The
Western world, also known as
the
West and the
Occident (
Latin:
occidens -sunset, -west, as distinct
from the
Orient), is a term that can have
multiple meanings depending on its context (e.g., the time period,
the region or social situation). Accordingly, the basic definition
of what constitutes "the West" varies, expanding and contracting
over time, in relation to various historical circumstances.
The consensus is that the West originated in the northern and
eastern Mediterranean with
ancient
Greece and
ancient Rome. Over time,
their associated
empires grew first to the
east and south, conquering and absorbing many older great
civilizations; later, they grew to the north and west to include
Western Europe.
Other historians, such as Carroll Quigley (
Evolution of
Civilizations), contend that Western Civilization was born
around 400 AD, after the total collapse of the
Western Roman Empire, leaving a vacuum
for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical
societies. In either view, between the
fall of the Western Roman Empire
and the
Renaissance, the West
experienced a period of considerable decline,
Middle Ages
Of the three great civilizations of western Eurasia and
North Africa, that of Christian Europe began as the least developed
in virtually all aspects of material and intellectual culture, well
behind the Islamic states and Byzantium.
known as the Middle Ages,
which include the Dark Ages and the
Crusades.
The knowledge of the ancient Western world was partly preserved
during this period due to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire; it was also
greatly expanded by the Arab World,
Section 31.8
For some generations before Muhammad, the Arab mind had
been, as it were, smouldering, it had been producing poetry and
much religious discussion; under the stimulus of the national and
racial successes it presently blazed out with a brilliance second
only to that of the Greeks during their best period. From a new
angle and with a fresh vigour it took up that systematic
development of positive knowledge, which the Greeks had begun and
relinquished. It revived the human pursuit of science. If the Greek
was the father, then the Arab was the foster-father of the
scientific method of dealing with reality, that is to say, by
absolute frankness, the utmost simplicity of statement and
explanation, exact record, and exhaustive criticism. Through the
Arabs it was and not by the Latin route that the modern world
received that gift of light and power.
and mostly by the concurrent ascendency of the Islamic Golden Age.
For many centuries the world of Islam was in the
forefront of human civilization and achievement…. In the era
between the decline of antiquity and the dawn of modernity, that
is, in the centuries designated in European history as medieval,
the Islamic claim was not without justification.
The Arab importation of
both the Ancient and new
technology from the Middle East and the
Orient to Renaissance Europe represented “one
of the largest technology transfers in world history.”
Since the Renaissance, the West evolved
beyond the influence of the ancient Greeks, Romans and Muslims due
to the Commercial, Scientific, and Industrial Revolutions, and the
expansion of the Christian peoples of
Western European empires, and particularly the globe-spanning
empires of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since the
Age of Discovery and Columbus, the notion of the West
expanded to include the Americas,
though much of the Americas have considerable pre-Western cultural
influence. Most countries of Latin America, Australia and New Zealand
are considered part of Western culture due to their
former status as settler colonies of Western Christian
nations. Generally speaking, the current consensus
would locate the West, at the very least, in the cultures and
peoples of Europe, North America (namely Canada, U.S., and Mexico
), most
countries in South America, Australia and New Zealand. There
is debate among some as to whether Eastern Europe is in a category
of its own. Culturally Eastern Europe is usually more or less
accepted into the 'West', mainly because of its geographic location
in what is mostly Europe (and cultural ties). It, however, does not
fill the traditional economic and living standard criteria which
one associates with "The West".
When
referring to current events, the term "Western World" often
includes developed countries in
Asia, such as Japan
, Singapore
, Taiwan
, and
South
Korea
, that have strong economic, political and military
ties to Western Europe, NATO
or the
United
States
. While these countries also have substantial
Western influence and similarities in their cultures, they
nonetheless maintain largely different and distinctive cultures,
religions (although Christianity is a major religion in South Korea),
languages, customs, and worldviews that are products of their own
indigenous development, rather than solely Western
influences.
Japan and South Korea, in particular, are the only Asian members of
the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the two
leading full democracies in Asia,
having a high standard of living and a high level of human development. All of these
are amongst the generally accepted political or economic
characteristics of Western nations.
