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________________________________________________________________
BOOK AWARDS
American Sociological Association Political Economy of World-Systems Book Award 2000.
Andre Gunder Frank has been turning our thinking upside-down throughout his long
and illustrious career. With his work on the development of underdevelopment, he
successfully toppled the reigning orthodoxy of modernization theory and forced everyone to
reconsider how underdevelopment comes about. The world, and our understanding of it has
never been the same. Still working at full bore, fiercely attacking all of our
preconceptions, Frank has written yet another masterpiece of provocative sociology. ReOrient
calls into question virtually every set of assumptions that has dominated
macrosociology since the inception of the discipline. All of the great thinkers of social
science, from Adam Smith, to Weber and Marx, to Wallerstein, are put on the
chopping block....Whether we agree with everything Frank says in this book or not, it is
[a]major intellectual achievement. It forces us to confront the assumptions and
concepts that our ideas and research have stood upon for generations. Now the rug is
pulled out from under us, and we must question whether all of those "givens" are
just cultural biases that we have inherited. This book is like a cold bath that you enter
reluctantly, shiver in, and emerge from with a bracing vigor. What defines a great book?
One model is a work that synthesizes everything that we already know. The greatness of
ReOrient lies in an opposite principle: that of forcing its readers to revisit everything
they have thought and read. We believe such a work deserves to be cherished and honored.
World History Association First Book Prize 1999
This book has just won the 1999 World History Association Book Award, which was presented
at the WHA conference in Victoria, BC, Canada, on June 26, 1999. The choice was
unanimous, because we regard this book as being in a class by itself. Its
breadth of vision, courageous analysis and apt warning not to let ethnocentrism deter
historians from pursuing a global perspective on the past, all make Gunder Frank's book
exceptional and a must read for historians, teachers and students of world history. The
book argues that European hegemony in the modern era did not really emerge until the
nineteenth century, and that before that Europe was a rather marginal player in the
Eurasian world economy that was centered on China. Only the windfalls of American silver
and the Atlantic slave trade enabled Europe to buy its way into the existing world economy
and industrialize. Its holistic approach forces historians to look beyond Europe to
understand the making of the modern world, and Frank's attention to historiographic issues
is outstanding.
David A Chappell Book Review Editor Journal of World History
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From AMAZON.COM Reviews posted by Customers at their own Initiative
ReOrient will prove an instant classic, rating among those great books that come along
once in a generation, such as with Arnold Toynbee's The Study of History, William
McNeill's The Rise of the West, and Immanuel Wallerstein's The World-System as seminal
works in world history. For scholars researching the onset of industrialism and the West's
eventual dominance, they will be introduced to a whole new set of questions found in
neither Marx nor Weber that require exploration. This book will give world history a
research agenda for a generation. Original, contentious, challenging, yet accessible, this
is Frank at his best.
JEFFREY SOMMERS, Northeastern University, Boston
One of the best books of this century, November 18, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from North America
Gunder Frank have really helped to open up the eyes of people, who have long gotten used
to reading books and literary works written with Eurocentric bias. He conclusively proves
that Europe's success was nothing unique, and that Europe was the lesser of the many
players in world economics, technology, and industry until about 1800 AD. China, India,
Central Asia, South-East Asia, and the Middle East were those main players of the global
trade, spanning from 1500 BC to 1800 AD. These above five regions also had the world's
highest standards of living, most advanced technology, greatest industrial and commercial
enterprises, best art forms, literature, philosophy, and musical styles, and also the most
sophisticated government and best infrastructure in roads, bridges, canals, river and
seaborne transportation from 5000 BC to 1800 AD Special note must be made of the role that
Native American gold and silver played in helping Europe to become a player in the global
trade, by giving Europe with the purchasing power to purchase Chinese silks, tea,
porcelain, and other goods, Indian cotton textiles, and South-East spices and gems, should
be noted. Gunder Frank provides ample proof in his arguments and successfully disproves
long held Eurocentric ideas about the origins of the modern economics, commerce, and
industry. Gunder Frank's work is an eye-opener to all. This book should be read by
every person, willing to learn about world history. I must also say that in the 1800's and
1900's however, it was Europe which played the most significant role in moving the
science, technology, industry, trade, and commerce of the world forward and to greater new
heights, just as the other six regions of the world have done in the past.
