The Uniqueness of Western Civilization

540 Pages·2012·10.59 MB·English

by  Ricardo Duchesne

Th e Uniqueness of Western Civilization
Studies in Critical
Social Sciences
Series Editor
David Fasenfest
Wayne State University
Editorial Board
Chris Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside
G. William Domhoff , University of California-Santa Cruz
Colette Fagan, Manchester University
Martha Gimenez, University of Colorado, Boulder
Heidi Gottfried, Wayne State University
Karin Gottschall, University of Bremen
Bob Jessop, Lancaster University
Rhonda Levine, Colgate University
Jacqueline O’Reilly, University of Brighton
Mary Romero, Arizona State University
Chizuko Ueno, University of Tokyo
VOLUME 28
Th e Uniqueness of Western
Civilization
By
Ricardo Duchesne
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2011
On the cover: Th e Horned helmet, Vikso, Zealand, Denmark, Late Bronze Age, 11th-10th BC.
Photo: Lennart Larsen, the National Museum of Denmark.
Th is book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Duchesne, Ricardo.
Th e uniqueness of Western civilization / by Ricardo Duchesne.
p. cm. -- (Studies in critical social sciences, ISSN 1573-4234 ; v. 28)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-19248-5 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Civilization, Western. 2. Civilization,
Western--Historiography. 3. Civilization, Western--Philosophy. 4. Eurocentrism.
5. Multiculturalism. 6. Liberty--Western countries--History. I. Title.
CB245.D757 2011
909'.09821--dc22
2010047453
ISSN 1573-4234
ISBN 978 90 04 19248 5
Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Th e Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
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Fees are subject to change.
CONTENTS
Preface .........................................................................................................ix
Chapter One Th e Fall of Western Civilization and the
Rise of Multicultural World History .....................................................1
Early World Historians and the Idea of Progress ....................................1
Termination of the Western Civilization Course ....................................4
World History Texts from the 1920s to the 1940s ...................................6
World History Texts in the 1960s ...........................................................11
Rise of Dependency Th eory ....................................................................13
Wallerstein’s World-System and Critical Th eory ..................................16
Franz Boas’s Relativism and Marvin Harris’s
Cultural Materialism ...........................................................................19
Th e Conversion of William McNeill: From “Rise of the
West” to “Interactive Webs” ................................................................23
Cultural Relativism, Scientifi c Materialism, and
Humanism Combined .........................................................................27
Th e Exclusion of Sociobiology ................................................................32
Kant’s “unsocial sociability” ....................................................................38
Progress and the State of Nature .............................................................42
Dynamic Man versus Reactive Man ......................................................45
Th e Ascendancy of Multicultural World Historians ............................51
Patrick Manning: It Takes an African Village to Write
World History .......................................................................................56
Disparaging the West: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto ..............................62
Chapter Two Eurocentrism over Sinocentrism ................................71
Th e Basic Empirical Claims of the Revisionists ...................................71
Th e Two Arguments of Re-Orient. .........................................................74
One Asian World System? .......................................................................79
Th e Role of Colonial Profi ts ....................................................................83
Trade, Power, and Liberty: the Secret of British Imperial
Success ...................................................................................................87
China’s “high-level equilibrium trap” ....................................................93
Th e “Geographical Limits” of China’s Post-1400
Extensive Growth .................................................................................96
vi contents
Was Eighteenth Century Europe following a Malthusian
path? .....................................................................................................102
Was traditional China a Low Fertility Regime? ..................................108
Conclusion ..............................................................................................115
Chapter Th ree Whence the Industrial Divergence? .......................117
Th e Basic Propositions of Pomeranz’s “Great Divergence” ...............117
Malthus was Born too Late in a World too New ................................123
End of the Old Malthusian Regime in England .................................130
Standard-of-Living Debate ....................................................................136
New World Resources versus European Resources ...........................140
Was Cheap Coal Suffi cient or Necessary? ...........................................146
Dynamic Rather than Static Comparisons .........................................151
China’s Ecological Endowments and Imperial Windfalls .................153
Chapter Four Th e Continuous Creativity of Europe ......................165
Hobson and the Eastern Origins of the West .....................................165
Eurocentric Historians ...........................................................................167
Imitation, Innovation, and Invention ..................................................172
Revolution in Time ................................................................................174
Th e Printing Revolution ........................................................................179
Th e Science and Chivalry of Henry the Navigator ............................182
Columbus and the Cartographic Revolution ......................................189
Th e Industrial Enlightenment ...............................................................195
Goldstone’s “Happy Chance” versus Jacob’s Scientifi c Ethos ............199
Contingency versus Long Term Patterns ............................................203
Europe’s Solo Act: A Mercantile-Militaristic State? ...........................206
Military Revolutions in Europe 1300-1800 .........................................209
Th e Inter-State System ...........................................................................214
Greek Hoplites and the “Western Way of War” ..................................219
Mercantilism and the Birth of Political Economy ..............................222
Liberty and the States System ...............................................................226
Chapter Five Th e ‘Rise’ of Western Reason and Freedom .............231
Th e West is more than Wealth and Power ..........................................231
Th e Cultural Poverty of the Revisionists .............................................239
