Marc Ferguson University of Massachusetts, United States

HAOL, Núm. 5 (Otoño, 2004), 127-139 ISSN 1696-2060

WHY THE WEST?

Marc Ferguson University of Massachusetts, United States. E-mail: [email protected]

Recibido: 11 Julio 2004 / Revisado: 13 Agosto 2004 / Aceptado: 10 Septiembre 2004 / Publicado: 15 Octubre 2004

Resumen: The question of how 'the West' came f one wanted to tell the story of Europe to dominate the globe during the modern era has coming to dominate the globe during the been debated recently among historians. The Inineteenth and into the twentieth centuries debate has been polarized between those who as the parable of the big bad wolf and the three view 'modernity' as the result of a 'European little pigs, the passage quoted above from David miracle', the culturally unique and internally Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations1 generated project of the West, and those who would seem to do nicely. However, in Landes's question this 'European miracle' paradigm as version of the Rise of the West, the Europeans Eurocentric, and look to other factors to are not the "bad guys," they are the heroes of the understand and explain Western economic and story. But whether they were villains or political world dominance. The traditional messengers of historical necessity, the question narrative, represented by David Landes in his of how Europeans acquired this dominance is recent The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, one of the most hotly contested problems today attributes European success to its unique cultural among historians concerned with world history. values, social institutions, and political In recent years the discussion has intensified as practices. This success was entirely 'internally non-Europeanists, particularly Asianists, have driven' by these characteristics. Recently, a entered the fray over this question and are number of historians have questioned this challenging many of the long-accepted 'European miracle' paradigm as Eurocentric, and explanations for European domination. look to other factors to understand and explain Western economic and political world I think at the heart of this debate is a quarrel dominance. After surveying the recent work of over the very nature of history and historical historians addressing this problem, this paper explanation. Does history run in a single argues for placing European expansion within a direction, to a definite destination, if only one global context, and understanding the Industrial takes the right path? Is it structured and driven Revolution as a global transformation. This by large forces, perhaps economic, perhaps perspective allows us to understand European geographic? Or, is it contingent on innumerable technological and economic changes within the factors with many possible directions and larger context of patterns of worldwide solutions to the dilemmas that are faced by economic and cultural interaction. societies? Scholars examining the problem of Palabras Clave: Eurocentric, European miracle, European global dominance have taken all of globe, Western, Western economic. these approaches in recent years, and not ______surprisingly come to very different conclusions.

"So the years passed, and the decades, and the The disagreements are not only over the reasons centuries. Europe left China far behind. At first for European dominance but also the timing, unbelieving and contemptuous, China grew anxious with vastly different interpretations of Europe's and frustrated. From asking and begging, the role in the world during the early modern period, Westerners became insistent and impatient. The British saw two embassies dismissed with contempt. 1500-1800 AD. The disputants in the current The third time, in 1839, they came in with gunboats debate have staked out clear positions, and the and blew the door down" rhetoric duplicates the academic culture wars (David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations) over Western Civilization that for the past decade have occupied those concerned with how history is taught. Pursuing this large question

© Historia Actual Online 2004 127 Why the West? Marc Ferguson requires shaking up a hornet's nest of difficult firepower: "Europe could now plant itself historical problems. This paper will examine the anywhere on the surface of the globe within recent debate over "the rise of the west," and reach of naval cannon"8. Pedro Alvares Cabral, will primarily focus on several recent works on commanding this fleet of thirteen ships, was sent this topic. The debate has been polarized by the Portuguese just to do a little business, it between those who view "modernity" as the seems. As Landes explains, "they sent him to result of a "European miracle"2, the culturally make money and told him not to look for unique and internally generated project of the trouble; but if a hostile vessel should try to do West, and those who question this "European him harm, he was not to let it come near, but miracle" paradigm as Eurocentric, and look to rather to stand off and blow it out of the water"9. other factors to understand and explain Western It is significant to Landes that shortly after this, economic and political world dominance. David European ships were regularly calling on ports Landes has written a recent book vigorously throughout the world, while no Asian ships stating the argument for European economic and appeared in Europe. China had abruptly stopped political dominance resulting from internal its voyages under Zheng He in the early 15th development, and attributing the motive force century, an example of its essentially static and for this development to culture. On the other inward-looking culture. hand, Andre Gunder Frank sees European economic ascendancy as a recent and temporary So Europeans had seized the world initiative, phenomenon, and attempts to place it in the and it was their unique cultural values that context of a longstanding world-economic allowed for them to do this. This European system3. R. Bin Wong4 and Kenneth Pomeranz5 exceptionalism goes back for Landes to classical use comparative strategies to account for the times, as "Europe had always thought of itself as energy transformation of the industrial different from the societies to the east"10. The revolution, which they see as crucial to Western difference, of course, was the distinction economic advantages. Jack Goldstone argues for between the "free city" of the West and the the importance of certain political, cultural, and despotisms of the East. Linked with Western scientific changes which occurred specifically in democracy was the notion of private property. England after 1688 in leading to the Landes finds that the Western conception of technological breakthroughs of the industrial property rights goes back to biblical times. revolution a century later6. I will look at the Judaic and Christian values play an important arguments of these historians, offer some role, particularly later during the early modern critique of their strengths and weaknesses, and period, in his argument for European finally suggest some directions for exceptionalism. More than this, however, "the conceptualizing the analysis and further very notion of economic development was a research. Western Invention"11. We are not surprised when Landes later explicitly invokes the David Landes attributes European success to its Weberian thesis of the relationship between unique cultural values, social institutions, and Protestant ethics and capitalism. He asserts that political practices. This success was entirely "the heart of the matter lay indeed in the making "internally driven" by these characteristics. of a new kind of man –rational, ordered, Europe was indeed "exceptional," and "took diligent, productive"12. Ah yes, the relationship another path," from the rest of the world's between values and economic success! Let's not societies. He argues that "for the last thousand forget those other European characteristic years, Europe (the West) has been the prime mentioned by Landes at various points: honesty mover of development and modernity"7. It took and thrift, as well as greed and passion. These 500 years of preparation to assume world factors in his argument cannot be stressed too dominance, but when Europeans appeared in the much, since he declares, "if we learn anything Indian Ocean around 1500 they already had the from the history of economic development, it is advantages necessary to dominate the world. that culture makes all the difference"13. This shift to European world supremacy is marked for Landes by the Portuguese fleet sent The dynamic nature of European technology is a out in 1500 to follow up on Vasco Da Gama's product of the Middle Ages, which Landes calls circumvention of Africa and entrance into the "one of the most inventive societies that history Indian Ocean in 1498. The Portuguese were had known"14. Not only did Europeans create superior to anyone they would find there, and the notion of economic development, they are they knew it. What made this so? In a word, also responsible for "the invention of invention,"

