The Muslim Discovery of Europe

1957 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 409-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
World History ◽  
European History ◽  
The West ◽  
Stages Of Growth ◽  
The World ◽  
West European

I suppose that most textbooks of European history or of world history—which in European textbooks is much the same thing—contain a chapter called ‘The Age of the Discoveries’, or something of the kind, which deals with the period from the fifteenth century onwards when Western Europe set about discovering the rest of the world. My subject to-day is another and earlier discovery, in which the West European was not the explorer going forth to discover the barbarian, but the barbarian discovered by the explorer—the Muslim explorer. My purpose is to outline, very briefly, the sources, nature, and stages of growth of Muslim knowledge concerning Western Europe, first in the obscure centuries before the Crusades, then during that great offensive of Western Christendom against Islam, of which the expeditions to Palestine were the easternmost expression.

Searching for new Sources of growth. Are the Developing Countries Catching up with the Developed ones?

2015 ◽  
pp. 30-53
Author(s):  
V. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Gdp Per Capita ◽  
The West ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Divergence ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Relative Standing

This paper examines the trajectory of growth in the Global South. Before the 1500s all countries were roughly at the same level of development, but from the 1500s Western countries started to grow faster than the rest of the world and PPP GDP per capita by 1950 in the US, the richest Western nation, was nearly 5 times higher than the world average and 2 times higher than in Western Europe. Since 1950 this ratio stabilized - not only Western Europe and Japan improved their relative standing in per capita income versus the US, but also East Asia, South Asia and some developing countries in other regions started to bridge the gap with the West. After nearly half of the millennium of growing economic divergence, the world seems to have entered the era of convergence. The factors behind these trends are analyzed; implications for the future and possible scenarios are considered.

scholarly journals The framing of the Jewish pogroms upon the Ukrainian terrains via a prism of the Ukrainian foreign-language press in Europe (1919―1920s)

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serhiy Blavatskyy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
The West ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Usa ◽  
First Time ◽  
West European

It has been attempted to make an empirical study of the framing of the Jewish pogroms upon the Ukrainian terrains in 1919 in the Ukrainian press in the West European languages in Europe (1919―1920s). For the first time, in the communication and media studies discourses, there have been elicited new, previously unknown, findings of specificity of the framing of the Jewish pogroms in the Ukrainian foreignlanguage periodicals. Those were: «Bulletiner fra det Ukrainske Pressburo» (Copenhagen, 1919—1920s), «La Voce dell “Ucraina”» (Roma, 1919—1920s), «The Ukraine» (London, 1919—1920s), «Bureau Ukrai nien de Presse: Bulletin d’Informations» (Paris, 1919—1920s), «France et Ukraine» (Paris, 1920), «L’Europe Orientale» (Paris, 1919—1920s), «Die Ukraine» (Berlin, 1918—1926s). First, it has been elucidated that the «attribution of responsibility» frame was dominant in the content of the Ukrainian foreign-language press in Western Europe. Second, the conclusion about dialectic of the frames of «attribution of responsibility» and «morality» in the coverage of the Jewish pogroms upon the Ukrainian terrains has been made. In this regard, we conclude that the «morality» frame was connected with the internationalization of this problematic in the geopolitical discourse of international relations of the postwar period. On the contrary, the frame of «attribution of responsibility» was linked to localization of the Jewish question in the multilateral conflict on the Ukrainian territories in 1919. The main conclusion of this paper is that the coverage of the Jewish pogroms in the Ukrainian foreign-language press in Europe was made primarily in counterpropaganda purposes. The follow-up studies are to make a comparative study of the stereotypes about Jews’ perception in the Ukrainian-language press both in Ukraine and abroad (in Europe or the USA), as well as in the West European and American press of the Ukrainian Revolution period (1917―1921s). Thus, these future studies will either refute or confirm the validity of the findings and conclusions of this research. Keywords: framing, the Jewish pogroms, the Ukrainian terrains, the foreign-language press, Europe.

