File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9801, message 456


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




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