ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 20 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 20 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 20 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.'

FROM THE CRITICS

Harbans Mukhia

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

Saubhik Chakabarti

ReOrient's biggest virtue: it forces the reader to at least look differently at world history- This impressive and illuminating analysis 20 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. -- The Statesman

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

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 London Times Higher Education Supplement & St. Johns College, Cambridge)  — Jack Goody

ReORIENT deserves to become an instant classic. (Martin Lewis, Duke University)  — Martin Lewis

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)  — Mark Selden

Frank gained his world wide fame by making an argument that caused a revolution in thinking about Third World Development. Well, the same thing is about to happen again, except this time the stakes are much higher. Now it is the theories of the endogenous nature of change in the West that is being challenged. The Wallersteinian world economy did not give rise to the world-system, Frank argues, but the Afroeurasian world system gave rise to the European world economy. To correct the historical fact is to challenge the theoretical scaffolding of everyone from Marx to Weber to Braudel to Wallerstein. Frank shows how [they] got it all wrong. This book is conceptually that important. A fundamental rethinking absolutely essential to understanding world history. (Albert Bergesen, University of Arizona) — Albert Bergesen

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)  — Kenneth Pomeranz

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)  — Bin Wong

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)  — Peter Perdue