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Is Ancient Greece a Western Civilization?

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Serge L View Drop Down
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  Quote Serge L Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Is Ancient Greece a Western Civilization?
    Posted: 14-Dec-2004 at 14:23

io999,

more likely, it's the effect of migration and diffusion of civilization. You know, Europe was populated by people coming from the South-East. While the first settlements reach their peack of civilization, someone start colonizing the North-West, and/or people in the North West come in contact with the more advanced South-East, and this encounter jumpstart their own civilization. Eventually, the people in the North-West reach the peack of their civilization, while their once superior South-Eastern neighbours are suffering the effect of a certain decadence.

And so on. 

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  Quote Kids Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Dec-2004 at 14:51
So, does the notion of Western civilization equates to the notion of white race?

1) We know that first Europeans, Celts and later various Germanic tribes, did not endorse any Western ideas as Greeks knew, but can we still categorize them as Westerners?

2) During the middle age, Arbas deovted themselves into the preservation and the learning of the classics. But, how come they are not part of Western culture sphere?

3) Modern industrial nations, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and S. Korea, qualifies all major criteria of Western democracy or Western developed states: rule of law, parlimenatry system, democracy, free press, and heavy influence of Western values. In comparison, Russia and other East Europeans were less devloped in those ares of Western states, but they are still considered as part of Western.

4) Australis  and New Zealand were locted in the Pacific Rim, but its economies were heavly dependent on trades with Eastern nations. But, they are still considered as part of Western civilizations.

Why? If an Asian or non-white race is educated in Western tradition, does he qualifies as Westerner? or Oriental?


I understand if a foreigner, Persian or even a African, would be considered as Hellen, if he devoted himself into the study of Greek culture. Because Hellenization had nothing to do with races, but cultures.



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  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Dec-2004 at 17:32
1) We know that first Europeans, Celts and later various Germanic tribes, did not endorse any Western ideas as Greeks knew, but can we still categorize them as Westerners?


You seem to be evading whats been put forth in this thread so far.
Who says that Celts and Germanics are the first Europeans? They never called themselves Europeans. The first people to use 'Europe' as a geography label were the Greeks and they themselves lived in that region they called Europe, and thus were the first true Europeans.
If you wish to speak of Europe as the geographical region as understood today, then the first Europeans lived here 30,000 plus years ago and were niether Germanic nor Celtic.

2) During the middle age, Arbas deovted themselves into the preservation and the learning of the classics. But, how come they are not part of Western culture sphere?


Because in the 1700/1800s, when the notion of east and west as used today were redefined (or some would say, invented), they were different, they were muslim first and foremost. At this point in time of course, the muslim world was considered 'Oriental' along with that part of the Balkans controled by the Ottoman Empire.

3) Modern industrial nations, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and S. Korea, qualifies all major criteria of Western democracy or Western developed states: rule of law, parlimenatry system, democracy, free press, and heavy influence of Western values. In comparison, Russia and other East Europeans were less devloped in those ares of Western states, but they are still considered as part of Western.


Wether Russia is 'western' or not depends on who you ask, but, as mentioned above, being Christian has helped considerably.

4) Australis  and New Zealand were locted in the Pacific Rim, but its economies were heavly dependent on trades with Eastern nations. But, they are still considered as part of Western civilizations.


I suspect that their culture and population is primarily derived from Britian has much to do with it.

Why? If an Asian or non-white race is educated in Western tradition, does he qualifies as Westerner? or Oriental?


Again, it depends on who you ask. First off, 'western', 'oriental', 'eastern', are not perminant static constructs, they are vauge and constantly shifting. And yes, people do speak of 'Westernised' Asians and the like.
But its worth noting that for some people at least, 'westernness' can become a degree of defacto 'whiteness', take Turkey, where there are many people who are indistinguisable from people in Europe appearance wise. If that Turkish person is very muslim then they wouldn't immediatly be considered as white, but if they came across as modern and 'westernised' (notice that what is modern is often regarded as 'western' for whatever reasons) then people would regard them as being white.
Yet more proof that the popularised notion of race (vauge colour codes) is socialy defined.
Consider also, from the oposite end of the gaze, the notions of the 'coconut' (brown/black on the outside, white on the inside) or the 'banana' (yellow on the inside), etc.

Vauge labels such as East and West are not permenant and clearly defined, and how one views them will depend heavily on one's point of self orientation. Personaly i take them with a pinch of salt, but then i come from an extended family which is regarded by some as 'untypical' of 'westerners' and many deem it to be 'ethic' (another fantasticly vauge and meaningless label), so i guess my point of self orientation is different again.



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  Quote J.M.Finegold Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Dec-2004 at 22:11
So, should we leave this at, their was no 'European Nationalism' at the time, and that the Greeks were western in the way that their culture and political ideals were better incorporated into the west?
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  Quote Kids Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Dec-2004 at 22:29
So, does Japan and Singapore consider as part of Western sphere? 
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  Quote J.M.Finegold Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Dec-2004 at 23:17
Originally posted by Kids

So, does Japan and Singapore consider as part of Western sphere? 


Well, you can't compare Japan to Greece, in any respect.  Japan wasn't the birth of a quasi-democracy, and it didn't build the foundations of society for most of Mediterranean Europe.  In fact, I don't know why Japan is even mentioned.  Singapore, although an English colony is much the same.  Not to mention the geographical locations (assuming we're locating these governments using modern maps).


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  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Dec-2004 at 23:40
So, does Japan and Singapore consider as part of Western sphere?


Depends on who's definition of 'western' you use.
They are modern, which in the eyes of some = westernised.
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  Quote cattus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Dec-2004 at 23:45
yes, and very true what you said about it not being static. Culture is the key, not always race. I have seen Japanese usually gravitate towards americans or europeans before chinese or other asians in China.
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  Quote J.M.Finegold Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Dec-2004 at 23:49
That's probably due to Mathew Perry and gunboat diplomacy... and also due to the general Japanese theory of their superiority over the Chinese (I just picked up Stephen Turnbull's history on the Korean War in the mid 1550s... spectacular piece).
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  Quote cattus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Dec-2004 at 00:03
Chinese, Japanese, Korean... they all think they are superior to one another.

lol Jonnyboy, your going to past my post count before this weekend.
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  Quote Romano Nero Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Dec-2004 at 03:10

Tough question To my understanding, there has always been a distinction between east and west. The Greeks and Romans thought of anything beyond western Anatolia, eastern, not geographically but culturally. They didnt consider the easteners as barbarians in the way they talked about, for instance, their northern neighbors (Germanics, Celts etc.) but they made a clear distinction about the East as compared to them.

After the Pax Romana period, the boundaries of East and West became more diffused, but the rise of the Arabs later helped in redefining the East as a collective them Islam. The Byzantines were really on the fence but for the greater part were considered West. Race was not out of the equation: they typical white belonged to the West, but race was not the primary factor: lots of whites (eastern Europe, even Byzantium after a point in time) were not West but semi-East.

In the late Middle Ages East became synonymous to them as a more advanced and sophisticated collective, but the determining factor was now religion and (unconsciously, I think) race. Germanics were West. Slavs werent (but they werent East either thats tough). Christians (as defined after the Schizm so, Catholic Christians were West. Bon-christians were East (them). Orthodox neither.

The Renaissance helped redefine the term (since the classical culture began being studied by scholars throughout Europe) but the distinction was still nebulous, since the West was still culturally inferior to East (compare early Ottoman Empire 15th, 16th century to England, France etc. for a complete picture) and only by the next two centuries managed to gradually catch up. The actual concepts of East and West as known today, are a product of the colonization era (mostly 17th, 18th century) and were formulated into articulate statements during the early 19th century only. Thats the time when the West rediscovered after the enlightment movement in the previous century the classical Graeco-Roman legacy and tried to position themselves in the globe as The West.

In this time, the arguments for the Us vs Them issue had much to do with race: the whites have been thought of as superior to the others and the only capable of producing an advanced (Western) civilization. That brought us well into the 20th century, when globalized capitalism changed the definition into a purely cultural thing.

