Beyond Greece and Rome
aeon.co
Beyond Greece and Rome
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Re: Beyond Greece and Rome
#2[dead]
Re: Beyond Greece and Rome
#3There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not. There are lots of histories, and they don't taste well when mixed into a salad. Saying that there is a "global history" is like saying that time exists, and it s more of an ideological narrative than anything useful.
Re: Beyond Greece and Rome
#4There tends to be a knee-jerk reaction from the Western world anytime South Asians even try to say that they had grand civilisations. I see an onslaught of comments about their current economic conditions and how a call centre agent having a "bad" accent means that South Asians deserve to be criticised for every little thing.
Re: Beyond Greece and Rome
#5There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not. There are lots of histories, and they don't taste well when mixed into a salad. Saying that there is a "global history" is like saying that time exists, and it s more of an ideological narrative than anything useful.
There's also an incredibly powerful urge to take our worldview and overlay it on the past - for example, assuming that Westphalian states are how the world has always operated.
Re: Beyond Greece and Rome
#6I'm not widely read in history (though I've been improving of late), but for what it's worth, my favorite book on history "beyond Greece and Rome" so far has been Charles C. Mann's 1491. In fact, it's one of the best and most illuminating books I've read, period.
It has about the information/idea density of a Neal Stephenson novel (a good one), and is about equally a pageturner.
I've also adored all of Jimmy Maher's (better known as The Digital Antiquarian) amateur history books, his Wonders of the World series - I think the one on Chinese history was especially ambitious and nice.
I enjoyed Toby Wilkinson's The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, but it's a bit one-note; still looking for the Egyptian history book I'll fall in love with, though as as a general map it's quite good.
Re: Beyond Greece and Rome
#7To be honest, though many historians today might disagree, I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization,” even if it is a vague family of things that cannot be strictly defined. I know they are trying to correct for certain harmful attitudes out there, but articles like these feel to me to put the social message above all.
It is especially when a certain perceived problematic attitude is the focus, without much actual teaching the wider history, that leaves me feeling disappointed. I think teaching the complete history is a far better antidote than emphasizing a bad trend. Like I’ve read many articles accusing the brothers Grimm of being masculinist, but rarely will those same articles attempt to educate the reader of the Baroness D’Aulnoy, who coined the very term fairy tale!
The ancient world was indeed complicated and interconnected, rich in so many cultures and peoples and stories. We should talk more about these other civilizations! The Phoenicians, the Celts, the Chaldeans, Akkadians, Seleucids, Numidians—-those are just a few from “the West”, around the world offers an even broader view. There is so much more to wonder at, it is a shame that the discourse has the toxic backdrop it does.
Re: Beyond Greece and Rome
#8There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not. There are lots of histories, and they don't taste well when mixed into a salad. Saying that there is a "global history" is like saying that time exists, and it s more of an ideological narrative than anything useful.
> There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not.
The West is the Latin Church. From the Latin Church came the Protestants. From that West meant and means anything influenced by or in protest of the Latin Church in Europe and its colonies. Very easy to understand, makes less of a difference today than it might have 100 years ago but to pretend it's hard to define or not a real thing isn't serious.
Re: Beyond Greece and Rome
#9To be honest, though many historians today might disagree, I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization,” even if it is a vague family of things that cannot be strictly defined. I know they are trying to correct for certain harmful attitudes out there, but articles like these feel to me to put the social message above all. It is especially when a certain perceived problematic attitude is the foc…
> I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization"
This is perhaps the least controversial statement in history. It's obviously true. Western Civilization is:
1) Greece
2) Rome, borrowing from the Greeks
3) Christianity taking over Rome
4) Germanic tribes adopting Roman law + the Christian religion
5) Protestantism
6) The Renaissance
7) The Enlightenment
You can read Plato, and it all makes sense to you, but a lot of contemporaneous Asian sources would be quite alien. Its a weird kind of ethnocentrism to deny such a thing exists, because it leads to thinking that western civilization is in fact universal.
Re: Beyond Greece and Rome
#10There tends to be a knee-jerk reaction from the Western world anytime South Asians even try to say that they had grand civilisations. I see an onslaught of comments about their current economic conditions and how a call centre agent having a "bad" accent means that South Asians deserve to be criticised for every little thing.
> from the Western world
You might be overgeneralising just a little bit here as outside the US and the UK, I think few people in the Western world care about the accent of Indians when they speak English, and are not exposed to their call centers anyway.
I think most people are somewhat aware of the civilisations that occurred there.