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15 May 1998 13:01:51 -0500 (CDT)
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 13:02:22 -0500
From: "Joshua L. Rosenbloom" <jrosenbloom@ukans.edu>
Subject: Frank v. Landes on Eh.Res
To: jsommers@lynx.dac.neu.edu (Jeffrey Sommers),
CHRISCD@jhu.edu (Chris Chase-Dunn),
mlevine@lcsc.edu (Marilyn A. Levine),
agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca (Gunder Frank),
manning@neu.edu (Patrick Manning)
I see Pat's point about the subject, but having started down one path I will
retain the possibly off-putting "Frank versus Landes" so that the thread can
be easily followed.
Here are nine more postings from EH.RES as of about 1 PM Kansas time.
(1)
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 10:20:13 -0500
From: Brad De Long <delong@econ.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: EH.R: Frank versus Landes
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================= EH.RES POSTING =================
On 12 May, Gunder Frank wrote:
>many congratulations and best wishes to Brad for beginning to see the
>light, which alas is not very compatible with Brad's 'defense' of David
>Landes' book and his own theses in the ensuing debate -- which i have just
>continued with my posting on the Landes book, in which I apologize for not
>adding that Ken is the best guy and thing on that [non-Landes] wavelength.
>But Dear Brad, Ken does not limit himself to 'comparisons'. He also makes
>connections. I hope yuu will too.
Most of what I might have written has already been written--very well--by
Alan Taylor.
I do, however, find it interesting to look back and reflect upon my own
thoughts on western Europe compared to Chinese patterns of development...
I suppose that my first image--acquired while taking Social Studies 10,
which because of its concentration on *theory* leaves one with a somewhat
shaky empirical foundation corresponding to the state of historical
knowledge about 1870--was that of Max Weber: that the key to understanding
why and when the industrial revolution took place was to grasp the peculiar
means-ends instrumental rationality of Protestant northern Europe, that
this peculiar cultural complex was closely tied up with religions and
values, and that as a result Confucian, Hindu, and Buddhist Asia had no
chance at all of successfully industrializing for centuries.
This--Weberian--point of view has been decisively proven wrong by East
Asian industrialization since 1950.
I think that my second image--acquired after reading a little too much of
Hannah Arendt and Karl Wittfogel--was that of South and East Asia as
dominated by water-monopoly empires that are fundamentally hostile to
change (which may disrupt the power of landlord and priestly elites) and
that in their control over agrarian infrastructure have the power to make
their hostility to change effective. You can see this position too as
essentially Weberian--although the key here is the independence of the
European city rather than the Protestant Ethic. And I still find myself
believing (say, two days a week) that there was something very special
about the Medieval Commune and what it developed into, and that this did
play a major role in bringing us to where we are today.
My third image was that constructed by Ernst Gellner and John A. Hall--I
think of _Plough, Sword, and Book_, of _Powers and Liberties_, and of
_Liberalism_. Their image of pre-industrial societies--of Agraria--is of
societies in which warrior-princes, priests, and landlords all conspire to
keep the peasants ignorant, barefoot, pregnant, and over taxed; to keep the
urban merchants in constant fear of losing their fortunes, their
businesses, and their lives; and in which technological advance is quickly
abandoned either because the inventors have become rich and no longer wish
to be corrupted by contact with production and toil, or because cheap and
unfree labor forces leave those with power with no incentive to maintain
and operate technology. In their view, the natural state of post-Neolithic
Revolution humanity is somewhere between Merovingian Gaul and the Moghul
Gangetic Plain, and that only a true miracle allowed our escape from
Agraria's trap. I find myself believing their story, but also believing
that they have vastly overstated the power of warrior, priest, and landlord
elites to control historical developments.
My fourth image was one I drew from Joel Mokyr's _Lever of Riches_: it is
of Chinese and Indian civilizations that are progressive, dynamic,
technologically and demographically expansionary up until about 1400 or so.
