F Y = WSN? - Interest, and especially in re Warren Wagar's postings!
respectfully forwarded
gunder frank
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 16:48:55 -0500
From: "whitney@neu.edu Whitney Howarth, Northeastern Univ" <MANNING@neu.edu>
Reply-To: H-NET List for World History <H-WORLD@h-net.msu.edu>
Subject: Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history
From: Whitney Howarth, World History Center, Northeastern University
whowarth@lynx.dac.neu.edu
***Eurocentric vs. Euro-dominant history***
Most scholars purusing World History as a research field will
agree that a Eurocentric model does not successfully present our
global historical reality. Though many world history textbooks still
tend to fall short of the "global" mark, an increasing number of world
history monographs tend to focus on world-systems and cross-cultural
interactions (i.e. Wallerstein and Curtin). Educators, wisely,
often supplement these textbooks with such monographs in hopes of
presenting a fuller narrative of the past, and to formulate a new
historiography which does not perpetuate Eurocentrism. Ideally,
I envision a world historical methodology which embraces connections and
searches for patterns trans-nationally, but find myself often perplexed
by the numbers of contemporary world historical pieces which tend to
promote the "dominance" of Europe (post-1500) as the prevalent theme
of research.
Within this category I include books like Walter Rodney's *How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa* and Daniel Headrick's *Tools of Empire* --
books which by no means take a Eurocentric stance, but which,
nonetheless, do present world history through a Euro-dominant
perspective. (Headrick's thesis for example, for those unfamiliar with
his work, explains Europe's ability to expand into Africa only after the
development of machine guns, quinine and steam boats). Similarly, works
such as Alfred Crosby's *Ecological Imperialism* and Willian McNeill's
*Plagues and Peoples* attempt to explain Europe's status historically in
the world system (in this case biologically, rather than technologically)
without attaching a qualitative meaning to that status. It appears then
that world history post-1500 is dominated by a model of dominance (!)
which I find unsettling at best. Though quite fond of the above mentioned
texts and appreciative of their efforts to present a new perspective to
"old" subjects, I remain wary of the precedent they may establish.
I hope that scholars who have denounced a Eurocentric approach to
world history have not done so merely to adopt a Euro-dominant one. If
such is the case, it seems likely that we are merely substituting one
myopia for another.