Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History (Studies in Comparative World History) [Paperback]

Marshall G. S. Hodgson (Author), Edmund Burke III (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0521438446 | ISBN-13: 978-0521438445 | Edition: First Edition

Is the history of the modern world the history of Europe writ large? Or is it possible to situate the history of modernity as a world historical process apart from its origins in Western Europe? In Part One of this posthumous collection of essays, Marshall G.S. Hodgson, a former professor of history at the University of Chicago, challenges adherents of both Eurocentrism and multiculturalism to rethink the place of Europe in world history. He argues that the line that connects Ancient Greeks to the Renaissance to modern times is an optical illusion, and that a global and Asia-centered history can better locate the European experience in the shared histories of humanity. In Part Two of the work Hodgson shifts the focus and in a parallel move seeks to locate the history of Islamic civilization in a world historical framework. Finally, in Part Three he argues that in the end there is but one history--global history--and that all partial or privileged accounts must necessarily be resituated in a world historical context. The book also includes an introduction by the editor, Edmund Burke III, contextualizing Hodgson's work in world history and Islamic history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The pieces collected here show perceptive and rigorously developed insights into the problems of writing world history." Edwin J. Van Kley, Journal of Asian Studies

"Although several decades have elapsed since they were written, these writings offer immense contemporary value for both general historians and scholars of Islam. Besides providing a compendium of the principal thought of an eminent historian and Islamicist, Rethinking World History broadens the range of scholarly vision, presents a stimulating alternative to the frequent insularism of academic specialization and makes an important contribution to the overall understanding of human history." Brian Johnson, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin

"...useful for anyone interested in the discipline of world history." J.A. Progler, Crescent

"As today's world historians struggle with conceptual designs for courses and textbooks, they should pay attention to the lessons Hodgson taught....One delights in his piercing insights, his acerbic wit, and the amazing range of his thought...." Rose E. Dunn, Journal of World History

Book Description

Is the history of the modern world the history of Europe? Or is it possible to situate the history of modernity as a world historical process apart from its origins? This text challenges adherents of Eurocentrism and multiculturalism to rethink the roles of Europe and Islamic civilization in world history.

Product Details

• Paperback: 356 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; First Edition edition (May 28, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521438446
• ISBN-13: 978-0521438445
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,008,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tough reading to glean a few gems., July 8, 2001

By 

Damon Jasperson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History (Studies in Comparative World History) (Paperback)

This book is a posthumous collection of Hodgson's essays on world history, Islamic history in particular. Much of the book was unpublished at the time of Hodgson's sudden death. Consequently, the book reads as if Hodgson was thinking out loud. The prose is very dense and he often pounds home points over several pages that could have been made in a paragraph or two. Nonetheless, many of the ideas presented by Hodgson were advanced for the time, and a necessary correction to William McNeill, his fellow University of Chicago prof. Hodgson's main thrust is to set right the place of Islam--or what he calls the "Islamicate"--in world history. This argument should be well-heeded in view of the overly Eurocentric tone that much work on world history has taken. Specialists on Islam will appreciate the book the most, and anyone interested in world history can benefit from it--but it is a very tough read that could easily be pared down to a precis.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tough going but worth every bite, October 30, 2001

By 

Tom L. Forest (Forest Grove, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History (Studies in Comparative World History) (Paperback)

Hodgson was the pre-eminent Western historian of Islamic societies, as set forth in "The Venture of Islam." In "Rethinking," Hodgson's widow has seen to the publication of a series of broader essays on the philosophy of history as applied to the world at large. Part 1 tries to get outside Euro-centrism as best as an Occidental can. Part 2 considers Islam in a global context, and Part 3 discusses commonalities and differences that make for meaningful comparison, decompositions, and aggregations in regional and global history.

The most interesting chapter is entitled "Modernity and the Islamic Heritage." Here Hodgson inquires whether it is possible for a society to be Modern yet not Western, given that the presuppositions of Modernity reach deep into the Medieval Occident. For example, "with an effort of the imagination, one can guess what the institutions of Modernity might look have been like if it had developed, for instance, in Islamic society... The nation-state, with its constitutionalism, its particularist characters of rights and responsibilities, stems from the corporate conceptions of Medieval Western society. From the very different legal conceptions of Medieval Islamic society, with their abstract egalitarian universalism, there might well have developed, instead of the nation-state, some international corps of super-ulama, regulating an industrial society on the basis of some super-sharia code." This tension between Western-ness and Modernity is palpable in the West, but elsewhere it is a defining issue running through politics, economics, and warfare. It is especially evident in the violent Islamist organizations, where Modernity is used to combat Westernization.

The successful resolution of those tensions, in the Islamic world as elsewhere on Earth, will be the only way that civilization of any kind can continue at all.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An overlooked review and revision of history theory, September 18, 2003

By 

Zakir Khan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History (Studies in Comparative World History) (Paperback)

Marshall Hodgson was a scholar of rigorous and detailed precision. He gave no easy answers. In fact, he argued that in the science of history, above all other sciences, there can be no easy answers. What was necessary of historians was a total and unrelenting commitment to uncovering every possible detail on top of every possible detail in the study of earlier ages.....and even then, the historian would be truly lacking, but the effort MUST go on.

It is for this reason that I must respectfully disagree with an earlier reviewer. Hodgson's writing is not dreamy poetry....this is true. But every one of his sentances is jam packed with information. It only takes effort from the reader ( a reader truly interested in LEARNING) to decipher the incredibly important message Hodgson is trying to convey.

Part of this message is that there is only one global history, not an "Eastern" or "Western" history ... not a history that sets one history up to put another history down. Efforts to reinforce these generalizations are manipulative and, under closer scrutiny, factually incorrect.

In this book, you will find a truly fascinating philosophy of history as told through modernity and the Islamicate.