Countering the Eurocentric myth of the West: discovering the Oriental West ; The East as an Early Developer: the East discovers and leads the world through oriental globalisation, 500-1800 ; Islamic and African pioneers: building the global economy in the Afro-Asian Age of Discovery, 500-1500 ; Chinese pioneers: the first industrial miracle and the myth of Chinese isolationism, 1000-1800 ; The East remains dominant: India, Japan and Southeast Asia, 1400-1800 ; The West was Last: oriental globalisation and the invention of Christendom, 500-1498 ; Inventing Christendom and the Eastern origins of European feudalism ; The myth of the Italian pioneer ; The myth of the Vasco de Gama epoch, 1498-1800 ; The West as a Late-Developer and the advantages of backwardness: oriental grobalisation and the reconstruction of Western Europe as the advanced West, 1492-1850 ; The myth of 1492 and the impossibility of America: the Afro-Asian contribution to the catch-up of the West, 1492-1700 ; The Chinese origins of British industrialisation ; Constructing European racist identity and the invention of the world, 1700-1850 ; War, racist imperialism and the Afro-Asian origins of British industrialisation ; Conclusion: The Oriental West versus the Eurocentric Myth of the West ; The twin myths of the Western liberal state and the civilisational divide between East and West, 1500-1900 ; The rise of the Oriental West: identity/agency, global structure and contingency

John Hobson challenges the ethnocentric bias of mainstream accounts of the "Rise of the West" that assume that Europeans have pioneered their own development, and that the East has been a passive by-stander. Describing the rise of what he calls the "Oriental West", Hobson argues that Europe first assimilated many Eastern inventions, and then appropriated Eastern resources through imperialism. Hobson's book thus propels the hitherto marginalized Eastern peoples to the forefront of the story of progressive world history