Return-Path: <@JHUVM.HCF.JHU.EDU:DFOSS@ccvm.sunysb.edu> Received: from ccvm.sunysb.edu (NJE origin MAILER@SBCCVM) by JHUVM.HCF.JHU.EDU (LMail V1.1c/1.7e) with BSMTP id 3771; Mon, 8 Feb 1993 00:39:06 -0500 Received: from ccvm.sunysb.edu (DFOSS) by ccvm.sunysb.edu (Mailer R2.10 ptf000) with BSMTP id 9833; Mon, 08 Feb 93 00:39:58 EST Date: Sun, 07 Feb 93 23:05:54 EST From: "Daniel A. Foss" Subject: Sudden death of Chinese protocapitalism To: Chris Chase-Dunn No one contests the need to stress the big-picture broad-perspectual longterm approach to macrotheoretical analysis, especially when macrosocial diachronic comparison is indicated. But the preceding sentence is all the sociogibberish I have stomach for at this time, given the logical pitfalls in selecting for inclusion or omission which our discourse facilitates glossing over. To illustrate: I asked the only other person I knew in the computer room at the time, a graduate student in political science, to give a quick scan to the following passages from the Sanderson article, "Explaining the Transition From Feudalism to Capitalism: The Japanese Case and its Theoretical Significance": > It is important to situate this early Japanese economic thrust in >its world-systemic context..... > > No one should think I am suggesting that Japan was becoming a >capitalist society in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Far >from it. But it was involving itself in economic networks and >undergoing economic changes that would be of momentous importance in >the centuries to come. She said, "Is this supposed to mean anything, or isn't it?" (In response, I said, "In the current state of this 'field', that may well be a secondary consideration.") Upon re-reading a number of times, I decided that the author was here striving for a "meaning" which the historical facts, had they been fully investigated, might have at obscured; but this was unnecessary, since the author has already ascertained how the story "ends." Language had to be found for cursory treatment of inessential Chinese history. The inessentiality, in turn, derived from a *post hoc ergo haec geneses* fallacy (if you can pardo my language, which has got to be in error): This fallacy, which I have mentioned in passing in connection with European development, amounts to saying, "Given impressive outcomes at a later period, the order of magnitude of macrosocial variables X, Y, and Z, as assessed by an imaginary outside observer empirically observing the society in question in the *earlier* period, would have been *unimpressive* both qualitatively and quantitatively, takes on importance as *presumed origins*. Conversely, where the posited-as-empirically-observable order of magnitude of macrosocial development may apper in the results of a study for time T(1) be impressive indeed, then suffer catastrophic and irretrievable ruin hence appear paltry in a study done at time T(2), the latter, not the former, becomes theoretically salient. The actual process of development at T(1) is rendered susceptible to being rendered *theoretically unhappened*. This is done by assuming the miserable or seemingly backward conditions at time T(2) also prevailed at time T(1). The elided portion of that first paragraph, cited above, which the political scientist was expected to know beans about (Pol Sci is Seventh Floor, History is Third, Asian Studies, Second), there is asserted precisely this kind of *theoretical unhappening* of what was in effect the peak of Chinese economic development: > ...It seems that Japan was involving itself >in a vigorous Far Eastern trade at basically the same time that late >Sung and early Ming China was withdrawing from world trade and >declining economically. These events are undoubtedly connected. A >large economic vacuum was created, and Japan was quick to fill it >(Collins, 1990). Japan picked up the Asian economic impetus where >China left off. Is it getting picayune to berate Sanderson for omittimg a whole dynasty, the Yuan (1275-1368), between the Song (Northern, 960-1127; Southern, 1127-1275) and Ming (1368-1644)? Trivia-freak though I am, I'll have to give a serious No to that, because the Yuan was the very period of maximum wide- open boomtown-atmosphere commercial *and* industrial prosperity; the acme of Chinese protocapitalism prior to the Catastrophe. The general picture can be found in any standard general history of China (imder "The Song Economic Revolution" or suchlike); Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization; also, Everyday Life in China, 1250-1275, gives a good introduction. But there is even more impressive information in books read by Sanderson, Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past,; and Janet Abu-Lughod, Brfore European Hegemony, 1989. What follows is excerpted from a draft article I'm now revising for resubmission. The Chinese in the early fourteenth century looked like a better bet