Re: Factors of European dominance

Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:33:04 +1000
Bruce McFarling (ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au)

At 07:16 PM 7/22/97 -0200, barendse wrote:

>Bruce McFarling:
>
> Several fascinating issues but I am especially puzzled by his
> fascinating comments on `World Cities and World system' which
> paper, sadly, I didn't see.
It was on this list that I got the reference.

<http://www.jhu.edu:80/~soc/pcid/papers/17/pcidpap17.htm>

> 5.)The definition of zones in the early World system depends very much on
> the definition of `axial age' : the word is derived from K. Jasper's whose
>`Achsenzeit' refers to the seventh to fourth century B.C.

Then I am guilty of inferring the term as applying to the
East West axis from the West Asian zone to the East Asian zone.
Sorry if this confused the issue. In the paper, the working hypothesis
is that early correlation between what later become the East and West
regional zones (my terms) is parallel, which would be the time referred
to above, before the full Afrasian world-system had emerged.

> I think for this period two zones should be included in the definition
> if the central zone refers to Mesopotamia which I think is a reasonable
> proposition (India was central to nothing in the Vedic period)...

I cannot conceivable argue whether or not Mesopotamia was central
to the World-system that emerged at what was later the western end of the
Afrasian world-system. The suspicion was that a general vision in which
the center inexorably (though not continuously) expands outward is
underneath the labelling of the "central" world-system. I avoided the
prejudging the question by labelling the regional-zones of the Afrasian
world system by their relative location for the western and eastern
extreme, and calling the one in the middle Indic instead of central. I
would argue that we could identify regional-systems with a world-system
on structural grounds, and therefore define them *prior to* the
hypothesis emobodied in the "central world-system" terminology regarding
the development of the Afrasian World-System.

> For one thing it should include a southern zone refering to Meroe,
> early Ethiopia and the early Sabean kingdom of south Arabia which was
> of course closely related to Egypt but had a different and separate
> economy, for another - and in spite of being accused of Eurocentrism-
> I think this should include a `western zone' referring to Greece and
> the Hellenic zone of settlement in the Mediterrean, the Etruscs and
> Carthago.

So I wa saying precisely 0 regarding the regional-systems that
existed in the world-system that mostly became the westernmost regional-
system in the Afrasian World-System. I apologize if careless use of
terminology led to an impression otherwise.

>Which brings me back to the blessings of modern capitalism:
>
>6.)That the Spanish and Portuguese kings did not invest whole lots of
> money in the discoveries is at any rate wrong for the Portuguese.

Here I can be pleased that I was appropriately specific. I
specified the conquests, not the voyages of discovery. Although I
hadn't considered the point, the difference in investment in the
conquests and the voyages of discovery simply underlines the point.
The peripheral kingdoms at the western edge of the Western
regional-system were not setting out to conquer the world: they
were setting out to get better access to the goods that were coming
from areas closer to the center of the World-System of the time.

Virtually,

Bruce McFarling, Ourimbah
ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au