Should we really ReORIENT?

Itinerario

Volumn 22, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 19-38

  Vries, Peer ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33845981790     PISSN: 01651153     EISSN: 20412827     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0165115300009566     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. Andre Gunder Frank, ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Los Angeles and London 1998) 226–257.
2. D.S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York 1998) 513.
3. Frank, ReORIENT, 276–277.
4. ReORIENT, 4.
5. ReORIENT, 117–123 and 182–183.
6. Frank does not substantiate this statement by presenting price data for Europe and Asia. That is a pity because not everybody would agree with his thesis. Compare Frank, ReORIENT, 153–164, with for example J. Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modem World (Berkeley and Oxford 1991) 359–362 and 368–375.
7. Frank, ReORIENT, 126–130.
8. ReORIENT, 185.
9. ReORIENT, 204
10. ReORIENT, 190.
11. ReORIENT, 204.
12. K. Pomeranz, A New World of Growth: Markets, Ecology, Coercion, and Industrialization in Global Perspective (unpublished manuscript 1997)
13. Frank, ReORIENT, 222.
14. Frank, ReORIENT, 206.
15. ReORIENT, 224.
16. ReORIENT, 276.
17. ReORIENT, 263–264.
18. ReORIENT, 349.
19. ReORIENT, 349.
20. ReORIENT, 276, 334.
21. ReORIENT, 266.
22. ReORIENT, 259.
23. For further explanation of this concept, which is introduced in the debate by Mark Elvin, see M. Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford 1973)
24. idem, Another History: Essays on China from a European Perspective (Broadway Australia 1996) 20–63.
25. Frank, ReORIENT, 286, 300, 304, 307, 314.
26. ReORIENT, 367, 300–301.
27. ReORIENT, 288.
28. ReORIENT, 300.
29. ReORIENT, 277.
30. P. Bairoch, Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes (New York 1993) 101–110
31. A. Maddison, ‘A Comparison of Levels of GDP in Developed and Developing Countries, 1700–1980’, Journal of Economic History 43 (1983) 27–41
32. F. Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économic et capitalisme: XVe-XVIII siecle III: Le temps du monde (Paris 1979) 460–461.
33. J.A. Goldstone, ‘The Problem of the “Early Modern World” ’, The fournal of Social and Economic History of the Orient 40/4 (1998) 1–36.
34. M. Adas, Machines as Measures of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance I: Before the Industrial Revolution (Ithaca 1989) 17–127.
35. See for China J. Osterhammel, China und die Weltgesellschafi I: Annahrungen (München 1989) 1–40
36. R. Murphey, The Outsiders: The Western Experience in India and China (Ann Arbor 1977) chapter 9.
37. See for example P. Bairoch, ‘Commerce international et genèse de la révolution indus-trielle Anglaise’, Annates ESC 28 (1973) 541–571
38. idem, Economics and World History, 80–87
39. P.K. O'Brien, ‘European Industrialization from the Voyages of Discovery to the Industrial Revolution’ in: H. Pohl ed., The European Discovery of the World and Its Economic Effects on Pre-industrial Society: 1500–1800 (Stuttgart 1990) 154–177.
40. Frank, The European Discovery of the World and Its Economic Effects on Pre-industrial Society: 1500–1800, 182.
41. The European Discovery of the World and Its Economic Effects on Pre-industrial Society: 1500–1800, 184.
42. The European Discovery of the World and Its Economic Effects on Pre-industrial Society: 1500–1800, 237.
43. Murphy, The Outsiders, 204. See passim chapter 11.
44. Compare V.D. Lippit, The Economic Development of China (New York and London 1987) 45 and 55–65.
45. Frank, ReORIENT, 295.
46. ReORIENT, 42.
47. Compare J.L. Rosenbloom, http://www.eh.net/ehnet/lists, 28 May 1998.
48. For Elvin's point of view see his The Pattern of the Chinese Past, chapters 13 and 17 and Another History, 20–63.
49. For an analysis of Needham's ideas regarding this problem see H.F. Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago and London 1994) 439–488.
50. Compare Elvin, ThePattern of the ChinesePast, 175–178
