The
Western world, also known as
the West and the
Occident (from
Latin: ''occidens'' "sunset, west"; as contrasted with the
Orient), is a term referring to the countries of the
Americas, as well all countries of
Western (including
Greece and
Cyprus) and
Central Europe,
Baltic states and
Croatia,
Australia and
New Zealand.
The concept of the Western world has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe and the advent of Christianity. In the modern era, Western culture has been heavily influenced by the traditions of The Renaissance, The Protestant Reformation, The Enlightenment, and shaped by expansive colonialism in the 16th-17th Century. Its political usage was temporarily informed by mutual antagonism with the Soviet bloc during the Cold War in the mid to late 20th Century (1944-1989). In the contemporary religious and respectively cultural meaning, the term Western world refers to the countries of Western Europe as well as countries of European colonial origin in the New World like United States of America, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Australia and Haiti.
Introduction
The West originated with Greece and Rome. Over time, their associated empires grew first to the east and south, conquering and absorbing many older great civilizations of the ancient Near East; later, they grew to the north and west to include Western Europe.
Other historians, such as Carroll Quigley (''Evolution of Civilizations''), contend that Western Civilization was born around 400 AD, after the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire, leaving a vacuum for new ideas to flourish that were impossible in Classical societies. In either view, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West experienced a period of considerable decline, known as the Middle Ages, which include the Dark Ages and the Crusades.
The knowledge of the ancient Western world was partly preserved during this period due to the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire; it was also greatly expanded by the Arab World, and mostly by the concurrent ascendency of the Islamic Golden Age. The Arab importation of both the Ancient and new technology from the Middle East and the Orient to Renaissance Europe represented “one of the largest technology transfers in world history.”
Since the Renaissance, the West evolved beyond the influence of the ancient Greeks and Romans and the Islamic world due to the Commercial, Scientific, and Industrial Revolutions, and the expansion of the Christian peoples of Western European empires, and particularly the globe-spanning empires of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Generally speaking, the current consensus would locate the West, at the very least, in the cultures and peoples of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, The United States and Canada. With the exceptions of Australia and New Zealand, it is worth noting that ''The West'' has geographical relevance. There is debate among some as to whether Eastern Europe is in a category of its own. The argument supporting Eastern Europe being a part of the west is that Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania are now a part of the European Union, which mostly comprises western countries. However, there are distinct cultural differences; the impact of Communism on these cultures in the 20th Century was great. Although geographically not located in Western Europe, Greece and Cyprus are always considered a part of the Western World. This is partly due to political and economic reasons and partly due to western culture having Greek roots.
Some people assume developed countries in Asia, such as Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, are a part of the western world, because of their strong economic, political and military ties to Western Europe, NATO or the United States. However, while there are Western influences in their cultures, they nonetheless maintain largely different and distinctive cultures, religions (although Christianity is a major religion in South Korea), languages, customs, and worldviews that are products of their own indigenous development, rather than Western influences.
Japan and South Korea, in particular, are the only Asian members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the two leading full democracies in Asia, having a high standard of living and a high level of human development. Although these Asian countries are not western, these are amongst the generally accepted political characteristics of Western nations. However, having a high level of human development is not mutually exclusive to the west. Japan, South Korea, and Singapore all have higher income levels and standards of living compared to most to all of the Americas (which is entirely apart of the ''The West'').
Western culture
The term "Western culture" is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies.
Specifically, Western culture may imply:
:*a Biblical-Christian cultural influence in spiritual thinking, customs and either ethic or moral traditions, around Post-Classical Era.
:*European cultural influences concerning artistic, musical, folkloric, ethic and oral traditions, whose themes have been further developed by Romanticism.
:*a Graeco-Roman Classical and Renaissance cultural influence, concerning artistic, philosophic, literary, and legal themes and traditions, the cultural social effects of migration period and the heritages of Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and other ethnic groups, as well as a tradition of rationalism in various spheres of life, developed by Hellenistic philosophy, Scholasticism, Humanisms, the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, and including, in political thought, widespread rational arguments in favour of freethought, human rights, equality and democratic values averse to irrationality and theocracy.
The concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic and philosophical principles that set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon.
The term has come to apply to countries whose history is strongly marked by European immigration or settlement, such as the Americas, and Australasia, and is not restricted to Europe.
