Editing Eurocentrism (section)

==History==
According to historian [[Enrique Dussel]], Eurocentrism has its roots in [[Hellenocentrism]].<ref>[[Enrique Dussel|Dussel, Enrique]] (2011) ''Politics of Liberation: A Critical World History'' London: [[SCM Press]] p. 11 {{ISBN| 9780334041818}}</ref> Art historian and critic [[Christopher Allen (critic)|Christopher Allen]] points out that since antiquity, the outward-looking spirit of Western civilization has been more curious about other peoples and more open about learning about them than any other: [[Herodotus]] and [[Strabo]] travelled through [[Ancient Egypt]] and wrote about it in detail; Western [[Geographical exploration|explorers]] [[Cartography|mapped]] the [[Mappa mundi|whole surface of the globe]]; [[Western Science|Western scholars]] carried out fundamental research into all the [[Linguistics|languages]] of the world and established the [[scientific method|sciences]] of [[archaeology]] and [[anthropology]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/national-museums-fine-contribution-to-our-fascination-with-ancient-egypt/news-story/ec750477d537a4102bf7ced24e59327c|access-date=4 August 2024|url-access=subscription|title=National Museum's fine contribution to our fascination with ancient Egypt (print: Secrets of the past)|author=Christopher Allen|author-link=Christopher Allen (critic)|date=3–4 August 2024|newspaper=[[The Weekend Australian]]|pages=18–19}}</ref>{{relevance?|date=April 2025}}

===European exceptionalism===
{{Further|Great Divergence|The European Miracle|Middle Ages|Age of Discovery|Colonialism|Progressivism|Western world}}

During the [[European colonialism|European colonial era]], encyclopedias often sought to give a rationale for the predominance of European rule during the [[History of colonialism|colonial period]] by referring to a special position taken by Europe compared to the other continents.

Thus [[Johann Heinrich Zedler]], in 1741, wrote that "even though Europe is the smallest of the [[Four continents|world's four continents]], it has for various reasons a position that places it before all others.... Its inhabitants have excellent customs, they are courteous and erudite in both sciences and crafts".<ref>"<nowiki>[</nowiki>{{langx|de|link=no|Obwohl Europa das kleinste unter allen 4 Teilen der Welt ist, so ist es doch um verschiedener Ursachen willen allen übrigen vorzuziehen.... Die Einwohner sind von sehr guten Sitten, höflich und sinnreich in Wissenschaften und Handwerken.}}] [http://www.zedler-lexikon.de/blaettern/zedlerband.html?bandnummer=8&seitenzahl=1127 "Europa". In: ''Zedlers Universal-Lexicon''] {{webarchive|url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110911233435/http://www.zedler-lexikon.de/blaettern/zedlerband.html?bandnummer=8&seitenzahl=1127 |date= 11 September 2011 }}, Volume 8, Leipzig 1734, columns 2192–2196 (citation: column 2195).</ref>

The ''[[Brockhaus Enzyklopädie]]'' ({{lang|de|Conversations-Lexicon}}) of 1847 still expressed an ostensibly Eurocentric approach and claimed about Europe that "its geographical situation and its cultural and political significance is clearly the most important of the five continents, over which it has gained a most influential government both in material and even more so in cultural aspects".<ref>"<nowiki>[</nowiki>{{langx|de|link=no|[Europa ist seiner] terrestrischen Gliederung wie seiner kulturhistorischen und politischen Bedeutung nach unbedingt der wichtigste unter den fünf Erdtheilen, über die er in materieller, noch mehr aber in geistiger Beziehung eine höchst einflussreiche Oberherrschaft erlangt hat.}}] [https://books.google.com/books?id=fK9GAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA373 ''Das große Conversations-Lexicon für die gebildeten Stände''], 1847. Vol. 1, p. 373.</ref>

European [[exceptionalism]] thus grew out of the [[Great Divergence]] of the [[Early Modern period]], due to the combined effects of the [[Scientific Revolution]], the [[Commercial Revolution]], and the [[First European colonization wave (15th century–19th century)|rise of colonial empires]], the [[Industrial Revolution]] and a [[Second European colonization wave (19th century–20th century)|Second European colonization wave]].

