Theft of history

Jack Goody0521870690, 9780521870696, 9780511261510

Professor Jack Goody builds on his own previous work to extend further his highly influential critique of what he sees as the pervasive eurocentric or occidentalist biases of so much western historical writing. Goody also examines the consequent ‘theft’ by the West of the achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, capitalism, individualism, and love. The Theft of History discusses a number of theorists in detail, including Marx, Weber and Norbert Elias, and engages with critical admiration western historians like Fernand Braudel, Moses Finlay and Perry Anderson. Major questions of method are raised, and Goody proposes a new comparative methodology for cross-cultural analysis, one that gives a much more sophisticated basis for assessing divergent historical outcomes, and replaces outmoded simple differences between East and West. The Theft of History will be read by an unusually wide audience of historians, anthropologists and social theorists.

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Table of contents :
Contents……Page 11
Acknowledgements……Page 12
Introduction……Page 13
1 Who stole what? Time and space……Page 25
Time……Page 26
Space……Page 31
Periodization……Page 34
2 The invention of Antiquity……Page 38
Modes of communication: the alphabet……Page 43
The transition to Antiquity……Page 45
The economy……Page 50
Politics……Page 60
Religion and ‘Black Athens’……Page 72
Conclusion: Antiquity and the Europe–Asia Dichotomy……Page 77
The shift to feudalism from Antiquity……Page 80
Decline in the west, continuity in the east……Page 81
The shift to feudalism……Page 89
The Carolingian revival and the birth of feudalism……Page 93
Cavalry warfare……Page 97
The upswing of trade and of manufacture……Page 99
Other feudalisms?……Page 103
4 Asiatic despots and societies, in Turkey
or elsewhere?……Page 111
The Sultan’s army……Page 115
Peasants as slaves?……Page 118
Trade……Page 121
The silk industry……Page 123
The spice trade……Page 126
A static society?……Page 128
Cultural similarities in east and west……Page 130
5 Science and civilization in Renaissance Europe……Page 137
The polity and the bourgeoisie……Page 147
The economy and law……Page 153
‘Modern science’ and the internal characteristics of knowledge systems……Page 158
The ‘Needham problem’……Page 160
6 The theft of ‘civilization’: Elias and
Absolutist Europe……Page 166
The civilizing process……Page 171
Experience in Ghana……Page 187
7 The theft of ‘capitalism’: Braudel and
global comparison……Page 192
Towns and the economy……Page 202
Finance capitalism……Page 208
The timing of capitalism……Page 217
Towns……Page 227
Universities……Page 234
Muslim education……Page 239
Humanism……Page 245
9 The appropriation of values: humanism,
democracy, and individualism……Page 252
Humanism and secularization……Page 253
Humanism, human values, and westernization: rhetoric and practice……Page 256
Democracy……Page 259
Individualism, equality, freedom……Page 268
Charity and ambivalence regarding luxury……Page 273
10 Stolen love: European claims to the emotions……Page 279
11 Last words……Page 298
References……Page 319
Index……Page 336