It is though interesting that societies as that of Japan, are not referred to as Western (although they are much more Western than many Europeans) but as Westernized. Shows that there still is an underlying race issue

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  Quote Imperatore Dario I Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Dec-2004 at 20:19

The Greek city-states in Magna Graecia were 'West' enough, weren't they? I'd say that's pretty much central Europe!

 

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  Quote J.M.Finegold Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Dec-2004 at 22:00

Tough question To my understanding, there has always been a distinction between east and west. The Greeks and Romans thought of anything beyond western Anatolia, eastern, not geographically but culturally. They didnt consider the easteners as barbarians in the way they talked about, for instance, their northern neighbors (Germanics, Celts etc.) but they made a clear distinction about the East as compared to them.

The Greeks considered the Persians, not really equals, but superior to the Germanic and Gallic tribes to their north and west didn't they?

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  Quote Romano Nero Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Dec-2004 at 23:30
Yes, Germanics, Gauls and others "western barbarians" were in the last cultural tier of the Greek universe. That was true to a great extent for the Roman view of the world as well. The Greeks, for instance, regarded even the Skythian as far more civilized than the Germanic and Gallic.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Dec-2004 at 00:32

The Greeks considered the Persians, not really equals, but superior to the Germanic and Gallic tribes to their north and west didn't they?




Is that why some Greek were fighting on the Persian side each time there was a war?

As a Greek I sometimes feel a little ashamed of the level arrogance I see in some of these Greece related threads




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  Quote Romano Nero Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Dec-2004 at 00:40
Originally posted by akis

The Greeks considered the Persians, not really equals, but superior to the Germanic and Gallic tribes to their north and west didn't they?




Is that why some Greek were fighting on the Persian side each time there was a war?

Actually that was because the pay was great

As a Greek I sometimes feel a little ashamed of the level arrogance I see in some of these Greece related threads

The arrogance of the ancient Greeks you mean? Why be ashamed? The ancient Greeks and Romans had a well-established notion of cultural superiority against their neighbours. And righlty so - if we look at the facts. In our modern world every culture has its own place in the sun (or should have) and we (except Warhead, but that's a different story) believe that there are no "better" or "lesser" cultures.

But in the ancient world, such sophistication was a bit too much to ask for. Intolerance has been the norm even in the end of the 19th century, ask any of the natives seeing their cultures dissapearing because "the West" decided to bear the gifts of the superior western culture to them.

History repeats itself, doesn't it?

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Dec-2004 at 02:17


And righlty so -



This was your statement not the ancients don't blame them.



What do you think the other guys thought of us. Bunch of of naked people in a tiny country that can't even feed their own kids and have to come beg us to fight and work for money. You think they considered us to be superior. That is if they knew we even existed. Who are we kidding


The approach you and a few other have taken here just makes you feel better. Because in your mind you have connected yourself to something that you think is superior. That has nothing to do with history.







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  Quote Romano Nero Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Dec-2004 at 03:59

You most probably don't even know what you are talking about... And definitely you haven't the slightest idea of what I am talking about. Are we even speaking the same language here? Or do you have any serious understanding disability?

And if you missed this previously: I am not Greek. Just for the record.

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  Quote Yiannis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Dec-2004 at 05:49

If you have finished quarelling, perhaps it would be an interesting topic to explore the way that non-Greeks saw the Greeks of the era.

We already know that the Greeks of the time considered themselves superior to all other people (barbarians). Aristotle justified philosophically the war against the Persians to Alexander, by saying that "the Persians should rightfully be slaves to the Greeks, since they are barbarians - therefore slaves.  Therefore, war is simply the means to put them to their rightfull situation"! Similar were the views of most ancient Greeks, even the most educated ones.

So what were the views of other civilizations, how did they considered Greeks of the time?



Edited by Yiannis
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  Quote Cornellia Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Dec-2004 at 07:08

A very good question, Yiannis and one that may not be as simple a question as it appears.  I'm sure there are as many answers as there are other cultures or peoples.

Anyone have any ideas of what some of the answers will be?    In the meantime, I'm heading back into my books to get a few clues on what a few of those answers may be.

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