ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age

The revolution brought by Franck is to destroy Eurocentric views adopted since 1800 bit by bit to reveal how the economic system has been working since the last 2000 years and especially the last 500 years. What it shows is that the global economy was centered around China until 1800 AD, that the main economic players of those 2 millennia were China, India and Japan assisted by Russia, Persia and the Ottoman Empire. The West was only minor and it is only because we achieved the conquest of the Americas and the exploitation of its silver deposits that we obtained a ticket in the global economy and gradually rose to proeminence. Britain was global hegemon from 1800 until 1914, displaced by the United States from then until present. Some forecasts predict that Chinese economy could outpace the US between 2013 and 2049.

Author detailed and argumented study is confirmed by current reality. 4 of the 5 largest foreign currency deposits are already in East Asia: Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong. While US current account balance is at -$393 billion and EU current account balance is at -$14 billion, Japan current account balance is at $128 billion, Russia is at $30 billion and China is at $17 billion. Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia are all in positive waters. Most strategic technological monopolies are in Japan (Blindside from Eanmon Fingleton, 1995). 9 of the 10 largest harbours in the World are East Asian, leaving Rotterdam as the single exception. 70% of the World software production is in India. Most of the largest national GDP annual growth are in East, South-East and South Asia, making US robust growth of the last decade look pale and Europe's 2-3% definitly meaky.

The book is fundamental because it explains the basics of this Asian economic advantage, how post-1800 Westerners could delude themselves while their ancestors (Adam Smith being the most famous) dedicated pages of study to record and analyse why Asia was so superior to the West in almost everything and why the West has risen and is maybe falling beyond again (Only a blind could not notice that 1/3 of all US supermarket shelves are filled with Made in China or that the content of high-tech products is mostly Made in Japan, Taiwan or Korea and that Pokemon, Nintedno and Playstation are kids favorite).

An essential book for anyone to understand the global economy, to have an acurate look on current situation and evaluate the decisions made in the West to face Asian return to global power. A Chinese proverb says: There are no failures, only experiences. And another one: The 10.000 miles trip begins with one step. Make the first step of the next millennium and buy this book.


One of the best books of this century   November 19, 2000
 4 out of 8 found this review helpful

Gunder Frank have really helped to open up the eyes of people, who have long gotten used to reading books and literary works written with Eurocentric bias. He conclusively proves that Europe's success was nothing unique, and that Europe was the lesser of the many players in world economics, technology, and industry until about 1800 AD. China, India, Central Asia, South-East Asia, and the Middle East were those main players of the global trade, spanning from 1500 BC to 1800 AD. These above five regions also had the world's highest standards of living, most advanced technology, greatest industrial and commercial enterprises, best art forms, literature, philosophy, and musical styles, and also the most sophisticated government and best infrastructure in roads, bridges, canals, river and seaborne transportation from 5000 BC to 1800 AD. Special note must also be made, about the vast contributions of the Native Americans of the New World to world agriculture, medicine, metallurgy. Also the role that Native American gold and silver played in helping Europe to become a player in the global trade, by giving Europe with the purchasing power to purchase Chinese silks, tea, porcelain, and other goods, Indian cotton textiles, and South-East spices and gems, should be noted. Gunder Frank provides ample proof in his arguments and successfully disproves long held Eurocentric ideas about the origins of the modern economics, commerce, and industry. Gunder Frank's work is an eye-opener to all. This book should be read by every person, willing to learn about world history. I must also say that in the 1800's and 1900's however, it was Europe which played the most significant role in moving the science, technology, industry, trade, and commerce of the world forward and to greater new heights, just as the other six regions of the world have done in the past.


American Sociological Association PEWS Book Award 2000   August 25, 2000
 1 out of 4 found this review helpful

THIS CITATION/REVIEW WAS WRITTEN BY THE AWARD COMMITTEE and is only posted but NOT written by the book's author

American Sociological Association Political Economy of World Systems [PEWS] Book Award, 2000

Winner: Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1998.

Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient

Andre Gunder Frank has been turning our thinking upside-down throughout his long and illustrious career. With his work on the development of underdevelopment, he successfully toppled the reigning orthodoxy of modernization theory and forced everyone to reconsider how underdevelopment comes about. The world, and our understanding of it has never been the same.

