Saturday, October 13, 2012

A Study of History

A Study of History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History

A Study of History is the 12-volume magnum opus of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, finished in 1961, in which the author traces the development and decay of all of the major world civilizations in the historical record. Toynbee applies his model to each of these civilizations, detailing the stages through which they all pass: genesis, growth, time of troubles, universal state, and disintegration.
The major civilizations, as Toynbee sees them, are: Egyptian, Andean, Sinic, Minoan, Sumerian, Mayan, Indic, Hittite, Hellenic, Western, Orthodox Christian (Russia), Far Eastern, Orthodox Christian (main body), Persian, Arabic, Hindu, Mexican, Yucatec, and Babylonic. There are four 'abortive civilizations' (Abortive Far Western Christian, Abortive Far Eastern Christian, Abortive Scandinavian, Abortive Syriac) and five 'arrested civilizations' (Polynesian, Eskimo, Nomadic, Ottoman, Spartan).

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Systems_Theory

World-systems theory

World-systems theory (also known as world-systems analysis)[1] is a multidisciplinary, macro-scale approach to world history and social change.[1][2]
World-systems analysis stresses that the world-system (and not nation states) should be the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis.[1][3] World-system refers to the international division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries and the periphery countries.[2][3] Core countries focus on higher skill, capital-intensive production, and the rest of the world focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw materials.[4] This constantly reinforces the dominance of the core countries.[4] Nonetheless, the system is dynamic, in part as a result of revolutions in transport technology, and individual states can gain or lose the core (semi-periphery, periphery) status over time.[4] For a time, some countries become the world hegemon; throughout last few centuries during which time the world system has extended geographically and intensified economically, this status has passed from the Netherlands, to the United Kingdom and most recently, to the United States.[4]
The most well-known version of the world-systems approach has been developed by Immanuel Wallerstein in 1970s and 1980s.[2][5] Wallerstein traces the rise of the world system from the 15th century, when European feudal economy suffered a crisis and was transformed into a capitalist one.[5] Europe (the West) utilized its advantages and gained control over most of the world economy, presiding over the development and spread of industrialization and capitalist economy, indirectly resulting in unequal development.[3][4][5]
Wallerstein's project is frequently misunderstood as world-systems "theory," a term that he consistently rejects.[6] For Wallerstein, world-systems analysis is above all a mode of analysis that aims to transcend the structures of knowledge inherited from the 19th century. This includes, especially, the divisions within the social sciences, and between the social sciences and history. For Wallerstein, then, world-systems analysis is a “knowledge movement”[7] that seeks to discern the “totality of what has been paraded under the labels of the… human sciences and indeed well beyond."[8] “We must invent new language,” Wallerstein insists, to transcend the illusions of the “three supposedly distinctive arenas” of society/economy/politics.[9] This trinitarian structure of knowledge is grounded in another, even grander, modernist architecture – the alienation of biophysical worlds (including those within bodies) from social ones. “One question, therefore, is whether we will be able to justify something called social science in the twenty-first century as a separate sphere of knowledge.”[10][11]
Significant work by many other scholars has been done since then.[3]

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Origins

Influences and major thinkers

World-systems theory traces emerged in the 1970s.[1] Its roots can be found in sociology, but it has developed into a highly interdisciplinary field.[3]
World-systems theory was aiming to replace modernization theory.[2] Wallerstein criticized modernization theory due to:
  1. its focus on the state as the only unit of analysis,[2]
  2. its assumption there is only a single path of evolutionary development for all countries,[2]
  3. its disregard of transnational structures that constrain local and national development.[2]
Three major predecessors of world-systems theory are: the Annales school, Marxist, and dependence theory.[2][3] The Annales School tradition (represented most notaby by Fernand Braudel) influenced Wallerstein in focusing on long-term processes and geo-ecological regions as unit of analysis.[2] Marxist theories added
World-systems theory was also significantly influenced by dependency theory - a neo-Marxist explanation of development processes.[2]
Other influences on the world-systems theory come from scholars such as Karl Polanyi, Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter (particular, from their research on business cycles and the concepts of three basic modes of economic organization: reciprocal, redistributive, and market modes, which Wallerstein reframed into a discussion of mini-systems, world-empires, and world-economies).[2]
Overall, Wallerstein sees the development of the capitalist world economy as detrimental to a large proportion of the world's population.[5] Similar to Marx, Wallerstein predicts that capitalism will be replaced by a socialist economy.[2]
World-systems thinkers include Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Andre Gunder Frank, and Immanuel Wallerstein with major contributions by Christopher Chase-Dunn, Beverly Silver, Volker Bornschier, Janet Abu Lughod, Thomas D. Hall, Kunibert Raffer, Theotonio dos Santos, Dale Tomich, Jason W. Moore, and others.[3] In sociology, a primary alternative perspective is world polity theory as formulated by John W. Meyer.

Dependency theory

Main article: Dependency theory
World systems theory builds on but also parts from the proposition of dependency theory. Fernando Henrique Cardoso described the main tenets of the dependency theories as follows:
  • there is a financial and technological penetration of the periphery and semi-periphery countries by the developed capitalist core countries
  • this produces an unbalanced economic structure within the peripheral societies and among them and the centers
  • this leads to limitations upon self-sustained growth in the periphery
  • this favors the appearance of specific patterns of class relations
  • these require modifications in the role of the state to guarantee the functioning of the economy and the political articulation of a society, which contains, within itself, foci of inarticulateness and structural imbalance[12]
Dependency and world system theory propose that the poverty and backwardness of poor countries are caused by their peripheral position in the international division of labor. Since the capitalist world system evolved, the distinction between the central and the peripheral nations has grown and diverged.
In recognizing a tripartite pattern in division of labor, world-systems analysis criticized dependency theory with its bimodal system of only cores and peripheries.

