Four Great Inventions - Wikipedia
(1) The 4 Great Inventions that changed the world (China) - YouTube
There were more, as these videos show:
Made In China: Chinese Inventions That Changed the World
And yet a big question for our times - and one which has been asked for the last centuries - is how 'The West' came out on top:
Jay Doubleyou: is the west better than the rest?
Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity | TED Talk
Although now the question is whether that predominance is being lost - with panic over 'slipping education standards':
Jay Doubleyou: the purpose of education: from china to prussia to the united states
Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China | TED Talk
It gets interesting...
EUROCENTRISM:
Eurocentrism - Wikipedia
Amazon.com: Eight Eurocentric Historians (9781572305915): J.M. Blaut, James M. Blaut: Books
What is Living and What is Dead In Eurocentrism?
When and why did the West gain its current economic advantage over the rest of the world? This topic is the source of an animated debate within the academy today. Jack Goody, a noted social anthropologist, analyzes these questions and offers his own views in his new book, Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate.
The participants in this debate often have been divided into two broad camps. On the one side, which I will call here the Europeanists, are those who consider the West's attainment of economic advantage as having been the result of fundamental societal advantages, generally institutional or cultural. Factors often cited include limited power of the state, respect for property rights, the spirit of individuality, positive attitudes toward wealth accumulation, and separation of scientific and technical advances from religious control. According to this group, the bifurcation between the East and the West occurred early—at least before 1700 and in some ways centuries before that. While Goody identifies many authors within this group—including [End Page 497] Douglas North, Robert Thomas, and Eric Jones—he cites David Landes and his book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations as representative of this position.
The opposing group, which Jack Goldstone has called the "California School," explicitly rejects the assertion of what they would term "cultural superiority" by the Europeanists, characterizing it as overly broad, Eurocentric, and built on faulty assumptions about both the West and the rest of the world. Goody cites J. M. Blaut, Andre Gunder Frank, and Kenneth Pomeranz as exemplifying this group. Their position is that any specific assertions of European cultural advantage can be disproved by examining individual cases, and that the economic advantage gained by the West either can never be shown to have specific causes or was caused by narrower, more technical explanations. Two examples of this latter type of explanation are bullion flows to Europe (Blaut and Frank) and the ready accessibility of coal and iron in Britain (Pomeranz). Consistent with these views, this group argues that the bifurcation between the West and the East occurred later (after 1750 or even 1800) and took place in a world economy where China was a major, possibly dominant player.
Project MUSE - Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate (review)
The Theft of History (Canto Classics): Jack Goody: 9781107683556: Amazon.com: Books
THE GREAT DIVERGENCE:
Great Divergence - Wikipedia
The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.: Kenneth Pomeranz: 9780691090108: Amazon.com: Books
On the Rise of the West:Researching Kenneth Pomeranz’sGreat DivergenceRICARDO DUCHESNE
Ten Years of Debate on the Origins of the Great Divergence | Reviews in History
Communication and Empire: Chinese Empires in Comparative Perspective
Some more videos:
(1) Kenneth Pomeranz on writing The Great Divergence - YouTube
The Great Divergence on Vimeo
MING DYNASTY:
It would seem that none of the conventional explanations tells us in convincing fashion why technical progress was absent in the Chinese economy during a period that was, on the whole, one of prosperity and expansion. Almost every element usually regarded by historians as a major contributory cause to the Industrial Revolution in north-western Europe was also present in China. There had even been a revolution in the relations between social classes, at least in the countryside; but this had had no important effect on the techniques of production. Only Galilean-Newtonian science was missing; but in the short run this was not important. Had the Chinese possessed, or developed, the seventeenth-century European mania for tinkering and improving, they could easily have made an efficient spinning machine out of the primitive model described by Wang Chen. A steam engine would have been more difficult; but it should not have posed insuperable difficulties to a people who had been building double-acting piston flame-throwers in the Sung dynasty. The crucial point is that nobody tried. In most fields, agriculture being the chief exception, Chinese technology stopped progressing well before the point at which a lack of scientific knowledge had become a serious obstacle.
Why indeed? Sinologists have put forward several partial explanations. Those that I find most persuasive are the following.
