WARNING: My univ computer is snafuing and may introduce glitches that i
cant take out.
EXPLANATION: I subscribe to and second what AL Bergesen says, and will try
NOT to repeat that. I alos accept most of Bruce McFarlands 20 +\-
item world history in a nutshell. very nice.
PROCEDURE: I will refer to people by NAME and briefly recall [some of]
their points, and add my comments on the same.
INTRODUCTION: I am gratified to find sooo much interest and also interest
in the PRE 1500 period, to which I have devoted quite a lot of work, if
only because I think THAT has IMPLICATIONS also for the post 1500 period.
However, in my posting/s, i took care NOT to delve into the pre-1500,
and to stick to the POINT of/about WST analysis of the POST - 1500 period.
So, if there is a reference to pre-1500, i repeat, HERE the question is
what that says for POST 1500.
ALAS, one, perhaps the main thing, that it says is that 1500 was NOT
a break/inflection time [except of course for the Americas and Europe's
ability to become any kind of player], and/but that it defintiely was NOT
the inflection that WSNers, following Marx Weber and Wallerstein
[i think wrongly] ATTRIBUTE to it.
That leads me to my irst comment on the "first" respondent - which i take
in NO order of appearance and/or in one that is a function of in part how
i have them stored in my system and/or avoiding jumping around topoics
much more than necessary.
KERRY: says that this or that observation does not correspond to what
Wallerstein says/models. THAT is the point! Wallersteins "MW-S" is a
procrustean bed onto which we canNOT fit the evidence. Therefore, we
should abanbdon the evidence? Or we should modify the
theory/model/analysis IF it is sufficiently strechable - which Al B
recommends not trying to do - or REPLACE it by anOTHER one!
So never mind what Wallerstein - or anybody else inclding myself - said or
now say, unless it is USEFUL.
GRIMES: head and shoulers! Peter says we can use some other head and
eyes, but in what Peter says HERE, he continues to see the SAME EVIDENCE
in the SAME "W-S" shoulder with whatever head. The POINT is that there is
OTHER evidence out there, which is NOT being looked at, which does NOT fit
into the small "W"-S procrustean bed.
AND WICH MAKES THE EUROPEAN EVIDENCE LOOK DIFFERENT!
MISRA: No, we need/should NOT throw out the "evidence" we got, but we MUST
place [view with another Peter Grimes head] it INTO THE CONTEXT that gave
rise to it really = in the REAL WORLD Economy/System.
It is NOT a question of a EUROPEAN system and "ANOTHER" system next door,
as Misra says. There has been only ONE system since 1492 [it was already
Afro-eurasian for eons before and then incorporated the Americas -as per
Brucxe McFarlane] and that ONE = WORLD system DETERMINED what happend in
its European peninsular PART.
TERRY BOSWELL: good try, but... you contradict yourself.
If as Al & me - and YOU thank you in your later paragraph/s [sorry i cant
for tech reasaons write here and look at yours at the same time, so i
have to refer to yours from memory and notes] say
there is a WORLD wide econ/system that has its own A/B rise/fall
cycle/phases, and that what Europe did was to change its POSITION WITHIN
that WORLD system, then that is [we tihinl] right, but it pul;ls the rug
out from under your previous assertion [assumption?] that what happend in
Europe did so incdependently and/or on trhe basisis of European
developments, rather than as a European CONSEQUENCE of WORLD wide changes-
which is waht WE say happened.
So first of all we - and the evidence! that you do NOT look at -
DISPUTE your repeated assetion that 1500-1650 brought major EUROPEAN
changes in/to the world. Not so. they were not major changes, and the
changes that happened were world derived, AND POPULATION AND PRODUCTION
GROWTH was far greater in Asia than in Europe [in Europe it is treue that
pop in the 15-16 cent diud recover from the greater than elsewhere pop
drop of the 14th century, but thats about it].
NO it is also NOT true that "merchant" capitalist organizational changes
in 1500-1650 in Europe changed the world, and also NOT that they were the
basis of what happend around 1800.
Here is the problem of Misra's evidence: If we have it, lets keep it.and
use it, but lets put it in context. and the context is that OTHER evidence
YOU do NOT look at, shows that the "mercantile" and other "changes"
wewre NOT UNIQUE to Europe, were NOT especially EUROPEAN derived even
within Europe - where they were responses to changes IN ASIA! - and that
Asian institutions changed as much, and ALL of them in response to WORLD
- NOT european - economic circumstances. AND trhey all changed in
RELATIOIN TO EACH OTHER.
