I. Europeans did not just discover the Americas — they actually discovered Africa and mapped the continent including the entire interior of this “dark” continent. Before the Portuguese rounding of this continent in 1488, no one knew its southernmost point. The Portuguese gradually mapped the west coast of Africa from the mid-1400s on. Africans had NO idea where they were. But even as late as 1868, much of the interior of Africa remained unknown. Joseph Conrad recalls (in reference to his novel “Heart of Darkness”) as a child pointing to “the region of Stanley Falls which in 1868 was the blankest of blank spaces on the earth’s figured surface”. Then the entire continent was mapped, primarily by the British: all the rivers, mountains, lakes. Here’s a map of Africa 1885 by John Bartholomew, showing the situation on the eve of the beautiful European scramble for Africa.
II. White men are responsible for mapping the entire world and inventing the sciences of geography and cartography –because their mind, from ancient times on, was the least embedded to its immediate surroundings, uniquely capable of rising above a particular context to envision the totality of things. Nonwhites have always been trapped to the immediate world of the here and now, and that’s why they never knew where their lands where relative to other lands until Europeans mapped their lands inside out. India had no cartography. Only the Chinese had a cartographic tradition, but the Chinese mind was also trapped to its context; Chinese maps were parochially local without awareness of the world at large. Although the Chinese did use relatively precise grids, they had no conception of the sphericity of the earth, no determination of the size of the earth, no coherent and systematic integration of geography and cartography; and no idea, in the words of Ptolemy, of the “known habitable earth as a unit in itself” to draw maps to scale. The Chinese, moreover, carried no systematic integration of astronomy and cartography and how important astronomical measurements of latitudes and longitudes are for finding unknown distances.
In contrast, look at Ptolemy’s world map (AD 150), it already indicates the country of “Sinae” (China) at the extreme right, beyond the island of “Taprobane” (Sri Lanka, and the “Aurea Chersonesus” (Malay Peninsula).
III. Whites named all the planets and all the continents they singularly discovered.
1. ANTARTICA: The word “Antarctica” comes from the Greek word “antarktike,” which means “opposite to the north.” In line with the fact that all the greatest cartographers in history were White men, it is believed that the Scottish cartographer George Bartholomew encouraged its official use around the 1890’s.
2. AFRICA: After the Romans defeated Carthage (located in present day Tunisia), they called their new province “Africa.” Europeans would go on to explore and discover the entire continent of Africa and name its rivers, mountains, and demarcate its national boundaries. Africans had no clue where they were, that’s why this continent was known as “terra incognita” until the Portuguese sailing down the West African coast started mapping its continental contours.
3. ASIA: The word “Asia” comes from the Ancient Greek “Ἀσία”, used as early as 440 B.C. by Herodotus in his Histories, in reference to Asia Minor, or Anatolia or to the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt.
4. EUROPE: Europe was likely named after Europa, the Greek goddess of earth and agriculture, or one of Zeus’ many lovers in Greek mythology.
5. The AMERICAS: Americas (North and South) were named after Amerigo Vespucci, an explorer of “the new world” in 1499-1502 who understood that this world was not part of Asia.
6. AUSTRALIA: Back in ancient Roman times the term “Terra Australis Incognita” was used to refer to “the unknown land in the south”. The earliest recorded use of the word Australia in English was in 1625. The incomparable explorer James Cook discovered Australia in 1770, landing in present day Sydney and claiming this land for England. “Australia” was popularized following the advocacy of the British explorer Matthew Flinders in his 1814 description of his circumnavigation of the continent.
IV. No nation or race can survive without a “Spartan” ruling class. The British, it looks like, are headed for extinction as a race. It may be hard for people to understand this —– but not long ago the British ruling class was raised to be tougher than any other social class, with a “stiff upper lip”. As Charles Darwin observed of this upper class: “savages weep copiously from very slight causes” while “Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief.”