Wallerstein

The most well-known version of the world-systems approach has been developed by Immanuel Wallerstein, who is seen as one of the founders of the intellectual school of world-systems theory.[2][5]
Wallerstein notes that world-systems analysis calls for an unidisciplinary historical social science, and contends that the modern disciplines, products of the 19th century, are deeply flawed because they are not separate logics, as is manifest for example in the de facto overlap of analysis among scholars of the disciplines.[1]
Wallerstein offers several definitions of a world-system. He defined it, in 1974, briefly, as:
a system is defined as a unit with a single division of labor and multiple cultural systems.
—[13]
He also offered a longer definition:
…a social system, one that has boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence. Its life is made up of the conflicting forces which hold it together by tension and tear it apart as each group seeks eternally to remold it to its advantage. It has the characteristics of an organism, in that it has a life-span over which its characteristics change in some respects and remain stable in others. One can define its structures as being at different times strong or weak in terms of the internal logic of its functioning.
—[14]
In 1987, Wallerstein's, defines world-system as:
...not the system of the world, but a system that is a world and which can be, most often has been, located in an area less than the entire globe. World-systems analysis argues that the units of social reality within which we operate, whose rules constrain us, are for the most part such world-systems (other than the now extinct, small minisystems that once existed on the earth). World-systems analysis argues that there have been thus far only two varieties of world-systems: world-economies and world empires. A world-empire (examples, the Roman Empire, Han China) are large bureaucratic structures with a single political center and an axial division of labor, but multiple cultures. A world-economy is a large axial division of labor with multiple political centers and multiple cultures. In English, the hyphen is essential to indicate these concepts. "World system" without a hyphen suggests that there has been only one world-system in the history of the world.
—[1]
Wallerstein characterizes the world system as a set of mechanisms which redistributes resources from the periphery to the core. In his terminology, the core is the developed, industrialized part of the world, and the periphery is the "underdeveloped", typically raw materials-exporting, poor part of the world; the market being the means by which the core exploits the periphery.
Apart from these, Wallerstein defines four temporal features of the world system. Cyclical rhythms represent the short-term fluctuation of economy, while secular trends mean deeper long run tendencies, such as general economic growth or decline.[1][3] The term contradiction means a general controversy in the system, usually concerning some short term vs. long term trade-offs. For example the problem of underconsumption, wherein the drive-down of wages increases the profit for the capitalists on the short-run, but considering the long run, the decreasing of wages may have a crucially harmful effect by reducing the demand for the product. The last temporal feature is the crisis: a crisis occurs, if a constellation of circumstances brings about the end of the system.
In Wallerstein's view, there have been three kinds of societies across human history: mini-systems or what anthropologists call bands, tribes, and small chiefdoms, and two types of world-systems - one that is politically unified and the other, not (single state world-empires and multi-polity world-economies).[1][3] World-systems are larger, and ethnically diverse. Modern society, called the "modern world-system" is of the latter type, but unique in being the first and only fully capitalist world-economy to have emerged, around 1450 - 1550 and to have geographically expanded across the entire planet, by about 1900. Capitalism is a system based on competition between free producers using free labor with free commodities, 'free' meaning its available for sale and purchase on a market.

Research questions

World-systems theory asks several key questions:
  • How is the world-system affected by changes in its components (nations, ethnic groups, social classes, etc.)?[3]
  • How does the world-system affect its components?[3]
  • To what degree, if any, does the core need the periphery to be underdeveloped?[3]
  • What causes world-systems to change?[3]
  • What system may replace capitalism?[3]
Some questions are more specific to certain subfields; for example, Marxists would concern themselves whether world-systems theory is a useful or unhelpful development of Marxist theories.[3]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_inequality

International inequality

International inequality is inequality between countries (cf. Milanovic 2002). Economic differences between rich and poor countries are considerable. According to the United Nations Human Development Report 2004, the GDP per capita in countries with high, medium and low human development (a classification based on the UN Human Development Index) was 24,806, 4,269 and 1,184 PPP$, respectively (PPP$ = purchasing power parity measured in United States dollars).[1]

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International wealth distribution

See also: List of countries by distribution of wealth
A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. The bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. Extensive statistics, many indicating the growing world disparity, are included in the available report, press releases, Excel tables and Powerpoint slides.
The major component of the world's income inequality (the global Gini coefficient) is comprised by two groups of countries (called the "twin peaks" by Quah [1997]).
  • The first group has 13% of the world's population and receives 45% of the world's PPP income. This group includes the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Australia, and comprises 500 million people with an annual income level over 11,500 PPP$.
  • The second group has 42% of the world's population and receives only 9% of the world PPP income. This group includes India, Indonesia and rural China, and comprises 2,100 million people with an income level under 1,000 PPP$. (See Milanovic 2001, p. 38).
Economic inequality very closely matches lognormal distribution as one traverses the strata of national and world societies from top-to-bottom.
During the 20th century there was considerable divergence between the economic wealth of developed and developing countries. Richer countries like the United States and many European countries converged together towards a GDP per capita much greater than developing countries such as India and Ethiopia.
The evolution of the income gap between poor and rich countries is related to convergence. Convergence can be defined as "the tendency for poorer countries to grow faster than richer ones and, hence, for their levels of income to converge" [2]. Convergence is a matter of current research and debate, but most studies have shown lack of evidence for absolute convergence based on comparisons among countries (with regard to this debate see for instance Cole and Newmayer (2003) or [3]).
According to current research, global income inequality peaked approximately in 1970s when world income was distributed bimodally into "rich" and "poor" countries with little overlap. Since then inequality have been rapidly decreasing, and this trend seems to be accelerating. Income distribution is now unimodal, with most people living in middle-income countries.[2][3]


