DOCSLIB.ORG

Leaving Western Civ Behind WILLIAM H

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Leaving Western Civ Behind WILLIAM H Leaving Western Civ Behind WILLIAM H. MCNEILL I PROPOSE TO SURVEY MY EFFORT to understand Plato, Augustine, Luther, Voltaire, Marx, human history, seeking to clarify how I got to Flaubert, and many others. The Human Web (2003) from earlier world- views proffered by teachers and then altered My undergraduate years and elaborated by me, starting in childhood The course was put together by Ferdinand and proceeding all the way to the senility that Schevill, an elderly history professor who lec- PERSPECTIVES begins to beset me today. tured three times a week to a class of several In the beginning was Sunday school, where hundred. Schevill’s lectures had a clear and kindly teachers told us comprehensive point of view, juxtaposing Bible stories and did reason against faith, St. Socrates against St. their best to keep us quiet, except when we Paul, with clear and emphatic preference for My college years sang hymns. Christian doctrine was left out: Socrates and the human reason he stood for as contributed lasting no original sin, no redeeming grace, no hell the best available guide to human affairs. I either; and heaven remained very misty. The already had inklings of this secular—really, assumptions core message boiled down to this: Jesus loved eighteenth-century—viewpoint from high I used when us, and we should love him in return, just as school, where we had used Carl Becker’s text- working out all we loved and depended on our own mothers. book for modern European history. But it was my subsequent Not much of a worldview, but all a Canadian only under Schevill’s influence that what I Presbyterian Sunday school in the early 1920s will call the “Western Civ” model of the hu- notions about felt it safe to impart. man past came home to me. It was a conver- human history Years of subsequent churchgoing with my sion experience, and I remain grateful for it parents did not expand this core very notably, inasmuch as it introduced me to the European so much so that I first learned about original cultural heritage in a coherent—though highly sin and redemption by reading a translation of selective and superficial—fashion. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo assigned as required Throughout my undergraduate career, reading for an introductory humanities course 1934–38, the University of Chicago was staffed at the University of Chicago in 1934. That by professors born into Christian (and some course constituted a major landmark of my in- Jewish) families who had fallen away from in- tellectual maturation, exposing me, as it did, herited religious doctrines with varying degrees to a wide variety of other eye-opening authors of completeness and self-consciousness. So of the Western tradition week after week: my undergraduate years filled out details of Schevill’s secular viewpoint, but did not change WILLIAM H. MCNEILL is professor emeritus of fundamentals. Those years were also when history at the University of Chicago. This article the approach of World War II became in- was adapted from the first William H. McNeill creasingly obvious and I was much taken by Lecture in World History, sponsored by Berkshire the notion that international affairs consti- Publishing Group and delivered by the author on tuted a process that overrode human wishes or June 26, 2009, at the World History Association conscious intentions, and that we were reen- Conference in Salem, Massachusetts. acting a pattern already familiar from ancient 40 L IBERAL E DUCATION S UMMER/FALL 2011 University of Chicago Greek and Roman history. A cycle of civiliza- that social change very often arose from en- tional growth, crisis, and decay seemed to be counters with strangers who possessed some at work resembling the concept of nemesis, obviously superior skill or knowledge that which Herodotus used to explain Xerxes’ de- locals could borrow and adjust to their own feat. As an undergraduate I already planned use. So my college years contributed lasting to write an extended history of ancient and assumptions I used when working out all my modern times, setting forth the cyclical pat- subsequent notions about human history and tern I had glimpsed. how we got to where we are. PERSPECTIVES The nearest I came to expanding my outlook beyond the European past occurred almost by The influence of Arnold Toynbee chance in 1936 when I enrolled in a summer A massive intellectual jolt came my way in course entitled Folk Society, taught by the an- the spring of 1941, during my second year of thropologist Robert Redfield. He was then seek- graduate study at Cornell University, when I ing to contract a scientific, essentially timeless, chanced upon the first three volumes of typology of human societies; and later published Arnold J. Toynbee’s A Study of History—all his views in a book entitled The Folk Culture that had then been published of the eventual of Yucatan (1941). But in 1936 he was still ten volumes. I discovered that Toynbee had working his ideas out for himself, and this lent been a generation ahead of me in glimpsing a a special freshness and vivacity to his lectures. repetitive cycle of ancient and modern Euro- Redfield’s basic notion was that isolated pean history, having reacted to World War I village communities could and did work out a in much the same way as I reacted to the out- more or less complete array of customary re- break of World War II. Moreover, Toynbee sponses to all normal human experiences, had worked out details of classical and modern whereas cities, where strangers abounded, could civilizational growth, crisis, and collapse far not sustain firm customary rules, thus opening more precisely than I, and, wonder of wonder, the way for new forms of behavior—successful then searched the record of other civiliza- sometimes, but more often disruptive and psy- tions—twenty-one in all—to test whether chologically harmful. By arranging particular they, too, exhibited similar rhythms of growth