128 © Historia Actual Online 2004 Marc Ferguson Why the West? the title of one of Landes's chapters. The quality Narrative of this approach, typified by such of European technology is of course for Landes thinkers as Karl Marx and Max Weber, was to a result of European culture's openness to see modernity as the great teleological project of innovation and change. He cites several the West. The practice of world history, using examples of European invention, or adoption the approaches of these European social and novel use of other's technology. These sciences, takes the history of Europe as the norm examples include the water wheel, eyeglasses, when examining the history of other parts of the gunpowder, and printing. He also writes of the globe. Therefore, revisionists start by superiority of European shipbuilding, and their questioning the fundamental assumptions of use of technology that allowed them to navigate historians who situate the origins of modernity the oceans. Other societies had been unable to within the history of Europe, and their critique take advantage of technology as Europeans did attempts to place these assumptions and the due to their hostility to change, lack of social science that articulated them within the protection of private property, or arrogant historical context of nineteenth-century complacency. European experiences with industrialization and imperialism18. One of the most strident of recent The Industrial Revolution, for Landes, was a critics of the Eurocentric perspective is Andre natural development of the growth of European Gunder Frank. commerce, advancing technological knowledge, and capital accumulation. It is important, but As obvious as it is to Landes that in the last does not play a central role in the Rise of the millennium "Europe (the West) has been the West. It is no watershed event, as Europe in this prime mover of development and modernity," account has already left the rest of the world far creating with its expansion a European global behind. This "continuing accumulation" economy, it is equally obvious to Andre Gunder occurring in Europe is contrasted with "the Frank that until 1800 Europe was relatively interruption of Islamic and Chinese intellectual unimportant and backward. For Frank, the and technological advance, not only the notion of European dynamism contrasted with cessation of improvement but the Asian stagnation is a Eurocentric myth that is institutionalization of the stoppage"15. Landes not supported by the evidence. In ReOrient: identifies three factors that he sees as critical for Global Economy in the Asian Age he asserts that understanding why the Industrial Revolution the "real world" between 1400 and 1800 is one occurred in Europe and during the late 18th in which Asia dominated an already existing century. These three factors are: (1) the growing world economic system. autonomy of intellectual inquiry; (2) method, that is, a language of proof; and (3) the Frank rejects any notion of European routinization of research and its diffusion16. exceptionalism. He argues that because of its economic backwardness, Europe was able to What we have here is a restatement of the participate in the global economy during the unique and intrinsic cultural characteristics that early modern period solely because of American Landes attributes to Western Civilization: silver and gold. Europe only became freedom, individualism, rationality, economically dominant in the world after 1800, innovativeness, openness. The fruit of these as a result of global economic factors. In cultural qualities was their inevitable ReOrient, his mission is to combat the culmination in the Industrial Revolution. historically inaccurate "Eurocentric paradigm" Specifically, Great Britain was the site where in favor of a "humanocentric global paradigm," industrialization first occurred, and this "was not and to propose an explanation for the rise of a matter of chance. but the result of work, Europe after 1800 that does not hinge on ingenuity, imagination, and enterprise." Britain European exceptionalism. seems to have embodied as a nation the Western cultural values lauded by Landes, who asserts Frank is an economic structuralist who discounts that "Britain had the makings; but then Britain cultural interpretations for the "Rise of the made itself"17. West." What is essential to his argument is the existence, prior to European expansion around Critics of the argument that Western dominance 1500, of an already existing world economic resulted from Europe's natural internal system. Rather than being generated by internal development point to its origins in nineteenth- cultural, economic, or institutional factors, any century European social thought. The Grand European "rise," and for that matter Asian

© Historia Actual Online 2004 129 Why the West? Marc Ferguson "decline," occurred within the context of this superiority from an early date. Landes, as we world economy. Furthermore, he argues that saw, argues that Medieval Europe itself was within this world economy there are cycles of technologically creative and dynamic, and that growth and decline, called Kondratieff cycles, during the early modern period European which affect the entire global economy. technology was largely superior to that of the rest of the world, which was tradition-bound and It was the existence of this global economic uninterested in technological innovation. system that had attracted Europe to seek access Scientific method and technological innovation to trade with Asia since the time of the crusades. are seen as two sides of the same coin of a The so-called voyages of discovery were a result uniquely secular modernizing Europe. For of this attempt to get at the wealth of Asia. Franks this is just another Eurocentric myth; the Frank outlines in detail the structure of global rest of Eurasia was anything but stagnant and trade within this world economy. Europe used technology-phobic. Among the examples he gold and silver stolen from the New World to cites to counter this myth are guns and military buy its way into this already established world technology. He cites the excellence of Ottoman economic system. During the early modern military technology, particularly guns, which period, Europe was economically backward in were copied by Europeans, and disputes the relation to the rest of Eurasia and Europeans had "Eurocentric fable" that the Chinese invented nothing other than gold and silver to offer in the gunpowder but did not know how to use it. In global market. Most of the silver extracted from terms of scientific knowledge, he also cites the New World flowed into China in exchange examples of superior scientific knowledge from for the Asian commodities Europeans coveted. Asia, such as the fact that the theory and The degree of Europe's trade deficit is practice of inoculation against smallpox came demonstrated by the fact that gold and silver from India. never constituted less than two-thirds of its total exports. As a result, there was no significant Again, however, Franks insists that technology capital accumulation in Europe, as others have and science must be seen in a global, not argued, and European participation in the global national or regional, context: "Technology turns economy remained dependent on the flow of out not to be independently parallel. Instead, precious metals from America. technology is rapidly diffused or adapted to common and/or different circumstances. In In effect, Frank reverses Landes's picture of a particular, the choice, application, and 'progress' commercially dynamic Europe and a stagnant, of technology turns out to be the result of declining Asia. Asia, rather than relinquishing rational response to opportunity costs that are its economic dominance to Europe, remained the themselves determined by world economic and dynamic center of a world economic system local demand and supply conditions"20. He also throughout the early modern period. Frank maintains that scientific theory played no part in asserts that "Asians were preponderant in the technological innovation at least until the mid- world economy and system not only in 19th century. Furthermore, non-European population and production, but also in societies made significant contributions to productivity, competitiveness, trade, in a word, science and technology21. "There was no capital formation until 1750 or 1800. Moreover, European technology! In the worldwide division contrary to latter-day European mythology, of labor in a competitive world economy Asians had the technology and developed the national, regional, or sectional technological economic and financial institutions to match"19. superiority could not be maintained as long as at While he admits that accurate figures are least some other real or potential competitors difficult to come by, he cites statistics indicating had sufficient interest and capacity to acquire such measures as per capita income, population such technology as well"22. growth, and GNP to support his position. Comparisons aside, worldwide economic Frank even marshals evidence that European relationships, which created the conditions for contemporaries in the early modern period and Asian superiority and European marginality, are on the eve of the industrial revolution saw what really matter. Europe as less economically developed than Asia. With particular glee, not to mention irony, Historians who argue that European expansion he cites Adam Smith himself on this topic. In and the industrial revolution were internally The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, generated make much of European technological Smith observes the crucial role of America as a

130 © Historia Actual Online 2004 Marc Ferguson Why the West? market for European manufactured goods, the development as normative. He points out that superior wealth and manufacturing of China to comparative approaches have generally assumed Europe, and that it is American silver and gold that either Europe had something crucial for (not their manufactured goods) that allows industrialization lacking in other societies, or Europe to trade with Asia23. that non-European regions had some flaw blocking the "normal" progression to industrial So with all of Europe's disadvantages, how can modernity followed by Europe. Therefore, the the industrial revolution and European 19th and goal of comparing Europe and China has 20th century global domination be explained? typically been to identify what Chinese society To a great extent Europe's relative backwardness lacked for the development of an industrial to the rest of Eurasia was key. But first we have economy. Wong's approach is intended to to return to Frank's Kondratieff cycles in the overcome the biased assumptions of European global economy. He finds that a long growth social science: phase, an "A" phase, was ending in the mid- eighteenth century, and that the global economy "To transcend Eurocentric views of the world, I was entering into a contractive "B" phase. So, believe we should return to European cases to while the rest of the economic Asian consider carefully how national state formation powerhouse was entering a contraction, the and capitalist development actually took place relatively underdeveloped Europe was able to as historical processes rather than as abstract escape this contraction and take advantage of the theoretical models. After assessing Chinese rest of Eurasia's weakness. This is where the dynamics according to European measures of technological advances known as the Industrial changes I evaluate European possibilities Revolution come in. according to Chinese standards in order to introduce comparisons not usually made by Importantly for Frank, the context for the contemporary analysts. Sustained comparison of Industrial Revolution was not European, but Chinese and European patterns of economic global. It is viewed as a "world development" development, state formation, and social protest that moved to the West: "the relevant question is can suggest ways of interpreting historical not so much what the 'distinctive' European change in both parts of the world, identify those features or factors are of the industrial subjects on which additional historical research revolution as how and why this industrial shift may be especially useful, and contribute to the took place from East to West"24. Here I am construction of social theory grounded not only boiling down Frank's argument to its simplest in the European historical past but that of other form, but I think this is essentially accurate. regions as well"26 Because of Europe's relative underdevelopment, it had a lower population to land-resource ratio In attempting to understand why Europe than the rest of Eurasia. This meant that workers experienced an industrial revolution in the in labor-intensive proto-industrial manufacturing nineteenth century and China did not, historians received higher wages, which provided an point out a number of differences between China incentive for developing labor saving and Europe. The problem, according to Wong, is technology in Europe. This incentive did not that it is difficult to assess which of those exist in Asia since the low wages resulting from differences were significant. Wong begins by a high population to land-resource ratio kept identifying broad similarities in the pre- labor-intensive proto-industrial manufacturing industrial economic patterns of early modern profitable. The money that continued to flow Europe and late imperial China. In fact, he from America was also crucial to the demonstrates that commerce in late imperial continuation of this labor saving, capital- China operated according to the market intensive industrial development25. dynamics identified by Adam Smith. Both Europe and China experienced economic A different approach from Frank's integrative expansion during the 17th and 18th centuries, model is the comparative approach taken by R. including "increased rural industries, more Bin Wong. Wong, as with both Frank and productive agricultures, and expanded Pomeranz, disputes the portrayal of China as commercial networks"27. static, despotic, economically backward, and closed to innovation. He starts by critiquing the Wong concludes that none of these aspects of assumptions of the social science models used economic growth can be seen as crucial factors by historians that take European models of in Europe's 19th century Industrial Revolution.

