weird way, history is therapy! That thread is ably caught in the catch phrase coined by Santayana: "Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Way back at the start of modern historiography, the Swiss art historian, Jacob Burckhardt, warned:
"Our moral criticism of past ages can easily be mistaken. It transfers present-day desiderata to the past. It views personalities according to set principles and makes too little allowance for the exigencies of the moment."
As can be attested by the very threads of this forum, many are intent on denying the identity of the past by rendering repeated moral judgments that do little to give life to that past and express little more than mea culpas in the present by painting black what was incomprehensible to that past.
Here is a question: Is not the loss of confidence the harbinger of decadence within a cultural milieu?
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 21:39
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In the study of history there are historical facts - unchallenged basic narrative structures that are left unchallenged. Such as the invasion of Poland in 1939, that Barack Obama was elected President in 2008 and even that the invasion of Ireland by the Normans was authorised by the papacy. These are indisputable historical facts. (One could also argue that they only remain indisputable because no-one has bothered disputing them. Although the papal bull which authorised the Norman invasion of Ireland used to be considered to be a forgery) The a,b,c argument is a little stale - let me ask you a question. If four people approach a mountain from four different angles, does the mountain assume four different shapes simply because the four people see four different shapes to the mountain? Or is there one shape which is not immediately apparant from one vantage point? I believe there is such a thing as objective fact/truth. Human beings are incapable of seeing objectivity with their own eyes, but they get close. Better historians with the use of the tools in the historians trade strike even closer. All history is a mere approximation of the past. It cannot ever be considered to have a complete understanding of it. But through the investigation of the traces left behind for us we can get close to actually understanding what happened. On the other hand if you believe all events of the past are mere construct of our imaginations then I think we run into an intolerable situation, where there are no accurate or negative statements, just statements made by constructs of our consciousness. Relativism is, in a word, nuts. The epistomological problems which philosophers put before the historians in the 60s often approached intellectual masturbation, just another example of the vain and irrelevant intellectual frivolities of that era. Macauly and Gibbon were fine narrative historians (I have Gibbon's Decline and Fall in my bedroom, tend to read a chapter or two every couple of months. Great literature) but you must remember they wrote before the professionalisation of the historical craft. Consider them historical pioneers, not historians. ------------- |
Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 21:42
And herein lieth the vast divergence between historian and philosopher. Historians do not posit such unintelligible sequences of words. Needlessly complex and vain words seem to be the favourite past-time of philosophers and political scientists. Sure beats having to dig for documents in archives! ------------- |
Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 22:04
But you are wrong here, Parnell, because "decadence" (decline, decay, or what you will) has been the motif of grand historical writing reaching back as far as Thucydides. Unless you wish to condemn historiography to the straight-jacket of the monograph, with its limited perspective, and at times its deadening jargon harking to econometrics, the full historian must risk a synthesis of the detritus in the Archives. What then would you make of cultural historians and their breadth of vision (shades of Braudel)? Each tool must be kept to its limited setting and if you are worried over jargon, you'll find that the flaw of the manipulators of documents, who somehow are fully intent on not permitting these to speak for themselves.
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 22:43
No, I was a rather simple question I asked to what You wrote:
So let us see more about it - I am afraid I don´t see the need for either Pilate, Herod, the British (or Spanish or Portuguese or Habsburgian) bon mot.
Perhaps it ends up in too much of questionable "lessons of history".
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Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 02-Jun-2009 at 23:13
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Gawd! Both Colonel and Parnell judge Gibbons "a pleasure to read"! I must be the only heretic in the house. I find him turgid, but good for inducing sleep. Yes, literary allusion was the style of the times, but his is insufferable. Why not call a rose a rose? (Or the Pope the Pope?) As regards being an attack on Christianity, I read it more as laying the basis for justifying the break with the Roman Catholic church. Sorry, only vaguely related to the topic at hand. But I had to get that off my chest. Were I to be offered a scholarship to the European University of my choice in some future life, I'd opt for Montpelier, Salamanca, or Coimbra over Oxford, or anywhere else they still read Gibbons. (Shudder!) ------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: JRScotia
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 00:47
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Thank God! Someone else who does NOT consider Gibbons a pleasure to read. I thought I was delusional when I read that. And, needless to say, I'd choose to study someplace that wasn't in England. Well, I did as a matter of fact. I don't have to do that any more though. I can read and study history for pleasure instead of being force-fed Gibbons as I was in my misspent youth. I can read Stobart instead. Ah, the joys of being a "grown-up".
