The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation

	List of tables	page ix
	Preface and acknowledgements	xi
	Map: Hobo-Dyer projection of the world	xiv

1	Countering the Eurocentric myth of the pristine West: discovering the oriental West	1

I	The East as an early developer: the East discovers and leads the world through oriental globalisation, 500–1800

2	Islamic and African pioneers: building the Bridge of the World and the global economy in the Afro-Asian age of discovery, 500–1500	29

3	Chinese pioneers: the first industrial miracle and the myth of Chinese isolationism, c. 1000–1800	50

4	The East remains dominant: the twin myths of oriental despotism and isolationism in India, South-east Asia and Japan, 1400–1800	74

II	The West was last: oriental globalisation and the invention of Christendom, 500–1498

5	Inventing Christendom and the Eastern origins of European feudalism, c. 500–1000	99

6	The myth of the Italian pioneer, 1000–1492	116

7	The myth of the Vasco da Gama epoch, 1498–c. 1800	134

III	The West as a late developer and the advantages of backwardness: oriental globalisation and the reconstruction of Western Europe as the advanced West, 1492–1850

8	The myth of 1492 and the impossibility of America: the Afro-Asian contribution to the catch up of the West, 1492–c. 1700	161

9	The Chinese origins of British industrialisation: Britain as a derivative late developer, 1700–1846	190

10	Constructing European racist identity and the invention of the world, 1700–1850: the imperial civilising mission as a moral vocation	219

11	The dark side of British industrialisation and the myth of laissez-faire: war, racist imperialism and the Afro-Asian origins of industrialisation	243

IV	Conclusion: the oriental West versus the Eurocentric myth of the West

12	The twin myths of the rational Western liberal-democratic state and the great divide between East and West, 1500–1900	283
13	The rise of the oriental West: identity/agency, global structure and contingency	294

	Notes	323
	Index	369

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John M. Hobson

University of Sydney

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