They were able to leverage those "western" ideas because they are not unique to the West. Without some fortuitous chancy happenings in England in the 18th century that led to a perfect storm, most of the so-called West does not emerge from feudalism.
On this idea that advancement is "Western" which to many people is "White"...its because we have this very mistaken perception that White people began their technological advancement long ago, from ancient Rome to the present. But you know I found out that proper White, non-Mediterraneans were never even considered of the same race as the inhabitants of ancient Rome and Greece which some racists love to count as part of their own heritage, like these were their ancestors?
The Mediterraneans, i.e. the people of North Africa, the Levant, Turkey, and parts of Southern Europe like Rome and Greece, were the same broad loose 'civillization': Just peoples around the Sea. "Those pale Northerners" ( ie European Northerners and many in Central and Western Europe including France, Germany, Britain, the Scandinavians etc..basically, your typical white person with non-black hair, non-dark eyes and non-olive skin) were considered barbarian in the same way as the "dark skinned southerners", ie, the people south of Egypt, Tunisia etc by the Romans lol. Thy considered themselves ideal and balanced in appearance compared to these "uncivilized" peoples.
In fact, before they were Romanized, they were all illiterate, human sacrificing, mud-hut dwelling raiders and farmers, fighting with nothing no better weapons than the spear and crude swords. The structure of their societies was very much like typical African ones, ruled by elders, egalitarian etc. Nothing like the systems of government of the Mediterraneans cities and empires. Some of them were Romanized as late as the early part of the second millennium. Yet they and we now, have learned to see technological and organizational advancement as inherently "Western" or "White". Isn't that strange?
The Roman civilization was part of an ancient Mediterranean culture of thousands of years that saw the rise and fall of many different city states and empires starting after the discovery of agriculture in the levant. White people have no claim to it whatsover. The people in Tunisia and Egypt have a far more credible claim to that heritage as they were Roman citizens for a long time and also part of the cultural exchanges across the mediterranean long before the rise of Rome. Moreover, after Muslims took over Turkey in the Ottoman days, they adopted and developed the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, alongside Spanish Jewish philosophers, in a way that, along with others, then led to the set of principles from which the scientific method was born. If anyone has a claim to some type of "inherent" gift for what modern people now consider "advancement", it's Mediterranean peoples. But we know no one has such claims because even the Mediterraneans didn't lead the rapid advancements of the last few centuries. Who did? The old, illiterate, "uncivillized" pale Northerners.
Topic: Is it possible for a country/community to modernize without westernizing (Read 1208 times)