The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History

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Guilford Press, Oct 29, 1993 - Social Science - 246 pages
The Colonizer's Model of the World challenges one of the most pervasive and powerful beliefs of our time concerning world history and world geography. This is the doctrine of European diffusionism, the belief that the rise of Europe to modernity and world dominance is due to some unique European quality of race, environment, culture, mind, or spirit, and that progress for the rest of the world results 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. It is the world model that Europeans constructed to explain, justify, and assist their colonial expansion. This highly readable, illuminating volume will challenge and inform a broad audience that includes general readers. Disputing fundamental ideas in geography, history, anthropology, and the humanities, it is essential reading for professors and students in these fields.
 

Contents

History Inside Out
1
The Tunnel of Time
3
Eurocentric Diffusionism
8
Diffusionism
11
The Colonizers Model
17
Origins
18
Classical Diffusionism
21
Modern Diffusionism
26
Society
119
Church
123
Class
124
Family
128
Notes
135
Before 1492
152
Medieval Landscapes
153
Protocapitalism in Africa Asia and Europe
165

World Models And Worldly Interests
30
Diffusionism as a Belief System
41
Notes
43
The Myth of the European Miracle
50
Mythmakers and Critics
52
Modernization as History
53
The Critique
54
The Countercritique
58
The Myth
59
Biology
61
Demography
66
Environment
69
Arid Despotic Asia
80
Temperate Europe
90
Rationality
94
The Rationality Doctrine
95
Rationality and the European Miracle
102
Technology
108
Notes
173
After 1492
179
Why America Was Conquered by Europeans and Not by Africans or Asians
180
Why the Conquest Was Successful
183
Europe in 1492
186
Colonialism and the Rise of Europe 14921688
187
Precious Metals
189
Plantations
191
Effects
193
Colonialism and Capitalism in the Seventeenth Century
198
The Centration of Capitalism
201
Notes
206
Conclusion
214
Notes
215
Bibliography
217
Index
237
Copyright

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About the author (1993)

J. M. Blaut is professor of geography at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of three book and numerous articles on the historical and political geography of the Third World.
He was also the Recipient of the Distinguished Scholarship Honors of the Association of American Geographers Honors for 1997.

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