ReORIENT by Andre Gunder Frank

Author:Andre Gunder Frank
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2014-03-02T17:31:55+00:00

In 1776, Adam Smith (1937: 637–8,) compared Chinese and Indian canal and fluvial low-cost transport with that in Europe and declared the former superior. Asian use of substantial human labor in transport was economical given its availability. However, infrastructural investment in ports, canals, roads, caravanserai, and their maintenance and protection was also large and to all intents and purposes efficient and competitive within China, India, Central Asia, Persia, and in the Ottoman Empire. “International” transport across and around Asia was all the more so developed and competitive; and as we observe again and again below, Europeans took advantage of and benefited from this “development” through their own participation.

In short, it is far from established, as is so often supposed, that European “technological superiority” can be dated from 1500 onward. Comparisons of European and Asian technologies certainly cast more than doubt on this Eurocentric thesis.

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