Aperture Book of the Month - November 2025

Naoise Mac Sweeney, ‘The West: A New History of an Old Idea’. WH Allen, London, 2023

Our book of the month for November returns to an historian to provide an elegant illustration of the flaws and fallacies of linear and deterministic thinking. Naoíse Mac Sweeney’s ‘The West’ is more than just revisionist history; it fundamentally challenges the dominant narrative, which holds that culture and civilization has followed a single, deterministic path, placing ‘The West’ as an homogenous and dominant global force, carrying a baton passed cleanly from ancient Greece to modern Europe and North America.

Mac Sweeney, an archaeologist and classicist, reveals this linear view as a potent, relatively modern myth; a political and cultural construct forged in the crucible of nineteenth-century European imperialism and solidified during the Cold War. The concept of ‘The West’ is thus exposed as a closed system, deliberately developed to exclude and privilege.

“The modern West does not have a clear and simple origin in classical antiquity and did not develop through an unbroken and singular lineage from there through medieval Christendom, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment to modernity. The invention, popularization, and longevity of the grand narrative of western civilization all stem from its ideological utility.”

Mac Sweeney’s work provides a compelling case for adopting a networked, non-linear perspective on cultural development. She systematically dismantles the conventional narrative by demonstrating that concepts, technologies, and political systems traditionally deemed ‘Western’ are, in fact, products of constant, multi-directional flow and entanglement. From the alphabet and coinage originating in the Near East to the preservation of Greek science by Islamic scholars, Mac Sweeney shows that cultural history is an open, porous, and highly adaptive system. Her argument re-routes the currents of history, demonstrating that culture is a perpetually borrowed and mobile phenomenon, requiring us to view historical causation as a complex web of interactions rather than a simple chain of events.

The book has a simple, yet engaging and informative structure, and makes a profound point. It presents a collection of carefully chosen - some famous but many largely unknown - individuals representative of their time, each of whom lived at a pivotal moment in the conceptual development of ‘The West’, and each of whom contributed to a greater or lesser degree to the furtherance of the myth.

Mac Sweeney reveals how the accepted version of Western history was invented, how it has been used to justify imperialism and racism, and why it is no longer ideologically fit for purpose today.

One of the book’s most compelling sections focuses on the critical role of Byzantine and Islamic scholarship during Europe’s so-called Dark Ages. While the linear Western narrative speaks of decline after the fall of Rome, Mac Sweeney demonstrates how knowledge - particularly Greek philosophy and science - was not lost, but preserved, translated, expanded upon, and actively stewarded in places like Baghdad and Córdoba under Islamic rulers. She effectively repositions figures like the Islamic polymath Ibn Sina, whose medical and philosophical works were foundational to Renaissance Europe, not as external figures but as central actors in the global transmission of knowledge. By emphasizing this exchange, Mac Sweeney proves that the seeds of the Enlightenment were often watered in non-European gardens.

The construction of ‘The West’ as an identity is traced back to the post-Napoleonic era and the rise of German Idealism, which sought to create a distinct, racialised lineage for European civilization. Mac Sweeney explains how historians of this period consciously fabricated a singular, pure ‘Western’ tradition by excluding the contributions of Eastern cultures, particularly those of the Ottomans and the Islamic world, to justify imperial expansion and the creation of a unified European self-image. This myth was then weaponised during the Cold War, where ‘Western Civilization’ became synonymous with democracy, capitalism, and freedom - a clear, ideological counterpoint to Soviet communism.

The true strength of Mac Sweeney's work lies in her ability to challenge the reader's basic assumptions about cultural inheritance. She argues for a history defined by cultural currents - a systematic web of connections and borrowings - rather than a deterministic, single stream. In this view, culture does not flow from one fixed point to another, but rather circulates, mutates, and recombines in a constantly evolving cultural ecosystem. This systemic approach is what makes ‘The West’ such a crucial read for contemporary historical discourse.

“We know that socio-political context shapes culture, but we must also acknowledge that culture in turn shapes the socio-political context. The relationship between culture and identity is therefore like a feedback loop.”

This systemic, non-deterministic view of cultural history finds a parallel in Martin Puchner’s 2023 book, ‘Culture: The Story of Us, from Antiquity to the Present’. Both Mac Sweeney and Puchner illustrate the necessity of moving beyond simple, linear narratives of cultural spread. Mac Sweeney focuses on deconstructing the geographical myth of ‘The West’, while Puchner’s broader approach tracks how ideas - whether literary texts, democratic principles, or philosophical concepts - move, often against the grain of political power, to shape global society. Puchner emphasises the role of ‘cultural entrepreneurs’ - translators, travellers, and thinkers - who actively carry, modify, and transmit traditions across borders. Many of these contributors appear amongst Mac Sweeney’s cast. Both authors demonstrate that culture’s true nature is characterised by a messy, inter-connected system of exchange, far removed from the idea of a fixed, pure, or inevitable historical development. They effectively dismantle the notion that any culture is uniquely exceptional or that its trajectory was pre-ordained. Where Mac Sweeney uses this observation to critique the exclusionary myth of Western civilization, Puchner uses it to illustrate the unstoppable mobility of human creativity.

“This book is not an attack on the West. Instead, I would argue that it is a celebration of the West and its foundational principles. What could be more ‘Western’ than questioning, critiquing, and disputing received wisdom? And what could be more ‘Western’ than reimagining the shape of history?”

In conclusion, ‘The West: A New History’ is a masterful and compelling book. It is a work of deep scholarship that is also highly accessible, making it required reading for anyone interested in classics, global history, or the political construction of identity. Mac Sweeney’s compassionate and rigorously researched narrative successfully exposes the myth of ‘The West’ as a legacy of nineteenth-century nationalism and twentieth-century geopolitics. By doing so, there is no attempt to dismiss or undermine ‘The West’ as an entity. Instead, she invites readers to embrace a more truthful, complex, and inclusive history, defined not by singular origins and exceptionalism, but by the magnificent, ceaseless entanglement of human ideas.

Mac Sweeney’s lasting contribution is her powerful argument that to understand ourselves, we must first accept that we are all, historically and culturally, a synthesis of everywhere else. To think otherwise invites dangerous hubris, as Mac Sweeney argues by exploring the Russian and Chinese emphasis on cultural reinvention and parallel development. It’s therefore not only a brilliant illustration of systemic emergence and connectivity in comparison to simple, reductionist, linear alternatives, but is a profound commentary on contemporary trends in global politics.