Some tendencies that define modern Western societies are the existence of political pluralism, laicism, generalization of middle class, prominent subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements), increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration. Modern shape of these societies are strongly based upon the Industrial Revolution and their associated social and environmental problems as class struggle and pollution and reactions to them, such as syndicalism and environmentalism.
Historical divisions
The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of ''East'' and ''West'' originated in the
Roman Empire. The Eastern
Mediterranean was home to the highly urbanized cultures that had Greek as their common language (owing to the older empire of
Alexander the Great and of the
Hellenistic successors.), whereas the West was much more rural in its character and more readily adopted Latin as its common language. After the fall of the
Western Roman Empire, Western Europe was substantially cut off from the East where ''
Byzantine'' Greek culture and
Eastern Christianity became founding influences in the
Arab/
Muslim world and among the Eastern and Southern
Slavic peoples.
Roman Catholic western and central Europe, as such, maintained a distinct identity particularly as it began to redevelop during the
Renaissance. Even following the
Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe continued to see itself as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than other parts of the perceived ''civilized'' world.
Use of the term ''West'' as a specific cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. In the past two centuries the term ''western world'' has sometimes been used synonymously with ''Christian world'' because of the numerical dominance of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism compared to other Christian traditions, though this dominance is somewhat recent. As secularism rose in Europe and elsewhere during the 19th and 20th centuries, the term ''West'' came to take on less religious connotations and more political connotations, especially during the Cold War. Additionally, closer contacts between the ''West'' and Asia and other parts of the world in recent times have continued to cloud the use and meaning of the term.
Hellenic
The
Hellenic division between the barbarians and the
Greeks contrasted in many societies the
Greek-speaking culture of the Greek settlements around the Mediterranean to the surrounding non-Greek cultures.
Herodotus considered the
Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a conflict of
Europa versus
Asia (which he considered to be all land north and east of the
Sea of Marmara, respectively). The terms "West" and "East" were not used by any Greek author to describe that conflict. The anachronistic application of those terms to that division entails a stark logical contradiction, given that, when the term "West" appeared, it was used in opposition to the Greeks and Greek-speaking culture.
Western society traces its cultural origins to both Greek thought and Christian religion, thus following an evolution that began in ancient Greece, continued through the Roman Empire and, with the coming of Christianity (which has its origins in the Middle East), spread throughout Europe. The inherently "Greek" classical ideas of history (which one might easily say they invented) and art may, however, be considered almost inviolate in the West, as their original spread of influence survived the Hellenic period of Roman classical antiquity, The Dark Ages, its resurgence during the western Renaissance, and has managed somehow to keep and exert its pervasive influence down into the present age, with every expectation of it continuing to dominate any secular Western cultural developments.
However, the conquest of the western parts of the Roman Empire by Germanic peoples and the subsequent dominance by the Western Christian Papacy (which held combined political and spiritual authority, a state of affairs absent from Greek civilization in all its stages), resulted in a rupture of the previously existing ties between the Latin West and Greek thought, including Christian Greek thought. The Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed this deviation.
On the other hand, the Modern West, emerging after the Renaissance as a new civilization, has been greatly influenced by (its own interpretation of) Greek thought, which was preserved in the Roman Empire and the medieval Islamic world during the Medieval West's Dark Ages and transmitted from there by emigration of Greek scholars, courtly marriages, and Latin translations. The Renaissance in the West emerged partly from currents within the Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
The Roman Empire
Ancient Rome (510 BC-AD 476) was a civilization that grew from a
city-state founded on the
Italian Peninsula about the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the
Mediterranean Sea. In its 12-century existence, Roman civilization shifted from a
monarchy, to a
republic, to an
autocratic empire. It came to dominate
Western Europe, the
Balkans and the entire area surrounding the
Mediterranean Sea through conquest using the
Roman legions and then through
cultural assimilation by giving Roman privileges and eventually citizenship to the whole empire. Nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual
decline of the Roman Empire.
The Western Roman Empire eventually broke into several kingdoms in the 5th century due to civil wars, corruption, and devastating Germanic invasions from such tribes as the Goths, the Franks and the Vandals.
