EUROCENTRISM.

Eurocentrism refers to a discursive tendency to interpret the histories and cultures of non-European
societies from a European (or Western) perspective. Common features of Eurocentric thought
include:

Ignoring or undervaluing non-European societies as inferior to Western;

Ignoring or undervaluing what Asians or Africans do within their own society or seeing the histories
of non-European societies simply in European terms, or as part of "the expansion of Europe" and its
civilizing influence.

Eurocentrism is very old indeed. Already in the fifth century b.c.e. the Greek historian Herodotus
mentions "barbaric" Asian hordes who, despite splendid architecture, lack European individuality.

Although Eurocentrism has been common through the ages, it has not been constant, nor has it
affected the way Europeans have viewed all non-European societies equally. Moreover, Europeans
have not always been in full agreement with each other over the merits or failings of particular non-
European societies. In some writers and periods we find a tendency to romanticize Asia and Africa.
In general, Eurocentrism has been more pronounced during periods of greatest European
assertiveness or self-confidence, the most outstanding example being the age of imperialism and
colonialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

There are certain beliefs, valid or otherwise, that have led Eurocentric thinkers toward ignoring,
undervaluing, or condemning non-European societies. There is a wide range of these, some applying
more broadly in chronological terms than others. They include the following:

Non-European societies tend to be despotic and servile, as against the West's freedom and
individualism.

Non-European societies are Islamic, or pagan, or believe in strange religions, which are inferior to
Christianity, or lack its truth.

Non-European societies are cruel and lack concern for human life. They practice barbaric customs
toward women, such as female genital mutilation (North Africa), widow-burning (sati, India) or foot-
binding (China).

Non-European societies are inflexible and unchanging. Some European thinkers have attributed this
lack of change to topography or climate, for instance extreme dependence on a major river, such as
the Nile or the Yellow River, or extreme heat or dryness.

Non-European societies are poor, backward, and underdeveloped, as opposed to the industrialized,
progressive, and rich West.

Non-European societies lack rational modes of thinking and scientific approaches.

Examples
There are innumerable European or Western observers who can be categorized as Eurocentric or
otherwise. Between extreme Eurocentrism and its antithesis is a whole spectrum of attitudes toward
non-European cultures and peoples, some thinkers being quite Eurocentric in general, but still
showing remarkable sympathy toward non-Europeans in some respects, and vice versa. To some
extent, the history of Western Asian

Encyclopedia 1080

Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.) regarded Africa and Asia as monolithic and influenced by their hot
climates, contrasting with temperate or cold Europe. He saw their governments as despotic and
peoples as servile and lacking in spirit. On the other hand, he regarded Asians as intelligent and was
impressed with Egypt because leisure among the priestly caste had allowed them to found the
mathematical arts.

Medieval Europe's main impression of North Africa and Asia was distrust, then fear of, and hostility
to, Islam. And in 1242, the Mongols came very close to Vienna and could have captured it but for
news reaching them of their khan's death. Yet the thirteenth century also produced Marco Polo,
who traveled through much of Asia and left a detailed account of life in China, which is remarkably
positive and even romanticized.

The missionaries of the Catholic Society of Jesus (Jesuits) worked in many parts of Asia and Africa. In
that they preached a religion that was strongest in their own (European) countries, they were
Eurocentric. However, their policy was to try to understand the people they were converting and to
adapt to local conditions, practices, and rites as far as they could. Moreover, they were pioneers in
scholarship about several Asian countries, especially China. Jesuit missionaries sent back to Europe a
flood of information from various parts of Asia, including, from 1703 to 1776, the "Lettres édifiantes
et curieuses" (Edifying and curious letters), about one-third of which dealt with China.

Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment philosophers also discussed Asia and Africa. Although most of their ideas were
Eurocentric, some were remarkably inclusive thinkers. Non-European civilizations became part of
major philosophical debates in Europe about government, economy, and religion.

Among his three kinds of government, republic, monarchy, and despotism, Charles-Louis de
Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755) puts Asian societies unequivocally in the last. Being of
the view that climate and topography influence government system, Montesquieu saw despotism in
Asia, especially in China and India, as the result of vastness and heat. Although he does see some
merits in Asia, such as lenient laws in India, the general picture he presents of Asia is grim and
Eurocentric. To be fair, his Lettres persanes (1721; Persian letters) is in a style new to his time and
explicitly non-Eurocentric in showing Persian visitors to Europe criticizing what they found.
Montesquieu's most vigorous opponent was François Quesnay (1694–1774), the leader of the
philosophical school called the Physiocrats. His primary interest was in the economy, and specifically
agriculture, and the model he chose was China. His main work, Le despotisme de la Chine (1767;
Despotism in China), shows that he regarded that country as an example of despotism. However, it
was an enlightened despotism, with the emperor governing according to natural laws both he and all
his subjects must obey.

