Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Map: Hobo-Dyer projection of the world
- 1 Countering the Eurocentric myth of the pristine West: discovering the oriental West
- I The East as an early developer: the East discovers and leads the world through oriental globalisation, 500–1800
- 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
- 6 The myth of the Italian pioneer, 1000–1492
- 7 The myth of the Vasco da Gama epoch, 1498–c. 1800
- 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
- IV Conclusion: the oriental West versus the Eurocentric myth of the West
- Notes
- Index
5 - Inventing Christendom and the Eastern origins of European feudalism, c. 500–1000
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Map: Hobo-Dyer projection of the world
- 1 Countering the Eurocentric myth of the pristine West: discovering the oriental West
- I The East as an early developer: the East discovers and leads the world through oriental globalisation, 500–1800
- 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
- 6 The myth of the Italian pioneer, 1000–1492
- 7 The myth of the Vasco da Gama epoch, 1498–c. 1800
- 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
- IV Conclusion: the oriental West versus the Eurocentric myth of the West
- Notes
- Index
Summary
To the Arabs … [Western Europe] was an area of so little interest that, while their geographical knowledge continually improved between ad 700 and 1000, their ‘knowledge of Europe did not increase at all’. If Arabian geographers did not bother with Europe, it was not because of a hostile attitude, but rather because Europe at the time ‘had little to offer’ of any interest.
Carlo Cipolla[T]he central methodological weakness of my book [The Rise of the West] is that … it pays inadequate attention to the emergence of the … world system … Being too much pre-occupied by the notion of civilization, I bungled by not giving the initial emergence of a transcivilizational process the sustained emphasis it deserved.
William H. McNeillThe presence of oriental globalisation before 1500 (as established in Part 1) of this book) is confirmed by the claim of this. Not only was the rise of feudal Europe inconceivable without the diffusion of various advanced Eastern ‘resource portfolios’, but this period witnessed a particularly intense wave of global flows. Nevertheless, Europe was not simply, nor has it ever been, a ‘passive beneficiary’ of global transmissions of technologies, ideas and resources. To a certain extent ‘Europe’ made its own history (via its identity formation process). The has three sections. The first examines how the diffusion of Eastern ideas and technologies enabled the medieval agricultural revolution. The second examines the global forces that shaped the political and class system of feudalism (within which the economy was fundamentally embedded).
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- Information
- The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation , pp. 99 - 115Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004