Jack Goldstone’s Why Europe? is a book which tries to explain the reason of the “rise” of Europe as an indisputable fact that had happened in the world after the 19th century. The whole book is based on a presupposition that Europe (also including the US) had been more advanced and ahead in the world civilization since the last two century, and the short question “why Europe”, should mean why the modernization of Europe had come first in human history. Undoubtedly, Goldstone had recognized this fact, but he disagrees with some conventional interpretations of the past western historians upon this phenomenon.
To reverse a common misconception that the west had been always richer than the east in the past, the book starts with the climate in both Europe and Asia, pointing out that the natural factors were actually more favorable for the eastern agriculture due to the monsoon system. This simple introduction provides a fundamental backing, when he further elaborates on how the east was much more prosperous in almost every aspect of society before the 16th century. “How did Europe catch up and why was it able to eventually surpass Asia in the 19th century?”, this is the central question he raised in the very beginning of the book. Besides, Goldstone also indicates there is a noticeable patterns of change in history, in which he calls it the “up-and-down” cycle, which had confined the society from “further and proceeded flourishing”. He argues that this cycle is applicable to the population, the urbanization, the price of consumables, and the people’s income (which are all indicators for the extent of a society’s prosperity) before the mid 19th century, as there were constantly periodic upswings for them, but were soon followed by a subsequent decline. And this was the reason which hindered the process of “modernization”, as there had not been a crucial “break through” for people to achieve a higher living standard in the past two-thousands year. The wide range of data that he enumerates, makes this argument as well as the overall picture quite convincing for readers.
Regarding the rise of Europe, there were many explanations provided by scholars which stressed on the “unique qualities” of the Europeans as the cause of this outcome. Some of the most prominent say centred around the difference of religion, trade, family, states, laws, taxes and revolution between west and east. For the religion of west and east, they proposed that the former is interested in controlling nature while the latter does not, which made the believers of the former have a stronger tendency to explore the world geographically, as well as acquire practical knowledge and making material progress. It also stressed on the competition between Christianity and Protestantism, which they thought could foster the technological development in Europe. However, Goldstone challenges this point of view as there were also religious competitions (like Confucianism and Buddhism) in the East Asia. Most importantly, if the rise of Europe was really owing to the virtue of Christianity, why the continent had been lagged behind Asia for a thousand year, given the long history of this religion? For trade, some scholars assumed that the European had always been the better traders. And what matter most is that they could enrich themselves by colonialism since their discovery of the New World in 1492. In other words, “robbing other people to make themselves wealthy”. For the former, Goldstone had refuted it effortlessly with flourishing trading history of the east, such as using the sail of Zheng He from China as an evidence, as Zheng’s fleet had already traveled across the Indian Ocean and reached East Africa in 1414, which was much more earlier and large-scale than the Columbus’ sail. For the latter, he indicates that the most exploitative countries in colonialism (Spain and Portugal) did not really benefit in long term from the extra slavery labor, as both of them had declined in the 19th century. Goldstone also rebuts the point that the western society had a better population control than the east, as he points out that the Chinese society had their own way to keep the population down by methods like abortion along with the high mortality of infants. From the above, we can see that Goldstone strongly disagrees to use the first three as the “qualities” to interpret the rise of the West.
For the remaining four subjects, it seems he had a lesser hostile attitude, though apparently he did not totally agree with what many had said in the past either. For the first one, past scholars liked to argue that the European states were more scattered and full of competition (and also credited themselves as being similar to the Greek states), while in Asia it was mainly dominated by great empires which were stagnated in innovation. In respect to this, Goldstone reminds that Asian Empires had also undergone similar extent of competition, just that the size of their states were much larger than the European’s. For law, Goldstone specifically recognized the common law tradition of Britain, saying that it contributed significantly in confining the power of the monarch, as cases were determined by a jury but not a single judge.
After countering with all these existing claims upon the rise of west, Goldstone finally pointed out that the de facto rise was Britain but not the other European countries. He declares the most important reason for it to rise was its culture of innovation, spread and constant exchange of information, as well as an intimate linkage between science and industrial production. He mentions after 1500, “a series of discoveries forced thinkers to seek an escape from ancient religious traditions of knowledge”, which made scholars started to use mathematical and empirical approaches to demonstrate things. Also, this innovation culture was cultivated by the atmosphere of religious tolerance as well as pluralism in Britain at that time.
