Andre Gunder Frank (1929–2005)

Universal History

This collection is really superb! Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills (henceforth, F/G) argue, against established 'World-Systems' Theory, that there is in reality only one Eurasian 'World System' and that it began several millennia ago. They are here somewhat supported by the distinct positions of Ekholm and Friedman and also the rather separate 'Central Civilization' position of David Wilkinson. Parts I, II, and III lay out the argument while Part IV includes dissenting POV's. Samir Amin and Immanuel Wallerstein dissent the most while Janet Abu-Lughod takes something of an intermediary position. Also, William H. McNeill provides a Foreword that attempts to situate those of us unfamiliar with World Systems Theory.

Lets start with that. The study of History, I mean here in the West, was at first based on the linear vision of Christianity, which overran the more ancient cyclical notions. Then, in the Enlightenment, the notion of the Rise and Fall of Civilization and/or Culture reappeared (Vico, Herder, Gibbon, e.g.). One could say that this was the ancient cyclical view risen from the ashes. Of course, Marxist dialectic and triumphant Liberalism would restore a linear vision of History. But in the Twentieth Century this notion of 'rise and fall' was applied to cultures and civilizations outside Europe and the Mediterranean basin (most famously by Spengler and Toynbee, but there are several others of importance) to all Afro-Eurasia and then the 'New-World'. But, as McNeill points out in his Foreword, "by treating a plurality of civilizations as separate entities this vision of human reality minimized the importance of outside encounters and overlooked transcivilizational processes and relationships. (p. x)" World-Systems Theory is an attempt to correct this. In all this historians have been continually moving, in an ever-widening spiral, from the local to the Universal and from the specific to the General.

That is to say, the various local ethnocentric visions of human history have been, and are being, gradually replaced by ever more universal accounts of history. One can understand World-Systems Theory to be the latest step in this process. Now, according to the World-Systems Theory of Amin and Wallerstein something genuinely new in fact happened in early-modern Europe and that this 'new thing' (capitalism!) eventually overran the world. F/G disagree, maintaining that we are actually looking at one World-System that has been expanding for millennia. But first, shouldn't we note what the difference between the old civilizational analysis (Spengler, Toynbee, et al.) and our world-systems theory is? McNeill tells us that the choice between these two "depends on whether one reckons that material life is more important than ideas and ideals. World-system thinkers are especially conscious of material exchanges and assert (or perhaps rather assume) that the accumulation of wealth in privileged centers through trade and the exercise of force conformed to a common norm regardless of local, cultural differences. Those who speak of 'civilizations' tend to emphasize religious and other ideas... (p. xi)".

Hopefully, a new position will one day appear that can speak of all human activity without either favoring (or despising) the one or the other...

So, what exactly will we be looking at here? F/G tell us in their Preface that their "principal 'prisms' of interpretation are center-periphery structures, hegemony/rivalry within them, the process of capital accumulation, cycles in all of these, and the world system in which they operate. (p. xv)" Their innovation within the established World-Systems paradigm is the belief that there has been one eurasian world-system expanding by annexing others from very nearly the beginning of civilization.
Amin and Wallerstein argue against this. They believe that the Modern Capitalist World-System that began in Europe after the Middle Ages represented something entirely new. Thus people who agree with Amin and Wallerstein will almost always say 'World-Systems' instead of World System. They do so because they believe that there have been several world-systems and not a single 'blob' that has been growing for millennia. They believe that it is a mistake to lump them all together because the 'ceaseless accumulation' of capital is absent in earlier Tributary Empires.
But Wilkinson pushes the argument of Frank/Gills even further claiming that the world has, in reality, been in the process of becoming a single civilization since Mesopotamia and Egypt became civilizationally united (the 'Central Civilization') around 1500 BC. After that, according to Wilkinson, this 'Central Civilization' has only grown. But Frank and Gills consider the term Civilization "ambiguous as a unit and terribly difficult to bound either in space or in time." They therefore continue to speak of the 'World-System' and not the 'Central Civilization' of Wilkinson.
Holding up a moderating hand, Abu-Lughod, whose 'Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250 - 1350' was simply superb, contributes a piece. She sees discontinuities and persistence in the World System/s and sensibly calls for further study. I very much enjoyed her thoughtful contribution. For myself, I find that I am leaning in the direction of Frank and Gills. To me, Wallerstein is just a photographic negative of the old position that European Hegemony was good good good. He says it has been bad bad bad. He states quite clearly in his essay that the early modern European breakthrough towards capitalist modernity is in no ways a positive development. (It is this extreme anti-caitalism that has, imho, destroyed the lefts ability to understand late modernity.) Thus Abu-Lughod is, I think, correct to say of Wallerstein that he 'had still accepted the main line of western historical scholarship: namely, that the 'story' becomes interesting only with the 'Rise of the West' after 1450.'

