John M. Hobson

The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation is a telling reconsideration of Global History and a penetrating essay in economic and cultural historiography. Hobson presents evidence for an Afro-Asian ‘Age of Discovery’ and a Chinese ‘industrial miracle’ centuries before Europeans wrote of their own accomplishments in these endeavors. He dismantles myths about Oriental despotism and isolationism, the East’s technological backwardness, Italian Renaissance pioneers, and the European take-off enabled by ‘discovery’ of the New World. Serious readers will have to rethink much of what they have been taught about how the world came to be as it seems.… (meer)

Studied for a Masters of International Studies at University of Sydney, and I had John Hobson as a lecturer. I am usually sceptical when a lecturer has their own book as a set text for a subject, but this book is not a bad guide for a subject i hadn't had to tackle for a few years. As a textbook for something like Foundations of International Relations i find that it includes a few too many terms and concepts that are the author's own (such as Domestic and International Power)but it does seem to fit well between the spectrum of something for total beginner and something only an academic in the field would understand… (meer)