Eight Eurocentric Historians

Rating:
Summary: Failure of a genre
Review: Despite the problems with Jim Blaut's own methodology, his critical expose of the genre of 'rise of the modern' theory is actually indispensable reading for anyone exploring the field, and for theorists in this area, who probably wouldn't condescend to bother with him. One needs to figure out the secret of Blaut's success behind his own questionable alternative thesis which isn't actually the reason for the acute insights of his eight successful critiques, one after another.
It seems to me that Blaut succeeds for a reason evident in his other book, on the 'European Miracle', where he skewers Eric Jones, but with a cryptic sense that he is dealing with a problem in evolutionary discontinuity. That insight, and not only the exploitation thesis of World System theory, is what leads him so remarkably to spot the flaws in so many 'sophisticated' tracts from different scholarly viewpoints. This statement would require more elaboration than is possible here, but the issue is to consider the rightness of Blaut's criticisms without necessarily agreeing to all the other premises of his perspective. This is, for the 'pros' in this field, a 'no kidding' mongoose in action. Blaut's mentor, A. Frank, hit on another aspect of the problem, in his book on world history and systems theory applied to the last five thousand years. Minus the economic materialism, we can see that the 'rise of the West' requires a radically altered viewpoint, that of universal history. But that's another story, and Blaut's book is a significant, if also flawed, way station on the way to some new way of thinking about history.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent critique of mainstream history
Review: Don't believe the hype about "revisionist" historians; anyone who criticizes the essential goodness of European civilization will undoubtedly be marginalized (e.g., put in the same category as Holocaust deniers). By critically evaluating eight influential historians, Blaut outlines the main historical models of Europe's rise in world history: racial, cultural, and climatological/geographical.

The main shortcoming is that this book is polemical, primarily serving to expose the hidden assumptions and methodological flaws of the eurocentric historians; Blaut died before he had time to finish his third book on a Marxist interpretation of the rise of the West. That being said, this book is an great way to develop a critical view of contemporary views on history.

Rating:
Summary: Must read.
Review: Having read a number of the works that Blaut criticizes, I find Blauts criticisms spot on. Having the guts to challenge some of the most prominent scholars is no doubt going to make people criticize him, but his criticism seems consistent with a number of authors and third world scholars (as well as other scholars from the first world).

Rating:
Summary: Silly and Sophmoric
Review: This book caught my eye because of his criticism of Jared Diamond as a Eurocentrist, which seemed odd to me. At first, I found the irony inherent in labelling a historian who wrote a book about how people around the world have equal capabilities and equal intelligence astounding. After reading Blaut's criticism, I came to realise that I agree with one of his assessments; Diamond is a Eurocentrist... in the same sense that a study of the rise of the rich is Plutocentrist.

Having not been familiar with the other works Blaut criticised, I really cannot comment on them directly. But his criticism of Diamond was riddled with mischaracterizations worthy that of politicians, strawmen building and outright falsehoods. For example, he refutes the concept of Eurasia's east west axis vs the north south axis in Africa and the Americas, by pointing out that mobility did exist, and that Eurasia was almost as wide north and south as it was east and west. These statements are true in the literal sense, but conveniently ignore the facts that Diamond wished to illustrate. In another place, Blaut states that most of the domesticated species that are used by todays societies did originate in Eurasia but that it only pays attention to those that were actually domesticated, branding that as circular logic. This is circular logic in the same sense that saying "The Sun shines" is circular logic.

To be fair, I did find myself in agreement that Diamond did not accurately explain why Western society in particular won as opposed to Eurasian society; on this subject Blaut's criticisms were very similar to my review of Jared Diamond's book.

There is nothing wrong with history with a non-Western focus, provided that one holds the truth of paramount importance and does not attempt willfully to distort other peoples views. The truth is, that at some level Eurocentrism must be embraced to properly understand why western society turned out to be the winner. To ignore the factors that resulted in western society winning in the world is to portray western supremacy as a mere accident or random happenstance, regardless of Blaut's true intentions. That is the true irony of Blaut's thesis.

Rating:
Summary: But it Makes a Good Shopping List
Review: This is the second book in Blaut's trilogy of revisionist
world history (the first is 'The Colonizer's Model', the
third as yet unpublished). 'Eight Eurocentric Historians'
is a highly flawed book, attacking the mainstream tradition
of Western World History by criticizing its greatest scholars,
from Max Weber to David Landes.

Blaut's attacks are spurious and largely ad hominem. I am not
entirely unsympathtic to his cause (giving credit to non-western
achievements, presenting an accurate and balanced view of world
history) but he does it more harm than good by writing books
like these.

If you want to get an alternative view of world history, you
are better off reading the 'Chicago School' of World History,
especially Marshall Hodgson and William McNeill's later works
(McNeill started as a 'Rise of the West' triumphalist, later
moving towards a more nuanced view, taking proper account of
of China's precocious achievements in particular).
The British anthropologist Jack Goody also wrote a very good
book, incidently highly critical of Max Weber and Lynn White
(two of Blaut's targets), *The East in the West*.

By reading the authors that Blaut demonizes, as well as their
critics listed above, you will get a much clearer view of
world history than by reading Blaut himself.