Customer Reviews

The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I did not agree with everything in this book, but I sure learned a lot from reading it.

When I read the introduction, it became clear to me that this book is part of an on-going conversation among historians wrestling with the question of why "the West" has dominated the world stage. In fact, this author refers to David Landes' _The_Wealth_and_Poverty_of_Nations_ in a way that makes it clear that Hobson is responding to Landes. So I put this book aside long enough to read Landes' book first.

As a conversation, these two books have a great deal to offer. Neither is completely balanced, but between them, they cover a great deal of ground, both in terms of historical content and in terms of how the two authors understand the same events. Reading these two books together taught me a great deal, both about history, and about the historian's profession.

I strongly recommend that if you read one of these two books, you read the other. Be warned that if you agree with one, the other will probably infuriate you, but if you can stay the course, you will be both better informed and a bit wiser at the end of it all.

Looking through the reviews above I can imagine the bewilderment of the potential reader. Some of the reviewers hated it, some loved it. So is this book any good? I would answer 'yes': but the book has to be seen for what it is. It is NOT a 'fair' and 'balanced' academic treatise. It is, as someone pointed out, a polemic. What they failed to point out is that it is an excellent polemic, that has to be seen in context. The context is the literally thousands of books that have been published which unthinkingly take a 'Eurocentric' view of world history, asking loaded questions that are carefully chosen to permit only the 'right' answers to be given (E.g. Why did democracy arise only in the West? Why did science arise only in the West? Why is the West so much more 'advanced' than the Muslim world/Africa/South America etc. etc. etc.). Of course no one accuses them of being polemics: if you take the orthodox view, that's simply 'common sense'.

It should also point out that like most polemics (and unlike most academic texts) this book is well written and a pleasure to read. Certainly if one was carrying out an academic study on this subject I would read other books on the subject from more 'orthodox' historians to get the other side of the coin. In other words, not every word of Hobson's book might be the Gospel Truth. He ignores ambiguity and nuance: if something can be related back to China or the Muslim World it is. But on the other hand, it states an important position, which from now on economic and cultural historians are going to have to take note of.

The description on the approach of the book provided by the "Book reviews" is fairly accurate. Therefore, I will only point out that the book is about one of the most con-troversial issues nowadays on long-term and comparative history: why Western countries have dominated the world during the last few centuries (in fact, Hobson objects to the very way the question is posed). Besides, the book is not a difficult reading (content: 5 starts; pleasure of reading: 4 to 3).

Other books I would recommend to read are the following: "The Dynamics of Global Dominance. European Overseas Empires 1415-1980", by David Abernethy; "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; "The world economy. A millennial perspective" by Angus Maddison; "The Phe-nomenon of Religion", by Moojan Momen; "World History. A new perspective" by Clive Ponting; "The Great Divergence", by Kennetz Pomeranz;and Victor Lieber-man's "Strange Parallels: Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland : Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830".

P.D. For more information, I would suggest reading also the reviews to this work in amakon.co.uk

Accusations of "sino-centrism" or "one-sidedness" reveal simply that the accuser has not actually read the book (which one would hope to be a necessary pre-cursor to such evaluations). In fact, Hobson specifically argues not only against sino-centrism, but also offers philosophical and empirical arguments against ALL such "centrisms" where history is concerned. In this way, he distinguishes himself as a theoretical and empirical historian of the highest order.

Furthermore, Hobson--all of us--are under no obligation to be "balanced"--only to be honest and to present the evidence--which he has most eloquently done.

I highly recommend this book; it would be especially appropriate for a graduate-level seminar, as it is both rigorously researched and highly accessible.

I think that Hobson's book is good in a way that it provides a counter-argument to Eurocentricism such as found in David Landes' the Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Beyond that, however, I find that Hobson is lacking in any real substance and rather chooses to bash Eurocentrist's arguments rather than making any of his own. He resorts to many of the same pitfalls that he sees in Eurocentric authors by presenting the East as the sole site of pre-1800 civilization. I understand that he is trying to undermine Eurocentric arguments, but by being so obviously one-sided he is defeating his own cause.

