Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T00:15:42.852Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

History, Archaeology and Cultural Comparison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2020

Sverre Håkon Bagge
Sverre Håkon Bagge*
Affiliation:
University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Ian Morris’s Why the West Rules – for Now (2010) is a brilliant book, dealing with Eurasian history from the first civilisations to the present. It takes an intermediate position in the famous debate about Europe and the rest of the world and European dominance during the last few centuries. Morris uses all kinds of sources. However, his general approach is staunchly materialistic: the motors of history are fear, sloth and greed. Cultural differences do exist, but can be explained by the former factors. This is an attitude not confined to archaeologists, nor necessarily shared by all of them, but may nevertheless have something to do with Morris’s background in this field. One objection is that Morris may have underestimated the importance of institutional factors; he does not discuss the division of Europe into separate states, which has often been regarded as a central factor in ‘the Rise of the West’. This in turn raises the question of the ‘two hand-maidens’ and their relationship to the EU. If political division is an essential feature of Europe, what will happen if this division disappears?

Type
Focus: How can History and Archaeology be Handmaidens in Defining a National or Regional (in this Case European) Identity?
Information
European Review , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , June 2020 , pp. 465 - 468
Copyright
© 2020 Academia Europaea

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Guest Editor: Nikita Harwich

References

Berman, H (1983) Law and Revolution. I. The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Huff, TE (1993) The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Morris, I (2011) Why the West Rules – for Now. The Patterns of History and What they Reveal about the Future, 2nd edn. London: Profile Books.Google Scholar
Needham, J (1969) The Grand Titration. Science and Society in East and West. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Weinberg, S (2015) To Explain the World. The Discovery of Modern Science. London: Allan Lane.Google Scholar