Book Review : Eurasia: Re-Focusing Central Asia as the Centre of the World

This can be considered an Asian version of Grand theory of world history, written by Ooi Kee Beng who sought to codify his dialogues with eminent historian Wang Gungwu on world history. There are many Grand theories of world history. Most are linked to Leopold Ranke's Rankean historical positivism with the usage of primary sources and its integration with the bigger picture – universal history. Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (1961) and Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History (1939) (Rise and Fall of 26 civilisations) are considered seminal works in this category. The more contemporary examples include Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of Great Powers (1989), as well as the more normative and hence somewhat controversial works such as Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations (1996) and Francis Fukuyama's End of History (1992). Therein lies the paradox in historiographical research; whilst historians strive to be as positivist and objective in their historical analysis, the higher levels of aggregation to present the big picture inevitably run into charges of being value-laden and biased. In philosophy of history terms, while Ranke advocated “reporting history as it actually happened” (as cited in Houlgate & Baur 2011, 334) and, E H Carr gave the reality check that it is inevitable that “historians choose which facts they use” (1961, 8-13). In the worst case, history is presented in a highly thematic and structural deterministic manner that is devoid of human agency, as the Hegelian approach and exemplified by Fernand Braudel's longue-durée approach (continuities in deepest structure of society) in History of Civilisations (1993)