38 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Orientalism-lite: a weak and poorly grounded book..., October 25, 2003
This review is from: The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History (Paperback)
It is difficult to critique Blaut's book without falling into the trap of expounding the `Eurocentric diffusion' theory oneself. If he was making the point that many historical thinkers at many points in time were guilty of over-estimating the uniqueness and impact of any `European miracle', then I would have some sympathy with his argument. However, his aims are much grander. He wishes to prove that the success of `Western' civilisation was a geographical happenstance, and that the whole canon of European historiography is built on the basis of `Eurocentric diffusion', and he, of course, is the only person to have spotted this.
Of course, Edward Said's Orientalism of 1979 had preceded Blaut's work by some 14 years, but despite the similarity of tone and approach, Blaut disregards Said's work in one sentence with a quick nod of approval - colonial activity in the Orient obviously being unimportant to his central thesis of the importance of the Americas in European growth. This is typical of Blaut's lack of interest in Asian, African or Middle-Eastern colonialism - for example, colonial India does not figure in his exposition at all. Blaut may not have been aware of the historical academic community's attacks on Said's thesis - these seem to me even more apparent in Blaut's thesis than in Said's. John MacKenzie's incisive critique of Said's Orientalism resonates with flaws I perceive in Blaut's book.
Firstly Blaut does not provide any evidence of linkage between `representation' of the `outside' world, as he calls it, in the `Colonizer's Model of the World' and the application of that `representation' in the colonialisation `project'. So what philosophical and historical texts existed in the critical 16th and 17th centuries that exhibited this Euro-chauvinism, and how were they harnessed by the colonisers in their supposed domination of the world? He only provides a brief survey of books from 1850 onwards in an extended footnote. Secondly, he creates a form of Euro-centrism himself in his argument painting a caricature of "the imperial mugger and unresisting victim" Thirdly, he essentialises `european intellectual history' as if it is one body of consistent opinion. An example of his writing shows this: "All scholarship is diffusionist insofar as it axiomatically accepts the Inside-Outside world". Also, he is highly selective about the examples he cites, and those that he cites as examples of `current thinking' are often archaic. An example can be seen in his argument against the `Malthusian Theory' of overcrowding "being propagated today", where he attacks books by Lawrence Stone and Robert Brenner, both published in 1977. He only admits in a footnote that an extensive exegesis criticising these works was penned in the 1980s. His selectivity also extends to his bold statement that all world regions were using the sea as effectively as each other prior to 1492. However, he cannot ignore the evidence of the prowess of the Portuguese in sailing techniques, but he hides this in another footnote. What of Bartolomeu Dias's rounding of the Cape of Good Hope which predated Columbus's voyage by four years? Surely the epic voyage of Da Gama's to Kenya and India in 1497/8 shows that Columbus's route was not a one-off freak happenstance?
John Thornton's book published the previous year gives a much more convincing historical and geographic explanation of European maritime Atlantic successes over the riverine African sailors, arguing that Europe (and the Middle-East) did have world-beating technical advantages in sailing technology and know-how by the mid 15th century.
The final `Saidian' streak in the book is its ahistoricism. Like Said, Blaut is not a historian. He is a geography professor. But how is this book ahistorical? Firstly, it ignores specific causality. What exactly was the flow of precious metals when they arrived back in Europe? Many historians believe that much of the bullion was respent on purchasing china, silk and tea. Surely this would have enriched Asia not Europe, and especially encouraged Asian industrialisation? Also, the countries which reaped the bullion rewards of South America (Spain and Portugal) patently did not defeudalise at the same rate as Britain and the Low Countries. And some areas, such as Italy and Germany did not gain directly from such colonies - and yet they lie within Blaut's uniform definition of `Europe'.
