Eurocentrism

[Alazen]

It bothers me that Eurocentrism is still alarmingly present in discourse that loops around history. This isn't restricted to actual historians.

Even among SJW postings you can see a Villainous European Exceptionalism which has "white people" as a unified force of darkness who are identical in every way with "non-whites" as perpetual victims having no empires, or dubious behavior, or really agency against the "evil" white people. The same attitude that gets us the Noble Savage myth is continued, not treating the denizens outside of Europe as humans but rather as foils to stand for whatever they're being used for.

Whether in the "good side" or "bad side", it looks to be taken for granted that only Europeans carried the torch of agency.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Alazen

[Admiral "Bull" Halsey]

To be fair, I've always thought that the concept of 'the west' has some sort of derogetory discourse then eurocentrism...

[blah the Prussian]

In some eras of history, it makes sense to focus on Europe, for example the 1800s. However, I absolutely agree that Europe gets too much attention, especially during the Middle Ages. It is worth noting, however, that European nations tend to have more surviving records than nations in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, so European history is often easier to get.

[Skynstein]

It's because of the myth that other communities were "pure" before the arrival of the Europeans, which is laughable. That was sort of true for some of them, but they're a minority.

[The DanMan]

As blah2127 said, European nations tended to have the most surviving records, and ergo the most "history" about them.

As for SJW's,... they're SJW's.

[Alazen]

http://stirringwind.tumblr.com/post/110026669870/oniongrass-stirringwind-imo-part-of

http://stirringwind.tumblr.com/post/110852760405/ever-seen-that-gifset-of-avatar-tla-that-was-all

http://stirringwind.tumblr.com/post/100094099635/on-false-dichotomies-and-american-privilege

http://stirringwind.tumblr.com/post/100352858045/no-i-agree-that-poc-solidarity-is-largely-a-lie

A few tumblr posts on the subject.

[Skynstein]

Elaborating on it, in my country we study European history because we were European colony and therefore it has direct influence on our history.

There's an effort to include "African history", which is a bit silly, since, beyond the Atlantic slave trade, there's nothing African worth studying to Brazilians. Even the African-Brazilian religions are their own thing, mixed from African mythology and Christian traditions.

[blah the Prussian]

You don't just need to learn things relevant to Brazil, you know. All history is important.

[Naughx]

Many places didn't have written records (mostly the new world) so Eurasia and Northern Africa is where we know most about ancient history or the middle ages. (Since the Oral cultures were more prominent in other parts of the world, history got lost over there)

Edited December 1, 2015 by Naughx

[Rapier]

You don't just need to learn things relevant to Brazil, you know. All history is important.

All knowledge is important, but we focus on what is relevant to us and what fits our area of interest, anyway.

I agree with you that the focus on Europe was only natural, since our academic production came mostly from there. I don't see this as a sign of prejudice against other nations, but as giving focus to where it is more relevant to them. Far-away issues become less important when one has other issues closer to them. I'm sure far-away cultures also see the world through their perspective, and not ours. As I see it, it is only wrong to affirm that the world can only be seen through one perspective, but it is not wrong to see the world under your perspective.

I can't say I don't deeply admire the european culture and its ideals of freedom and individuality, arguably over the rest of the world. They were the ones who came up with the Springtime of Nations and the Industrial Revolution, among other important proggresses in many areas of knowledge. If modern society is way more tolerant and if poverty has severely diminished (but not extinguished - and many still do live in misery) in comparison to the Middle Ages, it was because of the european culture and its intelectual products. No other culture has ever been a match, save for maybe Roman and Ancient Greek cultures and other ancient countries that are now just a shadow of their former glory (Greece, you shame Aristotle). Objectively, european culture had a bigger and more important impact on the world, in comparisson to other cultures. But anyone is free to correct me if I am wrong about History.

[blah the Prussian]

Chinese culture has arguably had more of an impact than any individual European culture, because Europe is a diverse place, and to,say all Europeans are the same is kind of like saying all Africans are the same. But yeah, I would say that it was a geopolitical fact that the happenings of the world revolved around Europe roughly from 1841-1945.