---------------------------------------------------------------
A fundamental book for the 21st century, December 3, 2000
Reviewer: Eric Vertommen (see more about me) from Brussels Belgium
The revolution brought by Frank is to destroy Eurocentric views adopted since 1800 bit
by bit to reveal how the economic system has been working since the last 2000 years and
especially the last 500 years. What it shows is that the global economy was centered
around China until 1800 AD, that the main economic players of those 2 millennia were
China, India and Japan assisted by Russia, Persia and the Ottoman Empire. The West was
only minor and it is only because we achieved the conquest of the Americas and the
exploitation of its silver deposits that we obtained a ticket in the global economy and
gradually rose to proeminence. Britain was global hegemon from 1800 until 1914, displaced
by the United States from then until present. Some forecasts predict that Chinese economy
could outpace the US between 2013 and 2049.The book is fundamental because it explains
the basics of this Asian economic advantage, how post-1800 Westerners could delude
themselves while their ancestors (Adam Smith being the most famous) dedicated pages of
study to record and analyse why Asia was so superior to the West in almost everything and
why the West has risen and is maybe falling beyond again. An essential book for anyone
to understand the global economy, to have an accurate look on current situation and
evaluate the decisions made in the West to face Asian return to global power. A
Chinese proverb says: There are no failures, only experiences. And another one: The 10.000
miles trip begins with one step. Make the first step of the next millennium and buy
this book.
--------------------------------------------------------- --
Gunder Frank does it again. He turns standard Eurocentric historiography and social
theory upside down, as he did many years ago in exposing the facade of economic
development. He challenges the experts again, but this time they are quite a different
group at least in terms of theory, e.g., ranging from Marx to Braudel. They all
got it wrong because they did not see the whole picture, especially how the whole is
much more than the sum of its parts. Once again, his argument is clear, organized, and
often exciting.
PAT LAUDERDALE Arizona State University
A New Frame in Which to View World History, May 17, 2001
Reviewer: Scott Snyder (see more about me) from Martinez, CA USA
I confess. I was Eurocentric. Despite a degree in International Economics from an
east coast school known for its School of Foreign Service, I firmly believed Max Weber
that the Protestant work-ethic was the source of western prosperity. I also believed in
American exceptionalism. Frank's book cured me of both those false notions. This book is important
for understanding the world's past as well as the contours of the future. I wonder how
long it will take for the pendulum to swing back to Asia. Chinese-US relations are getting
interesting, aren't they?
REVIEW EXCERPTS
A book for the millennium ... can be a landmark book that shapes substantially the
scholarship and understanding of the next generation of researchers. It should have an
immediate impact.
MARK SELDEN State University of New York
This will be an extremely important book of sufficient originality and importance to have
a major impact. It could not be more ambitious.
KENNETH POMERANZ
University of California at Irvine
A work of highest intellectual, social and moral importance. Specialists will
welcome the forcefulness, verve, and coherence of Frank's BIG PICTURE. Much will be
completely new to many other historians and social scientists who will have to change
their views and rewrite their lectures after they read it.
ANONYMOUS Publisher's Referee
A fair competitor with Francis Fukuyama's The End of History.
STEVE FULLER University of Durham
ReORIENT deserves to become an instant classic.
MARTIN LEWIS Duke University at American Historical Association Meetings 1999
This is a brave book, brave in the academic as well as the personal sense. It
insists on a completely necessary reorientation of academic and political views. It will
prove to be compulsory reading.
JACK GOODY St. Johns College, Cambridge in London Times Higher Education Supplement
If challenging received wisdom is a trademark, this book is written as the mother of
all challenges. The immense power of the book rests on the ability to provoke and
force one to rethink many facets of history that have been taken for granted for a long
long time.
HARBANS MUKHIA Indian Express
Gunder Frank's ReORIENT is a heroic effort to reconstruct our conceptions of the
world economy in the early modern age. A brilliant theory-Frank's single-minded,
relentless, and compelling organic model achieves coherence and has much to offer.
PETER PERDUE Massachussetts Institute of Technology in Bulletin of Concerned Asian
Scholars
The value of this book is not only that it provides us with a global view of history but
that it rethinks the entire field of the social science
YE TAN Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in WENHUI BAO [Shanghai]
Frank gained his world wide fame by making an argument that caused a revolution in
thinking about Third World Development. Well, the same thing is about to happen
again, except this time the stakes are much higher. Now it is the theories of the
endogenous nature of change in the West that is being challenged. The Wallersteinian world
economy did not give rise to the world-system, Frank argues, but the Afroeurasian world
system gave rise to the European world economy. To correct the historical fact is to
challenge the theoretical scaffolding of everyone from Marx to Weber to Braudel to
Wallerstein. Frank shows how [they] got it all wrong. This book is conceptually that
important. No other work both provides the exhaustive documentation and the theoretical
clarity and conviction of thesis. You get the feel of the interconnectedness of the world
in a way ... not felt before and the reminder that according to all received theory this
is not supposed to be so. That is the power of this book. A fundamental rethinking
absolutely essential to understanding world history.
ALBERT BERGESEN University of Arizona
Andre Gunder Frank is an icon and iconoclast combined in one. With his new book,
Re-Orient, Frank is again charting a new territory, this time challenging his friends and
foes alike, including the former Frank himself, to think beyond narrow Eurocentric
approaches to the vicissitudes of world economic change and continuity. The book is
iconoclast to its core. It takes on the entire tradition of modern historiography, western
and non-western, left and right, on the world economy. Among the revered he attempted to knock
down in his new book are Karl Marx, Max Weber, Polanyi, Talcott Parsons, Arnold Toynbee,
Charles Kindleberger, Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein and most other
contemporary social theorists such as Perry Anderson and Benjamin Barber on the left and W.
W. Rostow, Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama on the right. The thesis of the
Re-Orient is quite straightforward: a truly global perspective is needed in studying
macro-historical changes in the world--the rise and fall of empires, the industrial
revolution, the decline of the East and the corresponding rise of the West, colonialism in
India and American revolution, etc. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as
Frank repeatedly tells us in his book, the parts can only be understood in relation to the
whole. Adopting such a globalist perspective is no easy task, however, as most of our
contemporary social science, history included, is trapped in an Eurocentric ideology
masquarading as universal science. Frank sets out to debunk this Eurocentric myth by
marshalling an impressive array of evidence LEI GUANG San Diego State University
This iconoclastic book is the culmination of one of the most prolific social
historian's life-long struggle to explain world development. A central idea put forward by
the author is that in order to understand history one has to place the analysis squarely
into a world-encompassing model of the global economy. Frank provides a much needed
perspective that we are 'all in the same boat', that there is 'unity in diversity', and
that ideas such as that of a 'clash of civilisations' are nonsense. It would be too easy
to dismiss it as just 'politically correct'. To sum up, 'ReORIENT' is a landmark
book.
HANS-JUERGEN ENGELBRECHT Massey University, New Zealand, in International Journal of
Social Economics
Frank's book makes two big arguments. The first demolishes one of the pillars of
Eurocentric history: the false belief that Europe was more advanced or more rapidly
advancing that Asia in early modern times. The second argument is a theory aiming to
explain why Europe began to outpace Asia in economic development around 1750 and, more
concretely, to explain why the industrial revolution took place in Europe and not in Asia.
J. M. BLAUT in JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
Andre Gunder Frank's latest work ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age definitely is a
book with a message. Its author sets out to challenge and overturns the ideas of
such influential scholars as Marx, Weber, Polanyi, Rostow, Braudel and Wallerstein.
As a matter of fact, almost everybody who has ever touched on the subject.
PEER VRIES University of Leiden in ITINERARIO
Andre Gunder Frank's thesis requires a revolution in Western thinking: if we
transcend Eurocentrism, we can see that, viewed from the standpoint of the global whole,
the main story of economic development is in Asia and not in the West. Frank pulls the rug
out from under the Eurocentrism of Marx, Weber, Toynbee and even Wallerstein [and] the
accepted ideological frameworks through which Western social theorists hide from
thesmselves the deep interdependency of the world.
TIKKUN [Nepal] November/December 1998
I feel that the publication of this book is not an isolated or unique event, but rather a culmination
of the past 20 years of Western research on China.
LI BOZHONG Qinghua University [China] in WENHUI BAO [Shanghai]
ReORIENT is a stimulating and thoughtful book that should be read by all serious students
of the modern world system. [It] has caused great waves of anxiety among social scientists
because of his claim that this new perspective on the West invalidates all our theories
of development.
CHRISTOPHER CHASE-DUNN UC Riverside in American Journal of Sociology
ReOrient's biggest virtue: it forces the reader to at least look differently at world
history. This impressive and illuminating analysis sets out to challenge the mother of
all orthodoxies that Europe discovered capitalism and industrialisation and that what
followed and is happening and will happen is essentially a fallout of this European
preeminence..