The most famous of the Enlightenment thinkers was Voltaire (1694–1778). His great Essai sur les
mœurs et l'esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l'histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu'à
Louis XIII (1756; Essay on the customs and spirit of the nations and the principal facts of history from
Charlemagne to Louis XIII) is a world or "universal" history, and the first ever written to treat the
growth of civilization as a whole. It has two chapters on China, two on India, one on Persia, and two
on the Arabs. In that sense it is the very antithesis of Eurocentrism, even though it does give much
more space to European than to other cultures.

Voltaire's picture of China and India was very positive, especially China, which drew his praise for its
secular government. However, he regarded both civilizations as having made their greatest
contributions many centuries before, at a time when Europe was still at the stage of barbarism, and
having since become static.

Marx.

Karl Marx (1818–1883) belongs in the tradition of Eurocentric thinkers. He developed the idea of
"oriental despotism" into his theory of the "Asiatic mode of production," the most important plank
of which was an absence of private property in land—the commune, state, or monarch being the
owner of all land. Marx's main exemplars for his theory were India and China, but also included
Egypt and the countries of the Sahara, as well as Arabia and Persia. Ironically he exempted Japan
from the "Asiatic mode of production," being thus one of a number of Western thinkers for whom
Japan was in many respects more like a Western than an Asian society.

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest
interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question
is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not,
whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing
about that revolution.

source: Karl Marx, "The British Rule in India," p. 493.

The basis of "Asiatic mode" societies was villages and communities, which Marx regarded as
backward, miserable, and lacking in historical spirit. He believed the government of such societies
was despotic, because communal agriculture necessitates large-scale hydraulic works and irrigation,
itself requiring large-scale bureaucracy. Marx was thus in a long line of environmental determinists.

Because of Marx's environmental determinism, he castigated "Asiatic mode" societies as

unchanging. It required outside force to impose change and, while that may have been painful, it
was necessary. In an article entitled "The British Rule in India," published in the New-York Daily
Tribune on 25 June 1853, he condemns British activity in India, but still believes that British
colonialism there was historically progressive.

The chief follower of Marx's environmental determinism in the twentieth century was Karl A.
Wittfogel (1896–1988), whose main work concerned China. Wittfogel was initially an activist in the
German Communist Party but migrated to the United States and became naturalized in 1939,
turning strongly against communism. He continued his work on Asia there, especially in Oriental
Despotism (1957), where he argues strongly that the need for large-scale waterworks spawns
despotic bureaucracies that impact on the whole nature of societies.

Weber.

Max Weber (1864–1920) is most famous for attributing the growth of the capitalist spirit to the
Puritan Protestant work ethic, especially John Calvin's (1509–1564) belief in predestination. Yet he
also deserves a mention here for his attempts to develop a comparative methodology of sociology
through his studies of the religious cultures of Asia, notably India and China.

In order to determine why Asian societies had failed to develop the "spirit of capitalism," Weber
examined in great detail the impact on society and "personality" of great religions such as
Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and, though to a slighter extent, Islam. His conclusion: that none
of the Asian religions engaged with the world in such a way as to seek salvation through exertion in a
calling and through profitable work in the way that ascetic Protestantism did. Confucianism he
characterized as the ethic of officials, which adapted to the world, while Buddhism divorced itself
from the world and Islam sought to rule it. Weber believed that the religions of Asia all accepted the
world just as it was, the implication of this being that there was no incentive to transform it. He also
saw the family systems in societies such as China and India as major inhibitors of modernization.

Weber's views, including those on Asia, remain controversial. In the late twentieth century many
argued that Confucianism, including the Confucian emphasis on family, was responsible not for
economic backwardness, but for capitalist progress. Despite his attempts to compare cultures
dispassionately, Weber's basic conclusions point to commendation for the accomplishments of
peoples following ascetic Protestantism, and criticism for other cultures, including Asian and African.