[Skynstein]

Chinese culture has arguably had more of an impact than any individual European culture, because Europe is a diverse place, and to,say all Europeans are the same is kind of like saying all Africans are the same. But yeah, I would say that it was a geopolitical fact that the happenings of the world revolved around Europe roughly from 1841-1945.

China had zero impact here until the late 20th century.

[blah the Prussian]

China had zero impact here until the late 20th century.

No, but it has had a huge amount of impact in East Asia.

[Rapier]

And the east influenced Ancient Greek philosophy, which influences us until today, if I recall correctly. Also, even if there is no homogeneous culture in Europe, those cultures have many similarities that make them compatible. Freedom and individuality are values commonly shared among every european country, for example. Those are seldom found outside european (or non european influenced) countries, where they have a more authoritarian approach in contrast to our more liberal approach.

[blah the Prussian]

What about Russia. Also, being ideologically similar doesn't equate to being culturally similar. It's like saying that in the 40s German culture was similar to Japanese culture because both were fascist.

[Skynstein]

No, but it has had a huge amount of impact in East Asia.

It did, of course, but I didn't grow up in East Asia. That's my point.

It doesn't mean I don't "like" studying Chinese history, though. I'm glad the new AoM expansion has the Chinese. Much better than those Greek copycats from The Titans. I also like the new African DLC from AoE2.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Cerberus87

[blah the Prussian]

Yes, but it is important to learn history beyond what is relevant solely to your country. That is my point.

[Skynstein]

I certainly love spaghetti, and that was brought from China by Marco Polo (or so legend goes), so there's that. :)

Honestly, the history of my country is boring and I largely prefer studying other places.

[blah the Prussian]

I certainly love spaghetti, and that was brought from China by Marco Polo (or so legend goes), so there's that. :)

Honestly, the history of my country is boring and I largely prefer studying other places.

Oh come on! It was awesome when the Duke of Caxais bitchslapped Lopez! Or when Princess Isabel provided a feminist role model no one cares,about! Sure everything after the abolition of the monarchy is pretty dreary, but come on, you guys had a good thing going for a while.

[Sunwoo]

I'm not well-versed in the history of any country in particular, other than the United States. And the Eurocentrism is still there in the U.S. history textbooks, but apparently it used to be a lot worse. My favorite book is Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. The author studied several high school U.S. history textbooks and looked at how the events are presented in the textbooks and what they tell the reader about the people and the events that we're supposed to be learning.

Almost every U.S. history book I can think of seems to start with the East Coast as the "start" of America. They don't go into a lot of details about the Native Americans, and the "facts" that they give us about the native population prior to 1492 aren't particularly accurate either. The Native Americans are presented almost as a foreign people instead of Americans in their own right. There is a lot of language bias present as well. Such as, why are the white settlers called that -- settlers? Calling them settlers is Eurocentric by nature, because to the Native Americans they were invaders.

Slavery and the Civil War is apparently a "touchy" subject for some people as well. The Civil War was primarily fought because of slavery -- and yet when some textbooks try to sugarcoat this reasoning by calling it "the right for state's rights", how is this not a view that is Eurocentric? Who does it harm when you tell the truth as it was? The feelings of the descendants of the slaveowners? When you write to comfort the descendants of the slaveowners instead of writing history objectively, that is Eurocentrism.

I think that even now, history is taught to "comfort" the descendants of the "winners" -- the people in power. And who are people with the most power in today's society?

[Snowy_One]

Well... to be perfectly honest... it makes a lot of sense.

Seriously. Think about it. Africa, North and South America, and Australia didn't have much of the way of written records and remained on a largely tribal/bronze-age technology level with most of their culture being oral. As a result simply passing on the various bits and pieces of their culture would be difficult and many things forgotten. Likewise Asia is largely dominated by three cultures; India, China, and Japan. Of these three cultures all three are very distinct but also largely insular. As a result having their various pieces spread beyond their borders is difficult.

