Date: 18-Mar-98 at 12:03
From: jim blaut, jblaut@uic.edu
Gernot:
If we don't study history, we're doomed to endure it a second time around.
The theory that Europeans are uniquely violent, or aggressive, or
predatory, or acquisitive, has a long and sordid history. Today, if I'm
not mistaken, most (not all) of the people who take it seriously are either
(a) racists, who believe that there is something in the genes of white
people that distinguishes them from everybody else and gives them an
advantage in history and that something is a gene for aggression (etc.);
(b) some Afrocentrists, who maintain that there is an abiding (perhaps
permanent) contrast between the peaceful, sharing peoples of Africa and the
vicious, violent people of Europe (occasionally, as with Bradley, this is
tied to the the idea of the Ice Man) and this explains Europe's predation
toward Africa. Some scholars opine that the viciousness may be very ancient
in European culture and not something in the genes (I call this cultural
racism). But the idea is a drearily old myth, unsupported by any evidence
that I am aware of.
The problematic is wrong. You search for some elixir that, swallowed before
dinner, will explain the rise of Europe before early modern times -- in
early modern times we have the massive inflow of wealth from the
newly-conquered Americas and soon thereatfer from the slave trade and slave
plantations, forces that some of us consider to be sufficient cause for the
initial (1500-1750) rise of Europe. There is no elixir. Europe was behind or on a par
with other civilizations until after 1492.
Cheers and boos
Jim Blaut