Spoke to a family member today. Talked about how I’m gonna write a student thesis on Wu Zetian, the only female emperor of China. Was promptly met with “but why not write about women like Margaret Thatcher? So many more references and much more recent!”
Cue me asking why I should study a known European figure rather than somebody more unknown (and more interesting imo) overseas? Family member goes on to tell me how “easy it was for medieval women overseas to gain power, they just had to marry their emperor husband!”, and how European history is so much more interesting and tragic and worth analysing because everything is so complex in Europe compared to those “primitive cultures.” Family member then jumps to how Europeans have invented EVERYTHING and how everybody else copies us (clothes, music, science) and Europe is the sole inventor of everything apparently. I get up and leave.
Apologies for the rant. Do y’all have any supporting words or advice on how to speak to these individuals? I thought I could post this here because I appreciate y’all’s anti-colonialist attitude, but do feel free to remove if it’s appropriate.
Good luck with your thesis, the topic sounds really awesome. A lot of people in the west don’t want to understand any history outside their colonialist propaganda. Being able to refute it to peoples faces is satisfying to either see them squirm faced with reality or for them to do their best mental gymnastics routine. Either way you come out better informed and you chipped away at their western ubermensch view of history.