Further facts

Wealth:
  • 6% of the world population own 52% of the global assets. The richest 2% of the world population own more than 51% of the global assets, the richest 10% own 85% of the global assets.
  • 50% of the world population own less than 1% of the global assets.[4]
  • The whole global assets volume is about 125 trillion US$.[5]
  • 1,125 Dollar-Billionaires own 4.4 trillion US$. They own 4 times more than the 50% poor people of the world.[6]
  • over 80% of the world population lives on less than 10 US$/day.;[7] over 50% of the world population lives on less than 2 US$/day;[8] over 20% of the world population lives on less than 1.25 US$/day [9]
Income:
  • In 2005, 43% of the world population (3.14 billion people) have an income of less than U.S. $2.5/day. 21.5% of the world population (1.4 billion people) have an income of less than US$1.25/day.[10]
  • In 1981, 60.4% of the world population (2.73 billion people) had an income of less than US$ 2.5/day and 42.2% of the world population (1.91 billion people) had an income of less than US$ 1.25 /day. But first of all these improvements were reached in China. In all other developing countries only the percents decreased (by the swelling world population) but the absolute numbers increased.
  • In 2008, 17% of the people in the developing countries are on the verge of starvation.[11]
  • The proportion of poor people (with less than US$ 3,470 per year) is 78%. The proportion of rich people (with more than US$ 8,000/year) is 11%.[12]
Welfare spending: If East Asia and southern Latin American countries are taken out of the equation, the differences in government spending between the industrialized and developing states are striking, with the latter registering extremely low levels of spending.
  • Social expenditure as a proportion for GDP for Indonesia or the Dominican Republic registers around the 2-3 per cent mark, compared to Sweden or France which at the moment hover just under the 30 per cent mark.
  • In contrast to the industrialized states, from 1980 to 1990 many southern states experienced a decline in social spending as a percentage of overall government spending.
Therefore, in contrast to the North, the developing states are far more vulnerable to the pressures arising from economic globalization. Overall, social spending is far lower in the South, with some regions registering just a few per cent of GDP.[13] However, some people argue that decrease in welfare spending is not an issue of global inequality but rather a common phenomenon in an era of globalization.[14]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oecumene

Ecumene

Ecumene (also spelled œcumene or oikoumene) is a term originally used in the Greco-Roman world to refer to the inhabited universe (or at least the known part of it). The term derives from the Greek οἰκουμένη (oikouménē, the feminine present middle participle of the verb οἰκέω, oikéō, "to inhabit"), short for οἰκουμένη γῆ "inhabited world".[1] In modern connotations it refers either to the projection of a united Christian Church or to world civilizations.

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  • 1 Ancient world
  • 2 Byzantine usage
  • 3 Modern usage
  • 4 Ecumenes in fiction
  • 5 References
  • 6 External links


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee
    Arnold J. Toynbee


    Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH (14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global perspective. A religious outlook permeates the Study and made it especially popular in the United States,[citation needed] for Toynbee rejected Greek humanism, the Enlightenment belief in humanity's essential goodness, and the "false god" of modern nationalism. Toynbee in the 1918–1950 period was a leading British consultant to the government on international affairs, especially regarding the Middle East.

    Contents

  • 1 Biography
  • 2 Foreign policy
  • 3 Study of History
  • 4 Civilizations
  • 5 Influence
  • 6 Reception and criticism
  • 7 Family connections
  • 8 Allusions in popular culture
  • 9 Works
  • 10 See also
  • 11 References
  • 12 Further reading
  • 13 Notes
  • 14 External links

  • Study of History

    In 1934-1954, Toynbee's ten-volume A Study of History came out in three separate installments. He followed Oswald Spengler in taking a comparative topical approach to independent civilizations. Toynbee's said they displayed striking parallels in their origin, growth, and decay. Toynbee rejected Spengler's biological model of civilizations as organisms with a typical life span of 1,000 years.
    Of the 21 civilizations Toynbee identified, sixteen were dead by 1940 and four of the remaining five were under severe pressure from the one named Western Christendom - or simply The West. He explained breakdowns of civilizations as a failure of creative power in the creative minority, which henceforth becomes a merely 'dominant' minority; that is followed by an answering withdrawal of allegiance and mimesis on the part of the majority; finally there is a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.[7]
    Toynbee explained decline as due to their moral failure. Many readers, especially in America, rejoiced in his implication (in vols. 1-6) that only a return to some form of Christianity could halt the breakdown of western civilization which began with the Reformation. Volumes 7-10, published in 1954 abandoned the religious message and his popular audience slipped away, while scholars gleefully picked apart his mistakes.[8]



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Yan Fu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Fu

Yan Fu




















Yan Fu (simplified Chinese: 严复; traditional Chinese: 嚴復; pinyin: Yán Fù; Wade–Giles: Yen² Fu⁴; courtesy name: Ji Dao, 幾道; 8 January 1854 — 27 October 1921) was a Chinese scholar and translator, most famous for introducing western ideas, including Darwin's "natural selection," to China in the late 19th century.

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Life

Yan Fu studied at the Fujian Arsenal Academy (福州船政學堂) in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. In 1877–79 he studied at the Navy Academy in Greenwich, England. Upon his return to China, he was unable to pass the Imperial Civil Service Examination, while teaching at the Fujian Arsenal Academy and then Beiyang Naval Officers' School (北洋水師學堂) at Tianjin.
It was not until after the Chinese defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95, fought for control of Korea) that Yan Fu became famous. He is celebrated for his translations, including Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Herbert Spencer's Study of Sociology. Yan critiqued the ideas of Darwin and others, offering his own interpretations.
The ideas of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" were introduced to Chinese readers through Huxley's work. The former idea was famously rendered by Yan Fu into Chinese as tiānzé (天擇).
He became a respected scholar for his translations, and became politically active. In 1895 he was involved in the Gongche Shangshu movement. In 1912 he became the first principal of National Peking University (now Peking University).
He became a royalist and conservative who supported Yuan Shikai (袁世凱) and Zhang Xun (張勛) to proclaim themselves emperor in his later life. He also participated the foundation of Chouanhui (籌安會), an organization which supported restoring monarchy. He laughed at "New Literature Revolutionaries" such as Hu Shi (胡適).

Translation theory

For more details on this topic, see Chinese Translation Theory.
Yan stated in the preface to his translation of Evolution and Ethics (天演論) that "there are three difficulties in translation: faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance" (譯事三難：信達雅). He did not set them as general standards for translation and did not say that they were independent of each other. However, since the publication of that work, the phrase "faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance" has been attributed to Yan Fu as a standard for any good translation and has become a cliché in Chinese academic circles, giving rise to numerous debates and theses. Some scholars argue that this dictum actually derived from British theoretician of translation, Alexander Fraser Tytler.

