ON THE LAST 2,500 YEARS IN WESTERN HISTORY: AND SOME REMARKS ON THE COMING 500

Johan Galtung; Erik Rudeng; Tore Heistad

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521221283.013

Chapter XII - ON THE LAST 2,500 YEARS IN WESTERN HISTORY: AND SOME REMARKS ON THE COMING 500

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Erik Rudeng and

Edited by

Johan Galtung: Affiliation:
University of Oslo Institut Universitaire d’ Études de Développement, Geneva
Erik Rudeng: Affiliation:
University of Oslo
Tore Heistad: Affiliation:
University of Oslo

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Introduction

It may be an indiscreet question, but it is nevertheless a highly legitimate one: ‘What actually happened during the last 2,500 years in Western history?’ – given that the answer should be a chapter rather than a book, one lecture rather than a series. There is nothing more illegitimate in this question than to ask for a description of what happens at street level as seen from a helicopter circling above, with a macro-view of the situation. This view would necessarily lack insight into the micro-perspective possessed by drivers and pedestrians, their anguish and delight or sheer boredom in trying to match their intentions to get ahead with their capabilities, against the intentions and capabilities of others in the traffic throng. It is legitimate to give answers in terms of traffic flows and charts, of periods of movement and periods of standstill, of the traffic being most rapid in the centre of the lanes and very slow towards the edges (as in hydrodynamics); an analysis of traffic does not have to be through the eyes and minds of those involved although that helps understanding. The question is not illegitimate, it is only indiscreet because of the difficulty of answering; itself a good reason why the question is usually rejected. And yet the question tends to appear and reappear: it is unnecessary to invoke a curious Martian on a quick visit wanting to get some information about ‘this thing called Western history’.

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Cambridge Modern History , pp. 318 - 362

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521221283.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Perry, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, 1974)Google Scholar

Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974).Google Scholar

Armstrong, E. A., Saint Francis: Nature Mystic (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1973)Google Scholar

Asad, T. (ed.), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (London, 1973)Google Scholar

Atal, Y. (ed.) Social Sciences in Asia (New Delhi, 1974).Google Scholar

Baechler, Jean, The Origins of Capitalism, trans. Cooper, E. (Oxford, 1975), ch. 7Google Scholar

Barraclough, Geoffrey, in his remarkable An Introduction to Contemporary History (London, 1964) especially ch. VI.Google Scholar

Bautier, Robert-Henri, The Economic Development of Medieval Europe (London, 1971).Google Scholar

Beneton, P., Histoire de mots: Culture et Civilisation (Paris, 1975).Google Scholar

Blunt, W., The Golden Road to Samarkand. Experiences of Explorers and Conquerors of Central Asia (London, 1973).Google Scholar

Boyle, G. and Harper, P. (eds.), Radical Technology (London, 1976).Google Scholar

Braudel, F., Civilisation matérielle et capitalisme (Paris, 1967).Google Scholar

Brown, Phelps and Hopkins, Sheila, in ‘Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables Compared with Builder's Wage-rate’ in: Peter, H. Ramsey (ed.), The Price Revolution in Sixteenth Century England (London, 1971)Google Scholar

Burke, P., Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978).Google Scholar

Bury, J. B. ed., The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, (London, 1901), vol. IV.Google Scholar

Cameron, N., Barbarians and Mandarins. Thirteen Centuries of Western Travelers in China (Chicago, 1976)Google Scholar

Camilleri, J. A., Civilization in Crisis. Human Prospects in a Changing World (Cambridge, 1976).Google Scholar

Carr, E. H., What is History? (New York, 1961), ch. 1.Google Scholar

Chabod, F., Machiavelli and the Renaissance (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

Chiappelli, Fredi (ed.), First Images of America. The Impact of the New World on the Old, vols. I–II (Berkeley, 1976)Google Scholar

Childe, Gordon, The Prehistory of European Society (Harmondsworth, 1958).Google Scholar

Cipolla, C. M., The Economic History Jo World Population (Harmondsworth, 1962)Google Scholar

Cipolla, C. M., and his Before the Industrial Revolution. European Society and Economy, 1100-1700 (London, 1976)Google Scholar

Conolly, V., Siberia Today and Tomorrow. A Study of Economic Resources, Problems and Achievements (London, 1974).Google Scholar

Dahrendorf, Ralf, ‘Out of Utopia: Toward a Reorientation of Sociological Analysis’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 64 (1958–9).CrossRef Google Scholar