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 01:29
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For shame! Our teacher told us to 'read Gibbon with head tilted in utter reverence, one chapter at a time'. Now there was someone who revered Gibbon. I just enjoy his use of language more than anything, and am quite conscious of how old the volumes are when I read it. The whole 'pioneer' buzz and all that. The use of jargon is a case in point. Jargon obfuscates. History attempts to clarify. The twain should never meet. When they do its bound to be a slow death sentance (Admittedly, this is why I veer away from economic and feminist history - yoink!) P.S- FloridaGuy, You might want to add Trinity College Dublin along with that list of universities to avoid. Gibbon might as well have a shrine here (We actually have a statue to a historian universally considered to be boring, vain, stiff, disinteresting and a complete geek. W.E. Lecky. And he's another guy I actually quite liked )P.P.S- JR, thought you would have been a Macauly man? Or at least a proud adherent to the historical novels of Walter Scott? Your dislike for English historians is quite understandable... I shall say no more than Hugh Trevor-Roper! ------------- |
Posted By: JRScotia
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 02:15
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Scott? I assume that is intended as an insult but I'll not react in kind. As literature, I have read his work, of course. However, they happen to be something known as FICTION. I am quite capable of reading historical sources such as Barbour's The Brus and Fordun's Scotichronicon, thank you very much. Or for something more modern my own preference is Barrow's Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland. (I've quoted all three on the forum on more than one occasion) As far as The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History the absurd man seemed to think he was the only one to know that the philabeg is a modern invention. The amusing thing is that a certain number of readers take him at his word that no one else ever noticed it. Let me tell you though, they're one heck of a lot easier to put on than a belted plaid. Ask any man who's worn both--I can't testify as to it myself since WOMEN don't wear either. As for his hatred of devolution and the move toward independence, he's just another anti-Scottish Englishman. There are too many to get excited about one. His arguments with almost everyone in the English establishment were more amusing. PS. I wonder why you think I'd be a Macaulay "man". (I'm assuming you meant Thomas Babington Macaulay--if you meant someone else then ignore the following) First, it's hard to be a Macaulay man when I'm not a man. Second, he was English educated at Cambridge--another typical Englishman really. Third, although I do NOT love the Stewarts I hardly agree that the usurpment of James II by William and Mary was a good thing--quite the contrary it brought many, many years of increased oppression of Catholics and severe oppression of the Scots and Irish. (I can be considered a Jacobite only in that I despise the Hanovers and William of Orange even more) Fourth, his worship of Whigs was, to put it mildly, excessive although at least he wasn't exactly for the oppression of the working class although his anthems about how wonderful 1830 working conditions were do leave me shaking my head. Fifth, I'm hardly an admirer of what he did in India. Mind you, his prose is more readable than Gibbons, but since they wrote on entirely different periods that doesn't really relate. You aren't the only one to have ever set foot in a university.
Lirelou, I didn't mean to ignore your comment. Sorry that I missed this comment addressed to me:
Since I SAID there was growth in military might during that period, I'd be interested in knowing what you're arguing with me about. I agree that it was an area of very substantial growth. Military might was EXACTLY why I said Europe prevailed during the period in question. And since the Sikh wars were during a different period that what I was discussing, they're irrelevant. There were improvements in organization later but I see no sign of it that early. The Anglo-Sikh War was substantially later. ------------- |
Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 03:05
Well, I suppose you would draw the same conclusions on reading Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope, or God forbid, Walter Scott, eh Lirelou? I'd bet you'd have the same experience in deciphering "the classics" at the institutions you mention. Imagine what you would make of reading Unamuno or Ortega y Gasset at Salamanca! Strangely enough, by your comment you illustrate one of the major pitfalls in modern higher education, an abysmal history in the inculcation of literacy and period style. Such is actually quite strange for any who wish to do archival research and encounters any text prior to the 20th century. But, I guess I've raised a tempest in the old teapot...wonder when the Queen of Hearts will start screeching "Off with his head"!
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Posted By: JRScotia
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 04:37
And this was a GOOD thing? One of the most oppressive powers to ever rise in the history of the world. I'm not struck with admiration. You know I don't want Scotland out of GB because of Culloden, or the many Highland massacres, or because the 1707 union was a joke in which the Scots were bought and sold (although that doesn't help). But I am so proud of all the things we did together. Sending Scots to oppress Ireland (God, the shame!), Iraq, Trident, Cash for Peerages, Slavery, imprisoning Ghandi, Suez, the Highland Clearances, the Black and Tans, the Irish Potato Famine, the genocide of numerous N. American, Australian and African peoples, the Boxer (opium) Rebellion, arming Saddam, selling Hawks to Indonesia for murder in East Timor to name but a few. Oh, yes. Good times were had by all. PS *sigh* Time for a break when it gets under my skin that badly. file:///E:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CJEANNE%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml - Saor Alba |
Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 11:02
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I seem to have opened a can of worms here... Hoped it didn't look like I was suggesting none of ye set foot in a university and I certainly didn't mean to offend JRScotia (I assume everyone on the internet is a man until told otherwise...)
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Posted By: Constantine XI
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 13:56
Malizai, yes they English did become familiar with the process of smallpox innoculation through observations of its use in Istanbul. Though the English made a notable improvement over it. They began using totally harmless cowpox instead of the Turkish method of purposefully infecting an individual with less severe smallpox from existing cases. They also made use of the injecting needle to administer this, itself an invention of the medieval Mahgreb.
Who decided that the Early Modern period ended in 1750? This sub forum classes it as extending to WWI, though personally I would be more comfortable extending it to 1871 or 1815 especially. So this fits well within the Early Modern period by most definitions.
The Bill of Rights is no tiny improvement, it is a fundamental shift in how human beings viewed eachother legally at the time. It helped establish the notion that people were their own property with firmly established rights. At that time, this was a big change. To go from being born with your privileges and duties determined by social superiors to having your own innate rights is certainly a formidable shift. And when something like the Bill of Rights or Representative Democracy is established, it can spread to other countries and take root (which both did, and did quite dramatically). It is wrong to claim there were no geat changes in fields like ethics. France prohibited slavery in 1794, while the UK did so in 1807 and then went on to conduct the most energetic anti-slavery enforcement campaign in history. Again this is merely one example. Ethics is an area which changed considerably through most of Europe during this time, the change in ethical standards being one portion in the overall movement known to history as the 'Enlightenment'.