But then circumstances--foreign conquest, Ming ideology, whatever--create a
profound hostility to further change, transform the ruling class into a
purely parasitic ruling class, and set both India and China on the track
toward the semi-Malthusian subsistence-level near-catastrophe that they
reached in the nineteenth century.
Now Ken Pomeranz's work (and not his alone) is transforming my image of
South and East Asian civilizations once again--but I do not yet have a
clear picture of just what it was that blocked what is now Greater Shanghai
(or Greater Canton, or Greater Tokyo, or Greater Mumbai, or Greater
Calcutta) from becoming the locus of an advanced commercial economy on the
brink of an industrial revolution in the sense of Greater London, Greater
Paris, and Greater Amsterdam.
Jim Blaut has an answer (which is, I think, the same as Eric Jones's answer
in the _European Miracle: although Blaut talks in terms of pillage, murder,
and extortion and Jones in terms of "ghost acreage" they are referring to
the same phenomena). But I look at the size of the Dutch herring fleet
compared to the VOC, and at the profits of the English wool industry
compared to the fortunes of Robert Clive and Warren Hastings, and I find
myself still thinking that long-distance trade is too small to bear the
burden and that more is to be learned from trying to think hard about the
internal dynamics...
Brad DeLong
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(2)
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 10:52:26 -0500
From: "Anthony Patrick O'Brien" <ao01@Lehigh.EDU>
Subject: EH.R: Frank versus Landes
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================= EH.RES POSTING =================
The May 25 issue of the New Republic contains a review by Jagdish Bhagwati of
Landes and of Kindleberger's _World Economic Primacy: 1500-1990_. Bhagwati's
conclusions about Landes:
"Landes wishes to link the European miracle causally, in the spirit of Max
Weber, to underlying values as defined by the Judeo-Christian, and especially
Protestant, universe. Islam is held to be inimical to a repetition of the
European experience owing to its allegedly holistic nature, with religion 'in
principle supreme and the ideal government that of the holy men.' Such
assertions recur throughout the book. And here Landes is stepping into
quicksand. For it is impossible to relate culture or values to these pro-growth
institutions and policy frameworks, and hence to economic growth, in a causally
tight way.
....
I do not mean to deny culture any role. But the precise role of culture in
economic behavior remains elusive. The encouraging truth appears to be that
growth-inducing institutions, like hardy perennials that will grow in different
and indifferent soils, are resilient and compatible with a range of cultures.
And for a historian who is confronted with economic success in extremely diverse
cultures, it is ahistorical to assert otherwise."
It would be interesting to learn where Bhagwati thinks the IR came from.
Tony O'Brien
Lehigh University
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(3)
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 12:45:52 -0500
From: "Joshua L. Rosenbloom" <jrosenbloom@UKANS.EDU>
Subject: EH.R: Frank versus Landes
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================= EH.RES POSTING =================
At 09:43 AM 5/14/98 -0500, jack a. goldstone wrote:
>(2) Frank, Pommeranz, and others now make it difficult if not impossible
>to see the roots of the great bifurcation in long-term structural changes
>c. 1000-1700. The "action" is in the last few centuries.
>(3) ...I would suggest instead a sudden "leap forward" in England,
>due to (a) new institutions developed post-1689; (b) new technology
>developed post-1689; and (c) a new religiously tolerant, scientifically
>empirical, culture of inquiry, experiment, and innovation that developed
>in England post-1689.
>(4) If this seems to pivot everything on the Glorious Revolution, that's
>right...If James II had triumphed...[t]he Dissenters who
>provided the bulk of the entrepreneurial energy of the IR
>in England might simply not have made their contribution, and perhaps
>modern science and industry as we know it might never have developed in
>the west....
>(5) In short, I think what needs to be explained is not a "long-term,
>inevitable" process that leads to industrialization, but a rare, one-off,
>developmental anomaly or "sport" that leads England on what is, by world
>standards, a "peculiar path."
