Remaking the World : European Distinctiveness and the Transformation of Politics, Culture, and the Economy / Jerrold Seigel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Seigel, Jerrold E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization, Western--History.

Civilization, Western.

Civilization, Modern--European influences.

Civilization, Modern.

Europe--Civilization.

Europe.

Europe--Politics and government.

Europe--Economic conditions.

Europe--Intellectual life.

Europe--Foreign relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 370 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, England : Cambridge University Press, [2025]

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

Contents:

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

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes index.

ISBN:

9781009541657

100954165X

9781009541695

1009541692

9781009541671

1009541676