The Christian and progress interpretations of human history had defined the unity of world history and given direction to all historical phenomena through, respectively. Divine Providence and the inexorable development of rationality. However, since 1918 many histories have adhered to the modem “sequence of cultures” interpretation. This nonteleological view sounds plausible until one tries to locate in this scheme the scientific-technological achievements of Western culture that are presently transforming most other cultures.
That feature clearly indicates an “upward” development and thus disturbs the egalitarian scheme of cultures constmcted by social scientists. For the latter, culture was simply a fact; every group had one. A group needed to achieve no special level of rationality to “have a culture”; no culture was superior to any other and one stage of a culture did not constitute progress beyond the preceding stages. In this egalitarian and ahistorical perspective a culture was a functional structural system used in the process of adjusting to given conditions. Yet the social sciences proudly carry the term “science” in their name. That implies a claim that the scientific—that is, modem Western—way of reflecting on social phenomena has a higher truth value than other ways. All in all, the phenomenon of the sciences has given the diffusion of Western culture a distinctly nonegalitarian and developmental character.
Historians confronted the very problem of accounting for the West’s position among other cultures when they wished to explain the centuries of Western dominance and expansion. Did either objectivity or respect for the sensitivities of the new non-Western nations obligate history to neglect the fact of Western culture’s apparent superior dynamics? Believers in progress among historians claimed that Western culture has unified the world and have praised Western influence on other cultures by pointing to the advances in hygiene, education, science, self government, and individualism. Herbert Butterfield credited Western influence with the eventual global triumph of personalism, even if Westernization itself would fail ultimately. But other scholars have rejected any positive evaluation of Western influence on non-Western cultures as a violation of the concept of equally valid cultures. Some even characterized world histories containing such an appraisal as born of a will to power and conquest, in short, as ill-disguised forces of Western imperialism.
The unresolved problem of how to evaluate the ongoing Westernization of the world has bedeviled all scholarly attempts to write world history. Whenever historians have dropped Westernization as the integrating theme for their world histories they have been left with a mere enumeration of cultures. Many authors did just that when they simply lined up the past of nations and cultures in consecutive chapters and let the bookbinder accomplish the synthesis with glue, bindery tape, and cardboard. Actually, most works on world history since 1945 have been less evasive on the process of Westernization. The ambitious works of many volumes—often cooperative endeavors—have to different degrees and in various ways affirmed the unifying force of Westernization. The new edition of the German Propylden Weltgeschichte, for example, dropped its previously strong Europe-centered approach but retained its positive evaluation of Westernization as progress. The same positive accent on Westernization without chauvinism remained in the Historia Mundi and William H. McNeill’s world history. From what is known so far of the UNESCO History of Mankind it will be unlikely to repudiate the Western assertion of progress, particularly not since its complete title includes the words: Cultural and Scientific Development. None of the doubts about Western civilization as the prototype of universal development could be found in Soviet world history. The prototypical industrialization of the West with its social and political consequences will be repeated in all societies on the globe as mankind proceeds in set stages to its fulfillment in the Communist society.
During the last two decades, different views of the development of the scientific-technological Western culture have developed. None of them has been apocalyptic, although both positive and negative perspectives have been present. Analysts of postmodernism with a social science perspective have spoken of an “end of history” and the subsequent postmodern age in an affirmative and critical vein. Francis Fukuyama saw in the victory of modernism’s liberal democracy and the market economy the “end of history.” Progress has reached its goal in an antiutopian stage where life’s routine will continue, but grand-scale historical developments will be absent. Other scholars (Roderick Seidenberg, Arnold Gehlen, Hendrik de Man) have arrived at a less sanguine understanding of the “end of history,” suggesting that by virtue of an out-of-control rationality. Western culture has exhausted its creative potential and is entering a stage of utter stability. In this static and soon-to-be-global stage, changes would happen only within a limited range. The increasingly “frozen” conditions (characterized as crystallization and petrification) would make anachronisms of all concepts linked to a rational, free, and creative subject. Ironically, modernity—the most dynamic period—was moving toward a permanent impasse. The postmodern stage offered no escape since all past forces of change will have been neutralized; collective agents (Marx’s proletariat), the arts, and critical thought. It also would know no overall meaning or unitary development. While this vision of the postmodern world has found little resonance in the main body of historiography, it has led Marxist scholars to reinterpret the stages of capitalism, search for new change agents, and rediscover history’s dialectic (Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagle-ton, and Edward W. Said). German advocates of microhistory (Alltagsge-scfiichte), too, ruled out grand-scale historiography, including the progress view, but still discerned a possible change agent: the people so far absent from historical narratives (Lutz Niethammer). In contrast, Jurgen Habermas has rejected “end of history” concepts and affirmed a still vital modernism, although skeptical of many of its aspects in the manner of the Critical school.
World History
