Leiden University


Because Ricardo Duchesne was criticising an article I did not read, I took a
good look at Jerry Bentley's essays "Shapes of World History in
Twentieth-Century Scholarship"  (http://www.riseofthewest.net/thinkers/bentley01.htm) too which Duchesne claims to be "hardly polemical and may very well be read as a fair treatment of the unfolding of world history as a "professional" field of study in the twentieth century."

And I must admit I have grave difficulties with it too, which are however of a
completely different nature than those of Duchesne. For what strikes me in the
article (and I can only hope, but I don't have good expectations, that the same
may also not be true for the book of Patrick Manning on World History) is the
USA-centrism of this essay rather than any Afro - or Asia-centrism which
Duchesne manages to discern. What I find worrying about this article is that it
may in fact fairly accurately reflect the current realities in the World in
which cultural exchanges between the USA and the rest of the World have by and
large become a one-way exchange only; the rest of the World is flooded with
US-culture whereas the culture of the rest of the World has no impact on the
USA's culture whatsoever.

Compare, for example, the situation on the hit-charts in the ninety-sixties
when hit charts in Europe as much as in the US were dominated by a well-known
British group, the Beatles, with the situation at present where all the radio
waves in Europe are
completely dominated by American music, to such an extent that to even hear
music from Amsterdam on the radio in Amsterdam you have to tune in to illegal
'pirate' stations, whereas in the US not a single non-American singer will be
played on the air at all. - Anybody of the readers ever heard of Neena,
Kraftwerk, Ramstein or Doe Maar which are big acts in Germany or the
Netherlands respectively ?. - Or compare for example the situation in the
movies in the sixties when American audiences regularly watched Fellini or
Bergman with the situation at present, where practically the only way you can
still see a non-American movie is by looking at a Hollywood rerun of a 
European original. Thus, for example, the only way you can now see Andre
Tarkovski's classic film 'Solaris' is through an  - I'm afraid much inferior-
Hollywood - remake of it.

And, sadly, I'm afraid 'World History' threatens - if I read Jerry Bentley - to
become somewhat similar to Pop-Music or the movies in that either European
(including in this case even British) contributions are entirely overlooked or
re-cycled as 'American' contributions.

Thus, for example, after an extensive treatment of, indeed, two Europeans who
are, however, long dead; namely Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee, Jerry
Bentley makes the claim that 'philosophy of history died out after the sixties'
except for the work of Ernst Voegelin (an emigree from Austria to the US and
probably only mentioned because he is located in the US) obviously - since
philosophy of history was not the American forte anyway.

Besides noting that Bentley manages to skip by far the most important
philosopher of history of the early twentieth century - because, I'm afraid,
his work has not been much translated and is therefore largely ignored in the
USA - namely the great Benedetto Croce, for Europe (and Latin America) I think
rather the opposite is true. Precisely since before that the shadow of Toynbee
- and in France Henry Berr - loomed over the field the ninety-sixties and
ninety-seventies have seen a prodigious outpouring of philosophy of history,
which I'm afraid is ignored by Bentley since it was written by and large in
French and German. But I do not see how you can ignore the work of Michel
Foucault or of Paul Ricoer in France and - above all - how can you argue that
'philosophy of history' - is dead, when the late twentieth century actually
witnessed the completion of one of the greatest projects in the philosophy of
history - which must surely rank along with Hegel - in the prodigious scholarly
output of Juergen Habermas ?

It worries me too that Bentley is apparently even unaware of European work from
Britain; since the treatment of the social scientists centres entirely on two
American schools; modernization theory and dependency and appears to be
entirely unaware of recent work in Britain. - Sadly, for, in fact, Michael
Mann's ongoing 'History of Power' is the grandest effort in building a general
theory of history since Max Weber.

