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Europe and China Compared Fairfield University DigitalCommons@Fairfield Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications Sociology & Anthropology Department Fall 2002 Europe and China Compared Eric Mielants Fairfield University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/sociologyandanthropology- facultypubs Copyright 2002 SUNY Binghamton University Archived with the permission of the author and the copyright holder. Peer Reviewed Repository Citation Mielants, Eric, "Europe and China Compared" (2002). Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications. 46. https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/sociologyandanthropology-facultypubs/46 Published Citation Mielants, Eric. “Europe and China Compared” in Review of the Fernand Braudel Center, Vol. 25 (4), Fall 2002, pp.401-449. This item has been accepted for inclusion in DigitalCommons@Fairfield by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Fairfield. It is brought to you by DigitalCommons@Fairfield with permission from the rights- holder(s) and is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. An Essay-Review Europeand ChinaCompared* Eric Mielants /^hina hasbeen regarded as one ofthe most glorious civilizations V><throughout human history. In theMiddle Ages, China was prob- ablythe most developed of all regions: socioeconomically, politically, and militarily.By about 1100 it had a populationof almost 100 mil- lionpeople, the economy had a highlevel of monetization(use of papermoney, written contracts, mercantile credits, checks, promis- sorynotes, bills of exchange) while the largest cities must have had up to a millioninhabitants (Elvin, 1973: 159; Kracke,1969: 11). MedievalChina's economic advance outshone anything in Europe. Militarilyspeaking the Chinese Emperor was the strongest overlord ofthe entire Eurasian landmass: in thetwelfth century AD he could easilymobilize about one millionsoldiers (McNeill, 1982: 40). A visi- torfrom outer space whowould have compared Medieval China withMedieval Europe in 1000 AD,would have staked his bet on Chinaas faras socioeconomic,military, and technologicaldevelop- mentwas concerned(Lippit, 1987: 37-38; Deng,2000). Yet,800 yearslater, Europe dominated the globe politically, militarily, eco- nomically,and technologically.Was theChinese Empire incapable orunwilling to develop by conquering, subordinating, and systemati- callyexploiting its peripheries as westernEurope would? Tradition- ally,scholars have located the "great divergence" between China and Europein theperiod of the Industrial Revolution, which then opens up thequestion why China "failed" to experience an IndustrialRevo- lution(e.g., Elvin, 1973), and thebenefit of recurring growth. Pomeranz's(2000) recentstudy is a majorcontribution to the fieldof worldhistory as it attemptsto present,by way of Charles * I would like to acknowledgemy gratitude to NorihisaYamashita (Hokkaido Uni- versity),John Chaffee (Binghamton University),and George Satterfield(SUNY- Morrisville)for their comments and suggestionson the firstversion of thisarticle. Of course, no one but myselfis responsiblefor any errorsof factor interpretation. review,xxv, 4, 2002,401-49 401 This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:37:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 402 EricMielants Tilly's(1984) "encompassingcomparative method," a convincing explanationof whythe Westexperienced recurring growth and China(or India)did not. Pomeranz challenges the traditional (Euro- centric)position of Western social scientists who continue to believe thatmore "perfect competition," and morefree labor in Western marketsthan elsewhere enabled a take-offtooccur in Europe (2000: 17),as ifthe Industrial Revolution in Europewas an almostinevita- bleevent, due toits unique internal features. Pomeranz does a great job in carefullygoing over the available literature to dismissEu- rope'suniqueness (or predisposednatural or teleologicalpath to uniqueness)prior to 1800.He underminesany scholarly attempt to explainthe "rise of the West" (or the emergence of capitalism within Europe)by solely looking at Europe(e.g., Bois, 2000; Lachmann, 2000) or byexplaining Europe's advantage in termsof cultural and religiouspeculiarities to theregion (e.g., Park, 1995). He repeatedlypoints out that Europe was not the motor behind worldhistory before the Industrial Revolution, that there existed multiplecores prior to Europe'sdomination of world trade in the nineteenthcentury, and that these areas were all experiencing mod- estper capita growth as well.In hiswords the mostdeveloped parts of westernEurope seem to