What's with the Europe bashing?

Great Debates
1

I am descended from Europeans. I have ancestors from Ireland, England (and possily through them from Scotland or Wales, but our history doesn’t extend that far back), Austria (although the definition of that area varies somewhat over time), and Czechia. These, of course, are all Northern or Eastern European nations.

So it vaguely bothers me that I see endless sniping at Europe all the time. Yes, Europe was not a maical land of technological expertise. But Europe, or at least the countries that made up Northern Europe, were amazingly productive for their time. None of those nations existed - and many were lightly and irregularly settled - before AD 400. Fact is, they advanced remarkably quickly for so recently a barbarian people, often engaged in war. They weren’t perfect or brilliant, no more than anyone else, but they accomplished many great things.

However, every five bloody minutes I seem to see someone snipe at Europe. “The Chinese invented this in XX, where as Europeans didn’t come up with the same idea until YY.” Yes, the Chinese were inventive and successfull. They were also 2000 years older. I see other examples implying the Europeans were ignorant rubes, because they didn’t have Arab medicine, etc. etc.

Look, people, they were not stupid, and I feel like I’m being implicitly put down when people say these moronic things. I have no idea what schoolign you guys got, but my history books variated between talking about Europeans history and saying that all Europeans are butchering idiots who stole all their ideas from other places.

2

No one thinks that Europeans are stupid. If China invented something chronologically before Europe, then so be it. It’s factual, and cannot be held against Europe.

I would not agree with you that Europe was amazingly productive. This is largely a subjective and comparative assertion. They had several factors working against them.

China, as example, wasn’t constantly coming out of or going into a war. China, whose land mass could swallow Europe as a whole, was far more peaceful (again, subjective). Europe was spending a lot of time trying to kill each other, so that friction slowed their progression. What major inventions came out of Europe were largely military type of hardware. Whereas, China was busy inventing paper and the printing press.

Religion in Europe was a stifling entity towards enlightenment and knowledge (Copernicus). While a tribal ruler in South America had calculated the Earth’s circumference within 50 miles of the actual number.

3

Just a note to Chicago Faucet, Copernicus was a clergyman, so that’s not really the evidence that religion in Europe was stifling knowledge. Also, the ancient Greeks also calutlated the Earth’s circumference getting an answer pretty similar to the actual number.

More generally, though, here’s what I think it is. For a long time, we’ve studied history with the idea that European civilization is somehow better than the rest of the world…that all sorts of good things happened in Europe, that European ideas were all better, and that the rest of the world was made up of primitive barbarians who didn’t know anything until Europeans came and taught them technology and a superior culture and way of life. Sometimes attitudes were even more extreme than that…that Europeans were technologically and culturally superior to the rest of the world because of some sort of inherant European traits…the white European was inherantly better than the African or east Asian, for example.

Of course, all of this wasn’t true, and reflected biases, but people thought it was, and so the cultures and accomplishments of the rest of the world were ignored.

Starting in maybe the 1950s, academic attitudes started changing, and there was a realization that the rest of the world wasn’t just a barren wilderness waiting for Europe, but that cultures like China, cultures in Africa, in North and South America, etc., were worthy of study in their own right, and that people in these various places around the world outside of Europe did things…that the Mayans studied astronomy, that the Chinese invented gunpowder, etc. And along with that, there were also studies of what European contact with the rest of the world meant, and what effect it had, both on Europe and the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, there’s a tendency now to err on the opposite extreme. Just as some earlier historians saw Europe as the source of everything good, some current historians see Europe as the source of everything evil.

4

Could someone provide a link where someone said this?

And why is this in GD?

5

CHICAGO: Surely Gutenberg invented the first printing press in 1452.
Paper used by the Chinese would not have supported the pressures as it was considered to flimsy.

I’m just saying

6

Having Googled I find that the Chinese did use printing presses.
:smack:

7

Oh, yeah, China was “peaceful”. It was the “peace” of national slavery.

And South American religions were SOOOOOOOOOOOO “enlightened”! NOTHING on earth is more “enlightened” than having regular wars specifically so you could have enough people to hack to bits in public religious festivals.

8

I thought the general consensus was that that friction is what advanced their progress?