The assertion that the Industrial Revolution may hinge on "accident" is
certainly intriguing, but I am not yet prepared to accept that conjecture
and give up looking for systematic differences. As a purely logical matter,
even if we accept the view that the "great bifurcation" in incomes did not
emerge until sometime in the 18th century, it is not so obvious that the
roots of the West's distinctive path in the last several centuries are not
to be found in prior events. These may not have translated into discernable
differences in economic prowess, but they may still have a long history.
I am hardly expert enough on this topic to suggest what these roots might
be, but I have always been intrigued by the argument that William H. McNeill
offers in _The Pursuit of Power_ (especially chapters 2-3), which identifies
a unique trajectory of western development associated with political
fragmentation and the emergence of significant international military
competition within Europe. This competition, according to McNeill, both
stimulated the development of new and more powerful military technologies
(which ultimately gave the west a considerable advantage vis a vis the rest
of the world), and obliged monarchs to grant increasing freedoms to
merchants and financiers as part of the bargain for raising the funds to pay
for military expenditures.
Clearly some countries within Europe benefitted more from these developments
than others, but their competition with eachother greatly raised the
prospects of the emergence of regimes that loosened restrictions on
religious and scientific dissent, thus making the ultimate transition that
occurred in the 18th century more likely.
Comments?
Joshua Rosenbloom
University of Kansas
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(4)
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 14:47:54 -0500
From: Jonathan_Liebowitz@uml.edu (Jonathan Liebowitz)
Subject: EH.R: Frank versus Landes
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================= EH.RES POSTING =================
1) I've been pleased at the turn this discussion has taken in the past few days
and thank recent posters for their insightful comments. In that vein I hope
Gunder Frank would give his counter-Landes interpretation of modern economic
growth. (I know we can all read his forthcoming book, but ...until it appears.
2) This is a bit in advance, but it seems like a good occasion to mention
it--There will be a session at next fall's SSHA meeting discussing Landes's
book. Participants will include P. David, D. McCloskey, J. Mokyr, K. Pomeranz,
and G. Grantham, as well as Landes. Hope to see you all there.
Jonathan J. Liebowitz (jonathan_liebowitz@uml.edu)
Department of History
University of Massachusetts Lowell
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(5)
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 12:36:12 -0500
From: Robert Marks <rmarks@whittier.edu>
Subject: EH.R: Frank versus Landes
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================= EH.RES POSTING =================
From: Bob Marks, Whittier College (rmarks@whittier.edu)
Having followed this discussion with interest, and now with Jack Goldstone
including me in the "California school" with regard to many of the issues
raised, I thought it was time to introduce myself to the Eh.Res list by way of
comments on some of postings.
First, and as a preliminary, the interest of historians whose primary focus
has been Europe and/or North America in the work of Asianists is a welcome
change, Brad de Long's comments about his education notwithstanding (maybe his
experiences were exceptional). Most of us working on China have for a very
long time immersed ourselves in work on Europe, becoming familiar with issues
and perspectives coming from that body of work, and clearly that experience is
beginning to bear fruit, as the work of Ken Pomeranz, Bin Wong, and James Lee
(among others in the "California school") attests. Now that we are beginning
to have a global dialog, maybe we will make some progress on understanding
global processes.
Now to some comments on others' postings:
Greg Clark asserted (5/13/98) that prior to 1800, all economies in the
world were Malthusian "in the sense that living standards did NOT depend
directly on the production technology," but did depend on population dynamics.
The work that I have done on the part of South China called Lingnan (and here
I'll try to help Brad de Long begin to remember some of these regions of China
by offering a translation: "South of the Mountains"), indicates that that
region (Guangzhou/Canton and its hinterland, a very wealthy and "developed"
part of late imperial China) may well have begun to break with a Malthusian
regime in the second half of the eighteenth century, without having
experienced an "industrial revolution" (but perhaps an industrious one). But
that does not mean, as Greg suggests, that that important demographic change
arose only from family and social structure reasons, and not technological
developments. The evidence that I've developed (in my book, Tigers, Rice,
Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China) suggests
that in Lingnan, by the end of the 18th century grain prices and food supply
had become delinked from harvest quality, assuring food supplies to urban and
sub-urban residents and workders at reasonable prices, regardless of what the
harvest was.