© Historia Actual Online 2004 131 Why the West? Marc Ferguson Pre- industrial economic growth and post- sudden and unanticipated development of coal industrial economic take-off are not causally and steam driven technologies in England. Up linked. No one could have foreseen the until this time he sees nothing exceptional in Industrial Revolution and the economic Europe's economic situation relative to the rest expansion that resulted in Europe. In fact, Adam Eurasia, writing, "there is little to suggest that Smith and all other political economists western Europe's economy had decisive assumed that there were natural limits to advantages before then [the 1800's], either in its economic growth that could not be overcome28. capital stock or economic institutions, that made industrialization highly probable there and Wong considers whether the resources that unlikely elsewhere"31. He makes careful flowed into Europe from the New World, the comparative analyses of various regions from wealth they were able to expropriate, and the around the world, focusing primarily on England capital accumulation from slave labor and other and the lower Yangzi delta in China, concluding activities could have been the factors allowing that China and Europe were roughly equal in all for the transcending of natural economic limits, important indices of economic development. but concludes that they were not. What set Europe off from China, were the technological Similarly to Frank, Pomeranz spends much of discoveries associated with energy that allowed his analysis disputing some of the "received for dramatic increases in productivity. However, wisdom" of European superiority in the early Wong's point is that these discoveries could not modern period. Technology is one of those have been predicted and did not inevitably areas. He shows that there were some areas in follow from Europe's cultural, economic, or which European technology was the best in the social development. world. He states, for instance, that in 1750 some European pumps and technology for canal locks If proto-industrial development in Europe and were the world's best. (He attributes this to the China were so similar, why is it that China application of Newtonian mechanics, a claim failed to make the technological innovations that that would undermine Frank's assertion that occurred in Europe? Rather than search for European science made no contribution to its reasons to account for the failure of China to technology until mid-19th century.) On the other produce an Industrial Revolution, Wong again hand, there were areas in which Europe lagged questions the assumptions upon which such an behind. This was the case with textile weaving approach would be based. He states that there is and dyeing processes, porcelain manufacturing, no reason to assume that cultural attitudes and and iron quality. He similarly demonstrates the governmental institutions should have an effect comparability of population, capital on the pace of technological innovation. accumulation, and the market economies of Pointing to the work of Joel Mokyr29 that Europe and Asia32. demonstrates that "bursts of technological change are relatively rare in world history," Based on these comparative analyses, Pomeranz Wong concludes that "we should be less concludes that Europe was not more advanced perplexed by the apparent slowdown of Chinese than the other developed regions of Eurasia prior technological change and more puzzled by to the 19th century. It was only after the Europe's technological innovations"30. He does Industrial Revolution that Europe began to not propose an explanation of the European outpace the rest of Eurasia. The task then is to Industrial Revolution, but instead demonstrates account for these technological innovations the inadequacy of the prevailing explanations. occurring in Europe. Since Pomeranz rejects the Wong's methodological approach is intended to notion of European cultural exceptionalism undermine notions of historical necessity and ("European science, technology, and inevitability. philosophical inclinations alone do not seem an adequate explanation")33, he looks to global Kenneth Pomeranz combines aspects of Wong's conjunctures outside of Europe to account for comparative approach to analyze claims of this transformation. European superiority during the early modern period and Frank's global integrative approach Pomeranz argues that both Europe and China to understand the factors resulting in Europe's were on the brink of ecological exhaustion eventual global dominance. In seeking the point around 1750. Europe's success, and the source of European divergence from the rest of the of the industrial revolution, was based on two world, Pomeranz locates it around 1800 with the factors. The first was the convenient location of

132 © Historia Actual Online 2004 Marc Ferguson Why the West? coalfields relative to manufacturing sites in Pomeranz concludes, "when we combine this England. The second was that Europe could use notion of European capitalism, in which links to the relatively open land space of the Americas the state and the right to use force and preempt as "ghost acreage" for important necessary certain markets loom large, with the idea that resources, such as fiber and wood, allowing it to advanced market economies everywhere faced escape pre-industrial Malthusian constraints and growing ecological problems, a new picture the consequences of the impending ecological emerges of what Europe's most significant exhaustion. Thus, he sees a conjuncture between differences were"37. the accident of England possessing advantages in an area of technology which allowed the use Jack Goldstone, a historian of early modern of conveniently located resources for energy Europe, allies himself with Frank, Wong, and conversion, and the fruits of European Pomeranz in placing the "divergence" of Europe expansion and coercion to avoid the from the rest of the world rather late. He raises consequences of exhausting Old World fundamental questions of method in pointing out resources through such processes as that historians too often confuse sequence for deforestation. This helped Europe bridge the gap causation, assuming that just because something between the initial appearance of the new energy came before an event, that it caused it. conversion technologies and the century it took Historians who know the outcome of European to start reaping great profit and advantage34. 19th and 20th century dominance too easily privilege aspects of the past that resemble their In Pomeranz's analysis, Europe's Atlantic view of the present, and dismiss other aspects of system, based on conquest and coercion, gave it the past that do not fit their perspective. a number of advantages. Not only could the New World supply crucial resources that were Goldstone proposes an "odd and quirky story" to diminishing in the Old World, but also America explain European divergence. In the 17th provided a perfect market fit for European century the most powerful empires in the world, products that had no market in Asia. the Spanish Empire, the Mughal Empire, and the Furthermore, the plantation system in the Ming Empire, and many other regions, Caribbean, with its reliance on slavery, gave experienced rebellions. Each of these societies Europe a market for its goods, and a source of was able to restore order and reassert authority cheap, labor-intensive resources. There were leading to a new period of stability and also the precious metals that gave Europe the prosperity, "but that strength and unity comes at currency to participate in Old World markets. the price of cultural conformity and intensifying Pomeranz contends that without the windfalls traditional orthodoxies regarding beliefs, social from the New World, Europe would have been hierarchy, and state power"38. The exception to forced down the same labor-intensive path that this pattern is that in Britain William of Orange's the rest of Asia had to follow to deal with invasion of England resulted in a settlement that ecological stresses. European overseas precluded the kind of repressive return to expansion generated various institutional forms orthodoxy experienced in other parts of the that were given the state-sanctioned right to use world. Goldstone claims that this created in force, including not only slavery and the Britain "the same kind of pluralistic open plantation system, but also joint-stock culture, and a substantial minority that can only companies and licensed monopolies. Pomeranz advance economically, as was found in asserts that the European record in the 18th pluralistic and innovative periods in other century was mediocre when competing with the societies. [and] in the space opened by this Old World regions without using force35. settlement, innovators and entrepreneurs emerged and flourished"39. In the final analysis, European institutions did matter. Pomeranz especially takes notice of the This opening that allowed for three institutions that emerged from Europe's Atlantic breakthroughs that would lead to the technology system and the unique relationship between of the Industrial Revolution: Newtonian physics, European commerce and the state. Europe's the principles of atmospheric pressure and the overseas practices were, in Pomeranz's words, vacuum, and the invention of the steam-powered "the projection of interstate rivalries overseas"36. pump. It also allowed for the adoption of Despite the broad similarities throughout experimental science among craftsmen and led Eurasia after 1500, for the sake of understanding to its application to solve a very specific which features ultimately made a difference, problem in Britain, the need to pump water out

