Search results for ""Author J. M. Blaut""

This influential book challenges one of the most pervasive and powerful beliefs of our time--that Europe rose to modernity and world dominance due to unique qualities of race, environment, culture, mind, or spirit, and that progress for the rest of the world resulted from the diffusion of European civilization. J. M. Blaut persuasively argues that this doctrine is not grounded in the facts of history and geography, but in the ideology of colonialism. Blaut traces the colonizer's model of the world from its 16th-century origins to its present form in theories of economic development, modernization, and new world order.

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This volume examines and critiques the work of a diverse group of Eurocentric historians who have strongly shaped our understanding of world history. Building upon the foundations laid in his previous book, The Colonizer's Model of the World, which provided a systematic overview of the nature and evolution of Eurocentrism, Blaut focuses in depth on Max Weber, Lynn White, Jr., Robert Brenner, Eric L. Jones, Michael Mann, John A. Hall, Jared Diamond, and David Landes. The role of each of these thinkers in generating colonialist understandings of history is described, and the fallacious assumptions at the roots of their arguments are revealed. Working toward an alternative understanding of the origins of modernity, this clearly written book provides invaluable insights and tools for students and scholars of history, geography, sociology, anthropology, and postcolonialism.

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