ReOrient
* Book: ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills.
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The global system is not 500 years old, but 5,000, and European hegemony is but a blip in this Asian-centric evolution. See also: ReOrienting the 19th Century.
Introduction
Sing C. Chew:
"ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age questioned (theoretically and historically) the manner we have interpreted long-term social change, and especially, our common understanding of the timing of the rise of the European domination of the world economy/system (the 1500 divide), and therefore, the specific region that was the dominant power of the world system at the particular historical conjuncture. ReOrienting the 19th Century further buttressed this line of argument that the periodization of European dominance, as has been commonly accepted, needed even further revisions. With these two volumes, Frank not only challenged the contemporary understanding (theoretically and historically) of the making of the "modem" world, but as well, the writings of his colleagues (such as Wallerstein, Arrighi, Amin, etc.) in world-systems analysis, and even his own contributions to world-systems analysis prior to the early 1990s. Following Frank's typical critical iconoclastic stance, even Fernand Braudel was not spared (Frank 1994; Chew and Lauderdale 2010). Despite Gunder's numerous pleas, not too many in world-systems analysis pursued his demand for reorientation theoretically and historically in the rethinking of world history."
Contextual Quote
"Frank's RGEA and RI 9C propose that we consider seriously analyzing the trading patterns and networks in terms of volumes of trade flows at the world system level in order to understand the course of world development, and to distinguish the economic and financial trends according to the different regions of the world economy. Because of his demand that everything has to be considered at the world level, bilateral trading flows do not capture the socioeconomic historical reality of what really happened in world history. A historical multilateral trading pattern analysis would be more precise in determining the relative dominance of the world system, and therefore, in socioeconomic and political terms, the real hegemonic region of the world system that is not ideologically derived and mythically reinforced."
- Sing C. Chew [1]
Contents
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
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
- 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
- HOW DID THE WINNERS USE THEIR MONEY?
Chapter 4 THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: COMPARISONS AND RELATIONS QUANTITIES: POPULATION, PRODUCTION, PRODUCTIVITY, INCOME AND TRADE
- QUALITIES: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
- MECHANISMS: ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
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
- HOW DID THE WEST RISE?
- A GLOBAL ECONOMIC/DEMOGRAPHIC ACCOUNTING FOR THE DECLINE OF THE EAST AND THE RISE OF THE WEST
Chapter 7 HISTORIOGRAPHIC CONCLUSIONS AND THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS HISTORIOGRAPHIC CONCLUSIONS
THE EUROCENTRIC EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES
THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS: THROUGH THE GLOBAL LOOKING GLASS
Discussion
Dropping the concept of Capitalism in World-Systems Analysis ?
Sing C. Chew:
"Bergesen's going forward plan recommends dropping the concept of capitalism as a mode of production underlining the world-economy when dealing with the post-1500s global changes, and to realize the theoretical utility of his "world-system based globology approach." He joins Gunder Frank (1991) in dismissing the utility of the capitalist mode of production framework in understanding and explaining long-term change. Bergesen's argument, based on an ontological understanding of what is capitalism by definition, is rather straightforward. Because world-systems theory's level of analysis is the world economy or world economy, and the capitalist mode of production theoretically belongs to the national level defined by worker-owner social relations guaranteed by a national state, "capitalism, as a mode of production, remains a societal/national entity"; he suggests that there is an issue in terms of translation-utilizing a concept that is based at the national level and employing it at the global level, though as he has correctly suggests, it has not prevented Lenin and Hobson from doing so. This "theoretical error" of Lenin and Hobson that starts from national accumulation, and then leads to the export of capital for further accumulation ( exemplified by imperialism as the final stage of capitalism) on the world scale has to be dropped, according to Bergesen, if we intend to undertake a world-system level analysis.?
...
Whereas Bergesen utilizes ontological and epistemological assertions to dismiss the world-system as having a capitalist mode of production in the post-1500 era, Frank's ( 1991) dismissal of using capitalism as a mode of production to understand the evolution of the world system is based mostly on his fervent insistence that the only "correct" route to understand long-term change or system transition is a world systemic analysis based on history and theory. In Frank's case, his declaration that feudalism, capitalism, and socialism are transitional ideological modes that has put blinders on our eyes, and thus has prevented us from really understanding and explaining the course of world history, is based on an examination of the historical processes of global history, and whether the characteristics of capitalism existed prior to 1500-hence, his 'continuity thesis.' Frank's rejection was historically based, and not derived from ontological and epistemological shifts of the sort Bergesen has proposed for world-system theory after Frank. "
Understanding B-Phases in World-Systems Analysis
Sing C. Chew:
"Conceptually, the factors and processes that trigger crises over the last five thousand years have not been worked out or well understood. That however has not prevented the identification of these economic stagnations or B-phases. With the plethora of positions on world system/s development, crises or B-phases have been proposed to cover different duration, and have different meanings for those working in this area. In addition to the Gills and Frank's model I have outlined in the previous pages, Modelski and Thompson (1996) and Wallerstein (1974, 1980) also comes to mind. According to each model, the duration of these downturn phases varies. Different durations ranging from 50 years to one thousand years in length have been suggested. Leaving this difference in duration aside for the moment, there are also different views of what a B-phase is in relation to world system/s reproduction. For Gills and Frank (1993), B-phases represent the cyclical tendency or rhythms that a world system goes through as it expands. In other words, a B-phase is a cyclical downturn of the world system within its rhythm of expansion and contraction, a structural process of the world system (Gills and Frank 2002: 159-160). They are recurrences of economic downturns.