The ability to conquer several continents materialised because European countries developed the economic, political and military groundwork at home to conduct these campaigns. When England went to war she had superb shipyards which could churn out and repair vessels at an astounding rate, well drilled infantry with a generally superior rate of rifle fire. She adopted the practice of issuing war bonds under William III, where she could simply borrow the money from her own public to conduct a war, then repay when military victory was accompanied by economic benefits (a HUGE boost). England (and later the US) also benefited by developing a strong patenting system which protected the commercial rights of inventors to profit from their discoveries, which is why it hardly comes as a surprise that these two countries were chiefly responsible for the Industrial Revolution. So with these factors, and many others I have omitted, what you end up with is a financially resourceful, technologically advanced, politically stable and militarilly well drilled nation facing its enemies. This is how nations in this period developed the economic and military might to conquer so much land. Throughout most of history, the urge to conquer and expand has usually been indulged without apology, constrained by logistical considerations rather than moral scruples. The Mughals under Aurangzeb and Persians under Nadir Shah showed the same tendencies during this period. If you could please now demonstrate how an abstract moral concept such as 'greed' resulted in the same, I would be appreciative  ------------- |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 20:35
| Now some of You may regard me as "geography - fanatic". I think any discussion of British (and even English) way to its (former) "hegemony" should include some remarks about its extraordinary geographical situation ("advantages" from the imperial point of view) in several ways. Perhaps even having much to do with its inner development, though in this field I am certainly an outsider). |
Posted By: Al Jassas
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 20:57
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If you are going to take the moral high road you will end up with nothing. Simple as that. History tells us that only aggressive powers achieve any advancements. Empires that try to make nice are either conquered or end up in oblivion. China under the Ming and then Qing did this and come the 19th century the country that had a third of the world's population couldn't even prevent 10 thousand europeans from occupying its capital and humiliating the son of Heaven.
Al-Jassas
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 21:29
I have met and heard some historians, not History him/herself, yet.
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Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 22:46
You've not only opened the can, but you've come perilously close to eating its contents as well, Parnell. Assumptions, even in historiography, often result in off-the-wall conclusions. A female historian (budding or otherwise) is no longer a rarity, and often a distinct pleasure if not wrapped in one of the current PC rants. Nevertheless, I did find interesting the voluminous protests against the classics, all required reading in my student days back before the Flood. Why, we were even forced to handle the sources in their original languages [mastery of two languages besides your own was a Ph.D. requirement]. Therein lay many of the problems arising in this forum and on this thread.
As for the gritting of the teeth on display in the above several posts, the simplifications border more on the simplistic than the succinct. The fall of the Ming, as well as Qing, are far from direct products of European "intervention" or expansion. In 1793, China under the Qianlong emperor was still an expanding power, while Europe was descending into a generation of internecine warfare. Likewise, the encounter by Europeans of the Ming dynasts in the 16th century can hardly be described as European disruption of an empire. The disastrous reign of the Chongzen emperor and his disruption of the Ming army can hardly be blamed on European incursions (in fact, Chinese merchants incessantly pleaded to no avail for imperial action against the pirates of "Formosa", who were disrupting Cantonese trade with Manila).
In historical speculation, postulates premised on geography abound. The "island" hypothesis has been applied to both England and Japan, and there is the also the old standard on Constantinople/Byzantium/Istanbul as the cross-road of trade laying the foundatons for political power. A favored thesis among Spanish Imperial historians is the famous "what if" touching upon Lisbon: What if Philip II had chosen Lisbon rather than Madrid for the administrative seat of power.
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Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 23:06
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My apologies to all if I momentarily slip into dialect: Distinguido drgonzaga, in re: "I'd bet you'd have the same experience in deciphering "the classics" at the institutions you mention. Imagine what you would make of reading Unamuno or Ortega y Gasset at Salamanca!" Bueno, adoro a Unamuno, pero Don Miguel era autor de "nivolas" en vez de "historias". En mis anos universitarios, mi "nivola" favorita del distinguido ex-rector de Salamanca fue "San Manuel Bueno, Martir". Pero de veras, hoy en dia me divierto mejor con las novelas de Arturo Perez-Reverte. Aqui hablo no solamente de "El Maestro de esgrima" y "El Club Dumas", ejemplares cumbres de su genero, sino tambien de su serie sobre las aventuras de "Capitan Alatriste", tan ricos que son en los detallles historicos del Siglo de Oro. Pena que algunos de los comentaristas hispanoparlantes aqui comentando no han aprovechado de la oportunidad de leerselas. For Parnell. Sorry I can'y throw out anything in Gaelge, but I only learned about ten phrases. After I fired off my comment, it occurred to me that you might have mentioned keeping Gibbons by your bed for the same reasons. To cure the occasional insomnia? But yes, Gibbons too is rich in historical details, though the constant allusion challenges those not raised in an English (or perhaps Irish/Ulster) educational environment. ------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 23:42
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Not so sure about that, the literary differences between Gibbon and modern historians is quite vast. Being acquainted with the English language doesn't necessarily give me an added advantage when reading Gibbon. I just find his turn of phrase marvellous, a little like Drgonzaga here!