Historic Criteria of West in the European Continent
Medieval appearance of parliaments (the dietal-system),
self-government status of big royal/imperial cities, medieval
appearance of banking systems and social effects and status of
urban bourgeoisie, medieval appearance of universities and the
medieval appearance of secular intellectuals, PhilosophY
Scholasticism and humanist philosophy,the knight-culture and the
effects of crusades in the Holy Land, medieval usage of Latin
alphabet and medieval spread of movable type printing, The medieval
western theatre: Mystery or cycle plays and morality passion plays,
The architecture and fine-arts: Romanesque Gothic and Renaissance
styles.
Western Culture
The term "Western culture" is used very broadly to refer to a
heritage of social norms, ethical
values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies. Specifically, Western culture may
imply:
- *a Graeco-Roman Classical and Renaissance cultural influence, concerning
artistic, philosophic, literary, and legal themes and traditions, as well as a
tradition of rationalism in various
spheres of life, developed by Hellenistic philosophy, Scholasticism, Humanisms, the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, and including, in
political thought, widespread
rational arguments in favour of freethought, human
rights, equality and democratic values averse to despotism, irrationality and theocracy.
- *a Biblical-Christian cultural influence in spiritual
thinking, customs and either ethic or moral traditions, around
Post-Classical Era.
- *Western European cultural
influences concerning artistic, musical, folkloric, ethic and oral
traditions, whose themes have been further developed by Romanticism.
The concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western
world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific,
political, artistic and
philosophical principles which set it
apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and
knowledge is collected in the Western
canon.
The term has come to apply to countries whose history is strongly marked by Western European
immigration or settlement, such as the
Americas, and Australasia, and is
not restricted to Western Europe.
Some tendencies that define modern Western societies are the existence of political pluralism, prominent subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements), increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration.
Historical divisions
The origins of the word "West" in terms of geopolitical boundaries
started in the 1900s . Prior to this, most people would have
thoughts about different nations, languages, individuals, and
geographical regions, but with no idea of Western nations as we
know it today. Many world maps were so crude and inaccurate before
the 1800s that geographical and political differences would be
harder to measure. Few would have access to good maps and even
fewer had access to accurate descriptions of who lived in far away
lands.
Western thought as we think of it
today, is shaped by ideas of the 1900s and 1800s, originating
mainly in Europe. What we think of as Western thought today is
defined as Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian culture, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and colonialism. As a consequence the term "Western
thought" is, at times, unhelpful and vague, since it can define
separate, though related, sets of traditions and values:
- The Christian moral tradition and
respective set of religious values;
- The humanist tradition and set of secular values, often with
rationalist, anti-clerical beliefs;
Hellenic
The Hellenic division between the
barbarians and the Greeks contrasted in
many societies the Greek-speaking
culture of the Greek settlements around the Mediterranean to the
surrounding non-Greek cultures. Herodotus considered
the Persian Wars of the early 5th
century BC a conflict of Europa versus
Asia (which he considered to be all land North
and East of the Sea of
Marmara
, respectively) . The terms "West" and "East"
were not used by any Greek author to describe that conflict. The
anachronistic application of those terms to that division entails a
stark logical contradiction, given that, when the term West
appeared, it was used in opposition to the Greeks and
Greek-speaking culture.
Western society traces its cultural origins to both Greek thought and Christian religion, thus following an evolution
that began in ancient Greece, continued through the Roman Empire and, with the coming of Christianity (which has its origins in the
Middle East), spread throughout Europe.
The inherently "Greek" classical ideas of history (which one might
easily say they invented) and art may, however, be considered
almost inviolate in the West, as their original spread of influence
survived the Hellenic period of Roman classical antiquity, The
Dark Ages, it's resurgence during the
western Renaissance, and has managed somehow to retain and exert
its pervasive influence down into the present age, with every
expectation of it continuing to dominate any secular Western
cultural developments.
However, the conquest of the western parts of the Roman Empire by Germanic peoples and the subsequent
dominance by the Western Christian Papacy
(which held combined political and spiritual authority, a state of affairs absent from Greek
civilization in all its stages), resulted into a rupture of the
previously existing ties between the Latin West and Greek thought,
including Christian Greek thought. The Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed this
deviation.
Hence, the Medieval West is limited to Western Christendom only, as the Greeks and other
European peoples not under the authority of the Papacy are not included in it. The clearly
Greek-influenced form of Christianity, Orthodoxy, is more linked to Eastern than Western
Europe. On the other hand, the Modern West, emerging after the
Renaissance as a new civilization, has
been influenced by (its own interpretation of) Greek thought, which
was preserved in the Byzantine
Empire and the medieval Islamic
world during the Medieval West's Dark
Ages and transmitted therefrom by emigration of scholars,
courtly marriages, and Latin translations.