To conclude, Blaut fails to harness his idea of a `Coloniser's Model' to any practical instances of colonialist hegemony, or instances of underdevelopment in the colonies. William Coffey describes Blaut's approach as "spending a great deal of effort constructing a `straw man' which he heroically topples...but his approach may be more properly likened to an attack of (German) panzer divisions." He fails to convince that there is one unitary Europe with one Colonial Model of exploitation for capitalist development. Some analysis of the divisions within Europe is surely required to understand how capitalism developed, and where it found nourishment. The book argues against Weber's ideas of the `oriental despot', the cyclical rather than modernising nature of Asian societies and Weber's racist undertones. But it fails to address Weber's ideas on the famous `Protestant Work Ethic' and the Marx's and Weber's `spirit of the true man'. One year after the publication of Blaut's book. Francis Fukuyama published the highly successful and controversial End of History and the Last Man which investigated these issues - coming to very different conclusions from Blaut.
It is worth noting that Blaut's final book, entitled Eight Eurocentric historians was published in 2000, in the year of his death. It may be that this new edition may address some of the criticisms I level at his 1993 work.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Refuting Eurocentrism, May 13, 2008
This review is from: The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History (Paperback)
James Blaut, a geographer at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is particularly known for his excellent refutations and polemics against Eurocentrism in economic history. This book, "The Colonizer's Model of the World", is the pinnacle of that oeuvre, together with its companion work
Eight Eurocentric Historians.
The first and largest part of the book is devoted to refuting the mythology and mistakes of Eurocentric diffusionism, a body of theories and statements which purport to show that Europe or Europeans were in some way, whether mentally or physically or economically or environmentally or culturally, superior to Asians, Africans and other non-Europeans before the 'discovery' of America. Blaut does this by analyzing systematically the works of many recent and past popularizers of these theories, from the 'hydraulic societies' of Karl Wittfogel to the contemporary racist historiography of Eric L. Jones, and subjecting them to an unsparing criticism for their erroneous assumptions and ignorance of the non-European world. As Blaut shows, China, India, Southeast Asia and even Africa were not lagging behind Europe in any respect before 1492, including but not limited to technology, individual freedom (or lack thereof), and demographics. He also makes many essential geographic points, such as refuting the theories that tropical conditions are inherently unsuited for working or thinking, or that tropical soil is necessarily less fertile, or that Europe relied on rainfall agriculture unlike Asia. The book "Eight Eurocentric Historians" builds upon this part and goes into more detail about it.
The second part of the book is a discussion of the state of feudalism in Europe and elsewhere (about the same level of development except for the Americas, as Blaut shows) before 1492, and the immensely rapid growth, change, and development Western and Southern Europe underwent in the period roughly from 1492 to 1700. Blaut persuasively argues that only the colonization of the Americas, with the enormous influx of wealth and capitalistic production relations resulting from gold and silver mining and plantation work (particularly sugar), can adequately explain this phenomenon. He also explains why it was Europe that conquered America rather than the opposite, the answer being disease, and why it was Europe as opposed to Asia or Africa that did this, the answer being geographical location and advantageous wind patterns for sailing.
Blaut is unsparing and polemic in his writing, occasionally getting preachy, but his case is strong and aims home. He even criticizes otherwise radical authors for their failing in this regard, often legitimately, such as Marx and to a lesser extent Engels, Robert Brenner, Perry Anderson, and others. I do not endorse or support all his critiques on this field, as Blaut occasionally goes overboard, and his endorsement of Martin Bernal's "Black Athena" theory, now discredited, does not aid his case. (It must be noted that this book was written in 1993, and the refutation of this theory in "Black Athena Revisited" (
Black Athena Revisited) was published in 1996.) Blaut nonetheless gives good cause also for the radical historians to revise and change the substance of some of the classic Marxist historical view - his book is yet more confirmation that the concept of the "Asiatic mode of production" is untenable and must be discarded, and it also gives more argument for introducting "protocapitalism" as a separate mode of production in between feudalism and Industrial Revolution capitalism, although Blaut himself is not yet willing to do so.
