Gunder Frank replies:
I have been waiting to see if anyone else will take Harlow's bait on the
Gills&Frank cycle. No one has yet, so here I go, i hope briefly:
Well, I have read some "tests". three of them:
- bosworth in the Sanderson Ed book
-wilkinson in an ISa paper, i dunno if/how now published, but he refers
to it here and there
- chase-dunn & willard, i also dunno published versikn, but Chris refrs
to their findings here and there
ALL three used Chandler's city-size data, but in different ways.
1 & 2 are pretty confirmatory, 3= Chs-D says his is heads or tails, but i
think its actualy MORE confirmatory than that!
Gunder Frank=me has/have since revised some of the early datings for my
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 93 bronze age world system cycles article.
A dozen archaelogists etc commented on it in perint in the saame issue,
some sayiung this is crazy, some that its great, and some suplying more
evidence on cuycle/phase datings.
At a bar with beer in Lund Sweden, an archaeologist made up a sort of table
with the dates going down and different places along the absissa, and
handed it around to others archs there to enter their "findings" in the
boxes about this and thast place/time. Alas i dunno whatever happened
to the table
or to the guy who made it.
Gunderfrank, thats me, - i have also sought to trace the same long cycle
forwards from 1450, and in a new book Ms on 1400-1800 find that the a A
phase started in 1400 in East and South ASia [and got to Europe by 1450]
and CONTINUED until at least 1750. [there was NO world-wide "17th century
crisis"]
I am scheduled to TALK about all this at the August 96 NYC ASA meets in a
pulsation/cycles plenary or somepin organized by Steve Sanderson. Its the
FIRST one listed in the preliminary ASA program.
Thats for empirics.
As to THEORY, who knows.
cheers gunder frank