The Renaissance in the West emerged partly from currents within the
Roman (Byzantine) Empire. Moreover, European peoples not included
in Western Christendom such as the Greeks have redefined their
relationship to this new, secular, variant of Western civilization,
and have increasingly participated in it since then.
Thus the idea of Western society being influenced from (but not
being the single evolution of) ancient Greek thought makes sense
only for the post-Renaissance period of Western history.
The Roman Empire
Ancient Rome (510 BC-AD 476) was a
civilization that grew from a city-state
founded on the Italian Peninsula
circa the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the
Mediterranean
Sea
. In its twelve-century existence, Roman
civilization shifted from a monarchy, to a
republic, to an autocratic empire.
It came to
dominate Western Europe, the Balkans and the entire area surrounding the Mediterranean
Sea
through conquest using the Roman legions and then through cultural assimilation by giving Roman
privileges and eventually citizenship to the whole empire.
Nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to
the eventual decline of the
Roman Empire.
The
Western Roman Empire eventually
broke into several kingdoms in the 5th century due to civil wars,
corruption, and devastating Germanic Invasions from such tribes as the
Goths, the Franks and
the Vandals; the Eastern Roman Empire,
governed from Constantinople
, is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire after 476, the traditional
date for the "fall of the Western Roman Empire" and for the
subsequent onset of the Early Middle
Ages. The Eastern Roman Empire survived the fall of
the West, and protected Roman legal and cultural traditions
combining them with Greek
and
Christian elements, for another thousand years.
The Roman Empire succeeded the about
500 year-old Roman Republic (510 BC - 1st century BC), which had
been weakened by the conflict between Gaius
Marius and Sulla and the civil war of
Julius Caesar against Pompey and Marcus
Brutus. During these struggles hundreds of senators were
killed, and the Roman Senate had been
refilled with loyalists of the First
Triumvirate and later those of the Second Triumvirate.
Several
dates are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to
Empire, including the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as
perpetual roman dictator (44 BC), the
victory of Caesar's heir Octavian at the
Battle of
Actium
(September 2, 31 BC),
and the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the honorific Augustus. (January 16, 27 BC). Octavian/Augustus officially
proclaimed that he had saved the Roman Republic and carefully
disguised his power under republican forms; consuls continued to be elected, tribunes of the plebeians continued to offer
legislation, and senators still debated in the Roman Curia. However, it was Octavian who influenced
everything and controlled the final decisions, and in final
analysis, had the legions to back him up, if it ever became
necessary.
Roman expansion began long before the state was changed into an
Empire and reached its zenith under emperor Trajan with the conquest of Dacia in AD 106. During this territorial peak the
Roman Empire controlled approximately 5 900 000 km²
(2,300,000 sq.mi.) of land surface and
had population of 100 million. From the time of Caesar to the Fall of the
Western Empire, Rome dominated Western Eurasia and the Mediterranean
, comprising the majority of its population.
Ancient Rome has contributed greatly to
the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture,
technology and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a major influence
on the world today.
The Roman Empire is where the idea of the "West" began to emerge.
Due to Rome's central location at the heart of the Empire, "West"
and "East" were terms used to denote provinces west and east of the
capital itself. Therefore, Iberia
(Portugal and Spain), Gaul
(France), Africa (Tunisia, Algeria, and
Morocco) and Britannia were all part of
the "West", while Greece, Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt were part of
the "East." Italy itself was considered central up until the
reforms of Diocletian, when the idea of
formally dividing the Empire into true Eastern and Western halves
was introduced.
In 395, the Roman Empire formally split into a Western Roman Empire
and an Eastern one, each with their own emperors, capitals, and
governments, although ostensibly they still belonged to one formal
Empire. The dissolution of the Western half (nominally in 476, but
in truth a long process that ended by 500) left only the Eastern
Empire alive, and for centuries the East continued to call
themselves Eastern Romans, while the West began to think in terms
of Latins (those living in the old Western Empire) and Greeks
(those inside the Roman remnant to the east).
Christian schism
[[File:Europe religion map en.png|thumb|200px|Religious split in
Europe
]]

Christianity and other religions in
the world.
