The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community by William H. McNeillReview by: L. S. StavrianosThe American Historical Review, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Apr., 1964), pp. 713-715Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1845786 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 06:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.121 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:23:16 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

* * * * Rjeviews of 3ooks * * * *

General THE RISE OF THE WEST: A HISTORY OF THE HUMAN COM-

MUNITY. By William H. McNeill. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. I963. Pp. Xviii, 829. $I2.50.)

THIS work of major significance deserves the attention particularly of those his- torians who have had reservations about the rationale or feasibility of world history.

The fact that a globally oriented history of mankind should have appeared at this particular time is in itself noteworthy. It represents a return to the his- toriographic tradition of the Enlightenment, when the idea of universal history fitted in with the prevailing views regarding progress. Prior to that period Western historians had been constrained by the need to fit all historical events into a rigid Biblical context. The break-through came with the publication of Voltaire's Essai sur les Mceurs et l'Esprit des Nations (1752), and the multivolume Histoire Universelle (1736-65), both of which dealt with China, India, and America, as welt as with the traditional regions of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. This interest in global history proved short-lived, disappearing with the French Revolution. One reason was the development of a more scientific attitude toward history, which set standards of reliable factual information that could not then be met in dealing with the Asian civilizations. At least as important was the militant nationalism of the nineteenth century, which emphasized national as against the earlier cosmopolitan history. This restricted frame of reference pre- vailed, at least until the First World War and to a large degree until the Second. The past few decades, however, have witnessed the beginnings of renewed in- terest in universal history. The accelerating tempo of historical research has vastly enlarged our fund of dependable data, while the impact of two world wars and of the scientific-technological revolution has compelled general acceptance of the fact of a "One World." Symptomatic of the new trend were the Outline of History by H. G. Wells (I9I9), The Great Cultural Traditions by Ralph Turner (0941), and the current UNESCO publications, Journal of World History and History of Mankind. McNeill's contribution represents a long stride forward in the same direction, based as it is on the latest scholarship, and encompassing the entire "history of the human community."

Though not explicitly stated, McNeill's approach is based on the propositions that human history is more than the sum of the histories of separate civilizations, that there is a cohesion transcending peoples and continents, and that this cohesion

7I3

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.121 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:23:16 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

714 Reviews of Books arises from cultural diffusion. Since Paleolithic times Eurasia has constituted a historical unit and continuum. Despite the particularism of local cultures and civilizations, innovations that aroused admiration or fear soon spread from their place of origin to other regions, eventually provoking throughout Eurasia new responses of rejection, imitation, or partial adaptation. This process of initiative and response reached significant proportions with the Middle Eastern Neolithic revolution that diffused agriculture through much of Eurasia and thereby laid the basis for the development of civilizations in geographically favored regions. Hence Part I of this study is entitled "The Era of Middle Eastern Dominance to 500 B.c." and is concerned with diffusion from the Middle East until the emerg- ence and crystallization of the four major Eurasian civilizations: the Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, and European.

Part II, entitled "Eurasian Cultural Balance 500 B.C.-I500 A.D.," analyzes the autonomous development of the four great civilizations in their respective regions. The balance among them was periodically strained by powerful interregional movements such as Hellenism, Christianity, Buddhism, and the Arab-Moslem and Turkish-Mongol eruptions. Nevertheless the essential autonomy of the individual civilizations was preserved. Their borrowings were selective, and there was no substantial or lasting preponderance of one over the others.

Part III, "The Era of Western Dominance, I500 A.D. to the Present," discusses the fateful disruption of the Eurasian balance resulting from the expansion of Western Europe overseas. What had been the isolated Western fringe of Eurasia now became the controlling center of global sea lanes, influencing and being influenced by every human society accessible from the ocean. The Eastern civiliza- tions, which for millenniums had confronted the mobile nomads of the steppes and deserts, now were outflanked by equally mobile invaders from the sea. The technological and political superiority of these invaders overcame resistance in both the Western and Eastern Hemispheres and imposed the unprecedented hegemony of one region over the entire world. Hence the tide, The Rise of the West, which the author describes as "a shorthand description of the upshot of the history of the human community to date."

The consistent and rigorous global orientation of this work yields many exciting insights, such as the comparison of the repercussions following the closure of the Eurasian ecumene in the second century B.c. and the closure of the global ecumene after the sixteenth century A.D., the comparison of the Southeast Asian territories influenced by India and the European territories influenced by the Roman Empire, the unique characteristics of West European civilization in the late Middle Ages that contributed to the ensuing global hegemony, and the con- clusion that we "should count ourselves fortunate to live in one of the great ages of the world."

