WSNers,
I am posting Sanderson's review of Blaut at his request and with
UT Press's permission and the stipulations below. Please honor
those stipulations. I also inserted page numbers in [] to show
the page breaks in the published version. Many WSNers may recall
rather forceful discussion of this book and this review some time
back.
tom hall
Stephen K. Sanderson, review of The Colonizer's Model of the
World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History by J.M.
Blaut, Sociological Inquiry, 66:4 (Fall 1996), pp 511-513; by
permission of the University of Texas Press.
-Permission is granted to distribute to the members of the WSN
listserv only. Any further reproduction or any other edition,
printed or electronic, requires that separate permission be
obtained in writing from the University of Texas Press.
[511]
_The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism
and Eurocentric History_ by J.M. Blaut. New York: Guilford
Press, 1993, 246 pp., cloth $40.00; paperback $17.95.
This book takes issue with Eurocentric interpretations of the
development of the modern world and presents an alternative that
fits nicely within the general framework of world-systems theory.
James Blaut, a geographer, argues that virtually all explanations
of the rise to economic and political power of the Western world
have been Eurocentric, that is, have seen Europe as the
repository of any number of attributes which have allowed it to
advance beyond the levels of economic, political, and cultural
development characteristic of Asia and Africa. As Blaut shows,
Eurocentric explanations have come in a variety of forms. Some
have stressed geography by making reference to the way in which
the tropics inhibited economic development in Africa, as well as
to the way in which arid environments in Asia allegedly led to
despotic governments and long periods of economic stagnation. In
contrast to Asia and Africa, Europe had temperate climates and
rainfall farming, and these proved superior for economic
development. Other arguments have followed one or another idea
of Max Weber's. Thus, we have the notion that Europe's unique
Protestant Reformation stimulated its [512] economic advance, or
the idea that Europe had a unique form of political organization,
or still yet the idea that Europe possessed a special form of
cultural rationality that contributed to constant technological
inventiveness. And some European historians, such as Alan
Macfarlane, have claimed to see in European history a unique type
of family structure that had enormously beneficial consequences
for the European development.
All of these and similar explanations, Blaut asserts, are
badly wrong, and there was no set of qualities intrinsic to
Europe that gave it any particular developmental advantage.
There was no "European miracle," and, indeed, as of 1492 Europe
was not more technologically or economically advanced than the
continents of Asia and Africa. Why, then, did Europe spurt ahead
after 1492 and ultimately leave these other continents far
behind? Blaut's answer is that it was European colonialism that
was the source of Europe's eventual superiority. Europe did have
one enormous advantage over Asia and Africa, and that was its
geographical location. It had readier access to the Americas,
and this allowed it to establish voyages of discovery, implant
colonialism in the New World, and plunder the New World's wealth.
It was in particular the role of silver mined in the Americas
that was the secret of Europe's success.
What can we make of Blaut's overall argument? On the one
hand it provides a useful corrective to those intellectual
tendencies to see a stark contrast between Europe and Asia as
early as the fifteenth century. As Blaut notes, an extensive
amount of protocapitalism existed throughout Asia in the
fifteenth century, and during this time China was technologically
on a par with Europe if not, in fact, in the lead. He also quite
properly notes that throughout the world in the time period
between AD 1000 and 1500 there had been a buildup of extensive
and intensive world trade and that, in a sense, the world as a
whole was moving toward capitalism.
Yet, on the other hand, Blaut overstates his case. His
claim that Africa was economically on a par with Europe and Asia
is not only wrong; it is absurd. And his claim that it was merely
Europe's geographical accessibility to the Americas that led to
its success rings hollow. The reader might wonder, "Wasn't West
Africa essentially as close to the Americas as Europe?" Indeed,
Blauthimself asks "why did not West Africans 'discover' America
since they were even closer to it than the Iberians were?" (p.
183). Blaut's answer is that the mercantile centers of West and
Central Africa were not oriented to maritime commerce. But,
incredibly, Blaut stops there. Doesn't the fact that West and
Central Africa were not oriented to maritime commerce mean
precisely that these regions were at a lower stage of economic
development? Blaut's response would be that the African
civilizations oriented their trade inland to the north and the
east. But I would disagree.
I would like to suggest that Blaut has overlooked a major
Asian society [513] whose parallel economic development with that
of Europe suggests another interpretation of the development of
the modern world. That society was Japan? As I have shown in
detail elsewhere, Japan's economic development after the
fifteenth century closely resembled Europe's, and both
civilizations shared some very important characteristics that
distinguished them from the rest of the world. First, Japan and
two of the three leading countries of western Europe, England and
the Netherlands, were small, and this may have given them an
advantage. Large states are costly to maintain and drain away
resources that can be used directly for economic development. In
addition, Japan and the leading countries of capitalist Europe
were located on large bodies of water that allowed them to give
predominance to maritime trade which, Blaut notwithstanding, has
clear advantages over land-based trade. Third, the fact that
Europe and Japan both had temperate climates helped them to
escape colonialism, inasmuch as colonial ventures were
concentrated in tropical and subtropical regions. Finally,
Europe and Japan had strikingly similar feudal sociopolitical
structures that contrasted markedly with the centralized states
of much of the rest of the world. Feudalism, I would argue, gave
the merchantclasses of both civilizations more freedom of
economic manuever than they had throughout the rest of the world.
Charges of the Eurocentrism of much modern Western social
science have become very popular these days, and these charges
are often justified. But they often go too far. Europe did have
developmental advantages over most of the rest of the world, and
there is no need to be shy or apologetic about pointing these
out. And when we recognize that a major Asian society also had
such advantages, then a good deal of the air is taken out of the
balloon of those who fling the charges of Eurocentrism.
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
HOME PAGE:
http://www.depauw.edu/~thall/hp1.htm