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Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 23:43
Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 23:45
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Ah, Lirelou, you betray yourself! A dazzled Romantic after all...the revival of the "capa y espada" genre in Spanish literature was a most welcome phenomenon at the hands of Perez-Reverte; however, I must warn you that the "powers-that-be" frown upon such an extended reparte in a language other than English. Many years ago, longer than I would like to recall, I made a pilgrimage of Salamanca to visit the "aula" in which Unamuno confronted General Millan Astray and his henchmen with their shouts of "Abajo la inteligencia". It was 1969 and the UNAM had just reopened to students (although all the entrances to the Facultad de Filosofia were still guarded by the Guardia Civil, who demanded ID before admission). Consequent to that visit, my friends and I decided to challenge the status quo on entry by donning fine tailored woolen suits and wearing winter coats with fox collars to seminars. Guess what, when we appeared at the doorways, the young guards simply saluted and did not request documents. How's that for adventure, and really on the cheap since one could live like a king back then on just 30,000 pesetas a month [$US1=125 pesetas]. Shades of Valle Inclan and the Marquez de Bradomin!
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Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 03-Jun-2009 at 23:50
And for a similar reason I devoured the Captain Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brien. They reeked of historical skill over that period, which is the one under discussion.
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 00:25
Perhaps there is other things important about Great Britain than being separated from continent: One is being located approximately in the middle of European Atlantic coast, at bit further west than most of the rest, especially when Scotland and Ireland were included as they were most of the period. second, having a probably much longer coastline - that means much more ressources and peoples located near the cost, and at easy disposal for maritime purposes in peace and wartime (proportionally) especially compared with the Iberian peninsula. Third - it is most lowland (at least England), probably meaning better easier internal communication, even often by rivers. Of course as long they were non-independent, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium or Norway, could hardly exploit their positions - (or if they could, then rather for easy emigration than anything else). Portugal, Britain and Spain were the westernmost located powers on the edge of the Eurasian landmass, and left the greatest impact of European countries, Followed by France and Netherlands.
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Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 01:37
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Ireland was in a brilliant strategic position to be a middling European power if it had of being able to secure internal peace and fight off the invaders in the early modern period. We had rich grazing land, the best wool in Europe, deep ports and were the nearest drop off point from North America to Europe.
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Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 03:51
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Parnell In re: "and were the nearest drop off point from North America to Europe." that's true coming from west to east, but not for the trip over. In the age of sail, it was the currents off Senegal pushing towards the Caribbean that made for the shortest passage. Ergo, the reason that the Caribbean became a contested area from shortly after the Conquest. And, one of the reasons that Piracy arose there. At least, that was my take from Samuel Eliot Morrison's "The European Discovery of (North) America".
------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 06:28
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Posted By: Byzantine Emperor
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 07:30
The existence of "grand-" or "meta-" narratives in historical traditions is something that postmodernists and literary critics set upon over thirty years ago. Except in the realm of pop history or fiction, most academics with a brain would not declare the existence of such a thing these days on the scale of Ranke or Gibbon. Nevertheless, speaking of elitism, I think the postmodernists and literary critics have brought their own intellectual snobbery and problematic methodology to the field of history. The better question might be, is not history turned into something akin to NYT Bestseller fiction once those types get their hands on it?
From the perspective of a Byzantinist, I can vouch that Gibbon and those who subscribed to his savagings of Byzantium did a great deal of damage to its historical image and even the discipline itself. It took a long while before historiographic advancements weeded out the bias that he planted. However, in the 21st century, most scholars, and definitely Byzantinists, do not consider Gibbon to be history, but rather literature. Of course he is fun to read and his style shows a mastery of the English language. But his "scholarship" has long been superceded and his historiographical perspective jettisoned as Enlightenment and Victorian elitism.
Although Vico was first, we must include Fichte and Hegel within the chain of development before we get to Marx. It can be argued that Marx largely appropriated Hegel et al.'s interpretative framework and switched the "World Spirit" and "Idea" with materialist production. This ultimately encourages "progress" and historical consciousness.
Burckhardt stated this very distinctly. Too bad more did not take this to heart and spared us all the existential, jargon-filled, reality/consciousness-denying babble of the postmodernists that dominated the history field from the late sixties through the nineties. They were essentially saying the same thing with all the added fluff.
You do realize, however, and unfortunately, that many in the field are still under the influence of the postmodern turn and would call your defense of objectivity "nuts." They believe that everything, from culture itself to consciousness to ultimate reality, is linguistically and culturally constructed. Therefore it contains an inherent bias and fictionalizes all attempts at producing anything close to honest, objective history. We are just formless blobs bouncing around on a grid. Of course, if you corner one of these people at a conference and ask them to define their terms and explain their epistemological assumptions, they become "deer in the headlights," so to speak!
Yes, but wouldn't you say that the longue duree approach of the Annalistes has its drawbacks as well? It is sad that Marc Bloch came to such a tragic end, for I admired his method and approach far more than Braudel. Bloch encouraged the use of different tools in historical investigation, although within limits. Braudel seemed to go overboard. There is only so much one can glean from 2000 pages of discussion on wheat, beans, rice, and copper sites! ------------- http://www.allempires.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=12713 - Late Byzantine Military http://www.allempires.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=17337 - Ottoman perceptions of the Americas |
Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 10:41
Thats what I find inherently boring about economic and cultural historians... Wouldn't they just be better off heading down to the train station and counting the number of trains that go past all day? ------------- |
Posted By: gcle2003
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 11:48
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After 1603 the distinction between English/Scots ships became blurred, finally vanishing entirely into the Royal Navy.
