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49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Balanced, provocative, worthwhile, January 14, 2007
I picked this up with a bit of trepidation: For some time, I'd been feeling the need to refresh my memory of Western Civ, so I welcomed the idea of a well-written five-hundred page survey; but I don't have much sympathy for simple-minded notions of The West as Vile Conqueror, or globalization as The Destroyer of What Matters, that many reviewers impute to the author.
I was pleased, then, to find this book considerably more balanced than the reviews would lead one to expect. I don't think it's entirely fair to say, for instance, that Osborn is "on the side of" what's local, oral, customary, etc., as if he were some sort of ideologue. He certainly presents the costs of universalistic, abstracted, impersonal modes of social organization, and in so doing he makes one realize that the shape the world has taken under old-fashioned notions of "being civilized" need not have been how history developed. But he does seem to appreciate the allure and value, as well as the costs, of "Western civilization," as it's conventionally conceived, and he has lots of good things to say about how Western notions have promoted freedom and self-respect, and especially artistic vigor, among previously-oppressed groups. One comes away with much richer notions of how people make lives.
It is certainly unfair to describe the work as "strident." There's an edge of sorrow and bewilderment to the writing--like, What are we supposed to do now?--and impatience with the sort of Triumphalist tradition in Western Civ that resolutely refuses to think clearly and carefully about the humane costs of our particular way of life and its spread, or to consider the possibility that maybe sometimes, in some parts of the world even today, we'd do well to keep to ourselves our grubby Western ideas of nation-states pursuing written rules and formal processes instead of imposing them at gun point. (Can anyone say, "Iraq"? Anyone who believes that armies can make the Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, etc., settle down into a stable rule-following nation state really needs to read this book.)
Because the book is balanced and well argued, I find myself less contemptuous of anti-WTO, anti-capitalist arguments than before I read it. "Ah--so that's what those nutty protesters are going on about," I found myself understanding at various points. I found myself thinking it would be most interesting to have Osborn sit down with Amartya Sen for a conversation on development and goodness, and wondered who would come away having more influenced the other.
Reading this book has forced me into some serious reflection on my prior beliefs--and that seems like a worthy reason to recommend any work, to me.
Why only four stars? There were a few places where I couldn't tell whether Osborn was summarizing available data or waxing eloquent with speculation, and there were a few places where I found myself thinking, "You can't possibly know that--no one can." But those are not dominant problems with the book, just occasional irritants.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An anthropological etymology, March 22, 2007
Osborne's book opens with a nineteen-page "Prologue", which is a helpful summary of his thesis that contributes useful coherence to the remaining 473 pages of historical narrative. The book also has a bibliography for further reading and an index.
In his "Prologue" the author notes that the events of 9/11 and their aftermath have brought the vague idea of Western civilization, a reflection of who we are and what we value, into the foreground, as what we are defending in the war on terror.
But he adds that civilization is not merely a set of virtuous concepts; it is also the effects that these concepts have generated in history, and he therefore offers a historical approach to understanding the meaning of civilization. Thus, an anthropological etymology of the meaning of "civilization".
From the time of the ancient Greeks civilization has been opposed to the barbarianism of other societies. Western historians have typically attempted to trace a thread of European civilization from ancient Greece, through Rome, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and into the nineteenth-century society of the British Empire. And this thread was spun with optimism and the idea of progress.
But the needless and futile carnage of World War I changed the idea of European civilization to one that carries pessimism and the negation of the idea of progress. Freud said of the First World War "It is not that we sank so low, but that we never came so high as we thought." Thus barbarism is not others, but rather is in each man with his base and brutal instincts that can never be expunged, so every man is both civilized and barbarian. Osborne sees this pessimism as a throwback to St. Augustine, who wrote: "Take away the barriers created by laws, men's brazen capacity to do harm, their urge to self-indulgence, would rage to the full."
Osborne's thesis is not a new historical interpretation. For example in his book Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting (World of Art) (1969), Michael Levey of King's College, Cambridge University, wrote that that the eighteenth century - from Watteau to Goya - saw a violent collision of opposing forces, which was at base a clash between the conscious and the unconscious mind - a very Freudian approach. And he notes that after the fall of the Bastille, optimism and belief in nature as a guide were shot to pieces by the fusillades that followed and that continued to Waterloo.
Nonetheless I enjoy reading a history with a thesis more than reading a chronology of tedious details.
Thomas J. Hickey
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great update on the Durant histories, October 26, 2009
This review is from: Civilization: A New History of the Western World (Paperback)
Civilization pulls the beard on many classic text on European history like the Durant series I grew up on. This series was written during the Cold War and could not escape from the fear of the time.
The author presents a much needed revision and many intriguing insights. Here's some excerpts:
"Generations of schoolchildren have been taught that waves of invaders from Jutland and west Saxony swept into the east and south of Britain as the Romans withdrew. The Celtic inhabitants of the lowlands were then forced back to the far west and North."
"This story, which is almost entirely untrue, was largely created in the seventh century (i.e. 300 years later) by Bede."
"The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at West Heslerton was placed among Bronze Age burial mounds, and more than 80 percent of the 200 human remains discovered were of people of Celtic, or old British, ancestry -- and none suffered violent deaths or major injuries." (pg. 40-41)
What the author is saying is that what we were taught in high school history was wrong. The Anglo-Saxon invasion was a dilution of cultures not an invasion. An invasion fits nicely with modern misconceptions of European behavior.
The author also explores many new theories about European history and digs deep into European philosophy to understand who we were 10,000 years ago, how we evolved, and thereby discover who we are now. I found many of the new theories fascinating. Many ideas seemed appropriate for our times. Here's an excerpt:
"For three decades from the mid-1840's, free trade seemed to work; the British economy prospered as more controls were lifted and income and other taxes were reduced. It seemed that this was the "natural" way in which an industrial economy should run. But this turned out to be an illusion. It has been convincingly argued (see for example, Gray) that controlled and regulated markets, with their forest of evolving customary restraints, are the product of "natural" human society, brought about by the overriding need for social cohesion, while free markets have to be imposed by a strong authoritarian state." (pg. 350-351).
At the time, the British government was controlled by the East Indian company, the first modern corporation. The worker rebellions of the 1840's, the resulting work of Marx and Engels and even the American Revolution were a response to corporate encroachment on individual freedom.
I found the modern view of the rise of capitalism and the interaction with the age of discovery very engrossing.
European treatment of the natives of America was different than earlier absorption of people in Europe during the early Iron Age and Bronze age. John Keagan, a traditional military historian, would have you believe that all was conquest. To Europeans during the age of discovery, formed by the recent reformation in religion and the explosive growth of nationalism and industrialization, led them to think of the natives as backward, unworthy animals. Wealth, and its entanglement with power, led us to conquer and annihilate rather than absorb. Look at how the Saxons melted peacefully into the culture dominated by the Celts and Romans in southern England. The same can largely be said of the later Norman invasion of England and France.
There was some bloodshed during these periods but it was nothing like the European subjugation of North and especially South and Central America. Capitalism is to blame. Capitalism is a uniquely European invention evolving from Martin Luther and the Reformation. Taking the good with the bad we have the creation of the individual conscience.
Unfortunately, modern capitalism still struggles with the question of morality; the religions born of Martin Luther's 95 thesis have proven a poor answer.
Much of the world took to Western Capitalism easily enough but could not understand its connection with individual conscience. Thus, the Chinese can indulge in stealing, e.g., copying movies, while in headlong pursuit of Capitalism, an evil if unrestrained.
This is an excellent history text and should enjoy a long shelf life. The author has managed to make history interesting again.
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