Twentieth-Century Critics of Eurocentrism

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) was born in Martinique but trained mostly in France, serving in the French
army during World War II. A strongly anticolonial theorist, he became involved in the Algerian war
against the French and was the most articulate spokesperson for its cause. He did not live to see
peace restored, dying of leukemia in Washington, D.C. in 1961. His most famous work is Les damnés
de la terre (1961; The wretched of the earth), which is a passionate indictment of colonialism,
especially that in Africa.

A major point of criticism of Eurocentrism in Fanon's work is his attacks on those Africans who
internalize European culture at the expense of their own. He calls on Africans to promote their own
culture as the symbol of their national consciousness. And that involves rejecting Europe and its
sense of superiority, in other words Eurocentrism.

Edward Said (1935–2003) was a Palestinian Arab, who was born in Jerusalem but was trained in
Cairo and the United States. He spent most of his professional career working at Columbia University
in New York. Famous as a public intellectual and thinker generally, Said became a passionate critic of
Eurocentrism.

So, my brothers, how is it that we do not understand that we have better things to do than to follow
that same Europe?

That same Europe where they were never done talking of Man, and where they never stopped
proclaiming that they were only anxious for the welfare of Man: today we know with what sufferings
humanity has paid for every one of their triumphs of the mind.

Come, then, comrades, the European game has finally ended; we must find something different. We
today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the
desire to catch up with Europe.

source: Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pp. 251–252.

Said's best known work is Orientalism (1978), a strong attack on Western scholarship on Islamic
West Asia and North Africa, which he regarded as deeply ethnocentric or "Orientalist." By its nature,
the theory of "Orientalism" applies to all non-Western societies, even though its focus is West Asia.
He claims that in colonizing West Asia and North Africa, European states also "colonized" knowledge
about these regions, meaning that there is a power factor of superior/inferior in Western
scholarship concerning them, which is deeply "hegemonic." The result is that Western scholarship is
generally simply an abstraction or invention shot through with various kinds of racism or
imperialism. Certainly, it is incapable of examining Asian or African cultures and societies in their
own terms. It is in line with a Western political agenda and suits Western interests generally.
Despite what many critics have claimed as an extreme view, Said does acknowledge the possibility
that Western scholarship can be "decolonialized." His belief was that allegiance to a discipline, not to
area studies, can lead to scholarship "that is not as corrupt, or at least as blind to human reality" as
the Orientalist type (p. 326). Naturally, it is essential that all links between scholar and state be very
specifically ruptured.

Said's work has attracted both support and criticism. Among the supporters is Ronald Inden, who has
written works with similar thrust concerning India, especially Imagining India (1990). It has also
sparked an opposite theory of "Occidentalism," which lies outside the scope of this entry.

The twentieth century saw numerous other critics of Eurocentrism closely involved in antiracist and
anticolonial movements. A particularly distinguished American example was W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–
1963), a leader of the American civil rights movement as well as an advocate of black rights
worldwide. A distinguished academic as well as a political activist, he wrote many books attacking
Eurocentric and racist thinking, as well as defending black integrity, identities, and traditions. Du Bois
was also notable in his understanding of the relationship between racism and sexism and in his high
evaluation of the contributions of black women. He was born and lived most of his life in the United
States, but emigrated to Africa in 1961, dying in Ghana.

Eurocentrism, Anticolonialism, Modernity,

Postcolonialism

The tendency to examine the histories of Asia and Africa through the prism of "European expansion"
was very common, even prevalent, in Western scholarship on these two continents in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The rise of nationalism, anticolonialism, and independence
movements brought greater realization of the importance Asians and Africans had played in their
own country, and hence a trend away from Eurocentrism. Scholars from Africa and Asia went to live
in the West in increasing numbers for training. They brought understandings from their own
countries as well as taking back ideas from the West. At the same time, the rise in influence of many
former colonies brought about a shift in attitude in the West itself toward Asia's and Africa's
histories and cultures.

One illustrative example is the literary movement negritude of the 1930s to the 1950s. Led by
Léopold Sédar Senghor, who was elected first president of the previously French-colonized West
African Republic of Senegal in 1960, this movement arose in Paris, where several major literary
figures from French African colonies lived. It attacked the humiliation and contempt European
colonialism had inflicted on Africa and black people. Above all, it opposed colonialism and
Eurocentrism by seeking to reassert the value and dignity of African traditions.

