From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu> Subject: Re: M-I: AG Frank etc. again Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 13:10:32 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) Jim B., Well, we are not too far apart. I never said that China "stagnated," only that after a certain point (and I am willing to accept that the exact timing of that is uncertain, although mid-1400s looks pretty likely), Western Europe began to grow more rapidly and innovate more technologically. China did not stop. Iceland is significant in that it is the purest remnant of the Viking culture/society, even its language being essentially Old Norse, that is, the language of the Vikings. What you hear of the Vikings in Britain is a Central Western Eurocentric myth about the wicked pagan Vikings, who were indeed on the periphery. They did disrupt trade and production through much of Western Europe as they raided hither thither and yon for several hundred years. In fact many argue that it was the cessation of their raiding with their Christianization that allowed the beginnings of the takeoff in Europe around 1000. But they also played an important stimulating role. They opened trade routes through Russia down to Constantinople and also through the Atlantic down into the Mediterranean. Despite their fiercesome reputation, they founded most of the modern major cities of Ireland (Dublin, Cork, etc.) and the part of England and Scotland they ruled, the Danelaw, had a reasonably democratically based legal system and was arguably much better run out of Jorvik (later York) than was the Saxon mess to the south. It was from the Danelaw that the British got their parliament. Thus rather peripheral actors played an important and very direct role in certain important European institutional developments. This is where lineally democracy came from in modern Europe, not the romanticized stories of revivals of ancient Greek ideals. Again, the technological takeoff in Europe had little to nothing to do with democracy, which did not exist in the parts of Europe that were taking off in the mid-1400s. As I argued against Gunder Frank, the overseas conquests arising from 1492 and 1498 played crucial roles in the eventual European domination, and I never said that "oriental despotic" regimes were necessarily or even historically technologically stagnant. Barkley Rosser Barkley Rosser On Mon, 2 Feb 1998 20:38:28 -0500 james m blaut <70671.2032-AT-compuserve.com> wrote: > Barkley Rosseer: > > The Icelanders had no real influence on the outside world i n spite of the > lively trading system with Western Europe, and all of this quite late. > There were many "parliaments" around the world. I'm not up on Viking > history so I can't comment, but it smells like another Eurocentric myth. I > thought the Vikings murdered Brits instead of in structing them in > democracy. > > As to China vis-a-vis "the Rise of Europe, I discuss this at some length in > my book. The key fact is the absolute strengthening of Europe due to the > looting of America and then the slave plantations. China did not stasgnate. > > Jim Blaut > > > --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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