Terry, i repeat, your trade comparisons veween intra European and
Europe-Asian trade are neither here nor there, since you toitally omit
mentiuoin and counting of the intra-Asian trde which was many orders of
magninture larger than them other two comined.
So
CARL DASSACH: tht "Europe is/was unique is irrefutable" is simply NOT
TRUE. not only is it "refutable" - it is DISconfirmed by ALL evidence.
Of course you have to LOOK at the evidence - which you CD and TB do NOT -
and both COMPARE evidence from here and there and RELATE evidence here
WITH/to evidence there!
ALL OF THE ABOVE -
and especially
STEVE SANDERSON: If we havew learned anything from WST it should be that
we cannot just look at the here and now, but must look/see how this ,
that, and the other here and now are influenced by/derived from/determined
by the SYSTEM in which they participate, and which GENERATES the
[differential] changes in its PARTS.
Yet Terry and Steve seem NOT to have learned this BASIC lesson, not to
mention Carl who does not even wanna look at THE SYSTEM.
Terry says, ok theremay have been suych a system, but Europe could/did its
own thing anyway. No, thats your - Terry's- inconsitency.
Steve says here is england and there is Japan. In between NOTHING, except
the EurASIA, that figured in your thousands of years of SOCIAL
TRANSFORMATION. you - Steve- DO look efore 1500. but suddenly in 1500
that Eurasian TRANSFORMATION become irrelevant? Only the two
pen/insular marginal Europe, indeed really Britian, and Japan DO anything
important any more? And they DO it for INTERNAL reasons only? - which if
that were the case would contradict your saying that they wewre MARGINAL,
since marginal means that it is their RELATION to what they are marginal
TO, that is [at least also] important. But for Steve almost the entire
rest of the world SYSTEM suddenly falls through the cracks.
NO it did NOT!
and Stgev e also, NO it was NOT the "transition from feudalism to
capitalism" in Europe and Japan that paved the way for the changes in
1800. what paved the way for 1800 was the GLOBAL "development" before
that.
THAT IS WHY THERE IS SOME SENSE IN STUDYING WORLD SYSTEM, but of course we
gotta study THE system, or at least economy , that REALLY mattered,
THAT IS what Immanuel Wallerstein [and if i may say so, gunder frank,
and marx and weber and whoever] SUPPOSEDLY taught us. but apparently
quite a few "WSN"ers did not even pick up THIS central idea!
Alas, Marx Weber, Gunder Wallerstein got WRONG what they the relevant
economy/system was - AND STILL IS!!! - that is why looking BEFORE 1500
changes what you see [and dont see and how you evaluate,contextualize]
after 1500 or indeed after ANY time, eg after 1800, or after 1996!
one thing that a longer and broasder perspective can do is to answer
WALlY GOLDFRANK. Westphalia was a SIDEshow, and the competition among
European states was kid stuff compared to both the STATES and their
competition elseewhere, INCLUDING with and among the Europoean ones.
DAVID LLOYD-JONES: War YES, but why/what for were /are all these wars
fought? "power" for its own sake? That is Michael Mann/ish [and
a lot of political/politicians] blindness! If the W [pol econ] system
doesNOT matter, why study it?
NICOLAI ROZOF
and
WARREN WAGAR
If you dont understand me, i dont understand you.
The issue is, but is NOT ONLY, Eurocentric prejudice, it is what that
[Peter Grimes head?] lets and makes you SEE and AVOID seeing/doing.
Alas what Warren claims he sees in Europe was soooo small a part of the
whole picture, that what he sees was really NOT so. Its hard to believe
that after writing a short history of the future, your nose is so close to
the windowpane that you canbt see the world AROUND, of which the
windowpane and the little room on the other side of it, are only a
small-and derivative- part!
Somebody else already answered Nicolai's pie in the sky, actually Warren
has some too!, but what Nicolai writes is LIVING PROOF - or at least
evidence! - that the Eurocentric prejudice to which Warren refers
is blinding Nikolai from seeing the REAL world, earlier or now.
Alas the USA is full of many more of the same, and if Russia and Siberia
are also, or even more so, full of the same, the WHOLE WORLD SYSTEM is in
trouble indeed!
respectfully submitted with cheers- as long as they last!
gunder frank