Cultures of the West A History

by Backman, Clifford R.

• ISBN13: 9780190240455
• ISBN10: 0190240458
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-10-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Cultures of the West: A History, Second Edition, focuses on the ways in which the major ideas and passions of Western culture developed, internally, and how they interacted with the broader world--for good and for ill. The development of such key ideas as religion, science, and philosophy form the central narrative of this book.

Cultures of the West stands apart from other textbooks in a variety of ways, the first being thematic unity. What did people think and believe, throughout our history, about human nature, the right way to live, God, the best forms of government, or the meaning of human life? Rather than maintaining a single interpretive stance, author Clifford R. Backman relies upon a consistent set of questions: What did people think and feel throughout the centuries about politics, science, religion, and sex? How did they come to their positions regarding the right way to live? Backman's many years of experience in the classroom have informed his approach--students respond to engaging questions more than they are inspired by facts.

Author Biography

Clifford R. Backman has been a member of the History Department at Boston University since 1989. He is currently at work on a book that traces the development of toleration and interpersonal forgiveness in medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Table of Contents

List of Maps
Preface
About the Author
Note on Dates
Prologue: Before History

1. Water and Soil, Stone and Metal: The First Civilizations
10,000-2100 BCE
The Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Land Between the Rivers
Early Mesopotamia: Kings and Priests
The Idea of Empire
Mesopotamian Life: Farms and Cities, Letters and Numbers
Religion and Myth: The Great Above and Great Below
Ancient Egypt, Gift of the Nile
Life and Rule in Old Kingdom Egypt
The Kingdom of the Dead

2. Law Givers, Emperors, and Gods: The Ancient Near East
2100-486 BCE
Old Babylon
Middle Kingdom Egypt
The New Kingdom Empire
The Indo-European Arrival
The Age of Iron Begins
Persia and the Religion of Fire

3. The People of the Covenant
1200-350 BCE
The Bible and History
The Land of Canaan
Dreams of a Golden Age
Women and the Law
Prophets and Prophecy
The Struggle for Jewish Identity
Second Temple Judaism

4. Greeks and Persians
2000-479 BCE
The First Greeks
The Search for Mythic Ancestors in Archaic Age Greece
Colonists, Hoplites, and the Path toward Citizenship
A Cult of Masculinity
Civilized Pursuits: Lyric Poetry
Sparta: The Militarization of the Citizenry
Miletus: The Birthplace of Philosophy
Athens: Home to Democracy
The Persian Wars

5. Classical Greece and the Hellenistic World
479-30 BCE
Athens's Golden Age
The Polis: Ritual and Restraint
The Excluded: Women, Children, and Slaves
The Invention of Drama
The Peloponnesian Disaster
Advances in Historical Inquiry
Medicine as Natural Law
The Flowering of Philosophy
The Rise of Macedonia and the Conquests of Alexander the Great
The Hellenistic World
The Maccabean Revolt

6. Empire of the Sea: Rome
753 BCE-212 CE
Ancient Italy and the Rise of Rome
From Monarchy to Republic
The Republic of Virtue
Size Matters
Can the Republic Be Saved?
Rome's Golden Age: The Augustan Era
The Sea, the Sea
Roman Lives and Values
Height of the Pax Romana: The "Five Good Emperors"

7. The Rise of Christianity in a Roman World
40 BCE-300 CE
The Vitality of Roman Religion
The Jesus Mystery
A Crisis in Tradition
Ministry and Movement
What Happened to His Disciples?
Christianities Everywhere
Romans in Pursuit
Philosophical Foundations: Stoicism and Neoplatonism

8. The Early Middle Ages
300-750
The Imperial Crisis
Imperial Decline: Rome's Overreach
Martyrdom and Empire
A Christian Emperor and a Christian Church
The Rise of "New Rome": The Byzantium Empire
Barbarian Kings and Warlords
Divided Estates and Kingdoms
The Body as Money and Women as Property
Christian Paganism
Christian Monasticism

9. The Expansive Realm of Islam
30-900
"Age of Ignorance": The Arabian Background
The Qur'an and History
From Preacher to Conqueror
Conversion or Compulsion?
The Islamic Empire
Sunnis and Shi'a
Islam and the Classical Traditions
Women and Islam

10. Reform and Renewal in the Greater West
750-1258
Two Palace Coups
The Carolingian Ascent
Charlemagne
Imperial Coronation
Carolingian Collapse
The Splintering of the Caliphate
The Reinvention of Western Europe
Mediterranean Cities
The Reinvention of the Church
The Reinvention of the Islamic World
The Call for Crusades
The Crusades
Turkish Power and Byzantine Decline
Judaism Reformed, Renewed, and Reviled

11. Worlds Brought Down
1258-1453
Late Medieval Europe
Scholasticism
Mysticism
The Guild System
The Mendicant Orders
Early Representative Government
The Weakening of the Papacy
Noble Privilege and Popular Rebellion
The Hundred Years' War
The Plague
The Mongol Takeover
In the Wake of the Mongols
Persia under the Il-Khans
A New Center for Islam
The Ottoman Turks

12. Renaissances and Reformations
1350-1563
Rebirth or Culmination?
The Political and Economic Matrix
The Renaissance Achievement
Christian Humanism
Erasmus: Humanist Scholar and Social Critic
Martin Luther: The Gift of Salvation
Luther's Rebellion against the Church
The Reformation Goes International
Calvin: Protestantism as Theology
The Godly Society
The Rebirth of Satire
Catholic Reform and the Council of Trent
The Society of Jesus
What about the Orthodox East?

