The World and the West: The European Challenge and the Overseas Response in the Age of Empire

by Philip D. Curtin

• ISBN13: 9780521890540
• ISBN10: 0521890543
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-02-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book is a study of the interaction of the Western societies of Europe and America with others around the world in the past two centuries--the age of European empire. Through a variety of case studies, it considers the European threat and the non-Western response, but the focus is on the ways in which people in Asia, African, and Indian America have tried to adapt their ways of life to the overwhelming European power of the period.

Author Biography

Philip D. Curtin is Herbert Baxter Adams Professor of History, Emeritus, at The Johns Hopkins University.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Part One Conquest	1	(52)
The Pattern of Empire	3	(16)
Technology and Power	19	(19)
The Politics of Imperialism	38	(15)
Part Two Culture Change and Imperial Rule	53	(56)
Culture Change in Plural Societies: South Africa and Central Asia	57	(16)
Culture Change in Mexico	73	(19)
Administrative Choices and Their Consequences: Examples from Bengal, Central Asia, Java, and Malaya	92	(17)
Part Three Conversion	109	(84)
Christian Missions in East Africa	111	(17)
Varieties of Defensive Modernization	128	(28)
Meiji Japan: Revolutionary Modernization	156	(17)
Ottoman Reactions to the West	173	(20)
Part Four Independence and the Liquidation of Empires	193	(82)
Non-European Resistance and the European Withdrawal	195	(18)
Personal and Utopian Responses	213	(19)
The Search for Viable Independence: Indonesia	232	(21)
Paths to Viable Independence: Ghana	253	(22)
Afterword	275	(4)
Index	279