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Title: Europe and the People Without History by Eric R. Wolf ISBN: 0-520-04898-9 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: February, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Chapter at a Time
Comment: This is a looong read but it is well worth it in the end. I found that taking this book chapter by chapter was the best way to read, because sometimes you find yourself reading the chapter's twice. Wolf offers an insighful and opinionated view of European and Imperial history. I would advise anyone who is interested in history and modern political relations, its a great overview of well....everything that happened in European history involving trade, imperialism, and colonial relations.
Rating: 5
Summary: An interconnected history
Comment: Wolf breaks the paradigm that the world ever was full of isolated pockets of civilized people void of contact with others. By tracing routes of fur trade, slave trade, early movements of people, materials and ideas, Wolf examines the world before Europe "civilized" the world. He is able to show how contact with European traders change the lifestyles of groups of people who already had fully developed cultural, linguistic and political traditions. How trade, bureaucracy, military force and violence influenced the people with whom the traders contacted illustrates the fact that "globalization" is hardly a recent phenomenon.
This provides the background for understanding the current changes in the transition of ideas in the world. Without Wolf's excellent work, it becomes possible to get lulled into the trap that the "Internet" changed the world. In fact, it did not provide contact for people where none previously existed. Electronic media does provide a new medium by which the transfer of ideas can take place. It changes the nature of that transmission, but it does not create a transmission where none previously existed.
Rating: 4
Summary: History and Power
Comment: Europe and the People Without History describes the very process by which capitalism has spread and permeated throughout the world. Wolf's narrative starts from AD 1400 and ends in the 20th century. He traces the historical events associated with the expansion of European commerce, paying extra attention to the people ignored by traditional history, those who either resisted to the death or toiled under the drudgery of capitalism.
Instead of viewing nations or "tribes" (a problematic term in anthropology) as isolated and coherent entities, Wolf is concerned with the international and intercultural processes that is continually creating new nations, new cultures, new identities. In turn Wolf warns against the reification of complex processes or elements into one seemingly unified term. I find this perspective especially valuable. Generalizations and broad categories must be used with caution, since words and concepts merely reflect aspects of reality, but they themselves are not to be equated with reality.
Another merit of Wolf is his world systems approach. He analyzes world history as a system in which disparate and distant social groups can have important influence on each other. This analytic method rejects the notion that countries are independent and self-contained systems, but instead they are interrelatetd in the larger global processes of change.
Finally, readers should pay extra attention to the concluding chapter. It discusses the nature of ideology, about how it is formed and how it is perpetuated. Wolf reminds the readers that common terms and categories are not innocent words - they are the offspring of constant construction, deconstruction, and redefinition of power relations.
In short, Europe and the People without History will impact the minds of those who have not been exposed to the history of capitalist and colonial expansion. It will force people living in developed nations to reconsider the historical source of their affluency and wealth. Despite the dispassionate and objective tone used in Wolf's analysis of global history, I cannot help but read the book as a somber epitaph to the silent victims of colonization and globalization.
- Malcolm Godwin
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Title: Pathways of Power: Building an Anthropology of the Modern World by Eric R. Wolf, Sydel Silverman, Aram Yengoyan ISBN: 0520223349 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies by Marcel Mauss, W. D. Halls ISBN: 039332043X Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: August, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 ISBN: 0195067746 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1991 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History by Sidney W. Mintz ISBN: 0140092331 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History, and Political Economy by William Roseberry ISBN: 0813514460 Publisher: Rutgers University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1989 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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