The question is, Why? And here I would point to both technological
developments in agriculture, in particular irrigation and the use of various
techniques by which peasant farmers could get 5 or 6 harvests in two years
from the same plot of land, and to organizational changes, in particular the
development of a large, integrated, and efficient market for food grains, in
particular rice. In fact, the eighteenth-century grain market in Lingnan was
larger, more integrated, and more efficient (by various measures) than those
in the most developed parts of Europe, allowing for the development of a very
large and productive textile industry (both cotton and silk) in the Pearl
River delta, utilizing spinning wheels and looms worked (and powered) by
several individuals. In short, in at least one region of China ca. 1800, it
is likely that living standards were not "determined" by birth and death rates
(and their causes), although population dynamics undoubtedly remained
important.
None of this gets to the question of explaining the industrial revolution,
as Greg Clark wants, but it should cast doubt on some verities, perhaps
including the one that does away with the industrial revolution altogether in
favor of an industrious revolution. For once again, even if we go down that
route, historians working on China can demonstrate that China got that far
too, and by 1800.
So, yes, the work of yet another historian of China tends to support the
case that the differences between China and Europe appeared very late, around
1800 in Lingnan, or later than the 1750 date suggested by Alan Taylor. So
maybe we have to think about "the great bifurcation" as coming later than
1750. Which brings me to my last observation: in 1984 Braudel (in the
Structures of Everyday Life) had already identified "the gap," its late
appearance around 1800, and the need for explaining it, as the most important
item on historians' agendas. But contrary to the thrust of Alan Taylor's last
paragraph, it is not necessarily the Europeanists (e.g. the North/Landes/Jones
Eurocentric view summarized by Jack Goldstone) who are helping the most with
crafting an explanation (or perhaps more precisely, one that will hold up
globally given the historical evidence we now have for China). In fact,
I would submit that this whole debate is possible only because of the work
that Asianists in general, but those working on China in particular, have done
over the past 15 years. Gunder Frank is right: it's time for economic
historians to ReOrient their views.
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(6)
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 12:36:12 -0500
From: Gunder Frank <agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: EH.R: Frank versus Landes
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================= EH.RES POSTING =================
Liebowitz requests more information from my book.
i'll see what i can do when i formulate some response.
but one of them is to inform that at the same SSHA meets in Chicago
Pomeranz is also an another panel
ORIENTING THE EUROPEAN 'MIRACLE": COMPARISONS, CONNECTIONS, CONJUNCTURES
along with Bin Wong, Gunder Frank as the other two paper givers, and
Jim Blaut and Bruce Cumings as discussants
organized by yours truly
gunder frank
Andre Gunder Frank
University of Toronto
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(7)
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 12:36:12 -0500
From: Gunder Frank <agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: EH.R: Frank versus Landes
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================= EH.RES POSTING =================
Liebowitz requests more information from my book.
i'll see what i can do when i formulate some response.
but one of them is to inform that at the same SSHA meets in Chicago
Pomeranz is also an another panel
ORIENTING THE EUROPEAN 'MIRACLE": COMPARISONS, CONNECTIONS, CONJUNCTURES
along with Bin Wong, Gunder Frank as the other two paper givers, and
Jim Blaut and Bruce Cumings as discussants
organized by yours truly
gunder frank
Andre Gunder Frank
University of Toronto
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(8)
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 12:46:21 -0500
From: "Alan M. Taylor" <amt@nwu.edu>
Subject: EH.R: Frank versus Landes
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================= EH.RES POSTING =================
Joshua Rosenbloom trenchantly points out:
>...As a purely logical matter,
>even if we accept the view that the "great bifurcation" in incomes did not
>emerge until sometime in the 18th century, it is not so obvious that the
>roots of the West's distinctive path in the last several centuries are not
>to be found in prior events. These may not have translated into discernable
>differences in economic prowess, but they may still have a long history.
