Customer Reviews

Eurocentrism

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Why did Western Europe achieve an industrial revolution and not China? Why did Western Europe achieve a scientific revolution while the Islamic World failed to do so? Conventional theories, from Adam Smith to modern authors such as David Landes and Eric Jones, concentrate on the innate cultural superiority of the West. Amin, on the other hand, takes a more global, and in my view, more accurate view. In Amin's view, the transition from tribal societies to agricultural "world empires", and then to industrial capitalism was a "global relay race" in which Western Europe was simply "the last runner". Amin traces the economic, political and cultural aspects of the transitions from tribal societies, to world empires (Amin's term is "tributory form"), to industrial capitalism and the modern nation state. This book is the best brief exposition of global history that I have seen.

Europe has long had a tradition of treating itself as the most important continent on the planet. "Eurocentrism" discusses the dominant Eurocentric view of the world and how it has formed over the centuries and the problems it has reaped. Samir Amin argues that the flow of history from classical Greece and Rome to medieval Europe is an inaccurate scope of world history, diminishing the history of the rest of the world. Aiming for a much wider view of the world, "Eurocentrism" is an excellent and highly intriguing read that shouldn't be missed.

A very important book ,a real critic to Eurocentrism
It gives a meaning to all struggles all over the world to make a new humanitarian society