Now, Amin's Marxist position is quite superior to Wallersteins and his contribution deserves to be read and reread carefully. Against Wallersteins notion that Europe (post capitalism) is bad, if not evil incarnate, Amin says that the "critique of Eurocentrism in no way implies refusal to recognize the qualitative break capitalism represents, to use a word no longer fashionable, the progress (albeit relative and historically limited progress) it ushers in. Nor does it propose an 'act of contrition' by which westerners renounce describing the invention as European. The critique is of another kind and centered on the contradictions the capitalist era opens up." By comparison, some of the remarks of Wallerstein regarding capitalism and Europe seem almost childish.
I especially enjoyed how Amin makes religion/ideology/metaphysics a defining quality of pre-modern systems. Now, I haven't gone into great detail because the various contributors make so many interesting points that it is difficult to choose what to exclude. But I do want to mention that, in several inches of text, Amin broaches the defining subject of geopolitics (land vs. sea power) and compares the position of F/G to it. Pointing at Jacque Pirenne's (excellent, but forgotten) "The Tides of History" Amin says that, "Pirenne managed - certainly with skill - to replace class with a constant struggle between the capitalist tendency and the feudal tendency within human societies." (Of course, in Pirennes two volume study, we should note that (geopolitically speaking) capitalism = sea-power while feudalism = land-power.) Obviously, Amin finds that Marxist understanding has more explanatory power than any geopolitics. I only mention this to underline how rich and substantive the contributions to this volume often are.

In the Epilogue to their contribution Ekholm and Friedman say something I found quite haunting:
"We are still operating with a working hypothesis and there is no obviously established 5,000-year-old system even if there might be much to suggest the existence of a system variable in extent and connectivity over time.
On the other hand there is also much to suggest that world history is like a Kafkaesque nightmare of repetition compulsions..."
I would fearfully add that, unfortunately, a repetition-compulsion can also be a 'system'...

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. The interactions between the great civilizations (if I may be permitted to use the term, however loosely) and world systems of China, India, Islam and Europe now take center stage rather than the particularizing histories of single nations, single civilizations and single cultures. All the contributors here agree that the old Eurocentric history is dead. We are today,I believe, at last in (more rightly, we are nearing) a position where we can start writing a genuine Universal History without the (often hysterical) 'Yes' and 'No' of past writers. We are working towards the day when we can understand instead of merely applauding and denouncing in an erudite manner. Hopefully there are young scholars today who are studying not only the World-Systems paradigm(s) but also the Civilizational school (which begins with Spengler and Toynbee) and the Cliodynamic (see Andrey Koratayev and Peter Turchin) and the Macro-sociological schools too.
...I very much look forward to reading what they have to say.

In the lingo of world-systems theory I will end by saying that one is either fighting for the current hegemon or fighting for the next one.
...Why not seek to understand instead? Hopefully the next generation of World System/s theorists will take that step.
Four and a half stars; five for the historian who one day pulls all the universalist schools of historiography together.… (mere)