Author: Will Reddig

As an nth-generation American with an ambiguous cocktail of Western-European blood in his veins, I know little of my ancestry beyond tidbits that were deemed interesting enough to share around the dinner table from time to time. My father has told me that our family name, Reddig, was bastardized from ‘Rettig’ (a German surname meaning ‘radish’), presumably upon entry into the United States. If my ancestors were German, then I think it would be safe to assume that at least a few of them came to the US over the course of the 19th century, when European immigration to the US was at a high.

Beyond that, I can’t say I know much else. My mother’s side of the family has been on the continent even longer, so the stories I’ve heard are even more vague and difficult to verify. If legend is to be believed, then one of my ancestors emigrated from England alongside William Penn in the 17th century, becoming among the first Quakers to populate the new colony of Pennsylvania. If this is indeed the case, then this ancestor of mine would have come to the colonies seeking refuge from religious persecution–a trend that pushed dozens of Protestant religions out of England at the time.

Despite the mythological appeal of my mother’s heritage, I find my father’s side of the family, populated by generations of long-forgotten radish farmers, to be the more interesting and, incidentally, the more relevant to the subject of this class. I hope to become more familiar with this side of my ancestry so that I might better understand how my personal history fits into the larger narrative of the globe (or at least Europe and North America) in these recent tumultuous centuries.

As per the brief discussion on this material at the beginning of class, there exists a strong and fascinating result of Bright and Geyer’s alternate historical model; the authors suggest that the  exploited states adapt to western exploitation through what are essentially survival mechanisms. This stands in opposition to the near-ubiquitous assumption that the supposed spread of western culture throughout the globe is a sign of an increasingly modernized (and therefore western) world.

The intent behind this interpretation of history can be presumed rather easily: the authors are seeking to provide an alternate explanation for why the influence of the West has reached to every corner of the Earth. More specifically, and more importantly, Bright and Geyer seem to hope that in retooling the current information we have of the past two centuries they can render the implications of the current model obsolete.

The present version of historical segmentation, and the conclusions that many have drawn from it, suggest that the ideal of the ‘modern world’ is embodied in western civilizations, and that the only way the rest of the world can attain modernity–that is, a truly civilized society–is by conforming itself to the mold set by Europe and the United States. This mode of historical interpretation reduces time to a mere racetrack, heading towards an a fully-realized civilization. Western powers are simply farther along in the race than the rest of the planet, and their every innovation pushes them ever closer to the goal, where those behind them struggle to keep pace. If westernization is the path along which societies improve, then ‘modernization’ must be synonymous with ‘progress,’ and therefore ‘progress’ must be a linear progression to a singular goal.

In addition to being reductive, elitist, and tinged with racism, this model is entirely ridiculous in its premise. History is not a straight line, and any serious academic can’t possibly make such a massive assumption to its end with so little evidence. Many historians recognize the absurdity in the notion that western culture is in any way a goalpost or a front-runner, but have struggled to bring forth any widely-accepted alternatives to the table. Among this group stand Bright and Geyer, who present instead a narrative that more realistically paints the trajectory of the world; that is to say, messy, multi-directional, and immensely difficult to predict accurately.

The effort made in this piece is beyond laudable, and the resulting portrayal of the globe is clearly a step in the right direction. Is this theory of history the most accurate interpretation? That remains to be seen, and the brevity of Bright and Geyer’s work suggests that this idea is still within its infancy. However, in casting aside the existing assumption that westernization is synonymous with progress, the authors have created a history that frees our vision of the present and the future, and allows us to see our world for the intricate and interconnected construct that it is.