Colonizer's Model Of The World Analysis

Colonizer’s Model of the World One of the central themes in J.M. Blaut’s book The Colonizer’s Model of the World, is that the social stratification and class system, which was built around the farmers and the landowners, which is cited by Marx and Eric Jones as the foundation that Europe was able to use to rise to power and dominance was reflected and found in similar forms throughout Africa and Asia. He utilizes the writings Jones and Marx, specifically The European Miracle from Jones, to show their belief that it was the social stratification and inequality that was key to Europe’s rise in the late 1400’s, early 1500’s. However, evidence that points at similar structures based around serfs and wealthy landowners throughout Asia and Africa
Blaut writes about the class system and social stratification of Europe throughout chapters 2, 3, and 4. This class structure, referred mostly to as feudalism, is that of a serf, or land worker and the elite who own the land. The fact that many non-European civilizations had very different looking class systems or, in some cases, no class systems at all was used by Eric Jones to argue that they were stagnant or under-developed when compared to Europe. These “European Miracle” historians either argue that as societies outside of Europe are “classless” they should either be ignored completely, or they are to be considered “stagnant and backward” (124). To this argument Blaut states: “…Africa was not classless in 1492…classless societies are not stagnant, and the historians that make this sort of argument…contradict themselves” (124-125). Slightly later in the text Padgug’s argument for slavery as the driving force behind Europe’s development is brought up, in this argument Padgug states that the reason Asia was unable to overtake Europe in the late 1400’s was because of Europe’s “slave mode of