Honored Readers,
I respectfully amend the following response:
AGF:
>7. To say that Europe "exapanded" to take up a big position in Southeast
>Asia, not to mention in East/South/or even West - and Central - Asia, is
>... ok, lets call it balderdash instead of BS!
JM - Take Two:
In Terry's and my forthcoming piece in _Acta Politica_, we make clear
that we know that Europe didn't take a large role in Asia during this
period. This (balderdash) is not the issue that's important to the
debate, since we all agree (at least on one thing :) ).
I also said:
>Yet, on the continued debate about whether there was a *qualitative*
>shift in Europe during this period which signals the emergence of
>capitalism, I quite honestly feel that I need to examine more evidence
>and make sure that what we all mean when we say "capitalism" is
>crystal clear.
I did not mean to say here that capitalism doesn't exist. I simply
wanted to specify what we mean when we say that capitalism "broke
through" (where and when we do).
Professor Thompson actually made this point more clearly when he said:
>What I am hinting at is that I'm not sure
>that everybody in this game is using the same criteria - therefore, it
>might be helpful if people spelled out what criteria they had in mind for
>establishing centrality/exceptionalism/breakthroughs to capitalism, or
>whatever.
I keep having the sneaking suspicion that semantic differences may
be at the root of at least some of these disagreements. But then
again, maybe I'm wrong.
Cheers,
Joya Misra