Eurocentrism

[Domen]

I would compare all technology trees from all Civilization games, and check which civilizations had which technologies in real history.

(...) Poland (...) definitely proving that it can into space

I still don't know why nobody remembers about Mirosław Hermaszewski:

Spoiler :

Here is a tech tree you must research when playing Poland to easily go into space:

Spoiler :

Communism ---> Sovietfriendization ---> Space Travel

 

[classical_hero]

Considering that this forum is host to mostly white heterosexual males, it is hardly surprising that this forum is Eurocentric, since most of us have our heritage from there. This forum is whiter than sour cream.

 

[Krajzen]

It is rather obvious than average Europeans are eurocentric, I would rather like to criticize the concentraion of "professional" Western history on Western Europe and nothing more*

*-Yes, apparently Russia exists when it starts messing with West Europe... And Ottomans when they do the same... And the same thing with Japan and obviously USA... And victims of superior European colonisation (by the way, why everyone knows "total defeat" of Aztec and Inca and nobody knows about Spanish huge defeats with Mapuche in Araucan War? )

I mean, popular image of history goes like this:
- Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, white civilisations
- Egypt, white civilisation obviously connected with Europe
- insanely overrated Greece (exception - Intellectual Life and Hellenism; still, Greece had very minor connection with "founding of Europe", "Greek democracy" lasted for less than century in one city - state, theatre wasn't invention of Greeks and many more - don't even mention Spartan Nazi State)
- Rome, obviously greatest empire ever, by the way: Europe
- oh, in the meantime there was China which invented paper, India with maths and Arabian muslims, but they all were still backwards and despotic
- Medieval Age in Europe (if by Europe we understand England, France, Italy and Germany, because I have seen tons of books devoted to "medieval Europe" which said only about those countries)
- renaissance, western Europe beats Aztec and Inca, conquers the entire world, and so Europe created modern world.

Yep, mainly this is truth that Europe had giant impact on world history, but come on, this image has so many ridiculous statements, flaws, ignorance and arogance. Obviously Europeans are always Eurocentric but still I hate countless "history of the world" books which basically say about Babylon->Egypt->Rome->Greece-Western Europe, or "history of Europe" books without entire Balkans, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia and Russia. "History of art in the world" - Greece<3333Rome<3333Italy<3333France<33333. "History of science" - without countless Chinese inventions and geniuses, no Arabian and Persian countless scholars, no Indian mathematics. This is so ridiculous.

 

[Akka]

Europe is a bunch of civs, not just one. Otherwise we could say that Eurasia won a domination victory, or Afro-Eurasia, or the whole planet.

Well, cf the title of the thread.

 

[Domen]

western Europe beats Aztec and Inca

I recommend you the book "Tenochtitlan 1521" by Ryszard Tomicki. It is some very good historical reading about the Aztec Empire.

It is not eurocentric - Tomicki wrote it rather from Aztec perspective, as well as from perspective of Native American enemies of Aztecs.

There is also a good series of three novels ("The Gold of the Black Mountains" trilogy) by Krystyna & Alfred Szklarscy about North American Indians.

They are novels, but historically & ethnographically accurate ones - so you can actually learn a lot about North American Indians from them.

Here is a brief description and a review (in English) of Szklarscy's "Indian Trilogy" from a book edited by James Mackay & David Stirrup:

Spoiler :

From "Tribal Fantasies. Native Americans in the European Imaginary, 1910-2010" edited by James Mackay & David Stirrup:

http://books.google.pl/books?id=lR4...Gold of the Black Mountains Szklarscy&f=false

 

[Singularitie]

It is rather obvious than average Europeans are eurocentric, I would rather like to criticize the concentraion of "professional" Western history on Western Europe and nothing more*

*-Yes, apparently Russia exists when it starts messing with West Europe... And Ottomans when they do the same...

The point of learning history is not to learn everything that ever happened. I don't know why but maybe it's to prepare you for the modern world. (politics?) Since our modern world was shaped by Europe then we should learn about Europe?

 

[ParkCungHee]

The point of learning history is not to learn everything that ever happened. I don't know why but maybe it's to prepare you for the modern world. (politics?)

History is terrible for that. Don't bother with it then.

 

[Phrossack]

The point of learning history is not to learn everything that ever happened. I don't know why but maybe it's to prepare you for the modern world. (politics?) Since our modern world was shaped by Europe then we should learn about Europe?

History has no purpose. It helps with entertainment, some background knowledge, a marginally better understanding of humanity, getting history-related jobs, and humiliating nationalists, but it's not terribly necessary or valuable. I think.

