![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ahorbinskiBibliographic Data: Wong, R. Bin. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Main Argument: Wong argues convincingly that scholars must seek "to generate the elements of well-grounded comparative history that can identify issues in European as well as non-European history, contribute to projects in world history, and create a new basis for building social theories to replace the great nineteenth-century efforts limited in large measure to European foundations" (ix), and that one way to do this is to incorporate thoroughly into scholarship the historical perspectives, experiences and paradigms of non-Western places. Accordingly, Wong analyzes a thousand years of Chinese history on its own terms and puts it in conversation with broadly similar examples of European history in the same period. In the end it becomes clear that differences are more salient than similarities, but only after similarities have been established through comparison--focusing on differences qua differences yields the sort of meaningless statements that, as one of the people in our class discussion commented, "Europe is different from China, China is different from apples, apples are different from hand grenades, and hand grenades are different from Dwinelle Hall." Yes, and?
Historiographical Engagement: Not only with all the great 19thC social theorists but with virtually all of the 20thC scholarship both on Europe in the medieval period and especially from 1500, as well as with that on China in the same timespan, most especially with the work of Charles Tilly on various aspects of European and world history.
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples Basing expectations about Chinese historical trajectories solely on rubrics drawn from the European experience does not yield sensible analyses; nor does it further the cause of a globally equitable social theory. By comparing China and Europe not as cases against models but as independently valid examples in and of themselves, better understandings of both regions may be obtained.
Part 1: Argument, Sources, Examples In this part, comprised of three chapters, Wong explores economic change in late imperial China and early modern Europe and argues convincingly that the continued dearth of convincing scholarship accounting for Chinese economic changes because scholars continue to frame the question in negative terms, i.e. implicitly or explicitly, why did China not become like Europe? Why is China not Europe? Fundamentally, of course, China is not Europe because China is China, but not forcing either to follow the other allows Wong to demonstrate that both early modern Europe and late imperial China shared Smithian economic dynamics, and that a sharp economic divergence between their trajectories did not occur until after the Industrial Revolution, which fomented the development of industrial capitalism.
Part 2: Argument, Sources, Examples Examination of the paths to state formation taken in China and Europe, respectively, reveals startling non-synchronous similarities as well as major differences in the paths taken towards their current forms. During the time of the Roman Empire both Europe and China had roughly similar (agrarian empire) formations, but while China sustained that state formation and the idea of a unified polity until the 20thC, Europe experienced disintegration and fragmentation and was never again put under one single polity. Both European states and the Chinese empire faced vastly different challenges, claims, and commitments, and they did so in different ways which reflected their divergent heritages as well as trajectories, and continue to do so.
Part 3: Argument, Sources, Examples In this section Wong looks specifically at grain seizures, tax resistance and revolutions in China and Europe, particularly France, by way of offering case studies proving his earlier points in more detail. It's interesting to read Wong's accounts of Qing and postimperial China and, putting it together with a few other things, to get a picture of an agrarian empire that was rapidly losing both prosperity and its ability to govern. The question of why these changes happened is paramount, of course, but it's important to remember that China found itself on a very distinct trajectory from which it has only recently emerged, and that when people in China voice fears of the country somehow breaking up, they are doing so out of a context of nearly two centuries of disorder, prior to Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms.
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples "The plurality of historical pasts makes more likely the persistence of multiple, open, and contingent futures" (293)--thus, expanding the capacities of social theory to describe accurately the many variations in human lifeways and ways of being in the world (note: this is me referring to Heidegger, not Wong) is not a matter of picaresquities but of vital importance, for in order to understand who we are, we must understand where we have been and where we are going, and vice versa.
Critical assessment: This is a brilliantly analyzed and argued book, and if it gets a little dry at times, Wong succeeds to a greater extent than most economic historians I've read in not ignoring the violence that haunts history--he has an entire chapter comparing the French and Chinese Revolutions with each other, for instance. Let me be frank: as our class discussions around this book made clear, there are some people who just don't believe in comparative history, or at least in doing comparative history as we can now, and this book will not please them. To his credit, however, Wong anticipates that reaction, remarking in his introduction that "Noting items not addressed or inadequately treated matters, I think, only when such absences undermine the arguments or qualify the evidence presented" (8). It should surprise no one, methinks, that I'm with Wong on both the necessity and the value of comparative history, and I think he succeeds brilliantly at the task he sets out for himself, particularly when he reads European examples according to Chinese criteria and destabilizes our received understandings. He's particularly good on the comparative European and Chinese economies and state formations--a lot of what he said led me to rethink things I knew about Europe from 1 CE forward, particularly in the medieval era.
Further reading: Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State; Joseph Fletcher Jr., "The Heyday of the Ch'ing Order in Mongolia, Sinkiang, and Tibet"; Edward Friedman, "Reconstructing China's National Identity", Bryna Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation; Philip Kuhn, "Local Self-Government under the Republic"; Kenneth Pomeranz, From Core to Hinterland, "Protecting Goddess, Dangerous Woman"; Mary Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China; Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990-1990
Meta notes: Europe isn't everything. Those of us in Asian studies and similar disciplines know that; now we just have to sell everyone else on that fact.