The Eastern Roman Empire, governed from Constantinople, is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire after 476, the traditional date for the "fall of the Western Roman Empire" and for the subsequent onset of the Early Middle Ages. The Eastern Roman Empire survived the fall of the West, and protected Roman legal and cultural traditions, combining them with Greek and Christian elements, for another thousand years.
The Roman Empire succeeded the about 500 year-old Roman Republic (510 BC - 1st century BC), which had been weakened by the conflict between Gaius Marius and Sulla and the civil war of Julius Caesar against Pompey and Marcus Brutus. During these struggles hundreds of senators were killed, and the Roman Senate had been refilled with loyalists of the First Triumvirate and later those of the Second Triumvirate.
Several dates are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to Empire, including the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual roman dictator (44 BC), the victory of Caesar's heir Octavian at the Battle of Actium (September 2, 31 BC), and the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the honorific ''Augustus''. (January 16, 27 BC). Octavian/Augustus officially proclaimed that he had saved the Roman Republic and carefully disguised his power under republican forms: Consuls continued to be elected, tribunes of the plebeians continued to offer legislation, and senators still debated in the Roman Curia. However, it was Octavian who influenced everything and controlled the final decisions, and in final analysis, had the legions to back him up, if it became necessary.
Roman expansion began long before the state was changed into an empire and reached its zenith under emperor Trajan with the conquest of Dacia in AD 106. During this territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled about 5 900 000 km² (2,300,000 sq.mi.) of land surface and had a population of 100 million. From the time of Caesar to the Fall of the Western Empire, Rome dominated Western Eurasia and the Mediterranean, comprising the majority of its population. Ancient Rome has contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, technology and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today.
The Roman Empire is where the idea of the "West" began to emerge. Due to Rome's central location at the heart of the Empire, "West" and "East" were terms used to denote provinces west and east of the capital itself. Therefore, Iberia (Portugal and Spain), Gaul (France), Africa (Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) and Britannia were all part of the "West", while Greece, Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt were part of the "East." Italy itself was considered central, until the reforms of Diocletian, when the idea of formally dividing the Empire into true Eastern and Western halves was introduced.
In 395, the Roman Empire formally split into a Western Roman Empire and an Eastern one, each with their own emperors, capitals, and governments, although ostensibly they still belonged to one formal Empire. The dissolution of the Western half (nominally in 476, but in truth a long process that ended by 500) left only the Eastern Empire alive. For centuries, the East continued to call themselves Eastern Romans, while the West began to think in terms of Latins (those living in the old Western Empire) and Greeks (those inside the Roman remnant to the east).
Christian schism
[[File:Europe religion map en.png|thumb|200px|Predominant religious heritages in 20th century Europe
]]
In the early 4th century, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great established the city of Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire included lands east of the Adriatic Sea and bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of the Black Sea. These two divisions of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires were reflected in the administration of the Christian Church, with Rome and Constantinople debating and arguing over whether either city was the capital of Christianity.
As the Eastern (orthodox) and Western (firstly Catholic, then Protestant as well) churches spread their influence, the line between Eastern and Western Christianity was moving towards one another until it was fully set at the time of Lithuanian Christianisation. The border of Western/Eastern Christianity was moving and its movement was defined by the existence of the Byzantine empire and the fluctuating power and influence of the church in Rome. Now its border is East of Estonian border, via the very West of Ukraine until Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, not to mention enclaves in many countries such as Romania, Northern Albania etc. From Middle Ages until late 20th century religion was decreasingly important in Europe therefore the religious division followed a cultural divide and vice versa.
Huntington argued that this cultural division still existed during the Cold War as the approximate western boundary of those countries that were allied with the Soviet Union. Others have fiercely criticized these views arguing they confuse the Eastern Roman Empire with Russia, especially considering the fact that the country that had the most historical roots in Byzantium, Greece, expelled communists and was allied with the West during the Cold War. Still, Russia accepted Eastern Christianity from the Byzantine Empire (by the Patriarch of Constantinople: Photios I) linking Russia very close to the Eastern Roman Empire world. Later on, in 16th century Russia created own religious centre in Moscow. Religion survived in Russia beside severe persecution carrying values alternative to the communist ideology.
