John Leandro Reyes

Historiography
HIST 201

Critical Examination of European Historiography

On European Historiography

Histories of Europe as a whole have a long genealogy, starting from the

earliest type of societies and eventually developed into a civilization. Even
during the rise of civilizations in Europe, European national identity did not
exist. Europe as a geocultural identity was none existent prior to 16th century,
distinct from Christendom. However, the sense of uniting Europe was already
an ancient ideal. In a sense it was implicitly prefigured by the Roman Empire.
In the Middle Ages, it was imperfectly embodied first by Charlemagne’s empire
and then by the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church. As Deny
Hay contends on Europe: the Emergence of an Idea which Stuart Woolf of
Cambridge University cited on his work Histories of Europe and the
nation-state, the origins of European histories can probably be found in the
defence of Christian Europe against the threat of Muslim Ottoman expansion.1

In the same fashion, Michael Baker in his work Modernity/Coloniality and

Eurocentric Education: towards a post-Occidental self-understanding of
the present said, European identity and their histories as a geocultural entity
only began with the breakup of Latin Christendom and the colonization of the
Americas during 16th century. Continuous with the divisions between Eastern
and Western Christendom, and the ongoing battles between the Holy Roman
Empire and the Muslim world, European civilizational self-understanding
emerged through a violent process of subalternization. The history of western
civilization was conceived between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries and
reconfigured and propelled during the Enlightenment, as European civilization
became the model for the entire planet. The sixteenth century marks the
emergence of the imaginary of European modernity within a newly formed
world system, controlled and managed by European men. ‘Europe and
modernity have become synonymous and essential components of modern
European identity and their histories.2

As Woolf contends in his work The construction of a European world-view in

the Revolutionary-Napoleonic years, in the course of the Enlightenment and the
Napoleonic years, elements that characterized Europe into a sense common to
European elites, are the belief of distinctiveness and superiority of Europeans and
Europe from all other regions of the world.3 ‘Civilization’ and ‘progress’ are the
common rhetoric of European imperialism, which influenced European

1
Woolf, Stuart. "Europe and Its Historians." Contemporary European History 12, no. 3 (2003):
323-37. Accessed December 25, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20081163.
2
Baker, Michael. “Modernity/Coloniality and Eurocentric Education: towards a
post-Occidental self-understanding of the present.” Policy Futures in Education 10, no. 1
(2012). Accessed on December 26, 2020.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/pfie.2012.10.1.4
3
Woolf, Stuart. "Europe and Its Historians." Contemporary European History 12, no. 3 (2003):
323-37. Accessed December 25, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20081163.
historiography. While it is vital that one should note, that there is no single,
having the same mechanism, European Historiography. However for
European scholars, according to Donald Denoon on his work Colonialism,
Racism, and European Historiography, ideological differences among
Western scholars merely reflect the different views about its mechanism or
ways. And that generally, progress fosters the belief that human experience
could in principle be totalised into a single History based on the progressive
principle, which is inherently Eurocentric.4

Eurocentrism in Historiography

Eurocentrism designate a world-view which, posits European history and

values as “normal” and superior to others. Inherently, the term ‘Eurocentric’ is
easy to parse, ‘euro’ for Europe and ‘centric’ for center. It is simply, the idea
that Europe is and has historically been viewed as the center of the world. As
Keena Hays claimed on her work Eurocentrism, the idea of Eurocentrism
encompasses many Western concepts and its effects such as colonialism,
capitalism, racism, and patriarchy, to name a few. Hays further claimed that
Eurocentrism itself is not individually any of these concepts, but rather the
amalgamation of the hegemonic entity of European culture. Through time,
these concepts influenced the world to such a degree that the way to view
Europe is, as if, it’s on a pedestal. That Europe is ‘better’, ‘more civilized,’
‘more developed,’ or as a “First World” in comparison to non-European regions.
These concepts have greatly influenced European historiography.5

Similarly, as stated in Eurocentrims by Hannah Franzki, at the heart of

Eurocentrism lies a binary way of thinking which constructs white, progressive,
modern and civilized European identity and juxtaposes it to a black or
indigenous, underdeveloped, traditional, and barbarian other in the colonies.
It sends a message that European history and values are “normal” and
superior to others. Eurocentrism produced Eurocentric knowledge through
Europe’s encounter with and its construction of the Orient as distinct entity.
The continuous organization of power along these lines, both on a
transnational level and within socities, are power structures that legitimizes the
invalidation of ways of living and the marginalization of people who do not
conform to European standards.6

