Gunder Frank Reponse to Rene Barendse on ReOrient (fwd)

second attempt to post to wsn




    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                 ANDRE  GUNDER  FRANK

         1601 SW  83rd Avenue, Miami, FL.  33155 USA
      Tel: 1-305-266  0311   Fax:  1-305  266 0799
                E-Mail :  franka@fiu.edu
   Web/Home Page:  http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/agfrank
    



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 11:01:02 -0400
From: Patrick Manning <manning@neu.edu>
Reply-To: H-NET List for World History <H-WORLD@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
To: H-WORLD@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: Gunder Frank Reponse to Rene Barendse on ReOrient

From:   Andre Gunder Frank, Florida International University
        franka@fiu.edu


RENE BARENDSE ON ReORIENT AND RELATED MATTERS:
A RESPECTFUL RESPONSE BY GUNDER FRANK

Rene Barendse, in his magistral survey and analysis of the Arabian Seas
[JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY vol 11, Nr 2, Fall 2000], makes several
references to my book ReORIENT [ University of California Press
1998]. Most of these, however, totally belie and turn around by 180
degrees what ReORIENT says, both literally and in thesis or spirit and
indeed in the title itself.  He makes false attributions to me that I have
NOT written  and critisizes them, and then he replaces what he thinks I
should have written, which I did. At the end of the article he correctly
and rightly draws several related conclusions from his  data and analysis,
all of which I not only share but  also wrote out in greater detail in my
admittedly longer ReORIENT.

I find this strange not to say disconcerting for the following reasons
among others:

-  any simple reading of my text, as I will demonstrate below with some
quotations and paraphrase references from ReORIENT, say and do the exact
opposite of and belie Rene's false attributions. Therefore, he can and
should know better.

-  Rene should also know better; because we  have know each other
professionally and personally for about a decade, during which time we
interchanged our manuscripts and our commentary thereon, as well as having
had face to face discussions.1/

- Indeed Rene could also draw conclusions about my text opposite from
those he does by virtue of my concurrence with his own as evidenced by my
quotations of and other references to Rene's book length manuscript.2/

- Furthermore, Rene should and could know better as well on the basis of
our mutual participation for  several years in long-winded  discussions on
more than one e-mail list-serve in which I have always agreed with and
defended Rene's writings.

The following are, in order of appearance, some of Rene's false
attributions to and erroneous commentary on ReORIENT, which I rebut by
quotations and other references to my text.

- "I can  subscribe to Frank's idea that 'Europe' and the 'Arabian Seas'
were more closely integrated that is often assumed. And I agree, too, that
those exchanges had a profound influence on society.... However, Frank's
model is essentially a bare outline. It lacks dynamic dimension [page
202]....[Yet] what can be observed is a very cyclical pattern, which
confirms the so-called Juglar cycles of twenty-five years, and maybe long
Kondratieff waves of one hundred and fifty years  [203. A footnote of
mine: Juglars are about 10 years, and Kontratieffs 50 years].

In a sense, Rene is of course right that my 'model' is a bare outline. As
per its sub-title, it covers the entire 'global economy' and cannot go
into nearly as much detail as Rene can only on the Arabian Seas. Besides I
lack his unparalleled enormous erudition and command of the literature and
of the evidence it affords. Nonethess, particularly  my chapter 2 and its
5 maps and corresponding tables figurately and  literally map out a global
trading system and  the major trade routes in its overlapping 'regional'
parts. Moreover, it lists several dozen  produced and traded commodities
and manufactures, a few of which I lifted from those mentioned in Rene's
own manuscript.

