Eurocentrism
In this journal, I’ll talk about what is Eurocentrism and the arguments given by Eurocentrist.
Eurocentrism is when😳:
- The history of non-European countries is looked down upon and is undermined, as compared to the history of European countries.
- Taking the credit for the current state and overall development of their once colonised states eg India.
In short, Eurocentrism is an ideology and an overall worldview that Europe is the Apex and rest, especially the east is inferior to them in terms of technology advancements, economy and in many other aspects.
Eurocentrism can be divided into 5 levels for easier understanding 🤨👌:
- Non-European countries did no contribution to world history, thus their history doesn’t exist. This is one of the justifications that eurocentric observers give, as to why colonisation was for the betterment of the colonised nation. The colonised slaves were conveniently titled slaves as they allegedly didn’t have any thinking of their own and were not even remotely related to logical reasoning, thus had to be ruled upon.The extreme eurocentric observers called the colonial lands, terra nullius i.e. nobody’s land and thus they did the righteous.
- History of Non-European is undocumented thus can not be known. Prime importance was given to written sources for a long period of time while judging history, and written non-European sources was scarce and alternative sources were ignored and unacknowledged and were even destroyed by the colonial rule in a lot of places.
- History of Non-European countries has low significance. Non-western cultures were broadly classified as either barbaric or no culture at all. Since all the available documents were either destroyed or ignored, they weren’t really examined closely and thus are stereotyped. The pagans following Islam were categorized as inferior to Christianity as they lack sympathy and logic. I feel that though the cultures were no doubt different, categorizing it as inferior is nothing else than discrimination in its core.
- Nothing valuable can be taken from the history of Non-European countries. Eurocentrist clearly undervalued all the contributions Non-European countries, let’s take the example of India (before partition). The benefit of Flush toilets that Europeans enjoy can be traced back to 3rd millennium BC where many houses of the cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. All the rituals of Asian countries especially were stereotyped to be barbaric. For example, female genital mutilation is many African countries and sati-pratha in the Indian subcontinent, and thus using this as a basis, the whole nation was termed inhumane and cruel
- Finally the last and the most relaxed argument of Ethnocentrists, that Eastern history is very difficult to trace and in fact to understand completely. They argued that since Eastern culture lack logic, it’s very hard to understand and since no one really cared to document eastern culture it’s really hard to trace it. Even if they were traced, no one had the knowledge to decipher the texts. As the societies of Europe and Asia were completely different, it was really hard for Europeans to completely understand it and respect it.
Is Ethnocentrism good or bad? 🧛♂️
Eurocentrism is the worldview point that, western culture and civilization is the centre of the world, and that our world is indebted to western cultures for its current growth in science and arts. It is the byproduct of colonial thinking which allowed them to commit unimaginable atrocities on different people. It represents a dangerous worldview of ignorance of other cultures and arrogance by the western cultures, which has no part in the increasingly globalized world. With such a rapid pace of globalization, we need to be more inclusive and understanding of different cultures. Eurocentrism is also an insult to the history of different cultures and promotes and justifies the wrongdoings committed by the European countries on others, for example, India was reduced from one of the richest countries which contributed 28% of the world’s GDP, to a very poor country with a little over 3% of the world’s GDP and having Eurocentric worldview conveniently ignores such acts while glorifying themselves as the saviour’s of the natives, who spread technology to the world.