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Response to Comments: /Econ_Articles/Reviews/landes.html

from Robert Marks (rmarks@whittier.edu)
Having followed this discussion with interest, and now with Jack Goldstone including me in the "California school" with regard to many of the issues raised, I thought it was time to introduce myself to the Eh.Res list by way of comments on some of postings. First, and as a preliminary, the interest of historians whose primary focus has been Europe and/or North America in the work of Asianists is a welcome change, Brad de Long's comments about his education notwithstanding (maybe his experiences were exceptional). Most of us working on China have for a very long time immersed ourselves in work on Europe, becoming familiar with issues and perspectives coming from that body of work, and clearly that experience is beginning to bear fruit, as the work of Ken Pomeranz, Bin Wong, and James Lee (among others in the "California school") attests. Now that we are beginning to have a global dialog, maybe we will make some progress on understanding global processes. Now to some comments on others' postings: Greg Clark asserted (5/13/98) that prior to 1800, all economies in the world were Malthusian "in the sense that living standards did NOT depend directly on the production technology," but did depend on population dynamics. The work that I have done on the part of South China called Lingnan (and here I'll try to help Brad de Long begin to remember some of these regions of China by offering a translation: "South of the Mountains"), indicates that that region (Guangzhou/Canton and its hinterland, a very wealthy and "developed" part of late imperial China) may well have begun to break with a Malthusian regime in the second half of the eighteenth century, without having experienced an "industrial revolution" (but perhaps an industrious one). But that does not mean, as Greg suggests, that that important demographic change arose only from family and social structure reasons, and not technological developments. The evidence that I've developed (in my book, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China) suggests that in Lingnan, by the end of the 18th century grain prices and food supply had become delinked from harvest quality, assuring food supplies to urban and sub-urban residents and workders at reasonable prices, regardless of what the harvest was. The question is, Why? And here I would point to both technological developments in agriculture, in particular irrigation and the use of various techniques by which peasant farmers could get 5 or 6 harvests in two years from the same plot of land, and to organizational changes, in particular the development of a large, integrated, and efficient market for food grains, in particular rice. In fact, the eighteenth-century grain market in Lingnan was larger, more integrated, and more efficient (by various measures) than those in the most developed parts of Europe, allowing for the development of a very large and productive textile industry (both cotton and silk) in the Pearl River delta, utilizing spinning wheels and looms worked (and powered) by several individuals. In short, in at least one region of China ca. 1800, it is likely that living standards were not "determined" by birth and death rates (and their causes), although population dynamics undoubtedly remained important. None of this gets to the question of explaining the industrial revolution, as Greg Clark wants, but it should cast doubt on some verities, perhaps including the one that does away with the industrial revolution altogether in favor of an industrious revolution. For once again, even if we go down that route, historians working on China can demonstrate that China got that far too, and by 1800. So, yes, the work of yet another historian of China tends to support the case that the differences between China and Europe appeared very late, around 1800 in Lingnan, or later than the 1750 date suggested by Alan Taylor. So maybe we have to think about "the great bifurcation" as coming later than 1750. Which brings me to my last observation: in 1984 Braudel (in the Structures of Everyday Life) had already identified "the gap," its late appearance around 1800, and the need for explaining it, as the most important item on historians' agendas. But contrary to the thrust of Alan Taylor's last paragraph, it is not necessarily the Europeanists (e.g. the North/Landes/Jones Eurocentric view summarized by Jack Goldstone) who are helping the most with crafting an explanation (or perhaps more precisely, one that will hold up globally given the historical evidence we now have for China). In fact, I would submit that this whole debate is possible only because of the work that Asianists in general, but those working on China in particular, have done over the past 15 years. Gunder Frank is right: it's time for economic h
(posted 8728 days ago)

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