4 - The great Western Transmutation

Summary

The Western Transmutation as a world event

Between about 1600 and about 1800 there took place in Western Europe a general cultural transformation. This transformation culminated in two more or less simultaneous events: the Industrial Revolution, when specialized technical development decisively transformed the presuppositions of human production, and the French Revolution, when a kindred spirit established likewise unprecedented norms in human social relations. These events did not constitute the transformation I am speaking of: they were its most obvious early consequences. But the transformation had far-reaching effects not only among Europeans but also in the world at large. Its long-run implications for us all have not yet become entirely manifest. We will take some of them up later. From the point of view of the world at large, however, and particularly of the Muslim peoples, there was a more immediate consequence which will concern us here. This was that, by about 1800, the Occidental peoples (together with the Russians) found themselves in a position to dominate over-whelmingly most of the rest of the world – and, in particular, to dominate the lands of Islamdom. The same generation that saw the Industrial and French Revolutions saw a third and almost equally unprecedented event: the establishment of European world hegemony.

It was not merely, or perhaps even primarily, that the Europeans (and their overseas settlers) found themselves in a position to defeat militarily any powers they came in contact with.