Postmedieval Ships and Seafaring in the West

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Hocker
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Atlantic Coast ◽  
Maritime Archaeology ◽  
The West ◽  
Ship Construction ◽  
Construction Methods ◽  
Merchant Ship ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Interest

Postmedieval maritime archaeology is focused more on naval ships than classical or medieval maritime archaeology. Merchant ship archaeology lived for many years in the shadow of naval ships. Ships and seafaring were an essential part of that growth and expansion, connecting remote parts of the world in a global economy. The period after 1400 is characterized by growth and bureaucratization in most of Europe. There were major developments in ship construction after 1400. In the Mediterranean, frame-based design and construction methods reached a stage of sophisticated geometrical precision. Mediterranean techniques began to be adopted along the Atlantic coast. The demographic and economic recovery of the fifteenth century and the globalization of seafaring lead to the use of a wider range of ship sizes. Privateering was a profitable enterprise in wartime. The growth of maritime archaeology was tied directly to popular cultural interest in perceived high points in national histories.

The Mongol Empire and the Unification of Eurasia

2021 ◽  
pp. 507-532
Author(s):  
Nikolay P. Kradin
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
World History ◽  
Global Communication ◽  
Bubonic Plague ◽  
The West ◽  
Old World ◽  
Technological Growth ◽  
The World ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
Mongol Empire

The Mongolian polity was the greatest pre-industrial empire, and second in the world history after the British Empire. It was established by the out-of-nowhere people of pastoral nomads. Nevertheless, the Mongolian Empire has played a great role in the world. Its founder, Genghis Khan, was even named the man of the second millennium. After termination of the murderous conquests, the Mongols became the trigger for building the global communication system in which gas stimulated the technological, cultural, and ideological exchanges between the civilizations of the Old World and contributed indirectly to the bubonic plague. The medieval Mongolian globalization laid the groundwork for subsequent technological growth, the age of discovery, and the rise of the West.

Ritual Brotherhood in Western Medieval Europe

Traditio ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 357-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. R. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Union ◽  
Gerald Of Wales ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Distinctive Aspect ◽  
The Difference

Concentrating as he did on the office of adelphopoiesis preserved in Eastern Christian liturgical sources, John Boswell gave short shrift to the West. Although he believed that the ritual was known and practiced there, the only documentary trace of any similar ceremony he discussed was an account that Gerald of Wales included toward the end of the twelfth century in his Topographica Hibernica. Boswell did present a fifteenth-century French pact of brotherhood in translation in an appendix, but he did not consider its ceremonial significance in his text. Nor did he believe it pertinent to his topic, labeling it as he did, “an agreement of ‘brotherhood',” and terming it “[a] treaty of political union using fraternal language.” I shall discuss Gerald's account and this compact later, in the course of analyzing a variety of evidence regarding ritual brotherhood in Western Europe between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. I shall attempt to show that ties of brotherhood contracted formally and ritually between two individuals were more common in the West than Boswell believed. I shall argue that bonds of ritual brotherhood similar to those solemnized in the office of adelphopoiesis existed in many parts of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages, in areas far removed from the regions of Italy subject to Byzantine influence, where euchologies containing the Eastern ceremony were preserved.’ In dealing with the Western evidence I shall be particularly concerned with its nature, which contrasts strikingly with the Eastern sources. For the East, the most abundant documentation is liturgical, and traces of such relationships in other sources are rare — although (as Claudia Rapp shows in this symposium) not as sparse as has sometimes been thought. For the West the situation is precisely the reverse.’ The Western cases of individuals linked by ritual fraternal ties that Du Cange presented far outnumber the Eastern instances he cited, and additional Western examples have come to light since his time. However, as regards the ceremonial by which the ties were forged in the West, there is no strictly liturgical evidence. Western liturgical books contain no special prayers and offices for making brothers. Narrative and documentary sources cast fitful light on the nature of the ceremony that accompanied the unions, but they do not suggest that any uniform ritual ever existed. Why this was so is a matter for speculation, but I believe that the absence of fraternal ceremonial from the liturgy is closely related to another distinctive aspect of the institution in the West: the lack of prohibitions, ecclesiastical and secular, against the bond. I shall consider this issue after examining the various motives that seem to have underlain the Western fraternal alliances, and also the outcomes of the unions. In the end I shall propose that whatever the differences in documentation, and despite the difference in the ritual practices, striking formal and functional likenesses existed between the Eastern and Western institutions of ritual brotherhood linking two participants: in the purposes they served, the means by which they were contracted, and the gap that often existed between ideal and reality. In a final section I shall discuss the problems associated with attempting to establish whether or not — or when and how often — Western (or Eastern) rituals of brotherhood formalized relationships that involved or were expected to involve sexual intercourse between the participants.

