Robert sees the modern world as one marked by the nation state, industry and the growing gap between the poorest and the wealthiest parts in the globe. He argues that the idea or preservation that people believe that the West had an added advantage in terms of a unique historical, special quality race, was completely a myth. He further proves by providing some features that show Eurocentrism is just a myth. For instance, he says that the environment, spirit, and mind are the major bases that give the human community superiority over the other species. Thus, it is not the industrial revolution in Europe that made Europe dominate the world at the beginning of the 1400s (Mark, 2007).
Eurocentric people oversee themselves better than the rest of the world by believing that they are the only active people who shaped the world history. He argues that Eurocentric development alone, was not capable of initiating modernization in the rest of the world. Mark disapproves Eurocentric myth of superiority to being just a matter of scholarship that contributed to establishment of what they believe to be false or true. Besides, he says that Eurocentrism development was just a way of setting assumptions about how the world works. Thus, Eurocentric was a way of establishing the strategy of practitioners to the facts. Equally, he argues that Eurocentric ideas in relation to the modern world were deeply involved with the American history . There is a cross relationship between the American history and European civilization, and thus, he grouped them into one. By this, he disagreed with the myth about the contribution of Eurocentric to the development of the new world (Mark, 2007).
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Mark institutes a method of proving that the rise of the West was wrong by developing another narrative that explains how the modern world came to be the way it is at the moment . The narrative uses different approaches such as thinking outside the rise of the West matrix. He argues that by thinking outside Eurocentric, one develops an independent way of finding out which part of the world, if any, contributed to the modern world (Marks, 2007). Additionally, he asserts that the alternative thinking enables readers to critically analyze their assumption on how the modern world works. Besides, the alternative narrative will enable the reader to understand the world and its history.
The difference in the arguments of Mark and those of Diamond
Diamond’s argument was almost similar to Mark’s in relation to the modern world. However , Diamond puts more emphasis on the rising of a world history. On the other hand, Mark uses alternative narratives to enable readers to cross-examine how the modern world came to exist. Mark used material conditions and the biological regime, similar to Diamond’s, but uses different examples to argue out his points in relation to the modern world. For instance, he uses the climate change that affects Europe agriculture predictor activities collapse and Diamond used Easter Island’s ecocides to explain the ecological collapse.
Both Mark and Diamond used land transformation and population growth to bring out the idea of ecological change. However, Mark viewed the ecological change in terms of an expanding economy, while Diamond based his argument on the effect of germs and guns on the ecology. Furthermore, Diamond argues that the emergence of the modern world was a result of accidents of agriculture. On the other hand, Mark uses a similar approach, but with a different meaning by arguing that the collapse of agriculture in the West led to the spread of Eurocentrism in the world.
Similarities and differences exists in the postulations given by Mark and Diamond. In as much as they use different perspectives to explain their understanding of the origin of the modern world , they both allude to an aspect of the environment having played a key role. Marks idea of the effect of the environment is direct as does point that nations may have prospered upon escape from environmental constraints. He uses an environmental context to explain the current modern world as well as the superiority of nations such as the United states. Diamond too can be said to take an environmental basis by explaining the existing modern worlds in terms of agriculture. They both also try to explain the governing factors behind the changes in the ecology. That said, the differences between their postulates cannot be ignored. The main difference is the position they take in regards to eurocentrism. Diamond gives a pro-Eurocentric argument while Mark gives an anti-Eurocentric argument. Other differences are the causatives of ecological changes. The origin of the modern world continues to be a contentious issue. Neither Diamond nor Mark can be said to be right or wrong. The real origin of the modern world can be best understood depending on the basis in which one decides to examine it from.
References
Mark, R. B. (2007). The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
