Product Description

Andre 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56286 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-31
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Card catalog description
Frank explains the Rise of the West from 1400 forward in world economic and demographic terms, with a sweeping historical perspective that places it in clear conjunction with the Decline of the East around 1800. 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.

From the Author
BOOK 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. The historical documentation poses an 'emperor has no clothes' challenge to all received Eurocentric historiography and social theory from Montesquieu, Marx and Weber, or Toynbee and Polanyi, to Rostow, Braudel and Wallerstein. The books's global economic analysis offers a more holistic theoretical alternative. 'The Rise of the West' was not due to any 'European Miracle exceptionalism' that allegedly permitted it to pull itself up by its own bootstraps as Weberians have contended. Nor did Europe build a 'European world-economy around itself" a la Braudel and thereby as per Marx and Wallerstein [as well as Frank's own WORLD ACCUMULATION 1492-1789] initiating a European centered 'Modern Capitalist World-System' primarily by exploiting the wealth of its American and African colonies. Instead, Europe used its American silver to buy itself marginal entry into the long since existing world market in Asia, which was much larger, more productive and competitive, continued to expand much faster until 1800, and was able to support a rate of population growth in Asia that was than double that of Europe until 1750.

Then changing world economic/ demographic/ ecological relations and relative factor prices in the competitive global economy resulted in the temporary 'Decline of the East' and the opportunity for the also temporary 'The Rise of the West'. Europe took advantage of this world economic opportunity through import substitution, export promotion and technological change to become Newly Industrializing Economies after 1800, as is again happening today in East Asia. That region is now REgaining its 'traditional' dominance in the global economy, with the Chinese 'Middle Kingdom' again at its 'center.'

COMMENTS ON ReOrient BY REFEREES AND REVIEWERS

"Frank shows how Marx and Weber got it all wrong. This book is conceptually that important. A fundamental rethinking absolutely essential to understanding world history."
-ALBERT BERGESEN University of Arizona

"This will be an extremely important book of sufficient originality and importance to have a major impact. It could not be more ambitious."
- KENNETH POMERANZ University of California at Irvine

"The author redefines our baseline for assessing the 'rise' of Europe. I believe this book could become a benchmark study."
- BIN WONG University of California at Irvine

"A book for the millennium ... can be a landmark book that shapes substantially the scholarship and understanding of the next generation of researchers. It should have an immediate impact."
- MARK SELDEN State University of New York

"Andre Gunder Frank's ReORIENT is a heroic effort to reconstruct our conceptions of the world economy in the early modern age. A brilliant theory - Frank's single-mided, relentless, and compelling organic model achieves coherence and has much to offer."
- PETER PERDUE Massachussetts Institute of Technology

"If challenging received wisdom is a trademark, this book is written as the mother of all challenges. The immense power of the book rests on the ability to provoke and force one to rethink many facets of history that have been taken for granted for a long long time."
- HARBANS MUKHIA Indian Express

"ReOrient's biggest virtue: it forces the reader to at least look differently at world history. This impressive and illuminating analysis sets out to challenge the mother of all orthodoxies that Europe discovered capitalism and industrialisation and that what followed and is happening and will happen is essentially a fallout of this European preeminence."
- SAUBHIK CHAKABARTI The Statesman

"This is a brave book, brave in the academic as well as the personal sense. It insists on a completely necessary reorientation of academic and political views. It will prove to be compulsory reading."
- JACK GOODY St. Johns College, Cambridge

"ReORIENT deserves to become an instant classic."
- MARTIN LEWIS Duke University

From the Inside Flap
"Frank shows how Marx and Weber got it all wrong. A fundamental rethinking of the rise of the West and the origin of the world-system. Absolutely essential to understanding world history."--Albert Bergesen,University of Arizona

"The great virtue of this stimulating book is its relentless push to redefine our framework for thinking about the early modern economy. . . . A benchmark study."--R. Bin Wong,University of California, Irvine

Customer Reviews

Andre Gunder Frank's Magnum Opus
"ReORIENT" is a fairly silly title perhaps, but behind this lurks German economic historian André Gunder Frank's magnum opus, the last major (re)statement of his refutation of Eurocentrism in his field and the rehabilitation of Asian wealth and development historically (Frank unfortunately died a few years ago). Written in an now and then dry but usually lively manner, Frank's book veers between the purely analytical and cautious and the passionate and polemical. This combination gives otherwise possibly dull matter a tempo and tension that should make it well worth reading for more than just specialists.

Frank's main thesis is the by now increasingly, if still far insufficiently, acknowledged fact that Europe was ahead neither in technological development nor in wealth nor in military power in the days of the Columbian conquests of the Americas. Contrary to this popular belief, Europe was in fact for the most part behind in all these factors until roughly 1750-1800. Frank establishes this thesis, which he shares with other major writers against Eurocentrism such as James Blaut, Jack Goody, Eric Wolf and so forth, with much statistical support and excellence and a strong sense of indignation, carrying the reader along through thorough analysis of Asian trading patterns, reports of Portuguese sailors, methodological discussions and much more. In this, Frank not only argues against the received opinion, still taught in practically every high school history class, that Europe was dominant in the world from the Middle Ages on (if not earlier), but also against colleagues in heterodoxy whom he accuses of still ceding too much ground to a Eurocentric, Euro-endogenous view of the origin of the Industrial Revolution, among whom are giants like Wallerstein and Braudel.