What is most important about this book however is not its historiographical import, but the essential corrective it is to much of the still popular view of world history and the development of Europe and its superior position. From Tarzan to Tintin and from Kipling to the popular view of American Indians, the entire picture of the interactions between Europe and the rest of the world are for many people still unwittingly based on completely incorrect Victorian prejudices and assumptions. This goes not just for the average guy, but even for intellectuals, in fact even for professional historians. And if Blaut's book could make a dent in this vision, it will have made a major contribution to international understanding and historical sense.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Mixed Bag, July 6, 2011
This review is from: The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History (Paperback)
In this book, the late James Blaut attempted to demonstrate the existence of a theory of Eurocentric diffusionism among mainstream scholars and the general public, as well as reasons for its falsity and the veracity of a competing theory.
Eurocentric diffusionism is defined as the concept that the internal qualities of Europe led to the modernization of non-European countries after colonialism, rather than utilization of the resources of those continents themselves, which is the idea that Blaut supports. The concept of an "Inside" versus an "Outside" is repeatedly mentioned, with Europe or "Greater Europe" said to be conceptualized as a focal point that gradually spreads its inventions and discoveries outward to the non-producers of the world in other continents.
Colonialism is legitimized by depicting non-European regions of the world as empty both physically and culturally. The exploitation of non-Europeans through dispossession, slavery, and theft of their mineral wealth is therefore justified because Europe contributed cultural wealth to those regions. While the importation of material products from non-Europe to Europe is regarded as acceptable, the importation of cultural or intellectual products is not, since non-Europeans are regarded as primitive and backwards.
While the author accurately describes a historic academic model that is likely still accepted in part by segments of the public, he provides rather limited evidence that this framework was still widely adopted by scholars in 1993, the year of this book's publication.
His own selected definitions of Europe and non-Europe are problematic. Blaut states that, "In this book, the word 'Europe' refers to the continent of Europe and to regions dominated by European culture elsewhere, regions like the United States and "Canada." He does not mention Latin America, dominated primarily by European culture from Iberia, likely because Americans have been conditioned to regard Latin Americans as non-white or non-European, despite the fact that several countries (such as Argentina) are predominantly ethnically European and all are predominantly culturally European, though those with higher traditionalist Indian populations (i.e. Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia) have important Native influences.
More significantly, the most persistent and critical error is likely the author's tendency to essentially promise more than he actually delivers in terms of demonstrating that the alleged disparities between Europe and non-Europe were nonexistent before the Age of Exploration, or to establish that there were parities between selected parts of non-Europe and Europe, but not the universal equality (or even the lesser standard of equity), that his wording implies existed.
In the beginning of chapter 2, Blaut states, "My task in this chapter and in Chapter 3 ('Before 1492') is to show that Europeans had no superiority over non-Europeans at any time prior to 1492: they were not more advanced, not more modern, not more progressive." However, in the beginning of chapter 3, he modifies his purpose somewhat, stating, "Prior to 1492, the progress toward modernization and capitalism which was taking place in parts of Europe was also taking place in parts of Asia and Africa." This fails to address the disparities between Europe and America, Australia, and various islands that were colonized by Europeans. He thus states an intent to only partially support his claim of parity between Europe and non-Europe.
Yet he then goes on to only partially support this partial support. The general pattern that he follows is to first make a rather strong claim, such as, "The protocapitalist port cities of Europe were not more highly developed than those of Africa and Asia in the fifteenth century."
He then proceeds to provide evidence for only part of this claim: "This holds true regardless of the kinds of criteria chosen as measures. European cities, first, were not larger in absolute or relative population. In fact, urbanization in Europe was probably less advanced than urbanization in China, India, the Arab region, and no doubt many other non-European areas. The urban population in early Ming China was perhaps 10% of the total population. In the Vijayanagar Empire of southern India it must have been at least as high: the inland capital alone held about 3% of the population - comparable centers in Europe, such as Paris, may have had half that percentage - and the coastal port cities were both numerous and large."