In the
early 4th century, the Roman Emperor
Constantine the Great
established the city of Constantinople
as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The
Eastern Empire included lands east of the Adriatic Sea
and bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean
and parts of the Black Sea
. These two divisions of the Eastern and
Western Empires were reflected in the administration of the
Christian Church, with Rome
and Constantinople
debating and arguing over whether either city was
the capital of Christianity. As the eastern and western
churches spread their influence, the line between "East" and "West"
can be described as moving, but generally followed a cultural divide that was defined by the
existence of the Byzantine empire and the fluctuating power and
influence of the church in Rome.
Some,
including Huntington, theorized that this cultural division still
existed during the Cold War as the
approximate western boundary of those countries that were allied
with the Soviet
Union
; others have criticized these views on the basis
that they confuse the Eastern Roman Empire with Russia, especially
considering the fact that the country that had the most historical
roots in Byzantium, Greece, was allied with the West during the
Cold War. These distinctions, rather obscurely, continue to
persist in many areas, especially those (outside of Russia, which
may be said to be refashioning itself along more secular lines now,
perhaps ironically) that were more formally identified with the the
Eastern Orthodox Church or its subsidiaries, such as Croatia,
Serbia, Lithuania and even areas to the north such as Estonia and
as far as Finland. As Christianity - and regionalism - declines,
especially in Central Europe and Western Asia, it will be of
interest to see if these distinctions persist.
Under
Charlemagne, the Franks established an empire that was recognized as
the Holy Roman Empire by the
Christian Patriarch of Rome, offending the
Roman Emperor in Constantinople
. The crowning of the Emperor by the Pope led to the assumption that the
highest power was the papal hierarchy, establishing, until the
Protestant Reformation, the
civilization of Western Christendom. The
Latin Rite Christian Church of western and central
Europe headed by the Patriarch of Rome
split with the eastern, Greek-speaking Patriarchates during the
Great Schism. Meanwhile, the extent
of each expanded, as Scandinavia, Germany, Britain, and the other
non-Christian lands of the northwest were converted by the Western Church, while Russia and some of
Eastern Europe were converted by the Eastern Church.
In this context, the Protestant reformation may be viewed as a
schism within the Latin Church. Martin
Luther, in the wake of precursors, broke with the Pope and with
the Emperor, backed by many of the German princes. These changes
were adopted by the Scandinavian kings. Later, the commoner Jean
Cauvin (John Calvin) assumed the religio-political leadership in
Geneva, a former ecclesiastical city whose prior ruler had been the
Bishop. The English King later improvised on the Lutheran model,
but subsequently many Calvinist doctrines were adopted by popular
dissenters, leading to the English
Civil War. Both royalists and dissenters colonized
North America, eventually resulting in an independent United
States of America
.
The Colonial "West"
The Reformation and
consequent dissolution of Western Christendom as even a theoretical unitary
political body, resulted in the Thirty
Years War, ending in the Peace
of Westphalia, which enshrined the concept of the nation-state and the principle of absolute
national sovereignty in
international law. These concepts
of a world of nation-states, coupled with the ideologies of the
Enlightenment, the coming of
modernity, the Scientific Revolution, and the
Industrial Revolution,
produced powerful political and economic institutions that have
come to influence (or been imposed upon) most nations of the world
today. Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution was one of the
most important events in history. The most significant inventions had their origins in the Western world,
primarily Europe (particularly the United
Kingdom
) and the United States
, whose influence was not felt initially due to a
pervasive European prejudice against a "new" nation they considered
a grandiose upstart at the time.
This
process of influence (and imposition) began with the voyages of
discovery, colonization, conquest, and exploitation of Spain
and Portugal
; it continued with the rise of the Dutch East India Company, and the
creation and expansion of the British
and French colonial
empires. Due to the reach of these empires, Western
institutions expanded throughout the world. Even after demands for
self-determination from subject peoples within Western empires were
met with decolonization, these institutions persisted; one specific
example was the requirement that post-colonial societies were made
to form nation-states (in the Western tradition), which often
created arbitrary boundaries and borders that did not necessarily
represent a whole nation, people, or culture, and are often the
cause of international conflicts and friction even to this day.
Though the overt colonial era has passed, Western nations, as
comparatively rich, well-armed, and culturally powerful states,
still wield a large degree of influence throughout the world.
