ARTICLES
Trade and State in the Arabian Seas: A Survey from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century
R. J. Barendse, 173
This article surveys developments in the western Indian Ocean during the early modern period. It argues that developments in the trade of the Arabian seas were characterized by continuity rather than by any radical break in the fifteenth century. “Europe” did not rise while “Asia” declined: developments in the Arabian seas had a powerful impact on developments in Europe, and vice versa. A case is made for a framework of study focusing on shifts in the middle to long term and linking trade with the state and agriculture. There are many and more important links, but these are more complex than is often recognized, and consequently they necessitate more subtle economic theory focusing on what links Europe and Asia rather than on dichotomies.
Patrons, Clients, and Empire: The Subordination of Indigenous Hierarchies in Asia and Africa
Colin Newbury, 227
This article examines the application and limitations of a patron-client model to clarify the relationship between imperial rulers and subordinate hierarchies in a range of Asian and African cases. Attention is drawn in particular to the denotation of the term hierarchy at different stages of contact, covering the dependency of European agencies on indigenous authorities, reversal of this status, the roles of intermediary groups and administrative brokers, reciprocal advantages in accessing resources, and not least the demise or survival of indigenous hierarchies into the period of decolonization.
China, the West, and World History in Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China
Robert Finlay, 265
Joseph Needham’s multivolume Science and Civilisation in China is recognized as one of the great works of historical scholarship in the twentieth century. The conception of world history that frames and shapes its arguments, however, has gone unnoticed. To sketch Needham’s ideas on world history, one must go to scattered discussions and suggestions in Science and Civilisation, as well as to numerous papers that Needham wrote as his masterwork moved forward. Needham conceived of world history as shaped by a dialectical relationship between China and the West, and he believed that synthesis of the two cultures would be furthered through Science and Civilisation. Moreover, Needham thought that such a synthesis would help realize what he called “the world co-operative commonwealth,” a global communist society, a “Kingdom of God on earth” that would be permeated by humane values nurtured in traditional Chinese society. Needham’s idiosyncratic views and political passions thus inspired Science and Civilisation, which is not only a monumental exposition of Chinese science and technology, but also, in the judgment of its creator, a force within world history itself.
Why Is the Twentieth Century the Century of Genocide?
Mark Levene, 305
This article seeks to relate the specific phenomenon of genocide to broader processes that have helped create and shape modern international society. In particular it argues that the emergence of a Western-led international system of nation states has led many new or latecomer states to attempt shortcuts to development or empowerment in order to make good a perceived discrepancy between themselves and the dominant players. Genocide has been a regular by-product of these agendas, not least because their accelerated or alternative programs of state building assume the rapid creation of “nationally” homogeneous and unified populations out of usually diverse ethnographic and social compositions. Though genocide is an extreme outcome demanding attention to the particular cultural, political, and socio-economic conditions in each perpetrator state, its repeat performance—since 1945 increasingly on a world scale—also suggests less a series of isolated aberrations and more a dysfunction of the system itself.
REVIEW ARTICLE
The Politics of Criticism: Not Out of Africa and “Black Athena” Revisited
Maghan Keita, 337
In 1996 two volumes of criticism appeared that addressed issues posed by Martin Bernal in Black Athena and the works of his putative allies, the “Afrocentrists.” Mary Lefkowitz had a hand in both of these works. Her Not Out of Africa was proclaimed by many cultural warriors as the definitive volume exposing the shortcomings of Afrocentric scholarship. The assumed companion piece, edited by Mary Lefkowitz with Guy MacLean Rogers, “Black Athena” Revisited, brought a vast array of scholars to the forum to discuss the Bernal thesis, and by extension the work of the Afrocentrists. Far from indicting Bernal and proving a definitive case against Afrocentrism, however, the views of these scholars in many ways curiously coalesce with those they criticize. At issue here is what to make of this and what the next steps are in constituting this discourse. For world historians, the question is even more straightforward: What does the debate between classicists and Afrocentrists have to do with the construction of world history?
BOOK REVIEWS
Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall. Rise and Demise: Comparing World Systems
Reviewed by Kevin Reilly, 347
Philip Pomper, Richard H. Elphick, and Richard T. Vann, eds. World History: Ideologies, Structures and Identities
Reviewed by Michael N. Pearson, 350
Clark G. Reynolds. Navies in History
Reviewed by James C. Bradford, 353
David Ewing Duncan. Calendar: Humanity’s Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year
Reviewed by Ronald Hutton, 355
Bonnie G. Smith. The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice
Reviewed by Maria Grever, 357
Patrick Vinton Kirch. The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic World
Reviewed by Thomas S. Dye, 361
David Gress. From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents
Reviewed by Stuart Harten, 364
Richard Fletcher. The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity
Reviewed by Gregory G. Guzman, 367
Martin Doornbos and Sudipta Kaviraj, eds. Dynamics of State Formation: Europe and India Compared
Reviewed by Bernardo Michael, 371
Ranajit Guha. Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India
Reviewed by Amalendu K. Chakraborty, 373
Robert Marks. Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China. Sucheta Mazumdar. Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology and the World Market
Reviewed by Adam McKeown, pp. 379-383
Pablo Pérez-Malláina. Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century. A. J. R. Russell-Wood. The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808
Reviewed by John B. Hattendorf, 384
Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini, eds. Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917
Reviewed by Michael Rywkin, 387
John P. LeDonne. The Russian Empire and the World, 1700-1917: The Geopolitics of Expansion and Containment
Reviewed by Willard Sunderland, 390
Michael Durey. Transatlantic Radicals and the Early American Republic
Reviewed by Marcus Daniel, 392
James L. McClain, John M. Merriman, and Ugawa Kaoru, eds. Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era
Reviewed by J. Charles Schencking, 394
D. K. Fieldhouse. The West and the Third World: Trade, Colonialism, Dependence and Development
Reviewed by James O. Gump, 396
Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker, eds. 1968: The World Transformed
Reviewed by Michael Seidman, 398
Richard J. Golsan, ed. Fascism’s Return: Scandal, Revision, and Ideology since 1980
Reviewed by Roger Griffin, 401
Robert Strayer. Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse? Understanding Historical Change
Reviewed by Christopher J. Ward, 405
INDEX TO VOLUME 11, 409-415