communities along a scale from those almost and decay. Not surprisingly, he found what he (but never completely) encapsulated within a looked for, and with masterful ingenuity—in- cake of custom to the polar opposite of a com- deed, with almost superhuman omniscience— munity lacking all customary forms of behavior proceeded to set forth a schema for human (another impossibility), Redfield hoped to history as a whole. understand all that happened among actual Those volumes of Toynbee’s A Study of His- human beings, and to be able to identify per- tory effected a second conversion, for they sistent points of strain within both civilized showed me how parochial my studies had and custom-bound societies. hitherto been. I suddenly realized that the Incidentally, Redfield’s course also intro- book I had planned would have to take on the duced me to the Plains Indians of North four-fifths of humankind excluded from the America and how they had altered their en- Western civilization with which I had previ- tire way of life by embracing new possibilities ously been exclusively concerned. Though I created by the spread of horses northward was then within sight of the completion of my from Spanish Mexico decade by decade, PhD, I had disconcertingly discovered that transmitting from tribe to tribe the skills and my education was just beginning, if I were accouterments needed for hunting buffalo on ever to understand the human past as a whole. horseback . This became for me an archetype To be sure, even in my first raptures, I rec- of intelligent human response to encounters ognized points of difference with Toynbee. He with new and obviously advantageous possi- referred to civilization as a “state of the soul,” bilities—encounters, I assumed, that must but I preferred to emphasize more tangible re- have played a large part in human history alities—technology, not least, together with from the very beginning. social complexity, occupational specialization, I still adhere to the idea that impersonal and other traits anthropologists were accus- process outweighs conscious purpose in human tomed to invoke. I was also sure that separate affairs. Likewise I have never since doubted civilizations were never insulated and unable 42 L IBERAL E DUCATION S UMMER/FALL 2011 I suddenly realized to learn from one another as that the book learned a great deal from one Toynbee claimed, interacting I had planned would another in our staff discus- only exceptionally through re- have to take on sions. So my college teaching naissances and what he called was a stimulating experience, “aparentation and affiliation.” the four-fifths of all the more so because we also The Plains Indians’ reaction to humankind excluded had to articulate our claim to a Spanish horses in Mexico was from the Western place in the curriculum before enough to show me how mis- civilization with which the college faculty as a whole guided he was. against doubters who disdained PERSPECTIVES A few months later, in I had previously our discipline and denied our September 1941, when I had been exclusively right to exist. completed note-taking for my concerned Nonetheless, I did not wish dissertation but before I started to confine my attention to to write it, my Chicago draft board summoned Western Civ permanently and had not forgot- me to join the army. Accordingly, for the next ten Toynbee. Thanks to my wife, whose father five years and two months my life altered dras- had been Toynbee’s closest friend at Balliol tically, and historical ideas and ambitions all College, Oxford, I met him for the first time but disappeared from my consciousness. in my father-in-law’s house in March 1947, Then in June 1946 I was discharged from a week after Time magazine had devoted its the army and returned to Cornell University cover story to his vision of rising and falling to write my thesis and qualify for an academic civilizations, and declared that he had fully career.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • World History Education in Scholarship, Curriculum, and Textbooks, 1890-2002
    WHAT ARE OUR 17-YEAR OLDS TAUGHT? WORLD HISTORY EDUCATION IN SCHOLARSHIP, CURRICULUM AND TEXTBOOKS, 1890-2002 Jeremy L. Huffer A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS December 2009 Committee: Tiffany Trimmer, Advisor Scott Martin Nancy Patterson © 2009 Jeremy L. Huffer All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Tiffany Trimmer, Advisor This study examines world history education in the United States from the late 19th century through 2002 by investigating the historical interplay between three mechanisms of curricular control: scholarship, curriculum recommendations, and textbook publishing. Research for this study has relied on unconventional source classification, with historical monographs which defined key developments in world history scholarship and textbooks being examined as primary sources. More typical materials, such as secondary sources analyzing philosophical educational battles, the history of educational movements, historiography, and the development of new ideologies from have been incorporated as well. Since educational policy began trending towards increasing levels of standardization with the implementation of compulsory education in the late 1800s, policymakers have been grappling with what to teach students about the wider world. Early scholarship focused on the history of Western Civilization, as did curriculum recommendations and world history textbooks crafted by professional historians of the period. Amidst the chaos of two World Wars, economic depression, the collapse of the global imperial system, and the advent of the Cold War traditional accounts of the unimpeachable progress of the Western tradition began to ring hollow with some historians. New scholarship in the second half of the twentieth century refocused world history, shifting away from the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations model which emphasized the separate traditions of various societies and towards a narrative of increasing interconnectedness.
