From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu> Subject: M-I: oriental despotism Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 02:06:02 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) I may be over my three-a-day limit, but a few remarks on Jim Blaut's interesting remarks and also on the earlier remarks of Frank as reported by Louis P. The agro-hydraulic infrastructure systems arose not just in arid climates, but in those characterized by monsoon rainfall patterns. That is they have very heavy rainfall during part of the year and are arid the rest of the year. This gives the productivity-enhancing basis for an agro-hydraulic infrastructure system that controls flooding and stores the floodwater for irrigation use during the dry season. The rise of cities and despotic managerial regimes coincided with the rise in productivity that accompanied the development of these infrastructures. Although China is sufficiently wet to be rainfall ag, Northern China followed the more classic pattern. In Wittfogel's view Rome reflected a partially ("margin") version of hydraulic society, importing a Hellenistic variety of it, and using state power to build vast aqueducts, sewers, highways, etc. This influence carried over into the early post-Roman period in Western Europe, only gradually fading out. From a political standpoint, the home of democracy was indeed Viking Scandinavia where Rome never ruled and where there was never serfdom. I won't claim that this is purely environmental, although it may be the great distance of Scandinavia from the core zone of agro-hydraulic despotism that allowed this zone to be politically democratic. [Aside to Carroll Cox: in the context of ancient civilizations, 20 years is not very long.] There is no necessary link between political democracy and "European technological exceptionalism." Democratic Scandinavia was not the economic or technological leader of Europe. The leadership that emerged around the 1400s when Western Europe began to surge ahead of China technologically came in the near absolutist monarchical emerging states further south. And China as well as the Ottoman Empire continued to advance technologically and economically, albeit not as rapidly as Western Europe did after this period. As regards Frank's view, I think much of it is correct and very interesting, but I feel that he overdoes his world economy argument. When I read his stuff I get the sense that he views the existence of any trade linkage at all between two societies as evidence that they are unified in a single system, a view that Uncle Lou seems to buy into. The Braudel perspective strikes me as more reasonable. There were multiple localized "world systems," the core of the European one being the Mediterranean (as the meaning of its name suggests, "middle of the world"), from its initial emergence/economic unification under the Phoenicians to the shift away from it as the voyages of discovery and conquest across the Atlantic and around the Cape of Good Hope displaced its centrality. With that movement came the true emergence of a world system, dominated by the smaller European world system. However, this does not imply or depend on any sort of innate superiority of the Europeans. After all, other areas of the world were for long periods the technological leaders of the world, China most notably for long stretches, but also Mesopotamia and other areas. Barkley Rosser -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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