Dr. John M. Hobson, an authority on political science and international relations, has done us a huge favour by writing this impressive book, dispelling the myth of a unique Western civilisation that developed and industrialised single-handedly, which defines `mainstream' human civilisation.

He reveals historic truths that the present day `Western civilisation' is fundamentally built on Eastern knowledge and expertise, particularly from China and the Middle East. He reveals that many if not most, of modern institutions of capitalism and governance have their origins from Imperial China.

While it is common knowledge that China was much more advanced than the West in technology and technical expertise up until the late 18th Century, it is often neglected that the West learnt a great deal from Confucian governance, ethics and social philosophy in the same period. The West, that has traditionally prided itself as the `giver' of modernity, was in actuality, given modernity by the Chinese. Chinese historical sources highlight the existence of full-fledged capitalism; and sophisticated governance, separation of powers, and rule of law since the late Han Dynasty, and developed further during the Tang Dynasty. At this point I would like to cross reference to The Art of the State, by Christopher Hood. Dr Hood collaborates Dr Hobson, by stating that all the criteria defined by German sociologist Max Weber for a `modern' state, was achieve by the Chinese more than 1500 years ago. By his definition, Imperial China was a modern state.

Other sections of the book give insight views on why a Eurocentric view distorts world history, elaborating on the racism and ignorance that have characterised much of Western civilisation in the past two centuries. In one section of the book, are detailed accounts of the `Chinese origins of the British Industrialisation,' indeed a very informative read, and much research is evident in this section.

Lastly, I would just like to touch on Dr Hobson's attempt to correct the myth that the East and West were separate. One lesson that readers can take with them is that the world was very much globalised than we thought. There were indeed contacts via trade between civilisations; China and Middle East, and Middle East and Europe that allowed a gradual diffusion of technology and knowledge from China to Europe.

This is indeed a much-needed book that will help rectify the ingrained prejudiced view of the Eurocentric world history and civilisation.

Readers should be forewarned that this is a polemical tract rather than a work of evidentiary historical scholarship. The idea that Chinese science was "ahead" of the West (however we define the West) is not new at all; it was a central theme of Joseph Needham's work half a century ago, some of which has stood the test of time and much of which hasn't. At least Needham and his collaborators were able to draw original Chinese sources into their studies (and the later works of his collaborators in "Science and Civilization in China" are mostly excellent). Hobson's work is laden with casual and unsubstantiated assertions, overuse of silly and undefined terms like "economic miracle," and unduly credulous readings of previous scholars who had their own axes to grind. As for individual critiques of his specific assertions about such issues as iron production, currency flows, etc, I'll leave that to the reviewers in the standard professional journals, if they bother to review this book (Although I'm sure it will be warmly received in some fields, like cultural studies, where the citation of prominent European intellectual theorists is more important than having reliable Chinese sources). In sum, this is a contribution to the growing ranks of Sino-triumphalist works by western writers guided more by recent politics and economic trends than historical evidence. A common feature of this group, apparently, is to think that because some of their predecessors have made ridiculous Eurocentric claims minimizing China's significance in their own works, that means it's somehow advisable to make equally absurd and unbalanced Sinocentric claims now - in fact, because the transparency of this approach is so obvious, it ends up preaching to the converted. My plea to others working in the same field: learn to read Chinese and look at some actual texts to check whether they support your arguments. For readers in search of more legitimate works in English about Chinese science, I heartily recommend "On Their Own Terms" by Benjamin Elman, published by Harvard University Press, which seems to be taking up the mantle so unfortunately cast off by Cambridge University Press.

A great title for a book on a great subject, but simply horrible execution. Cambridge University Press must have forgotten to put this book through the normal refereeing and editing process, and thus it reads like a second-rate dissertation written by an angry Ph.D. student who constantly appeals to the oracular statements of his fellow-travelers rather than presents his own convincing arguments. Simply stated, Hobson's thesis is that nothing good or original ever came from the West; all that is positive and original came from the East. He rests his case on his presentation of an encyclopedia of "preemptions' (Doesn't he must mean "antecedents"?). The heat of his diatribe obscures the depth and true complexity of the (non)?-problem he allegedly studies: "The Rise of the West." By the way, his answer to this issue is as follows: It did not rise (At least until 1800 or so). To Hobson's credit, he constantly emphasizes the growth of a World System, yet overstatement mars his argument. Hobson persistently juxtaposes the most derogatory and pejorative picture of Western society against an uncritical and idealized version of Eastern society. Hobson lacks all subtly and therefore is not to be believed. History is not so simple.