Likewise in treating 'modernisation' theory Bentley does indeed treat one
British author, E.L. Jones, but by far the most sophisticated work in
modernisation theory was not done in the USA or Britain but was, I think, the
debate on the so-called 'Deutsche Sonderweg' - associated in particular with
the 'Bielefelder Schule' in the ninety-seventies - which if obviously very much
concerned with Germany - yet produced a highly sophisticated comparative
literature on twentieth century and nineteenth century World History too. Such
as, for example, the impressive comparative work on 'bureaucracies in
industrialised societies' associated in particular with Juergen Kocka (see, for
example, his 'Angestellte zwischen Faschismus und  Demokratie. Zur politischen
Sozialgeschichte der Angesatellten (Gottingen, 1977)), or for  example, the
work done by Wolfgang Mommsen on the links between industrial growth and
imperialism in several western European societies (see e.g. his essay in W.
Mommsen (ed.), Imperialism and After; Continuities and Discontinuities (London,
1980). Note again; most of this work was done in the seventies and eighties way
after Vietnam and that in Germany the popularity of modernization-theory had a
lot to do with the German perception of Nazi-ism.

Dealing with what may roughly be called leftist historians again Bentley
entirely confines his attention to 'dependencia' theory. He thus ignores the
whole immense literature produced by Eastern European and Soviet 'Diamat'
(Dialectical Materialism) since World War I. Now, USA historians may be quite
ignorant of 'Diamat' - mostly misnaming it 'Communist doctrine' or 'Soviet
Marxism' - but to ignore 'Diamat' in a treatment of twentieth century world
history is like treating 'the shape of Christianity in the twentieth century' -
and then only confining oneself to Protestantism, either because the Roman
Catholic church uses Italian and Latin rather than English or because you do
not like the view of the Roman Catholic church on abortion or because Catholics
are a minority in the USA.

Similarly Bentley does not treat 'Diamat' because of a mixture of similar
motives I'm afraid; it's not in English, he does not endorse Communism and it
was the view of a very small minority in the USA anyway. But 'Diamat' has
dominated the writing of World History in the twentieth century beyond Britain
and the US, as was perfectly obvious to Toynbee and Rostow, who both
explicitly conceived their work in opposition to 'Diamat' - Is it necessary to
recall that the most famous book of Rostow is not called  'the stages of
economic growth; A NON-COMMUNIST MANIFESTO' for nothing ? 'Diamat' produced
undoubtedly a lot of bad history, but then I do not think Oswald Spengler was a
great historian either yet why treat Spengler - who was always a
quite marginal figure - at length and not even mention Diamat ? Diamat namely
produced arguably a lot of good history too - thus, for example, the work of
what was more or less the approved party historian of the GDR's SED Juergen
Kuczynski on the history of the labouring class under capitalism - which is by
far the most extensive - and I daresay in many ways the most sophisticated -
comparative work ever produced on the labour-class in the US, Europe, China and
India (Die Geschichte der Lage der Arbeiter unter dem Kapitalismus, Akademie
Verlag Berlin 1962 -, 37 volumes). Again, since World War II - then still
communist - Poland has produced a brilliant historiography with historians like
Jerzy Topolski and Witold Kula.

Moving on to the 'professional historians' (although Kuczynski, Kula or
Topolski are, to be sure, formidable professional historians) I can understand
that Bentley pays considerable attention to McNeill - who is an American - and
yet why he does entirely ignore - except in a few passing references - the
'Annales' revolution, except for a few token references to Fernand Braudel ?
And by then labelling him a 'World system theorists' he effectively shoe-laces
the 'Annales' in World system theory. Braudel is so-to-say recycled to an
American world-system theorist, much like Solaris becomes a Hollywood movie,
and I have to say the American version is likewise much inferior to the French
original.

Because Braudel framed his borrowings from World system theory in the brilliant
concept of the 'longue duree', which was both brilliant and revolutionary since
Braudel understood the history of the 'longue duree' precisely as the kind of
slow moving environmental history, which was invented by Braudel during World
War II and not at all - as some American historians now often think - somewhere
in the US in the eighties. However, Braudel superimposed on this a middle and
short term and the big problem in environmental history on the moment is that
it's all longue duree but that it is extremely difficult to show how this
impacts on the short term - a problem Braudel already addressed (and solved!)
in 1949.