It is said, that the origins of Eurocentrism can be trace as far back as

ancient Greece, which acted as a continental “crossroads” between Europe,
Africa, and Asia and an origin of textual historical documents. For centuries, it
is known among historians that the Mediterranean was the origin of European
culture, civilization, democracy, and philosophy. With a political system based
on imperialism, that is, expanding their empire, and colonialism, the control or
occupancy of another region, it is clear that a foundation for Eurocentrism

4
Denoon, Donald. "Colonialism, Racism, and European Historiography." Current
Anthropology 32, no. 4 (1991): 505-07. Accessed December 25, 2020.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743833.
5
Hays, Keen. “Eurocentrism.” Making History. Accessed on December 26, 2020.
https://unm-historiography.github.io/intro-guide/essays/thematic/eurocentrism.html
6
began in Greece. Aside from its Greek genealogy, Eurocentrism can also be
linked to the late Roman period. According to Ernest Fortin in his work
Augustine’s City of God and the Modern Historical Consciousness,
Bishop Augustine of Hippo wrote a document titled City of God as a response
to the Roman defeat by the Visigoths in 410 CE explaining the reasons for
Roman defeat and his attempt to understand human history. In this work of
Augustine, he redefined history as not only a Western one, but also a Christian
one. This belief system became the basis for contemporary Eurocentrism to be
much more permeating than the Greeks ever employed.7

Several centuries later, as stated by Emanuel Copilas in his work Hegel,

Eurocentrism, Colonialism, German philosopher, Georg Hegel acts as a
prime example of explicit Eurocentrism in historiography. Hegel, as an active
supporter of colonialism, believed that European ‘progress’ did not have any
immediate impact on non-European regions and actually showed them the
path to ‘freedom.’8 True enough, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in his
Philosophy of World History, only counts Europe as having history proper. H
interprets Europe as the region where world history has unfolded to its most
developed point, beginning with the ancient Greeks and running through
Christendom to the realization of God’s plan or history’s goal in modern
Europe.9 These thoughts of European geocultural identity heavily influenced
how history was written about ‘others’ and perpetuated preconceptions rather
than challenging them. Until the 20th century, Eurocentrism became stronger
through time, as imperialist and colonialists reinforced their preconceived
notions of Europe and the West as ‘advanced’.

How is History Written with a Eurocentric Perspective?

In the late 20th century, with the rise of the Postmodernism movement,
historians sought to establish that all people had various views of what ‘reality’
is, and that no single ‘reality’ could be seen as the only ‘true’ version of events.
Questions like, what was happening on the ‘other’ side of history? But, also,
how has the history of Europe and the ‘other’ been portrayed and reinforced
trough Western education? According to Ella Shohat and Robert Stam on
Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, History
textbooks lay a foundation for education and a basic understanding of history,
but are also used to propagate Eurocentric and nationalistic ideas, which these
views create a divide between Europe and the ‘other’ resulting an ‘Us vs.
Them’ mentality, rather than a conception of a whole world history.

To refer indigenous Americans as ‘Indian’ is without question offensive, but

there is more than just a misnomer that has portrayed indigenous Americans
inaccurately.The term ‘Indian’ was a colonial invention. As what Bonfil Batalla
contend on Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization, there was no

7
Fortin, Ernest L. “Augustine’s City of God and the Modern Historical Consciousness.”
The Review of Politics 41, no. 3 (1979): 323-43. Accessed on December 27, 2020.
8
Copilas, Emanuel. “Hegel, Eurocentrism, Colonialism.” Romanian Journal of Political
Science 18, no. 2 (2018): 27-57. Accessed on December 27, 2020.
9
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. “Lectures on the Philosophy of World History.
Introduction: Reason in History.” (1975). Accessed on December 27, 2020.
specific identity or trait that indigenous groups used to describe themselves
collectively. There were hundreds of independent tribes which all identified
themselves as different from one another as the English and Scotts. It was not
until Spanish arrival that ‘Indians’ were lumped into one identifying category,
without acknowledgement of their various cultural differences.

As Overmyer-Velazquez contend on The Anti-Quincentenary Campaign

in Guerrero, Mexico: Indigenous Identity and the Dismantling of the Myth
of the Revolution, It was on 1992 that there was a unified indigenous groups
protested against Mexico’s celebration of “The Encounter of Two Words” as
the 500 Years of Resistance Movement erupted through Latin America. The
protesters rallied against the Eurocentric concept that it was Christopher
Columbus who “discovered” the “new” world as if there were no original
inhabitants of the area. To say that Christopher Columbus “discovered” the
Americas, is to invalid the native inhabitants their, it is to adhere to colonialism,
imperialism, and to enable the oppression of the colonized. Likewise, De la
Pena in A New Mexican Nationalism? Indigenous Rights, Constitutional
Reform and the Conflicting Meanings of Multiculturalism said, The
movement fought the Eurocentric implications of Europe and the Americas as
inhabiting two separate ‘worlds’, as well as the celebration of a traumatic
indigenous history.10