13. Worlds Old and New
1450-1700
European Voyages of Discovery
New Continents and Profits
Conquest and Epidemics
The Copernican Drama
Galileo and the Truth of Numbers
Inquisition and Inquiry
The Revolution Broadens
The Ethical Costs of Science
The Islamic Retreat from Science
Thinking about Truth
Newton's Mathematical Principles

14. The War of All against All
1540-1648
From the Peace of Augsburg to the Edict of Nantes: French Wars of Religion
Strife and Settlement in England
Dutch Ascendancy and Spanish Eclipse
The Thirty Years' War
Enemies Within: The Hunt for Witches
The Jews of the East and West
The Waning of the Sultanate
New Centers of Intellectual and Cultural Life
Wars of Religion: The Eastern Front
Economic Change in an Atlantic World

15. From Westphalia to Paris: Regimes Old and New
1648-1750
The Peace of Westphalia: 1648
The Argument for Tyranny
The Social Contract
Absolute Politics
Police States
Self-Indulgence with a Purpose: The Example of Versailles
Mercantilism and Absolutism
Mercantilism and Poverty
Domesticating Dynamism: Regulating Culture
The Control of Private Life
England's Separate Path: The Rise of Constitutional Monarchy
Ottoman Absolutism
Persian Absolutism
The International Economy in a Mercantilist Age
The Slave Trade and Domestic Subjugation
The Return of Uncertainty

16. The Enlightened
1690-1789
The Enlightenment Enterprise
Learning from Our Worst Mistakes
A New World of Ideas
Voltaire and the Limits of Optimism
The Radical Thought of Rousseau
The Jewish Enlightenment
The Jews and Europe's Ambivalence
The Unenlightened
Assessing the Enlightenment

17. The French Revolution and Napoleon
1789-1815
A Revolution in Western History?
Revolutionary Road
The Enlightened Revolution
The Revolution Turns Radical
How to Judge a Revolution
Napoleon
The Rush to Empire
The Continental System
Downfall
Revolution in the Colonies

18. Industrialization and Its Discontents
1750-1850
Britain's Head Start
Innovation and Infrastructure
Trying to Catch Up to Britain
Trying to Catch Up to Europe: The Ottoman Empire
Life in the Industrial Age
Riots and Repression
Women and Children Last
The Romantic Generation

19. The Birth of Modern Politics
1815-1848
Conservatism in Power
Royalism and Its Opponents
The Moral Component of Conservatism
The Challenge of Liberalism
Rebellion and Reform
Responses to Liberal Capitalism
The Revolutions of 1848
Karl Marx and Revolution
The Collapse of the Concert of Europe
Women in a Conservative Age

20. Nationalism and Identity
1800-1900
Nationalism in Theory
Nationalism in Practice: France, Italy, and Germany
Frustrated Nationalism: Hungary and Ireland
Jewish Identities
Islamic Nationalisms
Reforming Islam

21. The Modern Woman
1860-1914
The Appetite for Reform
Whose Rights Come First?
Suffragists and Suffragettes
Love and Sex
The Female Identity
Education and Work
The "Woman Question" for Muslims

22. The Challenge of Secularism
1800-1914
Who Killed God?
The Theory of Creation
Darwin and Evolution by Natural Selection
A Secular Universe
Nietzsche and the Will to Power
Art for Art's Sake
The Illness of Western Society
Freud and Psychoanalysis
Modernism: The First Wave
The Catholic Counterattack
Modernism, Secularism, and the Jews
The Islamic Exception

23. The Great Land Grab
1870-1914
"The White Man's Burden"
The Second Industrial Revolution
Looking Overseas
Missionary Europe
Industrial Warfare and Command Economies
Western Ways: Emulation and Resistance

24. The World at War (Part I)
1914-1918
The Run-Up to War
The Balance of Power
A New Map of Hell
The War in the Trenches
The Home Front
Officers and Gentlemen
Russia's Revolution
Bolshevism and the Laws of History
How Not to End a War
Young Turks

25. Radical Realignments
1919-1939
History for Beginners
Parceling Out Nations
New Rights and New Economies
The Great Depression
The Search for Someone to Blame
Modernism: The Second Wave
The Rise of Fascism: Italy and Spain
Nazism in Germany
Oppression and Terror in Russia
A New Deal?
Appeasement and Pacifism

26. The World at War (Part II)
1937-1945
The War in Europe
War in the Pacific
Atomic Fissures
Women in, and against, Fascism
Atrocities and Holocaust
Making Amends
The United Nations and Human Rights
World War II and the Middle East
Arab Nationalism and Growing Zionism

27. Theater of the Absurd: The Postwar World
1945-1968
Setting to Work
Alienation and the Absurd
The Cold War
Decolonization in a Cold War Word
Rise of the Welfare State
Social Conservatism and Economic Liberalism
The Postwar Boom
Turning Point: 1967-1968
The Female Factor
Women, Islam, and the State

28. Something to Believe In
1960-1988
A Generation of Rebellion
Big Science and Expanding Secularism
Another Catholic Reformation
Postwar Protestantism
Jewish Revival and Conflict
International Judaism and the State of Israel
Islamic Revolutions
Ba'athism and Brotherhood

29. Global Warmings
Since 1989
1989: One Year, Three Crises
The United States of Europe
Economic Globalization
War and Peace, from the Balkans to Pakistan
Islam and Its Discontents
Why Terrorism?
"Why Do They Hate Us?"
Israel, Palestine, and the Arab Spring
Women and the Global World
Debt, Taxes, and Liberty
Free Market? What Free Market?
What Is the Greater West Now?