ABSTRACT
The Middle Ages’, ‘the Renaissance’, ‘the Early Modern period’, ‘the period of Industrialization’ … these are familiar terms, invented by European historians for the purpose of differentiating phases of their continent’s past. It was never intended that the terms should apply universally: nobody envisaged talk of medieval New Zealand, or of Renaissance Alaska. None the less, the terms have had a baleful effect on the presentation of the history of countries for whose past the categories of European periodization are inappropriate. Historians of China, for example, have had to struggle to keep at bay European terms such as ‘the Scientific Revolution’ and ‘the Industrial Revolution’ in order to free themselves for the project of telling Chinese history in its own terms.
