Western Supremacy: The Triumph of an Idea

by Sophie Bessis

Sophie Bessis tells the story of the West's relationship with the world it came to dominate - from the conquest of the Americas, through the slave trade and the Scramble for Africa, the White Man's burden, Manifest Destiny and the growth of scientific racism, to decolonisation, the ideology of development and structural adjustment.

Western Supremacy is the history of colonial and developmentalist thought. Starting with the Enlightenment idea of universality it traces how this facilitated a notion of the West rooted in a Hellenic inheritance systematically shorn of Egyptian or Arab influences. Though the hierarchy of races has now given way to the hierarchy of development, Bessis argues that developmentalism is the new incarnation of the West's paradoxical aspiration to lead the world into universalism whilst maintaining its own supremacy.

An extraordinary tour-de-force which will fascinate everybody who has an interest in globalization, development and the history of ideas.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 22, 2001

About the author

Sophie Bessis (Arabic: صوفي بسيس‎) is a Tunisian-born French historian, journalist, researcher, and feminist author. She has written numerous works in French, Spanish, and English on development in the Maghreb and the Arab world, as well as the situation of women. A history scholar and former editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Jeune Afrique, she is currently a research associate at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) in Paris and Deputy Secretary General of the International Federation of Rights Leagues (FIDH). She has taught the political economy of development at the Department of Political Science at the Sorbonne and in the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO). She is a consultant for UNESCO and UNICEF, has carried out numerous missions in Africa.

Reviews

[Haidar means Lion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Al ser un ensayo, requiere una lectura atenta y lenta para entender todos los puntos que la autora expone a lo largo del libro. Para ser una lectura obligatoria de la asignatura de Historia del mundo árabe e islámico 2, ha captado mi interés y te hace cuestionarte muchos aspectos acerca de los actos cometidos por Occidente sobre "los otros" (África y Asia principalmente) y sus posteriores consecuencias.
La lectura es rápida, ligera y ayuda mucho a completar la lectura. Sin duda lo recomiendo aunque no sea el tipo de lecturas que me atraen.

[Teresa Gómez · Rating 3 out of 5]

un poco denso pero muy esclarecedor

[Under_rubble · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do all zed books suck or just the ones I got on discount? Standard feminist critique of eurocentrism and third-worldism. Originally written in French by a Tunisian Jewish woman, so examples from the french and arabic speaking worlds that I'm less familiar with, but zero analysis of Capital.