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Article: 1492. (Columbus and the New World Order 1492-1992)
- Article from:
- Monthly Review
- Article date:
- July 1, 1992
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 Monthly Review Foundation, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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If I were required to pick a date to mark the birth of the modern world, I should choose 1492, the year in which the Europeans began their conquest of the planet--military, economic, political, ideological, cultural, and even, in a certain sense, ethnic. But the world in question is also the world of capitalism, a new social and economic system, qualitatively different from all previous systems in Europe and elsewhere. These two traits are inseparable, and this fact calls into question all analyses of and responses to the crisis of modernity that fail to recognize their simultaniety. From this perspective, the dominant "social science" can be seen to be handicapped by its ...