Meanwhile Europe, for various reasons, has been heavily involved in cultural export and sharing as well as held a written word and record. The roman culture spread across three separate continents and caused a lot of cultural shifts on its own. Nevermind the greeks, french, and likewise. And each culture is highly distinct and in a 'tight' space where meetings are almost inevitable as well as one nation rarely holding power for a prolonged period. No one culture overwhelmed the others. Meeting other cultures was frequent. Expansionism and trade became a heavy focus. And all their traditions and methods were recorded.

[Parrhesia]

I'm going to rephrase my original badly-worded patronising mess into something well-worded (but still patronising).

Arabs and Persians, Snowy. Leaving aside all the other parts you left out (I heard Mali was a significant power once! Someone effort post about that!) Arabs and fucking Persians. Fucking massive source of culture, impact still felt today. Like... leaving aside all the details, how didn't you know that they were so important?

Can I expand on that? No, I can't. You know why? Because none of my fucking history classes gave a shit. And isn't that the problem this thread's addressing?

Edited December 3, 2015 by Parrhesia

[Alazen]

Well... to be perfectly honest... it makes a lot of sense.

Seriously. Think about it. Africa, North and South America, and Australia didn't have much of the way of written records and remained on a largely tribal/bronze-age technology level with most of their culture being oral. As a result simply passing on the various bits and pieces of their culture would be difficult and many things forgotten. Likewise Asia is largely dominated by three cultures; India, China, and Japan. Of these three cultures all three are very distinct but also largely insular. As a result having their various pieces spread beyond their borders is difficult.

Meanwhile Europe, for various reasons, has been heavily involved in cultural export and sharing as well as held a written word and record. The roman culture spread across three separate continents and caused a lot of cultural shifts on its own. Nevermind the greeks, french, and likewise. And each culture is highly distinct and in a 'tight' space where meetings are almost inevitable as well as one nation rarely holding power for a prolonged period. No one culture overwhelmed the others. Meeting other cultures was frequent. Expansionism and trade became a heavy focus. And all their traditions and methods were recorded.

What are you on about? ''Tribal'' is an academically rejected term, Africa south of the Sahara certainly had states with at least weaponry that was made with iron (such as the already mentioned Mali Empire), and there are multiple examples of the Chinese Dynasties pushing invasions and keeping a thumb down on neighbors (how do you think China's borders got to their current limit).

Your European Exceptionalism is showing.

Edited December 3, 2015 by Alazen

[Sunwoo]

The original inhabitants of North America were, for the most part, wiped out by the people who came from Europe. The people that remain are nowhere near what the numbers were before all that destruction happened. And yet, when we as a culture do not own up to the horrible things that we've done to other people, preferring to lie to ourselves about the extent of our damage -- "oh, they were a backwards people, it was inevitable", "they were the aggressors, we were the peaceful ones!", "we gave them religion and tried to help them acculturate, it's not our fault they didn't take it" -- that is Eurocentrism. When we belittle native societies and say that their way was not a civilized way, that is Eurocentrism. There are ways to teach history without being so overly biased in favor of the winners.

It's also Eurocentrism to imply that Europe invented everything modern and before that, there was nothing. I read an excerpt of Lies My Teacher Told Me with a high school class I was tutoring last month. It was on Columbus and his "discovery" of America, and the people who came before him. The section I was reading discussed Prince Henry of Portugal -- how the textbooks give him credit for "inventing" navigation when Prince Henry himself had been inspired by the feats of the Phoenicians, his works based on ideas known to people were non-European. Columbus never even reached the U.S. and he wasn't even the first person to reach North America. Why do we celebrate him anyway? It's because he reached North American during an advantageous time, that's it and not much else.

Europe isn't the only culture that interacted with other cultures. There's apparently evidence to suggest that trans-Atlantic contact was present long before Columbus was ever a thing. The Asian countries weren't really all that insular, they have history amongst themselves. How else would Korea have been invaded by Japan so many times throughout their histories. People will believe what they want to believe, but what they believe is not always right.

