File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 20


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




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