SAUBHIK CHAKABARTI The Statesman [India]
Frank raises the following issue in this book: Can any theory or perspective (theoretical,
analytical and empirical) which carries the baggage of Eurocentric historiography and
ideology address the social and economic issues of the 21st century? Can it do so
especially as it suffers from the drawback of not being able to answer various questions
relating to the resurgence of the Asian economy without reorienting its analysis of world
history and global political economy.
SATISH K.SHARMA in SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN [India]
This is a bold new interpretation that ... creates a distinctive argument to
explain Europe's post-1800 successes. It departs from virtually all other 'global' or
'world' system perspectives by arguing that Europe was not the central location of
economic dynamism in the early modern world (1400-1800) and therefore that 'capitalism'
was not a unique cultural phenomenon that can explain the differential economic success of
Europe over Asia. The author redefines our baseline for assessing the 'rise' of Europe. I
believe this book could become a benchmark study. BIN WONG University of California
at Irvine
We have long been indebted to Andre Gunder Frank for giving us unforgettable concepts. He
now gives us the brilliant "Re-Orient", an incisive bon mot that not only steers
us away from Eurocentric history but emphasizes even during the period of the so-called
European hegemony, of Asia's vigor and significance. This book is written in the classic
iconoclastic and synthetic style we expect from Frank. In support of this position he has
assembled a prodigious amount of evidence. [His] strong and clear voice has always called
upon us to revise. No scholar can afford to ignore this serious book.
JANET ABU-LUGHOD New School University in JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY
_________________________________________________________________________
Reviews of ReOrient and Evaluations by Reviewers and Referees
This list of reviews is complete through July, 2001.
Andre Gunder Frank has written responses to ReOrient
reviews by S. Amin, G. Arrighi, and I. Wallerstein in REVIEW XXII, 3, 1999 and to the P. Vries review in ITINERARIO, 1998. |
Reviews have
appeared in the following publications, among others:
Publication |
Issue |
Reviewer |
USA |
WORLD HISTORY ASSOCIATION |
June 1999 |
DAVID CHAPPELL |
JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY |
11/1/2000 |
JANET ABU-LUGHOD |
JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY |
10/2/99 |
DAVID BUCK |
AMERICAN HISTRICAL REVIEW |
104:10/ |
S.A.M. ADSHEAD |
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY |
DEC 1998 |
DAVID LANDES |
BULLETIN CONCERNED ASIAN SCHOLARS |
30:4/98 |
PETER PERDUE |
JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY |
25: 4/99 |
J. L. BLAUT |
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE |
37/1:MR.98 |
ANON |
LINGUA FRANCA |
FALL 98 |
GINA NEFF |
WORLD VIEW |
JULY-SEPT 98 |
ANON |
AMAZON.COM |
|
JEFFEREY SOMMERS
PAT LAUDERDALE |
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY |
v 105 nr 4 |
CHRIS CHASE-DUNN |
INTERNATIONAL HISTORY REVIEW |
March 2000 |
GEORGE MODELSKY |
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY |
2000 |
DAVID LUDDEN |
INDIA & NEPAL |
INDIAN EXPRESS |
15/11/98 |
HARBANS MUKHIA |
THE HINDU |
16/12/97 |
S. AMBRIJAN |
THE STATEMAN |
21/12/98 |
SAUBHIK CHAKABARTI |
ECONOMIC TIMES |
25/10/98 |
ANON |
THE TELEGRAPH |
16 June 2000 |
ABHIJIT KUMAR DUTTA |
BUSINESS ECONOMICS |
July 31,2000 |
RILA MUKHERJEE |
CHINA |
DUSHU [Beijing] |
2000/5 |
Liu He (Lidya Liu) [The World outside the Shadow of the
European Streetlight] (PDF Format) |
WENHUI BAO Shanghai Daily] |
MAY 13, 2000 |
Wei Sei et al. |
WENCUI ZHOUKAN
Special issue on ReOrient: Whom on Earth Has the ReOrient offended? |
JUNE 19, 2001 |
(Prefaces by Chen Yangu and Bing Won;
papers by Liu He [The World outside the Shadow of the European
Streetlight]; Xu Youyu [Questioning the ReOrient]; Liu He [Whom on Earth Has the ReOrient offended?; Wang Ye [Reflecting on the World History that People have been used
to -Chinese academia paying attention to the ReOrient]; Ye Tan [On
the ReOrient]; Wei Si [Reading the ReOrient]; Xiao Jun [ The Debate {on the ReOrient} that I Don't Understand].
