Author: Andre Gunder Frank
Publisher: Sage Publications
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8170367603
Description
A great virtue of this stimulating book is its relentless push to redefine our framework for thinking about the early modern economy. Frank us to Reorient our views away from Eurocentrism - to see the Rise of the West as a mere blip in what was, and is again becoming, an Asia-centered world.
Andre Gunder Frank asks us to ReQRIENT our views away from Eurocentrism-to see the Rise of the West as a mere blip in what was, and is again becoming, an Asia-centered world. In a bold challenge to received historiography and social theory, he turns on its head the world according to Marx, Weber, and other theorists, including Polanyi, Rostow, Braudel, and Wallerstein.
Frank Explains the Rise of the West from 1400 onwards in world economic and demographic terms, with a sweeping historical perspective that places it in clear conjunction with the Decline of the East around 1800. European States, he says, used the silver extracted from the American colonies to buy entry into an expanding Asian market, which already flourished in the global economy by means of the very productive commercial and institutional mechanisms that were supposedly unique to Europe. Then, as the East entered into a decline phase of the cyclical world economy, the nations of the West resorted to import substitution and export promotion in the world market to become new Industrializing Economies.
That is precisely what East Asia is doing today, Frank points out, to recover its traditional dominance in the world economy, the center of which is once again moving to the Middle Kingdom of China. Anyone interested in Asia, economic and social history, in international relations, in political economy, and in socio-economic theory cannot afford to ignore Andre Gunder Frank’s exciting reassessment of our global economic past and future.
REVIEWS
Frank shows how Marx and Weber got it all wrong. A fundamental rethinking of the rise of the west and the origin of the world system. Absolutely essential to understanding world history.
-Albert Bergesen, University of Arizona
The great virtue of this stimulating book is its relentless push to redefine our framework for thinking about the early modern economy… a benchmark study.
-R Bin Wong, University of California, Irvine
Here is a book for the millennium, the capstone of a life time of iconoclastic scholarship.
-Mark Selden, Binghamton University and Cornell University
Contents
Preface
1. Introduction to Real World History vs. Eurocentric Social Theory
Holistic Methodology and Objectives
Globalism, not Eurocentrism
Outline of a Global Economic Perspective
Anticipating and Confronting Resistance and Obstacles
2. The Global Trade Carousel 1400-1800
An Introduction to the World Economy
World Division of Labor and Balances of Trade
India and the Indian Ocean
Southeast Asia
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?
4. The Global Economy: Comparisons and Relations
Quantities: Population, Production, Productivity, Income, and Trade
Qualities: Science and Technology
Eurocentrism Regarding Science and Technology in Asia
World Technological Development
Mechanisms: Economic and Financial Institutions
5. Horizontally Integrative Macrohistory
Simultaneity Is No Coincidence
Doing Horizontally Integrative Macrohistory
6. Why Did the West Win (Temporarily)?
Is There a Long-Cycle Roller Coaster?
The Decline of the East Preceded the Rise of the West
How Did the West Rise?
A Global Economic Demographic Explanation
Past Conclusions and Future Implications
7. Historiographic Conclusions and Theoretical Implications
Historiographic Conclusions: The Eurocentric Emperor Has No Clothes
Theoretical Implications: Through the Global Looking Glass
References
Index