The examples of Ming China and Vijayanagar Empire may serve to prove that there was Asian urbanization comparable or superior to European urbanization, but the author does not cite any specific examples of African urbanization, such as Timbuktu. While the "Arab region" includes substantial portions of North Africa, the most persistent Eurocentric criticism is typically directed at sub-Saharan Africa, by genetic determinists because of their beliefs about the inferiority of the population and by those he terms environmental determinists because of their beliefs about the Saharan desert blocking diffusion to the south. To reference the most recent advocacy of environmental determinism in a popular science book, Jared Diamond (who is addressed in Blaut's book
Eight Eurocentric Historians), writes in
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies that, "my use of the term 'Eurasia' includes in several cases North Africa, which biogeographically and in many aspect of human culture is more closely related to Eurasia than to sub-Saharan Africa."
Worse than the partial argument is the bald assertion, such as that expressed in his discussion of military disparities between Europeans and Amerindians: "Moreover, the superiority of the Spaniards' primitive guns was not really very great when compared with the Americans' bows and arrows."
In comparison, in
Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, Matthew Restall explains that guns were of limited use to the earliest Europeans in America artillery pieces such as cannons and firearms such as harquebuses were in short supply and difficult to transport, tropical and sub-tropical humidity dampened powder, rendering guns inoperable, and that more effective weapons such as the musket and more effective battle techniques such as volley-firing had yet to be developed. In
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles Mann explains that the pistols owned by Jamestown colonists were inferior to arrows in range and penetration. In
The Mystic Warriors of the Plains, Thomas E. Mails explains that quickly drawn and discharged arrows can be fired more rapidly than a historic revolver, and at short range can penetrate further than the ball of a historic Colt's navy pistol and that the bow and arrow was not abandoned to a very great extent by Plains warriors until they acquired repeaters such as the Winchester 66 and the Sharps .50 caliber carbines.
Blaut, by contrast, provides an (unsourced) assertion in a single sentence. There is evidence of this statement being true, in the form of the arguments provided by the aforementioned authors, but Blaut does not summarize these arguments himself or even reference these sources in an endnote.
Returning to the issue of disparities between continents, of particular significance was the complete absence of any discussion of Australia from the book, and (according to the index), only one brief mention of the smallest continent, in an endnotes section. The likely reason is that Australian history strongly evidences the fact that there were technological disparities between continents based on the presence or absence of domesticable flora and fauna, and Blaut insistently rejects this as an explanation. In pre-colonial Australia, both domesticated plants and animals were fundamentally absent, and the consequence was that the indigenous population were nomadic hunter-gatherers.
To this day, the principal rural productive activity in Australia is not crop cultivation but livestock ranching (mainly of sheep and cattle), with wheat, sugar cane, and cotton. Cultivation is primarily practiced in relatively small pockets in the southern and eastern regions of the continent (with the highest human populations concentrated in Melbourne and Sydney) that enjoy the combined benefits of moderate to high soil fertility, annual precipitation, and temperate climate. Even twenty-first century technology cannot produce an irrigation system that converts the massive interior deserts into fertile regions, demonstrating the extent of environmental influence that the author repeatedly denies.
If we can accept the fact that there is a correlation between domesticated flora and fauna and technological sophistication, and it is sufficiently evident that a continent without the former also lacked the latter that the author omits it from his book, can we not also accept that high levels of such flora and fauna are present in certain regions of the world, low or nonexistent levels are present elsewhere, and intermediate levels in still others, with technology approximately commensurate to these levels? The author apparently cannot.
Yet remarkably, after much criticism of environmental determinism (which he describes as "the theory that the natural environment strongly influences human affairs and human history"), Blaut emerges as a reluctant partial advocate of it in his explanation as to why America was colonized by Europeans rather than...
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