(PDF format) |
NANFANG ZHOUMO |
JUNE 16, 2000 |
Xu Youyu [Questioning the ReOrient] (PDF format) |
NANFANG ZHOUMO |
JULY 27, 2000 |
Liu He [Whom on Earth Has the ReOrient offended?] (PDF
format). |
CHINA ECONOMICS
NETWORK |
|
(Introduction of the author of ReOrient, Table of Content, and
two prefaces by Chen Yangu and Bin Wong). (PDF format) |
DUSHU & SHINJIAO (Vol. 21 No. 1) |
JANUARY 31, 2002 |
Guang Lei [Frank and Global Perspective on Studies of World Political Economy"] |
JAPAN |
RYUKYU SHINPOU (a newspaper) |
25 June 2000 |
"Asian Age Again" by HEITA KAWAKATSU |
SHUUKAN EKONOMISUTO (Weekly Economist) |
4 July 2000 |
"Anti-Eurocentric View of History at the Age of Global Economy" by MINORU
KAWAKITA |
NIKKEI BIZINETSU (Weekly Nikkei Business) |
24 July 2000 |
"Asian Perspective: Critical Re-Assessment of Eurocentric Worldview" by
KUNIKO INOGUCHI |
YOMIURI SHINBUN (a newspaper) |
6 August 2000 |
"Asia, the Leader of World Economy" by HIROFUNI YAMAMOTO |
NIHON KEIZAI SHINBUN (a newspaper) |
3 September 2000 |
"World History and World Economy in Asian Perspective" by TAKESHI HAMASHITA |
ENGLAND |
TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT |
|
JACK GOODY |
ECONOMIC HISTORY JOURNAL |
8/99 |
N.F.R. CRAFTS |
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS |
|
H.-J. ENGELBRECHT |
BUSINESS HISTORY |
42:2 April 2000 |
DAVID RICHARDSON |
FRANCE |
REVUE BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE DE SINOLOGIE |
1999 |
R. BIN WONG |
CRITIQUE INTERNATIONALE |
FALL 1998 |
J.-F.B. |
ANNALES |
No. 4, 2000 |
SANHA SUBRAHMANYAN |
SPAIN |
PAPELES DES QUESTIONES INTERNACIONALES |
1998 |
JOSE MARIA TORTOSA |
GERMANY |
ANTXRHPOS 95 |
2000/1 |
WOLFGANG MARSCHALL |
YUGOSLAVIA |
POLITICA |
July 1, 2000 |
DUSAN PETROVIC |
NETHERLANDS |
ITINERARIO |
|
PEER VRIES |
Chapter Abstracts
The Preface gives an account of the 40 years over
which the ideas of this book have developed, from dependence theory, to world system
theory to the present globalism. It refers specifically not only to the various stages of
the work by Frank, but also its mutual interaction with that of other contemporary
authors, such as Abu-Lughod, Amin, Arrighi, Bergesen, Blaut, Chase-Dunn, Chaudhuri, Chew,
Denemark, Ekholm, Friedman, Gills, Hall, Hodgson, McNeill, Wallerstein, and Wolf.
The Chapter 1 Introduction presents the 'unity in diversity' theme of this book and its
general idea that the whole is more than the sum of, and also shapes, its parts and their
relations. It applies this ground rule to the study of the global economy and world system
between 1400 and 1800, which this book analyzes as an alternative to the past two
centuries of Eurocentric historiography and social theory. The chapter contains very
critical examinations of the work of classical authors such as Durkheim, Maine, Marx,
Smith, Sombart, Toynbee, and Weber. It also reviews and challenges twentieth century
economic historians and social theorists in general and in particular the resistance to
the present thesis by Abu-Lughod, Amin, Arrighi, Bairoch, Blaut, Braudel, Brenner,
Chase-Dunn and Hall, Chaudhuri, Cipolla, Gates, Jones, Landes, McNeill, Mann, Modelski and
Thompson, North, O'Brien, Parsons, Polanyi, Redfield, Rostow, Sanderson, Wallerstein,
White, and Wolf. On the other hand, the chapter recommends as complementary to the present
book the recent and oft still unpublished work of Asiniero, Fletcher, Hodgson, Perlin,
Pomeranz, and Wong.
