How should we understand Europe's special role in world history, and the enduring impact it made on the rest of the globe? Jerrold Seigel traces both the positive and negative sides of the continent's special role to its absence of effective central authority, the division and competition...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Seigel, Jerrold E. 1936- (Author)
Format:	Electronic eBook
Language:	English
Published:	Cambridge ; New York Cambridge University Press 2025
Subjects:	Civilization, Western / History Civilization, Modern / European influences Europe / Civilization Europe / Politics and government Europe / Economic conditions Europe / Intellectual life Europe / Foreign relations
Online Access:	DE-12 DE-473 Volltext
Summary:	How should we understand Europe's special role in world history, and the enduring impact it made on the rest of the globe? Jerrold Seigel traces both the positive and negative sides of the continent's special role to its absence of effective central authority, the division and competition between its states and peoples, and its propensity for developing autonomous spheres of activity. Remaking the World analyzes how these features fostered Europe's characteristic preoccupation with a politics of liberty, its evolution of an aesthetic sphere animated by values specific to itself, its singular capacity to revolutionize scientific understanding, and its ability to prepare and carry out the first transition to a modern industrial economy. Extended and substantive comparisons with Africa, India, China, and the lands that came under the rule of the Ottomans demonstrate the absence of similar phenomena elsewhere, whereas in Europe they also helped generate the malign force of imperial expansion
Item Description:	Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 29 Nov 2024) Introduction -- A preoccupation with liberty -- From liberties to liberty -- Liberties elsewhere -- Spheres of autonomy: The church, universities, and the bounds of reason -- Classical humanism and aesthetics -- Science as a sphere of autonomy -- Teleocratic sciences -- Other peoples, other places -- Empire: material expansion, moral contraction, and internal criticism -- Courage and weakness: anti-imperialism and its limits in the nineteenth century -- Autonomy and transformation: Britain -- Transformation and autonomy: France and Germany -- Ready or not? China and India -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Endnotes
Physical Description:	1 Online-Ressource (viii, 370 Seiten)
ISBN:	9781009541671
DOI:	10.1017/9781009541671