have sharedcrucial economic features- commercialization, corn- modificationofgoods, land, and labor, market-driven growth, and adjustmentby households of both fertility and labor allo- cationto economic trends- with other densely populated core areasin Eurasia(Pomeranz, 2000: 107). In his carefuland thoroughoverview of theliterature, Pomeranz rightfullydebunks Eurocentric myths, but unlike Frank (1998), he at- temptsto re-evaluatethe era beforethe nineteenth century as a fundamentally"polycentric world with no dominantcenter" (Pomer- anz,2000: 4, 273). AlthoughPomeranz distances himself from world-systems anal- ysisby claiming that "the exploitation of non-Europeans- and access to overseasresources more generally- [is] not the sole motorof Europeandevelopment" (2000: 3), hisfocus on theunique exploit- ativerelations of westernEurope with the New World,"and the exceptionalscale of the New World windfall" (2000: 11) whichthis generated,the importance he attributesto thelink between "capi- This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:37:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Europe and China Compared 403 talism,overseas coercion and industrialization" and his emphasis on thevisible hands of political-economicinstitutions of Europeancapitalism and violentinterstate competition, combined with some very lucky (forEurope) globalconjunctures, [which] made European (especiallyBritish) relations with the rest of the world unique amongcore-periphery relationships (2000: 185) comescloser to the world-systems paradigm than he seemswilling to admit. LikeWallerstein (1983), Pomeranz (2000: 187) is quitecritical of O'Brien's(1990) outrightdismissal of Europeanprofits generated outsideof Europe, and likeWallerstein (1974) theconquest of the NewWorld (in turn "the result of intense military competition with- in Europe")is consideredto be crucialto explainEurope's rise (Pomeranz,2000: 282). More importantly, Pomeranz himself insists on theimportance of fundamental differences between European- dominatedperipheries, and therelations China had withits own peripheries(2000: 255, 267, 289). WhilePomeranz's book should be appreciatedfor its efforts to underscoreonce more the vitalityand importanceof the non- European(especially East Asian) arena in termsof socioeconomic developments-since world-systems analysis sometimes stresses the increasingpower of Europe and the "passivity" ofthe to-be-incorpo- ratedexternal arena- the study is neverthelessproblematic from the pointof view of Braudel's longue durée. I contendthat both the structural (geographical, demographic, geopolitical)constraints and limitations China was facing on theone hand,and theagency and policychoices made by elites, in theface of internaland externalchallenges on theother, have to be taken intoaccount in orderto comprehendthe different political/eco- nomictrajectories of Europe and China in the long run. Although it has latelybeen in vogueto dismisseither the impact of European influenceto a verylimited period in time(e.g., Frank, 1998) or to attributeit(mainly) to a military/technological breakthrough because ofthe Industrial Revolution,1 I will attempt to tracethe roots of the 1 Pomeranzalso regardsthe Industrial Revolution as thewatershed that ultimately transformedthe world, and in variousparts of hisbook he discussesthe debates on (proto)-industrialdevelopments (2000). The obsessionof equating modernity with the This content downloaded on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:37:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 404 EricMielants greatdivergence in the thirteenth-fifteenthcenturies. Only by lookingat thehistorical trajectory of China and Europein thelong run(from c. 1200on) can one assessthe specific divergent trajecto- ries(or pathdependencies) at play.2 THE CHINESE SOCIOECONOMIC REVOLUTION DURINGTHE SUNG DYNASTIES(C. 900-1280). Pomeranzis ofcourse correct in claimingthat the scale of trade networksand themultitude of goodsexchanged in Asia weredaz- zlingwhen compared to Europe throughout most of the premodern era (2000).From the tenth century, the Chinese took to theseas in increasingnumbers with junks of 200 tons.Although some scholars havesuggested that mostly luxury products were transported by the Chinesemerchants in theIndian Ocean (e.g., Lewis, 1978: XI, 462), itappears that already under the Sung dynasty significant amounts ofbulk goods such as "rice,porcelain, pepper, lumber, and miner- als"were transported overseas (Shiba, 1983: 104).3 During the Sung, jointventures in shippingand leasesof vessel services had become "quitecommon" (Deng, 1997a: 102), and
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