Europeans Globalizing: Mapping, Exploiting, Exchanging (Making Europe) - Softcover

Diogo, Maria Paula; Van Laak, Dirk

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0230279643 ISBN 13: 9780230279643

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Synopsis

Over the course of 150 years, Europe's protean technologies inspired and underpinned the globalizing ambitions of European nations. This book aims to show how technology mediated European influence in the rest of the world and how this mediation in turn transformed Europeans. Europeans mapped, they exploited, and they exchanged - their interactions ranged from technological and biological genocide to treaties of cooperation and the construction of elaborate colonial infrastructures. Quite aside from the enormous variety of political settings, cultures and colonial programs, interrelations created dependencies on both sides. Cultural transfers were rarely unidirectional, and often a kind of Pidgin-knowledge emerged, a hybrid fusion of European and local knowledge and skills. As observers have rightly pointed out, Europe played both the role of 'Prometheus unbound' and the 'Sorcerer's apprentice'.

About this title

About the Author

Maria Paula Diogo is Full Professor of History of Technology and Engineering at the Faculty of Science and Technology, New University of Lisbon (FCT/NOVA), Portugal, and member of the Centre for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT). She has pioneered the study of Portuguese engineering and engineers in the early 90s and is currently working on engineering and the Portuguese colonial agenda, as well as the role of technology in European history, particularly in peripheral countries. She publishes on a regular basis both nationally and internationally. She is a member of several societies and international research networks.
 
Dirk van Laak is Full Professor of Contemporary History at the History Department, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. He has worked on German, European, colonial and global history, as well as the history of technology and intellectual history. He also pioneered the history of infrastructures, and most recently devoted himself to a cultural and everyday history of public works. He has published and (co)edited several books on a wide range of topics.

From the Back Cover

Over the course of 150 years, Europe's protean technologies inspired and underpinned the globalizing ambitions of European nations. This book aims to show how technology mediated European influence in the rest of the world and how this mediation in turn transformed Europeans. Europeans mapped, they exploited, and they exchanged - their interactions ranged from technological and biological genocide to treaties of cooperation and the construction of elaborate colonial infrastructures. Quite aside from the enormous variety of political settings, cultures and colonial programs, interrelations created dependencies on both sides. Cultural transfers were rarely unidirectional, and often a kind of Pidgin-knowledge emerged, a hybrid fusion of European and local knowledge and skills. As observers have rightly pointed out, Europe played both the role of 'Prometheus unbound' and the 'Sorcerer's apprentice'.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0230279643
• ISBN 13: 9780230279643
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 372