The Unity of the West and Free Trade: A Report From Washington

Worldview ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 14-16
Author(s):  
Lionel Gelber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common Market ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Common ◽  
De Gaulle

When the United States fostered the recovery and underwrote the security of Western Europe she had more than sentiment to impel her. That salient zone is a pivotal sector of the world balance, and while she may station fewer of her own troops upon its soil, she can entertain no total disengagement from it. But there is another West European item, the future of the Common Market, which calls for a fresh American scrutiny. The West will be better off if Western Europe acquires more of an ability to stand on its own feet. Gaullism, however, revealed a less modest goal, one that was not confined to France and did not vanish with the departure of General de Gaulle. On the contrary, it may have gained new leverage from his downfall.

Power, Patronage, and Memory in Early Islam

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
The West ◽  
Indus Valley ◽  
Fresh Material ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
The World ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
New Religion

The Umayyads, the first Islamic dynasty, ruled over the largest empire that the world had seen, stretching from Spain in the west to the Indus Valley and Central Asia in the east. They played a crucial rule in the articulation of the new religion of Islam during the seventh and eighth centuries, shaping its public face, artistic expressions, and the state apparatus that sustained it. The present volume brings together a collection of essays that bring new light to this crucial period of world history, with a focus on the ways in which Umayyad elites fashioned and projected their image and how these articulations, in turn, mirrored their times. These themes are approached through a wide variety of sources, from texts through art and archaeology to architecture, with new considerations of old questions and fresh material evidence that make the intersections and resonances between different fields of historical study come alive.

Editing the first Journal of World History: global history from inside the kitchen

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-178
Author(s):  
Gabriela Goldin Marcovich ◽  
Rahul Markovits
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
World History ◽  
Global History ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relational History

AbstractThis article offers the first study of the Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale, the Journal of World History published under the auspices of UNESCO from 1953 to 1972 as a by-product of the ‘History of mankind’ project. Drawing on material in the UNESCO archives, it delves into what Lucien Febvre, the first editor of the Cahiers, called his ‘kitchen’, in order to understand world history as a practice. Data on author origin and article subject matter point to the journal’s mitigated success in overcoming Eurocentrism. The article ultimately contends that the Cahiers was at once a laboratory that experimented with new forms of relational history, and a forum where the very nature of world history was discussed by scholars from around the world (mainly from the West, but also from the East and the South). It suggests that today’s epistemological discussion on global history might benefit from the reflection offered by this now largely forgotten experiment.

N.I. KAREEV ON THE GENERAL HUMANITARIAN CHARACTER OF F. SCHELLING'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-26
Author(s):  
N.A. Soboleva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
World History ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
The West ◽  
Positive Potential ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Dialogue ◽  
New Education

It is shown that the representative of the Russian positivist philosophy of history N.I. Kareev left behind a huge array of historiosophical reviews that are important for permanent understanding of the essence of world history. It is concluded that N.I. Kareev, as a thinker who stands on the platform of multi-factor analysis, was able to see the positive potential of various concepts of world history. In particular, in the metaphysical legacy of F. Schelling, N.I. Kareev found ideas that could unite seemingly dissimilar interpretations of world history. As such, N.I. Kareev highlights two ideas of the German thinker. The first idea: the merging of cultures that are opposite in their foundations can give rise to a new education and encourage a cultural dialogue. The second one: the world history is the duality and interdependence of the cultures of the West and the East.

A Worldview Evolution?

2021 ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
Erik R. Tillman
Keyword(s):  
Political Psychology ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
European Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
West European Politics ◽  
The Usa ◽  
West European

The concluding chapter revisits the main arguments and findings of each chapter before turning to a discussion of their implications for our understanding of West European politics. The first implication is that the worldview evolution described in this book is rooted in political psychology rather than group interests or identity. Second, the worldview evolution occurring in Western Europe bears similarities to developments in the USA and other advanced democracies. Though the differences in context mediate how this evolution develops in each part of the world, similar divisions over social cohesion and community are at their heart. Finally, this book’s findings suggest that issues relating to social cohesion and diversity will remain contentious in the coming years. By contrast, economic and class issues may evolve to reflect the new structure of party conflict. Finding common ground across these worldviews will be a core challenge of West European democratic politics in the coming years.

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