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

from Rebecca Menes (menes@ucla.edu)
A brief but pithy respons to David Gress, who first of all says > >"Before people divide too radically into two camps on the origins of >economic growth, modernity, and Western prosperity -- the North/Landes camp >versus Jack Goldstone's California camp -- perhaps they ought to consider >that both may have a part of the truth." But David parks himself firmly in >the Landes camp. Landes gives a lot of attention to the post-1500 factors >in "the rise of Europe," but his real argument is that the uniquely >progressive European mentality/culture and the European environment (not >nastily tropical nor Wittfogelianly arid) are the basic explanation for the >later rise of Europe. > >If I read Jack Goldstone correctly, his "California school" does not draw >into the explanation any pre-1500 propensities. Speaking for myself, I have >come to reject flatly the idea that Europe pre-1492 had any potentiality or >actuality for later development that was not also present in non-Europe. So >the line is drawn in the sand: either Europe had something marvelous going >for it back in medieval and/or ancient times (Landes, Jones, et al.), or it >did not (the Californio-centrics). > >Respectfull submitted > >Jim Blaut >Geographer

Is it possible we are confusing necessary and sufficient conditions? It is possible "to reject flatly the idea that Europe pre-1492 had any potentiality or actuality for later development that was not also present in non-Europe" and still believe that the bifurcation is not totally independent of the pre-15th century world. The Industrial Revolution isn't just a horse race (why Europe, not Asia?), it's something that happened. In this light, I would like to make one point and ask one question:

1. We can certainly come up with regions/nations/cultures that did not have the "potentiality" before 1492. European history doesn't have to be unique, just slightly unusual, in order to play an role in understanding why Europe develops differently post-1800. There can be interactions between European conditions before 1500, not unique but unusual in human experience, and European conditions after 1500, which may also have been not unique, but unusual. The interaction, however, may have been unique. (And if not unique, was at least undeniably first.)

2. I am not clear which of the following counterfactuals is being proposed in the anti-Landes camp: 1. Landes is wrong because if Europe had been magically erased than some other region (frontrunners currently SE China or parts of India) would have invented the IR, only a generation or so later. Many (or at least 3 other) regions could have had an IR, but Europe got one a few key years earlier. 2. The IR is the invention of a world system. Disturb any part and it doesn't happen. So we have to understand not Asia versus Europe, but Asia and Europe. Of course we then have to determine how one tiny part of this system seems to get all the goodies, at least for a little while.

It seems important to differentiate these two alternatives when discussing evidence and when discussing what are important future research agenda.

Rebecca Menes

Charles Grove Haines Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of California--Los Angeles

The lyf so short, the crafte so long to learn...

(posted 8728 days ago)

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