To begin, we follow the teachings of an European political extremist by the name of Robert Marks. He is one to believe in the power and rule of the European state and is even more apt to defend the means of their triumphs. This academic has spread wide knowledge of the European’s influence on western culture and furthermore the world. Yet he is sparse to come to the conclusion of whether it was the culture that made them so powerful or their willingness to mend broken civilizations via their own teleological means. The two main points I will continuously circle back to include Marks view on ‘Path Dependence’ and ‘Inevitability.’ “One of the main reasons why we see Eurocentric culture today is simply because Europe was in the right place at
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How states manage and manipulate the natural world is often key to understanding their evolution, power and shortcomings. In the late 90’s Scott wrote a book titled, Seeing Like a State it is an excellent example of the state’s boundaries of power while incorporating the idea of Zomia to the text. The civilization of Zomia moves away from the state-centric approach to the processes of modernization and instead emphasizes what happens on a regional level. Although situated at the heart of the Euro-Asian divide, Zomia lies on the continent's ecological periphery. For starters the terrain frustrated mapmakers. “In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these mountains were a messy maze of political borders, regional divides, ecclesiastical boundaries, ethno-linguistic divisions, and natural rifts that intersected and overlapped each other.” The borderlands were dynamic places where state oversight supposedly met its limits, but where crucial ecological, cultural and economic transfers occurred such as trade, language and political beliefs. Various development schemes jostled together as ownership of the land collided with the original settlers and the colonizers. Tension shaped the heights, together with the efforts of state centric colonizers that attempted to organize the landscape. Through this process the mountains of Zomia were now more manageable for trade, impoverished clans could now become more prosperous villages, and hard-working famers could now continuously sell their crops for profit to support the lower lying urban centers. Yet not all believed that the state could uphold the promises to improve the lives of the untouched land; but history has come to show that exploring untouched frontiers such as Zomia can help elevate regions as useful trade and political sites while de-centering the place of the nation-state for the benefit of the
How states manage and manipulate the natural world is often key to understanding their evolution, power and shortcomings. In the late 90’s Scott wrote a book titled, Seeing Like a State it is an excellent example of the state’s boundaries of power while incorporating the idea of Zomia to the text. The civilization of Zomia moves away from the state-centric approach to the processes of modernization and instead emphasizes what happens on a regional level. Although situated at the heart of the Euro-Asian divide, Zomia lies on the continent's ecological periphery. For starters the terrain frustrated mapmakers. “In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these mountains were a messy maze of political borders, regional divides, ecclesiastical boundaries, ethno-linguistic divisions, and natural rifts that intersected and overlapped each other.” The borderlands were dynamic places where state oversight supposedly met its limits, but where crucial ecological, cultural and economic transfers occurred such as trade, language and political beliefs. Various development schemes jostled together as ownership of the land collided with the original settlers and the colonizers. Tension shaped the heights, together with the efforts of state centric colonizers that attempted to organize the landscape. Through this process the mountains of Zomia were now more manageable for trade, impoverished clans could now become more prosperous villages, and hard-working famers could now continuously sell their crops for profit to support the lower lying urban centers. Yet not all believed that the state could uphold the promises to improve the lives of the untouched land; but history has come to show that exploring untouched frontiers such as Zomia can help elevate regions as useful trade and political sites while de-centering the place of the nation-state for the benefit of the