Chapter 2 examines the structure and flow of trade, starting in the Americas and going
eastward literally around the globe. It examines the pattern of trade imbalances, and
their settlement through payment in money, which also flowed predominantly eastward. A
dozen regions and their relations with each other are examined, going from the Americas,
via Africa and Europe, to and through West-, South-, and Southeast- Asia, to Japan and
China and from there both across the Pacific and also back across Central Asia and Russia.
This review reveals both information about the strength and growth of these
"regional" economies and their trade and monetary relations with each other. It
also shows, at least implicitly, what kind of a world economic division of labor existed,
expanded, and changed in the early modern period from about 1400 to 1800. At the very
least, this chapter demonstrates that there was such world-wide division of labor. It
identifies many of the different products and services, sectors and regions, and of course
enterprises and "countries" that effectively competed with each other in a
single global economy. Thus, we will see that all received economic and social theory
based on the neglect or outright denial of this world-wide division of labor is without
historical foundation.
Chapter 3 examines the role of money in the world economy as a whole and in shaping the
relations among its regional parts. There is a large literature on the flow of money from
the silver mines in the Americas to Europe, and there has been some concern also with its
onward remittance to Asia. However, insufficient attention has been devoted to macro- and
micro- economic analysis of why the specie was produced, transported, minted, re-minted,
exchanged, etc. Beyond macro- and micro-economic analysis of this production and exchange
of silver and other species as commodities, one section of this chapter also examines the
very circulatory system through which the monetary blood flowed. Moreover, this monetary
system is itself shown to have played an essential role in connecting and expanding the
world economy.
Thus, another section examines why and how this capillary monetary system, as well as
the oxygen carrying monetary blood that flowed through it, penetrated and fuelled the
economic body of the world economy. We examine how some of these monetary veins and
arteries were bigger than others, and how smaller ones reached farther into, and even
served to extend and stimulate production on, the outward reaches of the world economic
body at this and that, but not every, frontier. The hoary myth about Asiatic
"hoarding" of money is shown to be without foundation, especially in the
"sinks" of the world monetary supply in India, and even more so in China.
Chapter 4 examines some quantitative global economic dimensions. Although hard data are
hard to come by, one section devotes some effort to assembling and comparing at least some
world-wide and regional dimensions of population, production, trade, and consumption, as
well as their respective rates of growth, especially in Asia and Europe. We will see that
not only were various parts of Asia economically far more important in and to the world
economy than all of Europe. The historical evidence also demonstrates unequivocally that
Asia grew faster and more than Europe and maintained its economic lead over Europe in all
these respects until at least 1750. If several parts of Asia were richer and more
productive than Europe was, and moreover their economies were expanding and growing during
this early modern period, how is it possible that the "Asian Mode of Production"
under any of its European designations could have been as traditional, stationary,
stagnant and generally uneconomic as Marx, Weber, Sombart et al alleged? It was not, and
this also Eurocentric proposition should already appear as absurd as it is prima facie.
Other sections also bring evidence and the judgements of authorities to bear on
comparisons of productivity, technology as well as of economic and financial institutions
in Europe and Asia, especially with India and China. These comparisons show that the
European put-down of Asia is unfounded in fact; for Asia was not only economically and in
many ways technologically ahead of Europe at the beginning but still also at the end of
this period. However, this chapter also launches the argument that production, trade,
their institutions and technology should not only be inter-nationally compared, but that
they must also be seen as being mutually related and generated on a world economic level.
Chapter 5 proposes and pursues a "horizontally integrative macrohistory" of
the world, in which simultaneity of events and processes is no coincidence. Nor are
simultaneous events here and there seen as differently caused by diverse local
"internal" circumstances. Instead, one section after another inquires into
common and connected causes of simultaneous occurrences around the world.
Demographic/structural, monetary, Kondratieff and longer cycle analysis is brought to bear
in different but complementary attempts to account for and explain what was happening here
and there. Such cyclical and monetary analysis is used to help account in the 1640s for
the simultaneous fall of the Ming in China and of revolution in England, rebellion in
Spain and Japan, and other problems in Manila and elsewhere. The French, Dutch Batavian,
American, and industrial revolutions in the late eighteenth century are also briefly
examined in cyclical and related terms. Another section inquires whether the so-called
"seventeenth century crisis" of Europe was world wide and included Asia; and I
explore the important significance of a negative answer for world economic history.
