Rod: I've got strogn criticisms of Eric Jones's _The European Miracle_ in my book _The Colonizer's Model of the World._ Chapter 2 is entitled "The Myth of the European Miracle." On this particular point, he is resurrecting an old idea that has been shown to be total false. All modern scholarship, of all persuasions, agrees that the intermittent imperial bans were not enforced and generally not paid attention to, and wwere largely shakedowns of the merchants; also broad if not unviersal agreement that the voyages to Africa around 142-1440 were not repeated because the Chinese govt needed to spend its funds on warfare in the northwest against the "nomads," but otherwise there was no backing away, etc., from sea travel prior to the impact of europeans (Chinese merchant ships plied the Asian seas as happily as in prior times). The theory that Europe's fractionated late-medieval polities somehow explain Europe's unique development and expannsion, while the fact that China was a single empire, is rooted in the notion that an empire somehow cannot be as progressiveas a small state (the theory of "Oriental Despotism") anbd while this view isd fairly widely held among Eurocentric historians like Jones, M. Mann, John A. Hall, and others, it is resoundingly rejected by sinologists like Ken Pomeranz, Bin Wong (see his CHINA TRANSFORMED, 1997) Bob Marks, and others, as well as non-Sinologists like Jack Goody, Janet Abu-Lughod, Gunder Frank, and your obdt. servant. My view is: nobody has produced any empirical evidence that the Chinese govt impeded economic development, and nobody has produced any convincing evidence that the tiny warring feudal polities of earely modern Europe were somehow more favorabvle for development than a unified state, although many hypotheses to that effect have been thrown up. Cheers Jim Blaut Subject: [PEN-L:12061] Re: China Date: 30-Sep-99 at 16:24 From: INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED], INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] TO: INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Eric Jones in the European Miracle has a discussion of China. He argues at a certain point an emperor put a halt to foreign contacts. That before this Chinese sailors had made it as far as the Cape of Good Hope. China turned isolationist and inward. Europe because it had not been unified was not subject to the same central control. No king or emperor had the power to keep Europeans at home. It was not any backwardness on China's part, but a matter of policy. I don't know enough Chinese history to evaluate the argument. Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ----------------------- Internet Header -------------------------------- Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Received: from galaxy.csuchico.edu (galaxy.CSUChico.EDU [132.241.82.21]) by spdmgaad.compuserve.com (8.9.3/8.9.3/SUN-1.7) with ESMTP id RAA11213; Thu, 30 Sep 1999 17:24:26 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by galaxy.csuchico.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id OAA14412; Thu, 30 Sep 1999 14:31:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hotmail.com (f57.law4.hotmail.com [216.33.149.57]) by galaxy.csuchico.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id OAA14377 for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Thu, 30 Sep 1999 14:31:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 80721 invoked by uid 0); 30 Sep 1999 21:23:22 -0000 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Received: from 209.183.133.90 by www.hotmail.com with HTTP; Thu, 30 Sep 1999 14:23:21 PDT X-Originating-IP: [209.183.133.90] From: "Rod Hay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:12061] Re: China Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 14:23:21 PDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.2.08 -- ListProc(tm) by CREN