© Historia Actual Online 2004 133 Why the West? Marc Ferguson of mines. Initially, the steam-powered pump was when Europe surpassed the rest of the world in highly inefficient, and only useful in locations terms of wealth and technological achievement. with plenty of coal and water nearby. Although Intense scrutiny and disputation has focused on the first of these pumps was installed in 1712, it the relationship between Europe and the rest of was not until after Watt and Boulton's Eurasia between 1500 and 1800. The "Landes modifications in 1765 that this technology camp" sees Europe as already being uniquely became more widely applicable. On the basis of wealthy and advanced in relation to a poverty this technology British industry, and later the stricken, stagnant, and despotic Asia, while the rest of Europe, caught up with that of China and "revisionists" believe that Europe and Asia were India40. comparable in terms of technology, commerce, and industry by the mid-18th century. The This argument at first blush may sound second question has to do with the reasons for somewhat like Landes's, with its emphasis on an Europe's technological innovations in energy open society allowing for innovation. However, production that led to the Industrial Revolution. Goldstone specifically rejects the notion that Those who believe that Europe already had Europe had long-since passed Asia by, and that unique advantages see this as a continuation of its economic and technological progress resulted an ongoing process of technological advance from intrinsic cultural attributes. His argument is and capital accumulation, while those who that historically contingent, serendipitous, and believe that Europe and Asia were roughly unpredictable events led to the conditions that comparable at the time see it as an unexpected resulted in a specific technological innovation discontinuity that must be understood through with unforeseeable consequences. examining the contingencies of its historical context. Furthermore, everyone seems to be One very interesting aspect of Goldstone's using the same evidence, from the meaning of critique is his discussion of European expansion events to economic and demographic statistics, after 1500. He challenges the notion that this and arriving at dramatically different expansion is evidence of, or resulted from, conclusions. European cultural, technological, or economic superiority to the rest of Eurasia. He equates the An example of how the same event is used by Spanish and Portuguese conquests to those of historians to support contradictory conclusions the Huns, Mongols, and other groups who is that of the Chinese voyages during the 15th conquered more advanced civilizations, stating century that reached as far as the eastern coast of "it has been a general pattern that smallish Africa. For Landes the abrupt end to these groups of underdeveloped, barbarian peoples on ventures and the subsequent expansion of the periphery of great and populous civilizations European sea travel into the Indian Ocean is can achieve stunning geopolitical victories when evidence of Europe's vigor and China's the great civilizations are in decline"41. stagnation and lack of curiosity. For Jack Goldstone points out that, rather than resulting Goldstone the end of these voyages has an from superior civilization, the Spanish victories entirely different meaning. This was an entirely over the Aztec and Incas resulted from their rational economic decision with no other "ruthlessly and brutally" exploiting advantages implications for Chinese economic strength in gained due to epidemic disease and internal Asia. The reason was simple, "there was nothing weaknesses. Likewise in Mughal India, the there to justify the costs of such voyages. The British were able to exploit the internal divisions further China sailed, the poorer and more barren of an already declining empire. These examples the lands that they found." He describes the flow are contrasted with the inability of the British to of Asian sea trade as converging on Malacca, gain entrance into China until well into the 19th which the prevailing winds made the most century. Rather than demonstrating an advanced convenient point, and China continued to civilization and indicating the potential for an dominate this Asian sea trade until the Industrial Revolution, Goldstone observes, nineteenth century43. "until well into the 1800s, the European conquests are not greatly different than [sic] the Landes characterizes non-European societies as other great barbarian conquests of history"42. stagnant and technologically backward. According to him, there is really no such thing The recent dispute over the origins of European as science outside of Europe. Useful technology world domination seems to revolve around two moved in one direction after 1500, from Europe interrelated questions. The first has to do with to the rest of the world. Except that in Landes's