Observation of the continuation of the "long sixteenth century" expansion
through the seventeenth and into part of the eighteenth century in much of Asia is used
also to pose the question of whether there were very long, about 500 year long, world
economic and political cycles.
Chapter 6 opens with this question about very long cycles opens on how and why the West
"won" in the nineteenth century, and whether this "victory" is likely
to endure or to be only temporary. In previous works (Gills and Frank 1992, Frank and
Gills 1993, Frank 1993), I claim to have identified half-millennium long world economic
system wide cycles of expansive "A" and contractive "B" phases, which
were some two-three hundred years long each. I traced these back to 3000 BC and up to
about 1450 AD. Three separate test attempts by other scholars [cited below] offer some
confirmatory evidence of the existence and my dating of these alleged cycles and their
phases. Did this pattern of such long cycles continue into early modern times? That is the
first question posed in this section. The second one is that, if they did, do they reflect
and can they help account for the continued dominance of Asia in the world economy through
the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, as well as for its decline and Europe's
rise thereafter? The chapter also culminates the book's historical account and theoretical
analysis to argue how the "Decline of the East" and the "Rise of the
West" may have been systemically related and mutually promoted. To do so, one section
examines the unequal regional and sectoral structure and the uneven temporal or cyclical
dynamic the growth of production and of population in the single global economy. The
argument is that not Asia's alleged weakness and Europe's alleged strength in the period
of early modern world history, but rather the effects of Asia's strength led to its
decline after 1750 and that Europe's actions reflected the weakness of its perviously
marginal position in the world economy and led to its ascendance after 1800. This
development also took advantage of the "Decline of Asia" after 1750, whose roots
and timing are also examined in a separate section of the chapter. Moreover, the
suggestion is made that within the same still continuing process of global development, a
possible twenty-first century reversion of the balance of economic, political and cultural
power to Asia may already have begun again. "The Rise of the West" is also
examined more concretely in the last section. My thesis - echoing but extending that of
James Blaut - is that the West first bought itself a third class seat on the Asian
economic train, then leased a whole railway carriage, and only in the nineteenth century
managed to displace Asians from the locomotive. One section examines, and cites the
analysis of Adam Smith about how the Europeans managed to do so with the use of American
money. They used it not only to expand their own economies, but also or even especially to
buy themselves into the expanding market in Asia. Thus, the industrial revolution and its
eventual use by the Europeans to achieve a position of dominance in the world economy
cannot be adequately explained on the basis only of factors "internal" to
Europe, not even supplemented by colonially based accumulation of capital. We need a world
economic accounting for and explanation of this world economic process and event. This
section proposes and then examines a hypothesis based on world-wide and subsidiary
regional demand-and-supply relations for labor-saving and power-producing technological
innovation.
Chapter 7, the conclusion, re-examines the implications of this need for holistic
analysis and our derivative findings and hypotheses for further research about
historiography, received theory and the possible and necessary reconstruction of both.
That is, since the whole is more than the sum of its parts, each part is not only
influenced by other parts, but by what happens in the whole world [system]. There is no
way we can understand and account for what happened in Europe or America without taking
account of what happened in Asia and Africa - and vice versa- nor what happened anywhere
without identifying the influences that emanated from everywhere, that is from the
structure and dynamic of the whole world [system] itself. In literally a word, we need a
holistic analysis to explain any part of the system. The first part of the chapter
summarizes the historiographic conclusions of what not to do, especially the divisionism
of Fukujama's 'end of history,' Huntington's 'clash of civilizations,' and Barber's 'Jihad
vs. McWorld.' The second part of the final chapter goes on to suggest better alternative
theoretical directions for new historiogrpahy and theory to promote unity in diversity.
