Verlagstext:
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.
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Preface
Introduction to Real World History vsEurocentric Social Theory p1
Holistic Methodology and Objectives p1
Globalism, not Eurocentrism p8
Outline of a Global Economic Perspective p34
Anticipating and Confronting Resistance and Obstacles p38
The Global Trade Carousel 1400-1800 p52
An Introduction to the World Economy p52
World Division of Labor and Balances of Trade p63
India and the Indian Ocean p84
Southeast Asia p92
Money Went Around the World and Made the World Go Round p131
World Money: Its Production and Exchange p131
How Did the Winners Use Their Money? p151
The Global Economy: Comparisons and Relations p165
Quantities: Population, Production, Productivity, Income, and Trade p166
Qualities: Science and Technology p185
Mechanisms: Economic and Financial Institutions p205
Horizontally Integrative Macrohistory p226
Simultaneity Is No Coincidence p228
Doing Horizontally Integrative Macrohistory p230
Why Did the West Win (Temporarily)? p258
Is There a Long-Cycle Roller Coaster? p260
The Decline of the East Preceded the Rise of the West p264
How Did the West Rise? p276
A Global Economic Demographic Explanation p297
Historiographic Conclusions and Theoretical Implications p321
Historiographic Conclusions: The Eurocentric Emperor Has No Clothes p322
Theoretical Implications: Through the Global Looking Glass p339
References p361
Index p389