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Yellow River Piano Concerto 3rd Movement Played by Tan Hainu


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Yellow River Chorus




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Orientalism - Occidentalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism

Orientalism

is a term used by art historians, literary and cultural studies scholars for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Middle Eastern, and East Asian cultures (Eastern cultures) by American and European writers, designers and artists. In particular, Orientalist painting, depicting more specifically "the Middle East",[1] was one of the many specialisms of 19th century Academic art.
Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism, the term has tended to acquire a negative connotation, and in much academic discourse has become shorthand for Western feelings of superiority over, and overlooking of the views of, Asian and North African cultures.

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OttomanEmpireIn1683.png





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Abukir_%281799%29

Battle of Abukir (1799)

The Battle of Abukir (or Abukir)[1] was Napoleon Bonaparte's decisive victory over Seid Mustafa Pasha's Ottoman army on 25 July 1799 during the French invasion of Egypt (1798).[5] No sooner had the French forces returned from a campaign to Syria, the Ottoman forces was transported to Egypt by Sidney Smith's British fleet to put an end to French rule in Egypt.[5][6]
Seid Mustafa Pasha was an experienced commander who had fought against the Russians. He knew that cavalry charges against the French squares was futile. So, he sought to avoid them by fortifying his beachhead with two defensive lines. From this beachhead Mustafa could carry out the invasion of Egypt. However, Napoleon immediately saw the flaw in the tactic as it meant that the Turks had nowhere to run if routed.[7]
The French attacked the Ottoman positions and quickly broke through the first defensive line before it was fully completed. The second line, however, proved tougher to defeat and the French withdrew for a while. As usual, the Ottoman army came out of their positions and began killing the wounded and mutilating the dead. At this point, cavalry general Murat saw his opportunity and attacked with his cavalry, quickly routing the exposed Turks.[7]
Murat's charge was so rapid that he burst inside Mustafa's tent and captured the Turkish commander, severing two of the Turk's fingers with his sabre. In return, Mustafa shot Murat in the jaw. Immediately, Murat was operated on and resumed his duties the next day.
The Turkish army fled in panic. Some Ottomans drowned trying to swim to the British ships two miles away from shore, while others fled to Abukir castle, but they surrendered shortly thereafter. The Turks suffered about 8,000 casualties and the French only 1,000.[8] News of the victory reached France before Napoleon arrived in October and this made him even more popular, an important asset considering the troubles brewing in the French Directory. This battle temporarily secured France's control over Egypt.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem

Harem

Harem (pronounced [haˈɾem], Turkish, from Arabic: حرم‎ ḥaram "forbidden place; sacrosanct, sanctum", related to حريم ḥarīm, "a sacred inviolable place; female members of the family" and حرام ḥarām, "forbidden; sacred") refers to the sphere of women in what is usually a polygynous household and their enclosed quarters which are forbidden to men. It originated in the Near East and is typically associated in the Western world with the Ottoman Empire. For the South Asian equivalent, see purdah and zenana.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_studies

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies. European study of the region, formerly known as "the Orient", had primarily religious origins, which has remained an important motivation until recent times. Learning from Arabic medicine and philosophy, and the Arabic and Hebrew translations from Greek, was an important factor in the Middle Ages. Linguistic knowledge preceded a wider study of cultures and history, and as Europe began to encroach upon the region, political and economic factors encouraged growth in academic study. From the late 18th century archaeology became a link from the discipline to a wide European public, as treasures brought back filled new European museums. The modern study was influenced both by Imperialist attitudes and interests, and also the sometimes naive fascination of the exotic East for Mediterranean and European writers and thinkers, captured in images by artists, that is embodied in a repeatedly-surfacing theme in the history of ideas in the West, called "Orientalism". In the last century, scholars from the region itself have participated on equal terms in the discipline.

History of ideas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ideas

The history of ideas is a field of research in history that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. The history of ideas is a sister-discipline to, or a particular approach within, intellectual history. Work in the history of ideas may involve interdisciplinary research in the history of philosophy, the history of science, or the history of literature. In Sweden, the history of ideas and science (Idé- och lärdomshistoria) has been a distinct university subject since 6 November 1932, when Johan Nordström, a scholar of literature, was appointed professor of the new discipline in a pompous ceremony at Uppsala University (coinciding with that commemorating the 300-year anniversary of the Battle of Lützen). Today, several universities across the world provide courses in this field, usually as part of a graduate program.

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The Lovejoy approach

The historian Arthur O. Lovejoy (1873–1962) coined the phrase history of ideas and initiated its systematic study[1] in the early decades of the 20th century. Johns Hopkins University was a "fertile cradle" to Lovejoy's history of ideas;[2] he worked there as a professor of history, from 1910 to 1939, and for decades he presided over the regular meetings of the History of Ideas Club.[3]
Aside from his students and colleagues engaged in related projects (such as René Wellek and Leo Spitzer, with whom Lovejoy engaged in extended debates), scholars such as Isaiah Berlin,[4] Michel Foucault, Christopher Hill, J. G. A. Pocock, and others have continued to work in a spirit close to that with which Lovejoy pursued the history of ideas. The first chapter of Lovejoy's book The Great Chain of Being lays out a general overview of what he intended to be the program and scope of the study of the history of ideas.[1]

Asian studies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_studies
Asian studies, a term used usually in the United States for Oriental studies and is concerned with the Asian peoples, their cultures, languages, history and politics. Within the Asian sphere, Asian studies combines aspects of sociology, history, cultural anthropology and many other disciplines to study political, cultural and economic phenomena in Asian traditional and contemporary societies. Asian studies forms a field of post-graduate study in many universities.
It is a branch of area studies, and many Western universities combine Asian and African studies in a single faculty or institute, like SOAS in London. It is often combined with Islamic studies in a similar way. The history of the discipline in the West is covered under Oriental studies.