The historian Thomas Dixon recently explained it this way: “The stiff upper lip was historically an upper class, public school, university and then military concept…a brutal, spartan way of not showing your feelings and ruling the world on the basis of your superior self-control.” But, of course, Dixon’s aim in his book, Weeping Britannia Portrait of a Nation in Tears (2020), was to mock this ideal for its “oppression and cruelty” — and to show that it was not authentic by pointing to counter-examples. Dixon’s take reflects a mind-set across the Western world, that “progress and human emancipation” requires white men to become effeminate and emotional. Upper British class kids are now taught to love Jamaican men, Moslems, black rap, and to be radical feminists. This same class still loves to showcase British power — but mainly by way of airstrikes from afar, or by getting other men, Ukrainians, to fight for their goals. And they always fail.
V. While all cultures have folk dances, and European folk dances are beautiful, ballet is a pan-European universal type of dance with origins in Renaissance Italy and Baroque France. It is a universal type in its striving for perfection and the highest aesthetics by training dancers to appear gentle and graceful in their movements through the teaching of a technique that requires a tremendous amount of strength, balance, skill, and flexibility. The production of universal types singularly by Europeans can be a confusing paradox. It does not mean that ballet is a “human universal” — as academics in Ivy Leagues argue in a state of mental confusion. All it means is that Europeans are the one people who have expressed “the highest in humanity” in all the fields of human endeavor. Therefore, it is only from the standpoint of European universal types in literature, philosophy, science, architecture, dance…that we can ascertain and evaluate the meaning of the less developed cultural types of other races.
VI. Fashion was a European invention that emerged during early modern times — whereas fashion was unknown in nonwhite civilizations. The French historian Fernand Braudel observed in his 3 volume work, Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century (1979), that Eastern societies “stood still”, and for this reason “fashion was less likely to change”. He cites J.B. Say in 1828: “I confess that the unchanging fashions of the Turks and other Eastern peoples do not attract me. It seems that their fashions tend to preserve their stupid despotism”. A traveler in China (1793) noted: “Dress is seldom altered in China…Even among the ladies, there is little variety in their dresses”. Japan “remained faithful to the kimono”, writes Braudel. Changes in fashion occurred only when these societies were conquered, as when the Moguls brought their costumes to India, but “all these imitations, once adopted, scarcely change over the centuries”. Meanwhile the “European craze for fashion” began after about 1350″.
In the 16th century the “sumptuous costumes of Renaissance Italy, with their low-cut bodices, wide sleeves, hairnets, gold and silver embroidery, figured brocades, satins and crimson velvets…were replaced by Spanish sobriety with dark material, close-fitting doublets, padded hose, short capes and high collars edged with a small ruff”. In the 17th century the “brightly coloured French costumes gradually took over.” Changing fashions can’t be attributed solely to increasing affluence. It was fundamentally an expression of the “restlessness” of Europeans, which expressed itself not only in their voyages across the globe, gunpowder revolution, Galilean science, and perspective painting — but also in “such trifles as dress, the shape of the shoes, and hairstyles”. Mind you, these fashions, Braudel writes, were not “a trifling thing…but rather an indication of deeper phenomena, of the energies, possibilities, demand and joie de vivre of a given society”.
But, the argument of Braudel has now been driven out of the universities. Foreigners like K.N. Chaudhuri have been hired to tell students that “fashion was as much a part of Asian culture as European, though its forms were not immediately intelligible or accessible to outsiders” (Asia Before Europe, p. 188). Chaudhuri’s argument comes down to the claim that there were changes in fashion because there were changes in the “shape and colors” of the clothing; it is just that whites are too racist to notice the changes. “It was European prejudice” that led them to deny changes in the East. Courses on European are now about how it “intersects with Gender and Race”. A standard syllabus on this subject literally warns students that NYU is committed to “Inclusion, Diversity, Belonging and Equity” and that “bias” for Europe will be penalized.
