In today's world it is imperative that people should learn about history in order to understand modern society. However, many historians have pondered the question; what is the best way to study history? The initial response is that a person should study history from an unbiased point of view. In the reading The Origins of the Modern World by Robert Marks, the author tries to describe the history of the modern world from that unbiased point of view. Marks accomplishes this by using a non-Eurocentric point of view to explain history.
The Eurocentric version of creation of the modern world is that Europe was currently developing at the time because they were exceptional or even better than the other countries of the world at that time. This provoked that idea that the west was "progressive", and that capitalist development was "progressive". Europeans were able to acquire money and power the soonest before the other countries by industrializing. This has been called the "European Miracle", and primarily occurred due to the exploitation of others. These unique characteristics allowed for Europe to modernize first, and created the opportunity for them to spread their modern culture throughout the world, bypassing cultural obstacles.
This can be said to pose Europe as the active shaper of history. However, this point of view does not take into account how other countries of the world progressed at other times to shape history in their own ways. The non-Eurocentric version of the creation of the modern world started in Asia, with the driving source of economic trade exchange. At that time, Chinas economic growth stimulated the entire Eurasian continent. Asia was the primary source of manufactured goods and desired large quantities of silver. This lead traders into the Asian economy. This economic growth however, did not last. Asia started to decline with the growing need for unavailable recourses such as coal. England, who had vast amounts of the highly sought after recourse, continued to progress. Once Europeans discovered large quantities of silver in the New World, they traded it with China for Asian spices and other assorted goods, and developed the first age of globalization.
This second point of view brings the reader into the more expansive of of things. Were as the Eurocentric viewpoint manly centered around Europe, the non-Eurocentric point of view involves other countries and continents in how the modern world was established. In the Eurocentric record of history, Europe was the center of all trade and establishment of modernity. This was not true in the non-Eurocentric point of view for Asia played a large role in modernization and globalization too. The historical outcome was the same with Britain having global dominance. So, the historical information was undisturbed. However, the amount of facts associated with the historical makeup of the time were far more extensive in the unbiased, non-Eurocentric, history of the creation of the modern world.
