Of course a further wiggle on this is, even if
it were the "monolithicness" of China that held
it back (which I do not necessarily accept), this
does not explain why some of China's equally or
even more technologically advanced neighbors
such as Korea and Japan did not engage in such
voyages or trade expansion, including to the
Americas from the northwest.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: James M. Blaut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, October 01, 1999 2:26 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:12087] Re: China
>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/
>
>
>
>
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>Subject: [PEN-L:12061] Re: China
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