The assumption of European exceptionalism is widely reflected in popular genres of literature, especially in literature for young adults (for example, [[Rudyard Kipling]]'s 1901 novel [[Kim (novel)|''Kim'']]<ref>{{cite web |last1=Jordison |first1=Sam |title=Reading beyond Rudyard Kipling's imperial crimes: the complexities of Kim |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/12/reading-beyond-rudyard-kiplings-imperial-crimes-kim |website=The Guardian |date=12 January 2016}}</ref>) and in adventure-literature in general. Portrayal of European colonialism in such literature has been analysed in terms of Eurocentrism in retrospect, such as presenting idealised and often exaggeratedly masculine Western heroes, who conquered "savage" peoples in the remaining "dark spaces" of the globe.<ref>Daniel Iwerks, "Ideology and Eurocentrism in ''Tarzan of the Apes''," in: ''Investigating the Unliterary: Six Readings of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes'', ed. Richard Utz (Regensburg: Martzinek, 1995), pp. 69–90.</ref>

The [[European miracle]], a term coined by Eric Jones in 1981,<ref>{{cite book| last =Jones | first =Eric | date =2003 | title =The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia | publisher =Cambridge University Press | isbn = 978-0-521-52783-5}}</ref> refers to the surprising rise of Europe during the Early Modern period. During the 15th to 18th centuries, a great divergence took place, comprising the European Renaissance, the European [[Age of Discovery]], the formation of European [[colonial empire]]s, the [[Age of Enlightenment|Age of Reason]], and the associated leap forward in technology and the development of [[capitalism]] and early industrialization. As a result, by the 19th century European powers dominated [[International trade|world trade]] and [[Global politics|world politics]].

In ''[[Lectures on the Philosophy of History]]'', published in 1837, [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] describes [[World history (field)|world history]] as starting in Asia but shifting to Greece and Italy, and then north of the [[Alps]] to France, Germany and England.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=de Boer|first=Karin|editor1-first= Dean |editor1-last= Moyar|date= 2017-06-06|title= Hegel's Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy|journal= Oxford Handbooks Online|volume=1|doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199355228.013.29}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=CuliwYNyvSUC&q=center+o+Europe+hegel&pg=PA8 | title=Properties of Modernity: Romantic Spain, Modern Europe, and the Legacies of Empire| isbn= 9780826515223| last1= Iarocci| first1= Michael P. | year=2006| publisher=Vanderbilt University Press}}</ref> Hegel interpreted India and China as stationary countries, lacking inner momentum. Hegel's China replaced the real historical development with a fixed, stable scenario, which made it the outsider of world history. Both India and China were waiting and anticipating a combination of certain factors from outside until they could acquire real progress in human [[civilization]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Farmer|first=Edward L.|date= 1985|title=Civilization as a Unit of World History: Eurasia and Europe's Place in It|journal=[[The History Teacher]]|volume= 18|issue= 3|pages= 345–363|doi= 10.2307/493055|jstor= 493055}}</ref> Hegel's ideas had a profound impact on western historiography and attitudes. Some scholars disagree with his ideas that the Oriental countries were outside of world history.<ref>{{Cite book |doi= 10.1057/9781137290007  |chapter=On the Origins of Modern Hospitality |title= Hospitality and World Politics |year= 2013 |isbn= 9781137290007 |last1= Baker |first1= Gideon |editor-first1=Gideon |editor-last1=Baker }}</ref>

[[Max Weber]] (1864-1920) suggested that capitalism is the speciality of Europe, because [[Orient| Oriental countries]] such as India and China do not contain the factors which would enable them to develop capitalism in a sufficient manner.<ref>{{Cite book|title= Scholarship and Partisanship : Essays on Max Weber|last1= Bendix | first1 = Reinhard|date= 1980|publisher=University of California Press| last2 =Roth | first2 = Guenther|isbn=978-0520041714|series=California Library reprint series, vol. 110|location=Berkeley | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ottM0fiTnO8C |oclc= 220409196}}</ref>{{request quotation|date=March 2022}} Weber wrote and published many treatises in which he emphasized the distinctiveness of Europe. In ''[[The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism]]'' (1905), he wrote that the "rational" capitalism, manifested by its enterprises and mechanisms, only appeared in the Protestant western countries, and a series of generalised and universal cultural phenomena only appear in the west.<ref>{{Cite book|date= 2017-07-03|title= The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism|doi= 10.4324/9781912282708|isbn= 9781912282708|s2cid= 166670406}}{{page needed|date=December 2019}}</ref>

Even the state, with a written constitution and a government organised by trained administrators and constrained by rational law, only appears in the West, even though other regimes can also comprise states.<ref>
{{Cite book
 |title= The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century
 |last1= Marks |first1= Robert |isbn= 9781442212398 |edition= 3rd
 |location= Lanham, Maryland|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|oclc= 902726566|year = 2015
}}{{page needed|date=December 2019}}
</ref> ("Rationality" is a multi-layered term whose connotations are developed and escalated as with the social progress. Weber regarded rationality as a proprietary article for western capitalist society.)

===Anticolonialism===
Even in the 19th century, [[anticolonial movements]] had developed claims about national traditions and values that were set against those of Europe in Africa and India. In some cases, as China, where local ideology was even more exclusionist than the Eurocentric one, [[Westernization]] did not overwhelm longstanding Chinese attitudes to its own cultural centrality.<ref name="ReferenceA">Cambridge History of China, CUP,1988</ref>

[[Orientalism]] developed in the late 18th century as a disproportionate Western interest in and idealization of Eastern (i.e. Asian) cultures.