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Posted By: Carcharodon
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 12:02
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Also archaeology has been influenced by the postmodernists (or post processualists that they are called in the archaeological world). The post processual archaeology was a reaction on the modernist processual archaeology that was popular in the 70:ties. That in turn was a reaction to the functionalistic approach which came after the culture history archaeology (as it was a reaction to).
It will be interesting to see what new isms and also what kind of synthesises the archeology of the future will hold.
Also there is the old debate about archeology as a (natural) science, or archaeology as humanistics or as social science that is still going on, especially since archaeology uses more and more tools and methods from the (natural ) sciences.
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 13:22
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A reason for special attention towards the relationship between history (and related disciplines) on the one hand, and what we can label loosely "geographical and environmental disciplines" on the other could be the "danger" of growing distance to reality, especially "past reality", loosing a possible path to understand. One reason to this of course is the growing "artificial world", that may make us unaware of anything else. especially academics in universities, but now more and more the majority of us.
Topics from this debate as Byzantine and Roman history are as far as I see it very retated to their location, natural surroundings etcetera (Self evident? yes, but perhaps less so the less related we are to our own "natural" surroundings).
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Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 15:21
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Thank you Constantine for reflecting back in the grand manner of a Cervantesque foil. After all, this thread's title--European Way to World Primacy--does encapsule the persistence of an attitude that says much about the intelligentzia but damned little about the integrity of historical epochs and the multiplicity of influences that shaped the mosaic of being. Yet, are you not being a bit harsh upon the players and observers of those epochs?
For example, you wrote: "Except in the realm of pop history or fiction, most academics with a brain would not declare the existence of such a thing these days on the scale of Ranke or Gibbon." It just happens that at this very moment, John Grenville Agard Pocock--who I am afraid to warn you is far from brainless--is attempting just that and employing the writings and encounters of Gibbon to encapsulate the era we have under discussion: Barbarism and Religion. To this day, I remain fascinated with his The Machiavellian Moment and its masterly integration that introduced contextualism, which in a way adhered strictly to the warning set forth by Burckhardt. This historian from "Down Under", he's a Kiwi, does embody the "cultural" tradition" in historiography but in something a bit more durable than pots, sherds, and diets. For him Gibbon's writings are a historical artifact speaking not so much about Rome while telling of the era that produced the historian, as you astutely observed in your summation on Gibbon and my observations.
Not that the debate within historical study is settled with regard to who the historian: the generators of the endless monographs that kill the most trees and sit unread in the journals lining the library shelves or the producers of grand syntheses composed with panache and avidly read by the public at large? History can be highly readable, but it is most unfortunate that the greater number of its professional practitioners can not compose a pleasurable turn-of-phrase much less a cogent paragraph absent the interjection of material best consigned to appendices and notes. One can readily assert that it is the latter group of historians that provoke the Muse Clio in all of us. For example, the pivotal work of Johan Huizinga--The Waning of the Middle Ages--illustrates how a "cultural" historian can wake up "academia"; yet this very literate and astute historian himself warned in his essay "The Task of Cultural History" that the historian should resist the attempt to make history entertaining and amusing and wrote: "No literary effect in the world can compare to the pure sober taste of history". Nevertheless, in "The Aesthetic Element in Historical Thought" he also wrote: "The historian tries to re-experience what was once experienced by men like ourselves...[for the]...true study of History involves our imagination and conjures up conceptions, pictures, visions." For him this responsibility, aesthetic thinking, warned of the aridity behind any attempt and making the writing of history "scientific".
In closing, Constantine, do you not think you are being too harsh on old Fernand? The sins you assign him belong more to his "disciples" although the English have still not forgiven him for labeling the 16th century the "Age of Philip II"
. If you wish to put forth an example of bastardized history at the hands of the "linguistically and culturally constructed" no better name can be put forth than Noam Chomsky. |
Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 15:46
The problem here, fantasus, is that when the "sciences" embark upon the vessel of historical narrative they often lower the sails of determinism. That is, geographic or economic or whatever other discipline is upon the sea makes inevitable the flow of human action. Yet in your critique of academia and its "artificial world" are you not just simply iterating the old bugbear known as the "ivory tower". Even the life of the "isolate" is a personal choice, and no one is condemned to the hermitage of their own minds at the expense of living it. The danger here derives from imposing one's own choices [ideas, conclusions, views] as dictats upon others. If any sin can be assigned to contemporary Higher Education, that transgression is scientism since the prime responsibility of any and all educators is the transmission of tools that facilitate the capacity for thought and not what to think!
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ated to their location, natural surroundings etcetera (Self evident? yes, but perhaps less so the less related we are to our own "natural" surroundings).Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 17:45
Perhaps I could use some of the discussed topics as examples: The roles of the cities of Rome and Constantinople (or Byzantium, Istanbul), though Athens, Alexandria or even Jerusalem could be other examples to discuss. On the one hand we have Rome, that owes its outstanding position in world History not to one single person. It is hard for me not to ask if there was something extraordinary about the very location, that contributed vastly to its "succes". On the other hand Constantinople, also located at a very special place, but "founded" as imperial capital by one man. I don´t necesarrily see this choice as something "predetermined" (or find it perhaps nearly an absurd idea), but on the other once this decicion were made there was very good reaon it became more of a succes than other Capitals (Did not Diocletian reside in Split, and other late emperors in Ravenna?)