Moreover, the entire book is constructed around long cycles, I grant him
longer than his 150 year ones,  and their crucial role in historical
development. Furthermore, my entire chapter 5 is devoted  to the
identification and analysis of  long and shorter economic cycles and their
political and social  consequences. The chapter  is entitled 'Horizontal
Integrative Macrohistory," which shows that 'simultaneity is no
coincidence' as per the title of its first section. This corresponds to,
and for at least some dates and periods of history, identifies and
analyses not only the simultaneity but also the mutual connection and
influence of events all around the globe. Thereby, my book  DOES what Rene
wishes and  what I already called for decades ago in my WORLD ACCUMULATION
[1978], whose Preface reads "the essential (because it is both the most
necessary and the least accomplished) contribution of the historian  is
successively to relate different things and places at the same time in the
historical process.... Throughout this book the attempt is made to examine
successively simultaneous historical events and to analyze the processual
or systemic connection between them in different parts of the world AT THE
SAME TIME [in italics], that is, in the same decade or year, and
particularly during the same period of crisis" [20,21].  ReORIENT now does
exactly that by way of illustration for the year 1640 and for the period
1762-1789. That is also part of what Rene now calls for when he writes "we
need to use more comparisons in the same period with comparable places
rather than using a post hoc ergo propter hoc 'Orientalist' frame of
reference" [223] . I go still further however in not only comparing but
also CONNECTING even otherwise Incomparable places.

Therefore and with all due respect to all concerned, I cannot agree that
"this is only a marginal improvement upon Kiri Chadhuri'as two books on
the Indian Ocean" [202]. For as already our titles show, his is limited to
one region and mine for the first time ever deals with the global economy
before 1800, whose existence  has heretofore been totally neglected and
even  denied. Moreover my analysis includes the structure, functioning and
development of this global economy, which Chaudhury does not even attempt
for that of the Indian Ocean.

Rene also writes "also, more importantly, Frank tends to subscribe to what
Frank Perlin calls the tabula rasa [in italics] of Asian economic
development ... [which] assumes that before the sixteenth century there
existed some Indian 'original economy' centered on direct consumption in
villages, with little or no trade... [and]
in the form of exchange of gifts or by the levy of tribute" [203].


It is difficult indeed here to identify this tabula rasa original economy
tendency of mine when I have widely written on 5,000 years of history and
in 1993 published a book with those years in its very title and also  an
article published the same year, which identifies  Afro-Eurasian wide long
cycles that go back to "Bronze Age World System Cycles."  Moreover
although ReORIENT deals with the period 1400 -1800 [that is beginning
already  with the fifteenth and not just the sixteenth century], Chapter 2
begins as per the title of its first sub-section with "Thirteenth- and
Fourteenth Century Antecedents." Therein  I observe that "the wealth of
Italian Cities [like Genoa and Venice]  were due primarily to their
middlemen roles between Europe and the East... [and that] during periods
of revival after A.D. 1000, both tried to reach into the trade and riches
of Asia as far as they could [which was not much]." Chapter 5 begins "to
make an excursion to a time partly before our period, let us briefly
examine Immanuel Wallerstein's account of European-wide cyclical decline
from 1250 to 1450....But was this decline limited to Europe? No!" [228]
-and I go one to review the simultaneous decline in Asia and refer to some
specific parts thereof during that period. In Chapter 6, I write "without
seeking to review the entire history of these long cycles again here, it
may be noted that a new major period of expansion spanned the years
A.D. 1000/1050 to 1250/1300. That was the period especially of the major
technological, productive, commercial and general economic development
under t he Song dynasty in China."  That was followed by "the 'crisis' or
great contractions of 1250-1450+....The present review of the world
economy also suggests that [the next] expansion began in 1400, not only in
India but also in Southeast Asia and probably in China" [260-261].  This
hardly represents an alleged tendency of mine  to identify a  sixteenth
century tabula rasa limited to direct village consumption. Of course, it
also belies the charge that my analysis is 'static' and 'lacks any dynamic
dimension,' which it has especially in its analysis of the relation
between demographic changes and regional differences within global
development  though all the intervening centuries up to 1800.