134 © Historia Actual Online 2004 Marc Ferguson Why the West? account, the rest of the world was not very variation on this theme at least has the virtue of interested. Both Frank and Pomeranz dispute placing technological innovation within a this characterization and see it as yet another specific historical context. Culture is always example of Eurocentrism. They both portray mediated through practices and institutions, and China and India as roughly equal to Europe in it is insufficient to pin technological technology and science around 1750. Frank cites achievement on inherent openness or curiosity. examples of Europe learning from Indian Landes wants to resuscitate the Weberian science. Two such examples are vaccination Protestant ethic argument, which has enormous against smallpox and the importation into appeal because it is elegant, but simplistic. Europe of astronomical tables. We have two There is something reassuring, yet too easy, such startlingly different views of world about reducing whole cultures to character technology during the pre- modern period that it types, particularly for our society that makes is hard to assess the claims. There are two issues much of personality traits. here. The first is whether or not European science and technology were clearly superior to Frank's economic-diffusionist perspective has the rest of the world in the early modern period. advantages and drawbacks. He argues that The second is the more fundamental question of technology is not "independently parallel," but how technology and scientific knowledge that technological choices and innovation can actually grows and changes. only be understood in the context of the global economic system. This approach is much more As to the superiority of European technology congenial to a "world history" perspective, and science, none of these arguments have left allowing us to focus on interconnections rather me with any certainty on the matter. Examples than identifying technologies as essentially can, and have been, marshaled to support both "Western," or "Asian." Pomeranz shares this sides. But the mere listing of machines, tools, or global perspective, but he is not so strictly processes by itself is not compelling. In some structural in his approach. While Frank relies cases, such as military technology and guns that solely on global economic patterns for his I mentioned above, historians make assertions explanations, Pomeranz uses this as context that flatly contradict each other. For instance, within which to comparatively analyze were the Ottomans hopelessly backward in this technologies in different regions. Instead of area, as Landes claims, or were their guns the assuming that one area, China for instance, did standard to which Europeans aspired, as claimed not have a specific technological variant because by Frank? I find Landes's characterization of of a cultural flaw, the method of "reciprocal Asian societies as technologically dormant and comparison" employed by Pomeranz can disinterested suspiciously stereotypical, and yet demonstrate the contingent factors, such as Frank has not succeeded in arguing away the social patterns or resource availability, that superior technological achievement of Europe as made the technology more likely to occur or merely a Eurocentric myth. Less polemical and more practical in one place versus another. Also, more promising is Pomeranz's approach. After if we consider that regions may be taking on the "received wisdom" of European technologically comparable, though with technological and scientific superiority, he then variations on technological strengths, there is no sets aside the question of who was more way of knowing in advance which technology advanced. As I understand his approach, with will prove more advantageous in the future. It is regard to technology and scientific knowledge, only in hindsight that the historian knows which the issue is not whose was better, but how and technology turned out to have more advantages why did they differ? under new circumstances, and it is non-historical to assume that the outcome was pre-ordained. This leads us directly into the question of technological growth and change. I find Much of the debate over the relative strengths of Landes's cultural explanations to be pre-1800 Europe and Asia hinges on the unsatisfactory. His statements about cultural evaluation of economic and demographic characteristics and technological innovation are evidence. While Landes rejects the approach of much too broadly drawn. Cultural attitudes and grounding historical arguments, even those beliefs certainly could have an impact on about wealth apparently, in economic theory and technological innovation, but I think that the "cliometrics," Frank, Wong, and Pomeranz rely argument would have to be drawn much more heavily on this these methods. But it makes their carefully, and focused more locally. Goldstone's complex analyses dense reading, and I do not

© Historia Actual Online 2004 135 Why the West? Marc Ferguson feel competent to evaluate the statistical military might to open markets or enforce evidence. Writers on different sides of the unequal trade relations, and slavery. Profits from debate interpret statistical evidence in the slave trade, and production from slave labor, contradictory ways. For instance, in support of were important aspects of the Atlantic trade his contentions of Asian economic dominance, network. Eric Williams made a plausible and Frank quotes estimates of GNP and worldwide influential argument that the institution of per capita income from the economic historian slavery allowed European economies to Paul Bairoch, an advocate of European accumulate the capital that was eventually used exceptionalism44. Landes expresses skepticism to fuel the Industrial Revolution48. While we about the use of statistics for reconstructing may not be able to credit this capital economic and social patterns during the early accumulation, if there in fact was such a thing, modern period, however he does use them when with causing the Industrial Revolution, it may they seem to confirm his claims45. For advocates still have played a role in financing this of the Wealthy Asia/impoverished Europe fledgling industrial process. thesis, the statistics show Asia to be a wealthy economic powerhouse. For historians who see State formation and interstate conflict within European development already on the path to Europe may have played a significant role in world dominance, at best the evidence is European expansion and in the development of ambiguous and shows Europe growing more commercial institutions that would later prove rapidly than Asia. extremely advantageous in international economic competition when backed by Whether or not Europe was already ahead of industrial economies. Landes would have it that Asia, during the pre-modern period European the limited role of government in commercial states did dramatically expand their trade and activity, its allowance for individual freedoms, commercial networks. In a review article, and the restriction of governmental authority to Charles Tilly quotes Landes on trade and protecting property rights was one of the keys to commerce in the 17th century Indian Ocean: Western prosperity. This is not so clear to me, "Everyone in these Eastern waters was half- since one of the main preoccupations of bandit, including the local sea jackals who European states during the early modern period ambushed the small boats and still in our time was finding sources of revenue to support their prey on defenseless refugees. But the English growth. One historian of state formation in were the big guns, the pirates' pirates. No vessel Europe, Martin van Creveld, in fact argues that too big for the taking. Not a bad strategy: if you it was the totalizing propensities of Western can't make money in business, you grab from states that resulted in their ability to marshal the those who do." Tilly then remarks, "an unwary resources to eventually dominate the world49. reader might expect such remarks to culminate in a theory of forcible expropriation"46. With regard to the uniqueness of European However, Landes and others who argue that banking and mercantile institutions, according to Europe "pulled itself up by its own bootstraps" Frank and Pomeranz, it turns out that these dismiss the accusation that Europe acquired its supposedly unique institutions can be found wealth through "forcible expropriation." Landes everywhere in the world. However, it may be admits that coercion and exploitation were the case that "Western Europeans' innovations in aspects of European expansion, but see them as organization for exploration and durable peripheral and not as significant factors in conquest and in creating institutions that Europe's economic growth and eventual combined entrepreneurship with intense economic world domination. Instead, the key to coercion. gave them much of their edge"50. In European success was hard work, curiosity, free other words, Europeans may have pioneered markets, and all of the concomitant virtues of forms of predatory commercial practices and the Protestant ethic. Yet, I have to agree with institutions that worked well under certain Charles Tilly, who points out that "much of circumstances, such as in the New World, and Landes's narrative –as distinct from his that combined well with the technological conclusions– confirms the centrality of advantages gained in the later 19th century after firepower and predation to European success"47. industrialization.