To confine 'professional world history' since 1950 to McNeill strikes me really
as blatantly unfair to Lucien Febvre or Marc Bloch who had long before McNeill
pleaded for 'une histoire a part entier' which not only meant all spheres of
life but also all human societies - in fact, Bloch and Febvre were bitterly
condemned by some of their contemporaries not because they worked on economic
history, that was perfectly acceptable, but rather because they did not want to
privilige the history of Europe. Is it really
necessary to recall that Marc Bloch already extensively studied Japanese
feudalism and that Lucien Febvre's 'La terre et l'evolution humain' is a world
historic work pur sang? The 'Annales' ran articles on non-European societies as
early as 1937.

And far from the study of world history in France dating only from the 1970's
(as Bentley apparently thinks) I would recommend readers to take a good look at
the 'Nouvelle Clio' series - mostly published by the Annales-historians in the
ninety - sixties - which already had many volumes dealing with non-European
issues (and two impressive general treatments of European expansion by Mauro
and Chaunu.)

I find this apparent ignorance of the 'Annales' work throughout Bentley's
article particularly disturbing in the paragraph which deals with large scale
economic and social change since that was exactly the theme the 'Annales'
historians specialised in since the ninety-forties in the famous 'ports, routes
et trafiques' publications of the SEVPEN. I do not see, for example, how
Bentley can write on the sixteenth century world economic conjuncture and the
Atlantic space - mentioning Curtin - and then entirely skip the work of Pierre
Chaunu. After all the very aim of his huge 'Seville et l'Atlantique' (Paris
1957-1959, 9 volumes) was precisely on the one hand
to pin down the 'world historic economic conjuncture' of the sixteenth century
and on the other hand to study the Atlantic 'Mediterranean' (as the Annalistes
used to say); I don't know what others think but IMHO the first volume of
'Seville et l' Atlantique' gives a sense of the Atlantic space like no other
book. Note that all that was written some twenty to thirty years before Curtin.
Moreover 'Seville et l'Atlantique' already contained long paragraphs on
biological exchanges - again, a theme on which the 'Annales' had already been
working ever since Bloch too.

And what I think is the most brilliant work on biological, economic, social and
cultural consequences of the European expansion - and based upon a huge
knowledge of the original sources, very different, I'm sorry to say, from
Crosby - was written by a Portuguese historian associated with the Annales (and
is only available in Portuguese) namely Vitorinho Magelhaes Godinho's
Os descubrimentos e a economia mundial (First published in Lisbon in 1981, 4
volumes) (the French version, L'economie de
l'empire Portugais is only a partial summary). Note, again, that Vitorinho
Magelhaes' Godinho spent nearly hundred pages on the diffusion of American
crops in the world, all of which was written many years before Crosby.
Furthermore, while I do not want to diminish the importance of McNeill's work
or that of the other historians mentioned unlike the great French, Portuguese
and Spanish historians of European expansion of the Annales school, such as
Frederic Mauro, Louis Dermigny, Ramon Carande or Bartholome
Benassar they did not use any original sources. (Not a single archive used in
any of the books mentioned by Bentley - compare that with the dozens of pages,
merely listing archive numbers, in the fore-mentioned Annales historians.)

