Publishers Referee Comments, Author's Abstract and Table of Contents of A S I A N A G E by ANDRE GUNDER FRANK University of Toronto 96 Asquith Ave. Toronto, Ont. Canada M4W 1J8 Tel:416-972 0616 Fax:416-972 0071 & 978 3963 e-mail: agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca PUBLISHER REFEREES' COMMENTS by six referees [identified as 1,2,3,4,5,6 below] for several American and European publishers: EVALUATION: A work of highest intellectual, social and moral importance. Specialists will welcome the forcefulness, verve, and coherence of Frank's BIG PICTURE. Much of it will be compltely new to many other historians and social scientists who will have to change their views and rewrite their lectures after they read it [1]. This is a stimulating and exiting book written in a style to challenge received wisdom. This book breaks new gound with an historiographic self- consciousness that should make it accessible to readers who will nevertheless find the major theses a basic challenge to their assumpions and understandings of early modern world history. The great virtue of this book is its relentless push to redefine our framework for thinking about the early modern economy. At this large task I believe the author has succeeded. I believe this book could become a benchmark study [2]. This can be a landmark book that not only arouses powerful controversy but shapes substantially the scholarship and understanding of the next generation of researchers [3]. The book is clearly written and understandable. The scholarship is superior. The greatness of this book is that it touches a number of intellectual nerves [with] an important thesis that will generate much discussion and intellectual debate ... because it forces a rethinking [4]. A compelling argument against Eurocentrism and for a holistic theory [or] "globology" to understand the whole world. Forces us to turn the telescope of world history around to see that the focus was, and is Asia --- NOT Europe [5]. A very provocative read [6]. EXPLANATION: The book is a plea for global studies as a general historical proposition. What is most impressive to this reader is where you succeeed in bringing to bear ample data to demonstrate the logic of world economy processes. You are probably correct in essentials on many of the boldest hypotheses, and notably the global framing of the economy, on the argument of the centrality of Asia for the period 1400-1800, and on the rejection of the entire Eurocentric analysis of incorporation, 1500 and all that [3]. This is a bold new interpretation that ... creates a distinctive argument to explain Europe's post-1800 successes. The author places his argument in an even longer-run perspective to sggest that Europe's 'rise' may be just a temporary one bracketed on either side by eras of Asian dominance. It departs from virtually all other 'global' or 'world' system perspectives by arguing that Europe was not the central location of economic dysnamism in the early modern world (1400-1800) and therefore that 'capitalism' was not a unique cultural phenomenon that can explain the differential economic success of Europe over Asia. The author redefines our baseline for assessing the 'rise' of Europe [2]. No other work both provides the exhaustive documentation and the theoretical clarity and conviction of thesis. You get the feel of the interconnecteds of the world in a way ... not felt before and the reminder that according to all received theory this is not supposed to be so. That is the power of this book. Frank gained his world wide fame by making an argument that caused a revolution in thinking about Third World Development. Well, the same thing is about to happen again, except this time the stakes are much higher. Now it is the theories of the endogenous nature of change in the West that is being challenged. The Wallersteinian world economy did not give rise to the world-system, Frank argues, but the Afroeurasian world system gave rise to the European world economy. To correct the historical fact is to challenge the theoretical scaffolding of everyone from Marx to Weber to Braudel to Wallerstein. Frank's point is that they were simply wrong [and] turns on their heads many of the received assumptions about the origin of the modern world system/economy. The book is that conceptually important [4]. RECOMMENDATION & MARKET: A lot more readable than some of the more jargon-ridden stuff in world- systems theory and social theory generally. A fair competitor with Francis Fukuyama's The End of History [6] There is no directly competing book ... of interest to economists, sociologists, political scientists, historians (world and otherwise) and East Asia area specialists. Its a very general thesis and will command a very general audience [4]. Should be required reading in courses in world history, economic history, and several kinds of social theory. A book of wide interest to both scholars and to general readers [that] would have major impact [1]. It should have an immediate impact both on Asian resesarchers and practitioners of global or world system studies, but could even intrude on the provincialism of Europeanists and Americanists working on all historical epochs. I have strongly recommended that [xx] publish in simultaneous hardback and paperback, and I would be delighted to feature it in in my proposed series on Asia [3]. The market foris book, in paperback, should include both advanced undergraduate seminars and graduate courses on early modern world history taught in both history and sociology departments. I urge the acceptance and publication of this provocative and useful manuscript [2]. AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT This book outlines and analyzes the global economy and its sectoral and regional division of labor and cyclical dynamic from 1400 to 1800. The evidence and argument are that within this global economy Asians and particularly Chinese were preponderant, no more "traditional" than Europeans, and in fact largely far less so. Mreover, the Europeans did not do anything - let alone "modernize" - by themselves. That contention turns the tables on the last two centuries of historiography and social science, and indeed also of the humanities a la "the East is East, and the West is West, and never the twain shall meet." They