Main Argument: Wong argues convincingly that scholars must seek "to generate the elements of well-grounded comparative history that can identify issues in European as well as non-European history, contribute to projects in world history, and create a new basis for building social theories to replace the great nineteenth-century efforts limited in large measure to European foundations" (ix), and that one way to do this is to incorporate thoroughly into scholarship the historical perspectives, experiences and paradigms of non-Western places. Accordingly, Wong analyzes a thousand years of Chinese history on its own terms and puts it in conversation with broadly similar examples of European history in the same period. In the end it becomes clear that differences are more salient than similarities, but only after similarities have been established through comparison--focusing on differences qua differences yields the sort of meaningless statements that, as one of the people in our class discussion commented, "Europe is different from China, China is different from apples, apples are different from hand grenades, and hand grenades are different from Dwinelle Hall." Yes, and?
Historiographical Engagement: Not only with all the great 19thC social theorists but with virtually all of the 20thC scholarship both on Europe in the medieval period and especially from 1500, as well as with that on China in the same timespan, most especially with the work of Charles Tilly on various aspects of European and world history.
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples Basing expectations about Chinese historical trajectories solely on rubrics drawn from the European experience does not yield sensible analyses; nor does it further the cause of a globally equitable social theory. By comparing China and Europe not as cases against models but as independently valid examples in and of themselves, better understandings of both regions may be obtained.
Part 1: Argument, Sources, Examples In this part, comprised of three chapters, Wong explores economic change in late imperial China and early modern Europe and argues convincingly that the continued dearth of convincing scholarship accounting for Chinese economic changes because scholars continue to frame the question in negative terms, i.e. implicitly or explicitly, why did China not become like Europe? Why is China not Europe? Fundamentally, of course, China is not Europe because China is China, but not forcing either to follow the other allows Wong to demonstrate that both early modern Europe and late imperial China shared Smithian economic dynamics, and that a sharp economic divergence between their trajectories did not occur until after the Industrial Revolution, which fomented the development of industrial capitalism.
Part 2: Argument, Sources, Examples Examination of the paths to state formation taken in China and Europe, respectively, reveals startling non-synchronous similarities as well as major differences in the paths taken towards their current forms. During the time of the Roman Empire both Europe and China had roughly similar (agrarian empire) formations, but while China sustained that state formation and the idea of a unified polity until the 20thC, Europe experienced disintegration and fragmentation and was never again put under one single polity. Both European states and the Chinese empire faced vastly different challenges, claims, and commitments, and they did so in different ways which reflected their divergent heritages as well as trajectories, and continue to do so.
Part 3: Argument, Sources, Examples In this section Wong looks specifically at grain seizures, tax resistance and revolutions in China and Europe, particularly France, by way of offering case studies proving his earlier points in more detail. It's interesting to read Wong's accounts of Qing and postimperial China and, putting it together with a few other things, to get a picture of an agrarian empire that was rapidly losing both prosperity and its ability to govern. The question of why these changes happened is paramount, of course, but it's important to remember that China found itself on a very distinct trajectory from which it has only recently emerged, and that when people in China voice fears of the country somehow breaking up, they are doing so out of a context of nearly two centuries of disorder, prior to Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms.
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples "The plurality of historical pasts makes more likely the persistence of multiple, open, and contingent futures" (293)--thus, expanding the capacities of social theory to describe accurately the many variations in human lifeways and ways of being in the world (note: this is me referring to Heidegger, not Wong) is not a matter of picaresquities but of vital importance, for in order to understand who we are, we must understand where we have been and where we are going, and vice versa.
Critical assessment: This is a brilliantly analyzed and argued book, and if it gets a little dry at times, Wong succeeds to a greater extent than most economic historians I've read in not ignoring the violence that haunts history--he has an entire chapter comparing the French and Chinese Revolutions with each other, for instance. Let me be frank: as our class discussions around this book made clear, there are some people who just don't believe in comparative history, or at least in doing comparative history as we can now, and this book will not please them. To his credit, however, Wong anticipates that reaction, remarking in his introduction that "Noting items not addressed or inadequately treated matters, I think, only when such absences undermine the arguments or qualify the evidence presented" (8). It should surprise no one, methinks, that I'm with Wong on both the necessity and the value of comparative history, and I think he succeeds brilliantly at the task he sets out for himself, particularly when he reads European examples according to Chinese criteria and destabilizes our received understandings. He's particularly good on the comparative European and Chinese economies and state formations--a lot of what he said led me to rethink things I knew about Europe from 1 CE forward, particularly in the medieval era.
Further reading: Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State; Joseph Fletcher Jr., "The Heyday of the Ch'ing Order in Mongolia, Sinkiang, and Tibet"; Edward Friedman, "Reconstructing China's National Identity", Bryna Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation; Philip Kuhn, "Local Self-Government under the Republic"; Kenneth Pomeranz, From Core to Hinterland, "Protecting Goddess, Dangerous Woman"; Mary Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China; Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990-1990
Meta notes: Europe isn't everything. Those of us in Asian studies and similar disciplines know that; now we just have to sell everyone else on that fact.