Drews, R., The Greek Accounts of Eastern History (Cambridge, Mass., 1973)Google Scholar

Duby, G., The Early Growth of the European Economy, Eng. trans. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1974).Google Scholar

Dumont, Louis, From Mandeville to Marx: Genesis and Triumph of the Economic Ideology (Chicago, 1977)Google Scholar

Duyvendak, J. J. L., China's Discovery of Africa (London, 1949).Google Scholar

Edgerton, S. Y. Jr., ‘Linear Perspective and the Western Mind: The Origins of Objective Representation in Art and Science’, Cultures, vol. III (1976)Google Scholar

Edgerton, S. Y. Jr., or his The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

Eliade, Mircea, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions (Chicago, 1976), ch. 4Google Scholar

Elster, Jon, Leibniz et la Formation de l'Esprit Capitaliste (Paris, 1975).Google Scholar

Fischer, Wolfram and Lundgren, Peter, ‘The Recruitment and Training of Administrative and Technical Personnel’, in Tilly, C. (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, New Jersey, 1975).Google Scholar

Flora, P., Indikatoren der Modernisierung (Wiesbaden, 1975).CrossRef Google Scholar

Freeth, Z. and Winstone, V., Explorers of Arabia (London, 1978).Google Scholar

Galtung, J., Methodology and Ideology (Copenhagen, 1977).Google Scholar

Galtung, J., ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism’, Peace and World Structure, Essays in Peace Research, vol. IV, ch. 13 (Copenhagen, 1979).Google Scholar

Galtung, J., Peace and Social Structure, Essays in Peace Research, vol. III (Copenhagen, 1978).Google Scholar

Galtung, J., ‘Violence, Peace and Peace Research’, Essays in Peace Research, Vol. I (Copenhagen, 1976).Google Scholar

Galtung, J., ‘Deductive Thinking and Political Practice’, Essays in Methodology, vol. II (Copenhagen, 1978).Google Scholar

Galtung, J., ‘Institutionalized Conflict Resolution’, Peace, War and Defence, Essays in Peace Research, vol. II (Copenhagen, 1976).Google Scholar

Galtung, J., ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism’, Essays in Peace Research, vol. IV (Copenhagen, 1979).Google Scholar

Galtung, J., Development, Environment, Technology, UNCTAD, Geneva, 1978Google Scholar

Garaudy, Roger, Pour un dialogue des civilisations (Paris, 1977).Google Scholar

Glacken, C. J., Traces on the Rhodian Shore. Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley, 1973).Google Scholar

Gottmann, Jean, ‘The Evolution of the Concept of Territory’, Social Science Information, XIV (1975).Google Scholar

Guénon, R., The Reign of Quantity as the Signs of the Times (London, 1953).Google Scholar

Gurevitch, A. Ja., Kategorii srednekovoj kultury (The categories of medieval culture) (Moscow, 1972).Google Scholar

Hemleben, S. J., Plans for World Peace through Six Centuries (Chicago, 1945).Google Scholar

Hicks, John, in his A Theory of Economic History (London, 1969).Google Scholar

Hirschmann, A. O., The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, New Jersey, 1977)Google Scholar

Impey, O., Western Interpretation of Oriental Styles (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar

Jacoby, H., The Bureaucratization of the World (Berkeley, 1973).Google Scholar

Jullian, P., The Orientalists (London, 1977).Google Scholar

Jung, C. J., ‘Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle’, preface to The I Ching – Book of Changes (Princeton, 1962).Google Scholar

Kagan, R. L., Students & Society in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore, 1975).Google Scholar

Kende, Istvan, ‘Twenty-five Years of Local Wars’, Journal of Peace Research, VIII (1971).Google Scholar

Kinsman, R. S. (ed.), The Darker Vision of the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1975).Google Scholar

Kohr, L., The Breakdown of Nations (London, 1957).Google Scholar

Lambert, Malcolm, Medieval Heresy. Popular Movements from Bogomil to Hus (London, 1977).Google Scholar

Landes, David, ‘Where is Prometheus Bound?’, Proceedings, XIV International Congress of the Historical Sciences (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

Le Goff, Jacques, ‘Mentalities: a new field for historians’, Social Science Information, XIII (1974).Google Scholar

Lewis, A. R., ‘The Closing of the Medieval Frontier’, Speculum, XXXIII (1958).Google Scholar

Lockhart, J. and Otte, E. (eds.), Letters and Peoples of the Spanish Indies (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar

Lopez, Robert, ‘Hard Times and Investment in Culture’ in: Panofsky, Erwin et al., The Renaissance (New York and Evanston, 1962).Google Scholar

Luckmann, Thomas's lucid analysis ‘On the Rationality of Institutions in Modern Life’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, XIV (1975).Google Scholar

Luhmann, Niklas, ‘Weltzeit und Systemgeschichte, Über Beziehungen zwischen Zeithorizonten und sozialen Strukturen gesellschaftlicher Systeme’, in Ludz, P. C. (ed.), Sozologie und Sozialgeschichte (Opladen, 1972).Google Scholar

Marc, Bloch, ‘momentary impoverishment of the seigneurial class’ (Les caractères originaux de I'histoire rural français, vol. I (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar

McNeill, , The Rise of the West (Chicago, 1963).Google Scholar

McNeill, W. H., The Shape of European History (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

Meek, R. L., Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge, 1976).Google Scholar

Mitchell, B. R., European Historical Statistics: 1750-1970 (New York, 1975)CrossRef Google Scholar

Molnár, M., Marx, Engels et la politique Internationale (Paris, 1975).Google Scholar

Nasr, Hossein, The Encounter of Man and Nature (London, 1968)Google Scholar

Needham, Joseph, ‘History and Human Values: A Chinese Perspective for World Science and Technology’, The Centennial Review (1976).Google Scholar

Peter, Mathias (ed.), Science and Society 1600-1900 (Cambridge, 1972)Google Scholar

Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Tradition (Princeton, New Jersey, 1975).Google Scholar

Postan, M. M., The Medieval Economy and Society (Harmondsworth, 1975)Google Scholar

Preiswerk, Roy and Perrot, Dominique, Ethnocentrisme et Histoire (Paris, 1975).Google Scholar

Rokkan, S., ‘Dimensions of State Formation and Nation-Building…’, in Tilly, C. (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, 1975).Google Scholar

Rougemont, Denis's ‘It is noteworthy that all the authors who have contributed to our becoming aware of the unity of culture, conceive it as unity in diversity’ (The Idea of Europe, Eng. trans. (New York and London, 1966).Google Scholar

Russett, Bruce, ‘Pearl Harbor: Deterrence theory and decision theory’, Journal of Peace Research, vol, IV (1967).Google Scholar

Schulin's magisterial, E., introduction to Universalgeschichte (Cologne, 1974).Google Scholar

Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), The Tell-tale Sign. A Survey of Semiotices (Lisse, 1975).Google Scholar

Sennett, Richard, The Fall of Public Man (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar

Sinar, D. (ed.), Orientalism and History (Cambridge, 1954)Google Scholar

Slicher van Bath, B. H., The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500-1850 (London, 1971).Google Scholar

Sorokin, P., Social and Cultural Dynamics, One vol. ed. (Boston, 1957).Google Scholar

Sorokin, P. A., Social and Cultural Dynamics, vol. I (New York, 1962)Google Scholar

Stavrianos, L. S., The Promise of the Coming Dark Age (San Francisco, 1976).Google Scholar

Stone, Lawrence, ‘The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640’, Past & Present, 28 (1964).Google Scholar

Stone, Lawrence, ‘Education and Modernization in Japan and England’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. IX (1966-67).Google Scholar

Tarschys, Daniel, Beyond the State: The Future Polity in Classical and Soviet Marxism (Stockholm, 1972).Google Scholar

Thomas, Keith, ‘The place of laughter in Tudor and Stuart England’, The Times Literary Supplement, 21 Jan. 1977.Google Scholar

Toynbee, Arnold, in his article ‘After the Age of Affluence…’, The Observer, 14 April 1974.Google Scholar

Uspenskij, B. A., ‘“left” and “right” in icon painting’, Semiotica, vol. 13 (The Hague, 1975).Google Scholar

Wachtel, Nathan, The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Conquest of Peru seen through Indian Eyes (Hassocks, Sussex, 1976)Google Scholar

Wehler, H. -U., Modernisierungstheorie und Geschichte (Göttingen, 1975).Google Scholar

West, M. L., Early Greek philosophy and the Orient (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar

White, Lynn, Machina ex Deo. Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture (Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1968)Google Scholar

Woytinsky, W. S. and E. S., World Population and Production (New York, 1953)Google Scholar

Zweig, P., The Adventurer (London, 1974).Google Scholar

Book contents

Chapter XII - ON THE LAST 2,500 YEARS IN WESTERN HISTORY: AND SOME REMARKS ON THE COMING 500

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive