The "European Miracle" in the Coverage of Western Historiography of the 19th and 20th Centuries

The article analyzes the 19th- and 20th-century Western historiography of the development of scientific concepts of the formation of an industrial society in Europe in the Modern era. On the basis of the analysis of historiography, the author distinguishes two general lines in Western historiography in relation to the nature of the "European miracle" according to the principle of endoge-neity vs exogeneity. Endogenous factors are the specific features of development within European civilization (economy, culture, religion, propensity to discoveries). Exogenous theories emphasize the external factors of the formation of an industrial society and are deployed in the context of global history. The continuous military and political expansion of Europe, the industrial revolution and scientific achievements proved the exclusiveness of European civilization to Western scholars of the 19th century. In the linear posi-tivistic theories of the historical dynamics of K. Marx, F. Engels, H. Spencer, the belief in infinite progress was reflected. The search for the causes of socio-economic transformations initially attracted the attention of sociologists. M. Weber saw in European civilization unique cultural, economic and social characteristics that are not peculiar to the peoples of the East. Ideological followers of this view of history were W. Rostow, N. Smelser, T. Parsons, supporters of the theory of modernization in the second half of the 20th century. The development of the civilizational approach in the form of cyclic theories of O. Spengler and A. J. Toynbee became of great importance in understanding the "European miracle". They managed to overcome Eurocentrism, but they could not escape from the dominant idea of the exclusively internal nature of the European industrial society. The civilizational approach and structural functionalism formed the basis for the concept of the world-system in the 1960s-1970s. The notion of the world as a global system essentially supplemented historiography and expanded the object of research. There was developed an "exogenous" direction, emphasizing the deep interconnection of Europe and other parts of the globe. In this respect, it is worth mentioning the works of F. Braudel, W. McNeill, I. Wallerstein, A.G. Frank, G. Arrighi. Thus, Western historiography has come a long way from "European exclusivity" to the recognition of Europe as part of a global world-system in which there is an inextricable cultural, economic, technological connection with other civilizations. According to the author of the article, the dualistic juxtaposition of the "endogenous" and "exogenous" theories of European modernism allows us to see the depth and the multifactor character of the historical process under study. On the other hand, such a systematization allows the historian to conceptualize the theoretical and methodological features of different scientific schools.

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