On 23 May 2001, at 11:58, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date sent: Wed, 23 May 2001 11:58:13 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:11971] Re: Re: A reply to Ellen Meiksins Wood
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>
> >By the standards of world historians - or anyone who disagrees
> >that Europe was uniquely prepared for modern capitalism, or that by
> >the 16th-17th centuries capitalism was fully underway in England,
> >Brenner, Wood, including Anderson, and all the British Marxist
> >historians ARE eurocentric.To the extent that marxists today continue
> >to write about the rise of capitalism without doing comparative world
> >historical research, they ARE eurocentric.
>
> But then the claim doesn't mean very much. It just means you're not
> doing comparative world history--which begs definition, btw. But so
> what? How does that invalidate any of the claims that Brenner makes in
> Merchants and Revolution or the Turbulence essay? The stuff you've
> been posting about Chinese agriculture (to the degree I've kept up)
> has been fascinating. But it doesn't explain the rise of New World
> Slavery, the triangle trade, the origins of modern finance, the
> transition from feudal to capitalist social relations in the Atlantic
> economies, etc. (Which doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, just that . .
> .)
>
> Eurocentrism, in that context, is basically a way to harness the
> political claims of wrong to an epistemology which, like all
> epistemologies, has its limits. If you want to argue on this
> level--which is basically name-calling--comparative world history is
> not non-Eurocentric--it's a more ambitious version of Eurocentrism,
> the way "globalization" is a more ambitious (and "friendly") version
> of imperialism.
>
> But that's a stupid argument. Spivak said somewhere that the problem
> is not Eurocentrism, but not being Eurocentric enough.
>
> Christian
>
> P.S. I second Justin's rec of _Hydra_.
>
