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.