It is about a lot more than any "Ivory Tower", and it is from my point of view not only a problem for "academia", but for nearly everybody(if we see it as a problem to lose insight)!
It is the changes in "lifestyle" and even the surrounding landscapes. As simple a task as determining "distances" in the past seems not to be so simple at all (the "real distance" seen not as miles or kilometres, but as the time and effort it takes, the dangers and costs.)
Do I exaggerate the importance of this topic about human mobility (just one aspect of geography)? I don´t think so, since any culture, any people needs at least some inne mobility of peoples, ideas, informations and material. (of course there could not even be people in the first place in any inaccesible region).
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Posted By: drgonzaga
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 18:47
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At the risk of sounding trite, fantasus, is not even distance relative? Certainly in the Information Age, where impersonal contact is possible between far-reaches at a wink of an eye, does not the gem still get lost amidst the mountain of discardable shavings? Just a simple perusal of the Internet would lead one to believe that witches and witchcraft are an integral part of modern life or that Atlantis still stands at the crossroads of civilization! Nevertheless, in entertaining these musings were are moving far off the road paved for this discussion. Not so long ago, the posit of dispersion stood at the nexus of scholarly theory--take it as a variant of speculations on Origins--yet today, one must accept the fact that ideas and methods or even technology can arise at different places as a consequence of encountering similar problems with solutions brought forth that are near identical but the possibility of communication being the source of the parallel remote.
Herein, the subject touches upon Europe and a nebulosity called "primacy". Was the map-making in the Berlin of 1881 a reality for the daily life of most sub-Saharan Africans? The maps looked good, what with all the shades of pink, purple, yellow and green, but little else may be brought forth as historical conclusion or even novelty. The practitioners of geo-politics today speak of Somalia as a "failed state", how can something fail that existed solely as a consequence of European fantasies?
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Posted By: fantasus
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 19:20
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Posted By: Constantine XI
Date Posted: 04-Jun-2009 at 23:05
Sorry drgonzaga, I think you may have confused me with Byzantine Emperor. ------------- |
Posted By: Maximus Germanicus
Date Posted: 13-May-2010 at 08:19
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I always thought Euros developed quicker becuase they had competition, neighbors were always trying to one up each other. Military and commercial inovation was necessary because if you didn't advance quickly enough you were out in the trash can of history.
The Arab, East Asian and African societyies all at one time were ahead of Europe, but they stagnated, why simple no compeition really maybe just a state or two vs multiple states vieing for Power in Europe
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Posted By: Cryptic
Date Posted: 13-May-2010 at 20:34
I agree. I would also add a the factor of lucky geographical location
-Western Europeans were on the Europe - Middle East -Asia trade route and were able to exchange technology / ideas with Ottomans and Asians (to a degree).
-Western Europeans were closest to America and more likely to get there before competing Ottomans or Arabs.
Meanwhile....
Africans with many competing tribes were off the trade routes and isolated below the Sahara desert. They had competition but little exhanges of ideas and technology. They, as you mentioned, stagnated.
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Posted By: DreamWeaver
Date Posted: 14-May-2010 at 09:45
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Im going to say it and Im sure I'll probably get some flakk, but one must not discount China.
Only the concept of the Middle Kingdom and the complacency that it ultimately entails, say in comparison to the explorative crusading zeal of Early Modern Europe seperates the history of the two regions. Early 15th Century Ming ships 'allegedly' make it to America before Columbus and sail round the Cape of Good Hope and up to the Mediterranea. Even if these theories arent true ther were still active throughout the Pacificand Indian Oceans and Central Asai since before the Tang Dynasty.
