"Samir Amin's fascinating book on the crucially important subject of Eurocentrism ranges from the spread of Hellenism with the conquest of Alexander the Great to the triumphs of imperialism and transnational capitalism of the 1980s. While essentially thoughtful and analytical, this study is quite rightly informed with outrage against European arrogance and with sympathy for the non-Euro-pean victims on the periphery of the present system."—MARTIN BERNAL, author of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization 

In this original and provocative essay, Samir Amin, the author of a number of pathbreaking studies on the structure of the world economy, takes on one of the great "ideological deformations" of our time: Eurocentrism. 

Rejecting the dominant Eurocenfitic view of world history, which narrowly and incor-rectly posits a progression from the Greek and Roman classical world to Christian feudalism and the European capitalist system, Amin presents a sweeping reinterpretation that emphasizes the crucial historical role played by the Arab-Islamic world. Throughout the work, Amin addresses a broad set of concerns, ranging from the ideological nature of scholastic metaphysics to the meanings and short-comings of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism. 

Consistently subversive of the established pieties of the West, this book breaks new theoretical and historiographical ground by outlining a compelling non-Eurocentric vision of world history. SAMIR AMIN was born in Egypt in 1931 and received his Ph.D. in economics in Paris in 1957. 

He is currently the director of UNITAR, a United Nations research institute in Dakar, Senegal. An economic consultant to many Third World countries, he is the author of numerous books, including Accumulation on a World Scale, Unequal Development, Neo-Colonialism in West Africa, Empire of Chaos, and Re-Reading the Postwar Period, all published by Monthly Review Press. 

Cover illustration: Artist's rendering of a zonal world map, produced by the Arab cartographer al-Idrisi in 1154. The map shows the centrality of the regions influenced by Islam, placing a shrunken Europe on the periphery of the Mediterranean world.