to develop capitalism than Europe. China had from the mid-tenth to the early fourteenth century been well in advance of the West both in technical development and in the institutional development of commercial enterprise. This perios corresponds exactly to the European Medieval economic expansion, except that the Chinese started from a higher level and developed at a faster rate. In recent years there has been some focus on parallels and similarities between the development of Europe and that of China. One major focus has been on the rapid development of both during the Medieval period.... The case made by Gernet and Elvin and recently restated by Abu-Lughod demonstrates most forcefully that until the early to middle fourteenth century the advantage in the imaginary race among the "competing civilization zones of the Eurasian landmass to be first to reach the unimagined goal of "modern capitalism" *favored the Chinese*. This has been inferred or explicitly evaluated by recent scholarship in terms of the rate and broad base of technological development; evolution of capitalist infrastructures such as considerable urbanization involving cities of immense size which had, from administrative centers of parasitic consumption developed into centers of manufacturing industry; development of metallurgical, textile, shipbuilding, and other industries in advance of the European; financial instruments facilitating transactions over long distances; printed paper money; and the appearance of private capitalists as profit-maximizers (as had not occurred in Europe0.[2].... [2] The comparison is with Italian bankers, like those of Florence at the same time, who were compelled to be simultaneously entrepreneurs and soldier-poliiticians: Those who controlled the state retained their enterprises; those who did not lost them. [Section on direct economic consequences of Bubonic Plague pandemic omitted here. It essentially duplicates material in a previous post.] *Economic collapse and the Ming crisis legislation*. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty no longer commanded a unified state apparatus after 1355. From the following year warlords leading their privately raised armies fought rebels and each other; loyalty of commanders to the central government in Dadu (Beijing) was purely symbolic; and troops on all sides were paid with revenues locally collected or stolen. The paper currency reflected this in hyperinflation. The warlords were eliminated piecemeal by a leader of genius, Zhu Yuanzhang (see below). [Meaning some other post.] The Ming state found the complex, sophisticated, and delicate system of estates, markets, internal trade, and industrial production in a condition of prostrate ruin. The Ming founder's objective was the swiftest possible restoration of the market economy. The means employed to restore commerce and industry entailed massive state economic intervention, which most heavily affected the agricultural base of the economy, which most fundamentally involved strenuous efforts at increasing basic cereal grain production. Vacant lands were repopulated by offers of land distribution and in some instances by enforced migrations. Additional land for redistribution was confiscated from loyalists of the former Mongol regime and its collaborators. Mobility of the population was enhanced by the abolition of the worst forms of serfdom, approximating to slavery, which had residentially fixed the mass of Yangzi Valley peasants on great estates. Mobility of produce was facilitated by improvement in water transport. These measures were accompanied by legislation of coerced production of cash crops especially those critically important for industrial production: hemp, cotton, and mulberry trees whose leaves were used in feeding silkworm larvae. Since the 1340s these crops had gone out of production; for lack of raw materials the costs of production of the finished cloth had exploded; and the number of those with cash income who could afford the high prices dwindled. Minimum areas were set aside for textile cultivation. The smallest peasant holdings were required to set aside one-half *mou* (one sixth of an acre) for planting mulberry, hemp, or cotton; for larger holdings the minimum assessment was a full *mou*. (Hucker 1978 p. 59) Violators, in abject lesson of the effects of the raw-materials shortage on prices, "were required to pay taxes in finished cloth at exorbitant rates." (*ibid*.) The sales of cotton cloth, recently introduced in the preceding Yuan Dynasty period, were greatly stimulated by state purchases. The state moreover rebuilt the economic base of the great cities of the Yangzi Valley, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou; this required major involvement of the state in the organization of textile production. in huge manufacturing establishments owned both by itself and private entrepreneurs.... <> <> <> Daniel A. Foss