Only culture and happenstance have perhaps dictated European ascendancy. ------------- |
Posted By: Maximus Germanicus
Date Posted: 14-May-2010 at 09:47
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Another reason why the Europeans rose to primacy was credit. The invention of credit allowed the Euros to raise and maintain astanding Army that trained together and stayed together. Before the Euros could not afford to keep a standing Army in the field. Credit allowed the units to stay together forge unit cohesion and discipline
However, the introduction of ingenious new taxes and other
means of ‘instant’ wealth extraction proved far less important for feeding Mars than the development, from the sixteenth century onwards, of new techniques for mobilizing credit – such as national banks, banknotes, letters of credit and bonds – because few states ever manage to finance a major war out of current income. But creating and (even more) conserving an adequate credit base proved highly elusive. In the evocative phrase of the eighteenth-century English political economist, Charles Davenant: Of all beings that have existence only in the minds of men, nothing is more fantastical and nice than credit. It is never to be forced; it hangs upon mere opinion. It depends upon our passions of hope and fear; it comes many times unsought for, and often goes away without reason; and when once lost, is hardly to be quite recovered. Nevertheless, in eighteenth-century England at least, credit seemed to exist everywhere. Contemporaries estimated that two-thirds of all commercial transactions involved credit rather than cash and by 1782 the Bank of England alone handled bills of exchange worth a total of over £2 million annually – a stunning extension of the available monetary stock. However, borrowing to finance wars depends not only upon the existence of extensive private credit, but also upon a convergence of interest between those who make money and those who make war, for public loans depend both on finding borrowers willing to lend as well as taxpayers able to provide ultimate repayment. In England, tax revenues increased sixfold in the century following 1689. As an alarmed member of parliament exclaimed: Let any gentleman but look into the statute books lying upon our table, he will there see to what a vast bulk, to what a number of volumes, our statutes relating to taxes have swelled . . . It is monstrous, it is even frightful to look into the Indexes, where for several columns together we see nothing but Taxes, Taxes, Taxes. And yet most Members, who paid the taxes themselves, accepted their necessity; and so did the majority of the political nation. By 1783, when the unsuccessful American War came to an end, Great Britain’s national debt stood at £245 million, equivalent to more than twenty years’ revenue; yet many of the loans had been contracted at just 3 per cent interest. ‘Who pays and why’ is as important, in the western way of war, as ‘Who fights and why’, and the ability to organize long-term credit (and therefore the existence of a secure and sophisticated capital market) to fund public borrowing in wartime represented a crucial ‘secret weapon’ of the West. © Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/ - www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521853591 - The Cambridge History of Warfare Edited by Geoffrey Parker Excerpt More information The Western Way of War Hanses argues that discipline is what sets the west apart:
Historian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Davis_Hanson - Victor Davis Hanson has claimed there exists a unique "Western Way of War", in an attempt to explain the military successes of Western Europe.citation needed It originated in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece - Ancient Greece , where, in an effort to reduce the damage that warfare has on society, the city-states developed the concept of a decisive pitched battle between heavy infantry. This would be preceded by formal declarations of war and followed by peace negotiations. In this system constant low-level skirmishing and guerrilla warfare were phased out in favour of a single, decisive contest, which in the end cost both sides less in casualties and property damage. Although it was later perverted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great - Alexander the Great ?, this style of war initially allowed neighbours with limited resources to coexist and prosper. He argues that Western-style armies are characterised by an emphasis on discipline and teamwork above individual bravado. Examples of Western victories over non-Western armies include the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marathon - Battle of Marathon , the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaugamela - Battle of Gaugamela , the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tenochtitlan - Siege of Tenochtitlan , the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey - Battle of Plassey and the defence of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorkes_Drift - Rorke's Drift . This also supported by ParkerA ‘technological edge’, however, has rarely been sufficient in itself
to ensure victory. As the Swiss military writer Antoine-Henri Jomini wrote in the early nineteenth century: ‘The superiority of armament may increase the chances of success in war, but it does not of itself win battles.’ Even in the twentieth century, the outcome of wars has been determined less by technology than by better war plans, the achievement of surprise, greater economic strength and, above all, superior discipline. Western military practice has always exalted discipline – rather than kinship, religion or patriotism – as the primary instrument that turns bands of men fighting as individuals into soldiers fighting as part of organized units. |
Posted By: Maximus Germanicus
Date Posted: 14-May-2010 at 09:49
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Then there was the Primacy of discipline
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Posted By: Shield-of-Dardania
Date Posted: 21-May-2010 at 02:07
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It's just history going through its cycles.
When West Asia was in primacy, the power emporiums with their vassal kingdoms were fiercely competitive and staunchly disciplined too. So too when the time came for South Asia, Central Asia and East Asia.
Every region has had its time. Now it looks like the pendulum of history is shifting toward Asia again. Specifically East Asia. Or perhaps East and South Asia simultaneously. ------------- History makes everything. Everything is history in the making. |
Posted By: Maximus Germanicus
Date Posted: 21-May-2010 at 10:27
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When Hansen and Parker speak of discipline and cohesion that sets the west apart from the east due to the fact that western armies were primarily loyal to the unit vs the east being loyal to the tribe. Eastern Armies tended to fight as individuals, were western units fought as units. Asia isn't on the rise yet, China has way to many problems to project power. If you cannot project power you are not a force in the world, you a force in your region of dominance. The US, UK and France can project power-- Russia somewhat China cannot. According to Hanson, Western http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_system - values such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_freedom - political freedom , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism - capitalism , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism - individualism , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy - democracy , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method - scientific inquiry , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism - rationalism , and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissent - open debate form an especially lethal combination when applied to warfare. Non-Western societies can win the occasional victory when warring against a society with these Western values, writes Hanson, but the "Western way of war" will prevail in the long run. Hanson emphasizes that Western warfare is not necessarily more (or less) moral than war as practiced by other cultures; his argument is simply that the "Western way of war" is unequalled in its devastation and decisiveness. Parker states that:
The Challenge-and-Response Dynamic
But the steady spread of western military power rested on far more than the triad of technology, discipline and an aggressive military tradition. Many other military cultures (such as those of China and Japan) also placed a high premium on technology and discipline, and the teachings of Sun Tzu strikingly anticipated many positions later developed by Clausewitz and Jomini. However, the West differed in two crucial respects: first, in its unique ability to change as well as to conserve its military practices as need arose; second, in its power to finance those changes. Areas dominated by a single hegemonic power, such as Tokugawa Japan or Mughal India, faced relatively few life-threatening challenges and so military traditions changed slowly if at all; but in areas contested by multiple polities the need for military innovation could become extremely strong. Admittedly, when the states remained relatively underdeveloped, with backward political and economic institutions and infrastructures, the tension between challenge and response seldom resulted in rapid and significant change. But where the major competing states were both numerous and institutionally strong, the challenge and response dynamic could become self-sustaining, with growth (in effect) begetting growth. This mechanism has been compared to the biological model known as ‘punctuated equilibrium’, in which development proceeds by short bursts of rapid change interspersed with longer periods of slower, incremental alteration. Further:
The Dominant Military Tradition
These various developments possessed a significance far beyond the region of their origin, because aggression – the ‘export of violence’ – played a central role in the ‘rise of the West’. For most of the past 2,500 years, military and naval superiority rather than better resources, greater moral rectitude, irresistible commercial acumen or, until the nineteenth century, advanced economic organization under-pinned western expansion. This military edge meant that the West seldom suffered successful invasion itself. Armies from Asia and Africa rarely marched into Europe and many of the exceptions – Xerxes, Hannibal, Attila, the Arabs and the Turks – achieved only limited success. None encompassed the total destruction of their foe. Conversely, western forces, although numerically inferior, not only defeated the Persian and Carthaginian invaders but managed to extirpate the states that sent them. Even the forces of Islam never succeeded in partitioning Europe into ‘spheres of influence. So when did these Eastern Nations ever rival the West? It seems like the west always was dominant, only the Turks really pentrated Europe, but they never fully entered western Europe did they.
