Gunder: I think I would rather hoist another set of glasses than put them
on. I did not say that maritime trade replaced overland trade. Nor am I
overly impressed with an anecdote from a British perspective in 1688
India that anteceded the later rise to prominence of the British in India
in the following century. That is the trouble with anecdotal evidence.
I also have no quarrel with the view that Europeans had to play the Asian
trade game largely by Asian rules and that it was larger than the
east-west flow. But the hijack of the western end of the east-west flow
(which is how I might better have expressed it), and again the initial
Portuguese effort was only temporarily successful, demarcated an initial
watershed in the gradual ascendancy of the Europeans. Moreover, I do not
contend that the Europeans or any Europeans became "preponderant" over
the world economy in 1500. We continue to disagree but I'm not sure that
we are disagreeing about the same things. Bill
On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, A. Gunder Frank wrote:
> The EVIDENCE speaks against Bill:
> 1. after 1500, maritime trade did NOT replace overland trade.
> overland caravan tradee continued [greater than maritime] and the two were
> more complementary than competitive
> 2. the Europeans did not "hijack a respectable portion" of maritime
> trade: they did not get more than a miniscule portion of it. Even Sir
> Josea Child, Director of the British East India Co. observed in 1688
> that just from ONE important European used port in India, the Asians
> had TEN times more shipping than ALL the Europeans combined.
> 3. put on another set of glasses!
> gunder
> On Wed, 5 Mar
> 1997, william r. thompson wrote:
>
> > Date: Wed, 5 Mar 1997 12:49:28 -0500 (EST)
> > From: "william r. thompson" <wthompso@indiana.edu>
> > To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
> > Subject: Re: Addendum to Mark Selden's post
> >
> > Perhaps raising the question of "incorporation" suggests that we are
> > evading a prior question: how or to what extent eastern and western
> > eurasian political economies were linked immediately prior and during
> > this roughly 14th-18th century period about which we are debating. The
> > Modelski-Thompson position, for instance, argues against "incorporation"
> > or "merger" conceptualization because they were already part of the same
> > larger Afroeurasian system. Around 1500 some Europeans hijacked a
> > respectable proportion of the ancient maritime version of the silk
> > roads. I think we would agree with the "Asia first" group(s) that this
> > did not immediately change the way in which the eastern end of Eurasian
> > political economy functioned but it did alter the nature of
> > transcontinental transactions which has always been our focus. Other
> > posters seem more interested in intra-regional transformations and
> > preponderances - on both the western and eastern regional ends.
> > Moreover, how one sees what happened around 1500 on (vis-a-vis
> > incorporation, merger, more of the same, or selective rechanneling of
> > major trade routes) will also influence how one views the paradigmatic
> > significance of the era. Bill Thompson
> >
> > On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, Thomas D. [Tom] Hall, THALL@DEPAUW.EDU wrote:
> >
> > > Mark et al are usefully pointing to a number of things that need to be
> > > rethought. At the risk of being too self-promoting, in Rise & Demise,
> > > Chap 4 on incorporation, we do discuss precisely this type of problem as
> > > the MERGER of formerly separate world-systems. While a type of
> > > incorporation, it is substantially different from garden variety
> > > incorporation as discussed in conventional WST, and very different from
> > > incorporation of non-state peoples as I have discussed it (mostly in
> > > _Social Change in the Southwest_). But I think we have barely scratched
> > > the surface of the problem. It may well be the case that the
> > > incorporation/merger of Asia with Western Eurasia will force to rethink
> > > the entire process, or to recognize this as a very different type of
> > > process than more conventional incorporation/colonization.
> > > tom
> > >
> > > Thomas D. [tom] Hall
> > > thall@depauw.edu
> > > Department of Sociology
> > > DePauw University
> > > Greencastle, IN 46135
> > > ***EFFECTIVE FEB 1, 1997 NEW AREA CODE
> > > 765-658-4519
> > > http://www.depauw.edu/~thall/hp1.htm
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>