Table of Contents
- EPIGRAPHS
- PREFACE
- Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO REAL WORLD HISTORY VS. EUROCENTRIC SOCIAL THEORY
- HOLISTIC METHODOLOGY AND OBJECTIVES
- GLOBALISM, NOT EUROCENTRISM
- CHAPTER OUTLINE OF A GLOBAL ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
- ANTICIPATING AND CONFRONTING RESISTANCE AND OBSTACLES
- Chapter 2: THE GLOBAL TRADE CAROUSEL 1400-1800 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD ECONOMY
- Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Antecedents
- The Columbian Exchange and its Consequences
- Some Neglected Features in the World Economy
WORLD DIVISION OF LABOR AND BALANCES OF TRADE 1400-1800
- Mapping the Global Economy
- The Americas
- Africa
- Europe
- West Asia
- - The Ottoman Empire
- - Safavid Persia
- India and the Indian Ocean
- - India
- - North India
- - Gujarat and Malabar
- - Coromandel
- - Bengal
- Southeast Asia
- Japan
- China
- Central Asia
- Russia and the Baltics
- A Sino-Centric World Economy Summary
- Chapter 3: MONEY WENT AROUND THE WORLD AND MADE THE WORLD GO ROUND
WORLD MONEY: ITS PRODUCTION AND EXCHANGE
- Micro- and Marco- Attractions in the World Casino
- Dealing and Playing in the Casino
- The Numbers Game
HOW DID THE WINNERS USE THEIR MONEY?
- Spenders vs Hoarders
- Inflation or Production in the Quantity Theory of Money
- Money Expanded the Frontiers of Settlement and Production
- Chapter 4 THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: COMPARISONS AND RELATIONS QUANTITIES: POPULATION,
PRODUCTION, PRODUCTIVITY, INCOME AND TRADE
- Population, Production and Income
- Productivity and Competitiveness
- World Trade 1400-1800
QUALITIES: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
- Eurocentrism Regarding Science and Technology in Asia
- Guns
- Ships
- Printing
- Textiles
- Metallurgy, Coal and Power
- Transport
- World Technological Development
MECHANISMS: ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
- European - Asian Comparisons
- Global Institutional Relations
- Chapter 5
HORIZONTALLY INTEGRATIVE MACROHISTORY SIMULTANEITY IS NO COINCIDENCE DOING HORIZONTALLY
INTEGRATIVE MACROHISTORY
- Demographic/Structural Analysis
- A "Seventeenth Century Crisis"?
- Monetary Analysis and the Crises of 1640
- Kondratieff Analysis
- Crisis/Recessions in the 1762-1790 Kondratieff "B" Phase
- More Horizontally Integrative Macrohistory?
- Chapter 6
WHY DID THE WEST WIN [TEMPORARILY] ? UP AND DOWN THE LONG CYCLE ROLLICOASTER? THE
DECLINE OF THE EAST PRECEDED THE RISE OF THE WEST
- The Decline in India
- The Decline Elsewhere in Asia
HOW DID THE WEST RISE?
- Climbing Up on Asian Shoulders
- Supply and Demand for Technological Change in the World Economy: A Hypothesis
- Supplies and Sources of Capital
A GLOBAL ECONOMIC/DEMOGRAPHIC ACCOUNTING FOR THE DECLINE OF THE EAST AND THE RISE OF
THE WEST
- A Demographic Economic Model
- A High-Level Equilibrium Trap?
- The Evidence 1500-1750
- The 1750 Inflection
- Past Conclusions and Future Implications
- Chapter 7
HISTORIOGRAPHIC CONCLUSIONS AND THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS HISTORIOGRAPHIC CONCLUSIONS:
THE EUROCENTRIC EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES
- The Asiatic Mode of Production [AMP]
- European Exceptionalism
- A European World-System or a Global Economy?
- 1500: Continuity or Break?
- Capitalism?
- Hegemony?
- The Rise of the West and the Industrial Revolution
- Empty Categories and Procrustean Beds
THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS: THROUGH THE GLOBAL LOOKING GLASS
- Holism vs. Partialism
- Commonality/Similarity vs. Specificity/Difference
- Continuity vs. Dis-continuities
- Horizontal Integration vs. Vertical Separation
- Cycles vs. Linearity.
- Structure vs. Agency
- Europe in The World Economic Nutshell
- Jihad vs. McWorld in the Anarchy of the Clash of Civilizations?
- REFERENCES CITED
- EPIGRAPH
ORIENT = The East; lustrous,sparkling,precious;radiant,rising,nascent; place or exactly
determine position, settle or find bearings; bring into clearly understood relations;
direct towards; determine how one stands in relation to one's surroundings. Turn eastward
!
ReORIENT = Give new orientation to; readjust, change outlook (from THE CONCISE OXFORD
DICTONARY; thank you for being so CONCISE)
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