Coercion and exploitation included pushing Not only do Frank, Wong, Pomeranz, and indigenous peoples off their lands in America, Goldstone disagree with Landes with regard to taking the wealth of conquered people, using the origins and causes of the "Rise of the West,"

136 © Historia Actual Online 2004 Marc Ferguson Why the West? but they also take vastly different where an innovation initially appeared, it was methodological approaches. While Landes tells taken up wherever it was useful. Could a good story, there is no clear analysis contained technological and commercial sophistication with Wealth and Poverty. Neither is there an have reached a critical mass within the Eurasian identifiable methodology. Landes bluntly asserts landmass that would allow for crossing the Western cultural supremacy as a fact, and then threshold of certain technological and resource narrates a story of rise and advance, anecdotally constraint thresholds? Is it that certain historical relating what he considers important and contingencies allowed Europe, or rather Great representative events. While Landes Britain, to be the take-off point? It seems a more continuously refers back to culture as the illuminating perspective to place European determining ground of the creation of wealth, expansion within a global context, and to see the what he really seems to be proposing is a form Industrial Revolution as a global transformation. of cultural psychology. Europeans are This perspective allows us to understand repeatedly praised as industrious, curious, European technological and economic changes freedom loving, individualistic, rational, etc. In within the larger context of patterns of Landes's words, the European is "a new kind of worldwide economic and cultural interaction. man." This is the story of the "rise of the west" as a heroic adventure, with the European Of course, Frank is in the minority in seeing a explorer, inventor, merchant, and industrialist as world system operating from ancient times, and heroic archetype. This hero is a combination the concept of a world system even in the early Prometheus and rugged individualist. This modern period not based on European western self-image of the individualistic hero hegemony is widely dismissed by historians52. who carves out his own life from the wilderness However, the evidence appears to be may have resonance within contemporary overwhelming for networks of trade and contact culture, but is smacks of cultural narcissism51. across Afro-Eurasia from very early times. Even during periods when that contact was greatly However, there is nothing in Landes's approach diminished, for instance after the fall of the that can offer us useful new insights into the Roman and Han empires, contacts never ceased historical problem of the "rise of the West." to function entirely. Janet Abu-Lughod's work Insistence on cultural superiority and the piling on economic systems in Eurasia gives us a up of examples cannot get us away from the model for seeing interconnected economies, problem of teleology. Furthermore, The Wealth even where we might not see a fully integrated and Poverty of Nations is, in the final analysis, world-system53. more a polemical synthesis of previous research and theory than an original work of historical The work of historians such as Frank, Wong, analysis. Its stridency of tone is intended to Pomeranz, and Goldstone have at the very least cheer the already convinced and to rankle raised significant questions about the received dissenters. His claims about culture are wisdom of Western exceptionalism, and has essentialist, contrary to his protestations. The proposed methods which allow us to ask new cultural attributes he points to as fundamentally and more interesting questions than "why is the Western are posited as eternal verities. This is West unique?" The most innovative approach in non-historical. He does not historically situate these recent contributions to the Rise of the the cultural attributes, social institutions, West debate is the comparative method of political forms, technological accomplishments, analysis used by Wong and Pomeranz. This etc, to demonstrate how they were advantageous method, called "reciprocal analysis" by in a particular historical context. Pomeranz, allows us to make comparisons from varying perspectives, rather than measuring a The work of Frank, Wong, and Pomeranz, in my society or economy against a normative ideal. opinion, all make important contributions to the This can allow the historian to understand discussion and offer useful insights and change, be it growth or decline, in the context of methodologies. An integrative perspective actual historical circumstances and allows us to view the Afro- Eurasian world, and contingencies, rather than with judgments of after 1500 the entire globe, as a whole. Frank cultural superiority versus inferiority, or makes the point that there were no European, pronouncements about history having gone nor for that matter, Asian technologies. The wrong. After all, in the course of human history historical record shows that technology diffused the dominance of the West has been a brief across the Eurasian landmass; and regardless of phenomenon. Just as Europeans were able to