Overall, the book is very closely and strongly argued and it will be hard to find fault with any of the analysis if one has an open mind and is willing to have received opinions changed by the facts. Nonetheless, some criticisms can be made. The first is that Frank has a tendency to go off on tangents and has trouble keeping the structure of the book together, leading to oddities such as an almost impassably long chapter on mostly Chinese coinage, which detracts from the flow of the argument. The second is that where he correctly attacks the Eurocentric mistakes made by the usually also very heterodox ideas in these fields of Marx and his supporters, he goes overboard in this in wanting to reject the idea of 'capitalism' and 'feudalism' altogether, which is not helpful, and leads himself to remove all useful analysis of production and classes from his historical overview. This in turn leads to the major error in his approach, which is the excessive focus on trade, particularly foreign trade, as vehicle for historical change. The third is that Frank seems to want to put much stock instead into the independent power of cyclical phenomena in economics such as the Kondratieff cycle; surely an interesting phenomenon but not one that can be taken as causative on its own without losing the scientific method in political economy altogether. The fourth is the focus on Asia, which comes almost entirely at the expense of focus on Africa, and to a lesser degree the Americas.

Nonetheless, this book also contains all that is the best of André Gunder Frank, such as his immense knowledge, his courage in rejecting and questioning received opinion, his effectiveness in refuting Eurocentrism, and his strong ability to make much use of what is often little or confused historical-statistical information. For these reasons, this book is a masterpiece that belongs in any intellectual library.

I' d rather read other books
After reading Mr. Albin excellent review, I will only add that, instead of "Reorient", on the vexing question of why Western countries have dominated the world during the last few centuries [the very way the question is posed is controversial!], I would suggest reading the following books: 1) "Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium" by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke; 2)"The Great Divergence", by Kennetz Pomeranz (far clearer than "Reorient); 3 - 4): "The world economy. A millennial perspective" (2001) plus "The world economy: Historical Statistics" (2003) by Angus Maddison (a combined edition of these two volumes appeared on December 2007); 5) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation by John M. Hobson, and 6) it also seems interesting the brief book to be published this June "Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History 1500-1850" by Jack A. Goldstone.

And for those looking for a broad framework to understand the past, I would add the following works, whose scope is amazingly global: 1. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 2. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 3. Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 4. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and 5. War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat.

Fascinating, albeit incomplete
ReOrient is one the most important works of the last decade in that it not only challenges a dominant perspective in Western social science but it also refutes author's and his colleagues' earlier arguments. Andre Gunder Frank lays down two central arguments in ReOrient which complement one another: 1) the "rise of the West" did not happen due to any internal factors but was predicated on American silver and Asian market; 2) Asia in general and China in particular was the center of global economy until the 19th century. Thus, Frank aims to destroy the bases of Eurocentrism in social sciences.
Frank argues that Europe was not an important figure in world economy until the 19th century. Asians were more productive and competitive than Europeans and Asia remained at the center of global economy until the industrial revolution. Throughout this period European nations constantly had trade deficits with Asian nations, particularly with China and India. An indication of this European trade deficit was that gold and silver were never less than two-thirds of total European exports (p. 74). New World silver was for this reason very important for the Europeans; it helped them cover their trade deficits with the Asians and become a more active player in Asian economy. Thus, Frank contends that American silver bought Europeans a ticket in the "Asian productive and commercial train, which was steaming ahead on an already well-established track," (p. 115).
One of Frank's original arguments regarding the superiority of the Chinese economy vis-à-vis the European economy in the 15th to 19th century is the different effects on these economies of the influx of New World silver. To make his case, Frank utilizes Fisher's famous quantity-price equation which maintains that an increase in the amount of money in an economy will result in increases in the prices of goods unless it is matched by an increase in quantity of goods (p. 154). Frank then demonstrates that whereas American silver caused substantial increases in the price of goods in Europe, it did not have any remarkable inflationary effect on the Chinese economy. For this to happen, Chinese production must have increased parallel to the increase in the amount of silver. This means that the massive arrival of new American money stimulated production more in Asia than in Europe (pp. 157-8). According to Frank, this situation attests to higher productivity of Chinese economy compared to European economy. Thus, Frank refutes the orthodox Eurocentric "hoarding" argument on China which assumed that the Chinese used American/European silver by and large in non-economic and unproductive ways, primarily as jewelry: "Asians earned this money first because they were more industrious and more productive to begin with; the additional money then generated still more Asian demand and production," (p. 177).
Another historical fact Frank uses to demonstrate the superiority of Asian economies over European economies is the per capita production in these two economies in the 16th to 19th century. Using the estimates of such prominent historians as Braudel and Bairoch, Frank shows that in 1750 Asians accounted for 66 percent of world population but produced 80 percent of total world output; by contrast, Europe, which constituted 20 percent of world population then, produced only part of the remaining 20 percent. This again means that on average "Asians must have been significantly more productive than Europeans in 1750" (p. 173). As in the fist case, Franks' reasoning is simple, but smart and convincing.
After all these economic comparisons, Frank concludes that the Europeans did not "create" the world economic system but "purchased" an existing one with American silver. He therefore asserts that "the rise of the West" must be derived from the prior and contemporaneous development of "The rest," (p. 224).
Prospects:

The principal importance of ReOrient lies in its demolishing the bases of Eurocentrism in theories that explain "the rise of West" with factors that are internal to Europe. These theories attributed European economic development to Europe's exceptionality in such factors as rationality, religion, science, and geographic location. Yet Frank demonstrates that Europe did not have any inherent superiority in the 15th through 18th century vis-à-vis Asia and Asian nations were at least as much rational, industrial, capitalist, and dynamic as the European ones. Thus, there was no European "head start" or "exceptionality" that would necessitate the creation of a European hegemony over others. It was American silver and Asian market that allowed the "rise of the West". As such, Frank's arguments change the central question to be dealt with regarding the rise of the West. The critical question is no more why it was the West that rose in the 15th century -because it did not-, but why and how the West rose in the late 18th and early 19th century. As Frank argues, the new question is not about a mere difference in time but begs a qualitatively different answer.
What makes ReOrient particularly important is that it not only destroys the myth of "European exceptionalism" but it also uncovers and refutes the Eurocentrism in the critics of these theories as well. Frank argues that such important critics of capitalist world economy as Marx, Braudel, and Wallerstein could not escape the Eurocentrism embedded in the theories they criticized either. While Marx viewed Asian nations as stagnant, traditional and inferior; Wallerstein assigned an insignificant role to Asia and the Mediterranean in the making of his modern world-system (p. 45). Frank views these arguments as mere assumptions and refutes them in two ways: first, he tries to demonstrate that Europe did not have any inherent superiority in the 15th through 18th century vis-à-vis Asia; second, Frank argues that Europe owe its future "rise" to its borrowing from and integration to a well-established Asian economy. Thus, Frank demonstrates that Europe did not create a world system and incorporated more and more of the rest of the world as Wallerstein argued, but rather integrated itself to the Asian market and "climbed up on the back of Asia," (pp. 4, 30)
Problems:

Unfortunately, Frank's novel theorizing turns out to be at the expense of some conceptual clarity. Frank's approach to world economy and modes of production renders such important concepts like world system and capitalism ambiguous. Frank argues that there has always been "one world economy/system" and it had its "own structure and dynamic," (p. 139). In Frank's view, existence of any trade relations between regions of the world create a world system. Thus, Frank equates global trade with world system. However, until the 18th century trade was highly regionalized and most regions had miniscule contacts with others. Frank himself notes that Europeans' role in Asian trade before the second half of the 18th century was insignificant and Europe accounted for only one percent of Asian nations' international trade (pp. 178-85). Thus, if we define world-system as a global economic system in which most parts of the world are economically dependent on one another, I will have to side with Wallerstein who argued that such a system did not exist until the 19th century ("The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System", in The Essential Wallerstein, p. 74). Indeed, although unintentionally, Frank also provide support to this point when he notes that Europeans were the first to "operate in all markets simultaneously or systematically to integrate its activities between all of them," (p. 177). As such, there has been only one world-system so far and -unfortunately- it has been a European one.
A subsequent problem that results from Frank's bias towards holistic analysis is his search for single centers in world economy. Frank argues that the entire world economy was "Sinocentric" until the 19th century (p. 117). However, I have doubts regarding China's central role in economies of European and Middle Eastern countries in any period of history. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the Ottomans and Persians were more central to Middle Eastern economies than were the Chinese. Similarly, in the same period the British and the Dutch were more central to European economy than the Chinese. I therefore tend to agree with Pomeranz who later stated that the pre-1800 world was "a polycentric world with no dominant center," (The Great Divergence, p. 4).
Another shortcoming in Frank's book is that he cannot adequately account for the "rise of the West" in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His argument is that Asian economies were altogether facing a Kondratieff B-cycle in the first half of the 18th century and this allowed Europe to finally outdo the Asians. He therefore asserts that "the fall of Asia" preceded European political and military intervention in Asian nations (pp. 266-8). The first problem one might have with this argument is that it is impressionistic and allows little room to human agency. A more fundamental problem that I have, however, is that Frank's account does not consider the possibility that the Asian economic decline in the first half of the 18th century could have been a temporary problem and Asian economies could have easily recovered if it were not for European military intervention. Indeed, Frank himself reports that average annual exports from Asia by both Dutch and British East India companies declined in the decades of 1730s and 1740s "but recovered in the 1750s," (p. 270). Frank also notes that throughout the 18th century the balance of trade between Britain and China was constantly in China's favor and the British could reverse this situation only through forced opium trade in the 19th century. Thus, contra Frank, I believe that Asian economic problems in the 18th century were not insurmountable and "the fall of Asia" was indeed a European creation. As such, we still do not have a satisfying answer as to why Europe outdid the Asians by 1800.