Furthermore, to continue; much of what J. Bentley argues are 'new directions'
strike me as 'old directions' since the Annales historians had worked on the
themes mentioned since the late sixties already. Thus, for example, the
anthropological approach which Bentley argues is a new approach strikes me as
quite an old one. Something Annales historians have been
practising since the ninety sixties. It is very obvious, for example, that the
various examples Bentley quote are all more or less in debt to such studies as
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie 'Montaillou Village Occitain' - and speaking of Le Roy
Ladurie is it really necessary to point out that Le Roy Ladurie already
published a book on world climate since the year 1000 in 1974 too (Histoire du
climat depuis l'anne mil, Paris); an other theme World Historians now often
think was only recently invented in the USA ? -

Again, how can Bentley claim that the study of ethnic inter-relations in the
Americas is a new approach and then subsequently only quote American historians
whereas it is obvious that all these historians own a heavy debt to in
particular Nathaniel Wachtel's 1973 study La vision des  vaincus: Les Indiens
du Perou devant la conquete espagnole, or how can he ignore the classic work of
Tzvetan Todorov (La conquete de 'l Amerique, La question de l'autre (Paris
1981)) on this issue - if, in fact, most of the vast literature on 'the other'
'othering' etc. now being published in the USA is ultimately based on Todorov
while almost habitually ignoring his basic contribution (though of course
Todorov derived his terminology from Emmanuel Levinas in turn).

Some further examples of US-centrism; as to the role of Africans in the making
of the Atlantic world why mention, for example, a slim volume (except, of
course, because he is a colleague) by John Thornton and then ignore the huge
and absolutely basic tomes of Pierre Verger, based on a life time of archive
and anthropological research in both Africa and Brazil on precisely the same
themes, slave trade and the trenasmission of African cults across the Atlantic
(strarting from his 1957 thesis 'Notes sur le culte de Orica et Vodun a Bahia
et la Cote d'Ivoire (Dacar) ?

Again, on the issue of how Europeans evaluated foreign people Juergen
Osterhammel's recent huge 'Die Entzauberung Asiens; Europa und die Asiatische
Reiche im achtzehnte Jahrhundert' (Goettingen, 2000) is absolutely basic but
ignored (and at their peril) by US-historians. At their peril since it is an
absolutely essential contribution to World History; it is far more thorough
than any contribution on European images of the 'other' from the USA. To this I
might perhaps add that the only recent large overall and in most ways by far
also the best overall study on European expansion at large since the fifteenth
century is Wolfgang
Reinhard's 'Geschichte der europaeische Expansion', 4 vols. (Stuttgart
1983-1990). Or for example I might mention here the comparative work of Rudolf
von Albertini on European colonial rule in the nineteenth century (English
translation; European
Colonial Rule 1880-1940; The Impact of the West on India, Southeast Asia and
Africa (Oxford, 1982). A propos; as a piece of Leiden parochialism it might
perhaps be added that Henk Wesseling here has also just published a general
history of colonialism in the nienteenth century called 'Europa's Koloniale
eeuw; De Europese koloniale rijken in de negentiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 2003)'.

Finally, as to the so-called third 'new direction' is it really necessary to
point out that Bentley entirely ignores in his survey of writings of gender or
women's history the two largest projects in the field namely the five-volume G.
Duby (ed.) 'Histoire des femme dans l'Occident' (Paris 1991-1995) and above all
the massive volumes of the 'Histoire de la vie privee' ? - all of which are set
up as at least European history although they, of course, in practice mainly
deal with France.

I hope I have made my point but take a final good look at the bibliography; I
do not see a SINGLE book quoted there which is not in English. Bentley does
nowhere say he will only consider writers from the USA; instead he claims to
give an overview of 'World History'. But as this essay now stands World History
apparently threatens entirely to become yet an other one-way street in which
writers from Europe do consider the views of the Americans but in which the
Americans ignore the views of any living European (unless he writes in English
and was published in the USA).

I hope this e-mail by the way also settles an old discussion of two years ago
on why World History appears to be all in English - it isn't; the simple fact
is that Americans do not read it unless it is published in the USA and they
miss a lot of very important work because of this, and threaten often to
re-invent the wheel by ignoring European scholarship.

But then they're of course, not alone ... Kraftwerk was, for example, the
founding group of 'Techno' and American hard-rock fans certainly miss something
if they have never heard Ramstein play ...

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