Response

18 Historically Speaking · November/December 2007 sentatives at the United Nations made possible the introduction of the Declaration. Western racism was the issue that spurred non-Western delegates. Theirs was not simply a reaction to an aberrant racistNazism but was aimed mainly against the Western powers' racist imperial policies, which were the historical norm prior to 1945. Significandy, the U.S. representatives did their best to water down the Declaration, not least for their fear that its anti-racist clauses would stir up trouble in the American South. All in all, it seems fairer to conclude that it was not "American initiative and leadership" but Eastern initiatives that, in finally defeating American intransigence, resulted in the establishment of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights." A universal, inclusive historiography of human rights is revealed onlybyapplyingawide-angled, polycivilizational lens. Headley's "recentering the West" project fails to achieve this preciselybecause it represents a Western provincialism masquerading as the universal. John M. Hobson isprofessorofpolitics andinternationalrelations atthe University of Sheffield. He is the authoro/The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge University Press, 2004) andis coeditorofJohn A. Hobson: Constructing the International Mind (forthcoming, 2008). 1 .Alfred Thayer Mahan, "A Twentieth-Century Oudook," Harpers Monthly (September 1897): 527-532. See Akira Iriye, "The Second Clash: Huntington, Mahan, and Civilizations," HarvardInternationalReview 1 9 (1 997). 2 Edward W Said, Orientalism (Penguin, 1 978). 1 SeeJ.M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge University Press, 2004). 4 Eg, Hobson, Eastern Origins, 173-183; S.M. Ghazanfar, Islamic Civilisation (Scarecrow Press, 2006); Arun Bala, The Dialogue of Civilisationsin the Birth of Modern Stience (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); and CK. Raju, CulturalFoundations of Mathematics (Pearson Education, 2007). s Note that while there are vague references to the astrolabe in Ancient Greek texts, itwas the Muslims who developed itinto the instrument that the Europeans would borrow several centuries later. * Bala, Dialogueof Civilisations, ch. 8. ' For a fuller, albeit tentative, first-cut discussion of this point in the overall context of the rise of the West, see my, "Explaining the Rise of the West: A Reply to Ricardo Duchesne,"Journalof the HistoricalSociety 6 (2006): 579-599. 8 Martin Bernal, Black Athena (Vintage, 1991). q See Paul Gordon Lauren, PowerandPrejudice (Westview Press, 1996). Response John M. Headley Please let me begin by thanking my critics for tackling a problem, or rather a knot of problems , that appear, at least to me, to present themselves to the historical profession both in the conceptualizing of history and in its application in the forum of organized higher education. Inwelcoming the opportunity to achieve a greater degree of clarity in the presentation of my argument , I cannot help but reflect that the questions and issues raised here are immense and entangled, and that they can only suffer distortion and obfuscation in their present, cropped form. The fault must lie with the author. Yet each of us has his own intellectual baggage with all its implications. In his caricature of the present author as an ideologue , a Christian, and quite innocent of all history beyond his presumed specialty, Professor Subrahmanyam manages to miss the point. My purpose is not to diminish or ignore the values and virtues of other peoples, nor to deny the horrors visited upon them by the West. All this is well known, and the historical profession has concentrated on these verities for the past forty years. Rather, my intentis merely to shift from the well-known negative to the almost forgotten positive features of Western civilization. The extended removal of the profession's attention from the political has helped to effect this neglect of die positive. Thus an important theme in Western development has been overlooked—namely, die early establishedideal of a commonhumanity. This principle draws with it programs of human rights played out in the larger arena of the entire globe, opened by the Renaissance's initial engagement of the world's peoples through cartographic andgeographic knowledge. My critic's very distortions require a refocusing and restatement of the thesis. The issue does not lie in any failure to appreciate other civilizations and peoMy intent is merely to shiftfrom the wellknown negative to the almost forgotten positive features of Western...