Eurocentrism as the Colonizers Model of the World - Essay Example

EUROCENTRISM AS THE “COLONIZER’S MODEL OF THE WORLD” March 3, In contrast to the dominant belief and historiography that the West is the cradle of modern human civilization, James Morris Blaut argues that to see the West this way is to see the world from the colonizer’s perspective. In “Chapter 1: History Inside Out,” of The Colonizers Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History, Blaut examines the underlying forces that produced distorted geographies and histories. His primary argument is to define Eurocentrism with respect to the global order: “Eurocentrism is quite simply the colonizer’s model of the world.”1 Blaut does not merely eschew the Eurocentrism because it promotes false histories around European greatness. More than that, he opposes how Eurocentrism has taken a hold of the global imagination without understanding the economic and political motives behind the colonizer’s model of the world. Eurocentrism helps understand the history of East Asia because of its effects on how the latter also sees itself in relation to Europe. Eurocentrism is a colonizer’s viewpoint of the world, where the European elite used science, scholarship, and expert opinion to propagate the cultural and empirical worldview that Europe, or the Inside, is the superior inventor and justified ruler of the periphery, or the Outside. In Eurocentrism, the European civilization sees itself as the center of the human universe, where it is the Inside that forms, controls, and shapes the Outside, non-European civilizations. One of the premises of Eurocentrism is that the Inside is Europe and it is the center of everything important. Blaut describes Eurocentrism as “a label for all the beliefs that postulate past or present superiority of Europeans over non-Europeans (and over minority people of non-European descent).”2 These beliefs, however, did not just come out of thin air, but propagated through what Blaut calls as “tunnel history.” He asserts that in this tunnel, world history is European history; in other words, everything in history is a “matter of looking back or down in this European tunnel of time…”3 Blaut explains that the older form of tunnel history simply omits the existence of other cultures and histories, while later forms included non-European history, but with a diffusionist perspective.4 Diffusionism is the opposite of “independent invention,” which believes that change can happen within communities because of original inventions.5 Diffusionism does not agree with independent invention’s assumption that human ingenuity belongs to all, and instead, only certain superior cultures can create original inventions, which, in turn, diffuse to other less creative societies.6 Blaut shows that diffusionism is aligned with the Inside-Outside model, as it believes that only particular societies can be centers of civilization, while the rest are peripheries to it.7 His main contention is that “all scholarship is diffusionist,” although in varying degrees and intentions.8 He stresses that diffusionism is alive in every scholarly field because they are products of European society.9 The next premise of Eurocentrism that makes it a colonizer’s model of the world is its promotion of binaries, where the main thesis is that the Outside is inferior to the Inside. Blaut asserts that European intellectuals are the formers of Eurocentrism through their insistence on binaries in social thought: “…the really crucial part of Eurocentrism is not a matter of attitudes in the sense of values and prejudices, but rather a matter of science, and scholarship, and informed and expert opinion.”10 Blaut notes that these scholars had the advantage of having credibility that could not be easily undermined, and so they successfully spawned binaries that subjugated the Outside. He summarizes the oppositional characteristics between the Inside and Outside, some of which are the following: The Core or Inside is inventive, rational, capable of abstract thought and theoretical reasoning, and embodies mind, discipline, science, and progress, while the Periphery only knows how to imitate the core, and is characterized as irrational, insane, stagnant, traditional, and limited to concrete thought and practical reasoning, while also embodying matter/body, childhood, and sorcery.11 Essentially, the sciences and history castigated the Periphery as beneath the Core, where the main purpose is to condition their minds to accept the logic of European colonial expansion. Yukichi Fukuzawa held the same binary distinctions in “Good-Bye Asia.”12 He rejects Asia as a periphery and depicts China and Korea as belonging to old, ancient Asia: “[The Chinese and Koreans want to preserve] ancient ways and old customs [and being opposite of liberal moral and intellectual development].”13 Fukuzawa believed that for Japan to succeed as a nation, it must assimilate with the west and leave Asia.14 He too applies Eurocentrism by casting Asian neighbors into the Periphery. As