J. M. Blaut, PhD, until his death in 2000, was Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The author of The Colonizer's Model of the World and Eight Eurocentric Historians, Dr. Blaut was a recipient of the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Association of American Geographers (AAG). Awards in his name are given annually by the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group and the Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group of the AAG.
"No scholarly book could possibly be totally new or original in
this era, but Blaut's powerful and tightly focused opus comes close
in the way he has marshalled and distilled a vast array of
literature and evidence and the vigor and rigor with which he has
pursued his central theses--propositions of unusual intellectual
significance and timeliness. I find his argument quite persuasive
and potentially mind-altering....This is a work with truly
revolutionary implications, a badly needed recasting of our badly
flawed, conventional First World vision of ourselves and the thrust
of modern history. This could come to be regarded as a landmark
achievement." --Wilbur Zelinsky, PhD, Penn State University
"This is a dogmatically written, occasionally outrageous, and
absolutely spellbinding book. It is a strongly argued, alternative
interpretation of the basic causes for the rise of the west to the
hegemonic position it has occupied for perhaps five centuries....It
is a major contribution to the debate now coming to the fore in the
field. It makes its contribution through a merciless critique of
mainline theories, by its selective synthesis of subaltern
scholarship (both theory and piecemeal empirical evidence), and by
its integration of whatever evidence exists to support this
alternative position....I would plan to recommend it to my students
as highlighting many of the controversies of the field and as
representing an exaggerated version of one possible position."
--Janet Abu-Lughod, Ph.D., The New School for Social Research
"Will add excitement to courses in world history and self-critical
Western Civilization and European history courses. I have adopted
this provocative new book for my graduate colloquium on theories of
world history and think that undergraduates too would enjoy Blaut's
clarity of analysis and passionate writing. He depicts Eurocentric
diffusionism as a pernicious ideology justifying European and
United States colonial and neocolonial domination of the rest of
the world. His largest chapter refutes 'the myth of the European
miracle,' the decisive superiority that Western Europe allegedly
had achieved independent of outside help. Blaut, a historical
geographer, has assembled a wealth of evidence for many parts of
the world both for the long period before 1492 and for the
transitional period of 1492 to 1688. As one who has taught European
history since the early 1960's and world history since the late
1980's I enthusiastically welcome this exciting book which
challenges and explains assumptions about European superiority."
--David M. Fahey, Miami University -Adopted for Theories of History
(World)
"Jim Blaut has written an exciting book that successfully
challenges conventional Eurocentric diffusionism. The text is very
accessible and is well documented with numerous concrete historical
examples. The book is very popular among the students that I
teach." --Daniel Weiner, Associate Professor of Geography, West
Virginia University
"My students are enthralled by the accounts in the book of the
participation of other regions of the world in the making of modern
world history. The book is easy to read without the need for much
prior knowledge. Nearly a quarter-century after its publication,
the book's themes are just as relevant--if not more so--for helping
us understand the process of globalization today."--Sing C. Chew,
PhD, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research–UFZ Leipzig, and
Humboldt State University
"...Attributing European supremacy, in part at any rate, to
something resembling chance - Blaut throws down the gauntlet to
those still coddling the model of an Inside/Outside world [his
language] waiting to be 'modernized' and saved from itself." --B.
Marie Perinbam, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
"Blaut could offer us sound leadership, in heeding Chaudhuri's
(1990:43) sound admonition that 'the ceaseless quest of modern
historians looking for the 'origins' and roots of capitalism is not
much better than the alchemist's search for the philosopher's stone
that transforms base metal into gold' -and still less to look for
them under a proverbial lamppost in European history, when most of
the gold was, and still is, to be found elsewhere in the world."
--Andre Gunder Frank, Faculty of Economics, University of
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
"...an engaging book...a clear and accessible style, generally
valid assertions, and an explicit sense of geography. The book
serves as a valuable foil against a persistent Eurocentric bias in
historical interpretation--effectively challenging how we look at
the world." - The Professional Geographer
"Professor Blaut's book contains devastating refutations of many of
the scholarly theories that have attempted to establish a long-term
unique superiority of Europe on the basis of its geographical
features and climate or the special independence, rationality, or
restraint of its population. He has made an irrefutable case for
the importance of the conquest and exploitation of America after
1492 to the rise of modern European power and culture. His
arguments are always stimulating and often convincing." - Martin
Bernal, Cornell University
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