There are many passages in Rene's article and especially in his
conclusions in which he makes statements and advances interpretations
that he explicitly or implicitly denies to others, including to
myself. Among these are

-coast-hinterland connections, including specifically "the complex network
of overland routes connecting Europe with the Arabian seas ... [that were]
critical for virtually all ports ... as they were so dependent on the
hinterland for their trade [207-208]. If world system theory is ever
meaningfully to deal with pre-industrial societies it has to come to grips
with agricultural production" [206].

However, ReORIENT repeatedly  demonstrates these connections throughout
Afro-Eurasia and summarizes that "almost all the port cities were in
organic symbiosis with the caravan routes into and from their respective
hinterland interiors and also with distant transcontinental regions,
especially in Central Asia. Indeed, Chaudhuri suggests that the
continental overland trade and the Indian Ocean maritime trade "should be
viewed as mirror images of each other" [88]. ReORIENT does that,
especially in Chapter 2, whose section on "World Trade 1400-1800" also
reads "Asian overland and maritime trade were more complementary than
competitive, as Barendse also observes: "The relation between land and
seaborne trade is a complex one .... Trade along the caravan routes was
not substituted by overseas trade" [182]. That had been argued and
demonstrated earlier in Chapter 2 both for the "Orient" trade between
Europe and various parts of Asia, as well as in specific places within the
latter. ReORIENT extends its 'world-system' analysis if not 'theory' also
to agricultural production, its extension into previously sparsely or
unsettled jungle and hill lands, and their commercial exchange within and
among rural areas, as well as with urban ones and to overseas ones by
maritime trade. Thus it also demonstrates and analyzes how "trade on the
coast depended on the hinterland" as Rene also writes.

Rene's conclusion has six main points that emerge from the evidence and
analysis that precedes it.  All of them also appear in ReORIENT:

- First, "economic developments took place within a broader frame of world
trade.... [and] to ask for the 'European impact' is a rather useless
question [223]. It should hardly be necessary to offer detailed quotes to
that effect form ReORIENT, since the entire book is devoted to
demonstrating these two propositions.

- Secondly, "one should not try to 'explain' the sixteenth century by what
happened in the nineteenth (or by what one expects for the twenty-first
for that matter) [Footnote] as Frank is clearly doing in ReOrient. Much of
the debate on this book is really more about whether the next century is
going to be a 'Pacific' or an 'American' century than it is about the
sixteenth" [223].

That is really a low blow. First of all I can hardly be held responsible
for what others debate about my book, as is clearly illustrated by  Rene's
own misattributions to  and debate thereof.  Secondly, as I can
substantiate, of the several dozen reviews of this book, NONE debate that
question, although a couple of them do dismiss the contemporary
significance of the book on the alleged grounds that Recent Asian
development was a flash in the pan that is already over. If Rene has the
debate he mentions - let alone much of it- at his disposal, he could do me
a professional and personal favour by making it available to me to satisfy
my curiosity. Thirdly, Frank himself is clearly NOT doing any such
thing. We have already observed that I make more efforts than to my
knowledge anybody else  heretofore - and that includes Rene himself - to
identify and connect events at their face value among different places
around the world at the same time, eg 1640.  Moreover, the entire book is
devoted to the period 1400-1800 [which does not include the nineteenth
century!], and  mea culpa mea maxima culpa the twenty-first is mentioned
at best  in one or two sentences. I admit however that in the Preface to
the Chinese and Japanese editions I do delve into this problematique that
was not analyzed in the english language edition of the book itself, in
order - at the request of the Asian publishers! - to make it more
interesting and salable to their prospective readers concerned primarily
with contemporary and future affairs. But even the extensive debate [and
there IS one] on this book in China does not really revolve around the
next century, but about present day economic policy alternatives for
China. So Rene is again flat wrong on this score, and it is difficult to
understand how or on what basis he could invent so manifestly untrue a
charge as that ReORIENT is not about the historical past.