A universal history such as this is vulnerable to the specialists who can point to what they regard as procrustean manipulations or to errors of fact or interpre- tation. I have my own list of queries and complaints, particularly regarding the

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.121 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:23:16 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Artz: From the Renaissance to Romanticism 7I5

extent to which the author seems to have allowed his perfectly justified title to affect his treatment of the twentieth century. This century is surely witnessing the decline of the West in certain respects, and its triumph in others; indeed the two processes are interrelated and mutually stimulating. McNeill recognizes this in a footnote on his final page. If this book had appeared in I914, or even in 1939, the process of decline could have been relegated to a footnote. In I963 it suggests that the author has become the prisoner of his title and that his subtitle might have been a more functional, if less striking, description of his work. Also the banal and frequently confusing pictograms have no place in a study of such sophistication and stature.

In conclusion, the significance of McNeill's contribution must be underscored. World history hitherto has been left largely to amateurs or to philosophers of history such as Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. In their search for patterns and general laws they treated the rise and fall of "civilizations" as isolated and self-sufficient events. McNeill has provided here an alternative to this ahistorical disregard of time and space and in doing so has demonstrated that world history is a viable and intellectually respectable field of study.

North western University L. S. STAVRIANOS

Artz: From the Renaissance to Romanticism 7I5

extent to which the author seems to have allowed his perfectly justified title to affect his treatment of the twentieth century. This century is surely witnessing the decline of the West in certain respects, and its triumph in others; indeed the two processes are interrelated and mutually stimulating. McNeill recognizes this in a footnote on his final page. If this book had appeared in I914, or even in 1939, the process of decline could have been relegated to a footnote. In I963 it suggests that the author has become the prisoner of his title and that his subtitle might have been a more functional, if less striking, description of his work. Also the banal and frequently confusing pictograms have no place in a study of such sophistication and stature.

In conclusion, the significance of McNeill's contribution must be underscored. World history hitherto has been left largely to amateurs or to philosophers of history such as Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. In their search for patterns and general laws they treated the rise and fall of "civilizations" as isolated and self-sufficient events. McNeill has provided here an alternative to this ahistorical disregard of time and space and in doing so has demonstrated that world history is a viable and intellectually respectable field of study.

North western University L. S. STAVRIANOS

FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO ROMANTICISM: TRENDS IN STYLE IN ART, LITERATURE, AND MUSIC, 1300-I830. By Frederick B. Artz. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. I962. Pp. viii, 311. $5.oo.)

THIs is a richly informative book proceeding from years spent in the study and teaching of subjects pertaining to the culture of Europe. It is probably as excellent a book as can be written to give substance and illustration to the theme that the arts have a significant history only in the sense of a history of styles, and that an analysis and description of styles-herein named in chronological sequence "Early Renaissance," "High Renaissance," "Mannerism," "Baroque," "Neo-Classicism," and "Romanticism"-will reveal that painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and music have features and qualities common to one of these prevailing styles and reveal these usually within the same time periods. If not a pure intellectual history, it is a beautifully wrought intellectualized history, bespeaking a love of the arts and revealing a knowledge of the opera of painters, sculptors, and archi- tects, of masters in the various genres of literature, and of composers of music ranging from Landino in the fourteenth century to Beethoven and Schubert in the nineteenth. There are paragraphs and pages that communicate the excitement and relish of the author in building a formal dwelling house for the creative minds of modern Europe; there is often apt and charming and economical characteriza- tion of artistic achievements. Even so, the book's tendency is organizational and encyclopedic, and its matter is best savored in short samplings. Further, it must be said that what is most truly vital and essential in art cannot be given in this or any textbook of styles in the arts. In a college course devoted to intellectual

FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO ROMANTICISM: TRENDS IN STYLE IN ART, LITERATURE, AND MUSIC, 1300-I830. By Frederick B. Artz. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. I962. Pp. viii, 311. $5.oo.)

THIs is a richly informative book proceeding from years spent in the study and teaching of subjects pertaining to the culture of Europe. It is probably as excellent a book as can be written to give substance and illustration to the theme that the arts have a significant history only in the sense of a history of styles, and that an analysis and description of styles-herein named in chronological sequence "Early Renaissance," "High Renaissance," "Mannerism," "Baroque," "Neo-Classicism," and "Romanticism"-will reveal that painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and music have features and qualities common to one of these prevailing styles and reveal these usually within the same time periods. If not a pure intellectual history, it is a beautifully wrought intellectualized history, bespeaking a love of the arts and revealing a knowledge of the opera of painters, sculptors, and archi- tects, of masters in the various genres of literature, and of composers of music ranging from Landino in the fourteenth century to Beethoven and Schubert in the nineteenth. There are paragraphs and pages that communicate the excitement and relish of the author in building a formal dwelling house for the creative minds of modern Europe; there is often apt and charming and economical characteriza- tion of artistic achievements. Even so, the book's tendency is organizational and encyclopedic, and its matter is best savored in short samplings. Further, it must be said that what is most truly vital and essential in art cannot be given in this or any textbook of styles in the arts. In a college course devoted to intellectual

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.121 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:23:16 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions