Is it worth a read?

Is it worth a read?

general histories are for fags and contribute to the globalist system tb h

>Europe
There's that buzzword again.

>Tenth Century
Well at least he got the date right.

Why is Europe a buzzword?

Regional histories are perfectly appropriate. Talking about European history is like talking about Chinese history.

Because there is no Europe, in terms of civilisation. Europe is a continent (or more precisely a peninsula) on which three different civilisations have existed, each covering only a relatively small part of it.

The correct term is the West, which is correctly stated in the title, and which has its home in Western Europe. But that's not at all synonymous with Europe. It may seem like nitpicking, but that confusion has caused massive damage throughout history, for example in Russia.

first post on Veeky Forums that really made me re-think something
I suspect you are right about this

There is nothing about that cover that implies "Europe" to be anything other than how you've described it.

So what you're saying is that the title "Birth of the West" implies Western culture and civilization and since Eastern Europe doesn't belong in that category, the use of the word Europe is dishonest or misleading?

>Europe is a continent (or more precisely a peninsula) on which three different civilisations have existed
I'd put it at four; Aegean (Minoan/Mycenaean), Classical (Greek/Roman), Orthodox (Byzantine/Russian) and Western (Catholic/Protestant).

Just because difference civilizations exist in one place at different times doesn't make it not a region. And they didn't cover small parts of it.

It's called 'The Birth of the West' and in the subtitle says 'the creation of Europe', which implies the West = Europe. It's a pretty nit-picky thing to complain about, but its not wrong. Please spare us Satan.

>three different civilizations
Mediterranean, Slavic, and Central/Western Europe?

If it's not published by a University Press and authored by a historian with some credentials and experience in the subject, then no, not worth a read.

So I take it you already knew about the overratedness of the Renaissance and underratedness of the Middle Ages for example?

Of course it does. It talks about "the creation of Europe". Unless the book suddenly delves into geology or memeology, that's the wrong word.

Yes, although it's more just that it uses "Europe" as synonymous with "West" as most people do, which people should really stop doing.

You're right, although I was following Spengler's classification which assumes Minoan civilisation to be an offshoot of Egypt rather than a full-blown civilisation. I'm not quite sure about that though.

None of those civilisation even covered most of Europe. But I never said Europe wasn't a geographical region, in fact that's exactly what I'm saying it is. But that can't have been what the author meant.

It might be called a cultural and political region today, but historically it's pretty useless as a concept. Same thing with stuff like Africa or Southeast Asia.

Greco-Roman, Eastern (meaning Eastern Christian and Muslim), and Western. Although Minoan is also correct as said, and would bring it to four even if you do consider it linked to Egypt.

>Spengler's classification which assumes Minoan civilisation to be an offshoot of Egypt rather than a full-blown civilisation. I'm not quite sure about that though
Maybe that made sense in the 1910s, but no archaeologist would think that today.

New to Veeky Forums. Can you elaborate on the overratedness of the Renaissance and underratedness of the Middle Ages?

Looked up the author. The url of his personal website is literally paulcollinscatholicwriter. Seems like another Rodney Stark, so worth skipping.

see

You forgot Early British.

Building a tomb doesn't make you a civilization. And that's not British.

To sum it up, the image most people have of the Middle Ages is completely wrong, especially for the Gothic Era (12th to 14th century, before the black plague and hundred years war).

For instance the lack of hygiene, witch hunts, religious suppression of science... all those are things that began in the Renaissance and that weren't the case in the Middle Ages at all. Most strikingly, there was a real scientific revolution that began in the 13th to 14th centuries with major progress in the scientific method, in establishing the foundation of calculus, of modern physics etc. But that was in fact interrupted by the Renaissance, as academia came to be dominated by humanism, which considered all of medieval progress as deviations from true civilisations, ie that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This entire picture of the Middles Ages as "Dark Ages" was started by Humanists for that reason. The result was that for the following centuries, people went back to accepting the writings of Aristotle as absolute truth, and it's only in the 17th century that people started seriously questioning it again. And even then, someone like Galileo got into major trouble for it, even though he literally just said exactly what was already taught at the University of Paris 300 years before.

>Rome
>lumped in with Germany and France

Syrians and Egyptians are more Roman than the French and Germans.

>globalist

It's inevitable, user. Nothing was created in a vacuum, all cultures are parts of other cultures, even ones far the fuck away. Culture comes and goes, it's born and dies and melds. Stop clinging to the cultures that existed in the 18-1900s. They're dead. They're never coming back. move on.

Muslims in North Africa and Greater Syria are Greco-Roman. Moreso than the French, British and Germans.

the term civilization is for laymen. It means nothing in actual scholarly pursuits. most people are combinations of many complex situations and products of their environment.

Most people lump civilizations as basically a region that share a military or under a military's control. But many Empires held countless cultures, city states, tribes, and languages, sharing nothing other than taxation and common enemies.

Civilizations are nothing more than arbitrary lines that help us study history better.

There's not a sentence in this post that isn't complete nonsense.

Nah, you're just too invested into nationalism that your ego can't let go of the idea of putting titles on things, because humans are tribal/pack animals, and your monkey brain wants to lump things together as "packs" but that's not how history works.

It's also why you didn't actually argue. Greater Syria and egypt have actually been a part of the Roman Empire, and were the remainder of the Roman Empire when the Western Empire fell. Germany, France and the Uk were not. greeks also settled North Africa, Anatolia, and greater Syria.

>Muslims in North Africa and Greater Syria are Greco-Roman. Moreso than the French, British and Germans.

North Africans and Levantines are Hellenic Semites while Western Europeans are Latinized Germanics. Greco-Roman is more an abstract umbrella for humanist thought and philosophy than it is a civilization.

I'm not a STEMfag or anything, but that blows

>Muslims in North Africa and Greater Syria are Greco-Roman
No they aren't. They're Muslims in North Africa and Greater Syria. Romans aren't around anymore.

>Moreso than the French, British and Germans.
The French, British and Germans are no more or less 'Roman' than Muslims because neither of them are. They were both heavily influenced by Greece and Rome.

>Most people lump civilizations as basically a region that share a military or under a military's control. But many Empires held countless cultures, city states, tribes, and languages, sharing nothing other than taxation and common enemies.
That's complete bullshit. Civilizations are vaguely defined but very real groups of cultures that share a common intellectual or elite culture which develops as a single entity. That elite/intellectual culture can exist in many different diverse areas and among many different populations.

Nobody cares Ahmed.

>North Africans and Levantines are Hellenic Semites while Western Europeans are Latinized Germanics.

Language does not dictate that. North Africans and Greater Syrians are not semites. They speak a semitic language. Same with the Germanic people. They speak latin(ish) languages.

It does seem like Minoan culture just kind of popped up out of nowhere though. Kind of like the Incas, those are the only two societies that seem to defy Spengler's model, or maybe it just seems that way because we don't know enough about them.

>No they aren't. They're Muslims in North Africa and Greater Syria. Romans aren't around anymore.

I agree, that's why I said "more roman". They've been under far more Roman and Greek influence for much longer than every other European group except for Greeks and maybe Italians.

>Civilizations are vaguely defined but very real groups

If they are vaguely defined, then they are not very real. A Roman citizen in Spain was not the same as a Roman citizen in Egypt. Same with the rulers.

>share a common intellectual or elite culture

Not true. Intellectual cultures aren't a thing. All cultures focus on the intellect. The only differences is the technologies they had access to. Elite cultures were also top down, and can be (and have been) easily replaced without altering the culture of the grass roots, except for SOMETIMES superficial things, like style of dress or language spoken.

>which develops as a single entity.

That has never happened in the history of mankind. Even in hyper nationalistic places like France, each region has it's own culture and identity and style and opinions.

So like I said, "civilization" is basically "The military functioned over this area of land". It means nothing else. Peoples in 2 different Empires could be more related to each other than peoples within a single Empire.

Don't bother too much, he's an obscurantist. He'll tell you civilisations don't exist because there are always some regional variations or whatever.

>Don't bother, his point is too true to be argued against.

Publishers create the titles, not the authors. stop being obnoxious.

>Europe doesn't exist
Quick, someone tell Norman Davies.

>civilization is a social construct
so what? so are genres of music
the characteristics we use to differentiate synth pop and death metal are also arbitrary because we decide what characteristics separate them

stop acting like you're clever for pointing this out

don't take his words for it
he's a reactionary who fetishises everything that the "modernity" condemns
it's true that the "dark ages" are a meme, but he is doing the oposite

the major revolutions in science did not happen in the middle ages
and him quoting some obscure text that might be construed as a reference to a scientific thing proves nothing
it's like when people say that Muslims invented literally everything scientific

>Rome, Germany and France
>No Poland and Austria
Fuck that book