As being mentioned at the earlier part of this paper, The triad - Europe,
civilization, progress are common rhetoric for European imperialism. These
overriding Eurocentric concepts impacted not only our views of ‘othered’
regions, but also impacted their ability to participate in Western economics,
academia, and politics. These Western ideas or concepts of progress, see
non-Western regions as ‘stagnant’, ‘immobile’, or ‘unproductive.’ As stated by
Demir and Kaboub in Economic Development and the Fabrication of the
Middle East as a Eurocentric Project, when it comes to the ‘progress’ of the
West, it entirely rejects any historical contribution by non-Western regions.
This in turn, creates a negative image towards the histories of the Orient.

The ambitious collective histories of Europe such as The Cambridge

Modern History conceptualised by Lord Acton at the beginning of the 20th
century, the Peuple et Civilisations edited by Louis Halphen and Philippine
Sagnac, the recent Propylaen Geschicthte Europas - are conceived to be
and structured as the collective history of Europe. Historians were active
participants in the construction an legitimation of their nation states, identifying
a thread of continuity in the history of their peoples and their territory as if they
were destined, in teleological mode, to reach the climax as an independent
state.11 This process of legitimizing their nation states is inherently Eurocentric,
undermining the Orient by invalidating their histories and to depict them as
‘uncivilized,’ ‘unprogressive’, just to make sense of their actions, regardless if
it’s morally wrong.

10
De La Pena, Guillermo. “A New Mexican Nationalism? Indigenous Rights,
Constitutional Reform and the Conflicting Meanings of Multiculturalism.” Nations & Nationalism
12, no. 2 (2006): pp. 279. Accessed on December 27, 2020.
11
Effi Gazi. “Scientific National History. The Greek Case in Comparative Perspective
(1850-1920).” (2000). Accessed on December 28, 2020.
 In an Review article of Laxman Satya Eurocentrism in World History: A
Critique of Its Propagators it cited that Eurocentrims is not about what choosing
European music to other non-European music, or European cuisine to other cuisine. It
is about making claims that Europeans are more inventive, innovative, progressive,
morally upright, and so on, than to any other group of people. And this is highlighted
on how European historians write their histories. Eurocentrism is reflected on their
historiography.

Eurocentrism as Historiography and its Influence

From the aforementioned discussion, it is no doubt that Civilization is a

European concept, a concept that describes aspects of European society. So,
any culture which defines progress in any manner different to Europe’s, if not
all, are viewed as ‘uncivilized’ and, therefore, should not be part of European
history. Non-Western regions or the Orient written about as ‘unprogressive’
changes how the whole world views their history. Historiography and the
importance of how a certain history is written expands far beyond academic
history. The opportunities a region has to participate in the contemporary world
is ultimately determined by how they have been written about by all people
who have chosen to write about them. As the privilege of writing about other
cultures is often limited to wealthy, male, Caucasian, those biases, in result,
changes popular perspectives of those regions.

Eurocentrims in the study of world history rests on seven pillars, three of

those are about how Eurocentrism affects other cultures, as noted in The
Challenge of Eurocentrism: Global Perspectives, Policy and Prospects
edited by Rajani Kanth.12 The association of Islam with the sword of conquest
had been one recurrent tendency in Eurocentric accounts. More recently a
billion Muslims have been slandered for the sins of Al-Qaeda. While Islam had,
and is still suffering a lot of disparagement in Eurocentric history books,
indigenous African cultures have suffered the same plight. European had for
the longest time regarded indigenous African cultures as savage and primitive,
and have often exaggerated their weakness and invalidated their strengths. As
Hugh Trevor-Roper, then Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford
University put it in the 1960s:

Maybe in the future there will be African history. But at the moment there is none.
There is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness, and
darkness is not a subject of history.13

And as previously argued, these Eurocentric narratives towards non-Western

regions changes how the whole world sees them. The wrongful, bias,
prejudicial histories written by Western scholars about non-Western regions
furthers the inequality they face, which is, in the first place, brought as a
byproduct of the long oppressive ruling of Westerners in the Orient. This is one
of the many examples of how Eurocentrism as incorporated in the writing of
history has an effect not just in academia but in day to day real situation.

12
Kanth, Rajani Kannepalli. “The Challenge of Eurocentrism: Global Perspectives,
Policy, and Prospects.” (2009). Accessed on December 28, 2020.
13
Ibid.