Dear GK,
Your point is a good one, however, I think Japan's violent
excesses of the
1930s and early 1940s suggest a regional model is not primarily causal in
explaining brutality. Advanced capital accumulation in a poly-centric
world system, however, might better explain the phenomenon.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Sommers
Northeastern University
World History Center (http://www.whc.neu.edu)
On Wed, 18 Mar 1998, Gernot Kohler wrote:
> "ReOrient" (AG Frank, reading the synopsis circulated on internet) and
> "global apartheid" (term used by a small group of global apartheid
> watchers) fit together nicely. "ReOrient" can be interpreted as a
> critique of the ideology of global apartheid (critique of the superiority
> complex of the West). One element seems to be missing in "ReOrient",
> however, namely: Have Europen and Western nations NOT been *exceptionally
> violent* in history? (I am thinking of European conquests of other
> continents, Germany under Hitler, USSR under Stalin, nuclear overkill in
> the hands of USA and Russia.) I guess I am implying that the world
> economic system is, at the same time, a world military-political system
> where both dimensions are inseparable and influence each other. If there
> is no Western exceptionalism in economics, as Professor Frank argues, one
> still wants an explanation of why the West has been at the global top for
> the last little while. Exceptional brutality by the West is a possible
> explanation. How does truly globo-level historiography assess the
> relative militancy/brutality by the West?
>
> --gk
>