DID meet, albeit not at all on the alleged European terms, and the question is WHY? The book builds up, chapter by chapter, the global scaffolding that will permit the construction of at least preliminary answers derived from the structure and dynamic of the world economy as a whole. Chapter 2 outlines the productive division of labor and the multilateral trade framework, as well as the sectoral and regional inter-connections within the global economy. Chapter 3 signals how American and Japanese money went around the world circulatory system and provided the life blood that made the world go round. Chapter 4 examines the resulting world population, productive,income and trade quantities, the related technological qualities and institutional mechanisms, as well as how several regions in Asia maintained and even increased their global preponderance therein. Chapters 5 and 6 propose a global marcohistory that treats the Decline of the East and the Rise of the West as related and successive processes within and generated by the global world economic structure and dynamic. Chapter 6 inquires how Asia's world economic advantage between 1400 and 1800 turned to its disadvantage and to the [temporary] advantage of the West to face the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. World-encompassing macro- and micro-economic analysis is used to account for The Rise of the West in global instead of the received Eurocentric terms. The introductory Chapter 1 suggests that received historiography and social theory fall seriously short of what we need. Marx and Weber or Parsons and Rostow and their many disciples are far and away too Eurocentric, and Braudel and Wallerstein also are still not nearly holistic enough. None of them is able, or even willing, to address the global problematique, whose whole is more than the sum or its parts. Chapter 7 then builds on the historical evidence and argument of this book to derive theoretical conclusions about how to analyze this global whole. Only a globally holistic analysis can permit a better, indeed any even minimally satisfactory, comprehension of how the whole world economic structure and dynamic shape and differentiate its sectoral and regional parts East and West, North and South. Recourse to a more holistic global historiography and social theory suggests how Asian, and particularly Chinese, predominance in the world economy through the eighteenth century may presage its return to dominance also in the twenty first century. TABLE OF CONTENTS EPIGRAPHS PREFACE Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION TO REAL WORLD HISTORY VS. EUROCENTRIC SOCIAL THEORY THE EUROCENTRIC PROBLEMATIQUE AND THE PRESENT CHALLENGE PUTTING EUROPE IN ITS GLOBAL AFRO-ASIAN PLACE CHAPTER OUTLINE OF A GLOBAL ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE ANTICIPATING AND CONFRONTING RESISTANCE AND OBSTACLES Chapter 2: THE GLOBAL TRADE CAROUSEL 1400-1800 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD ECONOMY Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Antecedents The Columbian Exchange and its Consequences Some Neglected Features in the World Economy WORLD DIVISION OF LABOR AND BALANCES OF TRADE 1400-1800 Mapping the Global Economy The Americas Africa Europe West Asia - The Ottoman Empire - Safavid Persia India and the Indian Ocean - India - North India - Gujarat and Malabar - Coromandel - Bengal Southeast Asia Japan China Central Asia Russia and the Baltics A Sino-Centric World Economy Summary Chapter 3: MONEY WENT AROUND THE WORLD AND MADE THE WORLD GO ROUND WORLD MONEY: ITS PRODUCTION AND EXCHANGE Micro- and Marco- Attractions in the World Casino Dealing and Playing in the Casino The Numbers Game HOW DID THE WINNERS USE THEIR MONEY? Spenders vs Hoarders? Inflation or Production in the Quantity Theory of Money Money Expanded the Frontiers of Settlement and Production Chapter 4: THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: COMPARISONS AND RELATIONS QUANTITIES: POPULATION, PRODUCTION, PRODUCTIVITY, INCOME AND TRADE Population, Production and Income Productivity and Competitiveness World Trade 1400-1800 QUALITIES: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Eurocentrism Regarding Science and Technology in Asia Guns Shipping Printing Textiles Metallurgy, Coal and Power Transport World Technological Development MECHANISMS: ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS European - Asian Comparisons Global Institutional Relations --In India --In China Chapter 5 HORIZONTALLY INTEGRATIVE MACROHISTORY SIMULTANEITY IS NO COINCIDENCE DOING HORIZONTALLY INTEGRATIVE MACROHISTORY Demographic/Structural Analysis A "Seventeenth Century Crisis"? Monetary Analysis and the Crises of 1640 Kondratieff Analysis Crisis/Recessions in the 1762-1790 Kondratieff "B" Phase More Horizontally Integrative Macrohistory? Chapter 6 WHY DID THE WEST WIN [TEMPORARILY] ? UP AND DOWN THE LONG CYCLE ROLLICOASTER? THE DECLINE OF THE EAST PRECEDED THE RISE OF THE WEST The Decline in India The Decline Elsewhe in Asia HOW DID THE WEST RISE? Climbing Up on Asian Shoulders Supply and Demand for Technological Change in the World Economy: A Hypothesis Supplies and Sources of Capital A GLOBAL ECONOMIC/DEMOGRAPHIC ACCOUNTING FOR THE DECLINE OF THE EAST AND THE RISE OF THE WEST A Demographic Economic Model A High-Level Equilibrium Trap? The Evidence 1500-1750 The 1750 Inflection Past Conclusions and Future Implications Chapter 7 HISTORIOGRAPHIC CONCLUSIONS AND THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS HISTORIOGRAPHIC CONCLUSIONS: THE EUROCENTRIC EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES 1. The Asiatic Mode of Production [AMP] 2. European Exceptionalism 3. A European World-System or a Global Economy? 4. 1500: Continuity or Break? 5. Capitalism? 6. Hegemony? 7. The Rise of the West and the Industrial Revolution 8. Empty Categories and Procustean Beds THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS: THROUGH THE GLOBAL LOOKING GLASS 1. Holism vs. Partialism 2. Commonality/Similarity vs. Specificity/Difference 3. Continuity vs. Dis-continuities 4. Horizontal Integration vs. Vertical Separation 5. Cycles vs. Linearity. 6. Structure vs. Agency 7. Europe in The World Economic Nutshell 8.Jihad vs. McWorld in the Anarchy of the Clash of Civilizations? REFERENCES CITED