Th e Cultural Richness of Max Weber ..................................................246
Judaism and its Contribution to Western Rationalism .....................254
contentvsii
Schluchter on the Genetic Developmental Dynamic of
the West ...............................................................................................260
Habermas and the Rationalization of Substantive Values .................265
Th e Liberal Democratic Ideals of the West and its
Historiography ...................................................................................269
Chapter Six Th e Restlessness of the Western Spirit from
a Hegelian Perspective .......................................................................285
Change without Progress in the East ...................................................285
Measuring Human Accomplishments .................................................289
Th e Historiography of Europe’s Revolutions ......................................297
Phenomenology of the Western Spirit .................................................302
Hegel and the Geographical Basis of the “infi nite thirst”
of the West...........................................................................................308
Hegel and the Beginnings of Western Reason ....................................312
Hegel on the “desire” of World-Historical Individuals ......................315
Th e Master-Slave Dialectic and its Historical Reference ...................318
Hegel’s Account of the State of Nature .................................................325
Kojeve and the fi ght to the death for pure prestige ............................328
Spengler and the Faustian Soul of the West ........................................333
McNeill and the Indo-European Roots of the West’s
Warrior Ethos .....................................................................................338
Chapter Seven Th e Aristocratic Egalitarianism of
Indo-Europeans and the Primordial Origins
of Western Civilization ......................................................................341
Th e Founding Fathers of the West: Democratic Citizens
or Aristocratic Warriors? ..................................................................341
Indo-Europeans as the “Other” of World History .............................345
Th e Distinctive Indo-Europeanization of the West ...........................352
Chariots, Mycenaeans, and Aristocratic Berserkers ..........................363
Aristocratic and Martial Traits .............................................................371
Th e Impact of Indo-Europeans on the Civilizations of
the East ................................................................................................377
“Big Man” Feasting and the Origins of Inequality .............................380
Prestige-Seeking Chiefs .........................................................................384
From Simple to Paramount Chiefdoms ...............................................388
“Eastern” Group-Oriented and “Western” Individualizing
Chiefdoms ...........................................................................................390
viii contents
City-States: Sumerian versus Greek .....................................................399
Th e Autocratic Character of Mesopotamia and Egypt ......................402
Th e Epic of Gilgamesh is not a Heroic Tragedy ...................................410
Chapter Eight Th e Emergence of the Self from the
Western ‘State of Nature’ and the Conciliation of
Christianity and Aristocratic Liberty ..............................................419
Fukuyama and the Megalothymia of the “fi rst men”
of the West...........................................................................................419
Why Hegel’s “Master” Must be Aristocratic ........................................423
Kojeve and the “fi rst appearance” of Self-Consciousness .................428
Charles Taylor and Plato’s Self-Mastery ..............................................431
Th e Beginnings of Genuine Personalities in History .........................435
Nietzsche’s “Homer on Competition” ..................................................441
Arête and the Education of the Greeks ................................................445
Th e Roman Aristocratic Link ...............................................................456
Th e Germanic Barbarian Rejuvenation of the West ..........................460
Feudalism: an Aristocratic Type of Rule .............................................466
Charlemagne’s Continuation of the Western Tradition ....................470
Christian Virtues and Aristocratic Expansionism .............................475
Aristocratic liberty and the Rise of Representative
Institutions ..........................................................................................481
Cited Works .............................................................................................489
Index ........................................................................................................519
PREFACE
Th is book hasfi ve separate but closely related objectives. First, it seeks
to trace the ideological sources behind the multicultural eff ort to “pro-
vincialize” the history of Western civilization. It will be argued that the
devaluation of Western culture that swept the academic world starting
around the 1960s was part of a wider and newly emerging intellec-
tual movement that included the rise of anthropological relativism,
critical theory, dependency theory, evolutionary materialism, post-
modernism, feminism, and identity politics.
Th e second aim is to assess the empirical adequacy of a highly
infl uential set of revisionist works published in the last two decades
dedicated to the pursuit of dismantling the “Eurocentric” consensus on
the “rise of the West.” Th e focus will be on explicating, interpreting,
connecting, systematizing, supplying background information, and
refuting the arguments of multicultural revisionists who claim that
there were “surprising similarities” between the West and the non-
Western world as late as 1800–30 and that the Industrial Revolution
was the one transformation that fi nally set Europe on a diff erent path
of development. Th is book is quite determined in its eff orts to demon-
strate that the entire revisionist school is founded on precarious and
tendentious claims in its attempts to rewrite the history of the West.
Th e questionable pursuit of the revisionist school will be addressed by
means of a conscientious analytical and detailed review of a vast body
of secondary sources and fi ndings.
Th e third objective of this book will be to argue that the traditional
Eurocentric historiography on the rise of the West still holds much
signifi cance despite the unrelenting criticisms it has faced in the last
few decades. Th e standard historiography includes the classical expo-
nents of Europe’s uniqueness as well as contemporary historians and
sociologists whose primary interests are directed towards debating the
causes of Europe’s ascendancy. In defending their perspectives, this
book will also go beyond them by considering numerous additional
sources from historians of Europe who have written about Western
achievement from the ancient Greeks to the present. Th e central con-
tention will be that the West has always existed in a state of variance
from the rest of the world’s cultures. For example, some of the most