 - "Third, I have been arguing against both the tendency to see 'Asian
state and trade' as unchanging and fixed in time and against the tendency
to discern a constant pattern of growth from a tabula rasa somewhere in
the fourteenth century" [224]. We have already observed above that
ReORIENT has no such tendency even if it does detect and map an
Afro-Eurasian  STRUCTURAL   pattern of trade and division of labor that
persisted for centuries and indeed was  reflected already in the
structural balance of trade and payments deficit of Classical Rome with
all regions to the east as far away as China. Of course, there can be no
talk of any fourteenth century tabula rasa in ReORIENT, which as the
preface notes, continues on from where Janet Abu-Lughod and I myself left
off between 1350 and 1450 in our previous works. On the contrary in this
regard also, my book does exactly what Rene calls for.

- Fourth, there was " not 'a' single market but ...a complex segmented
structure" [224]. Exactly so, as per the maps I constructed for Chapter 2
and its introductory discussion of the difficulty in indentifing 'regions'
due to their complexity and mutability, which makes all definitions
essentially arbitrary.

-  "Fifth, ...what at first seems to be 'traditional', 'irrational'
activities often appear- on examining the context in which they are
pursued - to be driven by quite rational logic, well explicable within the
framework of conventional economics" [225]. Well, in ReORIENT there are 8
index entries to 'rationality', and that is exactly what the section on
the rational functionality of institutions in my Chapter 4 shows: "In
summary, it should be clear that  contrary to the Eurocentric myth, 'all
entrepreneurs in intercontinental trade [ which included much regional and
local trade as well] acted rationally and made the best possible use of
their own resources..." [quoted from Steensgard]. Also in my entire
Chapter 6, the explanation of events and developments at both the micro
and the macro level draws precisely on the analytic tools of conventional
economics. Thus some section sub-titles read "Supply and Demand for
Technological Change" and " Supplies and Sources of Capital."  My use of
'conventional economics' is so great  that others have criticised it for
soft-peddling  social institutional and power political, not to mention
cultural, alleged causation of these events.

Furthermore, Rene writes that "economic historians have to abandon
simplified Marxist, Keynesian - let alone Physiocratic - notions
...particularly in its Marxist form" [225].  It would be tedious to quote
at length my lengthy critiques and denial in my Introduction and again in
my Conclusion of especially of many - and more than Rene - Marxist
notions, to the chagrin of many of my other friends and colleagues. Thus
for instance "as we will see throughout this book, all these
characterizations by Marx [Asiatic Mode of Production, transition from
feudalism to capitalism in Europe, etc.] were no more than figments of his
and other Eurocentric thinkers' imagination anyway and had no foundation
in  historical reality whatsoever. This fallacy also extends to ...the
'capitalist mode of production' which was allegedly invented by
Europeans..." [15]. That also speaks to the  observation by Rene that
follows below.

Finally, Rene timidly suggests that the alleged difference between alleged
"European capitalism"  and its alleged contrast with also alleged
"traditional Asian trade" is   not very clear and does not make much
sense. ReORIENT, as also other publications of mine since 1991, go much
further in this direction than Rene is even willing to go today in denying
that there was any difference then or even earlier, so that it is quite
senseless and indeed literally counterproductive to refer to any alleged
existence and explanatory 'value' of "capitalism."

So, I plead innocent to all the Barendse charges and let our readers be
the judge and jury in the case.

Respectfully submitted,

Gunder Frank

Endnotes

1/ Later, I was also the publisher's referee for his book-length
manuscript, soon to be published by M.E.Sharpe;  on which I made very
specific as well as wide-ranging commentary, which naturally also convey
my own point of view that almost entirely parallels his own.  at my house
when I still lived in Amsterdam. Later, I was also the publisher's referee
for his book-length manuscript, soon to be published by M.E.Sharpe;  on
which I made very specific as well as wide-ranging commentary, which
naturally also convey my own point of view that almost entirely parallels
his own.

2/ I received  Rene's manuscript, alas only belatedly in the course of my
own writing, because first he graciously sent it to me on disc and  then
because his publisher sent me a hard copy to referee. Therefore regarding
some specific  topics, his name appears three times in the index of my
book and  also in references that are not indexed .