Edward Said













Edward Wadie Saïd (Arabic pronunciation: [wædiːʕ sæʕiːd] Arabic: إدوارد وديع سعيد‎, Idwārd Wadīʿ Saʿīd; 1 November 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American literary theoretician, University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and a public intellectual who was a founding figure of the critical field of post-colonialism.[1] He was born a Palestinian Arab in the Jerusalem of the British Mandate of Palestine (1920–48); he was an American through his Palestinian Christian Arab father, Wadie Saïd, who was a U.S. citizen.[2] As such, Saïd was an advocate for the political and human rights of the Palestinian people, whom the commentator Robert Fisk described as their most powerful voice.[3]
As an an influential cultural critic, academic, and writer,[4][5] Edward Saïd was known best for the book Orientalism (1978), a critical analysis of the ideas that are the bases of Orientalism — the Western study of Eastern cultures.[6][7] He proposed and contended that Orientalist scholarship was, and remains, inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, making much of the work inherently political, servile to power, and therefore intellectually suspect. Orientalism is based upon his intimate knowledge of colonial literature, such as the fiction of Joseph Conrad, and the post-structuralist theories of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and other such philosophers; thus, Orientalism, and other thematically related works, proved analytically influential in the fields of the humanities, especially literary theory and literary criticism. Moreover, Orientalism proved especially influential upon Middle Eastern studies, wherein it transformed the academic discourse of the field’s practitioners, of how they examine, describe, and define the cultures of the Middle East.[8] As an intellectual, Edward Saïd vigorously discussed and debated the cultural subjects comprised by Orientalism, especially as applied in the fields of history and area studies; nonetheless, mainstream academics disagreed with Saïd’s thesis in Orientalism, especially Bernard Lewis, a British–American Orientalist.[9]
As a public intellectual, he discussed contemporary politics, music, culture, and literature, in lectures, newspaper and magazine articles, and books. Drawing from his family experiences as a Palestinian Christian in the Middle East, at the time of the establishment of Israel (1948), Saïd argued for the establishment of a Palestinian state, equal political and human rights for the Palestinians in Israel — including the right of return — and for increased U.S. political pressure upon Israel to recognize, grant, and respect said rights; he also criticized the political and cultural politics of Arab and Muslim régimes.[10] He received a Western education in the U.S., where he resided from adolescence until his death in 2003; as such, in his memoirs, Out of Place (1999), Saïd applied his dual cultural heritage to narrow the gap of political and cultural understanding between The West and the Middle East, to improve Western understanding of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. His decade-long membership in the Palestinian National Council, and his pro–Palestinian political activism, made him a controversial public intellectual.[11]
In 1999, with his friend Daniel Barenboim, Saïd co-founded the award-winning West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, based in Seville, which is composed of children from Israel, the Palestinian territories, and surrounding Arab nations; personally, Edward Saïd was an accomplished pianist.[12] In 2002, he and Barenboim published Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society, a book of their conversations about music. Intellectually active until the last months of his life, Edward Saïd died of leukemia in 2003.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism

Post-structuralism

Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s.[1][2] The label primarily encompasses the intellectual developments of prominent mid-20th-century French and continental philosophers and theorists.[3] Poststructuralism stresses that the author's intended meaning is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives.
Post-structuralism is a response to structuralism. Structuralism is an intellectual movement developed in Europe from the early to mid-20th century. It argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure-—modeled on language (i.e., structural linguistics)—that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and the organization of ideas and imagination—a "third order".[4] The precise nature of the revision or critique of structuralism differs with each post-structuralist author, though common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute those structures.[5] Writers whose work is often characterised as post-structuralist include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, and Julia Kristeva.
The movement is closely related to postmodernism. As with structuralism, antihumanism is often a central tenet. Existential phenomenology is a significant influence; Colin Davis has argued that post-structuralists might just as accurately be called "post-phenomenologists".[6]
Some commentators have criticized poststructuralism for being radically relativistic or nihilistic; others have objected to its extremity and linguistic complexity. Others see it as a threat to traditional values or professional scholarly standards. Many theorists who have been called "post-structuralist" have rejected the label.[7]

Contents

  • 1 Theory
  • 2 Post-structuralism and structuralism
  • 3 History
  • 4 Major works
  • 5 See also
  • 6 References
  • 7 Sources
  • 8 External links

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lewis

    Bernard Lewis

    Bernard Lewis, FBA (born May 31, 1916) is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West, and is especially famous in academic circles for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.[1]
    Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History.
    Lewis is a widely read expert on the Middle East, and is regarded as one of the West’s leading scholars of that region.[2] His advice has been frequently sought by policymakers, including the George W. Bush administration.[3] In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing Martin Kramer, whose Ph.D. thesis was directed by Lewis, considered that, over a 60-year career, he has emerged as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East."[1] Lewis is known for his controversial views on the Armenian genocide.[4][5][6] He is also famous for his public debates with the late Edward Said concerning the latter's book Orientalism (1978), which criticized Lewis.

    Contents

  • 1 Biography
  • 2 Research
  • 3 Views and influence on contemporary politics
  • 4 Debates with Edward Said
  • 5 Debates with Noam Chomsky
  • 6 Books
  • 7 References
  • 8 External links

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_culture

    Eastern world

    The term Eastern world refers very broadly to the various cultures or social structures and philosophical systems of Asia or geographically the Eastern cultures. This includes the Indian subcontinent (comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Nepal), the Far East (comprising China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea), West Asia (Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and Egypt), and Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Kyrgyzstan).