See, people are quick to say what history isn't good for, but they are hesitant to say what it is good for.

 

[ParkCungHee]

See, people are quick to say what history isn't good for, but they are hesitant to say what it is good for.

That's because it's not aid to a good, it is a good.

 

[Akka]

History has no purpose. It helps with entertainment, some background knowledge, a marginally better understanding of humanity, getting history-related jobs, and humiliating nationalists, but it's not terribly necessary or valuable. I think.

See, people are quick to say what history isn't good for, but they are hesitant to say what it is good for.

History is the memory of mankind.
Unless you're ready to say that memory is useless, your entire point is bogus - and if you're ready to say it, then your point is no more bogus, but just plain wrong.

 

[ParkCungHee]

History is the memory of mankind.
Unless you're ready to say that memory is useless, your entire point is bogus - and if you're ready to say it, then your point is no more bogus, but just plain wrong.

Making a vague analogy does not make it identical to "memory."

 

[Phrossack]

That's because it's not aid to a good, it is a good.

Why, and how so?

 

[ParkCungHee]

Why, and how so?

History has been traditionally placed in the humanities for a reason: It is fundamentally an act with cherishes, promotes and contemplates the human experience. Attempts to draw history into a social science or base it's value on predictive power in order to control future outcomes by definition leave out an essential component of the past. History, like visual art and other forms of literature, is a moral good in itself to be striven for. Things that produce material benefits in the world are good for allowing us to pursue higher goals.

 

[Phrossack]

History has been traditionally placed in the humanities for a reason: It is fundamentally an act with cherishes, promotes and contemplates the human experience. Attempts to draw history into a social science or base it's value on predictive power in order to control future outcomes by definition leave out an essential component of the past. History, like visual art and other forms of literature, is a moral good in itself to be striven for. Things that produce material benefits in the world are good for allowing us to pursue higher goals.

Hä? What do you mean by "moral good?" Aren't art and literature just means to the end of enjoying oneself, rather than ends in themselves? And how are we defining "higher," here? Seems like it's purely subjective.

 

[Akka]

Making a vague analogy does not make it identical to "memory."

Luckily, it doesn't need to be identical to be important.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Luckily, it doesn't need to be identical to be important.

Yes it does, because your argument is hinged on the claim that if history isn't useful, then memory isn't useful. That's proposing that they have a singular nature, which is obviously not true.

If history is important by some means other then it's singular nature with memory, you wouldn't need to bring it up, and you'd actually explain what you think history is useful for.

 

[Akka]

Yes it does

Nope it doesn't.
History is important because it allows us to draw lessons from the past and to know what happened before. That you nitpick about how exactly it's identical to memory or not, is irrelevant.

 

[ParkCungHee]

History is important because it allows us to draw lessons from the past and to know what happened before.

History is objectively terrible at that, and you're wasting your time trying to draw lessons from that.

 

[Dachs]

History is objectively terrible at that, and you're wasting your time trying to draw lessons from that.

To expound on this further:

If history is useful chiefly for the lessons it, supposedly, teaches, then one would expect that people who 'do' history are the best at applying those lessons to the real world. That is to say, historians would have good predictive power and could forecast future trends and major events through their knowledge of the past. Unfortunately, this is empirically untrue, as shown most famously by the studies conducted by Philip Tetlock (and Aaron Belkin) over the course of the last several decades.

One must also ask how this lesson-teaching would actually happen. It's not like the study of history consists of Kleio whispering Ancient Truths into one's ear. History is about aggregating and analyzing a multitude of human perspectives about the world and about the past. Those perspectives often disagree. Historians looking at the same exact data can also disagree about what those data mean. There is very little, if anything, that is objective about history; there's a great deal more intersubjectivity, but there are also a hell of a lot of disputes and disagreements.

That being the case, it's difficult for me to conceive of any room for 'lessons' to be taught. This becomes more apparent when you look at many of the sources that make up history. Take, for instance, a Russian mobilization poster from late July 1914. These posters had a fairly exciting story; when German military intelligence secured a copy of one of the red mobilization placards on 31 July, the German government was motivated to finally take a step toward conflict by declaring an 'imminent danger of war'. These posters were a key part of the circumstances surrounding an event that involved millions of deaths, incredible amounts of destruction, and change to almost every life that survived them; they're certainly not 'trivial' documents. So what's the 'lesson' to be drawn from these documents and the story around them? It's not particularly obvious to me, at least.

 

[Masada]

The Russians should have posted them secretly.