First, China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights. The Chinese state was always stepping in to interfere with private enterprise—to take over certain activities, to prohibit and inhibit others, to manipulate prices, to exact bribes. At various times the government was motivated by a desire to reserve labor to agriculture or to control important resources (salt and iron, for example); by an appetite for revenue (the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs is a leitmotif of Chinese history); by fear and disapproval of self-enrichment, except by officials, giving rise in turn to abundant corruption and rent-seeking; and by a distaste for maritime trade, which the Heavenly Kingdom saw as a diversion from imperial concerns, as a divisive force and source of income inequality in the ecumenical empire, and worse yet, as an invitation to exit. This state intervention and interference encountered evasion and resistance; indeed, the very needs of state compelled a certain tolerance for disobedience. Still, the goal, the aim, the ideal was the ineffable stillness of immobility. When in 1368 the new Chinese emperor inaugurated a native (Ming) dynasty to replace the defeated Mongol invaders, he ascended the throne in Nanjing as the Hongwu (“Vast Martial”) emperor. Let not the name deceive the reader: Hongwu’s goal was anything but war. He wanted rather to immobilize the realm. People were to stay put and move only with the permission of the state—at home and abroad. People who went outside China without permission were liable to execution on their return...
Landes 2006 Why Europe and the West JEP.pdf
Why was there no capitalism in early modern China?
Although there are other traditions...
Daoism and Anarchism: Critiques of State Autonomyin Ancient and Modern China: John A. Rapp
See also:
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology - Wikipedia
Amazon.com: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Paradigm) (8601200454550): David Graeber: Books
Review: “Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology” - Sean Norton - Medium
.
.
.
The Great Divergence on Vimeo
MING DYNASTY:
It would seem that none of the conventional explanations tells us in convincing fashion why technical progress was absent in the Chinese economy during a period that was, on the whole, one of prosperity and expansion. Almost every element usually regarded by historians as a major contributory cause to the Industrial Revolution in north-western Europe was also present in China. There had even been a revolution in the relations between social classes, at least in the countryside; but this had had no important effect on the techniques of production. Only Galilean-Newtonian science was missing; but in the short run this was not important. Had the Chinese possessed, or developed, the seventeenth-century European mania for tinkering and improving, they could easily have made an efficient spinning machine out of the primitive model described by Wang Chen. A steam engine would have been more difficult; but it should not have posed insuperable difficulties to a people who had been building double-acting piston flame-throwers in the Sung dynasty. The crucial point is that nobody tried. In most fields, agriculture being the chief exception, Chinese technology stopped progressing well before the point at which a lack of scientific knowledge had become a serious obstacle.
Why indeed? Sinologists have put forward several partial explanations. Those that I find most persuasive are the following.
First, China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights. The Chinese state was always stepping in to interfere with private enterprise—to take over certain activities, to prohibit and inhibit others, to manipulate prices, to exact bribes. At various times the government was motivated by a desire to reserve labor to agriculture or to control important resources (salt and iron, for example); by an appetite for revenue (the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs is a leitmotif of Chinese history); by fear and disapproval of self-enrichment, except by officials, giving rise in turn to abundant corruption and rent-seeking; and by a distaste for maritime trade, which the Heavenly Kingdom saw as a diversion from imperial concerns, as a divisive force and source of income inequality in the ecumenical empire, and worse yet, as an invitation to exit. This state intervention and interference encountered evasion and resistance; indeed, the very needs of state compelled a certain tolerance for disobedience. Still, the goal, the aim, the ideal was the ineffable stillness of immobility. When in 1368 the new Chinese emperor inaugurated a native (Ming) dynasty to replace the defeated Mongol invaders, he ascended the throne in Nanjing as the Hongwu (“Vast Martial”) emperor. Let not the name deceive the reader: Hongwu’s goal was anything but war. He wanted rather to immobilize the realm. People were to stay put and move only with the permission of the state—at home and abroad. People who went outside China without permission were liable to execution on their return...
Landes 2006 Why Europe and the West JEP.pdf
Why was there no capitalism in early modern China?
Although there are other traditions...
Daoism and Anarchism: Critiques of State Autonomyin Ancient and Modern China: John A. Rapp
See also:
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology - Wikipedia
Amazon.com: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Paradigm) (8601200454550): David Graeber: Books
Review: “Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology” - Sean Norton - Medium
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment