The Colonizer's Model of the World

Book cover of The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History

Book description

This influential book challenges one of the most pervasive and powerful beliefs of our time--that Europe rose to modernity and world dominance due to unique qualities of race, environment, culture, mind, or spirit, and that progress for the rest of the world resulted from the diffusion of European civilization. J.…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Colonizer's Model of the World as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Eric Sheppard

Author

I found this book eye-opening; it forced me to rethink what I knew about Europe’s success.

We think of Europe (and the US) as being successful because of its culture, religion, democratic capitalism, and/or climate. Blaut challenges such Eurocentrist presumptions by documenting Europe’s geographical good fortune. It was much easier to reach the Americas from Europe than from its 15th-century Asian competitors (China and India), enabling Europe to overtake these by exploiting the Americas.

I came to realize that Europe’s prosperity, and that of its former white colonies (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), was due to good luck, not…

From Eric's list on understanding how Europe (and the USA) became prosperous.