The Uniqueness of Western Civilization -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter One: The Fall of Western Civilization and the Rise of Multicultural World History -- Early World Historians and the Idea of Progress -- Termination of the Western Civilization Course -- World History Texts from the 1920s to the 1940s -- World History Texts in the 1960s -- Rise of Dependency Theory -- Wallerstein's World-System and Critical Theory -- Franz Boas's Relativism and Marvin Harris's Cultural Materialism -- The Conversion of William McNeill: From "Rise of the West" to "Interactive Webs" -- Cultural Relativism, Scientific Materialism, and Humanism Combined -- The Exclusion of Sociobiology -- Kant's "unsocial sociability" -- Progress and the State of Nature -- Dynamic Man versus Reactive Man -- The Ascendancy of Multicultural World Historians -- Patrick Manning: It Takes an African Village to Write World History -- Disparaging the West: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto -- Chapter Two Eurocentrism over Sinocentrism -- The Basic Empirical Claims of the Revisionists -- The Two Arguments of Re-Orient -- One Asian World System? -- The Role of Colonial Profits -- Trade, Power, and Liberty: the Secret of British Imperial Success -- China's "high-level equilibrium trap" -- The "Geographical Limits" of China's Post-1400 Extensive Growth -- Was Eighteenth Century Europe following a Malthusian path? -- Was traditional China a Low Fertility Regime? -- Conclusion -- Chapter Three Whence the Industrial Divergence? -- The Basic Propositions of Pomeranz's "Great Divergence" -- Malthus was Born too Late in a World too New -- End of the Old Malthusian Regime in England -- Standard-of-Living Debate -- New World Resources versus European Resources -- Was Cheap Coal Sufficient or Necessary? -- Dynamic Rather than Static Comparisons.

China's Ecological Endowments and Imperial Windfalls -- Chapter Four The Continuous Creativity of Europe -- Hobson and the Eastern Origins of the West -- Eurocentric Historians -- Imitation, Innovation, and Invention -- Revolution in Time -- The Printing Revolution -- The Science and Chivalry of Henry the Navigator -- Columbus and the Cartographic Revolution -- The Industrial Enlightenment -- Goldstone's "Happy Chance" versus Jacob's Scientific Ethos -- Contingency versus Long Term Patterns -- Europe's Solo Act: A Mercantile-Militaristic State? -- Military Revolutions in Europe 1300-1800 -- The Inter-State System -- Greek Hoplites and the "Western Way of War" -- Mercantilism and the Birth of Political Economy -- Liberty and the States System -- Chapter Five The 'Rise' of Western Reason and Freedom -- The West is more than Wealth and Power -- The Cultural Poverty of the Revisionists -- The Cultural Richness of Max Weber -- Judaism and its Contribution to Western Rationalism -- Schluchter on the Genetic Developmental Dynamic of the West -- Habermas and the Rationalization of Substantive Values -- The Liberal Democratic Ideals of the West and its Historiography -- Chapter Six The Restlessness of the Western Spirit from a Hegelian Perspective -- Change without Progress in the East -- Measuring Human Accomplishments -- The Historiography of Europe's Revolutions -- Phenomenology of the Western Spirit -- Hegel and the Geographical Basis of the "infinite thirst" of the West -- Hegel and the Beginnings of Western Reason -- Hegel on the "desire" of World-Historical Individuals -- The Master-Slave Dialectic and its Historical Reference -- Hegel's Account of the State of Nature -- Kojeve and the fight to the death for pure prestige -- Spengler and the Faustian Soul of the West -- McNeill and the Indo-European Roots of the West's Warrior Ethos.

Chapter Seven The Aristocratic Egalitarianism of Indo-Europeans and the Primordial Origins of Western Civilization -- The Founding Fathers of the West: Democratic Citizens or Aristocratic Warriors? -- Indo-Europeans as the "Other" of World History -- The Distinctive Indo-Europeanization of the West -- Chariots, Mycenaeans, and Aristocratic Berserkers -- Aristocratic and Martial Traits -- The Impact of Indo-Europeans on the Civilizations of the East -- "Big Man" Feasting and the Origins of Inequality -- Prestige-Seeking Chiefs -- From Simple to Paramount Chiefdoms -- "Eastern" Group-Oriented and "Western" Individualizing Chiefdoms -- City-States: Sumerian versus Greek -- The Autocratic Character of Mesopotamia and Egypt -- The Epic of Gilgamesh is not a Heroic Tragedy -- Chapter Eight The Emergence of the Self from the Western 'State of Nature' and the Conciliation of Christianity and Aristocratic Liberty -- Fukuyama and the Megalothymia of the "first men" of the West -- Why Hegel's "Master" Must be Aristocratic -- Kojeve and the "first appearance" of Self-Consciousness -- Charles Taylor and Plato's Self-Mastery -- The Beginnings of Genuine Personalities in History -- Nietzsche's "Homer on Competition" -- Arête and the Education of the Greeks -- The Roman Aristocratic Link -- The Germanic Barbarian Rejuvenation of the West -- Feudalism: an Aristocratic Type of Rule -- Charlemagne's Continuation of the Western Tradition -- Christian Virtues and Aristocratic Expansionism -- Aristocratic liberty and the Rise of Representative Institutions -- Cited Works -- Index.