As all historians know, true originality in culture, in ideas, or in technology is rare indeed. Thus agriculture was independently invented only handful of times, written language even fewer times, and almost all technologies have antecedents. However, this fact does not diminish the accomplishments of any society that takes a procedure or thing from elsewhere and "runs with it." This ability to borrow or to be stimulated and to utilize something from elsewhere is surely not a sign of weakness or decadence but of strength. Finding the antecedents to things or ideas is not proof that these were "stolen"--not grounds for the kinds of admonishment regularly meted out by Hobson. Moreover, inter-societal or inter-cultural transmission is much more complicated than Hobson would ever admit and must even allow for independent invention in the face of common circumstances.

Illustrations of Hobson's misunderstandings and mistaken approach can be found on nearly every page of the book. It is true that Su Sung's water driven clock of 1086 in China was a marvelous invention, but precisely where did it lead? Was it replicated widely in market and church towers as the European mechanical clock was a few centuries later? Did it create a new sense of time necessary for new governing ideologies. And is the "good circumstantial evidence" (p. 131) about the influence of the Chinese on the European clock grounds for any historical argument at all? What about gunpowder and the cannon? It is not true as Hobson writes that "Eurocentric scholars often attribute the discovery of gunpowder to the European scientist Roger Bacon in 1267." (p. 186). Actually, they simply state that Bacon was the first one to mention this explosive mixture in Latin manuscripts. Everyone knows that gunpowder was first employed by the Chinese. As for the cannon, its early design and the terminology that described it is really too confusing to determine where the first true cannon was invented (When does some tube-like thing filled with explosive mixture become a cannon? Anyway, wasn't it developed rather than "invented"?). The first drawing in Europe of a cannon dates from 1326. It rapidly evolved into a weapon that revolutionized warfare and gave Europe the means to dominate the seas and coasts of the world.

Furthermore, Hobson writes over and over about the superiority of Chinese junks over contemporary European vessels. Junks were magnificent ships and much much larger than European caravels, but maybe bigger is not always better. After all, the tiny caravel did its job quite well. For Hobson Henry the Navigator "had begun to fumble" (p. 138) his was down the coast of Africa while people from the East heroically explored the world. Hobson never abstains from using pejorative language when referring to Westerners while he always stand in awe of the feats of other cultures.. Chinese agriculture was much more productive than Western agriculture according to Hobson. Well guess what: hydraulically controlled paddy agriculture does yield more per acre than natural-rainfall wheat agriculture, but yield per acre is only one measure of agriculture productivity. The more relevant point is that European agriculture and distribution networks began to liberate the continent from famine mortality at a time when killing starvation still swept periodically through the great kingdom of China. Hobson writes that the Egyptian physician Ibn al-Nafis "fully pre-empted the much heralded work of the Englishman, William Harvey, by no less than three and a half centuries" (p. 179). My little encyclopedia says that Ibn-al-Nafis argued for the pulmonary circulation. Harvey is known not for his discovery of the pulmonary circulation, which had already been proved by Renaldus Columbus at Padua in the sixteenth century, but for the systemic circulation, which he rigorously demonstrated with brilliant and repeatable experiments. Hobson writes that the fourteenth century astronomer Ibn al-Shatir "developed a series of mathematical models which were almost exactly the same as those developed about 150 years later by Copernicus in his heliocentric theory." (p. 180) It is certain that Islamic astronomy was well developed in the Middle Ages and at a time when Western astronomy was scarcely able to replicate the mathematical precision of the ancient Ptolemy, it is noteworthy that an Islamic scholar succeeded in "saving the phenomena" so accurately and with so much simple elegance. But Copernicus's achievement with it heliocentrism ultimately led to a paradigm shift. This is what is important. And Ibn al-Shatir was a geocentrist.