Under Charlemagne, the Franks established an empire that was recognized as the Holy Roman Empire by the Pope in Rome, offending the Roman Emperor in Constantinople. The crowning of the Emperor by the Pope led to the assumption that the highest power was the papal hierarchy, establishing, until the Protestant Reformation, the civilization of Western Christendom. The Latin Rite Christian Church of western and Central Europe headed by the Pope split with the eastern, Greek-speaking Patriarchates during the Great Schism. Meanwhile, the extent of each expanded, as British Isles, Germanic peoples, Moravia, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, Baltic peoples and the other non-Christian lands of the northwest were converted by the Western Church, while Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, lands of Belarus, Caucasus and most of Ukraine were converted by the Eastern Church.
In this context, the Protestant reformation may be viewed as a schism within the Latin Church. Martin Luther, in the wake of precursors, broke with the pope and with the emperor, backed by many of the German princes. These changes were adopted by the Scandinavian kings. Later, the commoner Jean Cauvin (John Calvin) assumed the religio-political leadership in Geneva, a former ecclesiastical city whose prior ruler had been the bishop. The English King later improvised on the Lutheran model, but subsequently many Calvinist doctrines were adopted by popular dissenters, leading to the English Civil War.
Both royalists and dissenters colonized North America, eventually resulting in an independent United States of America.
The Colonial "West"
The
Reformation, and consequent dissolution of Western
Christendom as even a theoretical unitary political body, resulted in the
Thirty Years War. The war ended in the
Peace of Westphalia, which enshrined the concept of the
nation-state and the principle of absolute
national sovereignty in
international law.
These concepts of a world of nation-states, coupled with the ideologies of the Enlightenment, the coming of modernity, the Scientific Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, produced powerful political and economic institutions that have come to influence (or been imposed upon) most nations of the world today. Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most important events in history.
This process of influence (and imposition) began with the voyages of discovery, colonization, conquest, and exploitation of Spain and Portugal; it continued with the rise of the Dutch East India Company, and the creation and expansion of the British and French colonial empires. Due to the reach of these empires, Western institutions expanded throughout the world. Even after demands for self-determination from subject peoples within Western empires were met with decolonization, these institutions persisted. One specific example was the requirement that post-colonial societies were made to form nation-states (in the Western tradition), which often created arbitrary boundaries and borders that did not necessarily represent a whole nation, people, or culture, and are often the cause of international conflicts and friction even to this day. Though the overt colonial era has passed, Western nations, as comparatively rich, well-armed, and culturally powerful states, still wield a large degree of influence throughout the world.
Although not part of Western colonization process proper, Western culture entered Japan in the so-called Meiji period (1868–1912). The traditional Japanese society was virtually overturned into a Western-like, industrial and militarist power by will of the Emperor Meiji himself, which with time led to the dawn of the Empire of Japan.
The Cold War Context
During the
Cold War, a new definition emerged. The
Earth was divided into three "worlds". The
First World, analogous in this context to what was called ''the West'', was composed of
NATO members and other countries aligned with the
United States. The
Second World was the
Eastern bloc in the
Soviet sphere of influence, including the
Soviet Union and
Warsaw Pact countries. It included some
Central European countries like the
German Democratic Republic,
Poland,
Czechoslovakia (now split into
Czech Republic and
Slovakia).
The Third World consisted of countries, many of which were unaligned with either, and important members included India and Yugoslavia (of which Central European countries Slovenia and Croatia)); some include the People's Republic of China, though this is disputed, as the People's Republic of China is communist, had friendly relations—at certain times—with the Soviet bloc, and had a significant degree of importance in global geopolitics. Some third world countries aligned themselves with either the US-led West or the Soviet-led Eastern bloc.
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There were a number of countries which did not fit comfortably into this neat definition of partition, including Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Ireland, which chose to be neutral. Finland was under the ''Soviet Union's'' military sphere of influence (see FCMA treaty) but remained neutral, was not communist, nor was it a member of the Warsaw Pact or Comecon but a member of the EFTA since 1986, and was west of the Iron Curtain. In 1955, when Austria again became a fully independent republic, it did so under the condition that it remain neutral, but as a country to the west of the Iron Curtain, it was in the ''United States''' sphere of influence. Spain did not join the NATO until 1982, towards the end of the Cold War and after the death of the authoritarian Franco.