Palestinian-American literary critic Edward
Said uses the term occident in his discussion of orientalism. According to his binary, the West,
or Occident, created a romanticized vision of the East, or Orient,
in order to justify colonial and imperialist intentions. This
Occident-Orient binary is focused on the Western vision of the East
instead of any truths about the East. His theories are rooted in
Hegel's Master-slave dialectic; the Occident
would not exist without the Orient and vice versa. Further, Western
writers created this irrational, feminine, weak "Other" to contrast
with the rational, masculine, strong West because of a need to
create a difference between the two that would justify imperialist
ambitions. Said influenced Indian-American theorist Homi K. Bhabha.
The Cold War
During the Cold War, a new definition
emerged. The Earth was divided into three
"worlds". The First World,
analogous in this context to what was called the West, was
composed of NATO
members and
other countries aligned with the United States
. The Second World
was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet
sphere of
influence, including the Soviet Union
and Warsaw Pact
countries. It included some Central European countries (like The German
Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland) which had
a Western type culture.
The
Third World consisted of countries
unaligned with either, and
important members included India
and Yugoslavia; some include the People's
Republic of China
, though this is disputed, as the People's
Republic of China
was communist, had
friendly relations—at certain times—with the Soviet bloc, and had a
significant degree of importance in global
geopolitics.
There
were a number of countries which did not fit comfortably into this
neat definition of partition, including Switzerland
, Sweden
, Austria
and the Republic of Ireland
, which chose to be neutral. Finland
was under the Soviet Union's military
sphere of influence (see FCMA treaty)
but remained neutral, was not communist, nor was it a member of the
Warsaw Pact or Comecon but a member of the EFTA
since 1986, and was west of the Iron
Curtain. In 1955, when Austria
again became a fully independent republic, it did
so under the condition that it remain neutral, but as a country to
the west of the Iron Curtain, it was in
the United States sphere of influence. Spain
did not join
NATO until 1982, towards the end of the Cold War and after the
death of the authoritarian Franco.
Modern definitions
The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in
nature, depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual or
political criteria are employed. In general however these
definitions always include the following countries: the countries
of Western Europe, South America, North America, Israel, Australia
and New Zealand. These are Western European or Western
European-derived nations which enjoy relatively strong economies
and stable governments, allow freedom of religion, have chosen
democracy as a form of governance, favor
capitalism and international trade, are heavily
influenced by Judeo-Christian
values, and have some form of political and military alliance or cooperation.
Many anthropologists, sociologists and historians oppose "the West
and the Rest" in a categorical manner. The same has been done by
Malthusian demographers with a sharp distinction between European
and non-European family systems. Among anthropologists, this
includes Durkheim, Dumont and Lévi-Strauss.
As the term "Western world" does not have a strict international
definition, governments do not use the term in legislation of
international treaties and instead rely on
other definitions.
Cultural
- See: Western
Culture
From a cultural and sociological
approach the Western world is defined as including all cultures
that are directly derived from European
cultures, i.e. Europe, the Americas (North and
South America), Israel
, Australia and New Zealand
. Together these countries constitute Western
society
In the 20th century, Christianity declined in influence in many
western countries, in Western Europe
and elsewhere. Secularism (separating
religion from politics and science) increased. However, while
church attendance is in decline, most Westerners nominally identify
themselves as Christians (e.g. 70% in the UK
) and
occasionally attend church on major occasions. In the United
States, Christianity continues to play an important societal role,
thus helping to maintain Christianity's important role in Western
culture.
The official religion of the United
Kingdom and some Nordic countries is Christianity, even though the
majority of European countries have no official religion. Despite
this, Christianity, in its different forms, remains the largest
faith in most Western countries. Thus another definition of
Occident would include reference to this majority
Christian content within the culture.
Modern Political
Countries of the Western world are generally considered to share
certain fundamental political ideologies, including those of
liberal democracy, the rule of law, human
rights and a high degree of gender
equality (although there are notable exceptions, especially in
foreign policy). Additionally countries with strong political
and/or military ties to Western
Europe, NATO
and/or the
United States, such as Japan
, Israel
, and
South
Korea
can be said to be Western in a political sense at
least.
As such, this definition of the term "Western" is not necessarily
tied to the geographic sense of the word. A geographically
Western nation such as Cuba
is sometimes
not considered politically Western due to its general rejection of
liberal democracy, freedom of the press, and personal liberty. Conversely,
some Eastern nations, for example, Japan, India, Israel, Taiwan,
and South Korea, could be considered politically Western, due to
their adoption of indigenous liberal democratic political
institutions similar in structure to those of the traditionally
Western nations.
Economic
[[File:UN Human Development Report 2009.PNG|thumb|right|300px|World
map indicating Human Development
Index (2009)
For
red-green color vision problems.]]Though the Cold War has ended, and some members of the former
Eastern Bloc are making a general
movement towards liberal democracy and other values held in common
by the traditionally Western states, some former Soviet republics are not
considered Western because of the small presence of social and
political reform, as well as their obvious cultural, economic and
political differences to what is known today as described by the
term "the West" (Western Europe,
North America, Australia and New Zealand
).
These
include the three Transcaucasian republics (Azerbaijan
, Georgia
, Armenia
), as well as Kazakhstan
, Tajikistan
, Turkmenistan
, Uzbekistan
, Kyrgyzstan
, Russia
, Belarus
and Ukraine
. Central
Europe is currently a separate entity occupying an in-between
economic position.
Although it is inaccurate to do so, the term "Western world" is
often interchangeable with the term First
World stressing the difference between First World and the
Third World or developing countries. The term "The North" has in some contexts replaced
earlier usage of the term "the West", particularly in the critical
sense, as a more robust demarcation than the terms "West" and
"East". The North provides some absolute
geographical indicators for the location of wealthy countries, most
of which are physically situated in the Northern
Hemisphere
, although, as most countries are located in the
northern hemisphere in general, some have considered this
distinction to be equally unhelpful.
The
thirty countries in the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which
include: the EU, Norway
, Iceland
, Switzerland
, Canada
, the
United
States
, Australia, New Zealand
, South
Korea
and Japan
, generally
include what used to be called the "first world" or the "developed
world", although the OECD includes a few countries, namely Mexico
and Turkey
, that are
not yet fully industrial countries, but newly industrialized
countries. The existence of "The North" implies the
existence of "The South", and the
socio-economic divide between North and South.
Although
Israel
, Singapore
, Taiwan
and Hong Kong
are not members of the OECD, they might also be
regarded as "western" or "northern" countries or regions, because
their high living standards and their social, economical and
political structure are quite
similar to those of the OECD member countries.
Other views
A series of scholars of civilization, including Arnold J. Toynbee, Alfred
Kroeber and Carroll Quigley have
identified and analyzed "Western
civilization" as one of the civilizations that have historically existed
and still exist today. Toynbee entered into quite an expansive
mode, including as candidates those countries or cultures who
became so heavily influenced by the West as to adopt these
borrowings into their very self-identity; carried to its limit,
this would in practice include almost everyone within the West, in
one way or another. In particular, Toynbee refers to the
intelligentsia formed among the educated elite of
countries impacted by the European expansion of centuries past.
While often pointedly nationalist, these cultural and political
leaders interacted within the West to such an extent as to change
both themselves and the West.

Huntington's map of major
civilizations, What constitutes Western civilization in his view is
coloured dark blue.
Huntington gave the most stringent interpretation of the term;
it is based on culture tradition and history.
Yet more recently, Samuel P.
Huntington has taken a far more
restricted approach, forging a political science hypothesis he labeled
the "The Clash of
Civilizations?" in a Foreign Affairs article and a
book. According to Huntington's hypothesis, what he calls
"conflicts between civilizations" will be the primary tensions of
the 21st century world. In this hypothesis, the West is based on
religion, as the countries of Western
and Central Europe were historically
influenced by the two forms of Western Christianity, namely Catholicism and Protestantism. Also, many Anglophone countries
share these traits, e.g. Australia and
New
Zealand
, as well as the more heterogeneous United States
and Canada
. Of
course, so does Latin America.
Huntington's thesis, while influential, was by no means universally
accepted; its supporters say that it explains modern conflicts,
such as those in the former Yugoslavia.
The thesis' detractors fear that by equating values like democracy with the concept of "Western
civilization", it reinforces stereotypes that some perceive as
being common within the West about non-traditionally Western
societies that some may consider racist or xenophobic. Others
believe that Huntington ignores the existence of non-Western
democracies such as the East Asian, South-Central Asian, and Latin
American democracies. As such, these detractors believe that it
will serve to provoke and amplify conflict rather than illuminating
a way to find an accommodating world order, or in particular cases
a commonly agreed solution.
In Huntington's narrow thesis, the historically Eastern Orthodox nations of southeastern
and Eastern Europe constitute a
distinct "Euro-Asiatic civilization"; although European and mainly
Christian (as well as notable Muslim influence and populations, particularly in the
Balkans and southern/central Russia), these nations were not, in
Huntington's view, shaped by the cultural influences of the
Renaissance. The Renaissance did not
affect Orthodox Eastern
Europe due in part to the proximity of Ottoman domination; though the
decisive influence on the Renaissance of Greek émigré scholars should be
acknowledged.
Other views might be made regarding Eastern Europe.
Huntington also considered the possibility that South America is a separate civilization from
the West, but also mused that it might become a third part (the
first two being North America and Europe) of the West in the
future.
The
theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
conceived of the West as the set of civilizations descended from
the Nile Valley
Civilization of Egypt
.
The term the "West" may also be used pejoratively by certain tendencies especially
critical of the influence of the traditional West, due to the
history of some of the members of the traditional West being
previously involved, at one time or another, in outright imperialism and colonialism. Some of these critics also claim
that the traditional West has continued to engage in what might be
viewed as modern implementations of imperialism and colonialism, such as neoliberalism and globalization. (It should be noted that many
Westerners who subscribe to a positive view of the traditional West
are also very critical of neoliberalism and globalization, for
their allegedly negative effects on both the developed and
developing world.)
Allegedly, definitions of the term "Western world" that some may
consider "ethnocentric" are considered
by some to be "constructed"
around one or another Western
culture. The British writer Rudyard
Kipling wrote about this contrast: East is East and West is
West and never the twain shall meet, expressing that somebody
from the West can never understand the Asian cultures as the latter
differ too much from the Western cultures. Some may view this
alleged incompatibility as a precursor to Huntington's "clash of
civilizations" theory.
Paradoxically, today Asia and Africa to varying degrees may be
considered quasi-Western. Many East Asians and South Asians and
Africans and others associate or even identify with the
cosmopolitan cultures and international societies referred to
sometimes as Western. Likewise, many in the West identify with a
transcultural humanity, a notion often found in visions of the
sacred.
From a very different perspective, it has also been argued that the
idea of the West is, in part, a non-Western invention, deployed in
the non-West to shape and define non-Western pathways through or
against modernity.
Other cultural blocs
See also
Organisations:
References
- western definition | Dictionary.com
- Science, civilization and society
- Middle Ages
- commercial revolution
- The Scientific Revolution
- The Industrial Revolution - Innovations
- Duran 1995, p.81
- Charles Freeman. The
Closing of the Western Mind. Knopf, 2003. ISBN 1-4000-4085-X
- Modern Western Civ. 7: The Scientific Revolution of
the 17 Cent.
- The Industrial Revolution
- Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living:
The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, Library of Economics and
Liberty
- Encyclopædia Britannica's Great Inventions,
Encyclopædia Britannica
- Embassy of Brazil - Ottawa
- AEI - Chile Moves On
- Cf., Arnold J. Toynbee, Change and Habit. The challenge of
our time (Oxford 1966, 1969) at 153-156; also, Toynbee, A
Study of History (10 volumes, 2 supplements).
- The World of Civilizations
- Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order (1996).
- About Latin America Huntington was evidently ambivalent; see
text at next after paragraph.
- Scholars such as Georgios Gemistos Plethon, Manuel
Chrysoloras, Theodorus of Gaza, Ioannis Argyropoulos,
Markos
Mousouros and Demetrius Chalcondyles.
- The Renaissance was said to be weak in the frontier region of
Hungary because Ottoman
military pressure long limited Hungarian access to their fellow
Roman Catholics in Austria. Yet regarding Hungary, such views wander
away from the consensus. Some claim the reforms of Peter the Great
(1682-1725) and Catherine II the Great (1762-96) were
inspired by the Enlightenment. However, they departed considerably
from the Enlightenment idea of respect for the individual: Peter's
projects for St
Petersburg cost the lives of 30,000 workers (though such loss
of life was not unknown in Western Europe), and under both Peter
and Catherine most Russians remained serfs. It is unclear whether these views are those
of Huntington or not.
- Huntington evidently did not detail Australia and New Zealand,
but see map.
- Cf., Teilhard de Chardin, Le Phenomene Humain (1955),
translated as The Phenomena of Man (New York 1959).
- Bonnett, A. 2004. The Idea of the West