    [Show full text]
  • Great Divergence of the 18Th Century?
    Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution Great Divergence of the 18th Century? Andrey Korotayev1,2, Julia Zinkina3, Denis Zlodeev1 1 National Research University Higher School of Economics 2 Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences 3 Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Abstract The article suggests that the Great Divergence of the 19th century between “the West” and “the East” was preceded by the Great Divergence in the 18th century between the Global North and the Global South. This may be attributed to a new, much higher level of state efficiency in the Global North. The eastern and western regions of the Global North frequently used different methods to make their state apparatuses more efficient, but achieved strikingly similar results during the 18th century. The Great Divergence of the 19th century, remarkably, occurred within the Global North. Introduction. The Great Divergence One of the major contributions made by Jack Goldstone to the study of social macroevolution is constituted by his founding of the 'California School' in whose framework the Great Divergence theory was developed (Frank 1998; Goldstone 1991, 2002, 2008a, and 2008b; Marks 2002; Pomeranz 2000 and 2002; Vries 2003, 2010, and 2013; Wong 1997). In the 19th century, northwestern Europe saw the birth of capital-intensive and fossil-fuel based manufacturing. Spreading throughout Europe and the United States, these changes triggered explosive growth resulting in the gap in per
    [Show full text]
  • A HISTORIAN's MEMOIR. by William H. Mcneill. Lexing
    History and Theory 46 (October 2007), xxx-xxx © Wesleyan University 2007 ISSN: 0018-2656 WILLIAM H. MCNEILL: LUCRETIUS AND MOSES IN WORLD HISTORY1 THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH: A HISTORIAN’S MEMOIR. By William H. McNeill. Lexing- ton: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. Pp. viii, 189. I The 1963 publication of William McNeill’s The Rise of the West was a great step forward for global historiography.2 The widespread attention to the book amount- ed to recognition of world history as a valid field of discourse both for the reading public and for historical scholars. Hugh Trevor-Roper, the Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford and one of the most visible scholars in the historical profession, wrote a highly positive review in the New York Times Sunday book review section; The Rise of the West subsequently won a National Book Award.3 The book conveyed a compelling statement of past and present on a grand scale, a global vision accessible to a North American reading public that had just passed through the terrifying brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis; its author be- came a public intellectual.4 The book also facilitated discussion of broad patterns in the past by professional historians and confirmed McNeill, already a well-es- tablished historian of Europe, as the leading authority in world history, a field whose emergence owed much to his own work. The term “emergence” is, I think, appropriate. World history had long existed as a stimulating but marshy mix of narratives, compendia, theories, and pronounce- ments—arguably at the creative frontier of historical analysis but, realistically, below the surface of academic discourse in history.
    [Show full text]
  • {TEXTBOOK} the Rise of the West a History of the Human Community
    THE RISE OF THE WEST A HISTORY OF THE HUMAN COMMUNITY 2ND EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK William H McNeill | 9780226561417 | | | | | The Rise of the West A History of the Human Community 2nd edition PDF Book From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A civilized state required 1 basic institutions of government and public bureaucracy; 2 the organizational capacity for self-defense; 3 a published legal code and adherence to the rule of law; 4 the capacity to honor contracts in commerce and capital exchange; and 5 recognition of international law and norms, including the laws of war Gong ; Bowden , The rise of the West on a cosmopolitan scale from to is described as to continued territorial expansion, industrialism , the democratic revolution, and intellectual aspects. Osterhammel, T. Thus, in this case, a single-minded pursuit of security led to extinction. For McNeill and myself it is the second major failing of the book and its author. European economic history Fascinating fact number 3,! McNeill, William Innovative four-step chapter reviews help students build historical skills while retaining key content. March 14, That in turn also vitiates his comparisons with 'the rest' of the alleged 'exceptionalism of the West,' which has long since been disconfirmed by historical research and social theory, most recently again by Jack Goody under the title The East in the West. Fourteen Ninety-Two. These means, along with the advent of the iron-clad steamship, gave Europeans the forceful power needed to subjugate those remaining uncolonized peoples of the world. No miracles. Schwarzenberger, G. Cameron, ed. With them they took their new military methods and, as these steadily improved, they gradually gained superiority over all their opponents: over the Americans in the sixteenth century, over most Indonesians in the seventeenth, and over many Indians and Africans in the eighteenth.
    [Show full text]
  • Europe and Asia Beyond East and West
    Europe and Asia Beyond East and West This is a timely volume that explores Europe in its relation to Asia in a way that moves beyond simplistic notions of West and East. Rejecting the idea of a clash of civilizations, the contributions highlight the interlinked nature of Europe and Asia and attempt to identify cosmopolitan moments of openness. From both a historical and a contemporary perspective, it is shown that both Europe and Asia are not based on fixed cultural or geographical foundations. The East is also in the West. Rather than look at Europe and Asia in terms of separate worlds, they can be seen in terms of cultural struggles common to both. A general theme is that the idea of the West as an ideological, cultural and geopolitical construct is becoming increasingly questionable when applied to the current situation, which is one in which West and East are mutually linked. The articulation of a new European identity that includes a recognition of the non-European is now one of the major chances for Europe to define its identity in the world. Chapters are thematically organized under four headings: • A post-Western world • Asia in Europe: Encounters in History • Between Europe and Asia • Otherness in Europe and Asia This major new title will be of great value to students and researchers in the fields of Sociology, European Politics and History, and Cultural Theory. Gerard Delanty is Professor of Sociology, University of Liverpool. His recent books include (with Chris Rumford) Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the Implications of Europeanization (Routledge, 2005); Community (Routledge, 2004).
    [Show full text]
  • Historical Traditions and Modern Imperatives for the Restoration of Global History
    Patrick O’Brien Historical traditions and modern imperatives for the restoration of global history Article (Published version) (Refereed) Original citation: O'Brien, Patrick (2006) Historical traditions and modern imperatives for the restoration of global history. Journal of global history, 1 (1). pp. 3-39. ISSN 1740-0228 DOI: 10.1017/S1740022806000027 © 2006 The London School of Economics and Political Science This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/26471/ Available in LSE Research Online: September 2012 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. Journal of Global History (2006) 1, pp 3–39 ª London School of Economics and Political Science 2006 doi:10.1017/S1740022806000027 Historiographical traditions and modern imperatives for the restoration of global history* Patrick O’Brien Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK E-mail: p.o’[email protected] Abstract This essay has been written to serve as a prolegomenon for a new journal in Global History. It opens with a brief depiction of the two major approaches to the field (through connexions and comparisons) and moves on to survey first European and then other historiographical traditions in writing ‘centric’ histories up to the times of the Imperial Meridian 1783–1825, when Europe’s geopolitical power over all other parts of the world became hegemonic.
    [Show full text]
  • Ten Years of Debate on the Origins of the Great Divergence
    Ten Years of Debate on the Origins of the Great Divergence Book: The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy Kenneth Pomeranz Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2000, ISBN: 9780691090108; 392pp.; Price: £20.95 Reviewer: Professor Patrick O'Brien London School of Economics Citation: Professor Patrick O'Brien, review of Ten Years of Debate on the Origins of the Great Divergence, (review no. 1008) https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1008 Date accessed: 17 March, 2020 Ten Years of Debate on the Origins of the Great Divergence between the Economies of Europe and China during the Era of Mercantilism and Industrialization 1. Smith, Marx and Weber Along with histories of power, histories of material life and economic growth are the most popular of metanarratives currently published in the growing field of global history. Indeed no surprise will be occasioned by the appearance in our times, of accelerated ‘globalization’, of histories seeking to encompass a ‘global economy’, dealing with chronologies going back millennia and written to expound upon the disparate levels of material progress achieved by tribes, societies, communities and national economies located on all the world’s continents. Such concerns continue to be the litmus test of the mission of global economic history to keep ‘humanity in view’. After all, most people, in most places for most of history have been preoccupied with obtaining food, shelter, clothing and other manufactured artefacts that they required to sustain either a basic, a comfortable and only latterly, an agreeable standard of living. Traditions of historical enquiry into the wealth and poverty of nations began with Herodotus but modern paradigms for investigation need be traced no further back than to the towering intellects of two cosmopolitan, but perhaps equally ‘Eurocentric’ Germans: Karl Marx and Max Weber.