Still working at full bore, fiercely attacking all of our preconceptions, Frank has written yet another masterpiece of provocative sociology. ReOrient calls into question virtually every set of assumptions that has dominated macrosociology since the inception of the discipline. All of the great thinkers of social science, from Adam Smith, to Weber and Marx, to Wallerstein, are put on the chopping block, as Frank challenges the very concept of capitalism, and of the emergence of anything special in Europe starting in the 16th century. He argues, and provides tons of evidence, that our most fundamental categories and assumptions are rooted in a Eurocentrism which has blinded us to the long historical dominance of Asia in the global system, and to continuities in global development that negate the idea of any sharp, self-generated break in European history.

Frank argues that our most fundamental categories and assumptions are rooted in a Eurocentrism that has blinded us to the long historical dominance of Asia in the global system. His major contention is that it was Asia, not Europe, that held center stage for most of early modern history before 1800. The economies of Asia were far more "advanced" than any or all of Europe. Only around 1800 did Asian societies lose their dominance in the world economy, a position that came to be occupied by the West during the 19th and 20th centuries. Frank foresees a shift back to Asian dominance in the new century. The books clever title has multiple meanings, including not only reorienting our thinking, with new emphasis on the importance of the "Orient," but also pointing to the "second coming" of the East. Whether we agree with everything Frank says in this book or not, it is major intellectual achievement. It forces us to confront the assumptions and concepts that our ideas and research have stood upon for generations. Now the rug is pulled out from under us, and we must question whether all of those "givens" are just cultural biases that we have inherited. This book is like a cold bath that you enter reluctantly, shiver in, and emerge from with a bracing vigor.

What defines a great book? One model is a work that synthesizes everything that we already know. The greaness of ReOrient lies in an opposite principle: that of forcing its readers to revisit everything they have thought and read. We believe such a work deserves to be cherished and honored.


First World History Association [WHA] Book Award 1999   August 25, 2000
 9 out of 12 found this review helpful

THIS IS THE CITATION BY THE WHA BOOK AWARD COMMITTEE, which is posted here but NOT WRITTEN BY THE BOOK'S AUTHOR

WORLD HISTORY ASSOCIATION FIRST BOOK PRIZE 1999:

This book has just won the 1999 World History Association Book Award, which was presented at the WHA conference in Victoria, BC, Canada, on June 26, 1999. The choice was unanimous, because we regard this book as being in a class by itself. Its breadth of vision, courageous analysis and apt warning not to let ethnocentrism deter historians from pursuing a global perspective on the past, all make Gunder Frank's book exceptional and a must read for historians, teachers and students of world history. The book argues that European hegemony in the modern era did not really emerge until the nineteenth century, and that before that Europe was a rather marginal player in the Eurasian world economy that was centered on China. Only the windfalls of American silver and the Atlantic slave trade enabled Europe to buy its way into the existing world economy and industrialize. Its holistic approach forces historians to look beyond Europe to understand the making of the modern world, and Frank's attention to historiographic issues is outstanding. David A. Chappell, Book Review Editor JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY


Interesting but Flawed   August 21, 2000
 26 out of 28 found this review helpful

An interesting and very ambitious book by a distinguished scholar. Frank challenges the views of a number of important thinkers about world history including important contemporary historians such as Braudel and Wallerstein, and seminal 19th century theorists such as Marx and Weber. Briefly, Frank attacks a 'eurocentric' model of world development that sees capitalism emerging in Europe and then enmeshing the whole world in a Europe centered world economy. Instead, he emphasizes the vigor of a well established Afro-Asian capitalist economy that Western Europe was able to participate in only belatedly and only by extracting precious metals from the Western Hemisphere. He shows convincingly that up until the threshold of the Industrial Revolution, Afro-Asian trade remained the greater part of the world economy. These points are an important corrective to the existing model. He goes too far, however, in asserting that the world economy was not created by European activity. This is a simple point of logic. A world economy means literally that, an economic system that encompasses the whole globe. It is only with the European expansion of the early modern period that the Western Hemisphere and Oceania were incorporated into the world economy. While the Afro-Asian trade networks would remain quantitatively substantially larger than trade involving Europe, the European additions to the world economy introduce a qualitative difference in world trade networks. Nor is it likely that China, Mughal India, or any other Afro-Asian economic power would have discovered the Western Hemisphere. Another flaw in this book is the somewhat rambling style. At times this can be a real obstacle to following Frank's arguments. There are 2 chapters on economic cycles that are poorly organized and at times seem contradictory. Frank's use of what appears to be a rather nebulous literature on cycles is unclear and he resorts at times to the poorly defined idea of Kondratieff waves as an explanatory force. The book finishes with a sketchy attempt to account for the Industrial Revolution. For those interested in this important topic, I recommend Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence, which covers some of the same ground in a more logical and systematic manner.