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Description of  The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea

0226068145 pdf The term civilization comes with considerable baggage, dichotomizing people, cultures, and histories as civilizedor not. While the idea of civilization has been deployed throughout history to justify all manner of interventions and sociopolitical engineering, few scholars have stopped to consider what the concept actually means. Here, Brett Bowden examines how the idea of civilization has informed our thinking about international relations over the course of ten centuries. From the Crusades to the colonial era to the global war on terror, this sweeping volume exposes civilization as a stage-managed account of history that legitimizes imperialism, uniformity, and conformity to Western standards, culminating in a liberal-democratic global order. Along the way, Bowden explores the variety of confrontations and conquestsas well as those peoples and places excluded or swept asideundertaken in the name of civilization. Concluding that the West and the rest have more commonalities than differences, Read more