    [Show full text]
  • The Political Economy of Imperialism, Decolonization and Development
    B.J.Pol.S., Page 1 of 32 Copyright r Cambridge University Press, 2011 doi:10.1017/S0007123410000232 The Political Economy of Imperialism, Decolonization and Development ERIK GARTZKE AND DOMINIC ROHNER* Nations have historically sought power and prosperity through control of physical space. In recent decades, however, this has largely ceased. Most states that could do so appear relucant, while the weak cannot expand. This article presents a theory of imperialism and decolonization that explains both historic cycles of expansion and decline and the collective demise of the urge to colonize. Technological shocks enable expansion, while rising labour costs and the dynamics of military technology gradually dilute imperial advantage. Simultaneously, economic development leads to a secular decline in payoffs for appropriating land, minerals and capital. Once conquest no longer pays great powers, the systemic imperative to integrate production vertically also becomes archaic. ‘Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home y’ George W. Bush Two recent American wars in the Middle East have reawakened discussions of American Empire.1 In contrast to traditional patterns, however, the United States appears to have no desire to acquire more territory. Whether empire requires physical expansion and colonization, or simply ‘effective control’ of another society,2 seems to us to be largely definitional.3 Labelling American motives and practices as imperial, hegemonic or something else is perhaps less critical than attempting to understand why such behaviour * Department of Political Science, University of California-San Diego (email: [email protected]); Department of Economics, University of Zurich, respectively.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth
    The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth By DARON ACEMOGLU,SIMON JOHNSON, AND JAMES ROBINSON* The rise of Western Europe after 1500 is due largely to growth in countries with access to the Atlantic Ocean and with substantial trade with the New World, Africa, and Asia via the Atlantic. This trade and the associated colonialism affected Europe not only directly, but also indirectly by inducing institutional change. Where “initial” political institutions (those established before 1500) placed significant checks on the monarchy, the growth of Atlantic trade strengthened merchant groups by constraining the power of the monarchy, and helped merchants obtain changes in institutions to protect property rights. These changes were central to subsequent economic growth. (JEL F10, N13, O10, P10) The world we live in was shaped by the rapid There is little agreement, however, on why this economic growth that took place in nineteenth- growth took place in Western Europe and why century Western Europe. The origins of this it started in the sixteenth century. growth and the associated Industrial Revolution This paper establishes the patterns of eco- are generally considered to lie in the economic, nomic growth in Western Europe during this political, and social development of Western era, develops a hypothesis on the origins of the Europe over the preceding centuries. In fact, rise of (Western) Europe and provides historical between 1500 and 1800, Western Europe expe- and econometric evidence supporting some of rienced a historically unprecedented period of the implications of this hypothesis. sustained growth, perhaps the “First Great Di- We document that the differential growth of vergence” (i.e., the first major sustained diver- Western Europe during the sixteenth, seven- gence in income per capita across different teenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centu- regions of the world), making this area substan- ries is almost entirely accounted for by the tially richer than Asia and Eastern Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking the Rise of the West: the Great Divergence Debate
    Lesson plan for web module: China and Europe, 1500-2000 and Beyond: What is "Modern"? Rethinking the Rise of the West: The Great Divergence Debate Konstantin Georgidis, Canterbury School, Ft. Myers, Florida I. Introduction a. Rationale b. Grade Level and time required c. Goals d. Instructional Objectives e. Resources f. Procedures II. Class Activities: Comparing and Contrasting Points of View A. The Traditional Story of the Rise of the West B. Rethinking the Rise of the West C. Historians and Their Perspectives: A Debate z Primary Sources z Secondary Sources III. Web Sources IV. Bibliography Introduction Rationale This unit focuses on historiography. It traces the ways in which historians view the rise of the west during the period from 1450 to 1850. In the past, historians have explained Europe's rise-as expressed in European global dominance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - by focusing on maritime achievements in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This interpretation has also generally viewed Europe's rise as a result of unique European cultural factors. More recent interpretations, however, have been critical of Western dominance and have attempted to place that dominance in a global historical context. In the 1970s, for example, world systems theory sought to view European dominance as a product of the expansionary nature of capitalism. In the last decade, scholars with opposing views about when, how, and why the West rose have hotly debated new interpretations. Even more recently, new comparative scholarship has sought to locate Europe's rise within a global trade network long dominated by China.
