Journal of World History, vol. 16, no. 2 (2005)

ARTICLES

Afro-Eurasian Bronze Age Economic Expansion and Contraction Revisited
Andre Gunder Frank and William R. Thompson
pp. 115–172
Abstract: By developing systematic, albeit crude, information on the timing of economic fluctuations in Afro-Eurasia between 4000 and 1000 B.C.E., we seek further evidence about the scope and degree of interdependence in the world system’s economic interactions. The empirical outcome suggests a variety of weak to moderate connections and waves of economic fluctuation that were especially and increasingly discernible in troughs of the contraction periods. By no means does this analysis resolve any or all questions about the antiquity or integration of the contemporary world system, but it supports the idea that world history is very much rooted in the continuity of ancient processes.

La civilisation la plus antique: Voltaire’s Images of India
Jyoti Mohan
pp. 173–185
Abstract: This article examines the writings of the Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire on India as he situated that land within a global context of history and cultural exchange. It examines the creation of a recognizable entity, “India,” in the Western imaginary by studying selected texts and focusing on a romanticized ideal of India as an Oriental paradise. It also examines the reasons behind such creation of India, primarily the Enlightenment attack on the Roman Catholic Church and more specifically Voltaire’s claim that many of the most important Christian rituals had their origin in Hindu rituals.

German Social Science, Meiji Conservatism, and the Peculiarities of Japanese History
Erik Grimmer-Solem
pp. 187–222
Abstract: An influential strand of Japanese historiography is invested in notions of peculiarity that highlight the deviance of Meiji Japan from Western liberal-democratic patterns. This special path is associated with the rising influence of the German Historical School of Economics. By analyzing the content of that influence and by maintaining a comparative perspective with the United States, Britain, and Germany, it is possible to highlight the worldwide demise of laissez-faire liberalism and the emergence in the 1880s of an international community of social reformers influenced by the Historical School, thus affirming the intellectual plurality and multiple political valence of this tradition of economic thought.

BOOK REVIEWS

Patrick Manning. Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past
Reviewed by Gary Kroll
pp. 223–227

Benjamin Isaac. The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity
Reviewed by Brent D. Shaw
pp. 227–232

Joseph E. Inikori. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development
Reviewed by Andre Gunder Frank
pp. 232–235

Steven G. Marks. How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism
Reviewed by Willard Sunderland
pp. 235–237

James L. Hevia. English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China
Reviewed by Tong Lam
pp. 237–239

Frederik L. Schodt. Native American in the Land of the Shogun: Ranald MacDonald and the Opening of Japan
Reviewed by Katsuya Hirano
pp. 239–241

Douglas Northrop. Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia
Reviewed by Sharon A. Kowalsky
pp. 242–244

Brian Masaru Hayashi. Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment
Reviewed by Kelli Y. Nakamura
pp. 244–246

Chadwick Allen. Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts
Reviewed by Harry A. Kersey Jr.
pp. 246–248