Gunder Frank response to Brown, Kalivas, Schmieder

Thu, 12 Dec 1996 11:18:31 -0500 (EST)
A. Gunder Frank (agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca)

Brown correctly and usefull calls for a re-examination of starting
points/s and methodology. But HIS starting point and HIS methodology are
no help. For to start with he only repeats that there is "no question of
European dominance" in the early modern period. Well, one starting point
is precisely to re-examine this "question," and the more we do the more we
find that there is NO question that Europeans were NOT dominant in the
world. Brown's "methodology" also does not help: He says world-system and
all that downplays production and up-plays commerce. For starters, there
can be NO commerce without production. the whole point is that the
commerce is part and parcel of a division of productive labor - all around
the world in the period Brown refers to. And in PRODUCTION, - NOT to
mention its commercialization - Europe was soooo marginal that Europeans
were not even able to sell anything in the world market, except silver -
which they did NOT even produce themselves! Byt any and all measure of
total production, porduction per capita, productivity, competititveness,
trade - and also the technology and institutions that supported the former
- China, India, and even South East Asia and West Asia were FAR ahead and
more important than Europe. Moreover even the rates of INCREASE in the
same were greater in Asia than in Europe, and supported a rate of
population increase of about 0.6% a year in Asia comapred to 0.3% a year
in Europe during the centuries before 1750, when an inflectin in these
propulation growth rates ocurred. So Brown is only leading us even farther
down the same old Eurocentric garden path, and offers just the opposite of
a new departure or methodology! Alas!!

Kalivas adds, yes but surely the Europeans weere laying the "groundwork"
before 1800 for their acheivments after that. To a rather limited extent,
insorfar as that gourndwork did support the sudden increase in population
growth rates from 0.3% before 1750 to over 1% a year in Europe after that.
But it is totally MISleading - and no contribution to "re-examining
starting points and methodololgy" to argue that in general what Europeans
did after 1800 built on their own groundwork between 1500 and 1800.
Even more MISleading is Schmieder's suggestion that we should trace the
European grondwork even farther back through the "middle ages" WITHIN
Europe. Precisely THAT has been the Eurocentric tunnel vision/tunnel
history "departure" and "methodology" of most historians, ALL economic
historians, and social "scientists" from Marx Weber to Braudel and
Wallerstein. the latter did however add a "colonial" dimension through
which Europeans did not doethe "groundwork" all by themselves. In fact
they did hardly any of it! And what the Europeans did between 1500 and
1800,most Asian did much more so and better [see above]! So it was not
that "groundwork" per se that can account for what happened after 1800 -
unless by "groundwork" we mean what the WHOLE World did before 1800, not
especially or even significantly what the Europenas did! To elucidate or
even to investigate that - what really happened - we DO need to
"re-examine" the real staring point/s and use a rather different
methodology from any still employed by Brown,Kaliva, Schmieder - and
[who are in the good = bad company of] virtually everybody else!
Wake UP, Haines!!

seriously submitted
gunder frank