Modernity.
Modernity and the question of when the modern age began are important in Eurocentrism. Until
World War II, most scholars studying Asian and African peoples were content to attach modernity to
European colonialism or imperialism. But this attitude came under attack in the post-war West, and
even more with the Vietnam War of 1965–1973, because it ignores or underplays processes that
might have been taking place in the country of concern.

Taking China as an example of a major civilization that never actually became a colony despite major
attacks from imperialist powers ranging from Britain to Japan, we find that prewar Western
historians of the "modern" period tended to see the beginnings of modernity in the middle of the
nineteenth century, which was when the Western impact began in earnest. For example, the great
American sinologist John King Fairbank (1907–1991) developed a theory of "change within tradition"
before the Western impact, but "transformation" brought about by the West in the nineteenth
century. Since the 1970s, more and more historians see internal dynamics within the long range of
Chinese history, in which the Western impact of the nineteenth century was an important factor, but
certainly not one so fundamental as to define the boundaries of "modern" China. They challenge the
notion of a stagnant China awaiting deliverance from a dynamic West as Eurocentric, and either see
no point in assigning the boundary of a "modern" China or choose times other than the mid-
nineteenth century.

Postmodern and postcolonial studies.

Since the 1980s Eurocentrism has been more closely associated in the humanities and social sciences
with ideologies such as sexism and racism. "Subaltern studies," which attack all forms of scholarship
and ideology that give space to any kind of dominationism or inequality have become increasingly
influential in the humanities and social sciences.

One highly significant example is the rise of gender and feminist scholarship that associates
Eurocentrism, imperialism, and racism with sexism. These theories argue against the possibility of
fully understanding imperialism without reference to gendered power. Colonialism was male in its
interests and violent in its methods. Europe was essentially male, the colonies female.

An interesting case study of the way anti-Eurocentrism has merged with antiracism in the field of
ancient history is the argument that Ancient Greek civilization derived from Asia and Africa,
especially Egypt. Ancient Greece is generally regarded as one of the most important sources, or even
"the cradle," of European civilization. But Martin Bernal (1987) suggests that it was nineteenth-
century racism that exalted the Ancient Greeks as racially pure Aryans, even though the roots of
their civilization were Semitic, Phoenician, and Egyptian.

Together with the existence of a thinker like Edward Said, these examples of alternative paradigms
suggest that Eurocentrism is on the decline in the postcolonial era. But it is very far from dead
One of the earliest uses of the term was by Egyptian Marxian economist Samir Amin, who used it in
the specific context of a core-periphery dependency model of global capitalist development. Amin’s
main concern was with exploring the ways in which the progress of Western capitalism towards
world dominance necessarily relied on the subjugation of other cultures and societies, leading to
their underdevelopment and dependence. Since then, however, the term has been deployed to
describe the Western-centric biases of a wide-range of writers and intellectuals. This diversification
in the application of the concept has meant that it is no simple task to pin down one clear definition.

To help us locate an appropriate definition of the concept, we sought to distinguish Eurocentrism

from ethnocentrism. The latter is the propensity to evaluate another’s culture through standards of
one’s own culture. Here, culture is understood as the values, norms and beliefs one has acquired
through societal interactions and connections. Ethnocentric use of these norms and values as a
framework for interpretation of the world is argued to be a natural human behaviour. Eurocentrism,
in contrast, goes beyond this. It assumes superiority at the expense of other cultures, having an
alienating and marginalising effect. Furthermore, whether intentional or not, Eurocentric
interpretations of the wider world carry with them the social and political context of colonial
oppression and domination which imbues it with more negative connotations than, for example,
Afrocentric studies in international relations/global politics.

Given the variety of definitions of and applications of Eurocentrism in the scholarship, the study of
Eurocentrism, as proposed through this study, produces some further problems. This includes five
forms of Eurocentrism, as outlined by Antoon de Baets. De Baets arranges the five forms of
Eurocentrism in order of importance: ontological, epistemological, ethical, utilitarian and didactic.
Each form captures a different way in which Eurocentrism manifests itself in cultural, intellectual,
and political thinking and behaviour.

For the purposes of our study we decided to make slight alterations to this framework, sidelining the
Epistemological and Didactic variants. The following will outline these aspects of Eurocentrism and
highlight why we felt they were not appropriate. Epistemological Eurocentrism is that which claims
non-Western history cannot be known. It works from the logic that knowledge derives from written
sources. These are largely Western because of the tendency for non-Western societies to find other
ways of recording and preserving knowledge and the colonial efforts to destroy any records that did
exist. We sidelined this variant for our project because it comprises a circular dilemma of not
knowing what we do not know, and lacking the linguistic/resource capabilities to access such
sources. Didactic eurocentrism identifies those instances in which ‘non-Western history is excluded
from teaching’. This variant was sidelined because we see it as an analytic conclusion that we can
reach through the results of our research, rather than as a condition whose existence is assumed
prior to proving our hypothesis

Having excluded those variants which we felt compromised clarity in our project, we were left with a
definition of Eurocentrism made up of its ontological, utilitarian, and ethical applications. With
regards to the Ontological variant, non-Western cultures are dismissed as ‘primitive’ and incapable
of historical agency. This was met with Utilitarian Eurocentrism ‘non-western history is seen to have
no utility’ – in this sense, non-western sources are underestimated and seen as not relevant or
useful. As well as Ethical Eurocentrism: non-Western sources have little value, or, more specifically,
non-Western history, experiences, cultures, and thoughts are devalorised and deemed inferior. The
fundamentals of Eurocentrism in the context of our study are, therefore: the belief, explicit or
implicit that, non-western history does not exist due to primitivism and that Eurocentrism has little
value either in utility and relevance to wider studies of the world and how it functions.

There were challenges in clarifying those aspects of Eurocentrism we were left with. We ran into an
issue when beginning to code in distinguishing between Utilitarian and Ethical Eurocentrism.
Ostensibly, the two are conceptually distinct from one another, however, we found difficulty in
separating them in our preliminary attempts at coding. Where some of us saw the very existence of
Utilitarian Eurocentrism as evidence of a value-based ‘ethical’ judgement, others found the
separation of the two more straightforward. For instance, where an author may have elected to use
an American study as opposed to an Indian one, this can, on the one hand, be understood as seeing
the Indian study as having merely less utility. However, a more critical view may argue that such an
analysis devalorises the Indian one. In order to attend to this issue we chose to use a selection of
human coders, as oppose to a singular electronic system to code the documents. In doing this we
hope to capture an ‘average’ of human interpretation on what seems a highly disputable matter.

Thus, while Eurocentrism is no simple concept by any means, and can be interpreted in numerous
ways, we have managed to generate a rough framework for our project through exploring Antoon
DeBates levels of classification. Our definition can be summarised as follows: the belief, explicit or
implicit that, non-western history does not exist due to primitivism and has little value either in
utility or relevance to wider studies of the world.

Future results from coding as well as reflections on the International Relations department round
table will very likely shift the boundaries somewhat but locating this initial definition has helped
greatly in building up the central elements of our research project. Ultimately, we expect to find that
the course does have a Eurocentric bias. After this our next task will be to go back to this definition
and understanding of Eurocentrism to understand how this came about and what it takes to change
it.

There were challenges in clarifying those aspects of Eurocentrism we were left with. We ran into an
issue when beginning to code in distinguishing between Utilitarian and Ethical Eurocentrism.
Ostensibly, the two are conceptually distinct from one another, however, we found difficulty in
separating them in our preliminary attempts at coding. Where some of us saw the very existence of
Utilitarian Eurocentrism as evidence of a value-based ‘ethical’ judgement, others found the
separation of the two more straightforward. For instance, where an author may have elected to use
an American study as opposed to an Indian one, this can, on the one hand, be understood as seeing
the Indian study as having merely less utility. However, a more critical view may argue that such an
analysis devalorises the Indian one. In order to attend to this issue we chose to use a selection of
human coders, as oppose to a singular electronic system to code the documents. In doing this we
hope to capture an ‘average’ of human interpretation on what seems a highly disputable matter.
Thus, while Eurocentrism is no simple concept by any means, and can be interpreted in numerous
ways, we have managed to generate a rough framework for our project through exploring Antoon
DeBates levels of classification. Our definition can be summarised as follows: the belief, explicit or
implicit that, non-western history does not exist due to primitivism and has little value either in
utility or relevance to wider studies of the world.

Future results from coding as well as reflections on the International Relations department round
table will very likely shift the boundaries somewhat but locating this initial definition has helped
greatly in building up the central elements of our research project. Ultimately, we expect to find that
the course does have a Eurocentric bias. After this our next task will be to go back to this definition
and understanding of Eurocentrism to understand how this came about and what it takes to change
it.