Remaking the World

Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-1-009-54166-4
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 378 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 766 g

How should we understand Europe's special role in world history, and the enduring impact it made on the rest of the globe? Jerrold Seigel traces both the positive and negative sides of the continent's special role to its absence of effective central authority, the division and competition between its states and peoples, and its propensity for developing autonomous spheres of activity. Remaking the World analyzes how these features fostered Europe's characteristic preoccupation with a politics of liberty, its evolution of an aesthetic sphere animated by values specific to itself, its singular capacity to revolutionize scientific understanding, and its ability to prepare and carry out the first transition to a modern industrial economy. Extended and substantive comparisons with Africa, India, China, and the lands that came under the rule of the Ottomans demonstrate the absence of similar phenomena elsewhere, whereas in Europe they also helped generate the malign force of imperial expansion.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Seigel, Jerrold

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction; Part I. Liberty and Liberties: 2. A preoccupation with liberty; 3. From liberties to liberty; 4. Liberties elsewhere; Part II. Autonomy and Teleocracy: 5. Spheres of autonomy: the church, universities, and the bounds of reason; 6. Classical humanism and aesthetics; 7. Science as a sphere of autonomy; 8. Teleocratic sciences; Part III. Openness and Domination: 9. Other peoples, other places; 10. Empire: material expansion, moral contraction, and internal criticism; 11. Courage and weakness: anti-imperialism and its limits in the nineteenth century; Part IV. Transformations: 12. Autonomy and transformation: Britain; 13. Transformation and autonomy: France and Germany; 14. Ready or not? China and India; 15. Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Seigel, Jerrold
Jerrold Seigel is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of History Emeritus at New York University. His work ranges from intellectual and cultural history to the evolution of society and politics. Previous publications include The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe Since the Seventeenth Century (2005), and Modernity and Bourgeois Life: Society, Politics and Culture in England, France, and Germany since 1750 (2012), which won the 2014 Laura Shannon Prize.