Remaking the World

How should we understand Europe's special role in world history, and the enduring impact it made on the rest of the globe? Jerrold Seigel traces both the positive and negative sides of the continent's special role to its absence of effective central authority, the division and competition between its states and peoples, and its propensity for developing autonomous spheres of activity. Remaking the World analyzes how these features fostered Europe's characteristic preoccupation with a politics of liberty, its evolution of an aesthetic sphere animated by values specific to itself, its singular capacity to revolutionize scientific understanding, and its ability to prepare and carry out the first transition to a modern industrial economy. Extended and substantive comparisons with Africa, India, China, and the lands that came under the rule of the Ottomans demonstrate the absence of similar phenomena elsewhere, whereas in Europe they also helped generate the malign force of imperial expansion.

• Provides a new understanding of Europe's ability to be the first site where humanity revealed its capacity to remake its world, both in productive and destructive ways
• Traces Europe's distinctiveness to enduring structural features of its social and political organization, and its evolution of autonomous spheres of activity
• Provides extended and substantive comparisons with corresponding features of other countries and regions, especially China, India, and the lands that came under the dominion of the Ottomans