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Posted By: Maximus Germanicus
Date Posted: 21-May-2010 at 10:29
| West Asia was never really in a Primacy--A primacy states that they could project their Power into Europe, they never really did, yet Europe projected thier Power into Asia |
Posted By: Cryptic
Date Posted: 21-May-2010 at 11:52
The Ottomans were a primacy and projected alot of power into Europe. Their conquests or vassal states included Greece, Albania, the former Yugoslavia, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria etc. . They even made it as far as Vienna. In addition, they had alot of influence the Caucaus mountains and some parts of Russia and Ukraine.
Ottoman power projection was not just military, but religous and cultural. In Yugoslavia, they averaged a 10% conversion rate and in Albania, the rate climbed to about 70%.
I think the individual warrior / glory concept lasts longest in honor based cultures. This explains why the Scottish and French held onto the concept longer that the more pragmatic English. And, why Islamic nations still keep it today.
I would not be suprised if most Taliban fighters view themselves as individual fighters first and being a member of a Taliban group second.
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Posted By: Kanas_Krumesis
Date Posted: 21-May-2010 at 12:30
This is absolute crap! I don`t give my money on this publication. So called Western value (such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_freedom - political freedom , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism - capitalism , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism - individualism , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy - democracy , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method - scientific inquiry , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism - rationalism , and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissent - open debate ) are not "western" invention. This is а typical things to every normal society. Communism smashed this value in every country where communist maniacs had been ruled (and still rule). If communists occupy anyone country from "Western world" for several decades I`m sure this country would be just like North Korea. I`m lived in communist state and I can make a proper difference. Question is not about East and West. This is only a geographical matter. Westerners manage to put communism away, Easterners couldn`t. Germany is a great example. Before 1945 one еconomical homogeneous country, after 1990 richer Western part and poor Eastern. The peoples are still the same like this before 1945.
And BTW discipline and cohesion is object number 1 to every communist world-wide.
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Posted By: opuslola
Date Posted: 21-May-2010 at 14:25
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While I have been occupied making posts at other parts of this site, I have read with enthusiasm the responses on this thread!
As the British might say; "Good Show!" Thanks for the relevant and well tempered postings! (absolute crap, excepted! 
Regards, ------------- http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/ |
Posted By: Maximus Germanicus
Date Posted: 21-May-2010 at 17:29
Really, The Cambridge History of Warfare is crap?, thats where it came from. Parker one of formost writers in modern Militry History is crap? Hansen is crap?. Well I think you have a prety hgh opinion of your self.
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Posted By: Maximus Germanicus
Date Posted: 21-May-2010 at 17:38
I agree with you statement on the Taliban, there is a lot of them seeking ind glory and a martyrs death versus how the group will overcome. The Ottomans never really pushed themselves into Western Europe, and when facing western European armies in battle in Europe, generally lost (both times in Vienna). If with numerical superiority. You would think the challenge response theory would apply to the Ottomans, it didn't, why didn't they improve as quickly as Western Europe did,? Hansen would argue it was due to their lack of western values. Parker explains that the Turks never really caught on in the following passage. and Africa rarely marched into Europe and many of the exceptions – Xerxes, Hannibal, Attila, the Arabs and the Turks – achieved only limited success. None encompassed the total destruction of their foe. Conversely, western forces, although numerically inferior, not only defeated the Persian and Carthaginian invaders but managed to extirpate the states that sent them. Even the forces of Islam never succeeded in partitioning Europe into ‘spheres of influence’ |
Posted By: Cryptic
Date Posted: 21-May-2010 at 21:14
I think hansen is correct. Parkers's passage covers too broad of a time period. The western values that Hansen is refering to might be the growing industrialization of the west (due to geography, credit, culture and just plain luck) and your statements about western nations starting to field units, not warriors.
I would not be surprised if the honor culture Turks brought alot of individual warriors to Vienna. Meanwhile, the western Europeans were bringing more units and fewer individual warriors. Units tend to beat individual warriors, even when they are outnumbered.
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