Peter A. Lorge said this quote

“ Technology has become the West’s main prop to its claims of inherent superiority over the non-West, and the reason why the non-West should adopt Western culture. If advanced technology is particular to Western culture, then it is only by Westernizing that the non-West can obtain it. This argument collapses if Western technology can be adopted in isolation from the broader culture, or if other cultures can generate significant technology independently. ”

Famous Quotes of Peter A. Lorge

Famous quotes of Peter A. Lorge from the classy quote

See all

European historians have often, though not unanimously, assumed that European modern warfare was the one true path, a system that developed logically and inevitably from the nature of the advancing technology of guns. Since Europeans by their own definition were the most rational and logical of people, their mode of warfare was also the most rational and logical. Those who did not adopt it after seeing it were being deliberately irrational, or lacked the ability to advance their polity to the point where it could follow it.

~ Peter A. Lorge

Guns neither initiated nor enabled larger changes. Economic, political, and social development preceded and laid the foundation for the invention and use of the gun, not the other way around.

~ Peter A. Lorge

Technology is often portrayed as an objective measure of development, and its advancement as something that can be examined outside of politics. But the history of technology, particularly military technology, has been deeply inflected by nationalist sentiment.

~ Peter A. Lorge

...the modern bias in contemporary Western scholarship (which has spread to the rest of the world as well) insists upon focusing all attention on the formation of the modern world and ‘‘modernity.’’ By directing attention to a time period rather than to a region, Western scholars can place the West at the center of any discussion, and subordinate backward Asia to Western history, without explicitly condemning Asian cultures and polities or arguing for a narrowly Eurocentric view of the world. Nevertheless, modern history is effectively a racist pursuit that not only elevates white Westerners above all others, but also actively denigrates Asian history.

~ Peter A. Lorge