    Contents

    Introduction

    An image of the "Eastern world" defined as Asia.
    The division between "East" and west is a product of European cultural history, and of the distinction between European Christendom and the cultures beyond it to the East. With the European invasion of the Americas the East/West distinction became global. The concept of an Eastern, "Indian" (Indies) or "Oriental" sphere was emphasized by ideas of racial as well as religious and cultural differences. Such distinctions were articulated by Westerners in the scholarly tradition known as Orientalism and Indology. People from the East are known by certain regions in the West as "Oriental". During the Cold War, the term "Eastern world" was sometimes used as an extension of Eastern bloc, connoting the Soviet Union, China and their communist allies, while the term "Western world" often connoted the United States and its NATO allies such as the United Kingdom. The concept is often another term for the Far East—a region that bears considerable cultural and religious commonality. Eastern philosophy, art, literature, and other traditions, are often found throughout the region in places of high importance, such as popular culture, architecture and traditional literature. The spread of Buddhism and Hindu Yoga is partly responsible for this.

    Eastern culture

    An image of the "Eastern world" defined as the "Far East", consisting of three overlapping cultural blocks: East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.
    The distribution of the two major families of world religion, Dharmic religion and Abrahamic religion, highlights the religious difference between the Far East and the rest of the world.
    Main article: Culture of Asia
    Eastern culture has developed many themes and traditions. Some important ones are:
  • Eastern religion, Eastern philosophy
  • Oriental medicine



  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_%28book%29

    Orientalism (book)

    Orientalism is a book published in 1978 by Edward Said that has been highly influential and controversial in postcolonial studies and other fields. In the book, Said effectively redefined the term "Orientalism" to mean a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the Middle East. This body of scholarship is marked by a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture." He argued that a long tradition of romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for European and American colonial and imperial ambitions. Just as fiercely, he denounced the practice of Arab elites who internalized the US and British orientalists' ideas of Arabic culture.
    So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Muslims and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.[1]
    —Edward Said, The Nation

    Contents

  • 1 Overview
  • 2 The book by chapter
  • 3 Influence
  • 4 Criticism
  • 5 See also
  • 6 References
  • 7 Further reading
  • 8 External links
    • 8.1 Articles


      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

      Western world


      The Parthenon (Athens)
      The Roman Forum (Rome)
      The Supreme Court of the United States (Washington, D.C.)
      The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident (from Latin: occidens "sunset, West"; as contrasted with the Orient), is a term referring to different nations depending on the context. There is no agreed upon definition about what all these nations have in common[1] apart from having a significant population of European descent and being heavily influenced by Europe.
      The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, with the advent of Christianity. In the modern era, Western culture has been heavily influenced by the traditions of Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, Age of Enlightenment, and shaped by the expansive colonialism of the 16th-20th centuries. Its political usage was temporarily informed by a mutual antagonism with the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War in the mid-to-late 20th Century (1945–1991).
      The term originally had a literal geographic meaning, contrasting Europe with the linked cultures of civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Near East, South Asia, South East Asia and remote Far East, however, today it has little geographic relevance.
      In the contemporary cultural meaning, the Western world includes many countries of Europe, as well as many countries of European colonial origin in the Americas and Oceania, such as the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay etc.[2][3][4]

      Contents

      Introduction

      Western culture originated in the Mediterranean basin and its vicinity; Greece and Rome are often cited as its originators. Over time, their associated empires grew first to the east and south to include Eastern European coastal areas and Southeastern, conquering and absorbing, and being influenced by, many older great civilizations of the ancient Near East; later, they expanded to the north and west to include Western and Central Europe.
      Historians, such as Carroll Quigley (Evolution of Civilizations), contend that Western civilization was born around 400 AD, after the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire, leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical societies. In either view, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West experienced a period of considerable decline,[5] known as the Middle Ages, which include the Dark Ages and the Crusades.
      The School of Athens depicts a gathering of the most prominent thinkers of classical antiquity. Fresco by Raphael, 1510–1511
      The knowledge of the ancient Western world was partly preserved during this period due to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire and the institutions of the Catholic Church; it was also greatly expanded by the Arab importation[6][7] of both the Ancient Greco-Roman and new technology through Arabs from the India and China to Europe.[8][9] Since the Renaissance, the West evolved beyond the influence of the ancient Greeks and Romans and the Islamic world due to the Commercial,[10] Scientific,[11] and Industrial Revolutions,[12] and the expansion of the peoples of Western and Central European empires, and particularly the globe-spanning empires of the 18th and 19th centuries. Numerous times, this expansion was accompanied by Christian missionaries, who attempted to proselytize Christianity.
      Generally speaking, the current consensus would locate the West, at the very least, in the cultures and peoples of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a great part of Central and South America like Argentina and Brazil. There is debate among some as to whether Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) [13][14][15] is in a category of its own. The argument supporting Central and Eastern Europe being a part of the West is that Central and Eastern European countries such as Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania are now part of the European Union and NATO, which mostly comprise Western countries. Although geographically not located in Western Europe, Greece and Cyprus are usually considered a part of the Western world. This is partly due to political and economic reasons and partly due to Western culture having Greek roots.
      Russia is often not counted as a part of the Western World. However, Russian culture (particularly literature, music and painting) is usually classified as a part of the Western culture.

      Western culture

      Main article: Western culture
      Further information: History of Western civilization
      Part of "School of Athens" by Raphael (Raffaelo Sanzio, 1483-1520)
      History of
      Western philosophy
      Western philosophy
      See also
      Religious philosophy
      Eastern philosophy
      The term "Western culture" is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies.
      Specifically, Western culture may imply:
      The concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic and philosophical principles that set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon.[16]
      The term has come to apply to countries whose history is strongly marked by European immigration or settlement, such as the Americas, and Australasia, and is not restricted to Europe.
      Some tendencies that define modern Western societies are the existence of political pluralism, laicism, generalization of middle class, prominent subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements), increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration. The modern shape of these societies is strongly based upon the Industrial Revolution and the societies' associated social and environmental problems, such as class struggle and pollution, as well as reactions to them, such as syndicalism and environmentalism.