    [Show full text]
  • A Roundtable on Michael Kimmage, the Abandonment of the West
    A Roundtable on Michael Kimmage, The Abandonment of the West Christopher McKnight Nichols, Heather Marie Stur, Brad Simpson, Andy Rotter, and Michael Kimmage Whither the West? From Columbian Triumphalism to the traces the rise, decline, and fall of many intertwined and first Non-Western Presidency: often competing notions and reorientations of the “West” A Review of Michael Kimmage, The Abandonment of the in foreign policy thought, debate, and practice. West At heart, this book is about how perhaps the most vaunted of Enlightenment ideals—a “Western”-centered set Christopher McKnight Nichols of concepts related to liberty and the definition, extension, and practice thereof—have and have not been embodied in the rhetoric and the practice of U.S. foreign relations. This he title of this book evokes numerous Donald Trump is an intellectual genealogy. As such, it seeks to reveal the tweets, statements, and threats over the past five sinuous path by which we arrived at contemporary notions years. It also raises questions: was Trump pro-West of the West and to point out which notions were rejected, Tor not, and how does his administration and its policies adapted, and transformed along the way. compare to those of his predecessors? The book asks, in other words, how the United States Trumpism and the related, inchoate policies of “America got from the era of the Turnerian “closure of frontiers” First” were firmly positioned against the organizational and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which structures and assumptions of the so-called liberal were characterized by encomiums to Anglo-Saxon international order, or rules-based order.
    [Show full text]
  • Arnold J. Toynbee and Islamism in Cold War￢ﾀﾓera Turkey
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Istanbul Sehir University Repository $UQROG-7R\QEHHDQG,VODPLVPLQ&ROG:DU²(UD7XUNH\&LYLOL]DWLRQLVP LQWKH:ULWLQJVRI6H]DL.DUDNRo &HPLO$\GLQ%XUKDQHWWLQ'XUDQ &RPSDUDWLYH6WXGLHVRI6RXWK$VLD$IULFDDQGWKH0LGGOH(DVW9ROXPH 1XPEHU$XJXVWSS $UWLFOH 3XEOLVKHGE\'XNH8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV )RUDGGLWLRQDOLQIRUPDWLRQDERXWWKLVDUWLFOH KWWSVPXVHMKXHGXDUWLFOH Access provided by ISTANBUL SEHIR UNIVERSITESI (29 Apr 2016 09:31 GMT) EMPIRE to REPUBLIC Arnold J. Toynbee and Islamism in Cold War – Era Turkey Civilizationism in the Writings of Sezai Karakoç Cemil Aydin and Burhanettin Duran tudies on the formation of modern Islamist thought in Turkey often provide a long- term perspec- tive, linking the Islamist political orientations with Pan- Islamist thought of the late Ottoman era. S This continuity thesis, however, neglects the crucial transformations in Islamism in the post – World War II period, when the international politics of Cold War and decolonization struggles coincided with the boom of Islamist intellectual writings in secular Republican Turkey. This article concentrates on the crucial additions to and reinterpretations of Islamist thought in Turkey during the Cold War and post – Cold War period by focusing on the civilizationist worldview of Sezai Karakoç (1933 – ), whose influ- ential writings on the civilizational resurrection (diriliş) of Islam have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. By deconstructing Karakoç’s ideas on civilizational Islam and putting them in relation to the writings and influence of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889 – 1975), this article attempts to achieve several objectives: first, it tries to establish the connections between global intellectual history and Islamist thought in Cold War Turkey.
    [Show full text]