Page 30 - AEI Insights 2020 - Vol. 6, Issue 1

AEI Insights, Vol 6, Issue 1, 2020

contradicts all cosmic laws bothered none in that time Europe – the continent was dizzy and
triumphant in its planetary conquest. Le Capitalisme Européen meant expansion – in every
possible sense.

Such a rapid shift from a peripheral status to an ‘advanced civilization’ of course necessitated
a complete reconstruction of western identity – furthering the weaponisation of religion for
ideological purpose. This acrobatics –in return– caused the rift in Europe and enhanced the
Continent’s continued split on two spheres: the Eastern/Russophone Europe – closer to and
therefore more objective towards the Afroasian realities; and the Western
(Atlantic/Scandinavian/Central) Europe, more dismissive, self-centred and ignorant sphere.
While the Atlantic flank progressively developed its commercial and naval power as to
economically and demographically project itself beyond the continent, the landlocked Eastern
Europe was lagging behind. It stuck in feudalism, and involuntarily constituted a cordon
sanitaire – from eastern Baltic to Adriatic Shkoder – against the Islamic Levant/south and the
Russo-oriental East.
th
Gradually, past the 15 century, the idea of ‘Western Europe’ begun to crystallise as the
Ottoman Turks and the Eastern Europeans were imagined and described as barbarians. During
th
th
the 17 and 18 century as the triangular ‘trade’ progressed, Atlantic Europe firmly portrayed
itself as the prosperous West that borders ‘pagan/barbarian’ neighbours to its near east, and the
‘savage subjects’ to its cross-Mediterranean south, overseas west, and the mystical Far East.
Consequently, we cannot deny a huge role that the fabricated history as well as the ‘scientific’
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racism and its theories played in a formation and preservation of European identity construct.
The Enlightenment was a definite moment in the reinvention of European identity. The quest
came along with the fundamental question who are we, and what is our place in the world?
Answering that led on to the systematisation, classification of anthropogeographic inversion
and – frankly – to reinvention of the world. From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, a kind
of an intellectual apartheid regime was forming.

(This historical anomaly I usually describe as anthropogeographic inversion in which the
periphery asserted itself into the center by periferising that core and managing to present itself
as a center. Thus, our current geopolitical and ideological core resides in geographic peripheries
of the planet. It is in the hands of late developmental arrivals, such as the UK, Scandinavia,
Russia, Canada, the US, Japan, Australia, New Zeeland, Korea, Singapore, South Africa. To
achieve and maintain this colossal inversion was impossible without coercion over the
extended space and time. Consequently, it necessitated a combination of physical and
metaphysical (hard/coercion and soft/attraction) instruments: Physical military presence of the
periphery in the center, combined with a tightly guarded narrative and constructed history. How
does my anthropogeographic inversion theory correspond with an institutional interpretation
of history? Real anthropogeographic peripheries are certainly a new civilizational arrival –
Interference, intrusion and discontinuity is suffered in a core not on edges. (E.g. It is not
centrally positioned Syria, Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan intervening in the geographic peripheries,
such as the UK, US, Russia, Canada.) Periphery faster coagulates as it is rarely intruded. Center

21 Explaining the notion of the Bantu Education Act of 1954, one of the chief architects of Apartheid the Dutch-
born prof. dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa, bluntly spelled out the following in his speech
of that year: “The Bantu must be guided to serve his own community in all respects (Bantustan). There is no place
for him in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour … For that reason it is to no avail
to him to receive a training which has as its aim absorption in the European community while he cannot and will
not be absorbed there.” (The State Archives, South Africa, National Library)

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