Title: Eurocentrism - Wikipedia
Headings: Eurocentrism
Eurocentrism
Contents
Terminology
History
European exceptionalism
Anticolonialism
Debate since 1990s
Race and politics in the United States
Latin America
Effect on beauty standards in Brazil
Islamic world
Orientalism
In the beauty industry
Clark Doll Experiment
Mexican Doll Experiment
Beauty Advertisements
Skin Lightening
South Korea
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links

Content: English usage of Eurocentrism is recorded by 1979. The coinage of Western-centrism is younger, attested in the late 1990s, and specific to English. History
European exceptionalism
Further information: Great Divergence, The European Miracle, Age of Discovery, Colonialism, Progressivism, and Western world
During the European colonial era, encyclopedias often sought to give a rationale for the predominance of European rule during the colonial period by referring to a special position taken by Europe compared to the other continents. Thus, Johann Heinrich Zedler, in 1741, wrote that "even though Europe is the smallest of the world's four continents, it has for various reasons a position that places it before all others.... Its inhabitants have excellent customs, they are courteous and erudite in both sciences and crafts". The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie ( Conversations-Lexicon) of 1847 still has an ostensibly Eurocentric approach and claims about Europe that "its geographical situation and its cultural and political significance is clearly the most important of the five continents, over which it has gained a most influential government both in material and even more so in cultural aspects". European exceptionalism thus grew out of the Great Divergence of the Early Modern period, due to the combined effects of the Scientific Revolution, the Commercial Revolution, and the rise of colonial empires, the Industrial Revolution and a Second European colonization wave . European exceptionalism is widely reflected in popular genres of literature, especially literature for young adults (for example, Rudyard Kipling 's Kim) and adventure literature in general. Portrayal of European colonialism in such literature has been analysed in terms of Eurocentrism in retrospect, such as presenting idealised and often exaggeratedly masculine Western heroes, who conquered 'savage' peoples in the remaining 'dark spaces' of the globe. The European miracle, a term coined by Eric Jones in 1981, refers to this surprising rise of Europe during the Early Modern period.