Asia in the ReMaking of the Modern World

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Asia in the ReMaking of the Modern World

• Teaching of History Conference
• September 29, 2007
• University of North Texas
• Denton, Texas
• Robert B. Marks
• Richard and Billie Deihl Professor of History
• Whittier College

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The Modern World
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The Early Modern World, 1450-1800

• Early Modern---gtModern
• Institutions (private property rights)
• Values (industrious work ethic)
• Family size (small by design)
• Economics (markets)
• States (national, but sovereigns not too powerful)

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Early modern---gtModern

• All arise within Europe
• How did the rest of the world modernize?
• One of two ways adopting the cultural, economic,
  etc. institutions from the West (e.g. Japan),
  or having them forced on them by force (the age
  of imperialism and decolonization
• The Rise of the West narrative

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Why? Narrative of the Rise of the West

• Superior culture, superior values
• Dynamic
• Inventive
• Scientific
• Disciplined, ordered
• Rational
• Democratic traditions (back to Greece)
• Civilized
• Inevitable! European features define modernity

Source Hobson, Eastern Origins of Western
Civilization, ch. 1.
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The Rest (Asia, Africa, and indigenous Americas
and the Pacific islands)

• Ignorant, passive
• Irrational
• Lazy
• Sensual
• Dependent
• Despotic
• Savage, barbaric, uncivilized
• Can become like the Westculture change

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A Certain Truth to the StoryEuropes Global
Dominance, 1914
Source Shannon, An Introduction to the
World-System Perspective, 1996
World mfg 80 World GDP 80 World surface 85
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The Great Divergence in history and storyline
Source Marks, The Origins of the Modern World,
p. 124
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The Great Divergence in history and storyline
Source Marks, The Origins of the Modern World,
p. 125
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Scholarship on AsiaGlobal trade routes
1400-1800(If silver flows to China and India,
how did Europe get to be at the center?)
Source Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient, p. 65,
following Flynn and Giraldez
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Asia-Centered World Systemin the 13th Century
-Asia, especially the Indian Ocean, at the world
center -Europe on the periphery
Source Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European
Hegemony, p. 34.
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Re-Centered on Asia for Longer
Indian Ocean a Chinese Lake
Source Phillipe Beaujard, The Indian Ocean in
Eurasian and African World-Systems before the
Sixteen Century. Journal of World History (Dec.
2005) 411-66
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Scholarship Questioning the rise of the West
narrative over the past 20 years

• Wong, China Transformed, 1997
• Flynn and Giraldez, silver articles JWH
• Frank, ReOrient, 1998
• Lee and Feng, One-Quarter of Humanity (1999)
• Pomeranz, The Great Divergence (2000)
• Goldstone,Efflorescences 2002
• Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western
  Civilization, 2004
• Marks, The Origins of the Modern World, 2002 and
  2006

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Two examples of questioning

• Family size (Lee and Feng take on Malthus in One
  Quarter of Humanity)
• Markets (Marks in Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt
• Summarized in Marks, Asia in the ReMaking of the
  Modern World, Education about Asia, Fall 2006

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Chinas Population Dynamics

• For 2000 yrs., between 25-40 of the world
• Malthus believed uncontrolled compared to
  England (hence the reason for apparent relative
  wealth)
• Wang and Lees findings Chinese controlled their
  population
• So why the great increase?

Source http//afe.easia.columbia.edu/
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Chinas Market Efficiency

• Whats the price of rice in China?
• Other markets too, for land, labor, capital,
  factors of production
• Most efficient in the world 18th century
• Did not lead to industrialization
• Expectations from European models assumptions

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Emerging New Narrative

• Early modern elements found in many places in
  the world 1400-1800, esp. Asia.
• Do not necessarily lead to industrialization, but
  to an economic cul dsac (Pomeranz)
• Industrialization efflorescences (Goldstone)
• The latest historically contingent (Chinas
  actions, British coal, colonies)
• The Origins of the Modern World A Global and
  Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the
  Twenty-First Century (2nd ed., 2006)

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Asia in the ReMaking of the Modern World Was
the Rise of the West Inevitable or Contingent?

• Inevitable The only way it could have been
• Contingent
• Asia not backward, but central to the story of
  the modern world
• Europe at first not advanced but backward
• Role of Chinese demand for silver
• What happened contingent

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Final Thought

• If the past was contingent, so too is the future