51. J. de Vries, European Urbanization 1500–1800 (London 1984) 348–350.
52. M.C. Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (New York and Oxford 1997).
53. Frank, ReORIENT, 219.
54. ReORIENT, 171.
55. ReORIENT, 168 and 170.
56. ReORIENT, 222.
57. A. Macfarlane, The Savage Wars of Peace:Japan and England and the Malthusian Trap (Oxford 1997). That this is the case in Japan can be inferred from figures Frank himself gives on pages 168 and 170 and from his remark on page 106: ‘After that [the year 1721, P.V.] all sources show population leveling off in Japan’.
58. Frank, ReORIENT, 308.
59. ReORIENT, 305.
60. Lippit, The Economic Development of China, 78–99.
61. For an analysis of income distribution in early modern Europe see J.L. van Zanden, ‘Tracing the Beginning of the Kuznets Curve: Western Europe During the Early Modern Period’, Economic History Review 48 (1995) 643–664.
62. Of course it all depends on what you call an agrarian society, but there a several pre-industrial societies where population growth did not imply a lowering of real wages and effective demand. For data on real wages in the early modern Dutch Republic - and England - see A. van der Woude and J. de Vries, The First Modem Economy: Succes, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge 1997) chapter 12.
63. For data on income and wealth in early modern Europe see Van Zanden, ‘Tracing the Beginning of the Kuznets Curve’.
64. Only then did Europe really ‘undercut’ the Chinese in some productive sectors. And even then the Chinese market was never really flooded by Western goods. See, for example, Murphey, The Outsiders, chapters 7 to 12.
65. For a, what I think, very convincing critique of the high-level equilibrium trap explanation of China's stagnation see Lippit, The Economic Development of China, 68–73 and 85–86.
66. See for example Bairoch, Economics and World History, 72–79 and the literature mentioned in notes 1 and 3 of that text.
67. Frank, ReORIENT, 285.
68. ReORIENT, 293, 316.
69. R.B. Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca and London 1997).
70. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 516.
71. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, XXI: ‘A third school would argue that the West-Rest dichotomy is simply false. In the large stream of world history Europe is a latecomer and free rider on the earlier achievements of others. That is patently incorrect. As the historical record shows, for the last thousand years, Europe (the West) has been the prime mover of development and modernity.’ 63 To give only a few examples. Cohen in his book on the Scientific Revolution does explicidy not reject the use of the concept ‘Scientific Revolution’ as Frank wants his readers to believe.
72. See Cohen, The Scientific Revolution, 500–501.
73. Compare Frank, ReORIENT, 192.
74. Cohen nowhere suggests, as again Frank want his readers to believe, that there would be a direct relationship between the ‘Scientific Revolution’ and the Industrial Revolution. See, for example, Cohen, The Scientific Revolution, 195, 427–428.
75. Cohen's book is about the Scientific Revolution, not about the industrial one. Compare Frank, ReORIENT, 188–192.
76. The fundamental thesis of Braudels trilogy Civilisation matérielle, économieet capitalisme is that only in Europe ‘[…] la construction [of capitalism, P.V.] reussit’. See part two of the trilogy, Les jeux de l'échange, 519.
77. Frank passes this over and only quotes Braudel as somebody who can be brought in line with his thesis that there were no significant institutional differences between Europe and Asia. See Frank, ReORIENT, 213–214.
78. Bairoch is quoted with approval when he compares GNP per capita in various civilisations at the end of the early modern period and concludes there was something of an economic parity, but when he claims intercontinental trade accounted for only a small part of European GNP at this same moment in time — as you will remember income from trade is part of GNP - his calculations are dismissed out of hand. Compare Frank, ReORIENT, 171–174 with 41–42 and 295–296.