The IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities
Volume I – Issue I – Summer 2012

The IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities
Volume I – Issue I – Summer 2012

The IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities
Volume I – Issue I – Summer 2012

The paper examines why Western culture achieved a position of hegemony in
global development in the 1800s and why non-Western cultures, particularly
Arabic, Indian, and Chinese cultures, did not achieve the same despite earlier
supremacy in various fields leading to a type of globalization that can be termed
“southernization.” I consider the question by assessing the political, cultural, and
economic factors affecting globalization during different periods. My analysis
utilizes Robert P. Clark’s entropy theory, according to which cultures have
flourished by extending their sphere of influence, whereupon disorder and loss
of energy have been moved elsewhere. The theory helps to suggest how
Western Europe was able to adopt enough technical innovations produced by
southernization to respond to the population pressures of the 1400s, thereby
rising to a leading position in the world in the 1800s.

Thomas French