The most disturbing aspect of Hobson's book is not in the multitude of mistakes that he makes and his disregard for conventional historical methodologies but simply his ill humor and name calling. Great historians like Lynn White who pioneered the field of medieval technology a half century ago are dismissed out of hand. Other historians, like David Landes, are characterized not as "the distinguished historian of technology" (which he is) but as "the avowed Eurocentric scholar" (p. 130). (Hobson's book is in part a response to Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations). For Hobson, there is a litmus test to which all scholars must be subjected: Eurocentric or non-Eurocentric?. No matter the quality of the historian's work, the elegance of the presentation, the force of the conclusions. If a historian is not politically correct in this matter, he/she is to be dismissed out of hand and even excoriated. Thank god that Hobson's book is unlikely to exercise much influence on historical discourse. The real story of the East's influence on the West must continue to be told by other scholars of a more level-headed temperament employing more acceptable methodologies.

John M. Hobson is the grandson of the famous liberal anti-imperialist John Hobson, whose works on the structure of imperialism and capitalism in the colonies influenced such luminaries as Lenin and Keynes. Following somewhat in the footsteps of his grandfather, the current Hobson has studied economic history to write this book, although his origins are in international relations theory. Using a great amount of recently amassed analysis and sources, he provides a damning if somewhat overdrawn critique of the Eurocentrist tendency still prevailing in the popular conception of history. He shows how rather than Europe having been dominant throughout the last millennium and having been technologically and economically superior to other parts of the world, in fact the period of European dominance is a fairly short one and more accurately described as an aberration based on a series of succesful conquests and exploitations than based on any superior form of civilization.

All of this is nothing completely new any more, since the same has been done quite well several times before, from Eric Wolf in the 1970s to Sir Jack Goody, James Blaut and so forth. The new anti-Eurocentric narrative is clearly much better founded in the accumulated evidence than the Whiggish version of events were Europe was always (latently) superior and all of history is but the sequence of events leading to its inevitable victory. Hobson shows this with much vigor and polemics, and cannot fail to convince even a skeptic with the mass of evidence he has accumulated. This version of events is generally, be it slowly, being accepted nowadays, with even such authors as Eric Jones being somewhat converted to its viewpoint. Wallerstein's "world systems analysis" is also built on similar insights, and has been quite influential. Nonetheless, Hobson's book is more valuable munition in this struggle, and what's more, his book is well-written, crisp and agressive.

Of all the anti-Eurocentric writers of recent times writing along these lines, Hobson is probably the most radical in his historical interpretation (though not his politics). If one were to follow his work "The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization" entirely, very little indeed would remain as European ideas or European inventions at all. In the end, our continent is left with not much but the invention of glasses and perhaps a part of the heavy plough. This seems exaggerated even to me, although I consider the anti-Eurocentric viewpoint to be generally highly defensible and explanatory. In this sense, Hobson's book is flawed in the other direction, and his overly polemical style will detract from the impact it might have on readers who are not so used to this perspective yet: he gives them neither mental space to accomodate the new information nor much of a way to accept it other than brute forcing the information on them. This is academically and scientifically completely valid, but one can doubt whether it is diplomatically the best approach.

One particularity of this book is his strong focus on identity. Because he will credit Europe with virtually nothing, this oddly leaves him with the question of how Europe became dominant anyway, at least for a while. In part he follows the common anti-Eurocentric answer to this, based on geographical considerations, ecology and some contingencies - this can be generally supposed to be a good working hypothesis. But he also puts a heavy emphasis on a European identity-formation in opposition to other peoples, with first the idea of 'Christendom' and later the formation of racial ideas. Here the Europeans come off as uniquely conceiving themselves as an agressive bloc against the rest, and this gives them the morale power to destroy more civilized and less hostile foes. I do not find this part very convincing on the whole, although it contains some worthwhile suggestions, mainly because it greatly understates the degree to which other peoples and civilizations in the past have also formed their own ideologies to give them the strength and coherence which could give them military victory and cohesion in empire, beyond their technology and numbers. Islam for example has played such a role more than once, and as Asia goes both the Chinese and Japanese have had similar developments over time. Here as with the technological evidence, Hobson seems to swing too much to the anti-European side, so to speak.