In my opinion, there is not much problems for the main body of Goldstone’s argument, as most of his evidences or his “discovery” actually is not that controversial in my point of view, especially for the context that in the past the east was more prosperous than the west as well as the importance of science in Europe’s modernization. The causation is also not difficult to follow. However, I found some of his generalization quite rash, especially for the religion part. To my surprise, he directly puts Confucianism into the category of religion, without single word stating their difference. It seems he is a bit too eager to provide an overview for the world, while committing the same mistake that he had criticized his fellows, which is “knowing so much about the west while ignoring the detail of the east”. In page 121, he even asserts that “by the early 1700s, all of the great Eurasian civilizations had long followed one or more of the major salvation religions launched in the axial age...”, in which straightly links Confucianism with the concept “salvation”. First of all, the word “religion” came from the Latin religio. If we look at its classical interpretation by Cicero in De natura deorum,
“those... who carefully reviewed and so to speak retraced all the lore of ritual were called ‘religious’ from relegere (to retrace or re-read), like 'elegant' from eligere (to select), ‘diligent’ from diligere (to care for), ‘intelligeny’ from intellegere (to understand); for all these words contain the same sense of ‘picking out’ (legere) that is present in ‘religious’”. [1]
It seems religio contains only the meaning of “carefully reread the lore of ritual” and “select” in itself. But if we trace back a few lines earlier, it says “it is our duty to revere and worship these gods under the names which custom has bestowed upon them. But the best and also the purest, holiest and most pious way of worshiping the gods is ever to venerate them with purity, sincerity and innocence both of thought and of speech. For religion has been distinguished from superstition not only by philosophers but by our ancestors”[2], which clearly shows the connection between those rituals and “god”. However, if we re-examine the classics of Confucianism, there have never been a concept of “god” like the western Christianity or the Muslim does. In fact, there is a well-known dialogue between Confucius and his student Chi Lu in the Analects,
“Chi Lu asked about serving the spirits. Confucius said, “If you can't yet serve men, how can you serve the spirits?” Lu said, “May I ask about death?” Confucius said, “If you don't understand what life is, how will you understand death?””[3]
In the orthodoxy of Confucianism, it seldom mentions about things that would happen in after life, which have reflected also plainly in another famous line of the Analects, “the master never discussed strange phenomena, physical exploits, disorder or ghost stories”.[4] As scholar Jana S. Rosker had argued in her article, “Confucianism is not a religion in the Western sense but a discourse that represents both a practical moral teaching and an abstract philosophy of immanent transcendence”[5], we can see that the categorization of Confucianism by Goldstone is merely a rash statement for his own convenience. And would there be any fundamental disparities in nature between the western religion and this Chinese traditional thought which might have brought a whole different outcome in history is something that still needed to be further explored.
10 Dec, 2018
Footnotes
[1] Cicero, De natura deorum II, (H. Rackham translated., the Loeb Classical Library, 1933), 28. Accessed from (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Natura_Deorum/2A*.html?fbclid=IwAR0IYJyHn5ntPGm61GiTr8BzaIV_7WsvCVLu8WEFU78SwOvOwWiSgSHswtI)
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Analects of Confucius. Muller Charles A. translated. Xianjin eleven. Accessed from (http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/analects.html)
[4] Ibid. Shu er seven.
[5] Rosker Jana S., Is Confucianism a religion? Modern Confucian theories on the ethical nature of classical discourses, Asian Philosophy, Vol.27(4), 2017, pp.279-291
Cicero, De natura deorum II, H. Rackham translated., the Loeb Classical Library, 1933. Accessed from http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Natura_Deorum/2A*.html?fbclid=IwAR0IYJyHn5ntPGm61GiTr8BzaIV_7WsvCVLu8WEFU78SwOvOwWiSgSHswtI
Rosker Jana S., Is Confucianism a religion? Modern Confucian theories on the ethical nature of classical discourses, Asian Philosophy, Vol.27(4), 2017, pp.279-291
The Analects of Confucius. Muller Charles A. translated. Accessed from http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/analects.html
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