Modern definitions
The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in nature, depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual or political criteria are employed.
Many anthropologists, sociologists and historians oppose "the West and the Rest" in a categorical manner. The same has been done by Malthusian demographers with a sharp distinction between European and non-European family systems. Among anthropologists, this includes Durkheim, Dumont and Lévi-Strauss.
As the term "Western world" does not have a strict international definition, governments do not use the term in legislation of international treaties and instead rely on other definitions.
Ethnic / Linguistic
The Western World is also considered to be the collection of nations, where Indo-European languages and cultures (primarily of Western European origin) are practiced and dominated. Ethnically speaking, it can refer to Germanic, Greek, Latin, and Celtic peoples and most of their territories. It can also refer to some Slavic territories in Central Europe.
Cultural
:''See:
Western Culture''
From a cultural and sociological approach the Western world is defined as including all cultures that are directly derived from Western European cultures, i.e. Western Europe, the Americas (North and South America), Australia and New Zealand. Together these countries constitute Western society
In the 20th century, Christianity declined in influence in many western countries, in Western Europe and elsewhere. Secularism (separating religion from politics and science) increased. However, while church attendance is in decline, most Westerners nominally identify themselves as Christians (e.g. 70% in the UK) and attend church on major occasions, such as Christmas and Easter. In the Americas Christianity continues to play an important societal role, thus helping to maintain Christianity's important role in Western culture.
The official religion of the United Kingdom and some Nordic countries is Christianity, even though the majority of European countries have no official religion. Despite this, Christianity, in its different forms, remains the largest faith in most Western countries. Thus another definition of ''Occident'' would include reference to this majority Christian content within the culture.
Due to the high influence of European culture in places like South Africa, it could be said that the country is Western or has achieved Westernization. Moreover, White South Africans of European origin make up about 9% of South Africa. Another 9% are of mixed race. Unlike Black South Africans who've maintained their own native languages, most mixed South Africans speak Afrikaans as a first language. Likewise, most Indian South Africans speak English natively today. Therefore, it can be argued that this collective 20% of native English and Afrikaans speakers (both European-derived) live in heavily western influenced cultures. Similarly, whites and coloureds are over 10% of Namibia. They primarily speak Afrikaans and German as a first language. In addition to that, many Black South Africans and Namibians speak European languages, e.g. Afrikaans and English, fluently and are also considered native speakers of those languages.
Another country which is considered to be a Western nation is Israel. Israel's two official languages are Hebrew and Arabic. Although 20% of Israel being Arab Israeli, the largest ethnic group of Jews in Israel are Ashkenazi Jews. They are the descendants of Jews who migrated from various European countries both decades prior to and after the state of Israel was created. These people were native speakers of various European languages, notably German.
Another country which the westernness is debatable is Cape Verde because most of the population speaks Portuguese natively. Due to it being far off the coast of western Africa and not having an indigenous population, many of the mainland Africans who moved there or who were brought there have assimilated into a western culture.
Modern political
Countries of the Western world are generally considered to share certain fundamental political ideologies, including those of liberal democracy, the rule of law, human rights and a high degree of gender equality (although there are notable exceptions, especially in foreign policy). Additionally countries with strong political and/or military ties to Western and Central Europe, NATO and/or the United States, such as Japan, Israel, and South Korea can be said to be Western in a political sense at least.
As such, this definition of the term "Western" is not necessarily tied to the geographic sense of the word. A geographically Western nation such as Cuba is sometimes not considered politically Western due to its general rejection of liberal democracy, freedom of the press, and personal liberty. Conversely, some Eastern nations, for example, Japan, India, Israel, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, could be considered politically Western, due to their adoption of liberal democratic political institutions similar in structure to those of the traditionally Western nations.
Economic
[[File:World map by 2010 Human Development Index.png|thumb|right|400px|World map indicating the countries'
Human Development Index in 2010 (Source: 2010 Human Development Report).
See also:
Colour-blind compliant map for those with red-green color vision problems.
]]
Though the Cold War has ended, and some members of the former Eastern Bloc are making a general movement towards liberal democracy and other values held in common by the traditionally Western states, most Soviet republics are not considered Western because of the small presence of social and political reform, as well as their obvious cultural, economic and political differences to what is known today as described by the term "The West" North America, Western and Central Europe, Baltic states and Croatia, Australia and New Zealand.
