Part one -- Conquest --
The pattern of empire --
Technology and power --
The politics of imperialism --
Part two -- Culture change and imperial rule --
Culture change in plural societies : South Africa and Central Asia
--
Culture change in Mexico --
Administrative choices and their consequences : examples from Bengal, Central Asia, Java, and Malaya --
Part three -- Conversion --
Christian mission in East Africa --
Varieties of defensive modernization --
Meiji Japan : Revolutionary modernization --
Ottoman reactions to the West --
Part four -- Independence and the liquidation of empires --
Non-European resistance and the European withdrawal --
Personal and utopian responses --
The search for viable independence : Indonesia --
Paths to viable independence : Ghana.
"The World and the West reaches from such diverse cases as the Maya and Yaqui of Mexico, the Ghost Dance of North America, cargo cults of Melanesia, to Meiji Japan and the Ottoman Empire. In discussing a variety of questions about the relations between the world and the West in recent centuries, Curtin ultimately introduces a new perspective on the underlying question: How do human societies change through time?"--Jacket.
more...