Along this reasoning, there is no notable difference between one B-phase and another. They are all economic downturns with no distinguishing characteristics depicting a specific era (conjuncture) of the world system, other than sharing similar tendencies such as hegemonic rivalries. Therefore, historical contingent circumstances/factors are not given much weight nor proffered to explain the genesis or resolution of the crisis.
Another view of a B-phase is quite different. For Wallerstein (1974, 1979, 1980) for example, a specific B-phase is not only signifying an economic crisis period (price fluctuations, etc.), it also demarcates specific characteristics of system reorganization and consolidation, depending on the particular B-phase in question. In his explication of the origin and evolution of the modern world-system, the B-phase between AD1300-AD1450 has been analyzed as a reorganization of the social structure ("the crisis of feudalism") in order to overcome the crisis conditions (Wallerstein 1980:25); In contrast, the B-phase between AD1600-AD1750 is considered not as a "crisis in the system" but as "a period of consolidation" of social relations and structures with its respective specificities (Wallerstein 1980: 31). Thus, a specific B-phase crisis has certain triggers that trip the crisis. In the case of the B-phase between AD1300-AD1450, the particular triggers for the "crisis of feudalism" were a conjuncture of secular trends, immediate cyclical crisis, and climatological decline. The apparent differences in just Frank and Gills' and Wallerstein's positions have implications for our understanding of the factors conditioning system crisis. If we consider a Wallersteinian B-phase, we need to note that it has some commonalities such as cyclical economic contraction trends (price changes, production losses, etc.) with other recurrent B-phases. In this case, Wallerstein's interpretation is similar to Gills and Frank's understanding of a B-phase. However, for Wallerstein, a specific B-phase might also be different from other B-phases, for it also has certain contingent particular characteristics ( e.g., breakdown of feudal social relations, climate changes) of the epoch in question that condition the system crisis. Hence, the specific conjuncture and its contingent socioeconomic and political characteristics are included in an understanding of the precipitation and determination of the crisis or contraction. Given this direction, for Wallerstein the identification of common elements that condition crises recurring over world history needs to be combined with the conjunctural elements in order to understand the crisis. The attempt, therefore, is to straddle nomothetic and idiographic methodologies for an explanation of system crisis and transition. Between these two viewpoints of B-phases, there are those that are closer or further away from the above two positions. Modelski and Thompson (1996, 2003) have suggested the recurrent nature of crisis and transitions over long cycles in the historical evolution of the world system. Agreeing with Gills and Frank on the dynamics of the world system since 3000BC, according to them, the recurring crisis phases have been characterized by learning (technological, writing, information, etc.) innovations,!olitical hegemonic struggles, population, urbanization, migrations, climate, and warfare. Unlike Frank (1992), Modelski and Thompson have identified both particular elements (technological innovation, information, writing, etc.) that underline a specific crisis phase, and common elements such as deurbanization, migration, population decreases, which permeate every system crisis phase. Beyond the widely agreed element of negative economic trends defining a B-phase, what we have are additional delineation of elements such as those that are specific (information, technological innovations, and writing), and other common elements ( deurbanization, migration, climate, and population decreases) that all form the matrix circumscribing system crisis and transition. For Modelski and Thompson, system crises, therefore, are transition points of system adaptation and evolution. In view of the state of discourse on long-term change over world history, we should also be aware of long-term structural crises-beyond a B-phase of contraction-that a historical world system experiences; what Modelski (2006) has called 'ages of reorganization' or what I have identified as Dark Ages (Chew 2007). Wallerstein's ( 1998, 2004; Hopkins and Wallerstein 1996) more recent works have also addressed this in terms of system maturation and transformation. These crises have also occurred in the past, and prior to the modern era have not been fully noted or understood. We do have some indications from historical accounts of social, political, and economic long-term downturn periods, and preliminary identification of the characteristic processes depicting these phases."
Review
Sing C. Chew:
"By stressing the continuity of the structures and processes of the world system and the irrelevance of the mode of production analysis to explain development pattern and the direction of social change, Frank has flattened world history and made it devoid of critical ruptures and specificities, as I have stated previously. For Gunder Frank, long-term social change over world history is depicted by long economic cycles of expansion and contraction (that he has not elaborated on why they occur), core-periphery relations, and hegemonic rivalry. There is no specificity of a transformation for a particular historical epoch as he has put it, just different players at the table.
...
If we are to understand the trajectory of world development and world history, such a flattened view of world history does not illuminate much. Frank, in his attempt to overcome certain breakpoints in world history, which he believed have been established as a result of the centric-ness (such as the 1500 break, as a result of Eurocentrism) of some analyses, does not address the issue of system crisis and transformation. As we know, all systems eventually will reach crisis conditions, and the effort is to maintain system equilibrium, which we know is especially difficult in systems that are organized on a hierarchical order with inequality as one of its basic features. The numerous theoretical and empirical works of Immanuel Wallerstein (1988, 1996, 1998, 2004) on the systemic crisis of a historical world system have addressed this issue precisely. Frank's model does not deal with system crisis and transformation; it is an endless cycle of system reproduction and perpetuation. "
More information
- " in 1995, a core group of scholars from various disciplines, including Frank, convened in Lund (Sweden) to discuss the evolution of the world system/world-systems (Denemark et al. 2000). The product of the discussions was to engage and write world system history along a trans-disciplinary approach. It is best summed up by the title of the first volume of the group's collective research: World System History: The Social Science of Long-Term Change." [2]