can be seen from these beliefs, Eurocentrism is a geographic and historical model that starts with the mind, specifically, mind control through creating fictitious binaries. The final premise that proves that Eurocentrism is a colonizer’s model is the reality that, in global history, the Inside used binary systems to control and exploit the Outside for its economic and political purposes. Sword and cross is the common original approach.15 Blaut describes Christianity as a colonizer’s weapon where the primary emphasis is on the belief that God made superior and inferior races, and it is up to the superior race to save the inferior ones from their savage spiritual beliefs and brutal societies.16 The latest approach of Eurocentrism is through economy, technology, and culture. Matthew Craven explored the unequal treaties in the context of European and Japanese expansion.17 He focused on unequal treaties between the West and several Asian nations, specifically Japan, China, and Siam during the nineteenth centuries. He noted that the main goal of Europe was not genuine equal business and trading, but to open conservative markets for purposes of global economic domination, especially when the treaties were coerced, such as accords with Britain, France and the United States after the Opium War in 1842, agreements with France after the Franco-Chinese war of 1884, and treaties regarding Japan subsequent the Chinese-Japanese War of1894–5, or non-reciprocal, such as those between China and the United States (1844), Britain (1876) and Norway (1847).18 These treaties underlie the economic and political interests of European colonizers. Technology is one of the paths of Eurocentrism. Fukuzawa is one of the proponents of leaving Asia behind for its slowness in adapting Western technology. His metaphor is transportation technology: “Transportation has become so convenient these days that once the wind of Western civilization blows to the East, every blade of grass and every tree in the East follow what the Western wind brings.”19 The statement reveals that Fukuzawa sees the advantage in embracing Western technologies and values that will be good for Japan. Though he has an assimilationist viewpoint, Matthias Zachmann Urs believed that Fukuzawa still promoted an independent Japan, even in the midst of both Asia and Europe: Japan leaves the position of being represented [in the Oriental, until] it reclaims the power and thereby restores sovereignty. By restoring its sovereignty, Japan regains the position of an integrated subject, capable of fully representing itself in every respect. There is an obvious analogy between this process and the treaty revision process (1871 – 99), in which Japan tried to restore its powers in judicial and tariff-related matters and thus reclaim the position of a fully sovereign subject in international law.20 It is analyzed that Urs shows how Japan, by following Western models, also strives to be a subject, not an object or the Periphery, and certainly, not an Oriental. Its independent identity might be another form of centrism, but it did support the outlook of Japan in its right to expand in Asia. Culture is the most important dimension of Eurocentrism. Blaut argued that it is culture and its intersection with class that drove Eurocentrism. He stressed that it began with the unity of all European elites because it served (and serves up to now) their interest to generate and uphold “a single ethnogeography and ethnoscience.”21 Geographical, historical, and scientific (all ethno-based) combined to create a single Core culture. Blaut underscored that the “core of the single belief system” is that it is made “under the influence of, and for the interests of, the European elite.”22 Ethnocentrism is then able to produce a lasting global Eurocentric culture that survives in more subliminal terms, through the viewpoints of European intellectuals, and even their progenies among non-Europeans, that reflect in their empirical and cultural studies that shape public views and behaviors. Blaut presents the world of Eurocentrism from the interests of European elites. As a result, he exposed the academic and cultural thought that drives the dominant values and practices that affect economic, political, and cultural systems. Eurocentrism is world history, not because it truly is, but because it aims to be. Bibliography Blaut, James Morris. “Chapter 1: History Inside Out.” In The Colonizers Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History, edited by Blaut, 1-49. New York: The Guilford Press, 1993. Craven, Matthew. “What Happened to Unequal Treaties? The Continuities of Informal Empire.” Nordic Journal of International Law 74, No. 3/4 (2005): 335-382. Yukichi, Fukuzawa. “Good-Bye Asia.” 1885. http://personal.ashland.edu/jmoser1/japan/fukuzawa2.htm Zachmann, Urs Matthias. “Blowing Up a Double Portrait in Black and White: The Concept of Asia in the Writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi and Okakura Tenshin.” Positions 15, No. 2 (2007): 345-368. Read More