By the early 20th century, some historians, such as [[Arnold J. Toynbee]], were attempting to construct multifocal models of world civilizations. Toynbee also drew attention in Europe to non-European historians, such as the medieval Tunisian scholar [[Ibn Khaldun]]. He also established links with Asian thinkers, such as through his dialogues with [[Daisaku Ikeda]] of [[Soka Gakkai International]].<ref>{{cite book |last=McNeill |first=William |year=1989 |title=Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life |location=New York and Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/arnoldjtoynbeeli00will/page/272 272–273] |isbn=978-0-19-505863-5 |author-link=William H. McNeill (historian) |quote=From Toynbee's point of view, Soka Gakkai was exactly what his vision of the historical moment expected, for it was a new church, arising on the fringes of the 'post-Christian' world.... Convergence of East and West was, indeed, what Toynbee and Ikeda sought and thought they had found in their dialogue. In a preface, written in the third person, Toynbee emphasized and tried to explain this circumstance. 'They agree that a human being ought to be perpetually striving to overcome his innate propensity to try to exploit the rest of the universe and that he ought to be trying, instead, to put himself at the service of the universe so unreservedly that his ego will become identical with an ultimate reality, which for a Buddhist is the Buddha state. They agree in believing that this ultimate reality is not a humanlike divine personality.' He explained these and other agreements as reflecting the 'birth of a common worldwide civilization that has originated in a technological framework of Western origin but is now being enriched spiritually by contributions from all the historic regional civilizations.' ... [Ikeda's] dialogue with Toynbee is the longest and most serious text in which East and West—that is, Ikeda and a famous representative of the mission field that Ikeda sees before him—have agreed with each other. In the unlikely event that Soka Gakkai lives up to its leader's hopes and realizes Toynbee's expectations by flourishing in the Western world, this dialogue might, like the letters of St. Paul, achieve the status of sacred scripture and thus become by far the most important of all of Toynbee's works. |url=https://archive.org/details/arnoldjtoynbeeli00will/page/272 }}</ref>

===Transformations of eurocentrism===
Authors show that since its first conceptualization, the concept of ''eurocentrism'' has evolved. Alina Sajed and John Hobson<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Hobson |first1=John M. |last2=Sajed |first2=Alina |date=2017-12-01 |title=Navigating Beyond the Eurofetishist Frontier of Critical IR Theory: Exploring the Complex Landscapes of Non-Western Agency |url=http://academic.oup.com/isr/article/19/4/547/4056212 |journal=[[International Studies Review]]|volume=19 |issue=4 |pages=547–572 |doi=10.1093/isr/vix013 |issn=1521-9488|doi-access=free }}</ref> point to the emergence of a ''critical'' eurocentrism, stressing that 'while [critical IR theory] is certainly critical of the West, nevertheless its tendency towards "Eurofetishism" –by which Western agency is reified at the expense of non-Western agency– leads it into a "critical Eurocentrism". Expanding on their work, Audrey Alejandro has put forward the idea of a ''postcolonial'' eurocentrism, understood as an emerging form of Eurocentrism that

{{blockquote|follows the criteria of Eurocentrism commonly mentioned in the literature – denial of 'non-Western' agency, teleological narrative centred on the 'West' and idealization of the 'West' as normative referent—but whose system of value is the complete opposite of the one embodied by traditional Eurocentrism: With postcolonial Eurocentrism, Europe is also considered to be the primary "proactive" subject of world politics—but, in this case, by being described as the leading edge of global oppression, not progress. Indeed, according to postcolonial Eurocentrism, European capacity to homogenise the world according to its own standards of unification is considered to be a malevolent process (i.e. the destruction of diversity) rather than a benevolent one (i.e. a show of positive leadership). In both forms of Eurocentrism, the discourse performs "the West" as the main actor capable of organising the world in its image. European exceptionalism remains the same—although, from the postcolonial Eurocentric view, Europe is not considered to be the best actor ever, but the worst.'{{sfn|Alejandro|2018|page=163}}
}}

===Recent usage===
Arab journalists detected Eurocentrism in western media coverage of the [[Russian invasion of Ukraine]] in February 2022, when the depth and scope of coverage and concern contrasted with that devoted to longer-running contemporary wars outside Europe such as those in [[Syrian civil war|Syria]] and in [[Yemeni civil war (2014–present)|Yemen]].<ref>
{{cite web
 |url= https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/ukraine-invasion-journalists-reject-bias-racist-coverage
 |title= Ukraine invasion: Arab journalists call out 'orientalist, racist' double standards on Ukraine coverage
 |website= [[The New Arab]]
 |date= 28 February 2022
 |location= London
 |access-date= 1 March 2022
 |quote= Arab journalists have called out the 'racist, orientalist' news coverage on the war in Ukraine, which they've accused of Eurocentric bias and ignoring the reality of conflict for many in the Middle East and North Africa.
}}
</ref>