[Snowy_One]

What are you on about? ''Tribal'' is an academically rejected term, Africa south of the Sahara certainly had states with at least weaponry that was made with iron (such as the already mentioned Mali Empire), and there are multiple examples of the Chinese Dynasties pushing invasions and keeping a thumb down on neighbors (how do you think China's borders got to their current limit).

Your European Exceptionalism is showing.

Yes. And? As I said, cultural export is important as well. China was largely insular at this time so that its culture never really spread beyond its borders is not surprising. It was willing to expand those borders, sure, but not much really traveled beyond it. Besides, its culture DID get spread, especially in the modern world. It's not on the same level as, say, Japan, but it's culture has still spread a LOT!

As for Mali... I honestly don't know much about that one. My reigning theory as to why they don't get much mention is because they get tossed in with muslims and people focus more on their wars in Spain when things of that region come up. Course, even if that were true it would lead to the question of why the Persian culture and the like has largely faded while people know a lot about european cultures that aren't really around all that much anymore. And... I honestly don't know. In the modern times it makes sense (The middle east is a very unstable place) but that doesn't make sense in a historical context where the Arab culture was the center of trade for quite a while. My best suspicion is that Islam repressed a lot of the older cultures to the point where info is hard to find, but then that doesn't explain why the cultures of the various local regions never got exported or islamic cultural works never spread. Not to mention that there is still a sizable chunk of pre-islamic history still left with written records. So... I just don't know. The theory works elsewhere with cultures willing to export and in frequent contact with other cultures spreading rapidly and becoming more pronounced, especially when records become written as opposed to kept to oral tradition. Just a baffling confusion here.

The original inhabitants of North America were, for the most part, wiped out by the people who came from Europe. The people that remain are nowhere near what the numbers were before all that destruction happened. And yet, when we as a culture do not own up to the horrible things that we've done to other people, preferring to lie to ourselves about the extent of our damage -- "oh, they were a backwards people, it was inevitable", "they were the aggressors, we were the peaceful ones!", "we gave them religion and tried to help them acculturate, it's not our fault they didn't take it" -- that is Eurocentrism. When we belittle native societies and say that their way was not a civilized way, that is Eurocentrism. There are ways to teach history without being so overly biased in favor of the winners.

You... might want to rethink that a bit. The primary devastation came from disease which, while brought over, wasn't really understood at all by the people at the time as to how they functioned or spread. Heck, they even forgot the cure to scurvy! With that said... I'm fairly certain a lot of people today owe up to what happened and recognize it was a horrible thing IN HINDSIGHT! For example, the battle of Little Bighorn shows the natives as being the heroes in the right while Custard was in the wrong despite being an American. By the time people managed to start caring, though, it was already too late. People had been so overly-focused on expansion that there was little left to save in the first place.

It's also Eurocentrism to imply that Europe invented everything modern and before that, there was nothing. I read an excerpt of Lies My Teacher Told Me with a high school class I was tutoring last month. It was on Columbus and his "discovery" of America, and the people who came before him. The section I was reading discussed Prince Henry of Portugal -- how the textbooks give him credit for "inventing" navigation when Prince Henry himself had been inspired by the feats of the Phoenicians, his works based on ideas known to people were non-European. Columbus never even reached the U.S. and he wasn't even the first person to reach North America. Why do we celebrate him anyway? It's because he reached North American during an advantageous time, that's it and not much else.

Because people are idiots. The vikings were the first recorded Europeans to reach America, and they actually GOT to America as opposed to Columbus. IMO the reason Columbus is famous is because of his attempt to prove the world was round (despite that discovering America wouldn't prove that. Only that the world was larger than they thought) as well as... well... being in the right place at the right time. But yea... While he isn't undeserving of acknowledgement he certainly doesn't deserve as much as he gets. And yes, a lot of people stupidly attribute inventions largely to Europe or, for some reason, China. Not saying China doesn't deserve recognition. Just weird that it seems like people only attribute it to those two places. Heck, ARABIC NUMERALS WEREN'T INVENTED IN EUROPE! It's in the freaking NAME! That's not to mention the many other things invented elsewhere. Did you know the vending machine was originally invented by Hero of Alexandria?

Edited December 3, 2015 by Snowy_One