      Historical divisions

      The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of East and West originated in the Roman Empire.[17] The Eastern Mediterranean was home to the highly urbanized cultures that had Greek as their common language (owing to the older empire of Alexander the Great and of the Hellenistic successors.), whereas the West was much more rural in its character and more readily adopted Latin as its common language. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Western and Central Europe was substantially cut off from the East where Byzantine Greek culture and Eastern Christianity became founding influences in the Arab/Muslim world and among the Eastern and Southern Slavic peoples. Roman Catholic Western and Central Europe, as such, maintained a distinct identity particularly as it began to redevelop during the Renaissance. Even following the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe continued to see itself as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than other parts of the perceived civilized world.
      Use of the term West as a specific cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. In the past two centuries the term Western world has sometimes been used synonymously with Christian world because of the numerical dominance of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism compared to other Christian traditions, ancient Roman ideas, and heresies. As secularism rose in Europe and elsewhere during the 19th and 20th centuries, the term West came to take on less religious connotations and more political connotations, especially during the Cold War. Additionally, closer contacts between the West and Asia and other parts of the world in recent times have continued to cloud the use and meaning of the term.

      Hellenic

      The Ancient Greek world, c. 550 BC
      The Hellenic division between the barbarians and the Greeks contrasted in many societies the Greek-speaking culture of the Greek settlements around the Mediterranean to the surrounding non-Greek cultures. Herodotus considered the Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a conflict of Europa versus Asia[citation needed] (which he considered to be all land north and east of the Sea of Marmara, respectively)[citation needed]. The terms "West" and "East" were not used by any Greek author to describe that conflict. The anachronistic application of those terms to that division entails a stark logical contradiction, given that, when the term "West" appeared, it was used in opposition to the Greeks and Greek-speaking culture.[citation needed]
      Western society traces its cultural origins, at least partially, to Greek thought and Christian religion, thus following an evolution that began in ancient Greece and the Levant, continued through the Roman Empire, and spread throughout Europe. The inherently "Greek" classical ideas of history (which one might easily say they invented) and art may, however, be considered almost inviolate in the West, as their original spread of influence survived the Hellenic period of Roman classical antiquity, The Dark Ages, its resurgence during the Western Renaissance, and has managed somehow to keep and exert its pervasive influence down into the present age, with every expectation[by whom?] of it continuing to dominate any secular Western cultural developments.
      The major Hellenistic realms; the Ptolemaic kingdom (dark blue); the Seleucid empire (yellow); Macedon (green) and Epirus (pink).
      However, the conquest of the Western parts of the Roman Empire by Germanic peoples and the subsequent dominance by the Western Christian Papacy (which held combined political and spiritual authority, a state of affairs absent from Greek civilization in all its stages), resulted in a rupture of the previously existing ties between the Latin West and Greek thought,[18] including Christian Greek thought. The Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed this deviation.
      On the other hand, the Modern West, emerging after the Renaissance as a new civilization, has been greatly influenced by (its own interpretation of) Greek thought, which was preserved in the Roman Empire and the medieval Islamic world during the Medieval West's Dark Ages and transmitted from there by emigration of Greek scholars, courtly marriages, and Latin translations. The Renaissance in the West emerged partly from currents within the Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

      Roman Empire

      The Roman Empire under Trajan in 117 AD.
      Ancient Rome (510 BC-AD 476) was a civilization that grew from a city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula about the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its 12-century existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy, to a republic, to an autocratic empire. It came to dominate Western, Central and Southeastern and the entire area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through conquest using the Roman legions and then through cultural assimilation by giving Roman privileges and eventually citizenship to the whole empire. Nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual decline of the Roman Empire.
      The Western Roman Empire eventually broke into several kingdoms in the 5th century due to civil wars, corruption, and devastating Germanic invasions from such tribes as the Goths, the Franks and the Vandals.
      Plato, Seneca, and Aristotle in a medieval manuscript illustration.
      The Eastern Roman Empire, governed from Constantinople, is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire after 476, the traditional date for the "fall of the Western Roman Empire" and for the subsequent onset of the Early Middle Ages. The Eastern Roman Empire survived the fall of the West, and protected Roman legal and cultural traditions, combining them with Greek and Christian elements, for another thousand years.
      The Roman Empire succeeded the about 500 year-old Roman Republic (510 BC - 1st century BC), which had been weakened by the conflict between Gaius Marius and Sulla and the civil war of Julius Caesar against Pompey and Marcus Brutus. During these struggles hundreds of senators were killed, and the Roman Senate had been refilled with loyalists of the First Triumvirate and later those of the Second Triumvirate.
      Several dates are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to Empire, including the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual roman dictator (44 BC), the victory of Caesar's heir Octavian at the Battle of Actium (September 2, 31 BC), and the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the honorific Augustus. (January 16, 27 BC). Octavian/Augustus officially proclaimed that he had saved the Roman Republic and carefully disguised his power under republican forms: Consuls continued to be elected, tribunes of the plebeians continued to offer legislation, and senators still debated in the Roman Curia. However, it was Octavian who influenced everything and controlled the final decisions, and in final analysis, had the legions to back him up, if it became necessary.
      Roman expansion began long before the state was changed into an empire and reached its zenith under emperor Trajan with the conquest of Dacia in AD 106. During this territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled about 5 900 000 km² (2,300,000 sq.mi.) of land surface and had a population of 100 million. From the time of Caesar to the Fall of the Western Empire, Rome dominated Western Eurasia and the Mediterranean, comprising the majority of its population. Ancient Rome has contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, technology and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today.
      The Roman Empire is where the idea of the "West" began to emerge. Due to Rome's central location at the heart of the Empire, "West" and "East" were terms used to denote provinces West and east of the capital itself. Therefore, Iberia (Portugal and Spain), Gaul (France), Africa (Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) and Britannia were all part of the "West", while Greece, Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt were part of the "East." Italy itself was considered central, until the reforms of Diocletian, when the idea of formally dividing the Empire into true Eastern and Western halves was introduced.
      In 395, the Roman Empire formally split into a Western Roman Empire and an Eastern one, each with their own emperors, capitals, and governments, although ostensibly they still belonged to one formal Empire. The dissolution of the Western half (nominally in 476, but in truth a long process that ended by 500) left only the Eastern Roman Empire alive. For centuries, the East continued to call themselves Eastern Romans, while the West began to think in terms of Latins (those living in the old Western Empire) and Greeks (those inside the Roman remnant to the east).