The term "Western world" is often interchangeablebly used with the term First World stressing the difference between First World and the Third World or developing countries. This usage occurs despite the fact that many countries that may be geographically or culturally western are developing countries. In fact, most of the Americas are developing countries, which make up a significant percentage of the west. It is also used despite many Developed countries not being western (e.g. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan).
The existence of "The North" implies the existence of "The South", and the socio-economic divide between North and South. The term "The North" has in some contexts replaced earlier usage of the term "the West", particularly in the critical sense, as a more robust demarcation than the terms "West" and "East". The North provides some absolute geographical indicators for the location of wealthy countries, most of which are physically situated in the Northern Hemisphere, although, as most countries are located in the northern hemisphere in general, some have considered this distinction to be equally unhelpful.
The thirty High-Income countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which include: Australia, Canada, Iceland, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, the United States and the countries of the EU (except for: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Romania), are generally included in what used to be called "Developed World", although the OECD includes three countries, namely Chile, Mexico and Turkey, that are not yet fully industrial countries, but newly industrialised countries. Although Andorra, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malta, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Singapore, Taiwan and Vatican City, are not members of the OECD, they might also be regarded as developed countries, because their high living standards, high per capita incomes, and their social, economical and political structure are quite similar to those of the High Income OECD countries.
Other views
A series of scholars of civilization, including
Arnold J. Toynbee,
Alfred Kroeber and
Carroll Quigley have identified and analyzed "
Western civilization" as one of the
civilizations that have historically existed and still exist today. Toynbee entered into quite an expansive mode, including as candidates those countries or cultures who became so heavily influenced by the West as to adopt these borrowings into their very self-identity; carried to its limit, this would in practice include almost everyone within the West, in one way or another. In particular, Toynbee refers to the ''intelligentsia'' formed among the educated elite of countries impacted by the European expansion of centuries past. While often pointedly nationalist, these cultural and political leaders interacted within the West to such an extent as to change both themselves and the West.
Yet more recently, Samuel P. Huntington has taken a far more controversial approach, forging a political science hypothesis he labeled the "The Clash of Civilizations?" in a ''Foreign Affairs'' article and a book. According to Huntington's hypothesis, what he calls "conflicts between civilizations" will be the primary tensions of the 21st century world. In this hypothesis, the West is based on religion, as the countries of Western and Central Europe were historically influenced by the two forms of Western Christianity, namely Catholicism and Protestantism. Also, many Anglophone countries share these traits, e.g. Australia and New Zealand, as well as the more heterogeneous United States and Canada. Of course, so does Latin America.
Huntington's thesis, while influential, was by no means universally accepted; its supporters say that it explains modern conflicts, such as those in the former Yugoslavia. The thesis's detractors fear that by equating values like democracy with the concept of "Western civilization", it reinforces stereotypes that some perceive as being common within the West about non-traditionally Western societies that some may consider racist or xenophobic. Others believe that Huntington ignores the existence of non-Western democracies such as the East Asian and South-Central Asian democracies. As such, these detractors believe that it will serve to provoke and amplify conflict rather than illuminating a way to find an accommodating world order, or in particular cases a commonly agreed solution.
In Huntington's narrow thesis, the historically Eastern Orthodox nations of southeastern and Eastern Europe constitute a distinct "Euro-Asiatic civilization"; although European and mainly Christian (as well as notable Muslim influence and populations, particularly in the Balkans and southern/central Russia), these nations were not, in Huntington's view, shaped by the cultural influences of the Renaissance. The Renaissance did not affect Orthodox Eastern Europe due in part to the proximity of Ottoman domination, despite the decisive influence of Greek émigré scholars on the Renaissance.
Other views might be made regarding Eastern Europe.
A controversial theory of Huntington is that he considered the possibility of South America being a separate civilization from the West, but also mused that it might become a third part (the first two being North America and Europe) of the West in the future.
The theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conceived of the West as the set of civilizations descended from the Nile Valley Civilization of Egypt.
