ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian AgeAndre Gunder Frank asks us to ReOrient our views away from Eurocentrism—to see the rise of the West as a mere blip in what was, and is again becoming, an Asia-centered world. In a bold challenge to received historiography and social theory he turns on its head the world according to Marx, Weber, and other theorists, including Polanyi, Rostow, Braudel, and Wallerstein. Frank explains the Rise of the West in world economic and demographic terms that relate it in a single historical sweep to the decline of the East around 1800. European states, he says, used the silver extracted from the American colonies to buy entry into an expanding Asian market that already flourished in the global economy. Resorting to import substitution and export promotion in the world market, they became Newly Industrializing Economies and tipped the global economic balance to the West. That is precisely what East Asia is doing today, Frank points out, to recover its traditional dominance. As a result, the "center" of the world economy is once again moving to the "Middle Kingdom" of China. Anyone interested in Asia, in world systems and world economic and social history, in international relations, and in comparative area studies, will have to take into account Frank's exciting reassessment of our global economic past and future. |
Contents
Introduction to Real World History vs Eurocentric Social Theory I | 1 |
2 | 40 |
The Global Trade Carousel 14001800 | 52 |
World Division of Labor and Balances of Trade | 63 |
Japan | 104 |
Central Asia | 117 |
Russia and the Baltics | 123 |
Money Went Around the World and Made the World Go Round | 131 |
Simultaneity Is No Coincidence | 228 |
6 | 258 |
7 | 298 |
Historiographic Conclusions and Theoretical Implications | 321 |
Hegemony? | 332 |
Through the Global Looking Glass | 339 |
Cycles vs Linearity | 347 |
Agency vs Structure | 351 |
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Adam Smith Africa agriculture alleged Americas analysis and/or argued Asian Asian economies Bengal Braudel Britain British bullion Cambridge University Press capital Central Asia chapter Chaudhuri China Chinese cited colonies commercial commodities competitive continued cotton cycles cyclical decline Dutch East Asia Economic History edited eighteenth century elsewhere especially estimates Eurocentric Europe European evidence expansion export Frank and Gills global economy gold Habib historians horizontally integrative important increased India Indian Ocean industrial revolution institutions Japan Japanese Kondratieff labor least Marx merchants microeconomic Ming Ming dynasty monetary Moreover Mughal nineteenth century nomic Nonetheless observed Ottoman Empire percent period Persia perspective phase political Pomeranz population growth Portuguese regional relations relative rise seventeenth century seventeenth-century crisis ships silk silver sixteenth century South Southeast Asia structure supply textiles thesis tion tons Wallerstein West Asia Western world economy world economy/system world history world market world system worldwide