Nonetheless, the book's amassing of material is good and reliable, and it is very readable. It is indeed a peculiar defect in the Western mentality that although Europe and its descendant countries have only been at the head of the pack for a very short time in history, we have nonetheless reinterpreted all of humanity's common history to present our superiority as both inherent and inevitable, and the manifold damaging effects this has had we still haven't quite been able to survey entirely. This 'Western disease' Hobson has well been able to demonstrate for what it is, and it makes him a worthy successor to the 1900s Hobson.

Just as the West in his book, the author's identity is constructed on a negative ideology: he is "against" Orientalism and Eurocentrism: and these images of the "other" ideology appear obsessively just about on every page of the book.

With pedantic patience Hobson sets up Eurocentric theses that he then punctiliously demolishes. Some of the facts and arguments he fields are good - none though new - his is mainly a compilation of existing studies. A sedulous one, however, and therein rests the great use of the book. One finds a lot of facts and anecdotes brought together accessibly and intelligently.

The main points I have retained are:

* The Eurasian continent became globalised at least since the time mankind learned to ride the Indian Ocean and Eastern monsoon. Overland routes also brought civilisations into contact. Trade ensued, in both commodities and specialities. "Resource portfolios" moved back and forth. On the whole, the West was a net recipient from the East (the author fails to mention though that copper smelting maybe a resource portfolio that moved east from Cyprus to China and beyond). China was the main generator of inventions and technology, but the Arabs much contributed. India is only cursorily mentioned but it is understood also to be a big player.

* China, and to a lesser extent India, remained the "great economic attractor" up to 1800 - absorbing bullion from both the Americas and Japan, and generating much trade.

* In the overall scheme of things at the beginning of the modern age, the West was a regional player, and the much vaulted Portuguese and Dutch empires of the eastern seas were in reality but a distraction for Eurasia. Overstating it - the West remind a minor player in Eurasia up to 1800 (America is another story, but even America contribution in silver and slavery did not fundamentally alter the power relations in Eurasia).

These are important insights, and worth pondering. They do destroy Eurocentrism. No great loss, though this spook haunts the international contemporary discourse. The author, however, is not a scholar of Eurasian history, and his mastery of the subject is rather patchy. He has read up on China, India he just about misses, and his portrait of Arabian civilisation is quite trite. He trots out the usual group of Arab philosophers suspected of having influenced the Renaissance (he misses Al-Hazen and his contribution to perspective). But that's about it. Why should he? After all, he is after Eurocentrism, not history.

After that he loses the plot completely. The two-bit player did conquer the world. India and China were in decline at that time, from internal and external reasons, though the author is loath to admit it. It would have been worth the author's effort to try and understand what was going on. A good point of departure might have been Spence The Search for Modern China (Second Edition).

Instead, he takes a plunge into "identity" and "agency". A fter the year 1000 the West first cast itself as God's "chosen" people, then moved on to the secular version of the same ideology - it saw itself as consisting of the best, the brightest, and the whitest. This implicit or explicit racist identity drove imperialism.

Well. A mouthful for sure. Identity is a most difficult construct to handle. Few people today would speak of "identity" at the "Western", or even "Anglo-Saxon" level nowadays. Identity is like clouds in the sky: close up the lovely images we saw in them as children vanish in a puff of condensation. The chain of causation from ideology to agency is most tortuous. Finally, he desperately seeks a "coherent and seamless imperial discourse" (pg. 230). As if ideologies ever bothered about coherence. They are tricks to distract attention. This second part of the book is hardly worth exploring.

The text has a dated feel. Though published in 2004 most of the references go back to the mid-nineties. The author is clearly worried that people will not be able to follow his demolition job. Like a conjurer he challenges us to see the lady vanish by announcing the impending act before, during and after the fact. Applause from the audience. He repeats himself profusely, and even proudly admits to being repetitive.

Finally, my usual gripe about the missing editor. The text could have been cut down by 1/3 without loss of content or clarity, and on the way the editor may have taught the author not to split infinitives. The bibliography is missing and replaced by notes that are cumbersome to handle.