From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
      The history of Western civilization has been undergoing a massive   
   re-interpretation in the name of a historical narrative that meets the   
   requirements of multiculturalism and the promotion of mass   
   immigration-regardless of the established protocols of scholarly   
   trustworthiness and the dictates of documentary evidence. Europe and   
   Asia are now regularly portrayed as "surprisingly similar" as late as   
   1750/1800 in their economic advances, standard of living, scientific   
   knowhow, and overall cultural achievements.   
      
      This state of affairs has been in the making for some decades now,   
   as evident in the formation of numerous programs dedicated to ethnic   
   minorities, the establishment of well-funded organizations, journals,   
   and the continuous conferences taking place every week and month   
   throughout the West promoting every multicultural idea and policy im-   
   aginable. The Western Civilization history course, virtually a   
   standard curriculum offering 40 years ago, has disappeared from   
   American colleges.   
      
       World historians continually boast about their emphasis on   
   "connections" between regions and continents, emphasizing the role of   
   trade, migrations, and environmental events that transcend national   
   boundaries. They also brag about their "scientific" emphasis on the   
   geographical, geological, climatic, economic, and demographic aspects   
   of history, as contrasted to the parochial, cultural, Eurocentric   
   biases of historians who write about the unique features of Western   
   civilization.7 It would make for an interesting essay showing the ways   
   in which this "scientific" emphasis is seriously impaired by the way   
   multicultural historians envision the geological, biological, and   
   human history of the planet as a communal affair wherein all natural   
   things, cultures, and regions are seen as equal partners marching in   
   unison under the guidance of "progressive" elites.   
      
       It would also make for an interesting paper explaining the ways in   
   which politically correct would-be scientific historians employ post-   
   modernist discourses as a means to confuse, detract from, or avoid   
   facing up to the overwhelming reality of the evidence standing in   
   opposition to their poorly supported claims.   
      
      However, my aim here is to bring to light the flagrant manner in   
   which multicultural historians go about misusing sources, misreading   
   books, misinterpreting the evidence, concealing the facts, and overall   
   violating the principles of historical objectivity and respect for   
   scholarship-all in the name of creating a consensus to accept the   
   imagined merits of a multiracial society inside European-created   
   cultures.   
      
      I will do this by examining four recent articles which appeared   
   separately in the Journal of Global History, published by Cambridge   
   University Press, in the flagship Journal of World History, in the   
   distinguished American Historical Review, and in the widely read   
   leftist newspaper The Guardian.   
      
      Hundreds of other publications could have served as well to   
   illustrate this abuse of the historical profession.   
      
     For example, Frank has written that Newtonian science was not   
   peculiar to Europe but "existed and continued to develop elsewhere as   
   well."10 Fernández-Armesto has shown no hesitation to state that the   
   science and philosophy of Copernicus, Kepler, Laplace, Descartes and   
   Bacon was no more original than the neo-Confucian "scientific" revival   
   of the seventeenth century-both were "comparable in kind."11   
      
       in his recent book, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global   
   Economic Divergence, 1600-1850 (2011) has rejected the "older" claim   
   that Europe possessed superior markets, rationality, science or   
   institutions, tracing the divergence instead to different competitive   
   and ecological pressures structured by global dynamics.13   
      
      O'Brien accepts the idea that world history should be the study of   
   "connections in the human community," the story of humanity's "common   
   experience," an idea which precludes seeing historical transformation   
   in terms of the "internal logics" of nations or particular   
   civilizations. The result is one of the most convoluted, awkward,   
   improperly documented papers I have read.   
      
    16 He mentioned the names of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, Quesnay,   
   Turgot, Miller, Hegel, and other Enlightenment thinkers known for   
   their "universal" approaches, but then summarily dismissed them for   
   their "superficial" discussions of economic matters.   
      
    O'Brien never manages to find a solid source either refuting the old   
   Eurocentric explanation or demonstrating that Asia nurtured anything   
   close to Newtonian mechanics, apart from some generalities about   
   "reciprocal comparisons," a reference to Arun Bala's unspecified   
   "dialogue of civilizations," and a citation of a unscholarly book and   
   of one refuted book.   
      
       We are thus privy to a very strange paper which boasts about the   
   superiority of global history, yielding the perspective that "much of   
   the modern debate on the Scientific Revolution looks Eurocentric,   
   provincial, and obsessed with local detail,"20 but which relies almost   
   entirely on Eurocentric sources, and is perforce obligated to conclude   
   that the rise of modern science was a European-generated phenomenon,   
   but which nevertheless still frames this revolution in global terms.   
      
       O'Brien's paper takes us through a historiographical journey of   
   some of the key books published since roughly the 1990s. Nearly all   
   these books were written by specialists in European history; they are   
   not products of a globalist approach. World historians have yet to   
   produce anything that can justify a global view of modern science;   
   accordingly, O'Brien has no option-unless he foregoes the act of   
   writing about this subject-but to rely on the very Eurocentric sources   
   he otherwise derides. This startling contradiction results in one of   
   the most tortuous, muddling, and diffident papers I have read. It is   
   worth going over the details of this historiographical paper both to   
   educate readers about the state of the research about a momentous   
   revolution in the history of Europe, and to alert them about the   
   strategies globalists are employing in their quest to dissolve   
   Europe's identity and sense of accomplishment.   
      
      They pay attention only to those cultural factors that can be shown   
   to have brought about an economic outcome. The Greek invention of   
   philosophical reasoning and citizenship politics, the medieval   
   invention of universities and the seven liberal arts, the Copernican   
   Revolution and the Cartographic Revolution, do not qualify, on their   
   own, as part of this debate.   
      
   Never mind that this book systematically arranges "data that meet   
   scientific standards of reliability and validity" for the purpose of   
   evaluating "as facts" the accomplishments of individuals and   
   countries across the world in the arts and sciences (by calculating   
   the amount of space allocated to these individuals in reference works,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)