FW: 8 Eurocentric Historians

[Brad De Long]

>--- Original Message ---
>Louis Proyect <lnp3 at PANIX.COM> Wrote on
>Mon, 25 Sep 2000 14:31:47 -0400
>  ------------------
>Jim Blaut, a Marxism list subscriber and distinguished scholar
>with solid
>class instincts and principles, has now come out with the second
>in a
>trilogy on Eurocentrism...
>In any case, here's the opening paragraphs of the article on
>Brenner to
>give you a feel for his approach:
>
>ROBERT BRENNER IN THE TUNNEL OF TIME
>
>Robert Brenner is a Marxist, a follower of one tradition in Marxism
>that is
>as diffusionist, as Eurocentric, as most conservative positions.
>I cannot
>here offer an explanation for this curious phenomenon: a tradition
>within
>one of the most egalitarian of all socio-political doctrines
>yet a
>tradition which, nonetheless, believes in the historical superiority
>(or
>priority) of one community of humans, Europeans, over another,
>non-Europeans. Eurocentric Marxists are not racist, nor even
>prejudiced,
>although most of them believe that Europeans have always been
>the leaders
>in the forward march of history...

Very strange. Not what Robert Brenner believes...

Robert Brenner believes that the core of world socio-economic and 
cultural development lay in (western) Asia and (northern) Africa from 
the initial invention of agriculture up until 500 B.C.; and that for 
much of the millennium and a half thereafter the core shifted around, 
finally passing from China to the Florence-Milan-Dijon-Antwerp-London 
axis around 1200 A.D. or so.

So unless you want to call Pharonic Egypt, the Tigris-Euphrates 
valley, and the Asiatic coast of the eastern Mediterranean "Europe", 
it seems that Blaug is clearly wrong...

Brad DeLong