9

In defence of Europe and in particular Britain permit me the following.
The British Empire for all it’s faults brought/gave to the Indian and African continents the following
Railways
Hospitals
Schools
Some paved roads
Clean fresh water
A system of law yet unsurpassed
Sanitation better than as was
A more efficient crop harvesting system.
Decent Governmental Control.
Admittedly there were some faults in our administration but by and large I don’t think we did so bad at all.

Consider also this:
After the break up of The British Empire lots of former colonies went it ‘alone’ the result of this in more than a few instances was catastrophic, Uganda springs readily to mind.
Even those that left The Empire still remained in our Commonwealth, very few have left and we still maintain good relationships with those countries.

I await the slings and arrows.

10

Capain Amazing has it: it’s a case of the academic pendulum swinging to the opposite extreme from where it was before", in a way that is just as blind to the real virtues and vices of the cultures in question as it was before. There is no “bashing” for instance in saying that at various points in past history, North-West-Central Europe really sucked, both in average quality of life and in the quality of intellectual activity, and that some major advances were imported. It IS “bashing”, though, if that simple circumstancial fact is used to somehow “prove” some sort of “moral inferiority” and that the Europeans’ greatness was exclusively achieved by ripping off others.

11

There is a difference between stating facts and harping on them to fit a political preconception.

Europeans invented many peaceful things from improved plows to movable type rpesses., and the Chinese used gunpowder for exposives and bombs. You just remember the wars of Europeans.

Sorry, but you are wrong: the history of China is amazingly bloody. They were always fighting some border war or supressing rebellious peasants. And that’s not to mention the many era of constant was, when China was divided by cometing powers. Those ages make the history of Europe look positively tranquil.

And the Greeks did that long before. You’re point is?

Gutenburg invented movable type, which was far more efficient.

I’m talking about 7 major books on the subject of China I’ve been reading in my classes. Each one of them uses these moronic comparisons, which add nothing at all to the book.

Maybe so. I was never taught that stuff, and I’m being bludgeoned with the preconceptions of the authors. I really don’t care that the Chinese invented X before Eurpeans did. It adds nothign to the discussion and breaks the flow of the books: its just the author’s snide little way of asserting Chinese superiority.

12

Bandit, can you show us an example of Euro-sniping?

13

All right, then, aside from the roads, and the medicine, and the peace, and the trade, and the arts, what HAVE the Romans done for us?–You shut up!

14

The aquaduct?

15

As opposed to all of that freedom that Europeans had during the Middle Ages (the comparable time in history)? Right.

16

Sort of. The Chinese invented movable type before Gutenburg, too. In the 11th century by a guy named Pi Chiang. Gutenburg just invented a way to mass produce the metal types and a press that was less of a pain in the ass to use than the Chinese version.

17

Well, Europe was no better off in the Middle Ages for sure.

But there’s a good argument that from the Enlightenment onwards through the First World War, European civilization was the best on the globe. Enlightenment ideas, from the scientific to the philosophical to the political, were far superior to anything elsewhere on the earth at that time. Most importantly, the scientific method began to flourish in Europe. This quickly allowed Europe to catch and surpass the Chinese in medicine, for instance. The Chinese are still today stuck with nonsense like poking people with needles and using worthless herbal concoctions because their medicinal knowledge was artificially frozen 1000 years by cultural forces that valued tradition over progress.

Europe was politically liberalizing while the rest of the world was stuck with rigid hierarchical authoritarian states. It’s not just cultural hubris to declare a liberal republic superior to the Indian caste system, the Japanese imperium, and the Cherokee matriarchy. It’s the truth. The political, economic and scientific ideas that came out of Europe from the 1600’s through the 1900’s made the world a better place wherever they arrived.

But it’s certainly true that this rise of European culture didn’t occur until a very late time in the history of civilization, and there’s nothing in Europe’s history pre-Enlightenment that made it any better than other cultures that had flourished centuries before. I think the bias towards Europe over the rest of the globe when looking at that period of history was mostly a religious bias, a notion that Christian monotheism was inherently more advanced than non-Christian religions.

18

Remember, folks, democracy, representative democracy, and parliamentarianism are all utterly and thoroughly worthless, since they first found flower in European countries (including the USA, which at the time was a European colony). We must abandon that vile Europeanism and instead accept superior non-European forms of government, like used in North Korea.

19

Stalinistic communism’s a European concept too, don’t forget.

20

http://www.langust.ru/review/18ways.shtml

Looks like Europeans are the biggest Euro bashers.