Dissemination of Western civilisation has been uneven and much Western example has been rejected by people who see it as an affront. Take the Islamists, who created whole new versions of their religion, amongst which sits Wahhabism, in reaction to aggressive Western successes compared to the decline of their Muslim world. Their fear that Western civilisation will sweep all before it still exists today - personified by members of Al Qaeda, anti-integration cultural Islamists in Western lands, and leaders of theocratic Islamist states, like Iran.

Today the very account of the story of Western civilisation is seen by some as an aggression. In a world of relativistic values and moral equality, the very idea of a West-centred (Eurocentric) global history is denounced as arrogant and oppressive. It is "designed", so we are told, to justify Western domination over the East by pointing to European superiority. What we should have instead is a multicultural, globalist, egalitarian history that tells something (preferably something good) about everybody. We are told that the European contribution (including that of the more recent European colonies, like the US) - no more or less than the invention and definition of modernity as we know it - should be seen as fortuitous or, to use the fashionable word amongst those who can but teach, contingent.

We have seen many examples of this Europhobia:

Take voyages and discovery. The Chinese are supposed to have found the Americas - at least they should have. As are the Africans. And the Japanese. Europeans were just lucky to document their "discovery". Or, Europeans were so vile and wretched of course they stumbled across the Americas - they took all the wealth of their discovered territory (the gold, the silver), dealt a blow to native (far more civilised) populations with mere thuggery and only then, after trading their wealth with Asia, did they call themselves top of the tree and praise themselves for their great civilizing mission, spirituality and achievements.

Or, closer to my heart than most subjects, take Golf. The Scottish game. Now the Chinese are claiming this bastion of western civilization, along with wall-building, as their own. Golf? Golf? Surely therein - especially after the bighearted return of Hong Kong - lies a declaration of war?

Admittedly Eurocentrism has existed to the detriment of western civilization: the 1901 Australian Immigration act was Eurocentric to the detriment of the Australian nation and the division of the landmass of Eurasia into the separate continents of Asia and Europe is an anomaly with no basis in physical geography yet has been displayed repeatedly in Western cartography.

Above all, say the globalists, we must not account for European priority by "essentializing it", that is, by tying it to European institutions and civilization - explaining it by European presences as against non-European absences. Thus the manifest asymmetry between Europe's systematic curiosity about foreign civilisations and cultures and the relative indifference of these others is denied a priori by apologists who unknowingly reaffirm the contrast. The point, say some globalists, is that there is nothing to explain. Or, if one prefers, one can "problematise" both European and non-European history by including what did not happen: by gesturing "failed struggles as well as successful ones are all part of history". Attention to failure is open to the charge of biased negativism: who says non Europeans had to pursue goals similar to those of the West?

The London Times reported in April this year that, "teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to cause offence to children from certain races or religions (a report claims). A lack of factual knowledge among some teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to "shallow" lessons on emotive and difficult subjects, according to the study by the Historical Association. The report, produced with funding from the UK's Department for Education, said that where teachers and staff avoided emotive and controversial history, their motives were generally well intentioned. "Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship," it concluded."

Apologists should really stay away from history curricula or History will become a teach-at-home subject with courses boycotted and those syllabi masquerading as history syllabi made redundant (not dissimilar to the British boarding school Ampleforth which switched its English Literature GCSE course for its own home-grown certificate of literature in reaction to dumbing down). In some countries historical revisionism (negationism) of certain historical events is a criminal offence - legislators throughout the civilized West should look at taking such laws up to protect their own nations.

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