Palestinian-American literary critic Edward Said uses the term occident in his discussion of orientalism. According to his binary, the West, or Occident, created a romanticized vision of the East, or Orient, in order to justify colonial and imperialist intentions. This Occident-Orient binary is focused on the Western vision of the East instead of any truths about the East. His theories are rooted in Hegel's Master-slave dialectic: The Occident would not exist without the Orient and vice versa. Further, Western writers created this irrational, feminine, weak "Other" to contrast with the rational, masculine, strong West because of a need to create a difference between the two that would justify imperialist ambitions, said influenced Indian-American theorist Homi K. Bhabha.
The term the "West" may also be used pejoratively by certain tendencies and especially critical of the influence of the traditional West, due to the history of most of the members of the traditional West being previously involved, at one time or another, in outright imperialism and colonialism. Some of these critics also claim that the traditional West has continued to engage in what might be viewed as modern implementations of imperialism and colonialism, such as neoliberalism and globalization. (It should be noted that many Westerners who subscribe to a positive view of the traditional West are also very critical of neoliberalism and globalization, for their allegedly negative effects on both the developed and developing world.)
Allegedly, definitions of the term "Western world" that some may consider "ethnocentric" are considered by some to be "constructed" around one or another Western culture. The British writer Rudyard Kipling wrote about this contrast: ''East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet'', expressing his belief that somebody from the West "can never understand the Asian cultures" as the latter "differ too much" from the Western cultures. Some may view this alleged incompatibility as a precursor to Huntington's "clash of civilizations" theory.
Paradoxically, today Asia and Africa to varying degrees may be considered quasi-Western. Many East Asians and South Asians and Africans and others associate or even identify with the cosmopolitan cultures and international societies referred to sometimes as Western. Likewise, many in the West identify with a transcultural humanity, a notion often found in visions of the sacred.
From a very different perspective, it has also been argued that the idea of the West is, in part, a non-Western invention, deployed in the non-West to shape and define non-Western pathways through or against modernity.
See also
Americanization
Anglosphere
The Bible
Christianity
Commercial Revolution
Democracy
Europeanisation
First world
Freedom of religion
Freedom of speech
Indo-European languages
Industrial Revolution
List of explorers
List of inventors
Lusofonia
Market economy
Protestant work ethic
Scientific Revolution
Sexual revolution
Western Bloc
Western culture
Western mystery tradition
Western Regions
Westernisation
Organisations:
Group of Eight
NATO
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Western European and Others Group
Maps
References
Further reading
Duchesne, Ricardo (2011): ''The Uniqueness of Western Civilization'', Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 28, Leiden and Boston: Brill, ISBN 978-90-04-19248-5
J.F.C. Fuller. A Military History of the Western World. Three Volumes. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1987 and 1988.
:V. 1. From the earliest times to the
Battle of Lepanto; ISBN 0-306-80304-6.
: V. 2. From
the defeat of the Spanish Armada to
the Battle of Waterloo; ISBN 0-306-80305-4.
: V. 3. From the
American Civil War to the end of
World War II; ISBN 0-306-80306-2.
Category:Country classifications
Category:Cultural spheres of influence
Category:Eurocentrism
Category:Cultural concepts
ar:عالم غربي
ast:Occidente
bg:Западен свят
ca:Occident
cy:Y Gorllewin
da:Vesten
de:Westliche Welt
et:Läänemaailm
el:Δυτικός Κόσμος
es:Occidente
eo:Okcidenta civilizo
eu:Mendebalde (kulturala)
fr:Occident
fy:Westerske wrâld
gl:Occidente
ko:서양
hr:Zapadni svijet
id:Dunia Barat
is:Vesturlönd
it:Civiltà occidentale
he:העולם המערבי
kk:Батыстық өркениет
la:Humanus Cultus Occidentalis
lv:Rietumu pasaule
lt:Vakarų pasaulis
ms:Dunia Barat
nl:Westerse wereld
ja:西洋
no:Vesten
nn:Vesten
oc:Occident
pl:Cywilizacja zachodnia
pt:Mundo ocidental
ro:Lumea occidentală
ru:Западный мир
sah:Арҕааҥҥы цивилизация
sco:Occident
simple:Western world
sl:Zahodni svet
ckb:جیھانی ڕۆژاوایی
sh:Zapadni svijet
fi:Länsimaat
sv:Västvärlden
th:โลกตะวันตก
uk:Західна цивілізація
zh:西方世界