I certainly agree. The great bifurcation may or may not have begun in 1800,
but that empirical question is (yes) totally separate from the question of
when and where any institutional/cultural/policy divergence began between
West and "not-West". Lags [and thus path dependence] could indeed be very
important.
Jonathan Liebowitz persuasively argues:
>1) I've been pleased at the turn this discussion has taken in the past few
>days
>and thank recent posters for their insightful comments. In that vein I hope
>Gunder Frank would give his counter-Landes interpretation of modern economic
>growth. (I know we can all read his forthcoming book, but ...
So I second that motion. Assume for the time being that post-1800 is where
the big empirical gaps are. Far from substituting for our purchase of his
400-page book, a few words from Frank might whet our appetite even more.
Can Frank say:
1) if he agrees that the great bifurcation post-1800 is the big issue;
2) whether institutional/cultural/policy differences across regions
mattered at that juncture (or else what did);
3) whether these institutional/cultural/policy differences, even if they
DIDN'T cause a pre-1800 bifurcation, nonetheless had very long-run
gestations over the preceding centuries.
The Rise of the West, sooner or later, has to come from somewhere.
Yours,
Alan M. Taylor
Hoover Institution and Northwestern University
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(9)
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 12:46:22 -0500
From: Brad De Long <delong@econ.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: EH.R: Frank versus Landes
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================= EH.RES POSTING =================
On Thu, 14 May 1998 Jack Goldstone wrote:
>There is emerging what I like to call the "California"
>school or interpretation of global economic history. This has been
>developed in good part by scholars in California, and holds that there
>were NO significant long-term advantages enjoyed by Europe over the main
>centers of civilization in Asia; that the level of technology, science,
>agriculture, and living standards were similar in these regions from 1000
>to 1800 AD, with Europe lagging if anything until nearly the end of this
>period; and that even the dynamics of political and social structures and
>conflicts in Asia and Europe were essentially similar from 1500 to 1850.
Living standards and agriculture I can buy. And "Technology" is complex:
are we talking rice seedlings, porcelain, or printing presses? Yet the
slope of European technological progress in the second millennium is very
impressive. By 1700 where outside of Europe are the equivalents of the
eyeglasses? The astrolabes? The microscopes? The logarithmic tables? The
lathes? The slide rules? The high-volume printing presses? The telescopes?
The escapement clocks? The grenades? The--advanced--cannon?
It is certainly true that eyeglasses, logarithms, screw-cutting lathes, and
printing presses churning out volumes by Erasmus don't mean beans
(directly) for sugar or cotton consumption in the Rhine or Thames delta
(and that grenades and cannon tend to make life a lot more nasty, brutal,
and short). But they mean a lot in terms of laying the groundwork for
further developments.
And science? 1800 is more than a century and a quarter past Newton.
And politics? Where is the William the Silent of Asia? Where is Magna
Carta? Where are the self-governing cities of Asia? Listen to only a few
speeches from Mahathir Muhammed or Lee Kuan Yu and you can't help but be
struck by the difference between their belief that rulers command and
people obey and the ideas that governments are instituted not to give
rulers the style of life to which they want to be accustomed but to secure
the people's natural rights,and that they derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed.
And as Alan Taylor eloquently pointed out, to reduce the European Miracle
from a ten-century to a two-century affair makes understanding and
accounting for it much, much harder...
Brad DeLong
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Joshua L. Rosenbloom e-mail: JRosenbloom@ukans.edu
Department of Economics phone: 785-864-2839
Summerfield Hall
Lawrence, KS 66045
University of Kansas
http://www.bschool.ukans.edu/home/jrosenbloom/jlr.html
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