      Christian schism

      Main article: East–West Schism
      In the early 4th century, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great established the city of Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire included lands east of the Adriatic Sea and bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of the Black Sea. These two divisions of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires were reflected in the administration of the Christian Church, with Rome and Constantinople debating and arguing over whether either city was the capital of Christianity.
      As the Eastern (orthodox) and Western (firstly Catholic, then Protestant as well) churches spread their influence, the line between Eastern and Western Christianity was moving towards one another until it was fully set at the time of Lithuanian Christianisation. The border of Western/Eastern Christianity was moving and its movement was defined by the existence of the Byzantine empire and the fluctuating power and influence of the church in Rome. Now its border is East of Estonian border, via the very West of Ukraine until Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, not to mention enclaves in many countries such as Romania, Northern Albania etc. From Middle Ages until late 20th century religion was decreasingly important in Europe therefore the religious division followed a cultural divide and vice versa.
      Huntington argued that this cultural division still existed during the Cold War as the approximate Western boundary of those countries that were allied with the Soviet Union. Others have fiercely criticized these views arguing they confuse the Eastern Roman Empire with Russia, especially considering the fact that the country that had the most historical roots in Byzantium, Greece, expelled communists and was allied with the West during the Cold War. Still, Russia accepted Eastern Christianity from the Byzantine Empire (by the Patriarch of Constantinople: Photios I) linking Russia very close to the Eastern Roman Empire world. Later on, in 16th century Russia created own religious centre in Moscow. Religion survived in Russia beside severe persecution carrying values alternative to the communist ideology.
      Worldwide distribution of Christianity and other religions
      Under Charlemagne, the Franks established an empire that was recognized as the Holy Roman Empire by the Pope in Rome, offending the Roman Emperor in Constantinople. The crowning of the Emperor by the Pope led to the assumption that the highest power was the papal hierarchy, establishing, until the Protestant Reformation, the civilization of West Christendom. The Latin Rite Christian Church of Western and Central Europe headed by the Pope split with the eastern, Greek-speaking Patriarchates during the Great Schism. Meanwhile, the extent of each expanded, as British Isles, Germanic peoples, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Baltic peoples and the other non-Christian lands of the northwest were converted by the West Church, while Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Caucasus and most of Ukraine were converted by the Eastern Church.
      In this context, the Protestant reformation may be viewed as a schism within the Latin Church. Martin Luther, in the wake of precursors, broke with the pope and with the emperor, backed by many of the German princes. These changes were adopted by the Scandinavian kings. Later, the commoner Jean Cauvin (John Calvin) assumed the religio-political leadership in Geneva, a former ecclesiastical city whose prior ruler had been the bishop. The English King later improvised on the Lutheran model, but subsequently many Calvinist doctrines were adopted by popular dissenters, leading to the English Civil War.
      Both royalists and dissenters colonized North America, eventually resulting in an independent United States of America.

      Colonial "West"

      The Reformation, and consequent dissolution of West Christendom as even a theoretical unitary political body, resulted in the Thirty Years War. The war ended in the Peace of Westphalia, which enshrined the concept of the nation-state and the principle of absolute national sovereignty in international law.
      These concepts of a world of nation-states, coupled with the ideologies of the Enlightenment, the coming of modernity, the Scientific Revolution,[19] and the Industrial Revolution,[20] produced powerful political and economic institutions that have come to influence (or been imposed upon) most nations of the world today. Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most important events in history.[21]
      This process of influence (and imposition) began with the voyages of discovery, colonization, conquest, and exploitation of Spain and Portugal; it continued with the rise of the Dutch East India Company, and the creation and expansion of the British and French colonial empires. Due to the reach of these empires, Western institutions expanded throughout the world. Even after demands for self-determination from subject peoples within Western empires were met with decolonization, these institutions persisted. One specific example was the requirement that post-colonial societies were made to form nation-states (in the Western tradition), which often created arbitrary boundaries and borders that did not necessarily represent a whole nation, people, or culture, and are often the cause of international conflicts and friction even to this day. Though the overt colonial era has passed, Western nations, as comparatively rich, well-armed, and culturally powerful states, still wield a large degree of influence throughout the world.
      Although not part of Western colonization process proper, Western culture entered Japan in the so-called Meiji period (1868–1912). The traditional Japanese society was virtually overturned into an industrial and militarist power like Western countries such as the United Kingdom.

      Cold War context

      During the Cold War, a new definition emerged. The Earth was divided into three "worlds". The First World, analogous in this context to what was called the West, was composed of NATO members and other countries aligned with the United States. The Second World was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence, including the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. It included some Central and Eastern European countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, East Germany, Czechoslovakia (now split into Czech Republic and Slovakia).
      The Third World consisted of countries, many of which were unaligned with either, and important members included India and Yugoslavia; some include the People's Republic of China, though this is disputed,[citation needed] as the People's Republic of China is communist, had friendly relations—at certain times—with the Soviet bloc, and had a significant degree of importance in global geopolitics. Some Third World countries aligned themselves with either the US-led West or the Soviet-led Eastern bloc.
      European trade blocs as of the late 1980s. EEC member states are marked in blue, EFTA – green, and Comecon – red.
      East and West in 1980, as defined by the Cold War. The Cold War had divided Europe politically into East and West, with the Iron Curtain splitting Central Europe.
      There were a number of countries which did not fit comfortably into this neat definition of partition, including Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Ireland, which chose to be neutral. Finland was under the Soviet Union's military sphere of influence (see FCMA treaty) but remained neutral, was not communist, nor was it a member of the Warsaw Pact or Comecon but a member of the EFTA since 1986, and was West of the Iron Curtain. In 1955, when Austria again became a fully independent republic, it did so under the condition that it remain neutral, but as a country to the West of the Iron Curtain, it was in the United States' sphere of influence. Spain did not join the NATO until 1982, towards the end of the Cold War and after the death of the authoritarian Franco.








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