PURPLE PATCH: Rethinking History
Marshall G S Hodgson
Is it true that Europe has colonized vast areas; but the only dense population resulting has been in the United States. With all her colonies, Europe still has not a great deal more population than China and Japan, whose past culture certainly has not ended. The history of Chinese culture, then, is very nearly as important, from an international point of view, to modern world humanity as is the history of Europe. Yet when we read “world history” we read chiefly of Europe.
Why is this? There seem to me to be three chief reasons. The first one will be evident when one remembers that the historians of the “Middle Kingdom” considered China as very nearly the only actor in world history. The reason for both the Chinese and the European exclusiveness is the same: snobbish misunderstanding.
The second reason is rather more defensible: Europe has had more influence on China since the Industrial Revolution than China has had on Europe. Granted! But will we get a true picture of the world, if we study only the dominating power, and not the dominated? After all, until extremely recently — as the history of civilization goes — there was probably more influence in the other direction; and we are beginning to realize that that may well be the case again.
The third reason goes to the heart of the matter: our civilization is European, therefore we are interested only in that history which can tell us how we got this way. In this case let us be frank about it, and stop talking about world history, or general history, when we really mean the history of European countries and their colonies (with a few remarks about the rest of the world thrown in). Some modern historians do this, indeed; but not the average person. However, I think that it is by no means true that world history has no great importance for us.
What are the purposes of history? They are many. Certainly a primary purpose of general history, either of all Europe, or of the civilization of the world, is to help us to understand the civilization of today, and to put it in its historic setting — just as a social worker, when taking up a case, first makes as all-inclusive a case history as he can in order to guide him....
We have known a long time that “the Crusades brought Europe knowledge of a more advanced culture” than her own. Is it enough to point out the specific items Europe learned, without attempting to set the European and Near Eastern cultures objectively side by side in a single history, where we could see not only what details Europe got, but also what she failed to accept; and more important, in what ways both developed in common? There is danger, in studying one country, that one may analyze all its events in terms of that country alone, whereas if one looks around he sees evidently related events elsewhere, that shows causes and development cannot be purely national but must be international. Likewise in studying Europe, should we assume that we are safe in looking for the causes of European developments within Europe alone?
I would go so far as to believe that if we began to study the history of the world as a whole, and not in the unbalanced way we have pretended to study it, we would discover the European history — in all its phases, social, economic, artistic, religious — has in the main, at least until recently, been a dependent part of the general development of civilization. Studying it in that light we will receive a new understanding both of Europe and of the human race. It will not do categorically to deny this surmise; the only way to show its falsehood is to study world history from this point of view, and see.
Marshall G S Hodgson was a world historian who taught at the University of Chicago. He is known for his masterful three-volume ‘The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilisation. This passage is from a posthumous collection of essays titled, ‘Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History’ where he argues that there is one global history and that all partial and privileged accounts must be resituated in a world historical context.
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