Quite apart from bringing processes of cross-cultural interaction into historical focus, a principal concern of most contemporary world history is to construct alternatives to Eurocentric understandings of the past. Here Eurocentrism refers to assumptions widely shared since the nineteenth century among European and Euro-American peoples that their lands have been the sites of genuine historical development, hence that their experiences constitute a standard against which it is possible to measure the development of other societies. Constructing alternatives to Eurocentric approaches does not mean denying the significance of Europe in world history. To the contrary, a great deal of recent scholarship in world history seeks precisely to explain the prominence of Europe in the modern world. Yet recent approaches to world history reject teleological assumptions that European forms of political organization (such as the national state) or economic development (such as industrialization) are either natural or inevitable. This scholarship also rejects arguments that credit European peoples with superior rationality, creativity, industriousness, or aggressiveness compared to other peoples, since historians have discovered the same or similar qualities in many other societies.