© Historia Actual Online 2004 137 Why the West? Marc Ferguson adapt technologies which originated outside of the persistence of multiple and contingent Europe to expand across the globe and for a time futures"55. exercise political and cultural hegemony over large parts of the world, there is no reason to think that many of these same technologies and NOTES practices won't contribute to the growth and perhaps world dominance of other regions as 1 Landes, David S., The Wealth and Poverty of historical contingencies change in the future. Nations. New York and London, W. W. Norton & Co, 344. Perhaps then another historian like Landes will 2 conclude that Europeans were quite clever Jones, Eric L., The European Miracle: innovators, but could not put their innovations to Environments, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, Cambridge, 1981. This full practical use. If the challengers to the book provides an earlier assessment of European European exceptionalist position are correct, this economic growth based on internally generate has enormous implications for the teaching of factors. history. The entire concept of Western 3 Gunder Frank, Andre, ReOrient: Global Economy Civilization is that Europe did have a unique and in the Asian Age. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, exceptional path, the roots of which can be University of California Press, 1998. traced back to very ancient times. If Europe was 4 Wong, R. Bin, China Transformed: Historical not already on the path to the Industrial chances and the limits of european experience. New York, Cornell University Press, 1997. Revolution and world dominance after 1500, 5 then most of the world history courses that focus Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the making of the Modern World on the post-modern period, usually Economy. Princeton and Oxford, Princeton conceptualized something like "World and 54 University Press, 2000. Rising West: 1450 to Present" , will have to be 6 Goldstone, Jack, "The Rise of the West-or Not? A completely revised. revision to socioeconomic theory". Sociological Theory, 18 (2000), 157-194. What is needed are nuanced analyses of non- 7 Landes, David S., The Wealth..., op. cit., xxi. 8 European societies, similar to the research of Ibid., 89, italics in the original. 9 Ibid., 89. Wong and Pomeranz, that can tell us about their 10 economic and commercial patterns, social Ibid., 31. 11 Ibid., 32. patterns, social institutions, commercial 12 Ibid., 177. institutions, etc. without reducing them to 13 Ibid., 516. simplistic stereotypes about despotism, 14 Ibid., 45. indifference to trade, hostility to innovation, and 15 Ibid., 200. the like. 16 Ibid., 201. 17 Ibid., 215. 18 This recent work has largely focused on James M. Blaut analyzed the relationship between comparisons between Europe and China. Similar the perspective of European exceptionalism and its comparative analyses focused on the Mughal origins in 19th century European social theory in The Colonizer's Model of the World, New York and and Ottoman Empires, or the coastal trading London, Guilford University Press, 1993. cities of India compared with the "free cities" of 19 Gunder Frank, Andre, ReOrient..., op. cit., 166. Europe could be equally illuminating. While it 20 Ibid., 186. may turn out that Frank and Pomeranz are 21 Ibid., 185-205. wrong about European wealth prior to 1750 or 22 Ibid., 204. 1800, I think that their approaches are promising 23 Ibid., 131 and 278-79. 24 for gaining better historical understanding of Ibid., 285. 25 world during the period 1500 to 1800, and for Ibid., 258-320. 26 Wong, R. Bin, China..., op. cit., 7. understanding the historical circumstances that 27 led to the breakthrough of the Industrial Ibid., 278. 28 Ibid., 49-52. Revolution. 29 Wong cites Mokyr, Joel, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. If the past was closed and determined from early New York, Oxford University Press, 1990. on, as Landes would have us believe, what does 30 Wong, R. Bin, China..., op. cit., 55. that say about our future? I will close with this 31 Pomeranz, Kenneth, The great divergence..., op. sentiment and a quote from Bin Wong: "The cit., 68.. 32 plurality of historical pasts makes more likely Ibid., 31-68. 33 Ibid., 68.

34 Ibid., 211-297. 52 The work of Ferdinand Braudel and Immanuel 35 Ibid, 182: "If emerging capitalist firms in western Wallerstein take European economic expansion as Europe had unique advantages, one would expect the origin of a world economic system, with Europe these advantages to show up where European firms as the core. competed with Asian merchants. But a European 53 Abu-Lughod, Janet L., Before European edge appears primarily where geography and local Hegemony: The world system a.d. 1250-1350. New politics favored using force to create monopolies or York, Oxford University Press, 1989. near monopolies (mostly in spices)". 54 The title of the second semester world history 36 Ibid., 19. survey course at the University of Massachusetts, 37 Ibid., 20. Amherst. 38 Goldstone, Jack, "The rise...", op. cit., 169. 55 Wong, R. Bin, China..., op. cit., 293. 39 Ibid., 170. 40 Ibid., 171-176. 41 Ibid., 177. 42 Ibid., 180. 43 Ibid., 160. 44 Frank, Andre Gunder, ReOrient..., op. cit., 171-74.. 45 For example, Landes dismisses Bairoch's estimates of caloric intake, used by some to claim that the Indian ryot [peasant] lived better than the English farm laborer, "the opportunities to distort the result are endless, and the leverage of even a small mistake extended over two hundred years is enormous" (The Wealth..., op. cit., 165). However, he later uses comparative per capital product figures for Mexico, Barbados, and the territory of the United States in 1700, 1800, and 1989 to support his position that united States grew faster than Mexico and Barbados (ibid., 548). 46 Tilly, Charles, "A grand tour of exotic Landes". The American Historical Review, 104 (1999), 1254. My impulse here is to break into song from Gilbert and Sullivan: "Oh, better far to live and die/Under the brave black flag I fly,/Than play a sanctimonious part/With a pirate head and a pirate heart./Away to the cheating world go you,/Where pirates all are well-to-do;/But I'll be true to the song I sing, And live and die a Pirate King./For I am a Pirate King!/And it is, it is a glorious thing/To be a Pirate King!/For I am a Pirate King! .When Sally forth to seek my prey/I help myself in a royal way./I sink a few more ships, it's true,/Than a well-bred monarch ought to do." "Oh, Better Far to Live and Die" from The Pirates of Penzance. 47 Ibid., 1254. 48 Williams, Eric, Slavery and Capitalism. Chapell Hill and London, The University of North Carolina Press, 1944. 49 Van Creveld, Martin, The Rise and Decline of the State. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999. 50 Pomeranz, Kenneth, The great divergence..., op. cit., 285. 51 Landes chides the Chinese for their "arrogance" and "cultural triumphalism." Furthermore, he writes as a universal psychologist and moralist, not a historian when he states, "this rejection of the foreign was the more anxious for the very arrogance that justified it. That is the paradox of the superiority complex, it is intrinsically insecure and brittle. Those who cherish it need it and fear nothing so much as contradiction." Landes, David. S., The Wealth..., op. cit., 336.