The Colonizer's Model of the World Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History

The book first defines the Eurocentric diffusionist model of the world as one that invents a permanent world core, an "Inside," in which cul tural evolution is natural and continuous, and a permanent periphery, and "Outside," in which cultural evolution is mainly an effect of the diffusion of ideas, commodities, settlers, and political control from the core. The ethnohistory of the doctrine is traced from its 16th-cen tury origins, through its efflorescence in the period of classical col onialism, to its present form in theories of economic development, mod ernization, and new world order. Blaut demonstrates that most "Western " scholarship is to some extent diffusionist and based implicitly in t he idea that the world has one permanent center from which culture-cha nging ideas tend to emanate. Eurocentric diffusionism has shaped our a ttitudes concerning race and the environment, psychology and society, technology and politics.

J. M. Blaut is Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois, Chicago.