Virgil says:

To call this book a hammerblow is to fall for a weak, almost emotional rather than academic analysis. While Blaut makes some excellent arguments about Europe’s lack of credit to other cultures, especially during it’s early expansion, in the end the facts don’t stand up to his argument.

He overlooks that overwhelming riches did little to stop Spain’s rapid decline as a power (it may have even accelerated it to some extent). Blaut seems to have discounted the fall of Constantinople and the subsequent fleeing of teachers and artists to the West as a factor.

What subsequent events does Blaut either overlook or underevaluate? For starters there are the beginnings of the scientific method in the West. Then there are things that muck up his argument like the advancement of western medicine (so much that even the Chinese would ask for western doctors in the 16th century, military improvements and numerous advancements in technology.

And so on and so on. I’m all for the remembering of contributions and influences from non-european societies, civilizations and cultures, but this “mea culpa” Western guilt has reached a bit of a height in Blaut’s work. It also seems to reflect an emotional analysis rather than any unbiased academic approach.

In addition to technical, scientific, medical, and management advancement, he leaves out the social/philisophical advancement of the West.

The basic concept of the freedom and dignity of the individual, while not perfectly practised were almost unique in being applied to Western society. In fact the West is the first to look at itself and realize to this day it’s failings vis a vis slavery, sexism, etc., in a sustained and critical way that other societies have yet to approach…Read this, but keep your wits about you as you do.
Rating: 3 / 5

doomsdayer520 says:

Anyone familiar with academic professor-style writing will understand the structural weakness of this book. There are four very long chapters related to Blaut’s theoretical argument, and they almost certainly originated as separate research projects written at different times for different audiences. Blaut has tied things together with occasional transitional paragraphs, surrounded by a shell of a general argument. Some knowledgeable reviewers here have found problems with Blaut’s general history, and that’s legitimate, but the fundamental problem with this book’s construction makes such matters of detail a moot point.

Blaut’s major contention is very strong, if not exactly groundbreaking. He wishes to debunk the body of historical theory called diffusionism – the dubious Eurocentric view that all the advancements of civilization, from agriculture to cities to capitalism, originated amongst genius Europeans and then were disseminated to ignorant peoples around the world. At the start of the book, Blaut promises to explore the intellectual processes that make mainstream and elite historians continue to believe such theories even after they have long since been disproved. That would have made this book a winner, but the promise never comes to fruition, leaving us instead with a tedious exercise in theorization.

After an exasperating opening chapter in which Blaut keeps telling us what he’s going to cover later, this book collapses in the disastrous second chapter. Here he ceaselessly nitpicks the arguments of selected history books. This includes dozens of pages obsessing over the works of some historian named Eric L. Jones, which reeks of professional sour grapes. Unfortunately for Blaut, simply finding errors in other theories does not prove your own theory by default. Chapters 3 and 4 incomprehensibly descend into reductionist historical research on the development of feudalism outside of Europe and the influence of colonial riches on England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. Now what do these have to do with the attempted high-level theoretical insights of the rest of the book? Extremely little – although Blaut throws in occasional reminders that he’s still leading up to great findings about his initial thesis. Well, he never does give us any real insights into why historians still believe in Eurocentric diffusionism. We only learn that Blaut really disagrees with it. Most would say he’s correct given the realities of history, if only he could say it in a way that makes sense. [~doomsdayer520~]
Rating: 3 / 5