Remaking the World European Distinctiveness and the Transformation of Politics, Culture, and the Economy
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Jerrold Seigel is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of History Emeritus at New York University. His work ranges from intellectual and cultural history to the evolution of society and politics. Previous publications include The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe Since the Seventeenth Century (2005), and Modernity and Bourgeois Life: Society, Politics and Culture in England, France, and Germany since 1750 (2012), which won the 2014 Laura Shannon Prize.'A work of breathtaking scope and erudition, this is macrohistory at its best, an original answer to the classic question of why Europe came to dominate the world. Europe's advantages, Seigel convincingly shows, emerged from no inherent superiority but from the autonomous spaces for innovation that the continent's political and religious disunity opened up.' Edward Berenson, New York University
'Jerrold Seigel's new book is an intriguing intervention in the long-running and often heated debate about the place of Europe in the history of the world.' Jonathan Sperber, University of Missouri
'Seminal, groundbreaking, exceptionally informative, impressively organized and presented history.' James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review
'Recommended.' J. Wigelsworth, CHOICE
'… tells the story of the West's outsize role across the last five centuries as the chief agent in unifying the globe, fostering complex networks of connection, and making originally European ways of interaction into points of reference for the rest of the world. This European impact was multidimensional: in economics, it brought the Industrial Revolution; in politics, it produced a distinctive preoccupation with the sources and meaning of freedom and equality; and in society and culture, it led to a reconceptualization of the cosmos and the modern imagination. In explaining why this grand transformation happened in Europe and not in the other great civilizations, Seigel points to the West's distinctive trajectory within the larger global system: after the fall of Rome, no aspiring hegemon succeeded in remaking Europe into a continent-sized empire, whereas its civilizational peers - China, Mughal India, and the Islamic dynasties - remained imperial in form. This fragmented and competitive early modern European landscape, Seigel argues, generated unique incentives for a dynamic process of “creative destruction,” laying the foundation of the great nineteenth-century explosion in wealth, power, and global imperial domination.' G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs
'… tells the story of the West's outsize role across the last five centuries as the chief agent in unifying the globe, fostering complex networks of connection, and making originally European ways of interaction into points of reference for the rest of the world. This European impact was multidimensional: in economics, it brought the Industrial Revolution; in politics, it produced a distinctive preoccupation with the sources and meaning of freedom and equality; and in society and culture, it led to a reconceptualization of the cosmos and the modern imagination. In explaining why this grand transformation happened in Europe and not in the other great civilizations, Seigel points to the West's distinctive trajectory within the larger global system: after the fall of Rome, no aspiring hegemon succeeded in remaking Europe into a continent-sized empire, whereas its civilizational peers - China, Mughal India, and the Islamic dynasties - remained imperial in form. This fragmented and competitive early modern European landscape, Seigel argues, generated unique incentives for a dynamic process of “creative destruction,” laying the foundation of the great nineteenth-century explosion in wealth, power, and global imperial domination.' G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs